Publications

K. K., Muhsina and Akshaya Kumar. (Forthcoming, 2026) ‘Memorialising Political Martyrdom: Visual Media and Party Politics in Kerala,’ Jump Cut 64.

Kumar, Akshaya. (2025) 'Wellness as Self-Governance: Digitalization, AI and Indian HealthTech,’ Asiascape: Digital Asia, 12 (1-3): 217-241, in Special Issue 'AI Imaginaries in Asia’, edited by Haiqing Yu and Florian Schneider. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/22142312-bja10073

Singh, Mahima and Akshaya Kumar. (2025) ‘The Telecommunication Engine of India’s Streaming Market: Reliance Jio’s Vertical Integration and Ascent,’ Journal of Digital Media & Policy, 16 (2). DOI: 10.1386/jdmp_00169_1

Kumar, Akshaya and Mahima Singh. (2025) ‘Streaming the Alter-Ego: ALTBalaji, between Saas-Bahu sagas and Fast-Fashion Erotica,’ Jump Cut 63. URL: https://ejumpcut.org/currentissue/Kumar-Singh/index.html

K. K., Muhsina and Akshaya Kumar. (2024) ‘Mourning and the Occasions of Excess: Melodramatic Transgressions in Contemporary Malayalam Cinema,’ Jump Cut 62. URL: https://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/JC62.2024/MuhsinaKK-AkshayaKumar/index.html

K. K., Muhsina and Akshaya Kumar. (2023) ‘Mediatization via Mourning and Vice Versa: Television, Mass Grief and Liveness in Kerala,’ Postmodern Culture, 34 (1).  DOI: 10.1353/pmc.2023.a952514

Singh, Mahima and Akshaya Kumar. (2023) ‘A Critical Political Economy Perspective on Indian Television: STAR, Hotstar and Live Sports Streaming in India,’ tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique, 21 (1): 18-32. Doi: https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v21i1.1395

Kumar, Akshaya. (2022) ‘Petrocultured Mobility in Bhojpuri Popular Culture,’ Critical Asian Studies Commentary Board,' March 23; DOI: https://doi.org/10.52698/FVYK9951.

Athique, Adrian and Akshaya Kumar. (2022) ‘Platform Ecosystems, Market Hierarchies and the MegaCorp: The Case of Reliance Jio.’ Media, Culture & Society Special Issue ‘Media Power in Digital Asia: Super Apps and Megacorps’, 44 (8): 1420-1436. Doi: 10.1177/016344372211277 

Kumar, Akshaya. (2021) ‘Re-Visioning Caste in Indian Cinema.’ Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal 104 (4): 362-391. Doi: 10.5325/soundings.104.4.0362

Kumar, Akshaya. (2021) ‘The Libidinal Economy of Vernacularisation: Modernity, Sexuality and Bhojpuri Media.’ Media, Culture & Society 43 (4): 776-784. Doi: 10.1177/0163443721994543 

Kumar, Akshaya. (2021) ‘Cinema and its Spatial Predicates: Landscapes of Debt in Search of Justice.’ Jump Cut 60. URL: http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc60.2021/AkshayaKumarPlace/index.html 

Kumar, Akshaya. (2020) ‘Standing the Provincial Ground: Childhood and Parental Authority in Dangal (2016).’ Studies in South Asian Film & Media 11 (1): 41-55.

Kumar, Akshaya. (2020) ‘The Popular Aesthetics of Social Mobility.’ Economic and Political Weekly 55 (31): 46-52. 

Kumar, Akshaya. (2020) ‘Deriving a Tangible Promotional Calculus: Platform Monopolies and Political Advertising.’ Media International Australia 176 (1): 52-65.

Kumar, Akshaya. (2019) ‘Informality in the time of Platformisation.’ Media Industries 6 (2). Doi: 10.3998/mij.15031809.0006.207.

Kumar, Akshaya. (2018) ‘Between Ramgarh and Bambai: The Leftover Geography of Bhojpuri Cinema.’ Summerhill 24 (1): 59-64. 

Kumar, Akshaya. (2018) ‘Media Portfolios after Credit-Scoring: Attention, Prediction and Advertising in Indian Media Networks.’ Postmodern Culture 28 (2). Doi: 10.1353/pmc.2018.0014. 

Kumar, Akshaya. (2018) ‘Deswa, the Film and the Movement: Taste, Industry and Representation in Bhojpuri Cinema.’ Contemporary South Asia 26 (1): 69-85.

Kumar, Akshaya. (2017) ‘Animated Visualities and Competing Sovereignties: The Formal Dwellings of Hindi Cinema.’ Social Text 35 (3): 41-70.

Kumar, Akshaya. (2017) ‘Item Number/Item Girl.’ South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 40 (2): 338-341.

Kumar, Akshaya. (2016) ‘Bhojpuri Consolidations in the Hindi Territory: Infrastructure, Aesthetics and Competing Masculinities in North India.’ BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies, 7 (2): 189-206.

Kumar, Akshaya. (2016) ‘Bhojpuri cinema and the "rearguard": Gendered leisure, gendered promises.’ Quarterly Review of Film and Video 33(2): 151-175. 

Kumar, Akshaya. (2015) ‘The Unbearable Liveness of News Television in India.’ Television and New Media 16(6): 538–556. 

Kumar, Akshaya. (2014) ‘Satyamev Jayate: Return of the Star as a Sacrificial Figure.’ South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 37 (2): 239-254.

Kumar, Akshaya. (2013) ‘Provincialising Bollywood? Cultural economy of north-Indian smalltown nostalgia in the Indian multiplex.’ South Asian Popular Culture 11 (1): 61-74.

Kumar, Akshaya. (2012) ‘Landscape, Allegory, and Historical Trauma in Postwar Japanese Cinema: Recapitulating Existential Horror in Onibaba (1964) and Woman in the Dunes (1964).’ Asian Cinema Journal 22 (2): 364-380. 

Kumar, Akshaya. (2011) ‘From Erotics to Poetics of Documentary Remembering: Patricio Guzman’s Battle of Chile (1979) and Chile: An Obstinate Memory (1997).’ Eras Journal (Arts), 13 (1).  

Kumar, Akshaya and Jonathan Haynes. (2025) ‘Comparative Noir Urbanisms in Mumbai and Lagos.’ In Lindiwe Dovey, Kate Taylor-Jones and Georgia Thomas-Parr (eds) Global Screen Worlds: Conversations across Cinema Cultures. Berg: Bloomsbury Publications, pp. 195-216. URL: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/global-screen-worlds-9798765126288/

Kumar, Akshaya. (2022) ‘ABP News.’ In Gregory A. Borchard (ed) The SAGE Encyclopedia of Journalism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 5-7.

Kumar, Akshaya. (2022) ‘Indian Farmers, Merchant Capitalists and the contest over the Platform Economy.’ In Holly Arden, Anna Briers and Nicholas Carah (eds) Conflict in my Outlook. Perimeter Editions, Melbourne and UQ Art Museum, Brisbane, 96-100. URL: https://perimetereditions.com/CONFLICT-IN-MY-OUTLOOK 

Kumar, Akshaya. (2022) ‘The Insurrectionary Lateral-ness of Bhojpuri Media.’ In Francesca Orsini and Ravikant (eds) Hinglish Live: Language Mixing across Media. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan, pp. 232-257.

Kumar, Akshaya. (2022) ‘Bhojpuri Cinema’, in Vebhuti Duggal, Bindu Menon and Spandan Bhattacharya (eds), Film Studies: An Introduction. Delhi/Kolkata: Worldview Publications.

Kumar, Akshaya. (2020) ‘Celluloid Visions in a Video Frame: Bhojpuri Cinema between Insurrections and Catharsis.’ In Madhuja Mukherjee and Monika Mehta (eds) Industrial Networks and Cinemas of India: Shooting Stars, Shifting Geographies and Multiplying Media. London: Routledge, pp. 181-193.

Kumar, Akshaya. (2020) ‘Informality in the time of Platformization.’ In Adrian Athique and Vibodh Parthasarathi (eds) Platform Capitalism in India. London: Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 261-279.

Kumar, Akshaya. (2020) ‘The Derivative Values of Platform Capitalism.’ In Adrian Athique and Vibodh Parthasarathi (eds) Platform Capitalism in India. London: Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 67-84.

Kumar, Akshaya. (2019) ‘The Diffused Substance of Bhojpuri Indigeneity.’ In Markus Schleiter and Erik de Maaker (eds) Media, Indigeneity and Nation in South Asia. London: Routledge, pp. 90-104.

Kumar, Akshaya. (2019) ‘Insurrectionary Tendencies: The Viral Fever Comedies and Indian Media.’ In Adrian Athique and Emma Baulch (eds) Digital Transactions in Asia: Economic, Informational, and Social Exchanges. London: Routledge, pp. 192-204.

Kumar, Akshaya. (2019) ‘Consolidating Bollywood: Spectacularity Without Stardom.’ In Sharon Heijin Lee, Monika Mehta, and Robert Ji-Song Ku (eds) Pop Empires: Transnational and Diasporic Flows of India and Korea. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, pp. 138-154.

Kumar, Akshaya. (2014) ‘The Aesthetics of Pirate Modernities: Bhojpuri Cinema and the Underclasses.’ In Raminder Kaur and Parul Dave-Mukherji (eds) Arts and Aesthetics in a Globalizing World. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 185-203. 

(2025) 'Oil as Paint, Social Media as Canvas.' Capitalism Nature Socialism. https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2024.2441137

(2021) ‘Noir Urbanisms in Post-globalisation Hindi Cinema.’ Economic & Political Weekly 56 (29): 34-36.

(2019) ‘The Nations of “Regional” Cinemas.’ Economic & Political Weekly 54 (26-27): 34-36.

(2019) ‘Capital and Popular Cinema: The dollars are coming!.’ Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 39 (1): 198-200.

(2014) ‘Cut-pieces: Celluloid Obscenity and Popular Cinema in Bangladesh.’ South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 37 (4): 744-745.

(2014) ‘The Self and the Screens: A Collection of Book Reviews.’ South Asian Popular Culture 12 (2): 141-145. 

(2014) ‘Routledge Handbook of Indian Cinemas.’ South Asian History and Culture 5 (3): 384- 387. (2013) Scope, 25, February.

(2012) ‘Retro-modern India: forging the low-caste self.’ Contemporary South Asia 20 (4): 536- 537. 

(2012) ‘New Media and its Audiences.’ Cultural Studies 27 (2): 297-302. 

(2012) ‘The multiplex in India: a cultural economy of urban leisure.’ Contemporary South Asia 20 (3): 415-416. 

(2012) ‘Stages of life: Indian theatre autobiographies.’ South Asian History and Culture 3 (3): 479- 482.