Bio

William Mazzarella is Associate Professor of Anthropology at University of Chicago. He writes and teaches on mass media, globalization, public culture and consumerism, critical theory, commodity aesthetics, and post-coloniality in contemporary India. His first book, Shoveling Smoke (Duke UP, 2003), is an ethnography of the Bombay advertising business and its role in the rise and elaboration of mass consumerism in India in the 1980s and 1990s. Mazzarella’s current projects include a book on censorship, cinema, and mediation in modern India. He also serves as Chair on the Committee on Southern Asian Studies at the University of Chicago. He received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of California-Berkeley.