Publications

Books

Articles/Book Chapters (Select)

  1. “Malayalam Cinema in an OTT India.” Chalachitra Sameeksha, vol. 7, no. 12, 2023, pp. 48-51.
  2. “Kerala: Beyond the Politicking of Gender and Politics.” Women in State Politics in India, edited by Pam Rajput and Usha Thakkar. Taylor and Francis, 2023, pp. 141-159.
  3. “Mira Nair and the Cinema of Postcolonial Spectacle.” Women Filmmakers in Contemporary Hindi Cinema: Looking Through Their Gaze, edited by Aysha Iqbal Viswamohan. Palgrave Macmillan, 2023, pp.179-192.
  4. “God’s Own Diaspora.” Kerala Calling, vol. 42, no. 08, 2022, pp. 20-22.
    Malayalam Research Journal, Issue Editor vol. 14, no. 2 & 3, 2021.
  5. “Return of the Uncanny: Gendering the ‘spectres’ of Keralam’s Many Modernities.” Malayalam Research Journal, vol.14, no. 2, May 2021, pp. 5251-5269.
  6. “Gendered Desire in Kerala: Affect and Assemblages as Development Indicators.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 56, no. 7, 2021, pp. 48-54.
  7. “The Feudal Lord Reincarnate: Mohanlal and the Politics of Masculinity in Malayalam Cinema”. Indian Film Stars. ed. Michael Lawrence. London: British Film Institute and Bloomsbury, 2020.
  8. ‘‘Camera Obscura’ to ‘Camera Dentata’: Women Directors and the Politics of Gender in Malayalam Cinema’, BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies, London: Sage, 2020.
  9. “The Politics of Desire: In Conversation with Jonathan Dollimore.” Littcritt (88.2):2019. 17-21.
  10. “The Many Misogynies of Malayalam Cinema”. Economic & Political Weekly 33 (2017).
  11. “Bearing Witness: Malayalam Cinema and the Making of Keralam”. Beyond Bollywood: The Cinemas of South India M.K. Raghavendra. New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2017
  12. ‘The Virality of the Male Gaze: The Selfie and Commodification of Women”. Media Anthology: A Critical Reader – Visualising Mass Media from a Macro Perspective. Theophilus Kofi Gokah. New York: Nova Publishers, 2016.
  13. “Cultural Studies and the Reinvention of English Pedagogy in India”. Ariel 1-2 (2015).
  14. “On Adapting the Popular”. Textual Travels: Theory and Practice of Translation in India. Eds. Mini Chandran and Suchitra Mathur. New Delhi & Oxon: Routledge, 2015.
  15. “Disciplining the Intimate: The Kerala Model”. Economic & Political Weekly 46 (2014).
  16. “The Politics of Namelessness”. Economic & Political Weekly 22 (2014).
  17. “The Celluloid Women of Kerala”. Economic & Political Weekly 48 (2014).
  18. “Matriliny to Masculinity: Performing Modernity and Gender in Malayalam Cinema”. . Handbook of Indian Cinemas. K. Moti Gokulsing & Wimal Dissanayake. London: Routledge, 2013.
  19. “Modernity and Male Anxieties in Early Malayalam Cinema”. Travels of Bollywood Cinema: From Bombay to LA. Eds. Anjali Gera Roy and Chua Beng Huat New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012.
  20. “Post-national B(H)ollywood and the National Imaginary”. The Magic Of Bollywood: At Home and Abroad. Ed. Anjali Gera Roy. New Delhi: Sage, 2012.
  21. “Modernity and the Fetishising of Female Chastity: C.V. Raman Pillai and the Anxieties of the Early Malayalam Novel”. South Asian Review 1 (2012): 53-75.
  22. “The Mullaperiyar Dam: Risking Media, Mediating Risk”. Journal of Creative Communications 1-2 (2012): 31-52.

ARTICLES/LECTURES/PODCASTS ON THE SHIFT TO ONLINE EDUCATION IN KERALA

When universities all over the world were adopting online modes of education in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, leading to a necessary debate over its implications for the future of public education across the world, I was able to contribute to this evolving field of discourses in the specific context of Kerala through a series of academic and popular articles, lectures and podcasts in both English and Malayalam languages, between April and June 2020. My article titled “Online Classrooms: Covid Lessons for Public Education” that appeared in The Indian Express on April 28, 2020 was one among the early articles to have triggered critical thinking in this area in the context of Kerala, as it engaged with the possibility of public educational institutions getting transformed into insulated, market- and technology-driven spaces in the online mode, detrimental to the inclusion and equal participation of underprivileged students in those spaces. Concerns regarding the shift to the online were further taken up in a public lecture titled “The Shift to Online Classrooms” uploaded on my personal YouTube channel on May 12, 2020, as well as in a conversation with Deccan Herald titled “Digital Education in the Times of Covid-19” that was hosted as part of the Pandemic Podcast on May 24, 2020. An article titled “An Ode to the Classroom” that appeared in Frontline on June 20, 2020 developed the earlier concerns, bringing into debate the potential loss of the connectivities engendered by the physical classroom and its organic fabric, foundational to the civil and egalitarian engagements made possible by them. A series of articles that appeared in TrueCopy Think such as “Digital Pourathwam, Digital Janmithwam” on May 12, 2020 “Digital Pothumandalathile Rashtreeyahimsakal” on June 21, 2020 as well as “Ithu Oru Adhyapikayude Vilapam Mathramayirunnenkil” on June 29, 2020 took up the debates in the language of Malayalam as well. An article titled “P. K. Rosiyude Penmakkal Online Classmurikalil Ethumbol” that appeared in TrueCopy Think on June 4, 2020, written in the context of the cyber-assault faced by women teachers of online school lessons in Kerala, critically engaged with the possibility of classrooms coming under scopophilic regimes in the online mode.

Links

English


Pillai, Meena T. “Online Classrooms: Covid Lessons for Public Education.” The Indian Express, 28 April 2020, https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/online-classrooms-covid-lessons-for-public-education-6383171/

Pillai, Meena T. “The Shift to Online Classrooms,” YouTube, 12 May 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFvuu7FZcm0

Pillai, Meena T. “Digital Education in the Times of Covid-19,” Deccan Herald, 24 May 2020,   https://www.deccanherald.com/national/pandemic-podcast-digital-education-in-times-of-covid-19-841283.html 

Pillai, Meena T. “An Ode to the Classroom” Frontline, 19 June 2020, https://frontline.thehindu.com/cover-story/article31737250.ece


Malayalam


Pillai, Meena T. “Digital Pourathwavum Digital Janmithwavum.” TrueCopy Think, 12 May 2020, https://truecopythink.media/meena-t-pillai-on-digital-class-rooms 

Pillai, Meena T. “P. K. Rosiyude Penmakkal Online Classmurikalil Ethumbol.” TrueCopy Think, 4 June 2020, https://truecopythink.media/meena-t-pillai-about-gender-issues-and-online-education

Pillai, Meena T. “Digital Pothumandalathile Rashtreeyahimsakal.” TrueCopy Think, 21 June 2020, https://truecopythink.media/meena-t-pillai-article-on-class-gender-issues-in-the-digital-world

Pillai, Meena T. “Ithu Oru Adhyapikayude Vilapam Mathramayirunnenkil,” TrueCopy Think, 29 June 2020, https://truecopythink.media/meena-t-pilla-about-online-education

Popular Articles

  1. Contributed a weekly column on Malayalam literature for the prominent Malayalam Daily Desabhimani , 2012 to 2016.
  2. Contributed a fortnightly column on women’s writings for The Hindu, India’s premier English language newspaper, 2015-16.
  3. Occasional articles on sociocultural issues for The Times of India, the website Livemint