Susan Reed

Susan Reed

Associate Professor of Women's & Gender Studies and Anthropology; Director, Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Gender
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Director of the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Gender

Educational Background

  • B.A., Anthropology and Philosophy, College of William and Mary
  • M.A. and Ph.D., Anthropology, Brown University

Teaching and Research Interests

  • dance and performance
  • gender, ethnicity and nationalism
  • religion and ritual
  • disability, performance and culture
  • South Asia, especially India and Sri Lanka

Prof. Reed has conducted field research on performance, religion and politics in Sri Lanka for over two decades. Her book and DVD, Dance and the Nation: Performance, Ritual and Politics in Sri Lanka (2010), was awarded the Outstanding Publication Award from the Congress on Research in Dance and a Special Citation Award from the Society of Dance History Scholars. To view video excerpts from the DVD see: http://www.ethnovisions.net/EV/SRI_LANKA_series.html

Courses

  • ANTH/WMST 232 Gender and Sexuality in South Asia
  • ANTH/UNIV/WMST 371: Dance, Culture and Politics
  • ANTH 244 South Asian Culture and Society
  • ANTH/WMST 282 Dance and Culture
  • UNIV 232 Peace and Society
  • WMST 150 Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies

Selected Publications

FILM

Why We Dance: Ritual, Performance and Healing in Postwar Sri Lanka (105 min., 2026).

Producer and researcher: Susan A. Reed
Director and co-producer: Wilton Martinez (Center for Visual Anthropology of Peru)
Distributor: Documentary Educational Resources

Why We Dance explores the role of dance in contemporary Sri Lanka through the lives and practices of hereditary ritual dancers and younger generation urban performers. The film addresses many facets of dance including ritual and stage performance; myth and history; war, violence and healing; caste discrimination; and ethnic nationalism. While capturing the enduring significance of traditional dance and ritual, the film illuminates the ways these have been adapted to address key social and political issues in the aftermath of Sri Lanka’s nearly 26-year civil war (1983-2009). 

 

BOOKS

Dance and the Nation: Performance, Ritual, and Politics in Sri Lanka. University of Wisconsin Press. Book with DVD (2010). https://uwpress.wisc.edu/Books/D/Dance-and-the-Nation

ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS

“changeABLE cohesion: Dance and Disability in Sri Lanka.” Asian Theatre Journal 41, no. 1 (Spring 2024)

“Contemporizing Kandyan Dance” in Music and Dance as Everyday Life in South Asia. Sarah Morelli and Zoe Sherinian, eds. New York: Oxford University Press. (2024)

"Bathed in Blood: Ritual Performance as Political Critique." Asian Ethnology 80 (1): 165-198. https://asianethnology.org/articles/2330 (2021)

"Women and Kandyan Dance: Negotiating Gender and Tradition in Sri Lanka" In Theorizing the Local: Music, Practice and Experience in South Asia and Beyond. Richard Wolf, ed., pp. 29-47. New York: Oxford University Press (2009).

"Buddhism, Sri Lanka" "Kohomba Kankariya," "Ankeliya," "Sri Pada," "Pattini," "Skanda," "Firewalking." South Asian Folklore: An Encyclopedia, Margaret Mills, Peter Claus, and Sarah Diamond, eds. New York: Routledge (2003).

"Performing Respectability: The Berava, Middle Class Nationalism and the Classicization of Kandyan Dance in Sri Lanka." Cultural Anthropology (May 2002) vol. 17 (2): 246-277.

"The Politics and Poetics of Dance" Annual Review of Anthropology 1998, vol. 27: 503-32. Palo Alto: Annual Reviews (1998).

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