Courses

AS 333LEC South Asian Cinema: Bollywood and Beyond

This course is a chronological exploration of Hindi cinema, stretching from the 1940s to the present. With its flashy item numbers, chocolate, heroes, masala films, and playback singers, Bollywood films offer delights that no other genre can. But beneath its flashy exterior, Bollywood also offers moral lessons for social uplift, provides examples of changing class and family dynamics, tracks the influence of the West on a decidedly South Asian art form, and has its finger perennially on the cultural pulse of India.