Thursday, April 12, 2007, 4-6pm, Russell Weigley Room, 914 Gladfelter Hall

Rachel Dwyer, Reader in Indian Studies and Cinema, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
"Screen goddesses: Female Deities in Indian Cinema"

Dr. Dwyer’s talk will examine depictions of goddesses in Indian cinema, seeking to explain the relative lack of popularity of the Devi in comparison to Sita. She will look at mythological films, where the goddess appears as one of the film’s characters, and at the social genre, where an image of the goddess is efficacious. She will also discuss films that refer to mythological stories of the goddesses to draw comparisons with human characters.

Rachel Dwyer teaches courses in Indian literature and cinema, as well as the Gujarati and Sanskrit languages. Her main research interest is in Hindi cinema where she has published on film magazines and popular fiction; consumerism and the new middle classes; love and eroticism; visual culture; and religion and secularism. Her major publications include: Filming the Gods: Religion and Indian Cinema (Routledge, 2006); One Hundred Bollywood Films (Roli, 2005); Yash Chopra (Roli, 2002); Cinema India: The Visual Culture of Hindi Film (co-authored with Divia Patel, Reaktion Books, 2002); and All You Want is Money, All You Need is Love: Sex and Romance in Modern India (Cassell, 2001).