Anupama Arora
Biographic Data
| ID | 3823548 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Anupama Arora |
| GIVEN NAMES | Anupama |
| FAMILY NAME | Arora |
| SIGNATURE | ARORA A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Massachusetts Dartmouth |
| ORCID | 0009-0007-3350-4693 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 15 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Of Women, Gay Men, and Dead Cats
Written by Zoya Akhtar, Reema Kagti, and Alankrita Shrivastava, the first season of the nine-episode web series, Made in Heaven, premiered on Amazon Prime Video on 8 March 2019 to great acclaim, garnering praise for being both “daring and revelatory” in its “provocative exploration of gender, marriage and love” and for offering “binge-worthy television” (Qureshi). In this essay, we examine how Made in Heaven investigates women’s lives as they nav…
Pathaan and its politics
Released on 25 January 2023, the Bollywood blockbuster film Pathaan , an action-spy thriller featuring India’s beloved superstar Shah Rukh Khan (SRK or King Khan to his fans), shattered box-office records. Pathaan ’s spectacular success is the starting point for this Special Section. Scholars of Indian cinema offer their reflections on the larger political-cultural conversations within which the film is embedded and that it has ignited, not least…
Pathaan, precarity and the Muslim question in neoliberal India
In India’s current censorial political climate, Pathaan ’s subtle jabs against authoritarianism, jingoistic nationalism and communal ideologies make it an unusual and innovative cinematic-political intervention despite its clichéd genre-elements. Yet we argue that the film’s diagnosis of what needs intervention is inadequate and its interventionist apparatus is counterproductive. The film uses all the accoutrements of a neo-liberal image-economy …
Just like everyone else
On 6 September 2018, after decades of queer activism, the Supreme Court of India declared unconstitutional the centuries-old law against sodomy, Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. Shelly Chopra Dhar's Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga (How I felt when I saw that Girl, 2019) and Hitesh Kewalya's Shubh Mangal Zyaada Saavdhan (Be Extra Wary of Marriage, 2020) were the first two popular Hindi-language films, on same-sex love and desire, to be releas…
Decolonizing the museum
Leila Aboulela's short story, "The Museum", was the winner of the first Caine Prize for African Writing in 2000, arguably the most prestigious contemporary award for African writing. Ben Okri, the chair of the first Caine Prize, praised the story as "moving, gentle, ironic, quietly angry and beautifully written". This article examines how Aboulela's story engages the interrelated politics surrounding museums – as institutions of power, sites of k…
ImNotAChickFlick
Released in 2018, Shashanka Ghosh’s Veere Di Wedding ( VDW; My Friend’s Wedding), dubbed as India’s answer to Sex and the City, evoked mixed responses. While many reviews of the film denounced it for its vulgarity and tawdriness, frivolity, flippant vision of women’s liberation and as a threat to Indian values, others, however, celebrated it for its frank depiction of female desires. This article undertakes a close study of the film to argue that…
Nobody puts Rani in a corner
Queen (dir. Vikas, 2014) is a coming-of-age Bollywood film that uses the travel trope to illustrate the female protagonist’s awakening. This article examines the journey and transition of Rani, a middle-class upper-caste Punjabi heterosexual Hindu Indian woman, into the ‘New Indian Woman’. Through its female protagonist, Queen offers an iteration and embodiment of the new Indian woman who emerged in the context of upheavals caused by India’s econ…
Excerpt from India in the American Imaginary, 1780s–1880s
This book seeks to frame the “the idea of India” in the American imaginary within a transnational lens that is attentive to global flows of goods, people, and ideas within the circuits of imperial and maritime economies in nineteenth century America (roughly 1780s-1880s). This diverse and interdisciplinary volume – with essays by upcoming as well as established scholars – aims to add to an understanding of the fast changing terrain of economic, p…
India in the American Imaginary, 1780s–1880s
India in the American Imaginary, 1780s–1880s
Distribution of improved cook stoves
Bhangra blues
Gurinder Chadha inaugurated her career in 1989 with the documentary film I'm British But ... celebrating the South Asian music and dance form of bhangra as symptomatic of a new generation in the wake of the anti‐racist politics and cultural innovation of 1980s Thatcherite Britain. This article suggests that the film's possibilities go beyond mapping out the reinventions of Asian British youth culture, as it offers more than an archive of the "pol…
My Books are About Small Details, the Daily Business of Living”
The Nightingale’s Wanderings
This essay examines the letters that the prominent Indian poet and nationalist leader Sarojini Naidu wrote to Gandhi and her daughters during her 1928—1929 tour of North America. These letters record her impressions of the “New World”, of her reception and of the sentiments these perceptions and reception evoked in her. In her epistolary reflections and public lectures, Naidu presents herself as a self-confident cosmopolitan Indian woman, a poet …
Neighborhood Assets” or “Neighborhood Nuisances?” National Anxieties in Katherine Mayo's Mother India
Rituals of Queer Diaspora in Nisha Ganatra's Chutney Popcorn 1
Nisha Ganatra's stylish Chutney Popcorn (1999) is perhaps the first feature film to focus exclusively on a South Asian American lesbian character as she strives to negotiate a place for herself at the intersection of different communities. The film functions as a text of diasporic queerness and as a rich site for studying the traffic between discourses of diaspora and sexuality. The ethnic diaspora is queered through the physical and emotional jo…
Nobody puts Rani in a corner
Queen (dir. Vikas, 2014) is a coming-of-age Bollywood film that uses the travel trope to illustrate the female protagonist’s awakening. This article examines the journey and transition of Rani, a middle-class upper-caste Punjabi heterosexual Hindu Indian woman, into the ‘New Indian Woman’. Through its female protagonist, Queen offers an iteration and embodiment of the new Indian woman who emerged in the context of upheavals caused by India’s econ…
Decolonizing the museum
Leila Aboulela's short story, "The Museum", was the winner of the first Caine Prize for African Writing in 2000, arguably the most prestigious contemporary award for African writing. Ben Okri, the chair of the first Caine Prize, praised the story as "moving, gentle, ironic, quietly angry and beautifully written". This article examines how Aboulela's story engages the interrelated politics surrounding museums – as institutions of power, sites of k…
Distribution of improved cook stoves
The Nightingale’s Wanderings
This essay examines the letters that the prominent Indian poet and nationalist leader Sarojini Naidu wrote to Gandhi and her daughters during her 1928—1929 tour of North America. These letters record her impressions of the “New World”, of her reception and of the sentiments these perceptions and reception evoked in her. In her epistolary reflections and public lectures, Naidu presents herself as a self-confident cosmopolitan Indian woman, a poet …
India in the American Imaginary, 1780s–1880s
Rituals of Queer Diaspora in Nisha Ganatra's Chutney Popcorn 1
Nisha Ganatra's stylish Chutney Popcorn (1999) is perhaps the first feature film to focus exclusively on a South Asian American lesbian character as she strives to negotiate a place for herself at the intersection of different communities. The film functions as a text of diasporic queerness and as a rich site for studying the traffic between discourses of diaspora and sexuality. The ethnic diaspora is queered through the physical and emotional jo…
Neighborhood Assets” or “Neighborhood Nuisances?” National Anxieties in Katherine Mayo's Mother India
The Nightingale’s Wanderings
This essay examines the letters that the prominent Indian poet and nationalist leader Sarojini Naidu wrote to Gandhi and her daughters during her 1928—1929 tour of North America. These letters record her impressions of the “New World”, of her reception and of the sentiments these perceptions and reception evoked in her. In her epistolary reflections and public lectures, Naidu presents herself as a self-confident cosmopolitan Indian woman, a poet …
My Books are About Small Details, the Daily Business of Living”
Bhangra blues
Gurinder Chadha inaugurated her career in 1989 with the documentary film I'm British But ... celebrating the South Asian music and dance form of bhangra as symptomatic of a new generation in the wake of the anti‐racist politics and cultural innovation of 1980s Thatcherite Britain. This article suggests that the film's possibilities go beyond mapping out the reinventions of Asian British youth culture, as it offers more than an archive of the "pol…
Distribution of improved cook stoves
India in the American Imaginary, 1780s–1880s
India in the American Imaginary, 1780s–1880s
Excerpt from India in the American Imaginary, 1780s–1880s
This book seeks to frame the “the idea of India” in the American imaginary within a transnational lens that is attentive to global flows of goods, people, and ideas within the circuits of imperial and maritime economies in nineteenth century America (roughly 1780s-1880s). This diverse and interdisciplinary volume – with essays by upcoming as well as established scholars – aims to add to an understanding of the fast changing terrain of economic, p…
Nobody puts Rani in a corner
Queen (dir. Vikas, 2014) is a coming-of-age Bollywood film that uses the travel trope to illustrate the female protagonist’s awakening. This article examines the journey and transition of Rani, a middle-class upper-caste Punjabi heterosexual Hindu Indian woman, into the ‘New Indian Woman’. Through its female protagonist, Queen offers an iteration and embodiment of the new Indian woman who emerged in the context of upheavals caused by India’s econ…
ImNotAChickFlick
Released in 2018, Shashanka Ghosh’s Veere Di Wedding ( VDW; My Friend’s Wedding), dubbed as India’s answer to Sex and the City, evoked mixed responses. While many reviews of the film denounced it for its vulgarity and tawdriness, frivolity, flippant vision of women’s liberation and as a threat to Indian values, others, however, celebrated it for its frank depiction of female desires. This article undertakes a close study of the film to argue that…
Decolonizing the museum
Leila Aboulela's short story, "The Museum", was the winner of the first Caine Prize for African Writing in 2000, arguably the most prestigious contemporary award for African writing. Ben Okri, the chair of the first Caine Prize, praised the story as "moving, gentle, ironic, quietly angry and beautifully written". This article examines how Aboulela's story engages the interrelated politics surrounding museums – as institutions of power, sites of k…
Of Women, Gay Men, and Dead Cats
Written by Zoya Akhtar, Reema Kagti, and Alankrita Shrivastava, the first season of the nine-episode web series, Made in Heaven, premiered on Amazon Prime Video on 8 March 2019 to great acclaim, garnering praise for being both “daring and revelatory” in its “provocative exploration of gender, marriage and love” and for offering “binge-worthy television” (Qureshi). In this essay, we examine how Made in Heaven investigates women’s lives as they nav…
Pathaan and its politics
Released on 25 January 2023, the Bollywood blockbuster film Pathaan , an action-spy thriller featuring India’s beloved superstar Shah Rukh Khan (SRK or King Khan to his fans), shattered box-office records. Pathaan ’s spectacular success is the starting point for this Special Section. Scholars of Indian cinema offer their reflections on the larger political-cultural conversations within which the film is embedded and that it has ignited, not least…
Pathaan, precarity and the Muslim question in neoliberal India
In India’s current censorial political climate, Pathaan ’s subtle jabs against authoritarianism, jingoistic nationalism and communal ideologies make it an unusual and innovative cinematic-political intervention despite its clichéd genre-elements. Yet we argue that the film’s diagnosis of what needs intervention is inadequate and its interventionist apparatus is counterproductive. The film uses all the accoutrements of a neo-liberal image-economy …
Just like everyone else
On 6 September 2018, after decades of queer activism, the Supreme Court of India declared unconstitutional the centuries-old law against sodomy, Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. Shelly Chopra Dhar's Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga (How I felt when I saw that Girl, 2019) and Hitesh Kewalya's Shubh Mangal Zyaada Saavdhan (Be Extra Wary of Marriage, 2020) were the first two popular Hindi-language films, on same-sex love and desire, to be releas…
Sociology (13 works) · Political science (12 works) · Politics (10 works) · Art (8 works) · Gender Studies (8 works) · South Asian Cinema and Culture (8 works) · Law (7 works) · History (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Aesthetics (5 works)