Understanding Indian Movies: Culture, Cognition, and Cinematic Imagination

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments An earlier version of Chapter Four was presented as the keynote address at the 2004 conference of the Research Triangle South Asia Studies Consortium , North Carolina Central University, Durham. I am grateful to the participants, and especially to Mary Mathew, for their comments and questions . A fuller version was presented at the symposium on comparative literature , film, and cognitive neuroscience at the University of Copenhagen in 2004. I am grateful to Torben Grodal and the other participants in the seminar for the stimulating discussion that followed the talk. A version of one section from Chapter Five was presented at the colloquium in film studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 2006. I am grateful to Ben Singer, David Bordwell, and other participants for their comments. Finally, I presented some of the ideas about mirth and childhood, treated in ChapterThree, at the seminar on cognition and literature at Yale University in 2006. I am grateful to Isabel Jaen-Portillo and the participants in the seminar for their observations. S. Shankar and an anonymous referee for the University of Texas Press gave careful, constructive suggestions which have certainly improved the manuscript. Jim Burr of the University of Texas Press was an insightful and very helpful editor. I am indebted to him. I am grateful to Frederick Aldama for inviting me to submit the manuscript to Jim initially and for providing support throughout the process. Megan Giller expertly ushered the manuscript through production and Salena Krug did valuable copyediting on it. Jonathan Frome provided invaluable assistance with technical matters regarding frame enlargements. Lalita Pandit watched all the films with me (many times), constantly helped me with the language, and repeatedly pointed me toward illuminating connections and implications. Without her, this book could not have been written. THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK Understanding Indian Movies THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK ...