Pritha Chakrabarti

@mitwpu.edu.in

Assistant Professor, Dadasaheb Phalke International Film School
Dr. Vishwanath Karad MIT World Peace University, Kothrud, Pune

Pritha Chakrabarti


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https://researchid.co/pritha2000

RESEARCH, TEACHING, or OTHER INTERESTS

Cultural Studies, Visual Arts and Performing Arts, Communication, Gender Studies
3

Scopus Publications

9

Scholar Citations

2

Scholar h-index

Scopus Publications

  • Familialization of the ‘deviant’: a hindrance to queer community building?
    Pritha Chakrabarti
    Community Development Journal, 2024
    Familial acceptance of queer relationships has long been at the centre of the same-sex marriage discourse in India. This is no coincidence since in India family as an institution represents caste, religious, class and other social privileges. Developing on Bordieu’s work on family, this paper examines three Hindi films—Ek Ladki Ko Dekha To Aisa Laga (2019), Shubh Mangal Zaada Savdhaan (2020) and Badhaai Do (2022)—to formulate the ‘ideology of familialization’ as the basis of the queer narratives in these popular film texts. Through narrative analysis of these texts, this paper argues that these narratives function at two levels: one, at the level of inducting the erstwhile subjects of developmentalist economy into the neoliberal economy; and two, they selectively transform the familial space of these subjects to make it conducive to integrate LGBTQ persons. The narratives perpetuate a consensus about the importance of selective co-option of queer individuals within the socially dominant traditional families, to keep the cycle of social privilege undisturbed by producing what Bordieu calls ‘unproblematic inheritors’. This, I argue, prevents the individual queer characters from building a modern queer community, a radical collective with intersectional politics at its heart, at the cost of alienating those who do not come from such caste/class privilege. This serves the interest of both the neoliberal market/State and the Hindu upper caste dominated social, perpetuating the Ideology of Familialization which eventually has the power to function as a governmental tool of transforming the ‘deviant’ lovers into ‘model’ queer citizens.
  • The disavowal of dance as labour in popular hindi cinema
    Pritha Chakrabarti
    Studies in South Asian Film and Media, 2020
    In this article, I analyse screendance texts from Hindi cinema to introduce a theoretical framework called the ideology of amateurism which, I argue, made space within the narrative of the Hindi film for the ‘ideal’ Indian woman to dance publicly while simultaneously disavowing modernity. Through an analysis of selected film dance texts, I show how this turned the dancing heroine into the restorer of the moral order of the narrative. I argue that this ideology of amateurism amounted to a denial of dance labour, which was a necessary precondition for the cultural legitimation of the viewers’ desire for the screendancer in particular and a disavowal of the desire for modernity in general. Following this, I show how with the liberalization of the Indian economy and the rise of neoliberalism, and interestingly, also the replacement of the erstwhile ‘union-dancers’ on-screen Bollywood film dance texts today not only acknowledge the labour of screendance but promotional materials lay out the ‘labouring process’. This, I suggest, is symptomatic of the emergence of a new work order and the entry of a new class into this sphere. I read this in conjunction with the rise of dance as an established profession, as seen through the mushrooming of Bollywood dance schools, in order to show how the ideology of amateurism is challenged through a reconfiguration of work practices in neoliberal economies.
  • Performing the region: Sadhona Bose and the modern Bengali film dance
    Pritha Chakrabarti
    South Asian History and Culture, 2017
    The first half of the twentieth century saw the emergence of popular cultural practices that would define the sub-national differential of ‘Bengal’ within the larger Indian nation. One of the constituents of this differential was 1930s modern screen dance, performed by stars from the ‘cultured’ society. The most notable of them was Sadhona Bose – granddaughter of the social reformer Keshub Chandra Sen – who went on to become one of the first known dancing stars of Bengal. Bose’s Bengali Modern Dance – which claimed distinction from previous dances performed on the stage, dance-forms of silent cinema (both of which were considered undignified) and the neo-classical dances of the national-revivalist project – was central to her stardom. Through a study of Bose’s personal history and dance choreographies on screen, this article underscores the differential ‘Bengali-ness’ of Bose’s dancer persona. The article argues that the modern eclecticism of film dance created a space for Bose to negotiate her regional/Bengali subjectivity even while fulfilling the historicist demands of a hegemonic nationalism. It goes beyond the scope of the respectability discourse that often mires a female star and instead focuses on the nuances of dance forms and choreographies to locate her within the larger framework of dance culture and a regional modernism.

RECENT SCHOLAR PUBLICATIONS

  • Kartik Nair, Seeing Things: Spectral Materialities of Bombay Horror
    P Chakrabarti
    Screen 66 (1), 138-141 , 2025
    2025.0
  • Tollygunge to Tollywood: The Bengali film industry reimagined: by Anugyan Nag and Spandan Bhattacharya, Hyderabad, Orient Blackswan Private Limited, 2021, 228 pp.,₹ 760 …
    P Chakrabarti
    South Asian Popular Culture 22 (3), 439-441 , 2024
    2024.0
  • Sirens of Modernity: World Cinema via Bombay, Samhita Sunya (2022).
    P Chakrabarti
    Studies in South Asian Film & Media 16 (1) , 2024
    2024.0
  • Familialization of the ‘deviant’: a hindrance to queer community building?
    P Chakrabarti
    Community Development Journal 59 (2), 348-364 , 2024
    2024.0
  • Review: Bollywood’s New Woman: Liberalization, Liberation, and Contested Bodies, Megha Anwar and Anupama Arora (2021)
    P Chakrabarti
    Studies in South Asian Film & Media, Volume 13, Number 1, January 2022, pp … , 2022
    2022.0
  • Bollywood’s New Woman: Liberalization, Liberation, and Contested Bodies , Megha Anwar and Anupama Arora (2021)
    P Chakrabarti
    Studies in South Asian Film & Media 13 (1), 63-66 , 2021
    2021.0
  • The disavowal of dance as labour in popular Hindi cinema
    P Chakrabarti
    Studies in South Asian Film & Media 11 (2), 209-223 , 2020
    2020.0
  • Copyright Intellect Books Not to be distributed
    R SAWHNEY, DS MINI, BM MANNIL, P CHAKRABARTI, A YADAV, ...
    2020.0
  • Performing the region: Sadhona Bose and the modern Bengali film dance
    P Chakrabarti
    Popular Cinema in Bengal: Genre, Stars, Public Cultures, 248 , 2020
    2020.0
    Citations: 7
  • Politics of screen dance in Indian cinema
    P Chakrabarti
    Ph. D. thesis , 2018
    2018.0
    Citations: 2
  • Hoping against Hope: Walter Benjamin and the Politics of History
    P Chakrabarti
    Convergia 5 (5) , 2016
    2016.0
  • Improving elementaty education in Maharashtra: The work of the state education quality cell
    P Chakrabarti, A Malhotra, A Parulkar, R Preece

MOST CITED SCHOLAR PUBLICATIONS

  • Performing the region: Sadhona Bose and the modern Bengali film dance
    P Chakrabarti
    Popular Cinema in Bengal: Genre, Stars, Public Cultures, 248 , 2020
    2020.0
    Citations: 7
  • Politics of screen dance in Indian cinema
    P Chakrabarti
    Ph. D. thesis , 2018
    2018.0
    Citations: 2
  • Kartik Nair, Seeing Things: Spectral Materialities of Bombay Horror
    P Chakrabarti
    Screen 66 (1), 138-141 , 2025
    2025.0
  • Tollygunge to Tollywood: The Bengali film industry reimagined: by Anugyan Nag and Spandan Bhattacharya, Hyderabad, Orient Blackswan Private Limited, 2021, 228 pp.,₹ 760 …
    P Chakrabarti
    South Asian Popular Culture 22 (3), 439-441 , 2024
    2024.0
  • Sirens of Modernity: World Cinema via Bombay, Samhita Sunya (2022).
    P Chakrabarti
    Studies in South Asian Film & Media 16 (1) , 2024
    2024.0
  • Familialization of the ‘deviant’: a hindrance to queer community building?
    P Chakrabarti
    Community Development Journal 59 (2), 348-364 , 2024
    2024.0
  • Review: Bollywood’s New Woman: Liberalization, Liberation, and Contested Bodies, Megha Anwar and Anupama Arora (2021)
    P Chakrabarti
    Studies in South Asian Film & Media, Volume 13, Number 1, January 2022, pp … , 2022
    2022.0
  • Bollywood’s New Woman: Liberalization, Liberation, and Contested Bodies , Megha Anwar and Anupama Arora (2021)
    P Chakrabarti
    Studies in South Asian Film & Media 13 (1), 63-66 , 2021
    2021.0
  • The disavowal of dance as labour in popular Hindi cinema
    P Chakrabarti
    Studies in South Asian Film & Media 11 (2), 209-223 , 2020
    2020.0
  • Copyright Intellect Books Not to be distributed
    R SAWHNEY, DS MINI, BM MANNIL, P CHAKRABARTI, A YADAV, ...
    2020.0
  • Hoping against Hope: Walter Benjamin and the Politics of History
    P Chakrabarti
    Convergia 5 (5) , 2016
    2016.0
  • Improving elementaty education in Maharashtra: The work of the state education quality cell
    P Chakrabarti, A Malhotra, A Parulkar, R Preece