Pooja Rangan
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Pooja Rangan
@p8ja.bsky.social
780 followers 200 following 13 posts
Professor of English + Film & Media at Amherst College, Author of The Documentary Audit (Columbia 2025 *coming soon*) Immediations (Duke 2017) and co-editor of Thinking with an Accent (UC Press 2023)
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Join us for the Documentary Audit Book Launch! September 19, 6PM at NYU's Michelson Theater, 721 Broadway. Register here to attend in person or on Zoom: tisch.nyu.edu/cinema-studi... With special guests Lakshmi Padmanabhan, Jordan Lord, and LaCharles Ward.
Book Event: THE DOCUMENTARY AUDIT
How does listening in documentary become a proxy for justice—and what other kinds of listening might be possible?
tisch.nyu.edu
August 19, 2025 at 3:56 PM
Tomorrow is the first of two book launches for The Documentary Audit!

Visible Evidence Conference Philadelphia
Monday, August 4 | 9:00–10:45AM | Temple University City Center Room 222
With Respondents Paige Sarlin, Pavitra Sundar, Neta Alexander, and Tory Jeffay
A brown hand holding a red book, titled The Documentary Audit: Listening and the Limits of Accountability - Pooja Rangan.
August 3, 2025 at 4:19 PM
It's here!! Just in time to share with folks at Goethe Universität, Frankfurt during my Mercator Fellowship! For anyone interested in how documentary forms ask audiences to listen in order to hold power to account -- order at cup.columbia.edu/.../the.../9... (use code CUP20 for 20% discount)
Copies of a book nestled in a cardboard box. Description of the book cover: The title of the book (The Documentary Audit) appears in bold black text against a deep crimson background that fades to pink toward the bottom right. The book's subtitle (Listening and the Limits of Accountability) and the author's name (Pooja Rangan) appear in smaller pink letters.
June 19, 2025 at 5:30 PM
Out in June from Columbia University Press--THE DOCUMENTARY AUDIT. All of the information on the flier available on this website, where you can also order the book: cup.columbia.edu/.../the.../9... Cover description in comments
The Documentary Audit Listening and the Limits of Accountability Pooja Rangan Columbia University Press Documentary films are often celebrated with aural metaphors: they give “voice” to the “voiceless” and ask the public to “listen.” But when did listening become synonymous with social justice? How exactly do documentaries train audiences to listen when they ask them to right historic wrongs or hold power to account? The Documentary Audit challenges the association of listening with accountability and charts oppositional modes of listening otherwise. Pooja Rangan develops a framework for understanding how documentary practices have, under the mantle of accountability, provided a moral cover for listening habits that are used to profile, exclude, and incarcerate. From the British Crown’s promotional films to Zoom meeting recordings, from disability-informed filmmaking in Japan to forensic efforts to expose anti-Palestinian violence in Hebron, Rangan explores how historical and contemporary practitioners have challenged and refused the lures of normative documentary listening habits in order to listen with an accent, listen in crip time, and listen like an abolitionist. Through an interdisciplinary approach that bridges documentary and sound studies while considering raciolinguistics, disability access, and legal forensics, Rangan demonstrates how the question of listening is central to the study of documentary. Far from being a neutral ethic, The Documentary Audit shows, listening creates the reality it purports to verify—with transformative political possibilities. Pooja Rangan is professor of English in film and media studies at Amherst College. She is the author of Immediations: The Humanitarian Impulse in Documentary (2017) and coeditor of Thinking with an Accent: Toward a New Object, Method, and Practice (2023). Order Online: CUP.COLUMBIA.EDU Enter Code CUP20 for 20% discount
May 29, 2025 at 5:11 PM
I wrote a book on how justice-driven documentaries teach us to listen—and how those listening habits can perpetuate injustice or bring about transformative change. Coming soon from Columbia UP, read more about it here: cup.columbia.edu/book/the-doc...
The title of the book (The Documentary Audit) appears in bold black text against a deep crimson background that fades to pink toward the bottom right. The book's subtitle (Listening and the Limits of Accountability) and the author's name (Pooja Rangan) appear in smaller pink letters.
December 3, 2024 at 6:17 PM
I recently got to attend a film festival at Sing Sing prison. Here are some thoughts on the visit—on how prisons use progressive programming to justify their existence and the difficulties of pursuing liberation through art within their punishing constraints.
Touch Visit: 2024 Sing Sing Film Festival
Access points: the first-ever documentary showcase held within a U.S. prison included a slate of competing films judged by an incarcerated jury
www.filmcomment.com
November 26, 2024 at 2:56 PM
hi everyone! i look forward to never posting here instead of on twitter
November 13, 2024 at 5:06 PM