Joint appointment: Folklore Program
Office Hours: by appointment
Curriculum Vita
Christine Garlough is Professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Director for the Center for South Asia (2015-16), and affiliate of the Department of Comparative Literature and Folklore, Interdisciplinary Theater Studies, and the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures. Her research constellates around issues of art and activism. Her work centers on how feminist groups, both in India and the South Asian diaspora, use street plays, poster work, performance art, and oral narratives to address social and political exigencies. As part of this work, she has developed the South Asian Feminist Activism Archive (SAFAA), which digitizes and catalogs rare Indian feminist posters. Her research appears in journals such as Quarterly Journal of Speech, Journal of American Folklore, Women’s Studies in Communication, Journal of American Folklore, and Western Folklore, as well as the edited volumes and her recently published scholarly monograph, Desi Devas: Activism in South Asian American Cultural Performance (2013). Her new book project, The Danger of Safe Space, takes up questions of restricting discourse to shared political or social viewpoints, and the relation of this to the ethics of care, activism, and acknowledgment in a range of contexts.
Gender-related Courses:
GWS 102: Gender, Women, and Society in Global Perspective
GWS 880/CLFS 966: Proseminar, Graduate Study in Gender and Women’s Studies, “Gender, Performance, and Performativity”
GWS 468: Feminism, Folklore and Comparative Literature
GSW 467: Women and Politics in Popular Culture and Folklore
GWS 426: Gender and Grassroots Politics Across the Globe
GWS 414: Gender, Sexuality and Performance
GWS 950 : Gender, Performance and Performativity
Selected Publications:
1. Garlough, Christine L. Desi Divas: Activism and Acknowledgment in Diasporic Performances, University Press of Mississippi, as part of the Folklore series: editor, Craig Gill. [P]
2. Emon, Ayeshah and Garlough, Christine L. “Refiguring the Hijra: Performing the ‘Third Gender’ in Yoni ki Baat,” Invited for Journal of American Folklore, Special Issues on Asian Folklore, (2015).
3. Garlough, Christine L. “Savitri’s Stories and Girl Power: Rhetorical Approaches to Feminism(s) in South Asian American Ethnic Schools,” Storytelling, Self and Society, 9.2 (2013).
4. Lee, Nam-jin, Christine L. Garlough, Lewis Friedland, and Dhavan V. Shah. “Gender and Generation in the Social Positioning of Taste,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, November (2012).
5. Garlough, Christine L. and Anne Pryor. “Fearlessly Sifting and Winnowing: Folklore and the Wisconsin Idea,” Christine Garlough and Anne Pryor, Western Folklore, September (2012).
6. Garlough, Christine L. “Folklore and Performing Political Protest: Calls of Conscience at the 2011 Wisconsin Labor Protests,” Western Folklore, September (2012).
7. Garlough, Christine L. “Folklore and the Potential of Acknowledgment: Representing ‘India’ at the Minnesota Festival of Nations,” Western Folklore, 70.1 (2011): 69-98.
8. Garlough, Christine L. “The Risks of Acknowledgement: Performing the Sex-Selection Identification and Abortion Debate,” Women Studies in Communication, 31.3 (2008): 368-394.
9. Garlough, Christine L. “Playing with Boundaries: Self and Dialogue in an Indian-American Fatana Performance,” Folklore, 39.1 (2008): 63-95.
10. Garlough, Christine L. “On the Political Uses of Folklore: Performance and Grassroots Feminist Activism in India,” Journal of American Folklore 121.480 (2008): 167-191.
11. Garlough, Christine L. “Transfiguring Criminality: Eclectic Representations of a Female Bandit in Indian Nationalist and Feminist Rhetoric,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 93.3 (2007): 253-278.