Serious research on Bollywood—perhaps the most well-known and vital aspect of contemporary Indian culture—has flourished in recent decades. This new four-volume collection from Routledge meets the need for an authoritative anthology to enable users to navigate and make sense of the subject’s large body of scholarship, and the continuing explosion in research output. Edited by Rachel Dwyer, a leading expert in the field, this new Routledge title is a ‘mini library’ of foundational and the very best cutting-edge work.
Bollywood provides an indispensable one-stop resource on the development of popular cinema within India, with, of course, an emphasis on Hindi films produced in Bombay. Tracing the development of Indian popular cinema from the early twentieth century onwards, the collection allows users fully to comprehend the role of film and popular culture in colonial and independent India, the evolution and nature of different film genres, the importance of film music, and the great regional diversity 'Bollywood' encompasses. The collection also brings together the best and most influential scholarly works on topics that include: the silent era; the studio period; the ‘Golden Age’; and the so-called ‘segmentation’ of cinema. The contribution of major stars and directors is also assessed.
Bollywood includes a full index and a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context. It is an essential work of reference and is destined to be valued by scholars and advanced students as a vital research tool.
VOLUME i: Hindi cinema before Bollywood
Part 1: Silent Cinema
1. Ashish Rajadhyaksha, ‘The Phalke Era’, Journal of Arts and Ideas, 1987, 14–15, 47–75.
2. Kaushik Bhaumik, ‘Cinematograph to Cinema: Bombay 1896–1928’, BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies, 2011, 2, 41–67.
3. Sudhir Mahadevan, ‘Traveling Showmen, Makeshift Cinemas: The Bioscopewallah and Early Cinema History in India’, Bioscope, 2010, 1, 1, 27–47.
4. Manishita Dass, ‘The Crowd Outside the Lettered City: Imagining the Mass Audience in 1920s India’, Cinema Journal, 2009, 49, 4, 77–98.
5. Prem Chowdhry, ‘Situating Audience in Colonial India’, Colonial India and the Making of Empire Cinema: Image, Ideology and Identity (Manchester University Press, 2000), pp. 9–17.
6. Priya Jaikumar, ‘Empire and Embarrassment: Colonial Forms of Knowledge About Cinema’, Cinema at the End of Empire: A Politics of Transition in Britain and India (Duke University Press, 2006), pp. 65–103.
Part 2: Transition to Sound; The Studios
7. Neepa Majumdar, ‘Sound in Indian Cinema—Beyond the Song Sequence: Theorizing Sound in Indian Cinema’, in Graeme Harper (ed.), The Continuum Companion to Sound in Film and Visual Media (Continuum, 2009), pp. 303–24.
Part 3: Wadia
8. Rosie Thomas, ‘Distant Voices, Magic Knives: Lal-e-Yaman and the Transition to Sound in Bombay Cinema’, in Rachel Dwyer and Jerry Pinto (eds.), Beyond the Boundaries of Bollywood: The Many Forms of Hindi Cinema (Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 53–76.
Part 4: New Theatres
9. Sharmistha Gooptu, ‘Bengal and a "National" Cinema: New Theatres Ltd’, Bengali Cinema: ‘An Other Nation’ (Routledge, 2011), pp. 65–72, 80–99.
Part 5: Bombay Talkies and the Indo-German Film Makers
10. Rachel Dwyer, ‘Bombay Gothic: On the 60th Anniversary of Kamal Amrohi’s Mahal’, in Rachel Dwyer and Jerry Pinto (eds.), Beyond the Boundaries of Bollywood: The Many Forms of Hindi Cinema (Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 130–55.
11. Virchand Dharamsey, ‘Towards New Genealogies for the Histories of Bombay Cinema: The Career of Sagar Film Company (1929–40), Marg, 2013, 64, 4, 22–31.
12. Majumdar Neepa, ‘Real and Imagined Stars’, Wanted Cultured Ladies Only! Female Stardom and Cinema in India, 1930s–1950s (University of Illinois Press, 2009), pp. 71–92.
Part 6: Post-1947
13. Bhaskar Sarkar, ‘Runes of Laceration’, Mourning the Nation: Indian Cinema in the Wake of Partition (Duke University Press, 2009), pp. 88–124.
Part 7: Consolidation of the Form of the Hindi Film—Golden Age/‘Nehruvian Cinema’
14. S. S. Chakravarty, National Identity and the Realist Aesthetic National Identity in Indian Popular Cinema, 1947–1987 (University of Texas Press), pp. 80–118.
Part 8: 1960s
15. Ranjani Mazumdar, ‘Aviation, Tourism and Dreaming in 1960s Bombay Cinema’, BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies, 2011, 2, 129–55.
Part 9: 1970s
16. M. Madhava Prasad, ‘The Aesthetic of Mobilization’, Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical Construction (Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 138–59.
Part 10: 1980s
17. Ashis Nandy, ‘Introduction: Indian Popular Cinema as a Slum’s Eye View of Politics’, Secret Politics of Our Desires: Innocence, Culpability and Popular Cinema (Zed Books, 1998), pp. 1–14.
VOLUME II: Bollywood and beyond
Part 11: Indian Cinema not Bollywood
18. Ravi Vasudevan, ‘The Politics of Cultural Address in a "Transitional" Cinema’, in Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams (eds.), Reinventing Film Studies (Oxford University Press, 2000).
19. Ashish Rajadhyaksha, ‘Viewership and Democracy in the Cinema’, in Ravi S. Vasudevan (ed.), Making Meaning in Indian Cinema (Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 267–96.
Part 12: Defining Bollywood
20. Ashish Rajadhyaksha, ‘The "Bollywoodization" of the Indian Cinema: Cultural Nationalism in a Global Arena’, in Aswin Punathambekar and Anandam P. Kavoori (eds.), Global Bollywood (New York University Press, 2008), pp. 17–40.
21. Ravi Vasudevan, ‘The Meanings of Bollywood’, in Rachel Dwyer and Jerry Pinto (eds.), Beyond the Boundaries of Bollywood: The Many Forms of Hindi Cinema (Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 3–29.
22. M. Madhava Prasad, ‘Surviving Bollywood’, in Aswin Punathambekar and Anandam P. Kavoori (eds.), Global Bollywood (New York University Press, 2008), pp. 41–51.
23. Anustup Basu, ‘The Geo-Televisual and Hindi Film in the Age of Information’, Bollywood in the Age of New Media: The Geo-televisual Aesthetic (Orient Blackswan, 2010), pp. 71–92.
Part 13: Diaspora and Bollywood
24. Rachel Dwyer, ‘Bollywood’s Empire: Indian Cinema and the Diaspora’, in Joya Chatterjee and David Washbook (eds.), Routledge Handbook of South Asian Diaspora (Routledge, 2013), pp. 407–16.
25. Rajinder Kumar Dudrah, ‘Queer as Desis: Secret Politics of Gender and Sexuality in Bollywood Films in Diasporic Urban Ethnoscapes’, in Dudrah and Jigna Desai (eds.), The Bollywood Reader (Open University Press, 2006), pp. 243–63.
26. Patricia Uberoi, ‘The Diaspora Comes Home: Disciplining Desire in DDLJ’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 1998, 32, 2, 305–36.
Part 14: Indian Cinema Beyond India and the Diaspora
27. Sudha Rajagopalan, ‘Indian Voices in the Soviet Past: Memories Articulated’, Leave Disco Dancer Alone! Indian Cinema and Soviet Movie-going After Stalin (Yoda, 2008), pp. 29–65.
28. Brian Larkin, ‘Indian Films and Nigerian Lovers: Media and the Creation of Parallel Modernities’, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, 1997, 67, 3, 406–40.
Part 15: Mani Ratnam: Tamil Dubbed as Bollywood
29. Lalitha Gopalan, ‘Introduction’, Bombay (British Film Institute, 2005), pp. 9–16.
Part 16: The Many Remakes of Devdas
30. Corey K. Creekmur, ‘Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through Devdas’, in Heidi R. M. Pauwels (ed.), Indian Literature and Popular Cinema: Recasting Classics (Routledge, 2009), pp. 173–90.
VOLUME III: Form/Genres and other features of Hindi cinema
Part 17: Melodrama
31. Rosie Thomas, ‘Melodrama and the Negotiation of Morality in Mainstream Hindi Film’, in C. A. Breckenridge (ed.), Consuming Modernity: Public Culture in a South Asian World (University of Minnesota Press, 1995), pp. 157–82.
32. Ravi Vasudevan, ‘The Melodramatic Public’, The Melodramatic Public: Film Form and Spectatorship in Indian Cinema (Permanent Black, 2010), pp. 24–64.
Part 18: Romance
33. Rachel Dwyer, ‘Kiss and Tell: Expressing Love in Hindi Movies’, in Francesca Orsini (ed.), Love in South Asian Traditions (Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 289–302.
Part 19: Mythological
34. Rachel Dwyer, ‘The Mythological Film’, Filming the Gods: Religion and Indian Cinema (Routledge, 2006), pp. 12–20.
35. Philip Lutgendorf, ‘Who Wants to Be a Goddess? Jai Santoshi Maa Revisited’, in S. Brent Plate (ed.), Representing Religion in World Cinema: Filmmaking, Mythmaking, Culture Making (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 19–42.
Part 20: Stunt
36. Valentina Vitali, ‘Dara Singh and the Hindi Small-budget Film’, Hindi Action Cinema: Industries, Narratives, Bodies (Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 144–83.
37. Rosie Thomas, ‘Not Quite (Pearl) White: Fearless Nadia, Queen of the Stunts’, in Raminder Kaur and Ajay Sinha (eds.), Bollyworld: Popular Indian Cinema Through a Transnational Lens (Sage, 2005), pp. 35–69.
Part 21: Gangster
38. Ranjani Mazumdar, ‘Gangland Bombay’, Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the City (University of Minnesota Press, 2007), pp. 149–96.
Part 22: Muslim Social
39. Ira Bhaskar and Richard Allen, ‘The Classic Muslim Social’, Islamicate Cultures of Bombay Cinema (Tulika Books, 2009), pp. 64–90.
40. Rachel Dwyer, ‘The Courtesan Film’, Filming the Gods: Religion and Indian Cinema (Routledge, 2006), pp. 116–22.
Part 23: Biopic
41. Rachel Dwyer, ‘The Biopic in Hindi Cinema’, in Robert Rosenstone and Constantin Parvulescu (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Historical Film (Blackwell, 2013), pp. 219–32.
Part 24: Song and Dance
42. Sangita Gopal and Sujata Moorti, ‘Introduction: Travels of Hindi Song and Dance’, Global Bollywood: Travels of Hindi Song and Dance (University of Minnesota Press, 2008), pp. 1–60.
43. Gregory Booth ‘Issues of Style, Genre and Value in Mumbai Film Music’, Behind the Curtain: Making Music in Mumbai’s Film Studios (Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 255–83.
44. Anna Morcom, ‘Film Songs and the Cultural Synergies of Bollywood in and Beyond South Asia’, in Rachel Dwyer and Jerry Pinto (eds.), Beyond the Boundaries of Bollywood: The Many Forms of Hindi Cinema (Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 156–87.
45. Shikha Jhingan, ‘Re-embodying the "Classical": The Bombay Film Song in the 1950s’, Bioscope, 2011, 2, 157–79.
Volume IV: Language, stars, gender, clothing; Business of cinema
Part 25: Language
46. Mukul Kesavan, ‘Urdu, Awadh and the Tawaif: The Islamicate Roots of Hindi Cinema’, in Zoya Hasan (ed.), Forging Identities: Gender, Communities and the State (Kali for Women, 1994), pp. 244–57.
47. Harish Trivedi, ‘All Kinds of Hindi: The Evolving Language of Hindi Cinema’, in Vinay Lal and Ashis Nandy (eds.), Fingerprinting Popular Culture: The Mythic and the Iconic in Indian Cinema (Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 51–86.
Part 26: Clothing
48. Rachel Dwyer, ‘Bombay Ishtyle’, in Stella Bruzzi and Pamela Gibson (eds.), Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explorations and Analysis (Routledge, 2000), pp. 178–90.
49. Clare M. Wilkinson-Weber, ‘Fashion and Spectacle’, Fashioning Bollywood: The Making and Meaning of Hindi Film Costume (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), pp. 99–133.
50. Rachel Dwyer, ‘The Erotics of the Wet Sari in Hindi Films’, South Asia, 2000, 23, 2, 143–59.
Part 27: Gender and Sexuality
51. Asha Kasbekar, ‘Hidden Pleasures: Negotiating the Myth of the Female Ideal in Popular Hindi Cinema’, in Rachel Dwyer and Christopher Pinney (eds.), Pleasure and the Nation: The History, Consumption and Politics of Public Culture in India (Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 286–308.
52. Lalitha Gopalan, ‘Avenging Women in Indian Cinema’, Screen, 1997, 38, 1, 42–59.
53. Nandini Bhattacharya, ‘Imagining the Past in the Present: Violence, Gender, and Citizenship in Hindi Films’, Hindi Cinema: Repeating the Subject (Routledge, 2013), pp. 69–109.
54. Shohini Ghosh, ‘The Wonderful World of Queer Cinephilia’, BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies, 2010, 1, 17–20.
Part 28: Production
55. Tejaswini Ganti, ‘The Structure, Organization, and Social Relations of the Hindi Film Industry’, Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry (Duke University Press, 2012), pp. 175–213.
Part 29: Marketing
56. Aswin Punathambekar, ‘"It’s All about Knowing Your Audience": Marketing and Promotions in Bollywood’, From Bombay to Bollywood: The Making of a Global Media Industry (New York University Press, 2013), pp. 79–111.
Part 30: Bollywood and its Audiences
57. Amit S. Rai, ‘"First Day, First Show": Bollywood Cinemagoing and the New Sensorium’, Untimely Bollywood: Globalization and India’s New Media Assemblage (Duke University Press, 2009), pp. 23–54.
Part 31: Youth
58. Shakuntala Banaji, ‘Contemporary Hindi Film-going and the Viewing Context in Two Countries’, Reading ‘Bollywood’: The Young Audience and Hindi Films (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 33–54.
59. Steve Derné, ‘Handling Ambivalences About "Western" Ways’, Movies, Masculinity and Modernity: An Ethnography of Men’s Filmgoing in India (Greenwood Press, 1999), pp. 113–42.
60. Adrian Athique and Douglas Hill, ‘Film Exhibition and the Economic Logic of the Multiplex’, The Multiplex in India: A Cultural Economy of Urban Leisure (Routledge, 2010), pp. 40–61.
61. Rachel Dwyer, ‘Shooting Stars: The Indian Film Magazine Stardust’, in Rachel Dwyer and Christopher Pinney (eds.), Pleasure and the Nation: The History, Politics and Consumption of Public Culture in India (Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 247–85.
Part 32: Censorship
62. Monika Mehta, ‘Revisiting the History of Film Censorship’, Censorship and Sexuality in Bombay Cinema (University of Texas Press, 2011), pp. 26–59.