Darshana Sreedhar Mini

Current and Future Projects

• Indian cinema
• Critical Sexuality Studies
• Migrant Media and Transnational Cultures
• Labor in the Entertainment Sector
• Streaming and Platform Cultures

Expertise and Activities

Darshana Mini’s teaching and research lie at the intersection of feminist media, gender & sexuality studies, transnational media, migrant media and screen cultures of South Asia.

Supported by Social Science Research Council (SSRC), NEH and American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS), her first book Rated A: Soft-Porn Cinema and Mediations of Desire in India (UC Press, 2024) examines the genre of soft-porn in India and how it impacts public discourse on sexuality, obscenity, sex-work and sex-education. Using archival and ethnographic methods, the project tracks the emergence of the genre in the South India-based Malayalam film industry from the 1970s-2000s, by focusing on the formation of media publics—relationships, formations and exchanges in the public sphere, facilitated by the affective power of media. Her research is based on the idea that while histories and cultures of sexuality are locally specific, they often travel and have impacts in worlds that are not immediate to them. Rated A was awarded The Edward Cameron Dimock, Jr. Prize in the Indian Humanities by the American Institute of Indian Studies in 2024.

Her second book project, Telegeographies of Indian Migration: Media as Transregional Homemaking studies media flows between South Asia and Southeast Asia—specifically, between India, Singapore, Malaysia and their shared colonial pasts. Focusing on the lifeworlds of South Indian labor transported to British Malaya and Singapore between 1850s to the 1920s under the indentured system and the colonial regime, Telegeographies examine image-making practices centered around plantation histories and how they have led to the Malaysian Indian community to be identified with a plantation-lineage. In doing so, this project tussles with questions of identity, belongingness and community formation as they appear in media forms, against the backdrop of globalization and the shifting ethnoscapes it engenders.

Dr. Mini is the Director for Media and Gender Justice at 4W Initiative, and an affiliate of Gender and Women’s Studies, Center for Visual Cultures & and Center for South Asia. She is in the steering committee of Center for Visual Cultures (CVC), Wisconsin Center for Film and Theatre Research (WCFTR) and The Havens Wright Center for Social Justice.

Education

• Ph.D, Division of Cinema and Media Studies, University of Southern California
• M.Phil., Center for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC), India

Books

• Rated A: Soft-Porn Cinema and Mediations of Desire in India (University of California Press, 2024)
• South Asian Pornographies: Vernacular Formations of the Permissible and the Obscene, with Anirban K. Baishya (Routledge, 2024)
• Handbook on Adult Film History, with Patrick Keilty and Peter Alilunas (Under contract with Intellect Books)

Fellowships, Honors and Awards

• Top faculty Paper, Global Communication and Social Change Division, International Communication Association (ICA), 2025
• Early Career Award, APAC/SD, National Communication Association (NCA), 2024
• The Edward Cameron Dimock, Jr. Prize in the Indian Humanities, American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) for Rated A: Soft-Porn Cinema and Mediations of Desire in India, 2024
• Race, Ethnicity and Indigeneity Fellow, Institute of Research in Humanities (IRH), UW-Madison, 2024
• Byerly Award for Feminist Political Economy, Feminist Communication Division, International Communication Association (ICA), 2023
• Senior Long-term Fellowship funded by American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) and National Endowment of Humanities (NEH), 2022
• First Book Award, The Center for Humanities, UW-Madison, 2022
• Library Research Enhancement Grant, UW-Madison, “South Asian Film and Media Collection” (Principal Investigator), 2022
• Co-organizer Mellon-Borghesi Seminar on “Migrant Media: Activism, Visual Art and Performance,” UW-Madison, 2021-22
• 4 W Innovation Award, UW-Madison, 2022
• Exceptional Service Award, UW-Madison, 2022
• PhD Achievement Award, USC, 2020
• SCMS Student Writing Award (Third position), 2017

Special Journal Issues (Co-editor)

• Porn and Its Uses, with Rebecca Holt and Nikola Stepić,  Synoptique: An Online Journal of Film and Moving Image Studies 9. no. 2. 2021.
• South Asian Pornographies, with Anirban K. Baishya. Porn Studies 9. no. 3. 2022
• South Asian Pornographies: Vernacular Formations of the Permissible and the Obscene, with Anirban K. Baishya. Porn Studies 7. no. 1. 2020.
• Subjected to play: Power, Participation and Subjectivity in Gaming and Beyond, with Anirban K. Baishya. Spectator 38. no. 1  Spring 2018.

Articles

 

• Main/streaming Porn Discourse: Ten Years of Porn Studies and Reminiscing on South Asian Pornocultures co-written with Anirban K. Baishya, Porn Studies 11. no. 4. 2024, 367-379.
• Against Canon: Reflections on Diversifying Film and Media Studies, Communication and Race 1. no 1. 2024, 45-74.
• Hit like, please subscribe: OnlyFans, camming, and new directions in Indian erotic performance cultures, co-written with Anirban Baishya, Porn Studies 12. no. 1. 2023, 1-11.
• The Anti-Caste Alter-Network: Equality Labs and Anti-Caste Activism in the US, co-written with Anirban Baishya and Thenmozhi Soundararajan, Communication, Culture & Critique, Vol 16. Issue 2. 2023. 99-106
• Figuring the aggregated Aunty: netporn, Metadata and South Asian aunties, co-written with Anirban K. Baishya, Text and Performance Quarterly. Vol 42. Issue 3. 2022. 315-331.
• Feminism not for all? The discourse around white feminism across five social media platforms, co-written with Borah, Ghosh, Suk and Sun, Social Media + Society July-September 2023. 1-22.
• “Think Global, Act Local”: How #MeToo Hybridized Across Borders and Platforms for Contextual Relevance, co-written with Suk, Sun, Li, Farias, Kwon, Ghosh, Borah, Correa, Garlough and Shah, Information, Communication & Society. June 2023
• Towards an Incomplete Repertoire of South Asian Pornographies: Challenges, Potentials & Futures, co-written with Anirban K. Baishya. Porn Studies. Vol 9. Issue 3. 2022. 263-272
• Satellites of Belonging: Televisual Infrastructures and the Gulf-Malayali, Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 14(1-2), 2021. 81-111.
• Transnational Ethical Screens: Empathetic Networks in Malayalam Cinema from the Gulf, Film History: An International Journal. 32. 3, Fall 2020. 141-169
• Cinema and the Mask of Capital: Labor Debates in the Malayalam Film Industry, Studies in South Asian Film and Media. Vol 11. No 2, December 2020, 173-189.
• “Un-sound” Sounds: Pornosonics of Female Desire in Indian Mediascapes, Music, Sound and Moving Image. 13 (1) 2019. 3-30
• Translating porn studies: lessons from the vernacular, co-written with Anirban K. Baishya, Porn Studies 7. no. 1. 2020. 2-12
• Transgressions in Toonland: Savita Bhabhi, Velamma and the Indian Adult Comic, co-written with Anirban K. Baishya. Porn Studies 7. no. 1. 2020. 115-131.
• The Rise of Soft-Porn in Malayalam Cinema and the Precarious stardom of Shakeela, Feminist Media Histories 5. no. 2. 2019. 49-82
• Public Interest Television and Social Responsibility: The Search for Missing Person in Indian Television, International Journal for Digital Television 7. no.2 2016. 173-191
• The Spectral Duration of Malayalam Soft-porn: Disappearance, Desire and Haunting, Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies 7. no. 2. 2016. 127-150
• Attukal Pongala: Everyday Lives in a Ritualistic Space, Journal of Ritual Studies 30. no. 1. 2016, 59-69
• The House of Ill Repute: Malayalee House, Reality Television and Morality Debates in Contemporary Kerala, South Asian Popular Culture 13. no.1. 2015. 47-59
• Attukal Pongala: Youth clubs, Neighborhood Groups and Masculine Performance of Religiosity, in Economic and Political Weekly 49.no. 17 2014. 53-60

Book Chapters

 

• “Feeling” Malikappuram: Soft-Hindutva and Filmic Mediation of the Sabarimala Controversy in Nissim Mannathukkaren (ed) Hindu Nationalism in South India: The Rise of Saffron in Kerala. Routledge. 2024, 151-170.
• Indian Pandemic Entertainment: Aesthetics and Infrastructure in Vicki Mayer, Miranda Banks & Noa Lavi (eds) Media Industries in Crisis: What COVID Unmasked. Routledge: 2024, 112-121.
• Reimaging the Migrant in the Time of the Pandemic with Anirban Baishya, in Rohit Dasgupta, Niharika Banerjea and Paul Boyce (eds) COVID Assemblages: Queer and Feminist Ethnographies from South Asia. Routledge. 2022. 34-44.
• Locating the “B” in the B-circuit Cinema, in Bhattacharya, Menon and Duggal (eds) Film Studies: An Introduction, Delhi/Kolkata: Worldview Publications. 2022. 319-328.
• Star’s Dust: Miss Kumari and the Fossilized Memory of the “First Malayalam Female Star, in Michael Lawrence edited Indian Film Stars, London: BFI, Palgrave Macmillan. 2020. 45-58
• Attukal Pongala: Myth and Modernity in a Ritualistic Space in Kerala Modernity: Ideas, Spaces and Practices in Transition. Satheese Chandra Bose and Shiju Sam Varughese (eds.) Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan. 2015.  46-61
• When the Ghosts Come Calling: The Disappeared Muses of Malayalam Cinema, Co-written with Vinu Abraham in SARAI Reader 9. Projections. 2013. 336-344

Forum Pieces/Public Scholarship

 

• Darshana Sreedhar Mini and Monika Mehta in Conversation about Censorship in India, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 64. no. 1. Fall 2024. pp 5-13
• Envisioning Gender-Just Content for the Twenty First Century: A Response to Hema Commission Report, co-written with J. Devika, Gayatri Devi, Deepthi Komalam and Bindu Menon. Feminism in India. September 30, 2024.
• The Many (Regional) Lives of Malayalam Soft-Porn, The Wire, September 16, 2024.
• Podcast, New Media Books, Rated A: Soft-Porn and Mediations of Desire in India, July 7, 2024.
• “Anjali Menon: Championing Female Voices in Malayalam Cinema,” Critical Collective. September 2024
• When the Fourth Pillar Crumbles: Press Freedom in the Time of Right-Wing Nationalism, Journalism & Communication Monographs, 25(4), 370-374
• Locating Media Industries Podcast, Mediapolis: A Journal of Cities and Culture 3, no. 8, 2023.
• “Mysterious Cadavers and Marshy Mishaps in Purusha Pretham,” Critical Collective. May 2023
• “Star of the Stream: Sobhita Dhulipala and the New Star-Texts of OTT India,” Critical Collective. October 2022
• ‘We give sex a good name’: an interview with Paromita Vohra, co-written with Anirban K. Baishya, Porn Studies 9, no.  2. 2022. Pp 384-399
•  The Ontologies of the Refugee. Docalogue. April 2022.
• Dossier on ZEE5, India for the Global Internet Television Consortium, 2021
•  Where is Cinema? COVID-19 and Shifts in India’s Cinemascape, S.V Srinivas, Ratheesh Radhakrishan et al (eds) “Indian Cinema Today and Tomorrow: Infrastructure, Aesthetics and Audiences” in Indian International Center Quarterly. Winter 2020-Spring 2021. Vol 47, Numbers 3 &4, 106-123.
• Body in Keywords in South Asian Film and Media, Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies 12, no. 1-2, 2021, 39-42
• Book Interview for The Digital Fronter: Infrastructures of Control on the Global Web, Communication, Culture and Critique 14, no. 3. 2021, pp 545-549.
• “Minnal Murali: Provincializing Superhero Films”, Critical Collective. February 2022.
• What Women Want: Gendered Precarity and Labor Organizing in the Indian Film Industry, in Ammu Joseph, Bina Paul et al (eds). Shift Focus: Women Shaping the Narrative in Media and Entertainment. Published by Women in Cinema Collective (WCC) & Sakhi Women’s Resource Center, 2020, 62-74.
• Miss Kumari’s Stardom: Malayalam’s First Studio Actress, Swatantryavaadini, August 2020.

Courses

• COM350 – Introduction to Cinema
• COM418 – Gender, Sexuality and the Media
• COM443 – Indian Cinema and Beyond
• COM669 – Film Theory
• COM950 – Migrant Media and Diasporic Imaginations
• COM 950- Transnational Cinemas