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This essay situates the academic enquiry into the 'popular' idea of the nation within the shifting disciplinary contours of English in India. Using the iconic Bharatbala music video 'Vande Mataram' (1998) as a case study, it demonstrates how methods of analysis derived from literary studies may be used to engage with the mediated nature of contemporary culture; the classroom experience of 'reading' together a popular cultural text reflects as well as instantiates the expansion of 'English' at the level of both content and form. The collaborative pedagogic exercise of decoding the 'signs' that constitute the audio-visual text through familiar literary terms such as imagery, symbolism, setting and character reveals how the cultural discourse of nationalism – in terms of its historical legacy as well as its current political resonance – can be 'read' contextually using disciplinary methods of 'English'. I argue that the 'literary' can no longer be defined only in terms of the nature of the text one brings into the classroom – it is a mode of analysis that can be extended to examining cultural texts in other media formats too, especially if the enterprise of 'doing' English in a formal, academic set-up is to be anything more than a reiteration of the value of Anglo-American canonical literature. If the English canon has traditionally been a means of teaching students how to ask fundamental questions about cultural representation, the same aim is now achieved also through the use of texts from other, more familiar and local contexts and media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines George Ryga's play The Ecstasy of Rita Joe for its literary and dramatic strategies of representation of the violation of the human rights of its titular subject. I demonstrate how Rita Joe embodies the discursive construction of the racialized native subject whose speech and actions, at the textual level, are very often at odds with the immediate theatrical setting of the play itself, while also bearing deeper contextual resonance with the backdrop of the colonial history of Canada within which her story unfolds. The essay examines how (a) popular racial stereotypes operate within the colonial institutions of law and administration, education and religion as the discursive grounds for the dehumanization of the native subject (b) the 'criminality' of the native subject becomes a logical outcome of, and further inducement to, the breach of her rights as human, and (c) the dramatic staging of the violation of the racialized, criminalized subject creates a space for her to articulate her own suffering and thus claim a resistive narrative voice as a human subject. I contend that Ryga employs theatrical techniques (such as voiceovers, stage setting and lighting, transition of scenes) and dramatic elements (like plot, character, dialogue and action) not only to represent Rita Joe's systemic victimization and ultimate destruction within the colonial regime, but also to engage the audience in bearing collective witness to her trauma as that of a fellow human. In doing so, Ryga effects a narrative reconstruction and an empathic recognition of the colonized subject as human in her vulnerability to violence and her capacity to feel and articulate suffering, and thereby positions her narrative within a larger discourse of human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the dynamics of celebrity culture in the Harry Potter books by examining how the eponymous protagonist functions as a locus for intersecting and often conflicting notions of heroism and fame. I demonstrate how Harry Potter is implicated in popular, social structures of celebrity that frame both his private 'self' and his public 'persona' within discourses of exceptional individual achievement and moral responsibility towards the wizarding community. I argue that Harry embodies the tensions between the movement towards self-knowledge and realization integral to the heroic narrative and the workings of fame crucial to the perpetuation of a celebrity's popular image. I analyze Harry's celebrity status as one that (i) functions as a 'sign' that exists, in the collective imagination of the magical community, as a counter to the evil represented by Voldemort; (ii) prods him towards and increasingly poses a challenge to his discovery of his true identity; and (iii) leads to his ultimate realization of his social role and responsibility in the final culmination of his personal heroism with his public persona. Therefore, I argue that in negotiating and realizing his fame, Harry Potter goes through a journey that results in self-discovery and moves from being a celebrity-hero to a heroic celebrity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]