Indian Religions Podcast

Media and Communications

If All the World Were Paper

In If All the World Were Paper: A History of Writing in Hindi (Columbia UP, 2024), Tyler W. Williams puts questions of materiality, circulation, and performance at the center of his investigation into how literature comes to be defined and produced within a language, specifically, premodern Hindi. Williams proposes new methods for working with …

Guest: Tyler W. WilliamsDate: 11/14/2024Publisher: Columbia University Press
Popular Hinduism, Stories and Mobile Performances

This book addresses the recent transformations of popular Hinduism by focusing upon the religious cum artistic practice of Ramkatha, staged narratives of the Ramcharitmanas. Focusing on the sensory and media experiences, the author examines the aesthetics and dynamics of the Ramkatha ethnoscape through participant-observation in everyday …

Guest: Mrinal PandeDate: 12/15/2022
Representing Religion in Film

Tenzan Eaghll and Rebekka King's Representing Religion in Film (Bloomsbury, 2021) is the first full-length exploration of the relationship between religion, film, and ideology. It shows how religion is imagined, constructed, and interpreted in film and film criticism. The films analyzed include The Last Jedi, Terminator, Cloud Atlas, Darjeeling …

Guest: Tenzan Eaghll and Rebekka KingDate: 10/6/2022Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Print and the Urdu Public

In early twentieth century British India, prior to the arrival of digital medias and after the rise of nationalist political movements, a small-town paper from the margins of society became a key player in Urdu journalism. Published in the isolated market town of Bijnor, Madinah grew to hold influence across North India and the Punjab while …

Guest: Megan Eaton RobbDate: 7/8/2021Publisher: Oxford University Press
Digital Hinduism

Digital Religion does not simply refer to religion as it is carried out online, but more broadly studies how digital media interrelate with religious practice and belief. Xenia Zeiler's book Digital Hinduism (Routledge, 2019) explores and consequentially studies how Hinduism is expressed in the digital sphere and how Hindus utilise digital media. …

Guest: Xenia ZeilerDate: 1/26/2021
The Audacious Raconteur

Can a subject be sovereign in a hegemony? Can creativity be reined in by forces of empire? The Audacious Raconteur: Sovereignty and Storytelling in Colonial India (Cornell UP, 2020) argues that even the most hegemonic circumstances cannot suppress "audacious raconteurs": skilled storytellers who fashion narrative spaces that allow themselves to …

Guest: Leela PrasadDate: 12/9/2020Publisher: Cornell University Press