This volume serves as a roadmap for cultural studies in India. Drawn from varied areas including literature, linguistics, history, political science, media/theatre studies, and cultural anthropology, it foregrounds cultural pluralism in the context of caste, adivasis, vernacular languages, and folklore in the making of historical consciousness. It traces contemporary debates and interpretations and looks at the future directions this emerging area is likely to take.

Prologue. Part I: Cultural Studies & Indian Context 1. Culture and English Studies in India Kapil Kapoor 2. The Return of the Silenced Oral: Culture and Study in Our Time Ganesh N. Devy 3. The Relevance of Classical Indian Aesthetics to Contemporary Culture Studies Saugata Bhaduri Part II: Cultural Studies & Literary Studies 4. Popular Culture Studies in India today: Issues and Problems Simi Malhotra 5. Postcolonial Cultural Studies at the Crossroads: Theoretical Approaches and Practical Realities Rumina Sethi 6. Dalit Autobiographies in the Punjabi Context Akshaya Kumar Part III: Cultural History & Local Traditions 7. Indianness: A Battlefield Sushil Kumar 8. Cultural Studies in Indian History: Dominant Models from South Asia Mahesh Sharma 9. History, Historiography & Punjabi Folk Literature: Issues of Canons and Cultures I. D. Gaur 10. Uses of the Folk: Towards a Cultural History of the Guga Tradition Anne Murphy Part IV: Cultural Politics & Mass Media 11. When Was Participation? The Many Legacies of Indian Television's Public Abhijit Roy 12. The Transformative Energy of Performance Tutun Mukherjee 13. Re-invention and Appropriation of Folk in Daler Mehndi's Pop Videos Pushpinder Syal 14. Subverting the Male Gaze: A Case Study of Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara Vivek Sachdeva Part V Cultural Imagination & New Identities 15. New Cultures of Remembering: The Indian Memory Project Pramod Nayar 16. Romantic Imagination: Science and Empire in the works of Amitav Ghosh Sakoon K. Chhabra 17. Cultural Economy of Leisure and IPL Raj Thakur