Page 11 - From Bombay to Bollywoord The Making of a Global Media Industri

x<< Acknowledgments

Amanda Lotz, Robin Coleman, Susan Douglas, and Derek Vaillant have
been eager mentors and I am deeply grateful to them for helping me negoti-
ate the ups and downs of academic life. My intellectual and academic debts
to Paddy Scannell are simply too numerous. I can only hope that the conver-
sation we have been having over the past few years continues well into the
future. A number of friends and colleagues at Michigan have listened, read,
critiqued, and helped make this a better book. In particular, I would like to
thank Dan Herbert, Sheila Murphy, Mrinalini Sinha, Ram Mahalingam, Lee
Schlesinger, Matthew Hull, Rebecca Grapevine and others in the Kitabman-
dal group, Shazia Iftkhar, Will Glover, Farina Mir, Juan Cole, Sunil Agnani,
Nadine Naber, Evelyn Alsultany, and Sean Jacobs. I am also grateful for the
material support that I have received from the University of Michigan: start-
up research funds from the College of Literature Science and Arts, a junior
faculty research grant from the Rackham Graduate School, a travel grant
from the Center for International Business Education, and a publication sub-
vention from the Office of the Vice President for Research. I am also grateful
to Susan Douglas for organizing a manuscript workshop at a crucial stage,
and to John Caldwell and Radhika Parameswaran for being such terrific
interlocutors. Two graduate students in Communication Studies exceeded
all my expectations and taught me a great deal as they helped me with vari-
ous aspects of research toward this book: many thanks to Lia Wolock and
Brad Jones. I should also make public my indebtednes to Shevon Desai, a
wonderful librarian at Michigan who listened patiently to many a research
query and pointed me in just the right directions.
At Michigan and beyond, an ever-expanding network of friends and
colleagues have helped, in ways both direct and subtle, shape many of the
ideas in this book: thanks to Marwan Kraidy, Sreya Mitra, Josh Jackson,
Megan Ankerson, Russ Neuman, Joseph Straubhaar, Nancy Baym, Yeidy
Rivero, Madhavi Mallapragada, Joseph Turow, Monroe Price, Katherine
Sender, Paula Chakravarty, Sangeet Kumar, Bill Kirkpatrick, Serra Tinic,
Tim Havens, Nitin Govil, Sudhir Mahadevan, Bhaskar Sarkar, Rohit Cho-
pra, Manan Ahmed, S V Srinivas, Lawrence Liang, Ravi Sundaram, Miranda
Banks, Vicki Mayer, Ranjani Mazumdar, Ratheesh Radhakrishnan, Rosie
Thomas, Daya Kishan Thussu, Tarik Sabry, Zeynep Gursel, Navaneetha
Mokkil-Marathur, Pavitra Sundar, Sugi Ganeshananthan, Nilanjana Bhat-
tacharjya, Neepa Majumdar, William Mazzarella, Amit Rai, and Carolina
Acosta-Alzuru.
In Bombay, New Delhi, New York, and Los Angeles, I am indebted to all
those who took time away from their busy work schedules to talk to me. In
particular, I would like to thank Shashank Saksena, Parmesh Shahani, Gargi