A fascination for color in the 1960s led to Bombay cinema’s mobilization of the hinterland as the site for a new future. With the development of Indian highways and an increase in automobility, a new map of India now occupied the cinematic imagination. This talk will explore the links between the infrastructure of automobile culture, the highway, industrial development outside the city, and 1960s Bombay Cinema. Ranjani Mazumdar is Professor of Cinema Studies at the ...

Saymon Zakaria will reflect on the rich array of musical forms and cultural performances that have developed around religious rituals in Bangladesh. He will explore the intersecting networks of religious sentiments evoked by Bangladeshi musical performers from diverse religious communities, including Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and Christian performers. Dr. Saymon Zakaria is Assistant Director of the Folklore Department in the Bangla Academy in Dhaka, Bangladesh. A scholar of Bangladeshi folklore, his publications include Pronomohi Bongomata: Indigenous ...

Although an ascetic religion that touts celibacy as the norm (at least for the clergy), Buddhism has a lot to say about sexuality. José Cabezón’s talk will focus on ancient South Asian sources and will present an overview of what classical Buddhist authors have had to say about sex. Based on his recently published book, Sexuality in Classical South Asian Buddhism (Wisdom Publications, 2017), the talk will explore the themes of sexuality in Buddhist cosmological ...

Why are counterinsurgency campaigns able to overpower some insurgencies and not others? Amit Ahuja’s lecture will compare two counterinsurgency campaigns in India with divergent outcomes: the counterinsurgency in the Punjab was able to subdue the insurgency, whereas the counterinsurgency in Kashmir has had limited success. Drawing on 105 interviews—54 with security force personnel and 51 with family members of insurgents—Ahuja will highlight the ability of the security forces to target a key vulnerability of an ...

This talk will examine the reorganization of singing voices and vocal aesthetics in the music of Tamil cinema, contrasting the ideals for male and female voices from the 1960s and 1970s with new ideals that have emerged since the 1990s in the wake of India’s economic and cultural liberalization. Based on ethnographic research among playback singers, music directors, and sound engineers in the Tamil film industry, the talk will show how two now salient aesthetics ...

Portraits of Sai Baba of Shirdi (late 1830s–1918) are everywhere to be seen in public space in Mumbai. Are these images sacred? According to the saint himself, historical exponents of his teachings, and many ordinary Mumbai residents, the answer is “Yes.” What does it mean to encounter divine power in a mass-reproduced image? Drawing on material from his just-released book, The Neighborhood of Gods: The Sacred and the Visible at the Margins of Mumbai (University ...