India's Shakespeare

India's Shakespeare
Author: Poonam Trivedi
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2005
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780874138818

This is a collection on the diverse aspects of the interaction between Shakespeare and India, a process embedded in the contradictions of colonialism - of simultaneous submission and resistance. The essays, grouped around the key issues of translation, interpretation, and performance, deal with how the plays were taught, translated, and adapted, as well as the literary, social, and political implications of this absorption into the cultural fabric of India. They also look at the other side, what India meant to Shakespeare. Further, they document how the performance of Shakespeare both colonized and catalyzed Indian theater - being staged in English in schools, in translation in various parts of the country, through acculturation into indigenous theater forms and Hindi cinema. The book highlights, and thus rereads, not just one of the longest and most widespread interactions between a Western author and the East but also part of the colonial and postcolonial history of India. Poonam Trivedi is a Reader in English at Indraprastha College, University of Delhi. Now retired, Dennis Bartholomeusz was Reader in English literature at Monash University in Melbourne.

The City and the Country in Early India

The City and the Country in Early India
Author: P. K. Basant
Publisher: Primus Books
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2012
Genre: History
ISBN: 9380607156

The City and the Country in Early India: A Study of Malwa is about the emergence of urban centres in the sixth century bce, and analyses the processes and spatiality of urbanization, taking Malwa as its case study. Earlier research on urbanism has focussed on either literary or archaeological sources. While literary sources tend to locate the agency for change exclusively in preachers and rulers, in archaeology, the forces of change become nameless and faceless. The study of inscriptions from Malwa helps in restoring agency to common people. The beginnings of urbanism are to be found in the pre-literate past, and, therefore, require an analysis of archaeological data. Using insights from anthropology and studies of early states, in the first half of the book an attempt has been made to look for new ways to account for urbanization. The second half of the book tries to understand the process of urbanization by examining epigraphic and literary sources. The process of the emergence of urban centres created new forms of division of space: urban centres were surrounded by villages which in turn were surrounded by wilderness. This book tries to recover the histories of their complex interrelations. Since caste and kinship are considered central to the world of Indian sociology, an attempt has also been made to understand the relationships between caste, kinship and urbanism. Changes in the attitude of the literati towards the city and the country have also been examined.

The Theory of Citrasutras in Indian Painting

The Theory of Citrasutras in Indian Painting
Author: Isabella Nardi
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2007-01-24
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1134165242

Filling a distinct gap in Indian scholarship, this original account presents a critical re-examination of the key Indian concepts of painting as described in the Sanskrit treatises. Drawing on the experiences of significant painters, Nardi suggests a new way of reading and understanding these concepts.

Dancing Women

Dancing Women
Author: Usha Iyer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2020-10-02
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0190938757

Dancing Women: Choreographing Corporeal Histories of Hindi Cinema, an ambitious study of two of South Asia's most popular cultural forms cinema and dance historicizes and theorizes the material and cultural production of film dance, a staple attraction of popular Hindi cinema. It explores how the dynamic figurations of the body wrought by cinematic dance forms from the 1930s to the 1990s produce unique constructions of gender, sexuality, stardom, and spectacle. By charting discursive shifts through figurations of dancer-actresses, their publicly performed movements, private training, and the cinematic and extra-diegetic narratives woven around their dancing bodies, the book considers the "women's question" via new mobilities corpo-realized by dancing women. Some of the central figures animating this corporeal history are Azurie, Sadhona Bose, Vyjayanthimala, Helen, Waheeda Rehman, Madhuri Dixit, and Saroj Khan, whose performance histories fold and intersect with those of other dancing women, including devadasis and tawaifs, Eurasian actresses, oriental dancers, vamps, choreographers, and backup dancers. Through a material history of the labor of producing on-screen dance, theoretical frameworks that emphasize collaboration, such as the "choreomusicking body" and "dance musicalization," aesthetic approaches to embodiment drawing on treatises like the Natya Sastra and the Abhinaya Darpana, and formal analyses of cine-choreographic "techno-spectacles," Dancing Women offers a variegated, textured history of cinema, dance, and music. Tracing the gestural genealogies of film dance produces a very different narrative of Bombay cinema, and indeed of South Asian cultural modernities, by way of a corporeal history co-choreographed by a network of remarkable dancing women.

A Bollywood State of Mind

A Bollywood State of Mind
Author: Sunny Singh
Publisher: Footnote Press
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2023-10-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1804440450

'Prepare to laugh, sob and dance: this lively history of Indian cinema is imprinted with the memories of a life-long cinephile.' The Telegraph 'A gem of a book and a must for film lovers everywhere' Abir Mukherjee 'My biggest recommendation of the year. Sunny Singh's honouring of story and history shine through powerfully - an exquisitely enjoyable read' Nikita Gill Like all Indians, Sunny Singh was born and brought up in a country of film fanatics. She and her friends waited impatiently for the latest releases, listened to the songs on radio and wore clothes inspired by those seen on screen. They learned about India and the world, determined their enemies and friends, and chose their moralities thanks to films. A Bollywood State of Mind is a personal, intellectual and emotional journey which crosses five continents and 50 years of modern Indian history and cinema and explores why Bollywood means so much to so many across the globe. Sunny describes how this exceptional cinema retains its hold on the national imagination, how Bollywood has enhanced India's global standing in the 21st century, and how its characteristics endure despite the social and political changes. Ranging over history, aesthetic theory and politics, A Bollywood State of Mind explores encounters with Bollywood in the market places of Dakar and Marrakesh, in the nightclubs of New York, Barcelona and Mexico City, and in the ruins of Egypt's Valley of the Kings, Petra and beyond. It shows how the pioneers and heroes of Bollywood cut across national, linguistic and cultural lines not only in India but in far reaches of Somalia, Peru, Malaysia and Russia.

World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre

World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre
Author: Irving Brown (Consulting Bibliographer)
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 546
Release: 2013-10-11
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1136119000

An annotated world theatre bibliography documenting significant theatre materials published world wide since 1945, plus an index to key names throughout the six volumes of the series.

A New History of the Humanities

A New History of the Humanities
Author: Rens Bod
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2013
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0199665214

Offers the first overarching history of the humanities from Antiquity to the present.

An Anthropology of Intellectual Exchange

An Anthropology of Intellectual Exchange
Author: Jacob Copeman
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2023-09-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1805390716

Dialogues, encounters and interactions through which particular ways of knowing, understanding and thinking about the world are forged lie at the centre of anthropology. Such ‘intellectual exchange’ is also central to anthropologists’ own professional practice: from their interactions with research participants and modes of pedagogy to their engagements with each other and scholars from adjacent disciplines. This collection of essays explores how such processes might best be studied cross-culturally. Foregrounding the diverse interactions, ethical reasoning, and intellectual lives of people from across the continent of Asia, the volume develops an anthropology of intellectual exchange itself.

Two Men and Music

Two Men and Music
Author: Janaki Bakhle
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2005-10-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 0195166108

Presents an account of the development of national culture in India using classical music as a case study. This book demonstrates how the emergence of an "Indian" cultural tradition reflected colonial and exclusionary practices. It deals with how a nation's imaginings - from politics to culture - reflect rather than transform societal divisions.