POPULAR INDIAN FILM: RELIGION, MORALITY, AND AESTHETICS
Religion 297 B Nikky Singh
Fall 2005 Office:
Lovejoy 349; X 3175
Office
Hours: M
12-1;
T/Th 2.30-3.30
1. R.K. Narayan, The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic (Penguin)
2. Barbara Stoller Miller, The Bhagavad Gita
3. Vijay Mishra, Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire (Routledge)
WEEKLY SCREENING OF FILMS
WEEKLY CLASS DISCUSSION ON FILMS AND READINGS
3 PAPERS DUE:
OCTOBER 17 (5 pages)
NOVEMBER 14 (5 pages)
DECEMBER XX (7 pages)
SEPT. 12 Introduction: The Bollywood Scene
CBS video:
Aishwarya Rai: The Most Beautiful Woman in the World
Aishwarya dance to the song "dollareŠ"
from Devdas
Bell hooks'introduction to Reel to Real: race, sex and class at the movies (Routledge, 1996)
Start reading Miller's translation of the Bhagavad Gita.
19 Film: Amar Akbar Anthony: Religious Diversity in India
Reading: Eaton, "Sufi Folk literature and expansion of Indian Islam" in (on reserve)
Temples of Desire, skim through chapters 5 & 6 ("The Actor as Parallel Text: Amitabh Bachan" )
26 Film: Waqt
Reading: Rosie Thomas, "Melodrama and the Negotiation of Morality in Mainstream Hindi Film" in Breckenridge (ed) Consuming Modernity: Public Culture in a South Asian World, pp. 157-182 (on reserve)
Steve Derne, "Market Forces at Work: Religious Themes in Commercial Indian Films" in L. Babb and Susan Wadley Eds., Media and the Transformation of Religion in South Asia (Philadelphi: University of Pennsylvania, 1995), pp. 191-216.
(on reserve)
And the Bhagavad
Gita
OCT 3 Film: Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham
Reading: William Harman, "The Sacred Marriage Metaphor in Religious Studies and in Hinduism" from The Sacred Marriage (Indiana, 1989), pp., 1-20 (on reserve)
Selections on "marriage" from Pandey's Hindu Samskaras: Socio-Religious Study of the Hindu Sacraments (Delhi, 1969) (on reserve)
Reading: Sudhir Kakar, "The Ties That Bind Family Relationships in the Mythology of Hindi Cinema" in India International Centre Quarterly 8: 1, pp., 11-21 (on reserve)
And The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic
17 First
Paper Due!
24 Film: Mother India
Reading: "The Texts of Mother India" in Temples of Desire, "
pp., 61-87
Nasreen Munni Kabir, "Working Wonders" in Bollywood: The Indian Cinema Story, Channel 4 books, 2001, pp. 103-121 (on reserve)
And the myths of "Savitri" and "Sita, the Ideal Wife" (on reserve)
31 Film: Jai Santoshi Maa
Reading: Philip Lutgendorf, Who Wants to be a Goddess? Jai Santoshi Maa Revisited" in Chakra 3, 2005, pp. 72-112 (on reserve)
Selections from Stanley Kurtz, All the Mothers are One (Columbia, 1992) will be available on reserve.
NOV. 7 Film: Devi
Reading, Nikky Singh, "From Flesh to Stone: The Divine Metamorphosis in Satyajit Ray's Devi" in Journal of South Asian Literature (Michigan State University) Vol. XXVIII, pp. 227-250 (on reserve)
Ashis Nandy, "An Intelligent Critic's Guide to Indian Cinema" in The Savage Freud (Princeton, 95), pp. 196-236 (on reserve)
14 Second Paper due!
Screening of Mughal-e-azam
Reading on Mughal Emperors Akbar, Jahangir, and Shah Jahan
(on reserve)
21 Film: Umrao Jan
Reading: Oldenberg, "Lifestyle as Resistance: The Case of the Courtesans of Lucknow" in Lucknow: Memories of a City (Oxford, 1997), pp.,136-154 (on reserve)
28 Film: Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaenge
Patricial Uberoi, "The Diaspora Comes Home: Disciplining Desire in DDLJ" in Contributions to Indian Sociology 32.2, pp. 305-336 (on reserve)
"Female Bodies and the Male Gaze: Laura Mulvey and Hindi Cinema" (chapter 3), "Courting: Hindi Film Ishtyle" (chapter 4), and "Women in Indian Cinema: Fictional Constructs" (chapter 5) in Jasbir Jain and Sudha Rai (eds.) Films and Feminism: Essays in Indian Cinema, (Rawat Publications, Jaipur, 2002), pp. 52-71 (on reserve)
Vijay Sharma, "Bombay Cinema and Diasporic Desire" in Temples of Desire, pp. 235-269
DEC. 7 Film: Veer Zara
Sacred spaces of the Punjab: mandir, masjid, gurdwara