The University of Wisconsin-Madison
VISUAL CULTURE CLUSTER
April 17-19, 2006
Visiting Speaker Madhava Prasad
M. Madhava Prasad is Professor of Film and Cultural Studies in the Centre for European Studies, Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad, India and is currently Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute. Madhava Prasad has published on cinema, literary theory, postcolonial questions, and critical theory. His contribution to the burgeoning area of Indian film studies marshals a panoply of Marxist, political, and film theories about ideology, the Indian state, melodrama, realism, and narrative form to trace the historical construction of Hindi cinema.
Lecture
Tuesday, April 18 at 5pm in Chazen L140
"Contemporary Indian Cinema and the Figure of the Culturally Backward Spectator"
Spectators of Indian film melodrama today encounter in the cinema hall narratives that challenge their moral horizon without appearing to do so. The new popular cinema presents altogether new moral worlds but without any acknowledgement of their novelty, leaving the spectator to figure out his/her own position within the proposed order. This is a form of expropriation that compels spectators to become active, productive subjects by depriving them of their traditional means of meaning-making. The paper is an analysis of Rajat Mukherjee’s Pyar Tune Kya Kiya (2001), an ingenious allegory of this great transition.
Workshop
Wednesday, April 19, 9am-11am
"Kings of Democracy?: Understanding Indian Cinema's Political Agency."
The workshop topic is based on my current work on the connection between film stars and Indian politics. The existing literature on the subject treats it as an unfortunate and fortuitous occurrence. My study from which the readings are taken, will argue for a more structural relation between the world of cinema and that of electoral politics, a relation that is rooted in the general history of (political and aesthetic) representation and the specific history of representational politics in India. I argue that there is only a virtual national-popular in the Indian context and this is only realized through the cinema.
Seating for this workshop is limited and advanced reading is required
Please contact visualculture@education.wisc.edu for the readings and to register for the workshop
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