Fellow

Dr. Pooja Rangan

Photo by Stephen Dillon

Photo by Stephen Dillon

Associate Professor of English and Chair of Film and Media Studies, Amherst College, Massachusetts, USA

Duration of stay: May – June 2022 and June – July 2025

In cooperation with Prof. Dr. Vinzenz Hediger

Pooja Rangan is a documentary scholar based in Amherst College, where she is Associate Professor of English and Chair of Film and Media Studies. Rangan is the author of the award-winning book Immediations: The Humanitarian Impulse in Documentary (Duke UP, 2017) and co-editor of Thinking with an Accent: Toward a New Object, Method, and Practice (forthcoming from UC Press, 2023). She is currently completing a book titled On Documentary Listening, and co-authoring a book with Brett Story on abolitionist documentary.

Research project:
At present, Dr. Rangan is at work on a new co-authored book with filmmaker and scholar Brett Story that examines the prison as the insidious logic underwriting the narrative codes and values that govern much of documentary meaning and circulation. Tentatively titled “Captive Cinema,” the book charts the production of “carceral common sense” within the field of documentary image-making whilst advancing, as an alternative, an abolitionist vision for future nonfiction film.

Publications (selection):
“Thinking with an Accent: Toward a New Object, Method, and Practice” (University of California Press, 2023)
“Inaudible Evidence: Counterforensic Listening in Contemporary Documentary Art,” in Deep Mediations, edited by Karen Redrobe and Jeff Scheible (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2021; awarded Best Edited Collection by Society for Cinema and Media Studies, 2022)
“Four Propositions on True Crime and Abolition,” co-authored with Brett Story, World Records (Special Feature, 2021)
Auditing the Call Center Voice: Accented Speech and Listening in Sonali Gulati’s Nalini by Day, Nancy by Night (2005),” in Vocal Projections: Voices in Documentary, edited by Annabelle Honess Roe and Maria Pramaggiore (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), 29-44.
Immediations: The Humanitarian Impulse in Documentary (Duke University Press, 2017) (2019 Harry Levin Prize for Outstanding First Book from ACLA; PDF links to Introduction)

Events:
Mercator Lecture on Monday July 14th, 6 pm

News from the research institute

Event
16.06.2025 | Frankfurt am Main

Trump and the Assault on the State

Lecture

Vortrag von Jeffrey Kopstein Professor der Politikwissenschaft an der University of California, Irvine) über die Gefahr einer Erosion des Staates und Wege gegen den Trend zur Zerstörung.

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News
19.05.2025

What can a baroque tapestry tell us about colonial iconography?

Lecture by Cécile Fromone on May 21. The professor at the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University, director of the Cooper Gallery at the Hutchins Center and author will talk about the long-forgotten African origins of iconography and its colonial dimension.

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News
05.05.2025

Normative Orders Newsletter 01/25 published

The newsletter from Research Centre Normative Orders collects information on current events, reports, news and publications several times a year. Read the first issue 2025 here.

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News
05.05.2025

"Hitler. History of a Dictator" by Sybille Steinbacher will be published on May 15, 2025

The historian's new book deals with Hitler's origins, the roots of his anti-Semitism and his rise to power.

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News
29.04.2025

Public lecture series “Racism in the police” begins on May 13, 2025

Racism in the police has various dimensions. In the lecture series “Racism in the police - empirical findings, methodological approaches and controversies”, three empirical studies on police work will be presented.

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Publication
22.04.2025 | Encyclopedia

Edessa (Fourth Century bc to the Eighth Century ad)

Leppin, Hartmut (2025): "Edessa (Fourth Century bc to the Eighth Century ad)". In: Raja, Rubina (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of the Hellenistic and Roman Near East, Oxford Academic, pp. 491-506.

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News
10.04.2025

Shaping the future - between climate change, technology and social responsibility

A new series of lectures by the research center as part of the “Fixing Futures” exhibition on the implications of climate change and technological progress.

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