Babli Sinha – Författare

Through the lens of cinema, this book explores the ways in which the United States, Britain and India impacted each other politically, culturally and ideologically. It argues that American films of the 1920s posited alternative notions of whiteness and the West to that of Britain, which stood for democracy and social mobility even at a time of virulent racism.The book examines the impact that the American cinema has on Indian filmmakers of the period, who were integrating its conventions with indigenous artistic traditions to articulate an Indian modernity. It considers the way American films in the 1920s presented an orientalist fantasy of Asia, which occluded the harsh realities of anti-Asian sentiment and legislation in the period as well as the exciting engagement of anti-imperial activists who sought to use the United States as the base of a transnational network. The book goes on to analyse the American ‘empire films’ of the 1930s, which adapted British narratives of empire to represent the United States as a new global paradigm.Presenting close readings of films, literature and art from the era, the book engages cinema studies with theories of post-colonialism and transnationalism, and provides a novel approach to the study of Indian cinema.

South Asian Transnationalisms explores encounters in twentieth century South Asia beyond the conventional categories of center and periphery, colonizer and colonized. Considering the cultural and political exchanges between artists and intellectuals of South Asia with counterparts in the United States, continental Europe, the Caribbean, and East Asia, the contributors interrogate the relationships between identity and agency, language and space, race and empire, nation and ethnicity, and diaspora and nationality.This book deploys transnational syntaxes such as cinema, dance, and literature to reflect on social, technological, and political change. Conceiving of the transnational as neither liberatory nor necessarily hegemonic, the authors seek to explore the contradictions, opportunities, disjunctures, and exclusions of the vexed experience of globalization in South Asia.This book was published as a special issue of South Asian History and Culture.

South Asian Transnationalisms explores encounters in twentieth century South Asia beyond the conventional categories of center and periphery, colonizer and colonized. Considering the cultural and political exchanges between artists and intellectuals of South Asia with counterparts in the United States, continental Europe, the Caribbean, and East Asia, the contributors interrogate the relationships between identity and agency, language and space, race and empire, nation and ethnicity, and diaspora and nationality.This book deploys transnational syntaxes such as cinema, dance, and literature to reflect on social, technological, and political change. Conceiving of the transnational as neither liberatory nor necessarily hegemonic, the authors seek to explore the contradictions, opportunities, disjunctures, and exclusions of the vexed experience of globalization in South Asia.This book was published as a special issue of South Asian History and Culture.

The Bengal Famine and Cultural Production: Signifying Colonial Trauma analyses the various modes of representation used by Anglophone authors and artists in response to the Bengal Famine of 1943. Official imperial narratives blamed the famine on natural disaster, war, exploitation by merchants, and incompetent local officials rather than members of the imperial government and have remained dominant in the global public imaginary until recent years. The authors and artists referenced in this study appealed to elite Bengali, South Asian, and international audiences to resist imperial narratives that minimized or erased suffering and instead encouraged relief efforts, promoted nationalist movements, maintained collective memory, innovated ethical forms of representation, and prompted systemic change. They were part of an established tradition of English in the subcontinent as the language of empire and cosmopolitanism but are not accessible, widely taught, or well-known. The direct encounter with suffering was and remains insufficient for prompting systemic change or even engagement, and yet, the recognition of trauma is crucial for personal and collective well-being. The cultural production of famine writers and artists sought to integrate the suffering and agency of the destitute into narratives of Bengali and South Asian identity and of the Second World War. It is crucial to the Humanities to recognize this body of work as a cultural counter-discourse to the biopower of empire and to engage these texts as relevant to theories of trauma. The book will be of interest to researchers in the field of South Asian history, the history of the Bengal famine, South Asian Anglophone literature, twentieth century art history, and trauma theory.

The Bengal Famine and Cultural Production: Signifying Colonial Trauma analyses the various modes of representation used by Anglophone authors and artists in response to the Bengal Famine of 1943. Official imperial narratives blamed the famine on natural disaster, war, exploitation by merchants, and incompetent local officials rather than members of the imperial government and have remained dominant in the global public imaginary until recent years. The authors and artists referenced in this study appealed to elite Bengali, South Asian, and international audiences to resist imperial narratives that minimized or erased suffering and instead encouraged relief efforts, promoted nationalist movements, maintained collective memory, innovated ethical forms of representation, and prompted systemic change. They were part of an established tradition of English in the subcontinent as the language of empire and cosmopolitanism but are not accessible, widely taught, or well-known. The direct encounter with suffering was and remains insufficient for prompting systemic change or even engagement, and yet, the recognition of trauma is crucial for personal and collective well-being. The cultural production of famine writers and artists sought to integrate the suffering and agency of the destitute into narratives of Bengali and South Asian identity and of the Second World War. It is crucial to the Humanities to recognize this body of work as a cultural counter-discourse to the biopower of empire and to engage these texts as relevant to theories of trauma. The book will be of interest to researchers in the field of South Asian history, the history of the Bengal famine, South Asian Anglophone literature, twentieth century art history, and trauma theory.