*CFP* "TOWARDS NEW PARADIGMS AND THEORETICAL SHIFTS IN POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES IN SOUTH ASIA: FILM, MEDIA AND CULTURE", CHAPTER BOOK

Regional Focus: Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Afghanistan, Maldives, Bhutan

Postcolonial Studies, Film Studies, and Cultural Studies have come a long way since classic texts, paradigms, and theories such as those introduced in Orientalism (Edward Said 1978); Towards a Third Cinema (Getino and Solanas 1969); The Wretched of the Earth (Frantz Fanon 1961); Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire 1968); Unthinking Eurocentrism (Shohat and Stam 1994), Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism; When the Moon Waxes Red: Representation, Gender, and Cultural Politics (Trinh T. Minh-ha 1989; 1991); Nation and Narration; The Location of Culture; (Homi K. Bhabha 1990, 1994); Can the Subaltern Speak? (Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak 1988), among others.

As a new millennium gets underway, this interdisciplinary volume aims to focus on revisiting existing postcolonial approaches, critiques, and arguments, to identify the shifts, emerging trends, and developments in specific relation to respective South Asian countries, and the region as a whole, taking into account each country’s colonial history, independence struggle, and emergent identity as it stands today.

We are inviting book chapters from scholars working on South Asia in the areas of Film Studies, Media/Communication Studies, and Cultural Studies, as well as combinations of the aforementioned, whose research and findings introduce new theoretical approaches that counter, or critique Eurocentric/Western approaches to essentially non-Western issues, histories, and struggles, and present fresh theories and paradigms for academic investigation. For example, what is the validity today of using the term ‘Third World’ in an era of rapid cross-cultural communication when technological advancements are shrinking spatial and temporal boundaries in terms of cinema, media, and culture? How is ‘orientalism’ being redefined by South Asian societies themselves for marketing their cinema productions in the West? Is the West still THE stage for recognition (e.g. Pakistani documentary filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s winning of two Oscars in the USA to bring attention to acid-attacks and honour killings that take place back home in South Asia?) How valid are the Western formulations of feminism in South Asia where women’s human rights are still the bigger issue, and quite often intertwined with issues of religious and cultural identity? Why does South Asian academia still lean on Western concepts and theoretical approaches to define issues specific to their own cultures/region? How far, and why, have we failed to rid ourselves of the colonizer’s influence and intellectual hegemony? How far can such divisions be counter-productive as well? These are just some of the kind of questions this volume aims to look at to examine the politics of cultural exchanges taking place today, and the need to formulate and identify new theories and paradigms that South Asian scholars can apply to study their respective issues.

Abstract

Please submit an initial chapter proposal of up to 300-500 words that identifies your topic, area of enquiry (in relation to your country/regional focus), tentative chapter title, and an introduction to your proposed contribution. Your proposal should include your short bio and link to your affiliated academic department where applicable.

Please forward your proposal as a Word attachment to postcolonialmediafilmculture@gmail.com

Abstracts due: March 31, 2019

Selection announced: April 15, 2019

Chapters

Chapter length: 6000 words. Chapters will be sent for peer review.

Chapters due: September 30, 2019

The following are suggested broad topics and areas, but authors are strongly encouraged to define their own areas of interest and chapter titles:

Cinema and Film Studies

Role of Cinema in Promoting Human Rights and Social Justice; Activist Cinema; Oppositional Role of Cinema Against Religious Fundamentalism; Women Filmmakers, Gender Rights, and Violence Against Women; Advocacy Films and Pedagogical Role of Cinema (also in the academia); Political and Propaganda Cinema (e.g. films produced by government bodies/channels/Film Boards); Archival Role of Cinema as Historical and Counter-History Documentation (e.g. against violation of human rights); Influence of the Colonial Period on Film Production in the Colonized World; Commonalities of Postcolonial Themes in South Asian Cinemas; Cinema and Censorship Policies Under Authoritarian Regimes; Documentary Cinema as Expose; Common Themes of Human Rights and Social Justice in Third World Cinemas; Developments in Cinemas in the Muslim World; Muslim Women Filmmakers; Political Role of Music and Songs in South Asian Mainstream Cinemas; Cinemas of Resistance (e.g. Third Cinema); Contemporary Relevance of Third Cinema in the Developing World; Cinematic Stereotypes and Orientalism; Post-Third-Worldist approaches; Autobiographical Cinema; Postcolonial Politics of Entertainment Cinema; Developments in South Asian National Cinemas; Promoting Religious Identities in Cinema; Netflix and Disney’s role in South Asia; Role of Film Festivals and Emergence of Film Festival Studies in South Asia, among other topics.

Media and Communication

Political economy of new media; Public sphere, Globalization and media; Media, culture, and Communication; Disaster, terrorism, and Communication; Vlog for social change; participatory and community media; media institutions and infrastructures; historical and contemporary alternative media initiatives and organizations; useful media; activist media; media for self-representation; media and participatory democracy; media and censorship; social media, political participation and democracy; media for educational and science communication; media and broadcasting policy; NGOs and media institutions, resources and publics; UNESCO and media communication in the developing world; histories, experiments and discourses of media technology; convergence of broadcasting, telecommunication and internet; media conglomerates and public information; news representation; new media genres for social communication; online media, diasporic audiences and transnationalism.

Culture

Cultural politics; Literature of South Asia and/or comparative studies; identity in literature and visual arts; significance of geo-political and colonial politics of ‘Commonwealth’ and ‘Third World’ as literary and cultural identifiers; post-colonial feminist art and literature; representation of globalization, migration, diaspora in cultural production; decolonization in art curation; memory and oral history projects investigating colonial and postcolonial trajectories; collaborative, collective and critical modes of cultural production and consumption; globalization, social and cultural identities; folklore, theatre, and politics; culture, ideology, and religion in post-colonial contexts; historicizing and preserving colonial pasts in post-colonial contexts; post-colonial archives in South Asia; colonial architecture and post-colonial cultural identities; appropriating the colonial past in the present; prejudices, biases, and rejection of the past in the quest for an independent post-colonial identity.

Please direct any queries you may have to the editors:

Dr. Rahat Imran: nazsfu@gmail.com (Associate Professor, School of Creative Arts (SOCA), University of Lahore (UoL), Lahore, Pakistan)

Dr. Imran Munir: imunir9@gmail.com (Associate Professor, School of Creative Arts (SOCA), University of Lahore (UoL), Lahore, Pakistan)

Dr. Shweta Kishore: shweta.kishores@gmail.com (Lecturer, School of Communication and Design, RMIT University, Vietnam)