In this episode, we will highlight the innovative visual and multimodal work of former AIIS fellows and filmmakers. AIIS offers four categories of research fellowships: Junior fellowships, Senior long-term and short-term fellowships, and Performing and Creative Arts fellowships - and within any of these categories, the form that research takes can be moulded to fit what the fellows see as the best format for their work. Several of our fellows have explored visual storytelling as the medium through which to explore their research questions and communicate their findings to the public and back to the communities that they have studied.
Joining us in this episode:
Natasha Raheja, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University. Her projects explore questions of migration, belonging, and citizenship. S Natasha is the director of Cast in India, an observational portrait of the Bengali metal workers who manufacture New York City manhole covers. She is currently working on Kitne Passports?, a documentary featuring Pakistani Hindu migrants in India from different caste backgrounds and an experimental film series tracking human, animal, and object movement across the India-Pakistan border; films in this series include: A Gregarious Species, Kaagaz ke Chakkar, and Enemy Property.
Harjant Gill, associate professor of anthropology at Towson University. His research examines the intersections of masculinity, modernity, transnational migration and popular culture in India. His films include: Roots of Love which looks at the changing significance of hair and turban among Sikh men in India; Mardistan (Macholand) which explores Indian manhood focusing on issues of sexual violence, son preference and homophobia; and Sent Away Boys which examines how provincial communities across northern India are transformed by the exodus of young men giving up farming to seek a better life abroad. His website is HarjantGill.com .
Zoe Sherinian, Professor of Ethnomusicology and Division Chair at the University of Oklahoma. She has produced and directed two documentary films: This is A Music: Reclaiming an Untouchable Drum (2011), on the changing status of Dalit (outcaste) drummers in India, and Sakthi Vibrations (2018), on the use of Tamil folk arts to develop self-esteem in young Dalit women at the Sakthi Folk Cultural Centre.
Nita Kumar, retired Brown Professor of South Asian History at Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, California. Her research is on both the history of modern India, Hinduism, Islam, and modernity, and the anthropology of urbanism and education. Shankar's Fairies is Kumar's first feature film after two documentaries and two plays. The script is about the power of story-telling and the context of a 1962 India. It is based on her research with children plus the memories of her childhood, bringing together the 'education' from a Catholic school and a domestic servant, Shankar, who told fantastical stories.
For more information on AIIS fellowships, visit www.indiastudies.org/research-fellowship-programs/.