Hybrid Vehicles: Pedagogical Approaches to Transcending Imperial and Orientalized Gazes Through Kuchipudi Hindu Dance

• In Event: Roundtable Session 22
  In Roundtable Session: Curriculum of the Oppressed: Liberating Spaces Through Cultural Representations

Abstract

I aim to use Kuchipudi Indian classical Hindu dance as a hybrid vehicle to educate non-Hindus about Hinduism with postcolonial realities and decolonization in mind. The main question is how can Kuchipudi dance promote a critical educational gaze that intends to overcome the male gaze and the imperial gaze and also rise above the isolation of religions and cultures in diverse democracies? The nature of the gazes determines whether or not Orientalist or de-Orientalist knowledge develops. I propose that viewers of Kuchipudi dance maintain a hybrid gaze that seeks to understand each other as a part of humanity. It is our responsibility as educators to think of how the complexly employed gazes contribute to epistemological knowledge construction.

Author

• Sabrina D. MisirHiralall, Montclair State University