Dr. Danielle V. Schoon presents Staging Romani Belonging in Turkey: Between Nationalism and Globalism. Co-sponsored by the Departments of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures (NELC) and Dance, Ethnomusicology Program.
The promise of globalization was the free flow of commodities, ideas and people as well as greater forms of freedom and equality for societies across the world. Open economies and open societies would extend social and economic relations across national borders, phasing out and replacing cultural and political divides with interdependence based on our common humanity. Cultural identity has become doubly inscribed in the context of globalization (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2009), as both the conscious construction of selfhood—signaling a vibrant civil society that is the marker of a true and functioning democracy—and also a commodified, marketable object to be consumed—signaling a vibrant and free market. On the other hand, globalization seems to threaten to overcome local culture, which must be salvaged and preserved if it is to survive.
The performance of culture in Turkish Roman (“Gypsy”) communities is a particularly salient area of focus in order to understand how larger processes of globalization unfold in the daily lives of Europe’s perpetual "others." Interrogating this according to what Dr. Schoon calls the “politics of openness,” this presentation will demonstrate how Turkey’s Romanlar use music and dance to mediate tensions between local, national and global belonging. Using field recordings and YouTube videos to analyze shifting modes of "Roman dance," the speaker proposes that performing Roman identity is not only about representation; as affective experience, music and dance performance contribute to the embodiment of "open" subjectivities for a group of people often stereotyped as closed.
Lectures in Musicology is co-sponsored by The Ohio State University Libraries.
Lectures are held Mondays at 4 p.m. in the 18th Avenue Library, 175 W. 18th Ave. (Music/Dance Library, second floor, room 205), unless otherwise noted. These events are free and open to the public.
Campus visitors, please use either the Tuttle Park Place Garage or the Ohio Union South Garage. All other garages in the vicinity of the 18th Ave. Library are closed to visitors before 4 p.m.
