Special Issue of South Asian Popular Culture

Bollywood Audiences (Fall/October 2005)

Special Issue Co-editors: Jigna Desai (University of Minnesota), Rajinder Dudrah (University of Manchester), and Amit Rai (Florida State University). 

“The sense of belonging that Bollywood films foster - the sheer sense of security and shared joy, … the commonality of experience despite the geographical separation of so many thousands of miles - is second to none. It works more because Bollywood is one of the things that bind us together as Indians, never mind where we live.”

Soumya Bhattacharya (Hindustan Times 1/25/03) 

Bollywood is often conceived as providing the idiom of not only Indian, but also South Asian, and diasporic identity in the 21st century. While Indian cinemas have been well-known internationally for over fifty years, it is more recently that Bollywood has become a global cinema, often positioning itself against the hegemony of Hollywood. As a national and global cinema, Bollywood is ubiquitous from the Gulf States, North America and East Africa, to Southeast Asia and Europe. This reterritorialization of Bollywood raises questions regarding its consumption and reception. This special issue of South Asian Popular Culture is dedicated to interrogating Bollywood’s significance and meaning to its different audiences world-wide. 

Papers for a special issue of South Asian Popular Culture are invited on the broad topic of Bollywood and its audiences. Papers are invited on the significant roles that Bollywood and its attendant cultural products and practices (e.g., magazines, television shows, variety shows, web sites, music, and dance clubs) play economically and culturally for many audiences in South Asia and abroad. We welcome research that examines this cultural production and consumption from vibrant and new perspectives that challenge the assumptions of static, homogenous, and passive audiences. Papers that engage the location of Bollywood within specific geopolitical spaces and audiences are especially welcome. Papers may also focus on interrogating Bollywood’s role in local, national, and transnational cultural and political economies, discussing its economic and cultural capital. 

Papers that discuss Bollywood’s role in forming audiences, (ethnic, religious, class, gender, sexual, or racial) identity formations, national or diasporic discourses, and/or globalization are particularly desirable. We seek contributions that interrogate the diverse issues associated with audience consumption and reception of Bollywood films such as spectatorship, consumption, production of social spaces, and cross-cultural signification. We welcome a broad range of methodological and disciplinary approaches including but not limited to ethnography, focus groups, interviews, textual and discourse analysis, and economic analysis.  

Deadline for submission of articles: 1 July 2004 

Please send enquiries and essays to Rajinder Dudrah via email or to: