INDIA ABROAD April 21, 2017 18 CAMPUS AFFAIRS
INDIAABROAD.COM
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By Ritu Jha
hree Indian-Americans
are among 173 scholars
honored with the prestigious Guggenheim
Fellowships for 2017.
Shalini Shankar,
Shankar, an anthropology
professor and director of the
Asian American Studies Program
at Northwestern University, said
the fellowship’s support would
help her next project, research
on Generation Z, as well as mil-
lennials.
She said her goal is to redefine these categories in ways
that incorporate the contributions and impact of immigrants.
“In a time when support for
humanistic research is under
increasing threat, I am especially
thankful for this opportunity,”
she said.
Vasudevan, a choreographer,
an interdisciplinary artist in
Minneapolis, is founder and
artistic director of Aniccha Arts.
She said she would use the fel-
lowship for travel, research and
production of a large-scale dura-
tional public performance,
““THERE | HERE,” which takes
place in a three-level parking
ramp. She said she was pleased
to have recognition for her pur-
suit in creating “immersive per-
formances in non-traditional
spaces.” She said her projects
explore individual, agency and
group dynamics within commu-
nity histories, institutions and
systems.
“THERE | HERE” features 100
performers and allows audiences
to experience the work from the
outside, witnessing the image of
people across all three levels at
once.
They may also go inside to
experience a more intimate environment filled with objects,
sound, light, and movement.
Vasudevan is also a 2016
McKnight Choreographer Fellow
and a resident artist at Pillsbury
House Theatre and the Southern
Theater.
Mukherjee, professor of art at
Pomona College in Claremont,
California, received the fellow-
ship grant on the basis of
demonstrated exceptional cre-
ative ability in the arts. He plans
two projects, both involving
painted and folded aluminum
sculptures which will be exhibit-
ed at 68 projects gallery in Berlin
this September, according to
www.pomona.edu.
He received his master’s
degree in science, industrial
engineering and operations
research from the University of
California, Berkeley and he has a
master’s of fine arts from the
University of California, Los
Angeles.
He told www.pomona.edu
that the cross-cultural experience of growing up in India
influenced him, as did his childhood experience with his blind
grandmother.
He said he would describe
objects to her and she, in turn,
described them to him as she
experienced them through touch
and texture. He said that, as a
result, haptic sensitivity and
modularity are important parts
of his work.
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3 Honored as Guggenheim Fellows
Trio of Indian-Americans among 173 awardees
Sandeep Mukherjee Pramila Vasudevan Shalini Shankar
By Ritu Jha
he Hindi film industry con-
tinues to be one of the
world’s most prolific,
In fact, he said, the cinema’s
song and dance continue to play
a vital role in attracting new
viewers globally.
Gehlawat spoke during an
April 8 daylong international
symposium on the Sonoma campus where scholars discussed the
defining features of song and
dance in the industry known as
Bollywood.
Participants analyzed key historical, theoretical and cultural
issues related to the positioning
of song and dance in Hindi films
and looked at recent innovations
that have modified several elements of both song and dance in
these films.
Gehlawat explored the end
credits song-and-dance
sequence, saying how this new
feature of the Bollywood film
serves to compensate for the
diminished role of song
sequences in some more recent
films.
He also said the aesthetics and
attendant technologies of these
songs and dances – including
how they are recorded, filmed,
produced and disseminated –
have been changing over the past
few decades, in sometimes dra-
matic fashion.
"Some of these changes
include the shifting pitch of play-
back singing, particularly of
female playback singing,” he
said. “Gone are the days when
Lata Mangeshkar and Asha
Bhosle held a monopoly on these
voices – now one can hear a wide
range of voices and singing styles
that aptly reflect the changing
cultural politics in India and
among Indians abroad."
Anugyan Nag, from Jawaharlal
Nehru University explored the
evolution of male dancers’ roles,
Hrithik Roshan.
Gregory Booth, of the
University of Auckland in New
Zealand, talked about the changing dynamics of music and the
shift to playback technology in
the 1930s.
Stanford University’s Usha
Iyer proposed shifting the focus
from “song picturization” to
“dance musicalization,” that is,
from the primacy of song to the
role of dance and the dancing
body, in the construction of such
sequences.
Jayson
Beaster-Jones,
of the
University of
California,
Merced, dis-
cussed singer-
songwriter,
composer and
music produc-
er, A.R.
Rahman, and
the aesthetic
of Indian film
scores.
The role of foreigners and
white women in Bollywood films
was explored by Monia Acciari
from DeMontfort University in
the United Kingdom. Sangeeta
Marwah, from the University of
Southern California, discussed
the role of the Hindi film song in
shaping a contemporary dias-poric Indianness.
And the University of Iowa’s
Philip Lutgendorf explored what
the Bollywood film has become
today and whether or not the
song and dance still lies at the
heart of this cinema.
Not the Same Old Song and Dance
Bollywood’s evolution explored during California symposium
Scholars
reaffirm Hindi
cinema as
being among
world’s most
prolific
Participants of the international symposium on the “Evolution of Song and Dance in Hindi Cinema”
at Sanoma State University in California on April 8.
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