معرفی
Aparna Sharma is an Associate Professor in the Department of World Arts & Cultures/Dance at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she combines documentary filmmaking with film scholarship to examine cultural representation in South Asia and the Indian diaspora.
Her research centers on ethnographic film, observational cinema, and feminist film theory, employing collaborative techniques and experimental methods like haptics and montage editing to document subaltern subjects. Key interests include colonial photography in the Indian subcontinent, digital media archives, and the cinemas of Northeast India, with a focus on critically intervening in representational discourses through visual media.
Sharma's filmography and publications reveal a sustained engagement with marginalized communities in Assam and Northeast India, using close textual analysis combined with historical context to challenge dominant narratives in documentary practice.
At UCLA, she teaches documentary studies and feminist film theories while collaborating with ethnomusicologists and visual media researchers on projects including open-access archives of Northeast Indian historical photographs. She is associated with the Art & Global Health Center and Dancing Disability Lab, and serves on editorial boards for Media Practice and Education, MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture, and Lensopticon.
