In what ways does the visual and musical archive of Hindi film--commonly referred to as “Bollywood”--reflect and constitute social life in South Asia and beyond? This course takes this broad question as its starting point as we consider relationships between the popular cinema of Bombay (Mumbai) and South Asian history, culture, and politics. A study of Hindi film music will serve as a foundation for discussions on the nature of popular culture and how we can fruitfully study it in an academic context, as we consider debates regarding popular culture’s role in society. Is popular culture only reflective of commercial interests? Or does it play an instrumental function in driving political and social change? A further focus of this course will be to consider various methods of analyzing musical media. We will study approaches that music and film scholars use to analyze music’s role in cinematic narratives, and use these discussions to make our own critique of how music is used in Hindi cinema production.