Susan Seizer

Indiana University, Anthropology, Faculty Member

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I am also an affiliate faculty member of the departments of Folklore & Ethnomusicology, India Studies, American Studies, and Gender Studies at IU. Emerita as of June 2022.
Phone: 812-856-1986
Address: CMCL
800 E. 3rd Street
Indiana University
Bloomington IN 47405

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Papers by Susan Seizer

Roadwork: Offstage with Special Drama Actresses in Tamilnadu, South India

Cultural Anthropology, May 1, 2000

The event was absolutely unique, and it was repeated every year. For the event (any event) unfold... more The event was absolutely unique, and it was repeated every year. For the event (any event) unfolds simultaneously on two levels: as individual action and as collective representation; or better, as the relation between certain life histories and a history that is. over and above these, the existence of societies.

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Heredity Abandoned, and Kannagi's Courageousdecision to Act in Special Drama

Samyukta: A Journal of Gender and Culture, Jul 31, 2016

Women artists have performed in the Tamil theatre genre known as Special Drama since the early tw... more Women artists have performed in the Tamil theatre genre known as Special Drama since the early twentieth century, though they have been highly stigmatized for their participation. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with Special Drama artists in the early 1990s, I returned in 2014-2015 to conduct a follow-up study on the subsequent generations of drama family lineages. I became increasingly concernedlargely because this proved a primary concern of the artists themselveswith problems posed by the lack of any established route for the cultural transmission of knowledge of this field. In this essay I document one hereditary acting family lineage in which the stigma on stage actresses has resulted in a silencing of family history. I discuss Special Drama artists' ideas for how to encourage subsequent generations to take up this profession, and how my own presence and support contributed to their efforts to repatriate the artistic tradition. I focus specifically on the courageous decision of one young woman, a member of the fifth generation in the hereditary acting lineage I document, to buck the trend of her generation and become a dramatic Heroine even in the face of the globalizing social and economic climate of contemporary India.

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Stigmas of the Tamil Stage

Stewart Huff, P.I.: Intellectual at Large

Professor Orenstein\u27s contribution to this volume is chapter 12 Stewart Huff, P.I.: Intellectu... more

STEWART HUFF, P.I.: Intellectual at Large

Taking a Stand Book: Contemporary US Stand-Up Comedians as Public Intellectuals, 2021

In this essay we present and analyze the work of Stewart Huff, a stand-up comedian who, though le... more In this essay we present and analyze the work of Stewart Huff, a stand-up comedian who, though less well known (and certainly less financially solvent) than the more famous entertainers discussed in this volume, presents a stellar example of truth-telling through humor. We focus on his show God Hates Ann, which Huff built and performed in 2016–17. The show exposes and critiques sloppy and narrow-minded anti-science arguments and bigoted attitudes. Taking audiences on a hilarious, if sometimes horrifying, march through the history of intolerance to new scientific ideas, Huff demonstrates the folly of resisting change and challenges uncritical devotion to tradition. We focus on both the subversive content of Huff ’s act and his engaging form of delivery, exploring how he expertly embodies the duality of being a “P.I.”— meaning simultaneously “private investigator” and “public intellectual.”

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Review: Playing the Field

Publisher's, offprint versionThe magnetic appeal of the sexually charged sphere of "tabo... more Publisher's, offprint versionThe magnetic appeal of the sexually charged sphere of "taboo" -this fantasy mix of the erotic and exotic-has not exactly waned in subsequent decades, as a casual glance at almost any contemporary fashion magazine will attest. Nor has the charge of this encounter been limited to popular culture: indeed the sexuality of Others has been a mainstay of the scholarly discipline of cultural anthropology. But it is only in academic circles that the draw of the "erotic-exotic" is being "problematized" for what it reveals about Western cultural notions of sex, self, and relations of power. The ongoing rethinking of anthropology, especially, has finally begun to confront a certain smoldering disciplinary taboo: sex in the field

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Some Rise as Others Fall: Illegitimacy in Indian Dance

TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, 2015

No reason not to be frank: I love this book. Like the process of making ghee, which involves boil... more No reason not to be frank: I love this book. Like the process of making ghee, which involves boiling butter until it "clarifies," the richness of this book can be boiled down to a clear, even simple, argument that is nevertheless powerful enough to reframe the historical study of Indian dance from the colonial period to the present day. The argument is this: The anointing of certain performing arts, and those who would perform them, as "legitimate" conveyors of Indian culture simultaneously cast out others. A zone of exclusion was thereby created into which all-too-precipitously fell any arts and artists not invited to the classicizing, sanitizing, and entextualizing party. This highly generative heuristic model gives readers the opportunity to contemplate the possibility of a flip side to the welldocumented historical processes of reform that created, and indeed continue to create, cultural products charged with symbolizing the Indian nation. In the author's own words, "The model presents the official and the illicit dimensions of India's performing arts as two sides of the same coin." Illicit Worlds of Indian Dance will be of interest to scholars in transgender studies because it necessarily engages the ways gender itself is constituted and takes on meaning. Indeed, contestation over the status of performers seems woven right into the fabric of Indian dance as a conveyor of Indian culture; arguably, transgender (kothi) dancers, dancers who are also sex workers, and other performers marginalized through gender nonconformity are deeply imbricated in the very notion of a legitimate and appropriate India. Implicitly, this

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Playing the Field: The Sexual Life of Anthropologists

Transition, 1997

1996 Review essay of &quot;Taboo: Identity and Erotic Subjectivity in Anthropological Fieldwo... more

Heredity Abandoned, and Kannagi's Courageousdecision to Act in Special Drama

Samyukta: A Journal of Gender and Culture

Women artists have performed in the Tamil theatre genre known as Special Drama since the early tw... more Women artists have performed in the Tamil theatre genre known as Special Drama since the early twentieth century, though they have been highly stigmatized for their participation. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with Special Drama artists in the early 1990s, I returned in 2014- 2015 to conduct a follow- up study on the subsequent generations of drama family lineages. I became increasingly concerned – largely because this proved a primary concern of the artists themselves – with problems posed by the lack of any established route for the cultural transmission of knowledge of this field. In this essay I document one hereditary acting family lineage in which the stigma on stage actresses has resulted in a silencing of family history. I discuss Special Drama artists’ ideas for how to encourage subsequent generations to take up this profession, and how my own presence and support contributed to their efforts to repatriate the artistic tradition. I focus specifically on the courageous dec...

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Roadwork: Offstage with Special Drama Actresses in Tamilnadu, South India

Cultural Anthropology, 2000

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Paradoxes of Visibility in the Field: Rites of Queer Passage in Anthropology

Public Culture, 1995

is about the disintegration of our U.S. lesbian identities that my and I experienced during two y... more is about the disintegration of our U.S. lesbian identities that my and I experienced during two years in South India. In lieu of a formal academic treatment of the subject, I have written my critical and theoretical observations directly into the text of one story. It's a funny but a true anecdote, and in writing it down, I've come to recognize its troubling complexity. Such recognition would probably develop were I to narrate any of numerous encounters that relate in some way to the topic of identity transformation; from two years of anthropological fieldwork one has two years worth of just such anecdotes. I might have written, for example, about the many women who made it their mission to bring us their very own special spicy fresh fishsurely there is some meaning to be found in it, some fishy gendered institution to be exposed, captured in such acts as a neighbor waking us up in the morning by dangling a whole raw fish in through the grates of our bedroom window. There's also a long tale to unravel in the way everybody but everybody attributed blood relation I am grateful to the many friends and colleagues who read various versions of this essay. Special thanks are due to

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Stigma and the Expressive Arts: Cultivating Compassion

*We will discuss films as a group after the screenings. MICA (Moving Image Collections & Archives... more *We will discuss films as a group after the screenings. MICA (Moving Image Collections & Archives) is a state-of-the-art screening room that we are fortunate to have for film screenings this semester. There is no food allowed in the screening room. Eat before you arrive! Course Description: Cultural value systems in every society rely on sets of mutually defining terms-for example, normal/abnormal, able-bodied/disabled, free/enslaved, legal/illegal, white/non-white, heterosexual/homosexual-that largely determine local attitudes of acceptance or ostracism regarding particular categories of persons. Focusing on relations of social stigma in the U.S. allows us to understand how our own cultural value systems affect our most intimate senses of self, contribute to our very notions of personhood, and inform the ways in which we communicate and engage with others in the world.

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Dialogic catharsis in standup comedy: Stewart Huff plays a bigot

HUMOR, 2017

This essay investigates the cathartic creative process of a standup comic who recounts, in a vide... more This essay investigates the cathartic creative process of a standup comic who recounts, in a video-taped interview with the author, the act of transforming a painful meeting with a bigot in a bar into the stuff of comedy. Through reflexive engagement with his own creative process, Stewart Huff recounts building a scenario that splits his experience into two voices, enacting a breakthrough into performance within the taped interview itself. Taking to heart Bakhtin’s insight that parody involves a hostile relation between the speaker and another, and that introducing someone else’s words into our own speech results in a double-voiced narrative, I analyze Huff’s performance as a classic example of double-voiced parody. The transformation from horror to humor is an empowering performative

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The Afterlife of Fieldwork Relations

Indian Folklife, 2006

Dramatic license : negotiating stigma on and off the Tamil popular stage

THE UNMENTIONABLE: VERBAL TABOO AND THE MORAL LIFE OF LANGUAGE On the Uses of Obscenity in Live Stand-Up Comedy

This essay explores the use of swear words in stand-up comedy. Employing examples from the perfor... more This essay explores the use of swear words in stand-up comedy. Employing examples from the performances of two comedians who work the Midwest regional comedy club circuit, I analyze the non-referential pragmatic functions served by employing the register of dirty words. I critique flat-footed readings of the comedic use of obscenity, including that which informs recent Supreme Court censorship rulings, and argue instead for recognition of the communicative artistry displayed in such work. [Keywords: Stand-up comedy, obscenity, censorship, live performance, American working-class culture]

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Stigmas of the Tamil Stage: An Ethnography of Special Drama Artists in South India

A study of the lives of popular theater artists, Stigmas of the Tamil Stage is the first in-depth... more A study of the lives of popular theater artists, Stigmas of the Tamil Stage is the first in-depth analysis of Special Drama, a genre of performance unique to the southernmost Indian state of Tamilnadu. Held in towns and villages throughout the region, Special Drama performances last from 10 p.m. until dawn. There are no theatrical troupes in Special Drama; individual artists are contracted “specially” for each event. The first two hours of each performance are filled with the kind of bawdy, improvisational comedy that is the primary focus of this study; the remaining hours present more markedly staid dramatic treatments of myth and history. Special Drama artists themselves are of all ages, castes, and ethnic and religious affiliations; the one common denominator in their lives is their lower-class status. Artists regularly speak of how poverty compelled their entrance into the field. Special Drama is looked down upon by the middle- and upper-classes as too popular, too vulgar, and t...

Stewart Huff, P.I

Taking a Stand

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Post-field Positionings

... gained a double home through a life lived back and forth between India and the US As a journe... more

Fieldwork and Positioning

Susan Seizer's stimulating write-up, in addition to her invitation over the telephone, stimu... more

Susan Seizer

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