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Books by Ira Sarma
The book examines the Hindi laghukatha - a modern Indian prose genre that has been published si... more The book examines the Hindi laghukatha - a modern Indian prose genre that has been published since the 1970s in Hindi newspapers and magazines and is characterised by its concise form (500 words on average) and socio-political agenda. The importance of the genre within the Hindi literary scene lies in the fact that the laghukatha is based on indigenous genres which have been modernised, whereas the Hindi short story and the novel are Western genres that have been appropriated and Indianised. A thorough investigation of around 280 primary texts accompanied by an evaluation of the relevant Hindi criticism gives a comprehensive literary analysis of this genre and its historical development. This allows, in conclusion, to delineate an "ideal type" of laghukatha, suggesting a range of compulsory, desirable and optional features. English translations of almost 50 representative Hindi texts complete the picture.
Papers by Ira Sarma
Routledge Companion to Global Literary Adaptation in the Twenty-First Century, Feb 6, 2023
South Asian Gothic: Haunted Cultures, Histories and Media, 2021
In this article I want to look at how and to what effect Indian graphic novelists employ visual i... more In this article I want to look at how and to what effect Indian graphic novelists employ visual intertextualities and mixed media in their works. After the introduction of four categories of visual referencing in the graphic novel (allusion, direct and indirect quote, appropriation) a detailed analysis of selected examples from Appupen, Vishwajyoti Ghosh, Amruta Patil and Sarnath Banerjee’s works will show how the authors appropriate a broad variety of both Indian and non-Indian visual cultural utterances to add extra layers of meaning to the narrative. We see how the references enter into a dialogue with the diegetic world and introduce their (real or imagined) original context into the new works. As a result the components communicate with one another, especially when several apparently disparate references come together in a single image. Not only the host narrative but also the referenced cultural utterances themselves acquire new meaning and new narrative power. The analyses shed light on how visual intertextualities position the graphic novels considered here within an extradiegetic “glocal” cultural arena in Ronald Robertson’s sense. The Indian graphic novel requires, to a much higher degree than its “Western” counterparts, a “glocal” reader who can navigate local, national and global cultural spaces.
South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, 2017
In times of increasing spatial mobility the negotiations of home and belonging for those who need... more In times of increasing spatial mobility the negotiations of home and belonging for those who need (or want) to settle down in new places have become a daily issue, and the young in particular often leave their families behind as they set out to conquer new frontiers. Looking at two Indian graphic novels—Corridor by Sarnath Banerjee (2004) and Kari by Amruta Patil (2008)—this article will examine the notions of what constitutes “home” for the protagonists: two young urban intellectuals who have moved to Mumbai and Delhi respectively. We will see that “strangeness” needs to be overcome both on a spatial and social plane, but that establishing a feeling of “belonging” no longer depends on the their being closely connected to their families—the family being a concept that, in India, is still widely hailed as an ideal social paradigm. The Indian graphic novel constitutes a cosmopolitan “alternative space” (Suhaan Mehta 2010:173), and it presents us with alternative paradigms of home and belonging.
CrossAsia-ePublishing, 2019
Photographs have long been seen as depictions of ‘reality’, and they are still regularly used to ... more Photographs have long been seen as depictions of ‘reality’, and they are still regularly used to attest to some ‘truth’, even though this notion has been challenged (and proven wrong) many times during the last decades. The fluidity of visual meaning is now taken for granted, and in the digital age the ever increasing flux of images in a diversified media landscape provides for an endless reframing of images – a continuing process of de- and re-contextualisation that has the power to deprive any image of previous connotations.
In order to show how the reframing of images can contribute to radically new (mis-) readings, the article traces the journey of a photograph by the US-American photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White through a handful of diverse media over a period of sixty years. Bourke-White took the photo in question, which shows a Sikh priest, in 1946 on her first trip to India. She was shooting for Life magazine at the time, which was thus the first medium to publish the image. From Life, the photograph travelled through Bourke-White’s personal reminiscence, an online archive, and the illustrated edition of the novel Train to Pakistan, to a 2006 review of this edition. Each medium adds new connotations to the image, in each it is subject to new interpretations, to the extent that the Sikh priest is, eventually, turned into a bloodthirsty madman.
Drawing, among others, on Roland Barthes’ essay The Photographic Message (1961), the article analyses how the photograph’s textual environment and layout impact upon its meaning. The examination of the photo on three connotative levels, which differ from each other with regard to their ‘closeness’ to the image, allows us to see, how the photograph’s protagonist has literally and metaphorically been framed in the process of ever new contextualisations.
Memories of the Partition of India have, over the last decades, been constructed through a broad ... more Memories of the Partition of India have, over the last decades, been constructed through a broad range of media, such as biographical memory, historiography, or literature. An interesting more recent example of remembrance is the illustrated golden jubilee edition of Khushwant Singh’s novel Train to Pakistan (2006) which features more than 60 of photographs of the US-American photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White and a wide range of editorial paratexts. An analysis of this new edition will show that the textual and visual narratives thus combined differ widely and do not support each other as the editor Pramod Kapoor claims. However, if we look at the project as a whole we find it to be more than simply an “illustrated version” of the original novel. Rather, it can be seen as what Marianne Hirsch has called a ‘postmemory’ project: Kapoor connects different viewpoints and narratives and thus finds a form of expressing his own view of Partition and the ways the second generation should deal with it.
Zeitschrift für Indologie und Südasienstudien; 31, 2014
Environment, Space, Place; 5 (2), 2013
Literary histories are narratives, just like the literatures they describe. They construct not on... more Literary histories are narratives, just like the literatures they describe. They construct not only a temporal framework but also a spatial arena for literary events, movements and authors—frequently following extra-literary agendas. Using the example of Hindi, the official language of the Republic of India, the article analyses the conceptualisation of space within literary history by comparatively mapping the space of a sixteenth-century Hindi poet, Tulsi Das, as presented in three histories of Hindi literature (by two Western and one Indian historiographer) from the periods of high colonialism, the struggle for independence and the post-colonial era. The highly divergent spaces that emerge show that space can never be an objective ‘given’ and also testify to the significance of visualising verbally produced spaces cartographically, so that underlying socio-political dimensions can be perceived.
Literature and Nationalist Ideology. Writing Histories of Modern Indian Languages, ed. Harder, Hans, 2010
Fremdbilder. Auswanderung und Exil im internationalen Kino, ed. Meurer, Ulrich et.al., 2009
The Global Literary Field, ed. Guttman, Anna et.al., 2006
Book Reviews by Ira Sarma
Interdisziplinäre Zeitschrift für Südasienforschung IZAF, 2019
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2019
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2015
The book examines the Hindi laghukatha - a modern Indian prose genre that has been published si... more The book examines the Hindi laghukatha - a modern Indian prose genre that has been published since the 1970s in Hindi newspapers and magazines and is characterised by its concise form (500 words on average) and socio-political agenda. The importance of the genre within the Hindi literary scene lies in the fact that the laghukatha is based on indigenous genres which have been modernised, whereas the Hindi short story and the novel are Western genres that have been appropriated and Indianised. A thorough investigation of around 280 primary texts accompanied by an evaluation of the relevant Hindi criticism gives a comprehensive literary analysis of this genre and its historical development. This allows, in conclusion, to delineate an "ideal type" of laghukatha, suggesting a range of compulsory, desirable and optional features. English translations of almost 50 representative Hindi texts complete the picture.
Routledge Companion to Global Literary Adaptation in the Twenty-First Century, Feb 6, 2023
South Asian Gothic: Haunted Cultures, Histories and Media, 2021
In this article I want to look at how and to what effect Indian graphic novelists employ visual i... more In this article I want to look at how and to what effect Indian graphic novelists employ visual intertextualities and mixed media in their works. After the introduction of four categories of visual referencing in the graphic novel (allusion, direct and indirect quote, appropriation) a detailed analysis of selected examples from Appupen, Vishwajyoti Ghosh, Amruta Patil and Sarnath Banerjee’s works will show how the authors appropriate a broad variety of both Indian and non-Indian visual cultural utterances to add extra layers of meaning to the narrative. We see how the references enter into a dialogue with the diegetic world and introduce their (real or imagined) original context into the new works. As a result the components communicate with one another, especially when several apparently disparate references come together in a single image. Not only the host narrative but also the referenced cultural utterances themselves acquire new meaning and new narrative power. The analyses shed light on how visual intertextualities position the graphic novels considered here within an extradiegetic “glocal” cultural arena in Ronald Robertson’s sense. The Indian graphic novel requires, to a much higher degree than its “Western” counterparts, a “glocal” reader who can navigate local, national and global cultural spaces.
South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, 2017
In times of increasing spatial mobility the negotiations of home and belonging for those who need... more In times of increasing spatial mobility the negotiations of home and belonging for those who need (or want) to settle down in new places have become a daily issue, and the young in particular often leave their families behind as they set out to conquer new frontiers. Looking at two Indian graphic novels—Corridor by Sarnath Banerjee (2004) and Kari by Amruta Patil (2008)—this article will examine the notions of what constitutes “home” for the protagonists: two young urban intellectuals who have moved to Mumbai and Delhi respectively. We will see that “strangeness” needs to be overcome both on a spatial and social plane, but that establishing a feeling of “belonging” no longer depends on the their being closely connected to their families—the family being a concept that, in India, is still widely hailed as an ideal social paradigm. The Indian graphic novel constitutes a cosmopolitan “alternative space” (Suhaan Mehta 2010:173), and it presents us with alternative paradigms of home and belonging.
CrossAsia-ePublishing, 2019
Photographs have long been seen as depictions of ‘reality’, and they are still regularly used to ... more Photographs have long been seen as depictions of ‘reality’, and they are still regularly used to attest to some ‘truth’, even though this notion has been challenged (and proven wrong) many times during the last decades. The fluidity of visual meaning is now taken for granted, and in the digital age the ever increasing flux of images in a diversified media landscape provides for an endless reframing of images – a continuing process of de- and re-contextualisation that has the power to deprive any image of previous connotations.
In order to show how the reframing of images can contribute to radically new (mis-) readings, the article traces the journey of a photograph by the US-American photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White through a handful of diverse media over a period of sixty years. Bourke-White took the photo in question, which shows a Sikh priest, in 1946 on her first trip to India. She was shooting for Life magazine at the time, which was thus the first medium to publish the image. From Life, the photograph travelled through Bourke-White’s personal reminiscence, an online archive, and the illustrated edition of the novel Train to Pakistan, to a 2006 review of this edition. Each medium adds new connotations to the image, in each it is subject to new interpretations, to the extent that the Sikh priest is, eventually, turned into a bloodthirsty madman.
Drawing, among others, on Roland Barthes’ essay The Photographic Message (1961), the article analyses how the photograph’s textual environment and layout impact upon its meaning. The examination of the photo on three connotative levels, which differ from each other with regard to their ‘closeness’ to the image, allows us to see, how the photograph’s protagonist has literally and metaphorically been framed in the process of ever new contextualisations.
Memories of the Partition of India have, over the last decades, been constructed through a broad ... more Memories of the Partition of India have, over the last decades, been constructed through a broad range of media, such as biographical memory, historiography, or literature. An interesting more recent example of remembrance is the illustrated golden jubilee edition of Khushwant Singh’s novel Train to Pakistan (2006) which features more than 60 of photographs of the US-American photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White and a wide range of editorial paratexts. An analysis of this new edition will show that the textual and visual narratives thus combined differ widely and do not support each other as the editor Pramod Kapoor claims. However, if we look at the project as a whole we find it to be more than simply an “illustrated version” of the original novel. Rather, it can be seen as what Marianne Hirsch has called a ‘postmemory’ project: Kapoor connects different viewpoints and narratives and thus finds a form of expressing his own view of Partition and the ways the second generation should deal with it.
Zeitschrift für Indologie und Südasienstudien; 31, 2014
Environment, Space, Place; 5 (2), 2013
Literary histories are narratives, just like the literatures they describe. They construct not on... more Literary histories are narratives, just like the literatures they describe. They construct not only a temporal framework but also a spatial arena for literary events, movements and authors—frequently following extra-literary agendas. Using the example of Hindi, the official language of the Republic of India, the article analyses the conceptualisation of space within literary history by comparatively mapping the space of a sixteenth-century Hindi poet, Tulsi Das, as presented in three histories of Hindi literature (by two Western and one Indian historiographer) from the periods of high colonialism, the struggle for independence and the post-colonial era. The highly divergent spaces that emerge show that space can never be an objective ‘given’ and also testify to the significance of visualising verbally produced spaces cartographically, so that underlying socio-political dimensions can be perceived.
Literature and Nationalist Ideology. Writing Histories of Modern Indian Languages, ed. Harder, Hans, 2010
Fremdbilder. Auswanderung und Exil im internationalen Kino, ed. Meurer, Ulrich et.al., 2009
The Global Literary Field, ed. Guttman, Anna et.al., 2006
Interdisziplinäre Zeitschrift für Südasienforschung IZAF, 2019
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2019
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2015