Collegiate Affiliation
Associate Professor ,
Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies
American Studies
Senior Affiliate,
Asian & Middle Eastern Studies
Race, Indigeneity, Disability, Gender & Sexuality Studies
I am a Professor at the Department Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies. https://cla.umn.edu/gwss/people/faculty
 
My current research investigates aesthetic practices that emerge in response to political violence and examines their effects on human life. I situate my theorization of cultural and political roots and praxis within decolonial knowledge frameworks, developing cartographies of relationality. Through an interdisciplinary lens, I analyze how narrative political violence is gendered and racialized in everyday contexts, and how these dynamics persist through post-colonial state failure, capitalist structures marked by Fascism and Authoritarianism in the Global South, and transnational extractive interests that link to the metropole as manifestations of Empire. I utilize choreographies, traditional performance arts, and creative artistic forms to examine sites of engagement and disengagement, with a focus on acts of witnessing and the generation of responses. My work extends to the laboratory of aesthetic pedagogy in rural villages and includes critical reflections on staging in urban environments. Additionally, I approach writing and literature as both praxis and epistemological tools, particularly in the context of retracing and responding to authoritarianism's deployment of "war, genocide machinery, where surveillance and punishment are operative."
In my first book, I examine the intersection of dance and political violence, focusing specifically on the Indonesian genocide, and analyze how these dynamics inform neoliberal responses to cultural production. Further details can be found at: https://www.upress.umn.edu/9780816679942/the-dance-that-makes-you-vanish/
Larasati, Rachmi Diyah. The Dance That Makes You Vanish: Cultural Reconstruction in Post-Genocide Indonesia. University of Minnesota Press, 2013.
The book was translated into Indonesian in 2023, expanding its accessibility to a broader audience.
By retracing literature as a potential site of speculative materiality, symbolism, and livelihood, I focus my analysis on the study of empire through technological and cultural practices, as articulated in a recent special edition:
Emily Mitamura & Rachmi Diyah Larasati. (2025) Bodies that haunt: rethinking the political economy of racialised death. Cultural Studies 39:6, pages 811-826.
and
Larasati, R. D. (2025). Train and its fugitive rhythms: rewriting empire, violence, and the politics of sound. Cultural Studies, 39(6), 974–991. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2025.2527031
 
Currently, my book project and choreography investigate sound as a geopolitical concept and as a critique of extractive machinery, mapping a cartography of noise that includes both punitive warnings and gendered and racialized livelihood possibilities as forms of biopolitics. This research examines how forest life, border temporalities, and transnational mechanisms, as manifestations of modern empire, are intertwined with post-colonial betrayal. I dedicate this book to retracing the songs, sounds, and artistic worlds of Indonesian farmers and plantation workers, as well as the resurgence of song and text in global cities, where such songs were previously banned and used as markers of agrarian uprising and political dissent during the Indonesian genocide. The project specifically addresses themes of gender, land reform, and aesthetic notions of nobility. The arts project 'genjer' is an exhibition that explores the "beauty" of unwanted leaves and food as indicators of spatial flourishing through performance and visual arts. This project investigates forbidden songs and maternal narratives, emphasizing the resonance of verdant forests and the interplay between natural ecological sounds, industrial noise, and creative imagination within diasporic life.
In my current scholarship, I utilize a transnational feminist lens to shift the focus from the politics of the "global" to the fragmentation of "local" aesthetic engagement with contemporary paradigms of international law, particularly those influenced by neoliberal political and ethical concerns. This work connects my interests in understanding communities of color in the United States and formerly colonized spaces, where anti-colonial cartographies are reformulated across various domains, including race, intellectualism, postcolonial sentiment, decolonizing practices, and the potential for alliance. By examining value and retracing the image of sound, I highlight the political economies of aesthetics shaped by the operations of post-colonial states and settler regimes, and analyze how these dynamics engage and reorient the intimacy of decolonial aesthetics.
I write in both academic and literary prose and employ performance as a methodological approach. I seek to broaden the sites and modalities of my research within arts spaces and through critical engagement with the complexities of everyday life.
Educational Background & Specialties
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Educational Background

  • Post Doctoral: Southeast Asian Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, 2005-2006
  • PhD: Dance History & Theory, University of California Riverside, 2006
  • MA: Dance, University of California at Los Angeles, 2000
  • Non-degree Objective: Intercultural Performance and Exchange Program, UCLA/World Arts & Cultures, 1998
  • MA summa cum laude: Dance & Performing Arts Studies, Gadjah Mada University, 1997
  • BA: Dance Studies & Anthropology, Institut Seni Indonesia (Indonesian Institute of the Arts), 1991

Specialties

  • Performing Arts in Global Politics & Culture
  • Dancing Body, Tourism & Citizenship
  • Genocide Narrative/Massacre Cultural Reconstruction
  • Study of Archive, Empire and Aesthetics
  • Politics of Human Rights and Creative Arts
  • Study of transnational Politics, Alliances (Bandung Movement and Global South)
  • Post Colonial Theories
  • Creative Projects in Post-Conflict/War Zones (Asia)
  • Feminism in Muslim societies (Southeast Asia)