Performing Arts Scholar Discusses Jewish Drag Performances

The Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies presents a talk by Rebecca Rossen, professor in the Department of Theater and Dance, titled "The Dancing Jew(ess): Ethnic Ambiguity and Jewish Drag in American Modern Dance."

In this lecture, Rossen will examine how discourses of ethnicity, gender, nationality and embodiment converged in Jewish drag performances on the American concert stage and in Yiddish film. Although these female performers reproduced certain stereotypes about Eastern-European Jews, their Jewish transvestism challenged essentialist notions of gender and ethnicity and ultimately undermined the androcentrism of Judaism.

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