Phungawari goes Digital: Emergent online materialities and shifting paradigms of Meitei Folklore
This project examines Phungawari (traditional folk narratives of the indigenous Meitei community of Manipur) as user generated creative content on digital platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. The remediation of Phungawari on such digital platforms ranges from animation, graphic comics, visual illustrations etc. This indicates the convergence of traditional Meitei folklore with digital platforms as part of an evolving digital culture.
This project conceptualises Meitei folklore as part of indigenous epistemology and identity expressions. The emergence of digital Phungawari indicates “cultural resurgence and resistance” (ku ‘ualoha ho ‘omanawanui 2018). Data will be sourced through online ethnography of relevant digital content, and semi-structured interviews with digital media content creators.
The expected outputs are an article to be submitted for publication at a peer-reviewed journal relevant to my research, a three-part thematic blog post and podcast episodes to be published on Spotify.
Main Research Topics
- Folklore studies
- Folklore and Digital Cultures
- Folktale and Fairy tale studies
- Hallyu studies
- Translation studies
Research Results
During my fellowship at CAIS, I conducted follow-up online interviews with Meitei digital content creators and analysed a corpus of in-depth interviews from 2022-2024. The interviewees (digital creators) shared insights that underscored various affordances of participatory platforms which facilitated innovative genres, aesthetics and creative flexibilities in reimagining folklore through digital storytelling. These provided alternative spaces to revitalise folklore across a diverse demography of audiences and increased scope of engagement affecting wider dissemination of an oral tradition through contemporary modes (digital comics and animation). Additionally, the interviewees highlighted constantly evolving interface, format and algorithm as key challenges to this digital cultural practice. Thus, the converging of folklore with digital technologies indicates an evolving subcultural phenomenon of cultural knowledge production led by Meitei digital creators as its bonafide producers.
Curriculum Vitae
- Assistant Professor (Ad hoc), Department of English, Kamala Nehru College, University of Delhi, 2016-2021.
- Member of the Expert Committee, Board of Secondary Education (BOSEM), Manipur, 2019.
- Assistant Professor (Ad hoc), Department of English, Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi, 2015.
- Guest Faculty, Non Collegiate Women’s Education Board (NCWEB), University of Delhi, 2013-2014
Publications and Presentations
Paper selected for presentation at the 2024 ELLAK International Conference, Revisiting the Korean Wave in a Global Context, Seoul National University, South Korea, December 12-14, 2024. Paper titled, “Hallyu 2.0: A Transnational Perspective from Northeast India.”
Sagolsem, S. (Forthcoming 2024). Phungawari in the digital space: Folkloric identity epxressions and new media. In Isha Dubey (Ed.) Remembrance, Forgetting and Utterance: Rethinking the Politics of Memory in South Asia. Routledge.
Sagolsem, S. (2024). Hallyu 2.0 and social media in Manipur: Examining cultural formations through user generated content. In Deepali Yadav & Vipin K Kadavath (Eds.), The Digital Popular in Indian Context: Mainstreaming the marginal (pp. 13-34). Palgrave/Springer.
Sagolsem, S. (2023). Exploring Folk Narrative Functions in Manipuri Wonder tale ‘Yenakha Paodabi’. Lokaratna: Journal for Language, Culture, Literature and Indigenous Knowledge, Folklore Foundation India, XVII, 22-34.
Sagolsem, S. (2022). Folklore as Identity: Phungawari of the Meitei in Manipur. In Saroj Kumar Mahananda (Ed.), Folk Traditions and Forms in India (pp. 186-203). SLC India Publishers.