Visiting Faculty, Media Studies, Ashoka University
PhD University of St AndrewsAakshi Magazine received her doctoral degree in 2020. Before that, she worked as a journalist and briefly as a film reviewer. Her writing and film criticism have been published in The Indian Express, The Hindu, Economic and Political Weekly, DNA, Outlook, Popula among others.
Her research interests include 1950s Hindi cinema, song sequences in the Hindi film form, film history, feminist production studies, and womenâs cinema.
Academic writing:
âLoving but critical: The empathetic gaze of Luck By Chance.â in ReFocus: The Films of Zoya Akhtar, edited by Aakshi Magazine and Amber Shields, 21- 38 (Edinburgh University Press, 2022).
âA language of its own: The songs in the films of Mani Ratnam.â in Musicals at the Margins: Genre, Boundaries, Canon, edited by Martha Shearer and Julie Lobalzo Wright, 144-157 (Bloomsbury, 2021).
“Tum Toh Mohammed Rafi Nikle: The song sequence in contemporary Hindi cinema.â South Asian Popular Culture Volume 17, Issue 2 (2019): 133-144.
âGhoul: Challenging the category of the âNationalist Muslimâ.â Economic and Political Weekly Volume 53, Issue 45 (2018).
Newspaper articles and essays:
In an age of cynicism, Monia, O my Darling’s sincerity is worth cherishing, The Indian Express, 23 November 2022.
What a Robot from Kerala, Bombay High Court, French and Indian films tell us about domestic labour, The Indian Express, 30 October 2022.
What the success of Vikram Vedha says about the multiplex, The Indian Express, 7 October 2022.
With Brahmastra, a more Hinduised Bollywood, The Indian Express, 18 September 2022.
âDobaaraaâ does not feel like an Anurag Kashyap film. And that is good, The Indian Express, 31 August 2022.
Lata Mangeshkar Heroine off-screen, The Indian Express, 9 February 2022.
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/lata-mangeshkar-singer-death-Â stardom-7764762/
Some films find you, Popula, 21 September 2021.
https://popula.com/2021/09/21/some-films-find-you/
Their own selves, The Indian Express, 14 March 2021.
Odd Men Out, Verve Magazine, December 2020.
https://vervemagazine.in/cinemaissue/#/gulabo-sitabo-masculinity
The Real Horror Film, The Indian Express, 8 July 2020.
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/the-real-horror-film6494907/
Grocery-store Nationalism, Popula, 30 January 2019.
https://popula.com/2019/01/30/grocery-store-nationalism/.
Unlikely Lessons from Bollywood, The Hindu, 18 August 2017.
https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/movies/unlikely-lessons-from-bollywood/article19518947.ece
Linktree:  You can read her media writing here – linktr.ee/AakshiMagazine
Books:
ReFocus: The Films of Zoya Akhtar, edited by Aakshi Magazine and Amber Shields (Edinburgh University Press, 2022).
Book link – https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-refocus-the-films-of-zoya-akhtar.html