William T.S. Mazzarella

About

Contact Information

Office: Haskell 213
Phone: (773) 834-4873
Email: mazzarel@uchicago.edu
Website: n/a

(PhD, UC Berkeley 2000) Professor of Anthropology and of Social Sciences in the College, writes and teaches on mass media, globalization, public culture and consumerism, critical theory, commodity aesthetics, and post-coloniality in contemporary India. His books include Shoveling Smoke: Advertising and Globalization in Contemporary India (Duke, 2003) and Censorium: Cinema and the Open Edge of Mass Publicity (Duke, 2013). He is also the co-editor, with Raminder Kaur, of Censorship in South Asia: Cultural Regulation from Sedition to Seduction (Indiana, 2009).

Selected Works

Selected Publications

Year Title / Publications PDF
2013 Censorium: Cinema and the Open Edge of Mass Publicity. Duke University Press (in press).
2013 "A Different Kind of Flesh" : Public Obscenity, Globalization, and the Mumbai Dance Bar Ban In B. Bose and S. Phadke, eds., Explode Softly: Sexualities in Contemporary Indian Visual Cultures. Seagull (forthcoming). PDF
2012 "REALITY MUST IMPROVE": The Perversity of Expertise and the Belatedness of Indian Development Television. In R. Shome, ed. Media, Culture and Asian Modernities, special issue of Global Media and Communications (forthcoming)
2012 Why is Adorno so Repulsive? In James Elkins and Harper Montgomery, eds, Beyond the Aesthetic and Anti-Aesthetic. Penn State University Press (forthcoming) PDF
2011 The Obscenity of Censorship: Rethinking a Middle Class Technology. In A. Baviskar & R. Ray, eds., Elite and Everyman: The Cultural Politics of the Indian Middle Class. Routledge (forthcoming).
2010 Beautiful Balloon: The Digital Divide and the Charisma of New Media in India. American Ethnologist 37(4)
2010 The Myth of the Multitude, or, Who’s Afraid of the Crowd? Critical Inquiry (forthcoming). PDF
2010 Branding the Mahatma: The Untimely Provocation of Gandhian Publicity. Cultural Anthropology 25(1):1-39.
2010 A Torn Performative Dispensation: The Affective Politics of British World War II Propaganda in India and the Problem of Legitimation in an Age of Mass Publics. South Asian History and Culture 1(1):1-24. PDF
2009 Censorship in South Asia: Cultural Regulation from Sedition to Seduction (Co-ed. with R. Kaur). Indiana University Press. PDF
2009 Between Sedition and Seduction: Thinking Cultural Regulation in South Asia (co-authored with R. Kaur). In Kaur & Mazzarella, eds., Censorship in South Asia.
2009 Making Sense of the Cinema in Colonial India. In Kaur & Mazzarella, eds., Censorship in South Asia. PDF
2009 ‘Affect: What is it Good For?’ In S. Dube, ed., Enchantments of Modernity: Empire, Nation, Globalization. Routledge.
2006 Internet X-Ray: E-Governance, Transparency and the Politics of Immediation in India. Public Culture 18(3). PDF
2005 Public Culture, Still. Biblio: A Review of Books (Special Issue). X(9-10), Sept.-Oct.
2005 Indian Middle Class. In R. Dwyer, ed., South Asia Keywords. PDF
2004 Culture, Globalization, Mediation. Annual Review of Anthropology. 33: 345-67. PDF
2003 Shoveling Smoke: Advertising and Globalization in Contemporary India. Duke University Press.
2003 ‘Very Bombay’: Contending with the Global in an Indian Advertising Agency. Cultural Anthropology. 18(1) PDF
2003 Critical Publicity / Public Criticism: Reflections on Fieldwork in the Bombay Ad World. In T. Malefyt & B. Moeran, eds., Advertising Cultures. London : Berg. PDF
2002 On the Relevance of Anthropology: A Review Essay. Anthropological Quarterly. 75(3)
2002 Cindy at the Taj: Cultural Enclosure and Corporate Potentateship in an Era of Globalization. In S. Lamb & D. Mines, eds., Everyday Life in South Asia . Indiana University Press.
2002 The Limits of the Local: A Review of The Perception of the Environment by Tim Ingold. Mind, Culture and Activity. 9(1).
2002 Branding the War: Terror and the Commodity Image. In The Sarai Reader 02. Sarai Media Lab, Delhi & The Society for Old and New Media, Amsterdam.
2001 ‘Citizens Have Sex, Consumers Make Love’: Marketing KamaSutra Condoms in Bombay. In B. Moeran, ed., Asian Media Productions. University of Hawai’i Press.