scholarship

My scholarship and my art are different faces of the same being. I could reach for a metaphor and liken them to the demonic Greek hound Cerberus, or as an Indian I would evoke the four headed God of creation Brahma, or as a feminist I could quote Hélène Cixous and call them “écriture féminine. Regardless, my methodology is at once creative and critical.

For my dissertation I designed and created a virtual version of the ancient Hindu epic the Mahabharata. Its form worked alongside its content, while allowing me to foreground my subjectivity and engage with it positively—in a manner that was not absurd or incoherent or self-absorbed or self-defeating. This multimedia work existed on a digital platform and was one the first dissertations of its kind in the USA (it was the first at the University of Chicago). In 2009, it won an honorable mention in a national competition. Maha Multipedia was amongst the earliest digital dissertations in the United States, written about HERE. And here’s more about the content of the DISSERTATION.

During my time at Stanford University I updated the software and re-designed the work to function more like a wiki and internet archive. This was in 2010, ahead of both edX and Mooc (2011-12).  However, I did not have institutional backing, and the project was deeply rooted in India and the Indian mediascape. I am currently working on submitting it to libraries as an early web project and pioneering dissertation.

One extract of this networked site is a video essay called Great Full One. This film montage essay explores my relationship to the Hindu epic, history and death. You can view it below.