Rajinder Dudrah

"Performing Bollywood:

Hindi Cinema Entertainment Shows in the Diaspora"

Thursday, March 25, 2010

3:30-5pm, 821 Anderson Hall

 

 

About his talk, Rajinder writes:

What does it mean to perform "Bollywood," a nomenclature that increasingly encapsulates the growing multi-million fiscal and international aspirations of the commercial Hindi film and related entertainment and cultural industries? How is Bollywood's performativity presented to global audiences in and through entertainment shows? What does a focus on such shows reveal about the contemporary state of play of articulating together stars, spectacle, song and dance, international tour dates, and global multi-media players? This paper will attempt to answer some of these questions by drawing on participant observation, textual analysis, performance studies, and theoretical insights from transnational cultural studies to make sense of the phenomena of Bollywood shows, especially from the viewpoint of the diaspora.

About the speaker:

Rajinder Dudrah is Head of Drama & Senior Lecturer in Screen Studies at the University of Manchester. He is the author of Bollywood: Sociology Goes to the Movies (2006); Bhangra: Birmingham and Beyond(2007); and the forthcoming Bollywood Travels: Culture, Diaspora and Border Crossings in Popular Hindi Cinema. He is coeditor of the warmly praised, Bollywood Reader (2008) and the journal, South Asian Popular Culture.