Focus and Scope

Dastavezi is an international peer-reviewed, open-access e-journal, which seeks to reposition film as a central mode of knowing and thinking about South Asia. It is the first peer-reviewed journal connecting scholarly research from and about South Asia with filmic practices.

The journal is committed to promoting various modes of knowing by offering a platform for knowledge production and research on South Asia in both audio-visual and text forms. It is motivated by our desire to enhance the understanding of contemporary political, economic, and social developments in South Asia. Acknowledging the proliferation of audio-visual material in academic research, the abundance of camera-based research in ethnographic and regional scholarship, and the potential of documentary film to contribute to knowledge production, we consider the division between media practice and scholarly research to be mutually limiting. Instead, Dastavezi seeks to establish a platform for scholars and filmmakers, or both, to evolve new theoretical and practical epistemologies in their engagement with South Asia.

The journal incorporates both audio-visual and textual materials as equal outputs of academic research in order to nourish the various affordances emerging from the nexus between film production and academic writing. With its hybrid and open-access format, Dastavezi not only enables a dialogue between academics and film practitioners, but also provides an interested public with access to audio-visual productions on South Asia and the corresponding discussions.

Dastavezi welcomes submissions that connect academic texts and audio-visual material in creative ways to make a conceptual or empirical contribution to scholarship on South Asia. Contributions can either address existing discussions in new ways through audio-visual productions or introduce new themes that have thus far been overlooked in the field of South Asian studies, and which may be better addressed through an audio-visual approach.

Dastavezi is published once a year.

Peer Review Process

Members of the editorial board will evaluate all submitted contributions according to the journal’s standards. The chosen contributions will then be peer-reviewed. To guarantee the academic and aesthetic quality of contributions, they will be evaluated by two reviewers.

The evaluation criteria include assessing the contribution’s state of the art, aesthetic innovations, political reflexivity, and the professional technological standards of the audio-visual material.

We ask our reviewers to send us their recommendations within four weeks. The reviewed contributions are expected to undergo editing within four weeks after receiving the peer-reviewed manuscripts or film.

Open Access Policy, Copyright and Fees

Taking account of the emergence of a participatory digital media-culture, and pursuing the idea of free access to scientific and audio-visual content, this journal is open-access and publishing is free of any charge.

All material - written and audio-visual - published is licensed under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0.

Publication Ethics

The publication principles of Dastavezi the Audio-Visual South Asia are based on the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Dastavezi editors are accountable for everything published in Dastavezi the Audio-Visual South Asia.

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Longterm Preservation

Longterm Preservation of the Journal is guranteed by Heidelberg University Library.