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SPECIAL SERIES: Diasporic Gazes: Reviewing Global Bollywood Class
05/19/2025
SPECIAL SERIES: Diasporic Gazes: Reviewing Global Bollywood Class
May is special! Beyond celebrating May Day, Azhar and Ankita decided to crank it up a notch. As educators, cinephiles, Marxists, and postcolonial scholars, they believe in breaking hierarchies. So they bring you "Diasporic Gazes," a series of special episodes featuring Ankita's film students from her classes on Global Bollywood and Global Other Cinema. In this short episode, Cierra Ferguson and Laksh Makhija reflect on their experience taking Global Bollywood with Dr. Ankita Rathour at Georgia Tech. Together, they discuss how the class shaped their understanding of Bollywood as both an art form and a cultural force. What does it mean to study Bollywood in an academic setting? How does your background shape what you take away from it? Along the way, they share unexpected insights and work through a tier list of the films they watched throughout the semester. Whether you're a lifelong fan or completely new to Bollywood, this episode invites you to join us in thinking about how cinema, culture, and personal perspective come together in the classroom. Show these young learners some love and cheer. Speaker Bios: Cierra Ferguson is a Taiwanese-American psychology student focusing on computation and cognition. Dr. Rathour’s ENGL 1102 class on decolonial film and literature sparked in them a deeper commitment to continue education grounded in historical understanding and liberation. Now, after taking Global Bollywood, they’re more passionate than ever, and SRK has officially gained another lifelong fan. Laksh Makhija is a Computer Science major at Georgia Tech! Having grown up with Bollywood, Hindi films have played a huge role in his life. He had to perform a lot of the Bollywood songs at weddings and other events!
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