
Isabel Huacuja Alonso delivered a lecture on ‘Geeton-Bhari-Kahani (Story-Full-of-Songs): Hindi Film-Song Fanfiction on the Radio Airwaves, 1960-1979’. It was chaired by Ravikant. It was organized by Indian Languages Programme of CSDS.
ZOOM ID: 81890556424 PASSCODE: csdsdelhi
Geeton-Bhari-Kahani (Story-Full-of-Songs) is a genre of broadcast audio stories—sometimes authored by radio listeners, sometimes broadcasters—that features Hindi film songs. Focusing on the genre’s peak years (late ‘60s/early ‘70s) and on Radio Ceylon’s program Panghat Par (By the Well’s Edge)—while also briefly considering the genre’s evolution—in this talk the speaker hopes to demonstrate that this uniquely South Asian storytelling genre constitutes a kind of fanfiction. In doing so, it will challenge assumptions about what fanfiction is and invite scholars and historians of media in South Asia and beyond to seriously consider the significance of fan-authored radio content to popular cultures.
Isabel Huacuja Alonso is Assistant Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern South Asian and African Studies at Columbia University. She is a historian of modern south Asia and the author of Radio for the Millions: Hindi-Urdu Broadcasting Across Borders published in 2023 by Penguin Random House India and Columbia University Press.
Ravikant is Associate Professor at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi.
Wednesday, 7 August 2024, 5 pm, Seminar Room and Zoom https://bit.ly/46tSEM8