Dirk Wiemann

I am a professor of English Literature at the University of Potsdam with a background in postcolonial studies, world literature, and genre theory. In the eraly 2000s, I spent a couple of years as a visiting professor at universities in India (Hyderabad and Delhi), and I have ever since remained keenly interested in literary, cultural and sociopolitical processes in South Asia.  In some of my earler research I have tried to analyse how the Indian subcontinent figures as a specific 'zone' of the mordern world-literary system, where literature itself may be conceptualized and practiced in ways slightly different from the Eurocentric 'norm': rather than an essentially intimate and individualistic form, literature can be grasped as an inherently community-facing, community-building, and community-relevant cultural resource. 

My project within this Research Unit will explore a number of instances where literature in Western contexts is practiced against the grain as collaborative -- be it in terms of mulit-authored text production, of communal reading, or of participatory and interventionist forms of staging literature as public event. I will investigate 

1. some historical instances of the 'collective novel', including a childrens' book about a mysterious orange-coloured cat, which, at the height of the Cold War, was written by 10 authors from 10 different countries on both sides of the dividing line between capitalism and socialism;

2. the 'neighbourhood book store' as a space of engaging literature as community;

3. activist deployments of literature as a means of articulating protest and alternate horizons of possibilities, as exemplified most prominently in the 'Refugee Tales' project curated by the Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group in the UK.  

Satish Poduval

I am a teacher of literary and cultural studies at the English and Foreign Languages University in Hyderabad (India). After my initial training in historical fiction and popular politics in postcolonial India, I was involved in the setting up one of the earliest and highly-regarded cultural studies programmes in India at the EFL University along with inspiring colleagues such as Susie Tharu, Madhava Prasad, and K. Satyanarayana. 

My early research was on the history of Indian television, activist documentary films, and the politics of popular cinema. I contributed entries on Malayalam cinema in Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema (OUP/BFI), and later was part of the editorial team that set up the online indiancine.ma archive. These collaborative initiatives led to my interest in questions of political modernity within the emerging Indian digital media ecosystem, and my early collaboration with Potsdam University through my contributions “Governmentality and the Enthusiasm for Democracy” to the volume The Politics of Passion edited by Dirk Wiemann and Lars Eckstein, and “Hacking and Difference: Reflections on Authorship in the Postcolonial Pirate Domain” to the volume Postcolonial Piracy edited by Lars Eckstein and Anja Schwarz. Subsequent indicative publications by me include “The Affable Young Man: Civility, Desire and the Making of a Middle-Class Cinema in the 1970s” (South Asian Popular Culture), “Acts of Culture: Religion and the Question of Democracy in India” (Critical Quarterly), and “Against Literary Activism” (co-written with Dirk Wiemann in Public Humanities). 

As a teacher, I have always been interested in working with students and colleagues to create synergies in critical humanities education. My close involvement with Anveshi Research Centre for Women’s Studies in Hyderabad has kept me alert to public debates outside the university, while the experience of academic partnerships with German universities, especially my decade-long collaboration with Potsdam University, has shaped my thinking about critical postcolonial theory and minor cosmopolitanisms.     

My research under the project ‘From Bystander to Actor: Literature, Collaboration and Participation’ is focused on the public significance of visual culture in contemporary India. It will take forward my ongoing work on the paintings of K.P. Reji, the cartoons of Surendra, and the films of younger film-makers from Kerala. 

Shaswata Ray

I am currently a Doctoral Fellow at the University of Potsdam, working within the “From Bystander to Actor: Literature, Collaboration, and Participation” project situated within the “Collaborations” research unit. Prior to this I graduated from The English and Foreign Languages University in Hyderabad with an MA in Literary and Cultural Studies. My MA dissertation studied piracy in the digital age, considering its discursive history and the ethical implications surrounding its characteristic cultures of sharing, following a Kantian framework of ethics. I also hold a BA English (Major) from the Indira Gandhi National Open University, with a minor focus in Contemporary Western Philosophy and Epistemology. I also enjoy watching, analyzing and writing on cinema, and have helped co-write Whispers of Fire & Water which was selected for competition at the 2023 Locarno Film Festival.

My PhD project explores the literary and cultural impact of media piracy and open-access projects in our contemporary era of digital networks–specifically focusing on the challenge posed by the domestication of piracy in South Asian postcolonial contexts to Eurocentric conceptions of literary property, authorship/authorial rights, and individualistic creativity.