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.
