Shoma Munshi is Professor of Anthropology at the American University of Kuwait and Senior Research Partner at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, G̦ttingen, Germany. She 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), in addition to authoring several articles in refereed journals. She 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. She speaks several languages fluently and maintains close collaborative research and personal ties with scholars and institutions worldwide.Television is the single most powerful and dynamic agent of change in India today. It is also the country's most popular and accessible form of entertainment. Remote Control 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. Shoma Munshi's book shows us how everyday reality in India in the twenty-first century shapes television; and how television, in turn, shapes us.
