South Asian Diasporic Cinema and Theatre : Re-Visiting Screen and Stage in the New Millennium

Contents: South Asian Diasporic Cinema and Theatre: A Critical Introduction/Ajay K. Chaubey and Ashvin I. Devasundaram. I. Filming South Asian Diaspora: Critical Essays in the New Millennium: 1. Gender and Nation in the South Asian Diaspora: Transnational Cultural Spaces in Bollywood Cinema/Sanjena Sathian. 2. Desi Films: Articulating Images of South Asian Identity in a Global Communication Environment/Rekha Sharma. 3. British South Asian Cinema and Identity–I: Nostalgia in the Contemporary British Cinema and the South Asian Diaspora/E. Anna Claydon. 4. British South Asian Cinema and Identity–II: Representing America in the films of Gurinder Chadha/E. Anna Claydon. 5. Bride and Prejudice and the (Post-) National Cinema Debate/Ana Cristina Mendes. 6. Hanif Kureishi’s My Son the Fanatic: Anxiety in Assimilation/Pragya Shukla. 7. Afghan Diaspora and Diasporic Spaces in the Cinematic Landscape of Afghanistan and Iran/Irum Alvi. II. Typology of Indian Cinema: An Accentuated Journey of Hundred Years: 8. Bollywood on the Wings of Technology and Its Contribution to Economy: Hundredth Year of Indian Cinema/M.M.K. Sardana. 9. Bollywood Dreams Hand-in-Hand with the Canadian Movie Business: Interplay of Diasporic Cinema with Emotions, Creativity and Money/Shilpa Daithota Bhat. 10. Subalterns’ Voices through ‘Accented Cinema(s)’: A Study of Deepa Mehta’s Fire and Water/Subrata Kumar Das. 11. Queer Tropes in Post 1990s Malayalam Cinema/Rajesh James.III. Theatricality of South Asian Diasporic/Indian Theatre: A Critical Reception. 12. Diasporic Activism and the Mediations of ‘Home’: South Asian Voices in Canadian Drama/Nandi Bhatia. 13. Sharuk and Shylock: The Creation of a South Asian American Aesthetic/Neilesh Bose. 14. South Asian Diasporic Theatre: A Critical Overview/D. Sudha Rani. 15. Theatre for Development in Indian Context: An Introspection/Priyam Basu Thakur. IV: Partitoned Lives in Cinema and Theatre: Recent Perspectives: 16. Partitioned Lives and the Cinematic Quest for Redressal/Manjinder Kaur Wratch. 17. ‘Do They Want to Turn Partition into a Gilbert and Sullivan Opera?’: Performing Partition as Uncanny Farce/Anindya Raychaudhuri.

This volume contains seventeen path-breaking essays by Indian, European, Indo-Scottish, and Indo-American scholars. It seeks to affirm heterogeneity and difference, celebrating multi-dimensional modes of looking at South Asian diasporic cinema and theatre in the new millennium. The essays in the anthology engage in critical conversations around diverse themes—from ‘home’ and ‘homeland’ in Afghan Cinema, to the Partition of India. This co-mingling of multiple voices articulates the new, topical and sometimes radical dimensions of contemporary South Asian film and drama. In essence, the credo of this compendium is to breach extant disciplinary boundaries and establish a stimulating and thought-provoking rapport with its readers. With a polyvocality stemming from its panoply of eminent international contributors, this volume acts as a bridge, dissolving borders and addressing often-specious cultural pre-conceptions. It forges a cultural studies causeway across the largely reductionist duality of South Asian ‘diasporic’ and ‘domiciled’ visual arts. It is expected that this anthology, arguably the first of its kind, will be useful to both research students and academicians around the world. (jacket)