[Commlist] Call for Proposals - Historicizing Myths in Contemporary India: Cinematic Representations and Nationalist / Fascist Agendas

Please find attached a CFP for an edited work (approved for publication 
by Routledge) on Bollywood cinema. The last date for receiving abstracts 
is 15 March 2020.

*Call for Proposals*

*Historicizing Myths in Contemporary India:*
*Cinematic Representations and Nationalist / Fascist Agendas *

Editors: Swapna Gopinath and Rutuja Deshmukh

*Call for papers for a book approved for publication by Routledge, on 
Bollywood cinema, expected to fall within the interdisciplinary spaces 
of Cultural Studies, Film Studies and Postcolonial Studies. *
The rise and rise of Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism or political Hindu 
agenda that has engulfed India has also initiated the favorite pursuit 
of right wing of invoking the ‘glorious past’. This ‘glorious past is 
primarily being invoked by a surge of historical(s) in Bollywood.
Indian Popular Cinema has evolved through various genres and has 
successfully and consistently borrowed plots from History to create 
classics like /Mughal-e-Azam/(1960) and /Meera/(1979). As a technology, 
able to picture and embody the temporality of the past, cinema has 
become central to the mediation of collective memory through History. 
While past in representational terms has been figured in variations of 
Historical film- the costume drama, heritage picture or historical 
biopic from early cinema have come to surround the culture of the film.
Bollywood cinema as a popular cultural practice negotiates the 
socioeconomic and political discourses that define the social 
structures, the dialectical nature of this relationship creating a 
political dimension to the cultural processes at any given point in 
time. Contemporary India, at a critical juncture, opens up spaces for 
discussions and deliberations on the fast-paced social changes and a 
study of the politics of representations seems the need of the hour. 
Cinema responds in manifest ways and one genre, typically representative 
of the age of re-readings and re-writings of history, is the historical 
films. Historical films getting released in the last few years have been 
increasing in numbers and are often accompanied by controversies and 
debates on the veracity of these representations. Questions asked on the 
authenticity of these representations urge researchers to probe deeper 
into these works of art, as well as these questions being asked. The 
histories chosen, the protagonists selected, the narrative strategies 
employed, the target audience as well as the critics – all these 
multifarious aspects demand close reading and the proposed text seeks to 
explore them.
The progression of cinema as a political tool and cultural medium is 
rooted in the wider society; cinema has reacted to and in turn shaped 
the changing political, social and economic conditions of the times. The 
projection of past in a popular medium depends on various perceptions of 
history that has been in circulation in the popular culture. Till date 
cinema has borrowed representations of historicity from both academic 
and non-academic association with history.
Looking at History and its representation as a specific framework, we 
invite papers for proposed book chapters on Contemporary Cinema and 
Construction of History.
The book aims to blend academic papers and film screenings providing a 
platform to discuss cinematic historical interventions and 
transformations in India. Papers are expected to address but are not 
limited to:
  ​

  * Construction of memory and identity
  * Precision of digital and tactile past
  * Aesthetic conception of propaganda
  * Gender and depiction of historical moments
  * Egomania and servitude in the depiction of historical battles
  * The politics of reception and production
  *   The hero and the protagonist and the public imagination
  * Imagining a past and its cinematic representation

The last date for submitting abstracts is March 15, 2020. Please mail 
your abstract of 500 words to (historicalsbollywood /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(historicalsbollywood /at/ gmail.com)>
*Suggested Reading List*
Landy, Marcia (1986/) Fascism in Film: The Italian Commercial Cinema 
1930-1943/, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kapur, Geeta (1987) ‘Mythic Material in Indian Cinema’, /Journal of Arts 
and Ideas, vols /14-15, pp. 211-27
Laine, J. W. (2003) /Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India/, Oxford: 
Oxford University Press
Jaffrelot, C. (1996) /The Hindu Nationalists Movement and Indian 
Politics: 1925 to the 1990s/, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Hobsbawm, E. (1983) ‘Introduction: Inventing Traditions’, in E. Hobsbawm 
and T. Ranger, eds, /The Invention of Tradition/, Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press.
Sontag, S. (1981) Under the Sign of Saturn, US, Random House, Inc. New York.
Benjamin, W. (1936) ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical 
Reproduction’, in /Marxists.org/, 
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm 
<https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm>

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