Jyotsna Kapur | SIU

Cinema

Jyotsna Kapur is a Professor of Cinema and Media Studies, who is also cross-appointed with Sociology. Her research and teaching interests include: Marxist-feminist theory of media arts and culture; The politics of labor, class, race, and sexuality in neoliberalism; contemporary Indian media culture; History and theory of the documentary idea especially its redefinations in contemporary practices and digital culture; Third Cinema; and Global children's media culture.

She is the author of The Politics of Time and Youth in Brand India: Bargaining with Capital (2013) and Coining for Capital:  Movies, Marketing, and the Transformation of Childhood (2005); both books pre-occupied with how the neoliberal turn worldwide since the 70s radically transformed the relationship between generations and our consciousness of time. Coming into media studies with a background in theater, Kapur's current work is on the anxieties and hopes embedded in the transformation of experience into image and vice versa, both as a market-driven feature of everyday life as well as resistance to it. One sypmtom or artistic device for exressing this, she suggests, is the recurance of Frankenstein as an overarching myth/concept in contemporary arts practice. 

Kapur teaches courses in Media Arts theory, documentary practices, analysis of visual culture and in the Peace Studies Minor.

Education

Ph.D. (Radio TV Film), Northwestern University, 1998
M.P.S. (communication Arts) Cornell University, 1992
M.Phil (History), Delhi University, 1988