Moving Pictures The films of “Bollywood”—the nickname for the Indian film industry, centered in Bombay—exert a powerful tug on Indians living in the United States, Ajay Sinha, associate professor of art at MHC, tells readers of Newsday. “A number of these films address immigration, diaspora, the desire for nation, nostalgia for some notion of tradition,” Sinha, who teaches a seminar in Indian film, tells writer Fred Bruning. “It is a hybrid form that has drawn from older traditions of entertainment—theater, folk songs, village festivals,” Sinha says in the article, published in the April 25 edition of Newsday. Bollywood, with its emphasis on romance, action, song, and dance, “connects with people’s lives from whatever walk of life they come,” Sinha says.

Brown Honored MHC assistant professor of English Lois Brown, who rescued from obscurity the first biography written by an African American, has been honored with one of the first African American History Awards to be given by the Museum of Afro-American History. Brown was lauded for her “extraordinary commitment to American history, demonstrated poignantly by [her] successful efforts to edit and reprint Susan Paul’s Memoir of James Jackson,” as well as her “obvious commitment to education and equality.” She is to receive her award at the museum’s second annual gala on June 15 at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel. Brown’s award, for scholarship, is one of five the Museum of Afro-American History has awarded. Also receiving honors are the National Parks Service, for community service; Helen Seager, for volunteerism; Proctor Academy in New Hampshire, for education; and Julian Houston, for jurisprudence. The museum, founded in 1967, owns three historic sites: the African Meeting House and Abiel Smith School on Boston’s Beacon Hill, and the African Meeting House on Nantucket. Through Brown’s efforts, the story of James Jackson Jr., a nineteenth century free black child living in Boston, was reissued by Harvard University Press. Titled The Memoir of James Jackson, the Attentive and Obedient Scholar, Who Died in Boston, October 31, 1833, Aged Six Years and Eleven Months, the new edition was edited by Brown, who also wrote its introduction.