Asst. Prof. Swapnil Rai is giving an invited talk today entitled "From Erdogan’s Turkey to Modi’s India: Interstitial Spaces of Televisual Flows Between India and Turkey" at the South Asia Institute at the University of Texas, Austin, as part of their seminar series, "Streaming South Asia: Media Platforms and Digital Cultures." Rai's talk posits that certain genres of TV dramas offer an interstitial space of sanctuary from contentious political national landscapes in India and Turkey. The flow of Turkish romantic-comedy TV shows to India and concurrently the presence of Indian romantic saas-bahu (mother-in-law/daughter-in-law) soaps in Turkey, is reflective of a lateral bi-cultural interstitial space for expressions of freedom and parallel modernities, especially in the context of women and the limits posed on feminine expression.
