Deep Cosmopolitanism: Kutiyattam, Dynamic Tradition, and Globalizing Heritage in Kerala, India by Leah Lowthorp

Deep Cosmopolitanism (Indiana University Press, 2025) explores the extraordinary past and present of Kutiyattam Sanskrit theater, the world’s oldest continuously performed theater. Recognized as India’s first UNESCO intangible cultural heritage of humanity, the matrilineal temple art of Kutiyattam has been performed by men and women in Kerala, India, since the tenth century C.E.

This book illustrates how Kutiyattam Sanskrit theater has encountered multiple forms of cosmopolitanism over the course of its thousand-year history. Exploring how Kutiyattam artists create meaning out of their deep past through everyday narratives and reflections, author Leah Lowthorp traces the art’s cosmopolitan encounters over time, from the premodern Sanskrit cosmopolis to Muslim sultans, British colonialists, Communist politics, and UNESCO intangible cultural heritage. In so doing, Lowthorp rethinks the notion of cosmopolitanism from a non-Western perspective with premodern roots and offers a critique of the colonialist undertones of how international heritage organizations like UNESCO conceptualize peoples and traditions around the world.

Leah Lowthorp is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Folklore at the University of Oregon. She is editor (with Frank J. Korom) of South Asian Folklore in Transition: Crafting New Horizons (Routledge, 2019).