Fire on the Mountain: Media, Religion, and Nationalism Conference organized by the Center for Media, Religion, & Culture Conference
January 10-13, 2024.
General public invited to attend plenary sessions.
Fire on the Mountain: Media, Religion, and Nationalism Conference is the tenth in a series of successful international conferences held by the Center for Media, Religion, and Culture at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Nationalism has a deep history rooted in empire, territory, capitalism, globalization, race, ethnicity, language, culture, and religion, but its disturbing resurgence today prompts us to ask old and new questions about its sources, the reasons behind its appeal, its rhetorical devices, its mythological foundations, its storytellers, its mediations, its affects, and its futures.
This conference focuses on the intimate relationship between media, religion, and nationalism historically and in our times.
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CLEANSING THE NATION: CONTEMPORARY HINDU NATIONALISM, THE CLEAN INDIA CAMPAIGN, AND THE MEDIATED POLITICS OF GENDER
Thursday, January 11, 2024, 4pm - 5:30pm
Eaton Humanities 150
This talk is based on a book in progress Cleansing the Nation (under contract with Duke University Press) that explores the cultural logics of contemporary Hindu nationalism (and its authoritarianism) in contemporary India. It does so by focusing on a signature national development initiative launched in 2014 by the Hindu nationalist government BJP, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, or Clean India movement. In this talk in particular, I discuss the notion of a "Hindu modern' that, as a form of governmentality, of contemporary Hindu nationalism, also informs the Clean India campaign. Focusing specifically on the mediation of this development campaign, this talk examines the regulation of gender (and its intersections with caste and religion) in the Clean India campaign which I suggest serves as a metaphor for producing a "clean" and 'pure 'citizen that intersects with the virulent purification imperatives of the contemporary Hindu nationalist order. | demonstrate how the (Hindu) female body functions as a fulcrum around which "national cleansing" is being imagined that connects with contemporary on-the ground anxieties about protecting Hindu women. The implications of this for theorizing contemporary Hindu nationalism and its mediations will be addressed.
Raka Shome The Harron Family Endowed Chair, and Professor of Communication at Villanova University. She writes on postcolonial cultures, transnational feminism and nationalism as they intersect with media/communication cultures. Her current research interests are in Asian (and non-western) Modernities, Contemporary Indian (Hindu) Nationalism and Gender; the Global South; Transnational Politics of Knowledge Production as a Communication issue. She is the author of Diana and Beyond: White Femininity, National Identity, and Contemporary Media Culture. Dr. Shome is currently finishing up a book Cleansing the Nation: Hindu nationalism, Gender and the Clean India campaign.
Conference Sponsored by:
Center for Media, Religion and Culture | College of Media Communication and Information | Media Studies | Women and Gender Studies | Center for Asian Studies | Religious Studies
Ethnic Studies Communication