Popular Culture in South Asian Context

Introduction

Part I: Performance, Ritual and Folk

1. Secular “bhavs” of Remixed Dances: Dance Reality Shows as Soft Resistance

Pallabi Chakravorty

2. The ‘High Seriousness’ of Comedy: Stand-up Comedy and the Tradition of Dissent

Mini Chandran

3. From Behind the Mask: The Jabulo of the Khasis

Desmond L Kharmawphlang

4. The Axiology of the Lakhe and Navdurga Masked Ritual Dances of Nepal

Smriti Ladsaria and Java Singh

5. Asura, Danava, Rakshasa: Interpreting Popular Indian Myths from Dalit Perspectives

Raj Kumar

6. Tales of Love, Passion, Murder, and History: Poet’s Songs from Barak Valley

K M Baharul Islam

7. Sanjhi: A Multihued Folk Festive Presence within an Over-arching Feminine Divinity

Rekha

8. Can Nauntanki be digital?: A Study of Nautanki Performances in the Post-Covid Era

Vibha Sharma and Anum Fatima

9. C̄aviṭṭunātakam and Latin Christians: Becoming and Reviving Identity

Lija Mary K J

10. Musical Culture of Mourning Rituals: Liminality of the Orthodox and the Popular

Rashid Ali

11. Only a Joke: Stand-up Comedy and Disability in the Indian Context

Tirtha Pratim Deb

Part II: New Media Frames

12. Breaking Stereotypes or Making Stereotypes: Hiphop Dance in India 

Nilanjana Gupta

13. Mourning, Cult, Fandom and its Tentative Figurations: A Case Study of Pop-star-turned- cleric Junaid Jamshed’s Death and Mourning on the Internet                    

Abdul Rafay Mahmood

14. Cringe is the New binge: Matrimony, Desire and the Female Body in Netflix's Indian Matchmaking and Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives

Ritika Pant

15. From Streets to You Tube: Ladisha as an Alternate (Hi)story-Teller 

Jamiel Ahmad

16. Exploring the ‘Manosphere’: Analyzing Masculinities and the Politics of Red Pill in India across Social Media Platforms

Chitra Adkar

Part III: Cinema and Identity

17. Cultural Studies, Popular Hindi Cinema and the Question of Aesthetics

Vivek Sachdeva

18. Zindagi Tamasha to Kamli: Squeezing Space of Emergent Cinema of Pakistan

Ahmad Bilal and Aysha Ahmad Bilal

19. Framing the Ecology of Fear  

Nishat Haider

20. Subverting the Popular Gaze in Stree (2018) and Bulbbul (2021)

Harmanpreet Kaur

21. Dalit Sporting Imaginary and Jhund 

Raj Thakur and Sonakshi Malhotra

22. “My Son Won’t Play Cricket for England”: Cricket, Patriarchy, and Diasporic Subjectivity in Patiala House

Rakesh Ramamoorthy

23. Screening Sainthood: Shifting Paradigms in the films on Vivekananda

Gaurav Kalra

24. Surrogate Inc.: The Commercialization of Bollywood’s Surrogacy Narrative in the Neoliberal Age

Eva Sharma and Isha Malhotra

25. An Excavation of Identities through Indiana Jones

Pankaj Singh

Part IV: Visual Figurations 

26. The Home and the World of Hindi Television Serials

Abhijit Roy

27. Troubling the Waters: Graphic Advocacy and the Indo-Sri Lankan Fisher Folk’s Tale

Christel R. Devadawson                                              

28. Post-1971: Photographic Ambivalence, Archives, and the Construction of National Identity of Bangladesh  

Nubras Samayeen

29. Talking Walls- Muted Femininity

Aqsa Faheem Khuhro

30. Popular Culture of Cynicism and its Satirical Expressions in Art: Notes from Contemporary Pakistan

Sadia Pasha Kamran

31. Re-viewing the Mythoepic in Indian Popular Imagination     

Varsha Singh 

Part V: Spatial Becomings

32. Willkommen (“Welcome”) Bishan Singh to the Kit Kat Klub                                                                                            

Murzban Jal

33. Unpacking Popular Culture from the Lens of Public Philosophy   

Sidharth Chadha and Lallan Singh Baghel

34. Popular Culture in Early Nationalist Imagination 

Akshaya Kumar

35. The World Ends in South Asia: Dilli Dystopias and the (Post-)Apocalypse                    

Zahra Rizvi and Simi Malhotra

36. “Oppositely Parallels”: A Visual Inquiry on Squeezing Female Spaces                                          

Ayesha Bilal

Biography

Akshaya Kumar is Professor in the Department of English and Cultural Studies, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India.

Raj Thakur is Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Central University of Jammu, Jammu and Kashmir, India.