CASA ASIA arranges a course on Indian cinema and literature after Independence and Partition. The course will cover the relationship of symbiosis between the respective narratives, crossing experiences from both fields through the resonances and correspondences that unify them, from the perspective of Cultural Studies.

The professor of the University of Oviedo, Carmen Escobedo de Tapia, co-author of the book “Narrativa y Cine de la India en Lengua Inglesa” with Verónica Quevedo, will start by presenting an introduction class, making a general subject contextualization of the course. This session will be followed by the one presented by Guillermo Rodríguez, director of “Casa de la India de Valladolid”, since it was founded in 2003. The session will deal on Satyajit Ray and Rabindranath Tagore, before giving way to the topics that Priyanka Ragji will address in the following classes. Ragji’s classes are focusing on the work of writers such as Anita Desai, Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Amitav Ghosh, and the filmmakers Mrinal Sen, Guru Dutt, Aparna Sen and Anurag Kashyap. The aim of this course is to value a relational system as a methodology to approach a field of knowledge that opens up countless interpretative options and to establish a clear division between cinema and literature, taking into account that they often share their respective narratives.

Program:

1. Literature and Cinema in Postcolonial India. In this session, Professor Carmen Escobedo de Tapia will contextualize the influence of literature on cinema and vice versa, based on her research on the different literary and cinematographic narratives in English that arise in India, in the historical, cultural and literary context to which they belong.
2. Satyajit Ray and Rabindranath Tagore by Guillermo Rodriguez
3. India after Independence and Partition. The Regional conflicts in a global world between Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Kashmir. A look at the work of the writer Anita Desai and the infinite diaspora
4. Mrinal Sen and the politically and socially committed cinema
5. Where is Salman Rushdie?
6. Guru Dutt‘s Full House
7. The tragic melancholy of a classical landscape: Arundhati Roy
8. Aparna Sen: The resurgence of nationalisms and other conflicts
9.  Amitav Ghosh and “El entorno retorno”
10. Viral pornography: Anurag Kashyap, followed by the conclusions of the course, and an annotated bibliography. By Priyanka Ragji.

Professors:

Carmen Escobedo de Tapia is an associate professor at the University of Oviedo and a specialist in Postcolonial Literature and Culture. Her extensive teaching experience is associated with her research on Indian Literature in the English Language. She is the author of numerous articles and co-author of the essay “Narrativa y Cine de la India en Lengua inglesa: una aproximación para la Era Global” (2012. Madrid: Bohodón Ediciones). Among other texts published by Carmen Escobedo, it is worth mentioning Female Narratives of Loss; Memories of Partition (2018); “Mujer  y  violencia  en  la  literatura  india  contemporánea” (Women and Violence in Contemporary Indian Literature, 1999): “Voces  femeninas  frente  a  la  violencia: recreaciones  de  lo  epistolar  en  Witness  the  Night” (2010), by Kishwar Desai; Re-reading Nature, Restoring Nature: The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai (2019); and Spiritual and Corporeal Selves in India: Approaches in a Global Era (2020).

Guillermo Rodríguez Martín is a Doctor in English Philology from the University of Valladolid and with a Ph.D. from Kerala University (2006). From 2000 to 2003, he held the position of Coordinator of the Indian Area at the Centre of Asian Studies at the University of Valladolid. He is an expert in Indian poetics and aesthetics, literary criticism, and contemporary Indian culture. He has been director of “Casa de la India de Valladolid” since its creation. In 2010 he received the González Sinde Prize awarded by the Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences of Spain for the organization of the Spanish Film Festival in India (6 editions). In 2012 he was awarded with the “Premio de la Amistad”, granted by the Government of India for his work. His publications include When Mirrors Are Windows. A View of A.K. Ramanujan`s Poetics (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Journeys: A Poet`s Diary, co-edited with Krishna Ramanujan (Penguin Random House, 2019).

Priyanka Ragji She was born in Mumbai, India, and she graduated from Media with a major in Advertising and Journalism from her hometown’s university. She is a translator and interpreter, and as a result of her interest in Indian literature and cinema, she instructs the Asian Film Festival regarding the cinema of her country. She has concluded the Master of Humanities and Cultural Management at the International University of Catalonia, and she is currently pursuing her Ph.D. based on the research and comparative analysis of the preservation and techniques of new media art in the European and Asian contexts.