South Asian Transnationalisms: Cultural Exchange in the Twentieth Century (Routledge South Asian History and Culture Series)

South Asian Transnationalisms explores encounters in twentieth century South Asia beyond the conventional categories of center and periphery, colonizer and colonized. Considering the cultural and political exchanges between artists and intellectuals of South Asia with counterparts in the United States, continental Europe, the Caribbean, and East Asia, the contributors interrogate the relationships between identity and agency, language and space, race and empire, nation and ethnicity, and diaspora and nationality. This book deploys transnational syntaxes such as cinema, dance, and literature to reflect on social, technological, and political change. Conceiving of the transnational as neither liberatory nor necessarily hegemonic, the authors seek to explore the contradictions, opportunities, disjunctures, and exclusions of the vexed experience of globalization in South Asia. This book was published as a special issue of South Asian History and Culture . 1. Introduction / Babli Sinha -- 2. Tropical Longing: The Quest For India In The Early Twentieth-century Caribbean / Lisa Outar -- 3. A Productive Distance From The Nation: Uday Shankar And The Defining Of Indian Modern Dance / Nilanjana Bhattacharjya -- 4. Transnational Resistance And Fictive Truths: Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, Agnes Smedley And The Indian Nationalist Movement Purnima Bose -- 5. Colonial Encounters Between India And Indonesia / Martin Ramstedt -- 6. Empire Films And The Dissemination Of Americanism In Colonial India Babli Sinha -- 7. The Eternal Return And Overcoming Cape Fear: Science, Sensation, Superman And Hindu Nationalism In Recent Hindi Cinema / Anustup Basu -- 8. Ur-national And Secular Mythologies: Popular Culture, Nationalist Historiography And Strategic Essentialism / Rini Bhattacharya Mehta -- 9. Visual Culture And Violence: Inventing Intimacy And Citizenship In Recent South Asian Cinema / Kavita Daiya. Edited By Babli Sinha. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. South Asian Transnationalisms unites scholars from across the United States to explore encounters in the "contact zone" of South Asia in the first half of the twentieth century beyond the conventional categories of center and periphery and colonizer and colonized.This book was published as a special issue of South Asian History and Culture.