Your Complete Summer List | Part 2

Recommendations from Prof. Clancy Martin, Prof. Madhavi Menon and Prof. Arghya Bhattacharya

We hope you have had a chance to devour the content recommendations from our first article in this series, which has contributions from Prof. Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Prof. Bikram Phukoon and Prof. Gilles Vernier.

For part two, we bring recommendations from our professors in the Literature, Philosophy and Economics departments.

Professor Clancy Martin is a visiting professor of Philosophy at Ashoka University. Last semester, he taught two courses at Ashoka, ‘Existentialism’ and ‘19th Century Philosophy’, both topics he specializes in.

Professor Madhavi Menon teaches English Literature at Ashoka, and recently took a course titled ‘Advanced Theory — The Law of Desire’. Professor Menon has also recently published a book, Infinite Variety : A History of Desire in India.

Professor Arghya Bhattacharya is a member of the Economics department. His academic interests include macroeconomics (markets with frictions), monetary economics, and international finance. To know more about Professor Bhattacharya, read his interview on The Edict.

Movies

From Professor Clancy Martin –

1. Badlands. (American existentialist classic)
2. Full Metal Jacket (Kubrick’s best movie)
3. Vara (great study of women, love and dance by the Buddhist lama and filmmaker Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche)

From Professor Madhavi Menon –

1. Pedro Almodovar, Bad Education (More on the pleasures and dangers of education)

2. Asghar Farhidi, A Separation (Impeccable and Insightful Iranian drama)

3. Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Goliyon ki Rasleela Ram-lila (Dangerous Desires)

4. Michel Haneke, Cache (What you can’t see can kill you)

From Professor Arghya Bhattacharya –

1. Lawrence of Arabia
2. Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson movie)
3. Grand Budapest Hotel (well, another Wes Anderson movie)

Books

From Professor Madhavi Menon –

1. Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children
   A breathtakingly inventive use of language. Magic!
2. Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way
   Richer than rasgullas; more delicious than a Dharwar peda
3. Tana French, The Likeness
   Haunting treatment of students and the simultaneous dangers and pleasures of education

From Professor Arghya Bhattacharya

1. Haruki Murakami, Hear the Wind Sing & Pinball
   Murakami’s first two novels — beautifully written (like his later novels). Wind is his first novel and Pinball is more of a sequel to Wind. He calls them “kitchen table fiction” since he wrote them at the kitchen table in his tiny apartment back in 1979.
2. Atif Mian and Amir Sufi, House of Debt
   An important book on the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession. The Financial Times aptly calls it “a summary of a highly serious programme of economic research”.
3. Aziz Ansari & Eric Klinenberg, Modern Romance
   A hilarious and entertaining narration of a serious multi-country study of dating habits & dating dynamics by American comedian Aziz Ansari and NYU sociology professor Eric Klinenberg. Interestingly these days a section of macroeconomists is showing increased interest in the matching mechanism of, and optimal strategies in the dating “market”.

From Professor Clancy Martin –

1. Celine, Journey to the End of Night (Must read, inspiration to Jim Morrison)
2. Basho, Narrow Road to the Deep North (One of the best books ever written, a travelogue with occasional haiku from a poet who was also enlightened)
3. Lydia Davis, The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (the greatest living master and innovator of short fiction)

TV Shows

From Professor Arghya Bhattacharya

1. Dark (German TV series)
2. Broadchurch
3. Halt and Catch Fire

Professor Clancy Martin

1. Barry (very funny, creative new show by a great comedian)
2. Ru Paul’s Drag Race (my wife’s favorite show, I haven’t seen much but my wife and daughters love it)
3. Luther (violent but entertaining — I watched the whole thing while down with food poisoning from a bad oyster in a loft in the 8th arrondissement in Paris)

From Professor Madhavi Menon

1. The Sopranos
   Hell hath no fury like The Family
2. Prime Suspect
   Taut, brilliant, charismatic Helen Mirren
3. Dae Jang Geum
   Korean soap about the first woman physician in 16th century Korea. It’s also a show about food. Lots and lots of it!