The Department of History, University of Hyderabad in association with the Institute of Eminence, organised a one-day national seminar on “History and Visuality: Narratives and Temporalities in Indian Cinema”. The inaugural session was chaired by Prof. Jyotirmaya Sharma, the Dean of School of Social Sciences and Prof. Suchandra Ghosh did the official welcome address. Prof. Sujith Kumar Parayil, the co-ordinator of the event discussed the importance of visuals and its dynamics and the autonomy of an image. This conference compliments the course, “Visual History: Themes in Photography and Materiality” which Prof. Parayil designed for the 4th semester students. Prof. B. J. Rao, the Vice Chancellor of University of Hyderabad inaugurated the program and discussed the importance of these lectures for students and expressed his wish to be a student of history, and attending the lecture.
The national seminar was divided into four sessions and each session was chaired by a faculty member from the department of history. The morning session was chaired by Prof. Bhangya Bhukya and the first speaker, Dr. Madhav Prasad, a professor of Cultural Studies at EFLU, Hyderabad, gave an engaging talk on “Film History as Cultural History: New Reflections”. He was followed by Prof. G. Arunima, who walked us through “Delineation: Women Graphic Artists as Contemporary Historians” which saw comics through the three graphic authors – Amruta Patil, the first woman in India to write a graphic novel; Priya Kurian and Ita Mehrotra. Prof. Bhangya Bhukya gave his insights on the lectures and opened the discussion to the audience.
The second session was chaired by Prof V. J. Varghese who moderated the talks by Prof. P. Thirumal, Department of Communication, University of Hyderabad and Prof. S. V. Srinivas, Azim Premji University, Bangalore. Prof. Thirumal in his lecture ‘The Image in Media History’ discussed vividly how media history can be used to study various trends of representation of temporal histories while Prof Srinivas talked about “Codes and Conspiracies: Images in Indian Politics” while using the framework of Christopher Pinney. This was followed by an engaging question and answer session with the audience.
The post-lunch session was chaired by Prof. Eshwar Rao and the speaker, Dr. M. Parthasarathi, an assistant professor at the Department of Cultural Studies, EFLU, Hyderabad talked about the “Aesthetics of law and justice in contemporary cinema” with the example of the movie “Jai Bhim” followed by a round of question and answers with very interesting inputs from the audience.
The next session was chaired by Prof. Aninditha Mukhopadhyay. Prof. Ranu Roychaudhari, from the University of Allahabad, talked about “Narrating Nation building in 1950s India” through the photographs of photographers Sunil Jonah and Werner Bischof, while Prof. Deepa Srinivas, from University of Hyderabad talked about “Re-imagining a muscular nation: The Visual Borrowings of Amar Chitra Katha”. Prof. Mukhopadhyay shared her opinions on these topics and also asked some insightful questions after which the session was opened up to the audience. After a delightful discussion, the session ended with a thank you note from Ms. Shivani Krishnakumar. Food was served for breakfast, lunch and evening. Students from university of Hyderabad as well as other universities like EFLU participated with great enthusiasm.
Contributed by: Rinto Joy C, MA 2nd year, Department of History