Cross-Cultural Influence in Media: Post-Partition in Pakistan and Post 9/11 in Afghanistan

Date
Thu January 28th 2021, 12:00 - 1:15pm
Event Sponsor
Center for South Asia in collaboration with the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies
Location
Zoom Webinar
Cross-Cultural Influence in Media: Post-Partition in Pakistan and Post 9/11 in Afghanistan

Through a matrix of star and genre study, Salma Siddique will focus on the ineradicable presence of Bombay in the film culture produced in Lahore after partition. Wazhmah Osman will expand upon her argument that the post-9/11 media boom has enabled critical dialogue and debate, providing Afghans with a semblance of democratic process. Yet at the same time the larger forces of imperialism, warlordism, and war undermine the gains made.

Speaker Bios:

Dr. Salma Siddique is a witting historian and an unwitting ethnographer, who specializes in South Asian cinema and immigrant media studies. Her first book Evacuee Cinema: A partition history of cinema in South Asia recovers film genres and biographies from national amnesias shaped by partition based on new archival discoveries made in India, Pakistan and the UK. Her work has been published in the journals Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Social Text, Feminist Media Histories, Third Text and Bioscope. In March 2021, Salma will begin a three-year long research project on film spectatorship in urban South Asia, which is funded by the DFG at Humboldt University, Berlin. 

Wazhmah Osman is an Afghan-American academic and filmmaker. She is an assistant professor in Media Studies and Production at Temple University. Her research and teaching are rooted in feminist media ethnographies that focus on the political economy of global media industries and the regimes of representation and visual culture they produce. In her recent work she extends these critical inquiries to the politics of representation and visual culture of "The War On Terror" including gender/sexuality discourses and how they reverberate globally and locally. Osman endeavors to intervene on these subjects beyond academia. She has appeared as a commentator on Democracy Now, WNYC, NPR, and Al Jazeera and works with community and activist groups. Prior to starting her graduate studies, she worked in television and film production for major American and international media institutions and as an independent journalist and filmmaker. Her critically acclaimed documentary films have screened in diverse venues, ranging from human rights organizations to national and international film festivals.