Priya Joshi

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Professor Priya Joshi
English 165.2, Fall 2001
Tu, Th, 9:30-11 am, 210 Wheeler
Screenings: Wednesdays, 4-7 pm, 210 Wheeler

Office Hours: Tu, 2:15-4:30 & by appointment
Office: 451 Wheeler Hall
Email: pjoshi@socrates.berkeley.edu
Phone: 510-642-2377

The Course

Nationalism, Benedict Anderson has famously argued, can best be understood by aligning it alongside the large cultural systems that preceded it–out of which, as well as against which, it came into being. Using India as a case study, we will examine the extent to which popular Hindi film exerted, diverted, and contorted the many impulses toward nationalism preying upon and purveyed by the country that annually produces the most films in the world. Within months of the cinématograph's debut, the Lumière brothers' invention arrived in Bombay in 1896 inaugurating an ongoing romance between film and India, one that saw the rise of the anti-colonial movement, the nationalist movement, Independence, Partition, and the almost daily recreation of modern India, that place that Salman Rushdie has called "a broken creature spilling pieces of itself into the street." In a country where full literacy is still a distant dream, we will examine the extent to which popular film is Anderson's "cultural system" par excellence that deployed and addressed the social, cultural, and political myths of the modern nation. Focusing on Hindi blockbusters largely from the Golden Fifties, the Angry Seventies, and the Saccharine Nineties, we will explore how Bollywood movies construct and critique the grand narratives of Indian nationalism; ask what fantasies and illusions they elicit and project; and interrogate their relationship to India's preoccupations with its emerging modernity.

The Requirements

Course requirements include regular attendance and participation in discussions and the weekly film screenings, an oral presentation, a page for the course website, and a 12-15 page research paper due on Tuesday, December 4th. There will be no midterm or final exam.

The Texts (all available from the ASUC Bookstore on campus)

Benedict Anderson. Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. (1983) Revised Edition. New York: Verso, 1991.

Homi Bhabha, ed. Nation and Narration. New York: Routledge, 1990.

Erik Barnouw and S. Krishnaswamy. Indian Film. (1963) Second Edition. New York: Oxford UP, 1980. (o/p; in Reader)

Sumita Chakravarty. National Identity in Indian Popular Cinema, 1947-1987. Austin: U of Texas P, 1993.

Fareed Kazmi. The Politics of India's Conventional Cinema: Imaging a Universe, Subverting a Multiverse. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1999.

Laura Mulvey. Visual and Other Pleasures. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1989.

Ashis Nandy, ed. The Secret Politics of Our Desires: Innocence, Culpability, and Indian Popular Cinema. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1998.

M. Madhava Prasad. Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical Construction. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1998. (o/p; in Reader)

Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willemen. Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema. New revised edition. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1999.

a Reader available at Krishna Copy on University at Shattuck (phone: 540-5959)

The Fine Print

As I see it, our main goal in this class is to learn something about popular Hindi film and to enjoy ourselves as we do so. A seminar such as ours will flourish if we all respect the following common-sense policies. Please do not hesitate to speak with me immediately if you encounter difficulties with any aspect of this class. I work closely with the staff of the Disabled Students' Office to help my students when they need it. Therefore, if you have a disability that requires particular attention, please inform me of it at the very earliest so that I can make arrangements to accommodate your needs.

Attendance: Please come to class on time prepared to discuss the day's readings. If, for some reason, you are unable to attend our meeting, please inform me in advance by phone or email. This is simply being courteous and does not count as documenting an absence. Please be prepared to document all absences; undocumented absences will count against your grade as follows: 3 or more undocumented absences will lower your grade one full notch (from A to B, etc.), while 5 will fail you.
Grades: A final grade will be computed as follows:

Oral presentation: 20%
Web presentation: 30%
Paper: 50%

Papers: Use the MLA format for your paper and web page, and be sure to type papers in a legible (i.e., 10- or 12-point) font including a title, date, professor's name, and staple on all your work. All work must be submitted at the beginning of class on the date it is due.
Late Work: Late work will be marked down a third of a grade (from A to A- and so on) for each calendar day it is late. Assignments that are not turned in at the beginning of class will be marked late by a day.

Participation: This class will be most fun and rewarding if each of us assumes responsibility for it. Knowledge such as the kind we are trying to advance is not proprietary, and to this end, I will expect each and every student to participate actively and constructively in all our discussions. Since the generous exchange of ideas is as central to learning as breathing is to living, I do not institute a formal discussion grade per se; doing so would be akin to grading you for each breath you take. However, past experience in seminars indicates that there is up to a 10% "fudge-factor" that comes into play when computing grades: students who are constructive participants almost always receive it, while those who remain largely silent generally do not.

Listserv: In order to facilitate intellectual discussion and an exchange of information germane to our class, all members are required to subscribe to the course listserv. I will be posting information on readings, deadlines, and material of mutual course interest on it, and I encourage you to do so as well. The list is unmoderated, which means that as listowner I do not "approve" or "reject" postings. What you post will immediately get distributed to all subscribers of the list. I, therefore, expect each of us to adhere to common-sense standards of courtesy in our postings. I fully encourage you to disagree and debate postings on the list, but I hope you will do so with consideration.

Subscribing to the course listserv:

Send email to

majordomo@listlink.berkeley.edu

In the body of your message, please write only the following:

subscribe bollywood

You will shortly get a notification asking you to verify the subscription request; once you do so, you are subscribed to the list.

Posting a message to the listserv:

Send your message to:

bollywood@listlink.berkeley.edu

The message will be distributed to all subscribers on the list.

***************************************************

Schedule of Readings
Readings marked with an * can be found in the course Reader

Week 1

8/28 Welcome and Introduction

8/29 No Screening

8/30

*Eric Barnouw and S. Krishnaswamy, Indian Film ("Beginnings," "Empire," "Studio," "Industry," "Wide World")

*Arjun Appadurai and Carol Breckenridge, "Public Modernity in India" in Consuming Modernity: Public Culture in a South Asian World (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1995), pp. 1-15.

Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Encyclopedia of Indian Film, pp. 1-10; 17-32

Week 2

9/4 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (especially chapters 1-7; pp. 1-140)

9/5 Screening: Awara (The Vagabond, 1951; dir. Raj Kapoor)

9/6 Anderson, continued

Week 3

9/11
Anderson, continued;

Ernst Renan, "What is a Nation?" in Bhabha, Nation and Narration

*Jawaharlal Nehru, "Tryst with Destiny" in Salman Rushdie and Elizabeth West, eds., The Vintage Book of Indian Writing, 1947-1997 (London: Vintage): pp. 1-2.

9/12 Screening: Shree 420 (The Gentleman Cheat, 1955; dir. Raj Kapoor)

9/13 *Sudhir Kakar, "The Cinema as Collective Fantasy" in India Cinema Superbazaar, ed. Aruna Vasudev and Philippe Lenglet (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1983): 89-97.

Sumita S. Chakravarty, National Identity in Indian Popular Cinema, chs. 3-4 (pp. 80-156)

Week 4

9/18 Ashis Nandy, "Introduction," The Secret Politics of Our Desires (pp. 1-18)

9/19 Screening: Mother India (1957; dir. Mehboob Khan)

9/20 *Rosie Thomas, "Sanctity and Scandal: The Mythologization of Mother India" Quarterly Review of Film and Video 11:3 (1989): 11-30.

*Parama Roy, "Figuring Mother India: The Face of Nargis," in India Traffic: Identities in Question in Colonial and Postcolonial India (Berkeley: U of California P, 1998): 152-173.

Week 5

9/25 Sumita S. Chakravarty, National Identity in Indian Popular Cinema, chs. 3-4 (pp. 199-234)

9/26 Screening: Pyaasa (The Thirsty One, 1957; dir. Guru Dutt); OR Pakeeza (The Pure One, 1971; dir. Kamal Amrohi)

9/27 Web Workshop (location TBA)

Week 6

10/2 *Thomas Elsaesser, "Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations on the Family Melodrama" in Imitations of Life: A Reader on Film and Television Melodrama, ed. Marcia Landy (Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1991): 68-92; OR

Sumita Chakravarty, chapter 8 (pp. 269-306)

10/3 Screening: Bobby (1973; dir. Raj Kapoor)

10/4 *Laura Mulvey, "'It will be a Magnificient Obsession': The Melodrama's Role in the Development of Contemporary Film Theory" in Melodrama: Stage, Picture, Screen, eds. Jacky Bratton, et al. (London: BFI, 1994): 121-133; and

Mulvey, "Notes on Sirk and Melodrama" (in Visual and Other Pleasures)

Week 7

10/9 *"Indian Cinema: Shading out Reality" in Economist (February 27, 1999): 82-83.

*"Fundamental Blunder" and "Flaming Success" from India 50: The Making of a Nation, ed. Ayaz Memon (Bombay: Book Quest, 1997).

10/10 Screening: Sholay (Flames, 1975; dir. Ramesh Sippy)

10/11 Fareed Kazmi, "Analysing Conventional Films: Sholay, Coolie, Hum Aapke Hain Kaun" in The Politics of India's Conventional Cinema (pp. 95-163)

Week 8

10/16 Fareed Kazmi, "Towards a Theory of Popular Cinema" in The Politics of India's Conventional Cinema (pp. 215-241)

10/17 Screening: Amar, Akbar, Anthony (1977; dir. Manmohan Desai)

10/18 *Antonio Gramsci, "Popular Literature" in Selections from Cultural Writings, eds. David Forgacs and Geoffey Nowell-Smith, trans. William Boellhower (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1985).

Week 9

10/23 Gramsci continued

10/24 Screening: Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (The Man with the Heart takes the Bride, 1995; dir. Aditya Chopra)

10/25 *Ron Inden, "Transnational Class, Erotic Arcadia, and Commercial Utopia in Hindi Films" in Image Itineraries: Audio-Visual Media and Cultural Change in India, eds. Christiane Brosius and Melissa Butcher (New Delhi: Sage, 1999): 41-68.

Week 10

10/30 *Stanley Tambiah, sel. from Leveling Crowds: Ethnonationalist Conflicts and Collective Violence in Sough Asia (Berkeley: U of California P, 1996) pp. tba

10/31 Screening: Bombay (1995; dir. Mani Rathnam)

11/1 *Ravi Vasudevan, "Bombay and its Public" in Journal of Arts and Ideas 29 (January 1996): 44-65.

*Tejaswini Niranjana, "Banning Bombay" in Economic & Political Weekly (June 3, 1995): 1291-1292.

Week 11

11/6 *Ashis Nandy, sel. from At the Edge of Psychology: Essays in Politics and Culture (New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1980) pp. tba

11/7 Screening: Hey! Ram (Oh God, 2000; dir. Kamal Hassan)

11/8 Nandy, continued

Week 12

11/13 Web projects due in class

11/14 Screening: Fiza (2001; dir. Khalid Hasan)

11/15

Week 13

11/20

11/21 No Screening

11/22 Thanksgiving Holiday, No Class

Week 14

11/27 Student Conferences

11/29 Student Conferences

Week 15

12/4 Paper due

12/6 End of class festivities



home research teaching vitae	Professor Priya Joshi English 165.2, Fall 2001 Tu, Th, 9:30-11 am, 210 Wheeler Screenings: Wednesdays, 4-7 pm, 210 Wheeler Office Hours: Tu, 2:15-4:30 & by appointment Office: 451 Wheeler Hall Email: pjoshi@socrates.berkeley.edu Phone: 510-642-2377 The Course Nationalism, Benedict Anderson has famously argued, can best be understood by aligning it alongside the large cultural systems that preceded it–out of which, as well as against which, it came into being. Using India as a case study, we will examine the extent to which popular Hindi film exerted, diverted, and contorted the many impulses toward nationalism preying upon and purveyed by the country that annually produces the most films in the world. Within months of the cinématograph's debut, the Lumière brothers' invention arrived in Bombay in 1896 inaugurating an ongoing romance between film and India, one that saw the rise of the anti-colonial movement, the nationalist movement, Independence, Partition, and the almost daily recreation of modern India, that place that Salman Rushdie has called "a broken creature spilling pieces of itself into the street." In a country where full literacy is still a distant dream, we will examine the extent to which popular film is Anderson's "cultural system" par excellence that deployed and addressed the social, cultural, and political myths of the modern nation. Focusing on Hindi blockbusters largely from the Golden Fifties, the Angry Seventies, and the Saccharine Nineties, we will explore how Bollywood movies construct and critique the grand narratives of Indian nationalism; ask what fantasies and illusions they elicit and project; and interrogate their relationship to India's preoccupations with its emerging modernity. The Requirements Course requirements include regular attendance and participation in discussions and the weekly film screenings, an oral presentation, a page for the course website, and a 12-15 page research paper due on Tuesday, December 4th. There will be no midterm or final exam. The Texts (all available from the ASUC Bookstore on campus) Benedict Anderson. Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. (1983) Revised Edition. New York: Verso, 1991. Homi Bhabha, ed. Nation and Narration. New York: Routledge, 1990. Erik Barnouw and S. Krishnaswamy. Indian Film. (1963) Second Edition. New York: Oxford UP, 1980. (o/p; in Reader) Sumita Chakravarty. National Identity in Indian Popular Cinema, 1947-1987. Austin: U of Texas P, 1993. Fareed Kazmi. The Politics of India's Conventional Cinema: Imaging a Universe, Subverting a Multiverse. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1999. Laura Mulvey. Visual and Other Pleasures. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1989. Ashis Nandy, ed. The Secret Politics of Our Desires: Innocence, Culpability, and Indian Popular Cinema. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1998. M. Madhava Prasad. Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical Construction. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1998. (o/p; in Reader) Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willemen. Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema. New revised edition. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1999. a Reader available at Krishna Copy on University at Shattuck (phone: 540-5959) The Fine Print As I see it, our main goal in this class is to learn something about popular Hindi film and to enjoy ourselves as we do so. A seminar such as ours will flourish if we all respect the following common-sense policies. Please do not hesitate to speak with me immediately if you encounter difficulties with any aspect of this class. I work closely with the staff of the Disabled Students' Office to help my students when they need it. Therefore, if you have a disability that requires particular attention, please inform me of it at the very earliest so that I can make arrangements to accommodate your needs. Attendance: Please come to class on time prepared to discuss the day's readings. If, for some reason, you are unable to attend our meeting, please inform me in advance by phone or email. This is simply being courteous and does not count as documenting an absence. Please be prepared to document all absences; undocumented absences will count against your grade as follows: 3 or more undocumented absences will lower your grade one full notch (from A to B, etc.), while 5 will fail you. Grades: A final grade will be computed as follows: Oral presentation: 20% Web presentation: 30% Paper: 50% Papers: Use the MLA format for your paper and web page, and be sure to type papers in a legible (i.e., 10- or 12-point) font including a title, date, professor's name, and staple on all your work. All work must be submitted at the beginning of class on the date it is due. Late Work: Late work will be marked down a third of a grade (from A to A- and so on) for each calendar day it is late. Assignments that are not turned in at the beginning of class will be marked late by a day. Participation: This class will be most fun and rewarding if each of us assumes responsibility for it. Knowledge such as the kind we are trying to advance is not proprietary, and to this end, I will expect each and every student to participate actively and constructively in all our discussions. Since the generous exchange of ideas is as central to learning as breathing is to living, I do not institute a formal discussion grade per se; doing so would be akin to grading you for each breath you take. However, past experience in seminars indicates that there is up to a 10% "fudge-factor" that comes into play when computing grades: students who are constructive participants almost always receive it, while those who remain largely silent generally do not. Listserv: In order to facilitate intellectual discussion and an exchange of information germane to our class, all members are required to subscribe to the course listserv. I will be posting information on readings, deadlines, and material of mutual course interest on it, and I encourage you to do so as well. The list is unmoderated, which means that as listowner I do not "approve" or "reject" postings. What you post will immediately get distributed to all subscribers of the list. I, therefore, expect each of us to adhere to common-sense standards of courtesy in our postings. I fully encourage you to disagree and debate postings on the list, but I hope you will do so with consideration. Subscribing to the course listserv: Send email to majordomo@listlink.berkeley.edu In the body of your message, please write only the following: subscribe bollywood You will shortly get a notification asking you to verify the subscription request; once you do so, you are subscribed to the list. Posting a message to the listserv: Send your message to: bollywood@listlink.berkeley.edu The message will be distributed to all subscribers on the list. ************************************************* Schedule of Readings** Readings marked with an * can be found in the course Reader Week 1 8/28 Welcome and Introduction 8/29 No Screening 8/30 Eric Barnouw and S. Krishnaswamy, Indian Film* ("Beginnings," "Empire," "Studio," "Industry," "Wide World") Arjun Appadurai and Carol Breckenridge, "Public Modernity in India" in Consuming Modernity: Public Culture in a South Asian World* (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1995), pp. 1-15. Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Encyclopedia of Indian Film, pp. 1-10; 17-32 Week 2 9/4 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (especially chapters 1-7; pp. 1-140) 9/5 Screening: Awara (The Vagabond, 1951; dir. Raj Kapoor) 9/6 Anderson, continued Week 3 9/11 Anderson, continued; Ernst Renan, "What is a Nation?" in Bhabha, Nation and Narration Jawaharlal Nehru, "Tryst with Destiny" in Salman Rushdie and Elizabeth West, eds., The Vintage Book of Indian Writing, 1947-1997* (London: Vintage): pp. 1-2. 9/12 Screening: Shree 420 (The Gentleman Cheat, 1955; dir. Raj Kapoor) 9/13 Sudhir Kakar, "The Cinema as Collective Fantasy" in India Cinema Superbazaar, ed. Aruna Vasudev and Philippe Lenglet (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1983): 89-97. Sumita S. Chakravarty, National Identity in Indian Popular Cinema, chs. 3-4 (pp. 80-156) Week 4* 9/18 Ashis Nandy, "Introduction," The Secret Politics of Our Desires (pp. 1-18) 9/19 Screening: Mother India (1957; dir. Mehboob Khan) 9/20 Rosie Thomas, "Sanctity and Scandal: The Mythologization of Mother India" Quarterly Review of Film and Video* 11:3 (1989): 11-30. Parama Roy, "Figuring Mother India: The Face of Nargis," in India Traffic: Identities in Question in Colonial and Postcolonial India* (Berkeley: U of California P, 1998): 152-173. Week 5 9/25 Sumita S. Chakravarty, National Identity in Indian Popular Cinema, chs. 3-4 (pp. 199-234) 9/26 Screening: Pyaasa (The Thirsty One, 1957; dir. Guru Dutt); OR Pakeeza (The Pure One, 1971; dir. Kamal Amrohi) 9/27 Web Workshop (location TBA) Week 6 10/2 Thomas Elsaesser, "Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations on the Family Melodrama" in Imitations of Life: A Reader on Film and Television Melodrama, ed. Marcia Landy (Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1991): 68-92; OR Sumita Chakravarty, chapter 8 (pp. 269-306) 10/3 Screening:* Bobby (1973; dir. Raj Kapoor) 10/4 Laura Mulvey, "'It will be a Magnificient Obsession': The Melodrama's Role in the Development of Contemporary Film Theory" in Melodrama: Stage, Picture, Screen, eds. Jacky Bratton, et al. (London: BFI, 1994): 121-133; and Mulvey, "Notes on Sirk and Melodrama" (in Visual and Other Pleasures) Week 7* 10/9 "Indian Cinema: Shading out Reality" in Economist* (February 27, 1999): 82-83. "Fundamental Blunder" and "Flaming Success" from India 50: The Making of a Nation, ed. Ayaz Memon (Bombay: Book Quest, 1997). 10/10 Screening:* Sholay (Flames, 1975; dir. Ramesh Sippy) 10/11 Fareed Kazmi, "Analysing Conventional Films: Sholay, Coolie, Hum Aapke Hain Kaun" in The Politics of India's Conventional Cinema (pp. 95-163) Week 8 10/16 Fareed Kazmi, "Towards a Theory of Popular Cinema" in The Politics of India's Conventional Cinema (pp. 215-241) 10/17 Screening: Amar, Akbar, Anthony (1977; dir. Manmohan Desai) 10/18 Antonio Gramsci, "Popular Literature" in Selections from Cultural Writings, eds. David Forgacs and Geoffey Nowell-Smith, trans. William Boellhower (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1985). Week 9* 10/23 Gramsci continued 10/24 Screening: Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (The Man with the Heart takes the Bride, 1995; dir. Aditya Chopra) 10/25 Ron Inden, "Transnational Class, Erotic Arcadia, and Commercial Utopia in Hindi Films" in Image Itineraries: Audio-Visual Media and Cultural Change in India, eds. Christiane Brosius and Melissa Butcher (New Delhi: Sage, 1999): 41-68. Week 10* 10/30 Stanley Tambiah, sel. from Leveling Crowds: Ethnonationalist Conflicts and Collective Violence in Sough Asia* (Berkeley: U of California P, 1996) pp. tba 10/31 Screening: Bombay (1995; dir. Mani Rathnam) 11/1 Ravi Vasudevan, "Bombay* and its Public" in Journal of Arts and Ideas 29 (January 1996): 44-65. Tejaswini Niranjana, "Banning Bombay" in Economic & Political Weekly* (June 3, 1995): 1291-1292. Week 11 11/6 Ashis Nandy, sel. from At the Edge of Psychology: Essays in Politics and Culture* (New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1980) pp. tba 11/7 Screening: Hey! Ram (Oh God, 2000; dir. Kamal Hassan) 11/8 Nandy, continued Week 12 11/13 Web projects due in class 11/14 Screening: Fiza (2001; dir. Khalid Hasan) 11/15 Week 13 11/20 11/21 No Screening 11/22 Thanksgiving Holiday, No Class Week 14 11/27 Student Conferences 11/29 Student Conferences Week 15 12/4 Paper due 12/6 End of class festivities