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Dr Rashmi Sawhney

Dr Rashmi Sawhney

MA Cultural Studies (University of Limerick)
PhD Film and Cultural Studies (University of Limerick)

 P: +353-1-4023108
E: rashmi.sawhney@dit.ie
Campus: Aungier Street

Rashmi Sawhney is a Lecturer in Visual Cultural Studies in the Centre for Transcultural Research and Media Practice. She studied at Fergusson College, Pune and the University of Bombay before working for the Times of India Group in Baroda and Delhi. Her MA by research in Cultural Studies (University of Limerick, 2003) looked at the representation of women in dominant cultural forms in 19th and 20th century India. Her doctoral thesis in Cultural Studies explored concepts of ‘women’s cinema in India’ for which she was awarded the Languages and Cultural Studies scholarship at the University of Limerick (2006). From November 2006 – June 2007 she worked as research assistant on a project on globalisation and Indian cinema, as part of the Global Networks group at the Institute for International Integration Studies, Trinity College, Dublin. She coordinated the 'Moving Worlds: Cinemas of Migration Series', a
FOMACS (Forum and Migration and Communications) project, based within CTMP in 2008-9.

Teaching
She has taught a range of undergraduate courses in the Department of Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of Limerick (2002-2006) and in 2007 taught the first Irish course on ‘Indian Cinema’ to sophister students in the School of Drama, Film and Music at Trinity College, Dublin. She currently teaches a postgraduate course titled ‘Visual Culture: From Modernity to Diversity’ to doctoral students at CTMP, DIT and students of the MPhil in Race, Ethnicity and Conflict at Trinity College, Dublin. She also teaches three courses on the BA Photography programme at DIT: 'Visual Studies', 'Visual Studies and Modernity' and 'Research Methods'; as well as a course on ‘Network Societies’ on the BA Media Arts programme at DIT.

Subject areas of supervision include 'The Representation of Race in Irish cinema’ (PhD); 'The making of the Sikh community in Ireland and the role of the Gurudwara’ (MPhil); ‘Marie Claire India: Modernity and the New Woman’ (MA Journalism); 'The Politics of Mani Rathnam’s Terror Trilogy’ (BA Media Arts). She also supervises a number of other BA and MA dissertations in the School of Media on a range of topics in film, photography and journalism.

Research
1. She is currently working to complete a book-length manuscript on Indian women filmmakers titled A Woman’s Eye: Films From India which provides an account of women directors from the 1930s onwards across the Bombay and regional-language film industries, with a focus on post-1980s film production.

2. She is studying the cinematic representation of adivasis and janajatis in India looking at the anthropological gaze as well as strategies of self-representation within these communities. In this context she has a keen interest in the representation of other nomadic communities such as the European Romas and the Irish travellers.

Selected Publications:

2010 (and forthcoming)
'The Virtual Reality of Indian Cinema: Spectatorship as Enactment of "Becoming Modern"', Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies (special issue on film, ed. Lynne Pierce, forthcoming).

'Through the Lens of A "Branded Criminal": the Politics of Marginal Cinema in India' in South Asian Media Culture: Audiences, Reception, Contexts (Ed. Banaji). London: Anthem Press, pp 201-220.

2009
'Cinema and the Adivasis of India', Moving Wor/ds: Chotro - Adivasi Voices and Stories, 9 (1): 102-115.

‘Imagining an Adivasi Cinema: Exploratory Notes' in Indigeneity: Culture and Representation (Eds. Devy, Davis and Chakravarty). New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, pp. 378-93.

2007
‘Apotheosis or Apparition: Bombay and the Village in 1990s Women’s Cinema’, Film Studies, Winter (11): 1-13.

2006
‘Sectarian Violence in Contemporary Indian Cinema: Aesthetics of Dev and Mr and Mrs Iyer’ in John Hill and Kevin Rockett (eds.) Studies in Irish Cinema: National Cinemas and World Cinema, vol iii. Dublin: Four Courts Press, pp. 93-104.

2005
‘Postmodernism and the Political Aesthetics of Time: an Indian Perspective’, LITTCRIT, June, 31(1): 27-36.

2003
‘Semiotics, Structuralism and Post-Structuralism: Eastern Literary Approaches’, Digital Workshop Resource Pack; Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad.

2002
‘Dialectics of Advertising: the Search for an Indian Tradition’, Communications Review: the Language of Enquiry, 1(1): 37-45.

Conference Papers and Seminars

2010 (and forthcoming)

'Beyond Reverse Ethnography and Self-Representation: Transforming Social Perceptions Through Cinema', European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies (ECMSAS), Bonn, Germany (26-29 July 2010)

'Armchair Activists Combat Fascist Politics in Cyberspace: Khans and Other "Outsiders" in Mumbai', IAMCR 2010, Braga, Portugal (18-22 July 2010).

2009

'Bombay to Delhi: Relocating the Language of Modernity in Indian Cinema', Glocal Imaginaries, University of Lancaster and Manchester (September).

'Gender and Identity in Indian Cinema', Dept. of English, Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda (August, Invited Speaker, DRS Seminar Series on Identity).

'Manorama to Moore Street Masala: Ireland's Own "Bollyworld'?', Indian Cinema Circuits: Diasporas and Beyond, CREAM, University of Westminster and SOAS, London (June).

‘On Telling a Nomad's Story Through Film’, Chotro, Adivasi Academy, Tejgadh, Gujarat, India (January).

2008
‘Visualising Marginalised Cultures’, Chotro, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Performing Arts and Bhasha Research and Publication Centre, New Delhi, India.

2007
‘Cinema, History, Nation’, India and Ireland: Colonialism, Nationalism, Modernities, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

2005
‘Sexual Politics of the Tradition-Modernity Dialogue in Sai Paranjpye’s Disha and Aruna Raje’s Rihayee’, Visualizing the City, Centre for Screen Studies, University of Manchester, UK.

‘Violence in Contemporary Indian Cinema: Aesthetic Traditions of Dev and Mr and Mrs Iyer’, Irish Postgraduate Film Research Seminar, Trinity College, Dublin.

2004
‘Women’s Cinema in India: Methodological Considerations’, Researching National and Regional Film and Television, University of Ulster, Portrush.

‘Two Readings of Time: Rudaali’, Postmodernism: The Global Moment, Kogakuin University, Tokyo.

2003
‘Semiotics, Structuralism and Post-Structuralism: The Approach Through Literature in Eastern and Western Perspectives’ (joint presentation with Dr. Brian Coates), Semiotics Workshop, Mudra Institute of Communications, Mumbai, India.

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