We’re happy to announce the publication of BioScope vol. 12. no. 1-2.
The Keywords Issue marks 10 years of BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies. We first conceived of this special issue in 2018 when we were nearing our 10th anniversary. At the time, the editorial group sought a celebratory stock-taking – a means of noting the dynamism of the field of screen studies from and about South Asia – and signalling emerging directions for the future. A lot has happened since 2018. Most dramatically, we are living through a global pandemic with devastating and differential impacts across South Asia. Stark inequalities within this region have tragically come to the fore, as have the geopolitics of vaccine patents, aid infrastructures and news reportage that exacerbate and consolidate the difference between the West and the rest. The current moment underscores the necessity to view the field of intellectual production itself with a diachronic and spatially comparative lens, one that is attuned to the past constructions of a place and its media and the ongoing ramifications of these constructions.
At its most polemical, the ambition of this issue is to confront the geopolitics of knowledge production and disciplinary norms. A keywords approach allows us to ask what some of the central epistemes currently at play in film and media studies are. Each keyword in this collection aims to present concise accounts of core themes and debates, thereby illustrating the conceptual underpinnings upon which the field has been built. As such, the issue serves to highlight important areas of media scholarship pertaining to South Asia and serves as a ready reference for those unfamiliar with this thriving field of study. More significantly, this special issue also allows us to interrogate these central epistemes, illuminating both the promises and the challenges of South Asian screen studies. In a field dominated by Anglophone scholars trained in Euro–American paradigms of film and media studies, our work fundamentally operates with a double consciousness. At one level, we find great value in critical frameworks generated in French, American, or German contexts that help us approach and analyse South Asian media cultures. At another level, we often find that categories of analysis are contingent on the grounds (and languages) from which they have emerged.
Editorial
Keyword
Analogue and Digital
Ravi Sundaram
Archive
Ashish Rajadhyakhsha
Art Cinema
Aparna Frank
Audience
Stephen Putnam Hughes
B & C Circuit
Valentina Vitali
Bazaar
Kajri Jain
Body
Darshana Sreedhar Mini
Bollywood
Lotte Hoek
Censorship
Monika Mehta
Darshan(a)
M. Madhava Prasad
Design
Ranjani Mazumdar
Diaspora
Amardeep Singh
DIY Media in South Asia
Amit S. Rai
Documentary in Contemporary India
Veena Hariharan
Double
Richard Allen
Dubbing
Tejawsini Ganti
Environment
Bishnupriya Ghosh
Fan
S.V.Srinivas
Fantasy
Uma Maheshwari Bhrugubanda
Film Music
Shikha Jhingan
Genre
Kartik Nair
Hollywood
Nitin Govil
Infrastructure
Rahul Mukherjee
Installation
Iftikhar Dadi
Intermediality
Vebhuti Duggal
Islamicate
Salma Siddique
Language
Ravikant
Melodrama
Ravi S. Vasudevan
Modernity
Manishita Dass
Obsolescence
Sudhir Mahadevan
Photography
Sabeena Gadihoke
Piracy
Lawrence Liang
The Popular
Anustup Basu
The Public
Anupama Prabhala
Queer
Shohini Ghosh
Realism
Moinak Biswas
Region/Regional Cinema
Ratheesh Radhakrishnan
Remix
Kuhu Tanvir, Ramna Walia
Social Media Platform
Aswin Punathambekar, Sriram Mohan
Song-and-dance sequence
Usha Iyer
Sound
Indranil Bhattacharya
Space
Priya Jaikumar
Stardom
Rachel Dwyer, Rakesh Sengupta
Television
Shanti Kumar
Voice
Pavitra Sundar