Rini Bhattacharya Mehta is Visiting Assistant Professor of Comparative and World Literature at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She has published articles on the politics of religion in nineteenth and early twentieth century Bengal and is currently working on an anthology of South Asian literature; a manuscript on nineteenth century Indian nationalism’s revisiting of the Indian past; and a co-edited volume on Partition. Rajeshwari V. Pandharipande is Professor of Linguistics, Religion, and Comparative Literature at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and has written several books, including a collection of her original Hindi poems and more than sixty research articles and chapters.
‘As the [book suggests], “global Bollywood” has become an important site for assessing (and projecting notions of) complex changes taking place in Indian society since the early 1990s. And like the phenomenon itself, the perspectives on offer are as often perplexing as illuminating. The signifiers of globalization—the corporatization of culture, the ubiquity of consumption, the mediatization of everyday life, the technologization of the economy—have found in Bollywood their prime symbolic real estate, and herein lies both its relevance and its attraction for the foreseeable future.’ —Sumita S. Chakravarty in ‘TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies’ 'In this book, global India has moved on from postcolonial India and through economic liberalization, and new forms of cultural nationalism stand poised to leave its borders. Recommended.' —A. Hirsh, emeritus, Central Connecticut State University, ‘Choice’ 'Bhattacharya’s introduction underscores the salient role of economic liberalisation in shaping the Bombay film industry and its narratives… The contributions [draw] our attention to changes in genre and industrial contexts, the (re)production of the new on-screen patriarch, the dominance of Bhangra and the Punjabi body in Hindi films, screen patriotism and violence, the emergence of assertive female desire and queer sexuality as well as the rise of a ‘new ethics of individualism, enjoyment and freedom’… As a whole, ‘Bollywood and Globalization’ increases our understanding of post-liberalisation Hindi film.' —Monika Mehta, Binghamton University, in the ‘Journal of Intercultural Studies’ 'An informative discourse on the impact of globalization on Bollywood cinema and its implications. Scholars of film and cultural studies will find it useful for the range of topics it encompasses.' —‘South Asian Diaspora’