Professor of Anthropology Amanda Weidman was awarded a Senior American Institute of Indian Studies Fellowship to support six months of research in India.
This is the second time Wiedman has been an AIIS fellow; from 2009 to 2010, she researched playback singing in the Tamil popular film industry based in Chennai, India. That research resulted in her book, , published by the University of California Press in 2021.
Weidman is currently in Chennai, Madurai, and other parts of the state of Tamil Nadu conducting research for this project, which she described below:
"Songs on various manifestations of the Amman, the alternately fierce and protective South Indian goddess traditionally associated with lower-caste, ‘folk’ Hinduism are part of a vibrant field of mass-mediated devotional cultural production in Tamil Nadu. This project addresses the sociopolitical significance of this commercial genre through an investigation of its aesthetic and material aspects, focusing on the creation and production of these songs in studio contexts, their reanimation in live performances, and their deployment in amplified form in temple festivals and other everyday contexts.
"The research will explore how songs and live performances give voice to singers, devotees, and the goddess herself; and how these songs are used to claim and sacralize space and invoke the goddess’ presence and power. Through this research, I aim to understand how these songs are positioned within the competing dynamics of middle-class/upper-caste gentrification and the resurgence of ‘folk’ and lower-caste practices that currently shape goddess worship in the Tamil context."
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