FACULTY
Prof. Sarah received her Doctorate Degree in Media Studies from the Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM) at the University of Westminster in London. She did her M.Phil and MA from the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and BA (Hons) in English from University of Delhi. Her work maps the entangled history of cinema’s relationship to the Urdu public sphere in India (1930- 1950) and explores questions of language, literary culture, performance and gender. Her work has been published in international peer reviewed journals such as Widescreen, Culture Unbound, BioScope and in books by Sage, Bloomsbury, and Routledge. Currently, she is working on her book manuscript tentatively titled as A Language for cinema: Urdu imaginaire and the making of film cultures in India.
She has taught as a Teaching Fellow at the University of Westminster, and as faculty at Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University in New Delhi and the Institute of Film, Communication and Creative Arts, Whistling Woods in Mumbai. She has worked as a Research Fellow at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in New Delhi. She works as an Assistant Editor of Moving Image Review Arts Journal (MIRAJ), Intellect Books, UK
Peer-reviewed Articles:
- Niazi, Sarah R. "Where Adab meets Film: Mapping discourses on akhlaq and islah in the Urdu film journals from India (1930 - 1950" in BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies, 1:19. 2023: 1-19.
- Niazi, Sarah R. "White Skin/ Brown Masks: The Case of 'White' Actresses from Silent to Early Sound Period in Bombay", Culture Unbound, 10: 3, 2018: 332–352. Published by Linköping University Electronic Press.
- Niazi, Sarah R. "Urban Imaginations and the Cinema of Jafar Panahi" in WideScreen Journal, 1:2, June 2010 https://widescreenjournal.files.wordpress.com/2021/06/urban-imagination-and-the-cinema-of-jafar- panahi.pdf
Book Chapters:
- Niazi, Sarah R. "Disciplining cinema through akhlāq: An Urdu text on early cinematic practice in India" in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Postcolonial Print Cultures (London: Bloomsbury, Forthcoming 2023).
- Niazi, Sarah R. "Sabita's Journey from Calcutta to Bombay: Gender and Modernity in the circuits of cinema in India" in Industrial Networks of Cinemas of India: Shooting Stars, Shifting Geographies and Multiplying Media, ed. Madhuja Mukherjee and Monika Mehta (London: Routledge, 2021).
- Niazi, Sarah R. "Recasting Bodies and the Transformation of the Self: The case of women performers in the Bombay film industry (1925- 47)" in Interrogating Women's Leadership and Empowerment (New Delhi: Sage, 2015)
Book Reviews:
- Niazi, Sarah R. "Performative Negotiations and the Woman's Question" in The Book Review, 39:10, October 2015, 64-65.
- Niazi, Sarah R. "Women Through the Cinematic Eye" in The Book Review, 36:10, October 2012.
Online articles:
- Niazi, Sarah R. "A Polysemic Image: Anglo Indian actress in early Bombay cinema" published at criticalcollective.in (April 2023).
- Niazi, Sarah R. "Meena Kumari: The Last Great Tragedienne" published at criticalcollective.in (July 2022).
- Niazi, Sarah R. "Teen Deviyan: The Prabhat Star Triad and the discourse of 'Respectability'" published at Sahapaedia.org (August 2016).