Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 10:25:41 -0800 (PST)
Subject: CFP: Bollywood and Beyond 



CALL FOR PAPERS for the thematic section: 

"BOLLYWOOD AND BEYOND"

EXTENDED DEADLINE: January 31, 2004

We would like to invite paper proposals for the
following thematic section at the 2004 Annual
Conference of the Association for the Study of the New
Literatures in English(ASNEL/GNEL) on "Transcultural
English Studies" which is to take place in Frankfurt,
Germany, from May 19-24, 2004.


"Bollywood and Beyond"

As narratives as diverse as British theater and
Peugeot commercials attest, the West has Bollywood on
its mind. Yet what is at stake in this hype for a
genre which is already fundamentally hybrid, which is
already ^Ótainted^Ô by the West before it is ^Óexported^Ô
to London? Crucially, Bollywood's success seems at
first to run counter to what Graham Huggan has called
^Óthe postcolonial exotic^Ô, the Western search for
something Other than itself. To locate this Otherness
in a hybrid cultural formation ^Ö an Indianness staged,
literally, against the background of the Swiss alps ^Ö
seems at first to be counterintuitive. It is this
counterintuitivity which this thematic section sets
out to square: Just how is Bollywood defined in its
Western reception? Is Bollywood coterminous with a
certain ^Ómainstreaming^Ô of Indian identity in the
West?

This thematic section thus sets out to contextualize
Bollywood in a number of mutually constitutive ways.
It wants to address a continuity of various Indian
diasporic discourses. As ^ÓIndia^Ô has become hip, this
sudden attention seems to open up a space for Indian
diasporic cinema as a whole. This space, then, can be
appropriated by filmmakers themselves who at the same
time benefit from the sudden inclusion and resist it.
How do these films signify on the genre of Bollywood
cinema on the one hand and nationally specific
British, US American, or Canadian imaginaries on the
other? Films such as Deepa Mehta's "Bollywood /
Hollywood", Gurinder Chadha's "Bhaji on the Beach" or
Srinivas Krishna's "Masala" has explicitly dramatize
this intersection in a highly ironic fashion: In
"Bollywood / Hollywood," the synthesis between
Hollywood and Bollywood is mapped onto the city space
of Toronto as the marginal space of Canada signifies
on differently located centralities. Attesting to
cultural connections between minority communities,
Mira Nair's film "Mississippi Masala" points to the
interconnectedness of Indian American and African
American histories. 

At the same time, the panel seeks to provide a forum
for discussion between South Asian diasporic
filmmakers and critics. By contextualizing Bollywood
and South Asian diasporic expression, this panel wants
to point to the ways in which a ^Ódiasporic discourse^Ô
which is by definition ^Ótransnational^Ô intersects with
nationally specific discourses of reception and/or
redefinition. What is needed, this panel proposes, is
a dialogue between, for instance, Black British/Indian
British, Indian American, and Indian filmmakers and
critics. The German location of the ASNEL conference
on ^ÓTranscultural English Studies^Ô is thus also woven
into the agenda of the thematic section on ^ÓBollywood
and Beyond^Ô. In what way is there a specifically
European narrative of the "Indo chic" of whose allure
Bollywood as well as the success of Indian diasporic
film may be one manifestation? In this vein, we seek
to include German-Indian filmmakers such as Sadashivam
Rao in the debate. At the same time, however, European
minority communities have pointed to ways in which
their articulation of their own identity and minority
status is shaped by an American minority discourse. In
this sense, a dialogue between European and US
contexts seems essential. 

Section organizers:  

Mita Banerjee (Mainz)
Jigna Desai (St. Paul)
Christine Vogt-William (Frankfurt) 

For more information please contact: 
Mita Banerjee <mitabanerjee-AT-uni-mainz.de>
 



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