Sunita Mukhi
Lecturer
Sunita Mukhi is a cultural producer, theater artist, performance scholar.
She is the Director of the Charles B. Wang Center’s Asian/American Programming at the State University of New York in Stony Brook producing innovative programming in light of promoting a multi-faceted, intellectually sound and humane understanding of Asianness. She presents artists of international caliber such as Eiko and Koma, Nyrtyagram, Roksonaki, Kadri Gopalnath, Kenny Endo, and Niyaz; edgy contemporary performers like D’Lo, Christina Wong, Rizwan Mirza; popular comedians like Russell Peters, Eliot Chang, Dean Obedaillah and Maysoon Zahid amongst others. She has also curated a number of exhibitions such as Art Healing Space, Reinterpretations and Who is Asia America and film series such as Asian Loving, To Sing! To Dance! To Live!, and Odd Couplings.
She received her Phd. in Performance Studies at New York University. Her early education was from St. Scholastica’s College and De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines. Of South Asian origin, she was born and bred in Manila, Philippines, now living in New York.
Her book entitled Doing the Desi Thing: Performing Indianness in New York City was published in year 2000 by Taylor and Francis. Her work appears in the anthologies Contours of the Heart, A Patchwork Shawl and in the Little India magazine and in the anthology Desilicious: Sexy, Subversive, South Asian.
She has developed courses on Indian Cinema (s), Contemporary Performance and Film in the South Asian American Communities, Cultures of the South Asian Diaspora, Asian American Contemporary Performance. For the Bangalore Study Abroad Program she designed and taught course on Experiencing Contemporary India, and Contemporary Performance in India. In her capacity as Director of Asian and Asian American Programming at the Wang Center, she created a credit bearing internship entitled Presenting Asian American Cultural Programs.
She conceptualizes, presides over, participates in, and moderates numerous panel discussions, and gives lectures and addresses on topics ranging from identity and the politics of representation, performativity, arts, and the South Asian diaspora. She has appeared as a discussant and moderator in numerous episodes of the public television series Asian America and Asian Indian Immigrant Experience.
She has performed, directed and choreographed in university, community, and professional theatrical, television and film productions in Manila, United States, Mexico and Singapore. She continues to write poetry and stories, and performs. Her most recent performance works are on sexuality, women’s power, the slipperiness of identity and other yearnings such as It’s a Drag Being an Indian Woman and Cornucopia. Liberty’s New Wedding Day is a tongue-in-cheek indictment against imperialism and terror. As a story-teller, she has composed and performed tales with dynamic women as central characters such as Kalahati, the Half-Girl, Butterfly and the Pin Man, Princess Guddi Saves NYC, and Brown Fox. White Tiger, amongst others. Her poetry blog Both Beautiful with sculptor Alton Falcone appears on http://bothbeautiful.blogspot.com/.
For more information: http://www.stonybrook.edu/sb/wang/index.shtml
