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Cinema and the City

Cinema and the City

- Prof Ranjani Mazumdar

This course looks at the representation of the city in cinema. Exploring the links between urban topography and cinematic space across a range of thematic, historical and cultural concerns, the attempt will be to situate and understand cinema as an innovative and powerful archive of urban life. The cinematic city is born at the intersection of mental, physical and social space. It is in this imagined city that we get access to the fleeting, the ephemeral and the transient that shapes the rhythm and movement of contemporary city life. Through a range of readings on the city and cinema, along with screenings of films from across the world, the course will conceptually journey through the traffic of signs that move between the physical spaces of the city and its cinematic representation.

Key Readings:

• Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Cambridge, Massachusetts & London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999.

• Buck-Morss, Suzan. The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin & the Arcades Project. Cambridge, Massachusetts & London, England: The MIT Press, 1990.

• Clarke, David B. Ed. The Cinematic City. London and New York: Routledge, 1997.

• Donald, James. Imagining the Modern City. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.

• Friedberg, Anne. Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern. Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press, 1993.

• Neumann, Dietrich. Ed. Film Architecture: From Metropolis to Blade Runner. Munich, London, New York: Prestel, 1999. • Shiel, Mark & Tony Fitzmaurice. Ed. Screening the City. London & New York: Verso, 2003.

• Simmel, Georg. On Individuality and Social Forms: Selected Writings. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1971.

• Vidler, Anthony. Warped Space: Art, Architecture & Anxiety in Modern Culture. Cambridge, Massachusetts & London, England: MIT Press, 2001.

A warm welcome to the modified and updated website of the Centre for East Asian Studies. The East Asian region has been at the forefront of several path-breaking changes since 1970s beginning with the redefining the development architecture with its State-led development model besides emerging as a major region in the global politics and a key hub of the sophisticated technologies. The Centre is one of the thirteen Centres of the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi that provides a holistic understanding of the region.

Initially, established as a Centre for Chinese and Japanese Studies, it subsequently grew to include Korean Studies as well. At present there are eight faculty members in the Centre. Several distinguished faculty who have now retired include the late Prof. Gargi Dutt, Prof. P.A.N. Murthy, Prof. G.P. Deshpande, Dr. Nranarayan Das, Prof. R.R. Krishnan and Prof. K.V. Kesavan. Besides, Dr. Madhu Bhalla served at the Centre in Chinese Studies Programme during 1994-2006. In addition, Ms. Kamlesh Jain and Dr. M. M. Kunju served the Centre as the Documentation Officers in Chinese and Japanese Studies respectively.

The academic curriculum covers both modern and contemporary facets of East Asia as each scholar specializes in an area of his/her interest in the region. The integrated course involves two semesters of classes at the M. Phil programme and a dissertation for the M. Phil and a thesis for Ph. D programme respectively. The central objective is to impart an interdisciplinary knowledge and understanding of history, foreign policy, government and politics, society and culture and political economy of the respective areas. Students can explore new and emerging themes such as East Asian regionalism, the evolving East Asian Community, the rise of China, resurgence of Japan and the prospects for reunification of the Korean peninsula. Additionally, the Centre lays great emphasis on the building of language skills. The background of scholars includes mostly from the social science disciplines; History, Political Science, Economics, Sociology, International Relations and language.

Several students of the centre have been recipients of prestigious research fellowships awarded by Japan Foundation, Mombusho (Ministry of Education, Government of Japan), Saburo Okita Memorial Fellowship, Nippon Foundation, Korea Foundation, Nehru Memorial Fellowship, and Fellowship from the Chinese and Taiwanese Governments. Besides, students from Japan receive fellowship from the Indian Council of Cultural Relations.