Director, Sarai, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies; Module Coordinator: “Media and the Constitution of the Political”, International Centre for Advanced Studies: Metamophoses of the Poltical (ICAS:MP)
Duration of stay: 12 June 2023 to 14 July 2023
In cooperation with Prof. Dr. Vinzenz Hediger
Ravi Vasudevan is a film and media historian. With Ravi Sundaram, Vasudevan directs Sarai, the media research programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. He co-founded Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies (2010-), and is a coordinator of the media module of the International Centre for Advanced Studies: Metamorphoses of the Political (ICAS:MP). He is currently working on non-fiction film infrastructures, the film archives and questions of historiography; film and the history of publicity; film, media and mythopolitics; post-cinema media artefacts and political imaginaries.
Research project Title:
Populism, Authoritarianism, and Trust: exploring Indian film and media history
Research abstract
My research project with ConTrust draws on Indian film and media history to explore significant political configurations that enabled the development of trust in authoritarian politics. The first instance relates to the role of governmental cinema in the development of the career of Indira Gandhi between 1967 and 1977. The second reflects on configurations of political power and necropolitics in the cinematic imagination of Banaras, and the political ascendancy of Narendra Modi.
Publications
2023 Unexpected, Contingent, Accidental: Cinema in the Contemporary Digital Archive, in Stefanie Schulte Strathaus and Vinzenz Hediger edited Accidental Archivism: Shaping Cinema’s Futures with Remnants of the Past, Meson Press
2022 Infrastructures of Political Address: the Film and Media Archive, in Ranjani Mazumdar and Neepa Majumdar edited, Companion to Indian Cinema, London, Blackwell
2021 “In India’s Life and Part of It”: Film and Visual Publicity at Burmah Shell, 1920s-1950s, in Marina Dahlquist and Patrick Vondereau ed, Petrocinema: Sponsored Film and the Oil Industry, London, Bloomsbury
2021 Configurations of Partition: the Indian Newsreel Archive, in Ravi Vasudevan ed. Media and the Constitution of the Political: South Asia and Beyond, Delhi, Sage/Spectrum-International Centre for Advanced Studies: Metamorphoses of the Political
Events:
ConTrust Speaker Series
12 July 2023, 18.15
Lecture: Mythopolitics and Melodrama in the Forging of Populist Power in Contemporary India
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