This roundtable addresses the transcultural nature of Indian cinema, both past and present. Following the liberalization of India’s economy in the early 1990s, histories of Indian cinema have either focused on the reception of Indian films vis-a-vis cosmopolitan constructions of South Asian diasporic subjectivities or have examined the ways in which an image of the nation has been constructed in and through Indian cinema. What is less understood and explored is the integration, consumption, and vernacularization of Indian cinema in various contexts outside India, for instance in Latin America and Africa. Cinephiles, Fandoms, and Global Media Cultures aims to highlight recent engagements with transcultural Indian cinema.

This event will be held in conjunction with the opening reception of the exhibition Love Across the Global South: Popular Cinema Cultures of India and Senegal, Bernice Layne Brown Gallery, Doe Library (curated by Ivy Mills, Sugata Ray, Liladhar Pendse, and Adnan Malik). The exhibition highlights the interconnected nature of Senegalese Indian cinema fan culture and the Indian films that inspire it.

Program:

12:00: Welcome remarks

12:10-1:25: Roundtable presentations
Ajay Gehlawat (Sonoma State University), “Black Voice, Brown Skin: Auto-tuning Akon for Bollywood”
Jayson Beaster-Jones (UC Merced): “Have Mandolin Will Travel: Musical and Affective Themes of DDLJ”
Ivy Mills (UC Berkeley): “On Ravana’s Blackness: Akon’s ‘Chammak Challo’ and Bollywood’s Racial Imaginary”

1:25-1:35: Break

1:35-3:15: Roundtable presentations continued
Usha Iyer (Stanford University): “Teaching Indian Film in Trinidad: Cinema, Gender, and the Construction of Racial Identities”
Rachael Hyland (UC Berkeley): “Boundaries in Flux: Race and Class in Indian Summers and A Passage to India”
Atreyee Gupta (UC Berkeley), Discussant

3:15-3:25: Break

3:25-4:40: Keynote
Lalitha Gopalan (University of Texas, Austin), “Dust to Digital: Tamil New Wave”

4:40: Concluding remarks

5:00-7:00: Opening reception of the exhibition Love Across the Global South: Popular Cinema Cultures of India and Senegal in the Bernice Layne Brown Gallery, Doe Library

Both the roundtable and exhibition reception are free and open to the public.

Organizers: Rachael Hyland and Shivani Sud.

Event made possible with the support of the Townsend Center of Humanities, the Institute of South Asia Studies, the Sarah Kailath Chair of India Studies, the History of Art Department, the South and Southeast Asian Studies Department, and the Asian Art and Visual Cultures Working Group.