Tanya Desai | Cinema and Media Studies

Teaching Fellow in the Humanities, Department of Cinema and Media Studies and the College

Classics 307

PhD, University of Chicago, 2023; MA and MPhil, University of Delhi

Research Interests: philosophy of film, ordinary language philosophy, South Asian cinema, classic Hollywood, global classical cinema, gender and skepticism in literature and film, aesthetic theory, film comedy, animal studies, moral philosophy, psychoanalysis

Biography

Tanya Desai received her PhD in Cinema and Media Studies from the University of Chicago in 2023. Previously, she completed her MA and MPhil in English Literature at the University of Delhi. She works on the philosophy of film, particularly on topics of language, time, narrative, and gender. Her current book project is on classical Bombay cinema of the 1950s, examining the convergence of film and poetry in its iconic songs and exploring the philosophical issues these songs raise about the relation between body and voice, between the self and the world, and between words and lives.

Teaching Experience

Autumn Quarter 2024

CMST 10100 Introduction to Film Analysis

Winter Quarter 2025

CMST 14400 Film and the Moving Image

Previously taught courses: Philosophy of Comedy: Classic Hollywood Film, Lecturer (CMST 21405), Introduction to Film, Lecturer (CMST 10100), Classical Film Theory, CA (CMST 27220), History of International Cinema I (1895-1927), CA (CMST 28500), Film and the Moving Image, CA (CMST 14400).