Centre for Historical Studies
School of Social Sciences
invites to a lecture
Popular Intermediations : Listening to Cinema on Radio
(1930s-70s)
Ravikant
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
19th April, 2017 @ 3pm
Abstract: The paper outlines a social history of popular cinephilia as a listening experience in South Asia. At one level, it explores the layered complementarity between the two media forms evidenced in the thematic visualisations of radio – as a physical object, a listening instrument and a broadcasting institution - on the Hindi film screen across the middling decades of the last century. At another, it tries to capture the hiccups in the bilateralism by re-describing the monopoly of public broadcasting as it was represented, challenged and contested in diverse journalistic, broadcasting and listening registers, modes and practices. Using the auto/-biographies of professional broadcasters published in Hindi, it then takes a closer look at their curatorial creativity. Typically, since these autobiographies are collective affairs, inclusive of listeners' tales, experiences, and interactions, it finally makes a few preliminary suggestions about the figure of the listener.
About the Speaker: Ravikant is a bilingual historian, writer, and translator. He read, researched and taught modern Indian and world history in various colleges of Delhi University before joining the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), as Associate Professor. His collaboratively edited books include Translating Partition: Stories, Essays, Criticism with Tarun Saint (2001); Deewan e Sarai 01; Media Vimarsh; Hindi Janpad (2002), Deewan e Sarai 02: Shaharnama with Sanjay Sharma (2005); His collaborative filmography includes Andaz Prodeuction's Kali Shalwar (2001). Ravikant's doctoral work, 'Words in Motion Pictures: A social History of Language of 'Hindi' Cinema', naviaged inter-media sites such as print, broadcasting, and web in effort to offer creative connections between these media forms and their diverse publics. He also works for the Indian Languages programme at CSDS and its peer-reviewed journal Pratiman.