Professor Rachel Dwyer
BA (London) MPhil (Oxon) PhD (London)
Overview
Department of the Languages and Cultures of South Asia
(Professor of Indian Cultures and Cinema, Head of Department)
Centre of Jaina Studies
(Member, Centre of Jaina Studies)
Centre of South Asian Studies
(Member, Centre of South Asian Studies)
Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies
(Member)
Centre for Cultural, Literary and Postcolonial Studies (CCLPS)
(Member)
Centre for Media and Film Studies
(Associate Member, Centre for Media and Film Studies)
Hindi Cinema; Indian popular culture; Indian film; Hinduism; new middle classes; Mumbai/Bombay; Gujarati language and literature; Gujarati diaspora esp UK and East Africa; comparative Indian literature.Contact Details
- Name:
- Professor Rachel Dwyer
- Email address:
- rd3@soas.ac.uk
- Telephone:
- 020 7898 4294
- Address:
- School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG - Building:
- Russell Square: College Buildings
- Office No:
- 457
- Personal Website:
- http://www.racheldwyer.com
Interests / Disciplines
Rachel Dwyer is Professor of Indian Cultures and Cinema at SOAS, University of London.
She took her BA in Sanskrit at SOAS, followed by an MPhil in General Linguistics and Comparative Philology at the University of Oxford. Her PhD research was on the Gujarati lyrics of Dayaram (1777-1852). She teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses in literature, cinema, Gujarati and Sanskrit.
She has published nine books, several of which are on Indian cinema. She has recently completed ‘Beyond the boundaries of Bollywood: the many forms of Hindi cinema’ , co-edited with Jerry Pinto (Oxford University Press, Delhi) and is currently writing Bollywood's India: Indian cinema as a guide to modern India for Reaktion Books, London. She edits two book series on South Asian cinema: one with Oxford University Press, Delhi, the other with Indiana University Press.
Download her language course on Gijarati (pdf & audio files) (London: Hodder and Stoughton Educational, 1995)
Teaching
Students supervised
Courses Taught
Expertise
For help in contacting SOAS academics and advice on services to business and the community, please contact SOAS Enterprise on 020 7898 4837 or email interface@soas.ac.uk.
For all press and media enquiries please call 020 7898 4956 or email jf51@soas.ac.uk
Available for
- Radio
- Press
- Briefings
- Short Term Consultancy
- TV
Regional Expertise
- South Asia
Country Expertise
- India
Languages
- Gujarati
- Hindi
- Sanskrit
Publications
Authored Books
Dwyer, Rachel (2010) Bollywood’s India: Hindi cinema as a guide to modern India. London: Reaktion. (Forthcoming)
Dwyer, Rachel (2008) What do Hindus believe? London: Granta.
Dwyer, Rachel (2006) Filming the Gods: Religion and Indian Cinema. Routledge.
Dwyer, Rachel (2005) 100 Bollywood films. London: British Film Institute.
Dwyer, Rachel and Patel, D. (2002) Cinema India. The Visual Culture of the Hindi Film. Envisioning Asia. London: Reaktion Books.
Dwyer, Rachel (2002) Yash Chopra. British Film Institute.
Dwyer, Rachel (2000) All you want is money, all you need is love: sex and romance in modern India. Cassell (London).
Dwyer, Rachel (2000) The poetics of devotion: the Gujarati lyrics of Dayaram. London studies on South Asia, 19. Richmond: Curzon.
Dwyer, Rachel (1995) Gujarati: a complete course for beginners. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
Edited Books
Dwyer, Rachel and Pinto, Jerry, eds. (2010) Beyond the boundaries of Bollywood: the many forms of Hindi cinema. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. (Forthcoming)
Dwyer, Rachel and Pinney, Christopher, eds. (2000) Pleasure and the nation: the history, consumption and politics of public culture in India. SOAS studies in South Asia. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Chapters in Books
Dwyer, Rachel (2009) 'Bimal Roy: a different kind of Hindi cinema.' In: Bhattacharya , Rinki, (ed.), Bimal Roy: the man who spoke in pictures. New Delhi: Penguin, pp. 162-171.
Dwyer, Rachel (2009) 'Ich mag es, wenn du zornig wirst: Amitabh Bachchan, Emotionen und Stars im Hindi-film.' In: Tieber, Claus, (ed.), Fokus Bollywood: das indische Kino in wissenschaftlichen Diskursen. Münster: Lit. Verlag, pp. 99-115.
Dwyer, Rachel (2009) 'Depictions of and by religious practitioners in films: Hinduism.' In: Lyden, John, (ed.), Routledge companion to religion and film. New York: Routledge, pp. 141-161.
Dwyer, Rachel (2006) 'Planet Bollywood: Hindi film in the UK.' In: Sayyid, SHasan and Ali, N and Kalra, VS, (eds.), Postcolonial people: South Asians in Britain. Hurst & Co. (UK), pp. 366-375.
Dwyer, Rachel (2006) 'The saffron screen?: Hindi movies and Hindu nationalism.' In: Meyer, B. and Moors, A., (eds.), Religion, media and the public sphere. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 422-460.
Dwyer, Rachel (2006) 'Kiss or Tell? Declaring Love in Hindi Films.' In: Orsini, F., (ed.), Love in South Asia. A Cultural History. Cambridge University Press, pp. 289-302.
Dwyer, Rachel (2005) 'Cinema.' In: Cush, D. and Robinson, C. and York, M., (eds.), The encyclopaedia of Hinduism. London: Routledge Curzon.
Dwyer, Rachel (2004) 'Yeh shaadi nahin ho sakti! (This wedding cannot happen!).' In: Jones, GW and K.Ramdas,, (eds.), (Un)tying the knot: ideal and reality in Asian marriage. Asia Research Institute, National Univesrity of Singapore (Singapore), pp. 59-90.
Dwyer, Rachel (2004) 'International Hinduism: the Swaminarayan sect.' In: Jacobsen, KA and Kumar, P, (eds.), South Asians in the diaspora: historiesand religious traditions. Brill (Netherlands), pp. 180-199.
Dwyer, Rachel (2004) 'Representing the Muslim: the 'courtesan film' in Indian popular cinema.' In: Parfitt, T and Y.Egorava,, (eds.), Mediating the other: representations of Jews, Muslims and Christians in the media. Routledge/Curzon (UK), pp. 78-92.
Dwyer, Rachel (2002) 'Landschaft der Liebe: die indischen Mittelschichten,die romantische Liebe und das Konsumdenken.' In: Schneider, A, (ed.), Bollywood: das indische Kino und die Schweiz. Museum fur Gestaltung, Zurich (Switzerland), pp. 97-105.
Dwyer, Rachel (2000) 'Shooting Stars: the Indian film magazine Stardust.' In: Dwyer, R and Pinney, C, (eds.), Pleasure and the nation: the history, consumption and politics of public culture India. Oxford University Press (India), pp. 247-85.
Dwyer, Rachel (2000) 'Bombay Ishtyle.' In: Bruzzi, S and Gibson, P, (eds.), Fashion Cultures: theories, explorations and analysis. Routledge (London), pp. 178-190.
Articles
Dwyer, Rachel (2010) 'I am Crazy about the Lord: The Muslim Devotional Genre in Hindi Film.' Third Text, 24 (1). pp. 123-134.
Dwyer, Rachel (2002) 'Real and imagined audiences: Lagaan and the Hindi film after the 1990s.' Etnofoor, Vol. 15 (1/2) . pp. 177-193.
Dwyer, Rachel (2000) 'The erotics of the wet sari in Hindi films.' South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 23 (2). pp. 143-159.
Dwyer, Rachel (2000) '"Indian values" and the diaspora: Yash Chopras films of the 1990s.' West Coast Line, 32-34 (2, Autumn). pp. 6-27.
