
- silpamukherjee@ucsd.edu
- (858) 534-8690
-
Arts & Humanities Bldg (RWAC)
Room 235
Mail Code: 0410
Assistant Professor
Assistant Professor of Film and Media, Global South, and Cultural Studies
Silpa Mukherjee received a Ph.D. in Film and Media Studies from the University of Pittsburgh and an M.Phil. in Cinema Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her research and teaching interests include feminist historiography, informal media industries, media beyond legality, South Asian cinema, South Asian media culture in diaspora, and South by South networks. She has also written on Bombay cinema’s hypersexualized song-and-dance sequences, popularly known as “item numbers.”
Her current book project theorizes cinema as contraband by mapping illicit transregional corridors between South Asia and the Middle East that entangled a local cinema in global capital, speculative finance, and affective, legal, and material border breakings. Mukherjee’s research has been supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the American Council of learned Societies.
Mukherjee has also served as the Assistant Editor of JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies (2018-2022). As part of the editorial team, she received a Distinguished Service Award from Society for Cinema and Media Studies in 2023.
Suraj Israni Center for Cinematic Arts Fellow, 2024-2025
Steering Committee member of the South Asia Initiative, 2024-2025
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, 2025-2026
Languages: English, Bengali, Hindi, Urdu