Zoe Sherinian

Short Biography

Zoe Sherinian is an Associate Professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Oklahoma. Her research focus has been Christian indigenization and the production of liberation theology in India through Tamil folk music with secondary emphases in gender studies and world percussion. Her publications include articles in the journals Ethnomusicology (Summer 2007), Worlds of Music (2005) and Women and Music (2005). She also has articles in the anthologies Popular Christianity in India: Riting Between the Lines, edited by Selva J. Raj and Corinne Dempsey and Performing Pasts: Reinventing the Arts in South India, edited by Indira Viswanathan Peterson and Davesh Soneji. Sherinian is currently finishing a book entitled Songs of Dalit Transformation: Tamil Folk Music as Liberation Theology, which argues that Dalits (former untouchables) have been able to use Tamil folk music to create an indigenized Christian liberation theology that can respond in liturgical performance to their needs for transformative social change. She is a percussionist and is beginning a new fieldwork and film project supported by a Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship on the parai drum of the Dalits of Tamil Nadu, India. She holds an MA and PhD in ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University and a BA in sociology/anthropology and percussion performance from Oberlin College.