Wednesday, May 5 at 4:30pm MDT
Part of the聽Sound and Noise in Asia聽Speaker Series.
In this paper I trace a lineage of conditions generalizable as 鈥渞acial melancholia鈥� (including 鈥渄iasporic melancholia鈥� and 鈥減ostcolonial melancholia鈥�) in order to focus on the relationship between melancholia and mania. What I term 鈥渕elancholic mania鈥� describes performative, public, world-making cultural productions, those ephemeral pop-up spaces that gather groups in colorful and loud displays of jubilation. Through an examination of numerous Asian diasporic postcolonial discos, I examine how diasporic melancholia is aestheticized, made audible, visible and performed through dance and how the private grief of melancholia is transferred into a publicly politicized grievance through performance. 聽
Roshanak Kheshti聽is Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies and affiliate faculty in the Critical Gender Studies Program at the University of California, San Diego and Associate Editor of the Journal of Popular Music Studies. She is the author of Modernity鈥檚 Ear: Listening to Race and Gender in World Music (NYU Press, 2015) and Switched-on Bach (Bloomsbury Academic, 33 1/3, 2019). She is currently completing her third book, tentatively titled 鈥淲e See with the Skin: Zora Neale Hurston鈥檚 Synesthetic Hermeneutics鈥� as well as a performance piece 鈥淰eil Manifesto鈥� (with Sara Mameni). 聽Her scholarship has appeared in the Radical History Review, American Quarterly, Current Musicology, Feminist Media Histories, Hypatia, Feminist Studies, GLQ, Theater Survey, and Sounding Out!