This presentation will map the various dimensions of the significant flow of acrobats from East African countries such as Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia to Indian circus companies in recent times. This brings to the fore the remarkable narratives of transnational movement, livelihood, dignity and physical cultures. My attempt will be to look at their “movements, flows, and circulations”, that Isabel Hofmeyr notes as the defining characteristics of transnational histories. What are the global socio-economic contexts, inequalities and subsistence that set in motion the East Africans’ movement to Indian performance arenas? How do we address questions of race, caste, ethnicity, gender, body and performance in this transnational enterprise?
Nisha Poyyaprath Rayaroth is currently a Fulbright fellow with Yale Macmillan Centre, Yale University. Her book, Jumbos and Jumping Devils: A Social History of Indian Circus was published with Oxford University Press in 2020. She holds a PhD in History from the University of Delhi. Dr Nisha has been a Mellon-SSRC Transregional research fellow with the Centre for Indian Studies in Africa, University of the Witwatersrand and a Writing fellow with Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study in South Africa. Her monograph, The Jumping Devils: A Tale of Circus Bodies has been published in the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library Occasional Paper Series. Her writings have appeared, amongst others, in Indian Economic and Social History Review, Economic and Political Weekly, Conservation and Society, Indian Journal of Gender Studies and Social Science Probings. She has been awarded the Swedish South Asia Studies Network fellowship in Lund University, Sweden, Charles Wallace India Trust Research Grant, UK, Indian Council of Historical Research Junior Research Fellowship, New Delhi and the Papiya Ghosh Memorial Trust PhD Fellowship from Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata, India. Presently, she is also co-editing with Prof Dilip M Menon, a collection of essays based on the international conference, ‘Circus Histories and Theories’ that she organized at the Centre for Indian Studies in Africa in 2018.
We will have a hybrid arrangement. A live broadcast via Zoom and Facebook online, and an in-person attendance for Yale faculty and students ONLY in Room 202, Luce Hall. The room has a limited capacity and the access will be on a first come first serve basis. Thank you for your understanding.