Performing and Visual Arts Faculty Research

To Text or not to Text’ by Professor Lakshmi Sreeram

This talk was originally presented at the Annual Conference of South Asia, in Madison, Wisconsin, on October 23, 2025. Funds for conference travel were provided by the Office of the Dean, Graduate School and Research, Ahmedabad University.

This presentation proposes that the consolidation of the modern sphere of “Classical Music” consisted, in part, of an intensified investment in rāga as the primary site of musical meaning—at the expense of the compositional text. While this has been successful in Khyāl, Carnatic music exhibits an ambivalence towards the significance of compositional text and may be seen as a field that is still defining itself.

‘Hoon Abhi Main Jawaan (I am Still Young): Indian Elderly Adults, Karaoke, and the Old Hindi Film Song Repertoire’, by Professor Aditi Deo

Drawing upon ethnographic research with elderly adults in Ahmedabad who sing old Hindi films songs, this paper focuses on the engagement of elderly adults with popular music from their youth as a mode through which they negotiate the multiple personal and social shifts associated with aging.

‘State of Visuality’, by Professor Ranu Roychoudhuri

This talk was originally presented at the Annual Conference of South Asia, in Madison, WI, USA on October 24, 2025. Funds for conference travel were provided by the Office of the Dean, Graduate School and Research, Ahmedabad University.

Usually dominated by the triumphant war with Pakistan in 1971 and the Emergency (1975-77), what is often lost are the subtle ways in which the project of state-building and consolidation of the ideology of the paternal state continued unhindered through 1970s India. Indeed, its nature constantly shifted from being overwhelming to becoming almost invisible. This presentation demonstrates how the shifting character of the Indian state in the 1970s was constantly being negotiated in through advertisements of the products and services during that period.