The angry young man emerged in Indian art films of the late 1960s and early 1970s. He went on to enjoy a robust on-screen life in the star persona of Amitabh Bachchan. In this lecture, Rochona Majumdar , a historian of modern India with a focus on Bengal, looks at a different genealogy of this figure. At another filmic angry young man–Dalit/ Adivasi (indigenous)–whose presence has not elicited much analysis and whose youth is not even recognized as such.
Rochona Majumdar is professor in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations (SALC) and the Department of Cinema and Media Studies (CMS) at the University of Chicago
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DATE: Tue, Apr 18
TIME: 5-6:30 pm
VENUE: 10 Stephens Hall
LIVESTREAM: On FB at ISASatUCBerkeley
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Rochona Majumdar is a historian of modern India with a focus on Bengal. Her writings span histories of gender and sexuality, Indian cinema especially art cinema and film music, and modern Indian intellectual history. Majumdar also writes on postcolonial history and theory.
Majumdar’s first book, Marriage and Modernity: Family Values in Colonial Bengal (2009), challenges the assumption that arranged marriage is an antiquated practice. Through extensive and meticulous archival research, Majumdar demonstrates that in the late colonial period Bengali marriage practices underwent changes that led to a valorization of the larger, intergenerational family as a revered, “ancient” social institution, with arranged marriage as the apotheosis of an “Indian” tradition. Marriage and Modernity was shortlisted by the International Convention of Asia Scholars (Social Science short-list) in 2011.
Majumdar’s interest in postcoloniality led to her second work, Writing Postcolonial History (2010), where she analyzed the impact of postcolonial theory on historiography.
Her interests in the culture and aesthetics of mass democracy led Majumdar to study cinema, in particular Indian cinema. Her third book, Art Cinema and India’s Forgotten Futures: Film and History in the Postcolony (2021), is an analysis of global art cinema in independent India. It is also a book about art cinema as a mode of doing history in a postcolonial setting.
Majumdar is also a faculty affiliate of The Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory, The Nicholson center for British Studies, and the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at the University of Chicago.
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Event made possible with the support of the Sarah Kailath Chair of India Studies
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PARKING INFORMATION
Please note that parking is not always easily available in Berkeley. Take public transportation if possible or arrive early to secure your spot.
Event is FREE and OPEN to the public.
