Current Projects

Epic Bollywood: Religion and Representation in Modern Indian Cinema

Epic Bollywood: Religion and Representation in Modern India Cinema (under contract with New York University Press) is about one of the most popular ways to tell stories in India and two of India’s most popular stories: film, the Ramayana, and the Mahabharata. India is the largest producer of movies in the world with over one thousand films being released every single year. The country boasts several different film industries including Bollywood, India’s immensely popular Hindi movie industry based in Mumbai. And for over a thousand years, the stories of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata have captivated the hearts and minds of the people of South Asia. While the oldest iterations of these narratives are two ancient Sanskrit epic poems attributed to male caste-privileged Hindu sages, retellings of the epics have also been created by women, gender non-conforming people, Buddhists, Jains, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Zoroastrians, and members of caste-oppressed communities including Dalits (those sometimes derogatorily described as “Untouchables”) and Adivasi (Indigenous) people. There are innumerable Ramayanas and Mahabharatas from the realms of literature, poetry, theater, music, dance, and visual arts.

Epic Bollywood is a study of films that draw heavily from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata narrative traditions. In this book, I focus on Ramayana and Mahabharata movies that were created from 1992 onwards. While most of the films I analyze are Bollywood movies, I also explore Bengali, English, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu films as well as movies produced outside of India. Along with closely examining over forty different films, I investigate how these movies were received by general audiences and film critics in India and abroad.

Films I will examine in Epic Bollywood include: Jigar (1992), A Little Princess (1995), Fire (1996), Bala Ramayanam (1997), Lav Kush (1997), Hum Saath-Saath Hain (1999), Hey! Ram (2000), Gadar (2001), Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (2001), Lajja (2001), Pinjar (2003), Main Hoon Na (2004), Swades (2004), Eklavya (2007), Slumdog Millionaire (2008), Delhi-6 (2009), Raajneeti (2010), Raavanan (2010), Sri Rama Rajyam (2011), Chitrangada (2012), Mahabharat Aur Barbareek (2013), Ahalya (2015), Bajrangi Bhaijaan (2015), Prem Ratan Dhan Payo (2015), Mama’s Boys (2016), Kaala (2018), Padmaavat (2018),Kalank (2019), Kurukshetra (2019), Karnan (2021), Shikhandi (2021), Sita (2021), Sita Ramam (2022), RRR (2022), Gadar 2 (2023), Paradise (2023), Adipurush (2023), Hanu-Man (2024), Kalki 2898 AD (2024), Monkey Man (2024), Singham Again (2024), Gandhari (2026), and Ramayana (2026 and 2027).