Punjabi and Popular Vulgarity: A Critical Analysis of Language and Cinema in Pakistan

Gwendolyn Kirk was a 2012-2013 AIPS Fellow and conducted research in Pakistan for 5 months. Kirk's "ethnographic study of the Punjabi-language cinema industry in Lahore, Pakistan--known colloquially as 'Lollywood'--seeks to use the cinema industry as a lens through which to investigate the relationship between linguistic practices and social issues such as class, ethnicity, gender, vulgarity, and Punjabiyat (‘Punjabi-ness’) in contemporary Pakistani Punjab."