Tejaswini Ganti

Professor Ganti will be on leave for Spring 2022.

Ph.D. 2000, NYU; M.A. 1994, University of Pennsylvania; B.A. 1991, Northwestern University.

Anthropology of Media, Media Industries, Production Cultures, Translation Studies, Language Ideologies, Political Economy, Visual Anthropology/Visual Culture, Cultural Policy, Nationalism, Capitalism, Neoliberalism, Globalization, Postcolonial Theory, Indian Cinema, South Asia

Books

Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema, 2nd edition, Routledge, 2013

Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry, Duke University Press, 2012
Link to Facebook page
Interview with Tejaswini Ganti about the changes in Hindi filmmaking 1995-2010

Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema, Routledge, 2004.

Articles

“Creating that ‘Local Connect’: The Dubbing of Hollywood Films in India,” in Routledge Companion to Media Industries, ed. Paul McDonald, London: Routledge, 2022.

“Dubbing,” BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies. vol. 12, issue 1-2, 2021.

“Risky Business: The Structure and Practice of Formal Film Distribution in the Hindi Film Industry,” in A Companion to Indian Cinema, eds. Neepa Majumdar and Ranjani Mazumdar, London: John Wiley & Sons, 2021.

“English Is So Precise and Hindi Can Be So Heavy!”: Language Ideologies and Audience Imaginaries in a Dubbing Studio in Mumbai,” in Anthropology, Film Industries, Modularity, eds. Steven C. Caton and Ramyar Rossoukh, Durham: Duke University Press, 2021.

“‘It Needs to Be More Like a Hindi Film’: Dubbing Hollywood in India,” India International Centre Quarterly, vol. 47, no. 3& 4, 2021.

“Blurring the Boundaries Between Hollywood and Bollywood: The Production of Dubbed Films in Mumbai,” in Industrial Networks of Indian Cinema: Shooting Stars, Shifting Geographies and Multiplying Media, eds. Monika Mehta and Madhuja Mukherjee, London: Routledge, 2021.

“The Informality at the Heart of Bollywood,” Critical Collective, May 26, 2020.

“The Value of Surprise: Ethnography of Media Industries,” in Writing About Screen Media, ed. Lisa Patti, London: Routledge, 2019.

“Complicating Paradigms of Media Industry Analyses: The Case of Bollywood,” Economia della Cultura, vol. 27, no. 4, 2017.

“Bollywood Speculations,” Anthropology News, vol. 58, issue 2 (March/April), 2017.

“Fair and Lovely: Class, Gender, and Colorism in Bollywood Song Sequences,” in The Routledge Companion to Cinema and Gender, eds. Kristin Lene Hole, Dijana Jelaca, E. Ann Kaplan, and Patrice Petro, Routledge, 2017.

“ ‘No One Thinks in Hindi Here’: Language Hierarchies in Bollywood.” in Precarious Creativity: Global Media, Local Labor, eds. Michael Curtin & Kevin Sanson, University of California Press, 2016.

“ Fuzzy Numbers: The Productive Nature of Ambiguity in the Hindi Film Industry,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 35(3), 2015.

“The Politics of Commemorating the Indian Cinema Centenary,” Journal of South Asian Popular Culture, 13(2), 2015.

" Neoliberalism," Annual Review of Anthropology 43, 2014.

" The Value of Ethnography," Media Industries 1(1), 2014.

“Corporatization and the Hindi Film Industry,” in Handbook of Indian Cinemas, eds. K. Moti Gokulsing & Wimal Dissanayake, Routledge Press, 2013.

“No Longer a Frivolous Singing and Dancing Nation of Movie-Makers: The Hindi Film Industry and its Quest for Global Distinction," Visual Anthropology 25(4), 2012.

“Sentiments of Disdain and Practices of Distinction: Boundary-Work, Subjectivity, and Value in the Hindi Film Industry,” The Anthropological Quarterly 85(1), 2012.

“The Limits of Decency and the Decency of Limits: Censorship and the Bombay Film Industry,” in Censorship in South Asia: Cultural Regulation from Sedition to Seduction, eds. William Mazzarella & Raminder Kaur, Indiana University Press. 2009.

"Mumbai vs. Bollywood: The Hindi Film Industry and the Politics of Cultural Heritage in Contemporary India,” in Global Bollywood, eds. Anandam P. Kavoori & Aswin Punathambekar, New York University Press. 2008.

“And Yet My Heart Is Still Indian: The Bombay Film Industry and the (H)Indianization of Hollywood,” [Reprint] in Genre, Gender, Race, and World Cinema, ed. Julie F. Codell. Blackwell. 2007.

“And Yet My Heart Is Still Indian: The Bombay Film Industry and the (H)Indianization of Hollywood,” in Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain, eds. L. Abu-Lughod, F. Ginsburg & B. Larkin. Univ. of California Press. 2002.

“Centenary Commemorations or Centenary Contestations? -- Celebrating a 100 Years of Cinema in Bombay,” Visual Anthropology 11(4), 1998.

Lectures/Panel Discussions

From “Sinful Technology” to “Global Entertainment Industry”: The History and Evolution of State Policy Toward the Hindi Film Industry. Karwaan: The Heritage Exploration Initiative Special Lecture on the History of Indian Cinema. Facebook Live. November 21, 2020.

The Future of In-Home Video Entertainment. Luminare Series, Center for Analytics and Technology in Society, University of California, Davis, August 25, 2020.

Researching the Mumbai Film Industry: The Value of Surprise. Mumbai as a City of Knowledge Initiative, Columbia Global Centers, Mumbai, May 16, 2018.

Book Reading and Discussion of Producing Bollywood, Godrej India Culture Lab, Mumbai, January 24, 2014.

Selected Press

Print

“Producers bet on filmy offspring who are brands even before starting their careers, says anthropology professor Tejaswini Ganti” – Times of India

“Priyanka Chopra Came to Talk About Beauty. It Got Political.” – The New York Times

“Madhubala: A Bollywood legend whose tragic life mirrored Marilyn Monroe’s” – The New York Times

“Despite new states Mumbai film industry still follows map of the British Raj” – The Economic Times

"TIFF 2012: Beyond Bollywood at City to City" thestar.com

"Bollywood's Global Push" Christian Science Monitor, May 31, 2011

Digital

Bollywood-Bombay-Bombings - Object Obscura podcast Season 2, Episode 15.