Debashree
@Debashree2017
Followers
3,468
Following
4,331
Media
487
Statuses
3,398
Film historian, media theorist, college professor. Proud alum of Jamia Millia Islamia & JNU. #BombayHustle The hustle is real.
New York, USA
Joined September 2017
Don't wanna be here?
Send us removal request.
Explore trending content on Musk Viewer
Wizkid
• 372340 Tweets
APT OUT NOW
• 266025 Tweets
Ruto
• 131071 Tweets
Deputy President
• 95312 Tweets
علي النبي
• 56432 Tweets
Hayırlı Cumalar
• 37650 Tweets
Kindiki
• 32311 Tweets
安倍氏の女装
• 29623 Tweets
Dalton Knecht
• 24579 Tweets
低所得者
• 15594 Tweets
KAIRAIN HANGGANG DULO
• 15429 Tweets
ミミッキュ
• 15012 Tweets
#جمعه_مباركه
• 13711 Tweets
ちゃんのライブ
• 10398 Tweets
Pinned Tweet
Universities are gaslighting an entire generation that is watching massacres on screens but is forbidden from speaking out about them. And then we wonder why they use ChatGPT just to articulate basic 100-word class assignments.
#ceasefirenow
#ChatGPT
2
26
117
Fun pic of the day: When Mohammed Rafi met Muhammad Ali. 1979.
5
75
593
Ravish Kumar surrounded by admirers outside
@IFCCenter
! What a great night for NYC, thanks to
@WhileWeWatched
👏
6
35
550
Amazing student-led rally to support Palestinian life at Columbia today. Despite drones & hecklers these young scholars demonstrated love & allyship. BLM abolitionists, Kashmiris, Jewish anti-Zionists… just glorious 💪 From Palestine to Mexico, border walls have got to go!
6
72
422
Now available! Sumptuously illustrated with bts photos of 1930s Bombay filmmaking. Essays by Sudhir Mahadevan, Priya Jaikumar,
@RachelMJDwyer
@Eleanor_Halsall
Kaushik Bhaumik, Virchand Dharamsey & myself:
Bombay Talkies: An Unseen History of Indian Cinema
19
95
353
Wishing you perfect saree pleats & buckled sandals in 2023 ✨
Dec 1949, “Camera in the Tropics,” a journal from Bombay.
8
37
326
If you are teaching at CU or Barnard, please join the faculty rally on Monday, at 2 pm on the steps of Low Library. In support of faculty governance & student safety.
Return our students to campus, their dorms, dining halls, libraries!
1
86
282
So relieved that my book is now available in an affordable India edition from
@penguinrandom
. I couldn't afford US publications as a grad student. Travelled to NYU with a full-xerox of my advisor's book! I hope this helps a bit - INR 538 online:
10
41
282
There will be a faculty-led protest on Monday at 12:30pm at the sundial. Hope to see many colleagues there!
@SW_Columbia
#facultystudentsolidarity
Tenured faculty at Columbia, speak out! Support fair wages, better health insurance, and greater worker protections. These workers were us.
#CUonStrike
@SW_Columbia
1
45
260
1
70
264
Finally got a chance to pose with a physical copy of
#BombayHustle
at the
@ColumbiaUP
booth!
#SCMS23
7
16
257
My author copy has arrived! This is my online version of dancing with joy 💃🏽
Many thanks to my editor for being there every step of the way
@PhilipLeventhal
28
9
255
Happy to share a new open access publication where I study Kaala Patthar (1979) as a "coal melodrama." Family folklore says that this is the first film I ever watched in my life as a 10-day old baby accompanying my Nani and my Ma for a theatrical darshan of Amitabh Bachchan. 1/5
14
31
248
Acads with jobs: if you had to give one piece of advice to someone going to their first campus interview, what would it be?
145
27
227
5
36
204
Exciting new TT job at Barnard College for a *feminist scholar of media & tech*. Apart from teaching your dream courses, you'll have a fantastic group of colleagues & some of the smartest, most politically alive students in the country. 1/3
#mediastudies
9
155
184
What a brilliant turnout today! Even the sun came out bright & strong ☀️
#columbia
#faculty4students
0
22
167
So delighted to receive the Kovács Award for my essay "Somewhere between human nonhuman & woman" from
@SCMStudies
! Many of u gave me super feedback + I had stellar editorial guidance from Shelleen Greene, Ellen Scott,
@JenniferMBean2
Below: my photocopy of Shanta Apte's 🤯 book
21
18
162
Ayodhya teach-in coming up, for those who weren’t on this earth in the 20thc & for others who just forgot.
Perspectives from religion, legal history, politics, media, theatre, and historiography:
1
34
152
Have you ever seen a footnote that spoke to you like this?! This is going to become a mandatory teaching resource for me.
#citation
From Max Liboiron's new book "Pollution is Colonialism"
1
26
139
In 1919 Indian students had to be coaxed to consider the US a desirable educational destination. This note tells young scholars that they shouldn't feel disappointed if they don't get into Oxbridge bec Harvard, Yale, Columbia aren't so bad. FF to 2020 🤷🏾
#F1visa
4
43
123
Could this be the best thing ever produced by the Government of West Bengal?? 🤤
20
10
126
Hansal Mehta does it again!
#Scoop
tells a terrifying story about the swampy nexus of sensationalist news media & police
Brilliant writing, memorable female characters, gripping pace (no lazy fallback to bc mc gaalis), topnotch cast.
Kudos
@KARISHMAK_TANNA
@Mdzeeshanayyub
👏
3
13
125
Video from Prof. Ranjani Mazumdar explaining role of police on campus to intimidate peaceful students & faculty, while ABVP criminals go scot-free.
@mamidala90
a VC complicit in the steady demonization of JNU's vibrant student activism, issues stoogey stmt
#SOSJNU
5
105
119
Spent the most peaceful and therapeutic morning at the Gaza Solidarity Encampment today witnessing the care & community our young people are bringing into this world ❤️🩹
#columbia
(Thanks to
@hibabouakar
)
4
10
117
An ingenious map by Prof. Mustansir Dalvi that uses family names/surnames to track the complex migration histories of South Asians across the Indian Ocean region. Screenshot from the Indian Ocean Urbanisms plenary today:
7
41
112
*Camera in the Tropics*! New course is approved & a bright poster is being made with help from lantern slides recently viewed at UCSD's Geisel Library:
13
8
114
Glad to have caught this significant retrospective by the enigmatic
#surrealist
#DorotheaTanning
@tatemodern
Here is a famous self-portrait titled
#Birthday
. Strong, defined, confident female commentary & characters.
0
10
105
I'm really not interested in media scholars who took 7 years to realize that Modi is a self-serving autocratic hologram built up by corporate media & a gargantuan PR machinery, including misogynist and casteist digital troll armies.
#areyouserious
.
@OnReality_Check
| Vamsee Juluri, Professor of Media Studies. University of San Francisco on how he turned from a Modi admirer to a critic.
77
109
548
2
7
103
*Media Materialisms* GR6631 Spring 2024.
In which we survey historical and philosophical approaches to media forms and their material lives. Special focus on theories + case studies from the South.
8
9
102
Our special issue on “Decolonial Feminisms” in
@FemMediaHist
is now free to view!
#SCMS22
A 🧵on what to expect:
3
51
101
TW. First thing Monday morning as I'm trying to get a cup of coffee at a crowded Pret a person starts shouting at me: "Go back to your country!" This is on 116th and Broadway, right outside the gates of Columbia University. I'm still shaking.
36
11
100
Reading bell hooks has become my most grounding thing for that first day of teaching:
“I came to theory because I was hurting… I saw in theory a location for healing.” 1994. 1/3
2
6
98
Happy, and relieved, to announce that an essay I wrote in 2015 is finally out in the fantastic new Companion to India Cinema.
Archival Conjugations: Queer Traces of Love & Loss in Bombay Cinema” is inspired by a photo of 2 women in a car:
5
14
100
Just dropped! Pavitra Sundar and I edited a special issue of
@FemMediaHist
on *Decolonial Feminisms* w/ a dream author team:
@asliozgenh
@_vvnsag
@roopikarisam
@jenn_blaylock
@ushai2020
👏to editorial angel
@JenniferMBean2
&
@pengxin218
@kallmeister
5
31
96
Stoked to see my article on
#exhaustion
out in
@FemMediaHist
today! I analyze the activism and writing of 1940s actress Shanta Apte to think bodily depletion alongside debates on what constitutes film work, fatigue, factories, and humans.
4
14
95
Time to stop making the Global South a model for "jugaad" euphoria narratives. No one said New York was coming out alive last year thanks to jugaad work-arounds when it was the exact same failure of public health infrastructures and governance.
“Why is it that our almost endless capacity to negotiate difficult circumstances, to help each other and to demonstrate kindness, compassion and innovation is never rewarded with actual systemic change that will make some of this jugaad less necessary?”
0
18
42
2
15
92
CAMERA SOUTH ASIA - celebrating recent work on photography and cinema! April 27 (Thurs), 4pm-7pm, NYC.
Join our fabulous line-up of speakers as we discuss the pasts & futures of South Asian lens-based practice. Bring friends! 📸
Registration:
3
19
94
Join me for a super rare public screening of a 1939 film at Regal Cinema in Mumbai next week! *Kangan* starring Ashok Kumar and Leela Chitnis as you’ve never known them 🙃 No registration, just show up!
2
20
92
The moment you’ve been waiting for! 30% off
#BombayHustle
with its beautiful paper, elegant fonts, & killer cover! Thanks to
@ColumbiaUP
for putting my pandemic book on display at SCMS alongside such great new books.
Code SCMS
1
28
91
Friends in London, I’m presenting some new work on Wed:
"Stereoscopic Vision in the Plantationocene"
5pm 22 May 2024
UCL North-West Wing, Lecture Theatre G22
Stereo card, 1902, Tea Plantation in Java
2
20
86
Solid turnout today!
@SW_Columbia
#columbiaonstrike
There will be a faculty-led protest on Monday at 12:30pm at the sundial. Hope to see many colleagues there!
@SW_Columbia
#facultystudentsolidarity
1
70
264
2
16
85
Pedagogy is a key site of struggle, comrades! Join us for a book panel to discuss a brave new textbook on
#filmstudies
designed primarily for students & teachers in India.
Eds. Vebhuti D, Bindu Menon, Spandan Bhattacharya
The proof of the decolonial pudding is in the teaching 💪
4
17
83
SO excited that this book is out!! Can't wait to read Juned Shaikh's *Outcaste Bombay* 🙌
1
6
80
@ruha9
Grateful for this venue to share 🙏 My first book, Bombay Hustle, is out in September from
@ColumbiaUP
. Working on page proofs right now!!
11
9
77
A friend just sent me the nicest photo!
#BombayHustle
@PrithviTheatre
and right next to
@suketumehta
’s Maximum City!
My life has come full circle. I think I can go back to sleep now ☺️
2
2
82
Love, War & Other Longings, looks set to be a super addition to work on the cinemas of Pakistan. Eds. Vazira Zamindar & Asad Ali, it complicates the default linking of postcolonial cinemas with the nation-state; curates art alongside the academic and the popular 🙌
3
18
79
So happy to see my book featured in
@sundaymidday
! It means a lot to me that this book be discussed in Bombay, especially at a time when the whole world and their aunty is out to vilify Bollywood & it's women workers.
#bollywood
#filmhistory
#womenwhowork
#cineworker
@fwicemum
5
12
80
April 22 is going to be some night! Start your evening with a book talk at Columbia University by
@anjaliarondekar
at 4.15pm, & brilliant respondents
@shikariaurat
Niyati Shenoy & Neferti Tadiar 🔥
3
17
77
Join us for this in-person book discussion with
@ShanaRedmond
& Meheli Sen on Pavitra Sundar's new book "Listening with a Feminist Ear." March 25, 4.15pm, Knox Hall.
Students are especially welcome and we will have snacks after!
0
15
76
The new year continues with new acts of university cowardice. Renowned artist Samia Halaby’s (b. 1936) 1st US retrospective is cancelled because she is Palestinian. Luckily you can head online to see a rare (mainly does abstract) documentary series by her:
1
28
77
Wrapping up my "Cinemas of India" course on a high. Many thanks to my amazing students who took a leap of faith with collective screenings & brought such great energy to the room 💓
3
4
75
Columbia students stand in solidarity with the anti-CAA protests currently energizing India. The forecast says it feels like -11C right now but the fire is lit 🔥
#insolidarity
#jamia
#CAAProtest
#Columbia
1
27
69
While you're waiting, why not register for this fabulously interdisciplinary book panel where we discuss Bombay and hustling in the film industry! With Gyan Prakash, Neepa Majumdar, William Elison on Nov 13, 10amET/8.30pmIST
2
14
73
Apparently it's
#WorldSareeDay
🤷🏾 so I'll share one of my fave fashion photos from the film archive. This is Jamuna Barua, the original filmi Paro (of Devdas fame), glamming it up in a striped tissue saree in 1940. An early fashion model for sure.
#filmactress
3
10
73
Read about Payal Kapadia’s beautiful love letter to cinema & student politics in my open access
@FilmQuarterly
article on *Night of Knowing Nothing*, now playing on
@mubi
#antiestablishment
#indie
#cinema
From FQ's Fall 2022 issue, read Debashree Mukherjee on A NIGHT OF KNOWING NOTHING, the debut feature by Payal Kapadia, whose ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT just won the Grand Prix at Cannes
0
9
28
1
13
75
This weekend! The Next Monsoon conference - Climate Change & Cultural Production in South Asia.
October 27-29, 2023
Cornell University.
2
8
70
Reading this excellent new anthology on Digital Hate as i gear up for *Inflamed Publics* April 14-16.
Registration and program here:
3
7
73
Ch 1 of
#BombayHustle
explores the acute financialization of everyday life in the 1930s, felt across class & gender divides. Films of the time tapped into financial imaginaries of anxiety & thrill. This 1938 film packs in stock market crashes, evil speculators, & mad scientists!
1
5
66
Just out with
@rep_journal
- an article on
#landscape
in cinema that weathered the pandemic with me & owes so much to so many people. Here's a few key ideas & scholarship I draw on, with images that are central to my argument. 🧵(1/12)
3
7
68
Tomorrow at Barnard with
@ShayoniMitra
& Mara Green, Decolonizing Gender:
Sex/ualities and Performance in South Asia and Its Diaspora. 6:00-7:30pm
Held Auditorium, Barnard Hall 304
3
9
69
Teaching a week on television in India, right after the
#AyodhaVerdict
reminded me why I study what I do. So important to re-read Arvind Rajagopal and Purnima Mankekar on Doordarshan's epic hits: Ramayana & Mahabharata:
0
20
67
I'll be discussing
#BombayHustle
with Daisuke Miyao next Fri Feb 26 at 7.30pm EST. Join us if you can! This is part of a series on new books in Trans-Asian Film Studies
@CinemaStudies
with Sangjoon Lee & Shi-yan Chao.
Register here:
4
21
66
Weekend brain fired up by Salma Siddique's detective tracking of film doppelgangers across the borders of Indian & Pakistan in 1950s! Consider child star Rattan Kumar's role in almost identical songs in 1954 & 1956 dedicated to Gandhi & Jinnah respectively (R migrated in 1956):
2
10
67
4
9
66
In the subway today: Agha Shahid Ali greets me with a desire for stationery✍🏽 💗
"The world is full of paper.
Write to me."
4
8
65
Wait, really? Yasujiro Ozu was commissioned to make a film on Subhash Chandra Bose & the INA in 1943!
Most sources suggest Ozu never made the film, but new rsrch claims that the finished film made its way to Nehru in 1946 when he visited Singapore.
#netaji
#ozu
#cinecircuits
3
10
64
From Delhi to Amsterdam to New York, all my awesome but burnt out girlfriends are coping with the help of detective shows. Is there any good writing on this phenomenon?
#gimmemurder
#bloodystressful
6
3
62
The Wirsching photo book just launched at
#JLF2023
! Its a stunning collection of behind the scenes images of film work & life in the 1930s. All via a cinematographer who quit Nazi Germany & embraced India. Editing this was a real treat. Congrats to all the contributors 👏
Jaipur Literature Festival’s signature First Edition book launch presents ‘Bombay Talkies: An Unseen History of Indian Cinema’
Pub. The Alkazi Collection of Photography in association with Mapin Publishing, 2023
With 165 photographs
Edited by Debashree Mukherjee
1
0
7
4
9
62
Ha! Sarah Sharma's preface to Re-Understanding Media hilariously sends-up the McLuhan bro & reminds us that "the technological is a specific vector of power that demands a feminist understanding."
#mediumisthemessage
#MondayMood
2
7
60
Students protesting outside Delhi Police HQ, alleging police brutality, illegal round-ups, and vandalism in Jamia Millia Islamia. JMI professors have informed me that some students are missing. The situation is very serious and needs your attention.
#AcademicTwitter
#Jamia
4
55
57
Watch this absolutely brilliant discussion on caste in India hosted by
@fayedsouza
.
@cynstepin
@kirubamunusamy
@Datlitwriter
come together in a superstar panel that tackles savarna feminism, merit mythologies, Dalit depletion, & the continuing inspiration of Ambedkar.
Watch the full discussion by clicking on the link in the tweet.
6
28
94
3
8
57
Dr. Mona Bhan will be speaking at the South Asia Institute, Columbia! "Weathering the Occupation: Meteorological Wars & Climate Contestations Kashmir". Join us on Mar 21, 4pm ET.
RSVP:
0
11
58
This shall be my only contribution to the
#jawan
conversation: Day 2 of Urdu class and I’m trying to write “Khan”
6
2
59
The university has accidentally changed my prefix from Dr. to Hon. So what if this has led to the termination of paychecks & library privileges? At least you can now address me as The Right Honorable Debashree 🤷🏾
#sundaypositivity
#cantmakethisup
#Admin
6
0
59
Unbelievable!
@deepikapadukone
shows up in solidarity with terrorized JNU students. Every voice matters 💪
0
14
55
This will be fab! Online book launch of Kajri Jain's new book - Gods in the Time of Democracy - on Jan 14. Chk out the super lineup of speakers 👇
#visualstudies
#arthistory
#religion
#politics
#monumentality
#Democracy
1
11
61
MIRA NAIR is speaking at Columbia on April 27! And Monsoon Wedding opens
@stannswarehouse
on May 6! What are you waiting for?
#shaadioftheyear
#intermediality
Registration:
Tix:
4
11
60
I just went to my first kathak class… and am overwhelmed in the most thrilling way. Wish me luck 🙏
0
0
58
Congratulations to
@allthatbreathes
for the Oscar nomination! We already know this to be a beautiful & urgent film but here’s to more people getting a chance to watch it🤞🎊 Well done Shaunak & team.
0
12
58
@ProfSrilaRoy
@alfgunvald
Appalling! What is this language of bedding? Once again, weaponizing the brown woman’s body for a fight between men. Can women not assert sexual autonomy??!
1
1
59
This is simply heartbreaking news. Kavita was the embodiment of life and joy. She gave everything to her scholarship, her students, and her stewardship of SAA in the face of an aggressively anti-intellectual JNU administration.
But her light and work is irrepressible ✨
In 2017, Kavita Singh gave a talk at Columbia on Holocaust museums and the struggle to create collective memory. Her work grounded so much of my writing on the politics of memory.
She was erudite, sharp and incredibly generous with her time and scholarship. Rest in peace.
8
17
185
1
10
56
1/3 In solidarity with the students of CU/Barnard facing suspension, eviction, and police arrests, and to stand with our faculty colleagues, we are taking Camera South Asia off-campus. Please come support us!
#CSA2
#photography
#southasia
2
10
56
"Eisenstein, Pudovkin! We shall fight, we shall win!"
Payal Kapadia's new film wasn't easy to write about, but it helped process some heartbreaks of the last years. Glad to share the final article
@FilmQuarterly
where I explore concepts like viraha & andolan-jeevi.
2
9
53
Fascism goes to the movies. A new Hindi film trailer spews poisonous right-wing talking points urging us towards a Hindu supremacist future. What's sexier than a nice mix of campus politics, conspiracy theories, Islamophobia, & Brahmin heroes?
5
6
55
This must also be said today: too many Bengali bhadraloks are mourning the election verdict today. Secular values, good sense, and cross-class solidarity do not run magically in Bengali blood. A lot of work remains to be done.
3
7
54
Peter Dietze, the German-Australian grandson of Bombay Talkies studio founder Himansu Rai, articulates his emotions in Hindi. I wouldn’t have been able to even imagine
#BombayHustle
if Peter hadn’t welcomed me into his family archives. What an emotional evening 💐
0
1
55
*CAMERA SOUTH ASIA* returns April 27 with artists, curators, scholars from Bangladesh, India, Mauritius, South Africa & more!
An afternoon of thinking with images of/on/around South Asia and its contested itineraries.
Register & RT!
Reception after 🥂
1
10
54
Thrilled with this review from a scholar I deeply admire! There was a time when I wanted to be a screenwriter, so this feels gooood ✒️📽️
#bombayhustle
And finally, Jennifer Fay calls BOMBAY HUSTLE by
@Debashree2017
a "tour de force": "As if writing both a book and a screenplay, Mukherjee...recovers cinema as a lived and entangled experience between people and things, technology and climate, infrastructure and energy."(6/6)
0
3
12
0
4
53
Save the date! April 27 (Sat), 1pm-6pm
"CAMERA SOUTH ASIA - II"
a symposium on lens-based practices & visual histories across borders & oceans.
Register here:
And check out our awesome roster of speakers 🔥
4
14
53
Radhika Apte + Neeraj Ghaywan make for an unforgettable ep of Made in Heaven! This “shit is complex” indeed. You can be an award-winning Ivy League prof but UC aunties will only see the “problem” of your caste. (Ignore the anti-woke brigade on this. Wait for R in white 🤍)
4
4
49
I didn’t love Pathaan (after all that), but I do love this man.
Thanks
@EramAgha
for this SRK chronicle & the beautifully imperfect face on the cover
2
2
51
I've seen no refs to this murder mystery from 1981 in discussions of
#TheChair
this week. First female literature prof at Harvard is murdered soon after hire & the investigation reveals sordid views of Ivy League sexist institutional culture & more.
4
7
52
Please join us if in the NY for our exciting symposium next week: "Thinking the Ecological in Media Studies".
@msteinbrg
@_nbaer_
0
11
52
The covid situation in India is heartbreaking and unimaginable! Every person I know has been affected in some direct way. For those of us who have been away from India all of 2020, the news pouring in on our phones is devastating. I have no words.
0
4
53
Whence modernity? Multiple modernities. Whither modernity? Vernacular modernity. Whose modernity? Our modernity. ... The Modernist Studies Association (temporarily) puts the hand-wringing to rest by shortlisting
#bombayhustle
for its first book prize 😎 💪
#bombaymodern
Shortlist, MSA 1st Book Prize, continued:
Ben Glaser, Modernism’s Metronome: Meter and Twentieth-Century Poetics (Johns Hopkins U.P.)
Debashree Mukherjee, Bombay Hustle: Making Movies in a Colonial City (Columbia) +
1
0
14
8
2
52