Becoming a listener in Mid-20th century North India
Channel: British Library
Date: 2021-03-15

This talk examines the idea of becoming a listener, in the narratives of 'Main shrota kaise bana/bani (How did I become a listener)’ that peppered Hindi-language magazines.

These magazines, referred to as shrota sangh patrikayen (listeners’ club magazines), were produced, circulated and consumed largely in the ‘Hindi heartland’ of North India, during the mid-twentieth century.

Vebhuti Duggal performs an 'archaeology of listening' (Douglas 2004) and notes that the act of becoming a listener is a part of the everyday. She shows how this experience of listening is also intermedial, i.e. folds together cinema, the radio, post and print.

Vebhuti Duggal is Assistant Professor, Film Studies at the School of Culture and Creative Expressions, Ambedkar University Delhi. She was awarded her PhD in Cinema Studies from the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University on a CSDS-ICSSR doctoral fellowship. She works at the intersection of sound, music, and media. Her work has been published in books and journals by SAGE, Taylor and Francis, and the Oxford University Press.