South Asian Cultural Studies-A Bibliography

Cultural studies has dared to ask certain nasty questions about the civility of western civilization, and it has informed the study of the humanities and some of the less recalcitrant social sciences with pointed questions about the place of race, gender, class, ethnicity, and sexual preference in the construction of narratives. The ferment created by cultural studies can be seen in most disciplines, most clearly in writings by and women, and in the emergence of subaltern studies, ecological studies, and in significant interventions by Indians in critical and literary studies. Perhaps the most notable feature of cultural studies in India has been the development of formidable critiques of knowledge systems, including the Anglo-American model of ‘cultural studies’ itself. This book is a bibliographic guide to some of the literature in South Asian cultural studies, and the accompanying essay, besides highlighting some of the more prominent aspects of this literature, asks whether the contours of South Asian cultural studies must necessarily be those of cultural studies as it is known in the west.