Ajay Gehlawat
Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, Theatre & Film
Ph.D., Theatre and Film, 2007, City University of New York Graduate Center
Email: gehlawat@sonoma.edu
Voicemail: (707) 664-3178
Office: Carson Hall 33
Professional and Personal Interests
My research and teaching interests range from international cinema and film theory to transnational forms of popular culture and cultural identity. My primary areas of expertise include non-Western cinemas, particularly popular Hindi cinema, aka Bollywood; film and postcolonial theory; South Asian diasporic studies; and critical cultural studies. I am also interested in representations of race and ethnicity in American cinema; multiculturalism in European cinemas; and, more broadly, in the global circulation of popular cinemas and cultures. In addition to teaching in the Hutchins School of Liberal Studies, I serve as Program Coordinator and Faculty Advisor for the Film Studies minor at Sonoma State.
Selected Course Offerings
Bollywood (LIBS 320C)
Minorities in American Cinema (LIBS 204)
Film Theory and Narrative (LIBS 320C)
Multicultural Musicals (LIBS 320C)
Selected Publications
The Slumdog Phenomenon: A Critical Anthology (Anthem, 2013)
http://www.anthempress.com/the-slumdog-phenomenon
"Why Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle: The Representation of Otherness in Mainstream Teen Cinema," in Lost in Media: The Ethics of Everyday Life, Ed. Frymer and Kashani (Peter Lang, 2013)
"Goris in the Story: On the Shifting Dynamics of Whiteness in Bollywood." Center for South Asia Studies, UC Berkeley, CSAS Public Lecture Series (2012) http://southasia.berkeley.edu/goris-story
Reframing Bollywood: Theories of Popular Hindi Cinema (Sage, 2010) http://www.sagepub.com/booksProdDesc.nav?prodId=Book235555