Research Statement
Sheila J. Nayar’s research interests include the interplay of narrative, technology, and phenomenology, especially in the context of orality and alphabetic literacy. Her publications in that regard include the monographs Cinematically Speaking: The Orality-Literacy Paradigm for Visual Narrative; The Sacred and the Cinema: Reconfiguring the “Genuinely” Religious Film; Renaissance Responses to Technological Change; and, most recently, Before Literature. Her articles appear in Film Quarterly, PMLA, and the Journal of the Academy of Religion, among others.
Currently, she is working on a book-length project on secularism and Hindi popular cinema.
She also serves on the editorial board of Brill's Contemporary Cinema book series.
Research Keywords
- Orality and literacy studies; technology studies; media ecology; Bollywood; Hindi cinema; film spectatorship; narration and narrative; (post)humanism; medieval and Renaissance studies