Rochona Majumdar
Biographic Data
| ID | 335337 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rochona Majumdar |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rochona |
| FAMILY NAME | Majumdar |
| SIGNATURE | MAJUMDAR R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Chicago |
| ORCID | 0009-0000-8915-1371 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 40 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Cinema and Critique: Third World Imaginaries
This article considers examples of politically committed filmmaking in the erstwhile third world as a way of re-imagining histories of the international. As a medium whose dissemination was near simultaneous all over the world – thereby making it international from the moment of its birth – cinema, and moving images more generally, played a crucial role in generating and nourishing imaginations of the international. With particular reference to M…
Song Time, the Time of Narratives, and the Changing Idea of Nation in Postindependence Cinema
What changes in our understanding of Indian films when we treat the song sequence as a separate medium situated both within and outside the film text? I argue for treating the song text as operating simultaneously on multiple levels, both within the film and in its afterlife. Through a close reading of select song sequences from both popular and art cinema, I demonstrate how they may be read as allegories of temporal sensibilities at odds with th…
"What Is the Political? A View From the "Global South
In Elementary Aspects of the Political: Histories from the Global South, Prathama Banerjee challenges the ontological givenness of the category of the political in South Asian histories. The claim is surprising since the most productive interventions that heralded a postcolonial turn in the field have been preoccupied with analyses of colonialism, nationalism, political economy, and sovereignty. I situate Banerjee's claims in the context of her a…
Chapter 2 Snehalata’s Death: Questions of Dowry
Writing Postcolonial History
Writing Postcolonial History addresses the relationship between postcolonial theory and history. It provides students with critical analyses of postcolonial histories from around the world. In addition, it discusses the benefits and shortcomings of this form of writing by situating postcolonial history amidst other modes of historical inquiry. The field of postcolonial history is complex. Even though many scholars share a set of commonalities, th…
Feluda on Feluda: A letter to Topshe
This article is written as a letter by ‘Feluda,’ Satyajit Ray’s detective hero (formally named as Prodosh C. Mitter) to his cousin/assistant Topshe (Tapesh Ranjan Mitter). The choice of format enables the protagonist, Feluda, to make the unorthodox point that it would be a misreading to regard him as a children’s hero. Taking issue with Ray’s own remarks on Feluda, and focusing primarily on the two films, Sonar Kella (Golden Fortress, 1974) and J…
Subaltern Studies as a History of Social Movements in India
While there is a thriving sociological and historical literature on social movements in post-colonial India, popular mobilisations of the colonial period are rarely addressed in terms of social movements. But the historical record is replete with instances of countless mobilisations seeking change against the state and other forms of authority in colonial society. This essay analyses a select group of works by the historical collective, Subaltern…
Policing higher education: A historian’s perspective
Art Cinema: The Indian Career of a Global Category
Civilizing Emotions: Concepts in Nineteenth Century Asia and Europe
Gandhi and the Contemporary World
Debating Radical Cinema: A History of the Film Society Movement in India
This paper offers a history of the creation and development of film societies in India from 1947 to 1980. Members of the film society movement consisted of important Indian film directors such as Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Shyam Benegal, Basu Chatterji, Mani Kaul, G. Aravindan, Kumar Shahani, Adoor Gopalkrishnan, and Mrinal Sen, as well as film enthusiasts, numbering about 100,000 by 1980. The movement, confined though it was to members who con…
Gandhi's Gita and Politics as Such
M. K. Gandhi's “Discourses on the Gita,” a series of talks delivered to ashramites at Sabarmati during 1926 and 1927, provides a singular instance in Indian intellectual thought in which the Bhagavad Gita's message of action is transformed into a theory of non-violent resistance. This essay argues that Gandhi's reading of the Gita has to be placed within an identifiable general understanding of the political that emerged among the so-called “extr…
Marriage, family, and property in India: The Hindu Succession Act of 1956
The Hindu Succession Act of 1956, one of the first laws relating to property and family enacted by the newly independent government of India, remains in the final analysis an anti-women piece of legislation. This article explores the reasons that forced the hand of the new post-colonial state in that direction. There had been, from the early nineteenth century, a small but influential section of Indian reformers who had argued in favour of granti…
Marriage and Modernity: Family Values in Colonial Bengal
Arguments within Indian feminism
The books to be discussed in this essay are as follows: Rajeshwari Sunder Rajan, The Scandal of the State: Women, Law, and Citizenship in Postcolonial India (Durham and London, Duke University Pres
From the Colonial to the Postcolonial: India and Pakistan in Transition
Contributed articles presented in a conference organized at the University of Chicago in April 2005
Understanding Marriage Dowry
The dowry problem has not been known to produce suicides elsewhere in the world. Women without dowries or adequate dowries often ended up in convents or religious homes in England or Italy. Suicides and murders of young women on account of their family's inability to gather the requisite amount of dowry is unique to South Asia. What then, one wonders, is the practice of dowry all about? Is it something that represents unremitting oppression to al…
SnehalataÌs death: Dowry and womenÌs agency in colonial Bengal
The death of Snehalata Mukhopadhyay in January 1914 remains one of the earliest and most widely discussed cases of dowry related suicides in colonial India. While the fact file on this young woman has until recently remained slim, her name appears in most scholarly accounts of dowry related crimes against women. The first aim of this article is to fill in the details of the Snehalata case. It then attempts to understand why her name acquired an i…
Looking for Brides and Grooms: Ghataks, Matrimnials, and the Marriage Market in Colonial Calcutts, circa 1875-1940
Research Article| November 01 2004 Looking for Brides and Grooms: Ghataks, Matrimnials, and the Marriage Market in Colonial Calcutts, circa 1875–1940 Rochona Majumdar Rochona Majumdar [email protected] Collegite Assistant Professor in the Social Science Division and Harper Fellow at the University of Chicago. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Asian Studies (2004) 63 (4): 911–935. https://doi.org/10.1017/S00219…
Self-Sacrifice” versus “Self-Interest”: A Non-Historicist Reading of the History of Women's Rights in India
Research Article| August 01 2002 “Self-Sacrifice” versus “Self-Interest”: A Non-Historicist Reading of the History of Women's Rights in India Rochona Majumdar Rochona Majumdar Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (2002) 22 (1-2): 20–35. https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201X-22-1-2-20 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Rochona Majum…
From the Colonial to the Postcolonial: India and Pakistan in Transition
Contributed articles presented in a conference organized at the University of Chicago in April 2005
Debating Radical Cinema: A History of the Film Society Movement in India
This paper offers a history of the creation and development of film societies in India from 1947 to 1980. Members of the film society movement consisted of important Indian film directors such as Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Shyam Benegal, Basu Chatterji, Mani Kaul, G. Aravindan, Kumar Shahani, Adoor Gopalkrishnan, and Mrinal Sen, as well as film enthusiasts, numbering about 100,000 by 1980. The movement, confined though it was to members who con…
Art Cinema: The Indian Career of a Global Category
Looking for Brides and Grooms: Ghataks, Matrimnials, and the Marriage Market in Colonial Calcutts, circa 1875-1940
Research Article| November 01 2004 Looking for Brides and Grooms: Ghataks, Matrimnials, and the Marriage Market in Colonial Calcutts, circa 1875–1940 Rochona Majumdar Rochona Majumdar [email protected] Collegite Assistant Professor in the Social Science Division and Harper Fellow at the University of Chicago. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Asian Studies (2004) 63 (4): 911–935. https://doi.org/10.1017/S00219…
Marriage, family, and property in India: The Hindu Succession Act of 1956
The Hindu Succession Act of 1956, one of the first laws relating to property and family enacted by the newly independent government of India, remains in the final analysis an anti-women piece of legislation. This article explores the reasons that forced the hand of the new post-colonial state in that direction. There had been, from the early nineteenth century, a small but influential section of Indian reformers who had argued in favour of granti…
SnehalataÌs death: Dowry and womenÌs agency in colonial Bengal
The death of Snehalata Mukhopadhyay in January 1914 remains one of the earliest and most widely discussed cases of dowry related suicides in colonial India. While the fact file on this young woman has until recently remained slim, her name appears in most scholarly accounts of dowry related crimes against women. The first aim of this article is to fill in the details of the Snehalata case. It then attempts to understand why her name acquired an i…
Self-Sacrifice” versus “Self-Interest”: A Non-Historicist Reading of the History of Women's Rights in India
Research Article| August 01 2002 “Self-Sacrifice” versus “Self-Interest”: A Non-Historicist Reading of the History of Women's Rights in India Rochona Majumdar Rochona Majumdar Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (2002) 22 (1-2): 20–35. https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201X-22-1-2-20 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Rochona Majum…
Subaltern Studies as a History of Social Movements in India
While there is a thriving sociological and historical literature on social movements in post-colonial India, popular mobilisations of the colonial period are rarely addressed in terms of social movements. But the historical record is replete with instances of countless mobilisations seeking change against the state and other forms of authority in colonial society. This essay analyses a select group of works by the historical collective, Subaltern…
Self-Sacrifice” versus “Self-Interest”: A Non-Historicist Reading of the History of Women's Rights in India
Research Article| August 01 2002 “Self-Sacrifice” versus “Self-Interest”: A Non-Historicist Reading of the History of Women's Rights in India Rochona Majumdar Rochona Majumdar Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (2002) 22 (1-2): 20–35. https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201X-22-1-2-20 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Rochona Majum…
Understanding Marriage Dowry
The dowry problem has not been known to produce suicides elsewhere in the world. Women without dowries or adequate dowries often ended up in convents or religious homes in England or Italy. Suicides and murders of young women on account of their family's inability to gather the requisite amount of dowry is unique to South Asia. What then, one wonders, is the practice of dowry all about? Is it something that represents unremitting oppression to al…
SnehalataÌs death: Dowry and womenÌs agency in colonial Bengal
The death of Snehalata Mukhopadhyay in January 1914 remains one of the earliest and most widely discussed cases of dowry related suicides in colonial India. While the fact file on this young woman has until recently remained slim, her name appears in most scholarly accounts of dowry related crimes against women. The first aim of this article is to fill in the details of the Snehalata case. It then attempts to understand why her name acquired an i…
Looking for Brides and Grooms: Ghataks, Matrimnials, and the Marriage Market in Colonial Calcutts, circa 1875-1940
Research Article| November 01 2004 Looking for Brides and Grooms: Ghataks, Matrimnials, and the Marriage Market in Colonial Calcutts, circa 1875–1940 Rochona Majumdar Rochona Majumdar [email protected] Collegite Assistant Professor in the Social Science Division and Harper Fellow at the University of Chicago. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Asian Studies (2004) 63 (4): 911–935. https://doi.org/10.1017/S00219…
Arguments within Indian feminism
The books to be discussed in this essay are as follows: Rajeshwari Sunder Rajan, The Scandal of the State: Women, Law, and Citizenship in Postcolonial India (Durham and London, Duke University Pres
From the Colonial to the Postcolonial: India and Pakistan in Transition
Contributed articles presented in a conference organized at the University of Chicago in April 2005
Marriage and Modernity: Family Values in Colonial Bengal
Gandhi's Gita and Politics as Such
M. K. Gandhi's “Discourses on the Gita,” a series of talks delivered to ashramites at Sabarmati during 1926 and 1927, provides a singular instance in Indian intellectual thought in which the Bhagavad Gita's message of action is transformed into a theory of non-violent resistance. This essay argues that Gandhi's reading of the Gita has to be placed within an identifiable general understanding of the political that emerged among the so-called “extr…
Marriage, family, and property in India: The Hindu Succession Act of 1956
The Hindu Succession Act of 1956, one of the first laws relating to property and family enacted by the newly independent government of India, remains in the final analysis an anti-women piece of legislation. This article explores the reasons that forced the hand of the new post-colonial state in that direction. There had been, from the early nineteenth century, a small but influential section of Indian reformers who had argued in favour of granti…
Debating Radical Cinema: A History of the Film Society Movement in India
This paper offers a history of the creation and development of film societies in India from 1947 to 1980. Members of the film society movement consisted of important Indian film directors such as Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Shyam Benegal, Basu Chatterji, Mani Kaul, G. Aravindan, Kumar Shahani, Adoor Gopalkrishnan, and Mrinal Sen, as well as film enthusiasts, numbering about 100,000 by 1980. The movement, confined though it was to members who con…
Gandhi and the Contemporary World
Civilizing Emotions: Concepts in Nineteenth Century Asia and Europe
Policing higher education: A historian’s perspective
Art Cinema: The Indian Career of a Global Category
Writing Postcolonial History
Writing Postcolonial History addresses the relationship between postcolonial theory and history. It provides students with critical analyses of postcolonial histories from around the world. In addition, it discusses the benefits and shortcomings of this form of writing by situating postcolonial history amidst other modes of historical inquiry. The field of postcolonial history is complex. Even though many scholars share a set of commonalities, th…
Feluda on Feluda: A letter to Topshe
This article is written as a letter by ‘Feluda,’ Satyajit Ray’s detective hero (formally named as Prodosh C. Mitter) to his cousin/assistant Topshe (Tapesh Ranjan Mitter). The choice of format enables the protagonist, Feluda, to make the unorthodox point that it would be a misreading to regard him as a children’s hero. Taking issue with Ray’s own remarks on Feluda, and focusing primarily on the two films, Sonar Kella (Golden Fortress, 1974) and J…
Subaltern Studies as a History of Social Movements in India
While there is a thriving sociological and historical literature on social movements in post-colonial India, popular mobilisations of the colonial period are rarely addressed in terms of social movements. But the historical record is replete with instances of countless mobilisations seeking change against the state and other forms of authority in colonial society. This essay analyses a select group of works by the historical collective, Subaltern…
Chapter 2 Snehalata’s Death: Questions of Dowry
Song Time, the Time of Narratives, and the Changing Idea of Nation in Postindependence Cinema
What changes in our understanding of Indian films when we treat the song sequence as a separate medium situated both within and outside the film text? I argue for treating the song text as operating simultaneously on multiple levels, both within the film and in its afterlife. Through a close reading of select song sequences from both popular and art cinema, I demonstrate how they may be read as allegories of temporal sensibilities at odds with th…
"What Is the Political? A View From the "Global South
In Elementary Aspects of the Political: Histories from the Global South, Prathama Banerjee challenges the ontological givenness of the category of the political in South Asian histories. The claim is surprising since the most productive interventions that heralded a postcolonial turn in the field have been preoccupied with analyses of colonialism, nationalism, political economy, and sovereignty. I situate Banerjee's claims in the context of her a…
Cinema and Critique: Third World Imaginaries
This article considers examples of politically committed filmmaking in the erstwhile third world as a way of re-imagining histories of the international. As a medium whose dissemination was near simultaneous all over the world – thereby making it international from the moment of its birth – cinema, and moving images more generally, played a crucial role in generating and nourishing imaginations of the international. With particular reference to M…
Sociology (15 works) · History (14 works) · Political science (13 works) · History (12 works) · Law (12 works) · Law (10 works) · Art (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Colonialism (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works)