British South Asian Cinema and the Presence of History
A couple of years ago, when I defended the proposal for my dissertation on British South Asian cinema, one of the questions that came up was, why British South Asian cinema? In a field where people often assume that your area of academic specialization will relate strongly to your own background in some very personal, but compelling way, those present at this defense understood my academic interests at two levels. They instinctively understood my interest in postcolonial cinema (I am, after all, an English-speaking South Asian), and in diasporic South Asian-American cinema (because here I am, a South Asian studying at an American university, living far, far away from her family and home).