AUK's Dr. Shoma Munshi's New Book: Remote Control

A new book, titled Remote Control: Indian Television in the New Millennium, authored by Dr. Shoma Munshi, Professor of Anthropology at the American University of Kuwait (AUK), was released by Penguin Books worldwide in December 2012. The book's focus is 'What do the TV shows we're watching tell us about ourselves?'

Munshi argues that television is the single most powerful and dynamic agent of change in India today. It is also India's most popular and accessible form of entertainment. The book examines three kinds of programming - 24x7 news, soap operas, and reality shows - that have changed Indian television forever, and analyzes how these three genres, while drawing on different sources, are hybridized, indigenized and manage to ultimately project a distinctively 'Indian' identity. Munshi's book shows us how everyday reality in India in the twenty-first century shapes television; and how television, in turn, shapes us.

About her new release, Munshi comments, "This is my second single authored monograph since I joined AUK. I am particularly happy since this book is dedicated to my father, Wing Commander Anil Chandra Munshi, who came to AUK several times, and whom I lost two years ago, but my father read through and corrected the first draft of the book manuscript."

Munshi's book has already garnered extensive advance praise. Sunil Lulla, Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer of the Times Television Network, states "Shoma's book captures the rapidly changing pace in the Indian television domain. Big plots, subtle changes, new scripts, stolen ideas, factual updates, dreams and disrupted plans - all neatly explained. Good if you know nothing about Indian TV. Even better if you think you knew it all." Professor Dale F. Eickelman, Professor of Anthropology, Dartmouth College, USA, and the AUK-Dartmouth Relationship Coordinator, notes "Remote Control is the authoritative and entertaining story of India's rapidly evolving and hotly competitive television programming in the twenty-first century. A must read, it places Indian television on a worldwide stage and is a model for comparable studies elsewhere."

Munshi is the author of Prime Time Soap Operas on Indian Television (Routledge, 2010); editor of Images of the 'Modern Woman' in Asia: Global Media, Local Meanings (Curzon 2001); and co-editor of Media, War and Terrorism: Responses from the Middle East and Asia (Routledge, 2004, 2006). She also has several publications in refereed journals.

Munshi earned her PhD from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), in Paris, France; and her work experience encompasses the University of Delhi, University of Amsterdam, University of Pennsylvania, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in New Delhi, India, before joining AUK in January 2006 .

Released by the Office of Public Affairs on the 19th December 2012