S Sunya
S. Sunya is an Assistant Professor of Visual Culture in the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Virginia[1]. According to her university profile, her research interests span across world film history, feminist historiography, informal practices of media distribution across South / West Asia and the Indian Ocean, intersections of audio-visual media and literary forms, and sound studies.
According to her bio, she has published no books, papers or research pertaining to Hindus, the rights of Hindus, the impact of or relationship between Islam and Hinduism / Hindutva, India or the Indian Government.
In 2021, she along with Hibatullah Akhundzada, the supreme leader of the Taliban, co-signed a letter supporting the "Dismantling Global Hindutva" Conference, as an academic and scholar and made the following allegation:
"the current government of India [in 2021] has instituted discriminatory policies including beef bans, restrictions on religious conversion and interfaith weddings, and the introduction of religious discrimination into India’s citizenship laws. The result has been a horrifying rise in religious and caste-based violence, including hate crimes, lynchings, and rapes directed against Muslims, non-conforming Dalits, Sikhs, Christians, adivasis and other dissident Hindus. Women of these communities are especially targeted. Meanwhile, the government has used every tool of harassment and intimidation to muzzle dissent. Dozens of student activists and human rights defenders are currently languishing in jail indefinitely without due process under repressive anti-terrorism laws."[2]
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Books[edit]
- Sunya, Samhita. Sirens of Modernity: World Cinema via Bombay. Oakland: University of California Press, 2022.
Other Publications[edit]
- Sunya, Samhita. "Book Review: Cinemas Dark and Slow in Digital India, by Lalitha Gopalan." Film Quarterly, vol. 75, no. 2, 2021, pp. 112-114.
- Sunya, Samhita. "Changing Winds: Oman TV, Indian (Ocean) Films, and Media Piracy in the 1980s." Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, vol. 14, no. 1, 2021, pp. 46-67.
- Sunya, Samhita. "A Change of Address with Filmfare Middle East." "Indian Cinema Today and Tomorrow: Infrastructures, Aesthetics, Audiences" special issue of IIC Quarterly, Winter 2020/Spring 2021, India International Centre, pp. 221-238.
- Sunya, Samhita. “On Location: Tracking Secret Agents and Films, Between Bombay and Beirut.” Film History, vol. 32, no. 3, 2020, pp. 105-140.
- Sunya, Samhita, and Kaveh Askari. "Editors' Note: On a Press Booklet for Black Eyes (1936)." Film History, vol. 32, no. 3, 2020, pp. 191-196.
- Sunya, Samhita. "High-Fidelity Ecologies: India versus Noise Pollution in the Contemporary Public Sphere." In Indian Sound Cultures, Indian Sound Citizenship, edited by Laura Brueck, Jacob Smith, and Neil Verma, University of Michigan Press, 2020, pp. 88-112.
- Sunya, Samhita. "From Seoul to Cinemascapes: The Private Lives of Contemporary Cine-Tourism in (and out) of India." In Pop Empires: Transnational and Diasporic Flows of India and Korea, edited by Robert Ji-Song Ku, Sharon Lee, and Monika Mehta, University of Hawaii Press, 2019, pp. 195-208.
- Sunya, Samhita. “Moving Towards prem nagar: An Intimate Genealogy of the ‘City of Love’ and the Lyrical Worlds of Hindustani Film Songs.” positions: asia critique, vol. 25, no. 1, Duke University Press, 2017, pp. 51-99.
- Sunya, Samhita. "Book Review: The Sexual Life of English: Languages of Caste and Desire in Colonial India, by Shefali Chandra." South Asian History and Culture, vol. 4, no. 3, 2013, pp. 417-419.
- Sunya, Samhita. "'It is Written' (in Invisible Ink): Slumdog Millionaire's Sfx and the Realist Overwriting of Bollywood Spectacle." In The Slumdog Phenomenon: A Critical Anthology, edited by Ajay Gehlawat, Anthem Books, 2013, pp. 121-139.
References[edit]
- ↑ Samhita Sunya page on University of Virginia accessed September 29, 2022
- ↑ "Letter of Support", Dismantling Global Hindutva Conference website, accessed August 7, 2022