Ashoka University’s AshokaX | The Academy is offering a host of online courses, each two-weeks long, across disciplines. As part of this series, Professor Rita Kothari, is offering a course titled Hindi Cinema 1950s-1970s: The Making of Nation, Self and Society.
The introduction to the course reads: “Hindi cinema has shaped for most Indians conceptions of love, marriage, tradition and modernity. It has also shaped imaginations of the nation and its challenges as well as compromises. That said, the audiences have not been passive recipients; in fact the viewer and the ‘watched’ are interlocked in both the desire and its moderation, the containment as well its spill-overs. Cinema also interacted with ideas of the state; and helped or undermine its consolidation and democratic ends. With this in mind, we focus upon three important decades of the post-independence period and our discussion ranges from partition to emergency and everything in between. It is important to keep in mind that the instructor brings both affective and critical approach to the subject and that people’s memories and sentiments are as important to her as intellectual engagements in academic work on cinema. Also, this is not a film studies course, it retains its autonomy beyond disciplinary frameworks.”
Rita Kothari is a professor of English at Ashoka University. She is a multilingual scholar and translator, with works spanning literature, popular culture, anthropology, sociology and history.
The course will be held between 29 June to 11 July (two weeks). The application deadline for the course is 24 June, 2020. More details, here.
