Tejaswini Ganti
Associate Professor of AnthropologyPh.D. 2000, NYU; M.A. 1994, University of Pennsylvania; B.A. 1991, Northwestern University.
Office Address: Rufus D. Smith Hall 25 Waverly Place New York, NY 10003
Email:
Phone: 212-998-2108
Fax: 212-995-4014
Areas of Research/Interest
anthropology of media, visual anthropology/visual culture, cultural policy, nationalism, postcolonial theory, capitalism, neoliberalism, globalization, Indian cinema, South Asia
Publications
Books
Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry, Duke University Press, 2012
Link to Facebook page
Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema, Routledge, 2004.
Articles
“Sentiments of Disdain and Practices of Distinction: Boundary-Work, Subjectivity, and Value in the Hindi Film Industry,” The Anthropological Quarterly 85(1), 2012.
“Corporatization and the Hindi Film Industry,” in Handbook of Indian
Cinemas, eds. K. Moti Gokulsing & Wimal Dissanayake, Routledge
Press, Forthcoming.
“No Longer a Frivolous Singing and Dancing Nation of Movie-Makers: The Hindi Film Industry and its Quest for Global Distinction," Visual Anthropology, Forthcoming.
“The Limits of Decency and the Decency of Limits: Censorship and the Bombay Film Industry,” in Censorship in South Asia: Cultural Regulation from Sedition to Seduction, eds. William Mazzarella & Raminder Kaur, Indiana University Press.
2009
"Mumbai vs. Bollywood: The Hindi Film Industry and the Politics of Cultural Heritage in Contemporary India,” in Global Bollywood, eds. Anandam P. Kavoori & Aswin Punathambekar, New York University Press.
2008
“And Yet My Heart Is Still Indian: The Bombay Film Industry and the (H)Indianization of Hollywood,” [Reprint] in Genre, Gender, Race, and World Cinema, ed. Julie F. Codell. Blackwell.
2007
“And Yet My Heart Is Still Indian: The Bombay Film Industry and the (H)Indianization of Hollywood,” in Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain, eds. L. Abu-Lughod, F. Ginsburg & B. Larkin. Univ. of California Press. 2002.
“Centenary Commemorations or Centenary Contestations? -- Celebrating a 100 Years of Cinema in Bombay,” Visual Anthropology 11(4), 1998.
Films
Gimme Somethin’ to Dance to! (1995) – about the growing popularity of bhangra music in New York City
Media/Press
Television
"What's in a Name?" CBC News
"The Debate over 'Bollywood'" CBC News
Internet
"Indian film industry (Bollywood) - Perspectives and outlook" MBA Crystal Ball
Radio
"Bollywood Sirens" On the Media, National Public Radio
Print
"Bollywood's Global Push" Christian Science Monitor, May 31, 2011
Current News / Projects
Updated August 2011
• My book, Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry, is currently in press and scheduled for publication by Duke University Press in early 2012. The book explores the transformations in the Hindi film industry from 1995-2006, a period in which the economic ideals of neoliberalism came to be dominant in India. The book details how the Hindi film industry became “Bollywood” – a globally recognized and circulating brand of filmmaking, which is often posited by the international media as the only serious contender to Hollywood in terms of its global popularity and influence.
• I am working on the second edition of my book, Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema (Routledge 2004), which will be updated to include current trends in Hindi filmmaking. The new edition is scheduled for publication in the latter half of 2012.
• My article, “Sentiments of Disdain and Practices of Distinction: Boundary-Work, Subjectivity, and Value in the Bombay Film Industry” has been accepted for publication by Anthropological Quarterly and will be appearing in the journal in 2012. It examines the inordinate amount of criticism and contempt expressed by Hindi filmmakers about the workings of the industry as well as filmmakers’ efforts to assert their difference from that norm – ranging from discourses about behavior to a fetishization of new technology. I discuss how these sentiments and discourses play key roles in the self-making practices of Hindi filmmakers by operating as a form of “boundary-work,” the industry’s ideological efforts to define legitimate membership and practice, thus creating alternate regimes of value and criteria of prestige independent of commercial outcome.
• I am currently writing a chapter about the corporatization of the Hindi film industry for the Routledge Handbook on Indian Cinema for publication in 2012. This chapter lays out the histories of capital formation and state policy in India that have enabled the structural reorganizations within the Hindi film industry, which allow for its further expansion into North America and increasing interaction with Hollywood studios.
• I have been invited to write a scholarly review essay about neoliberalism by the Annual Review of Anthropology for publication in volume 42, 2013.
Lectures/Conferences
• I was invited in June by the Institute of Contemporary Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto to speak at a panel discussion, “Beyond Bollywood Showcards” held in conjunction with their exhibit, “Bollywood Cinema Showcards: Indian Film Art from the 1950s to the 1980s.” My presentation laid out the broad contours of how Hindi filmmaking has changed aesthetically, thematically, and economically over the decades in post-independence India.
• While in Toronto, I was interviewed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s [CBC] Television show, “The National” about the contestations over the term, “Bollywood.” [see links above]
• After my return from Toronto, I was also interviewed by CBC Radio’s morning programs in Vancouver, Winnipeg, and Whitehorse, discussing the economic scope of the Bombay film industry, aka Bollywood.
• I was invited in May by the Stern School of Business’s India Leadership Exchange Program to speak about the Hindi film industry to a group of undergraduate students and their professors visiting from Bombay. My lecture, “From ‘Sinful Technology’ to ‘Entertainment Industry’: The Evolution of State Policy toward the Hindi Film Industry” examined the evolving relationship between the Indian government, regional governments, and the Hindi film industry in terms of policies of taxation and financing, which has led to the industry's current profile as well as contrasted it with earlier moments to illustrate how state policies created the context and set of conditions that shaped the structure of filmmaking in India since independence.
• I was invited to be a discussant for the conference, “URBAN INDIA: Historical Processes and Contemporary Experience,” held at Yale University, April 29-May 1. The conference brought together a very interdisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners to discuss issues and challenges regarding the massive urbanization underway in the subcontinent.
• I presented the paper, “Sentiments of Disdain and Practices of Distinction: Understanding the Production Culture of the Bombay Film Industry,”which eventually became the article I submitted to Anthropological Quarterly at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, held in New Orleans in November 2010. The panel was entitled, “Crafting Media: Ethnographies of Media in the Making.”
