Preminda Jacob is Associate Professor of Art History and Museum Studies at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, USA. Her research specialization is on the social and political aspects of South Asian public visual culture. Her book, Celluloid Deities: The Visual Culture of Cinema and Politics in South India, published in the USA by Lexington Books (2009 and India by Orient BlackSwan (2010) has an accompanying website http://CelluloidDeities.com that features over 300 photos and three videos. Dr. Jacob’s research for the book was supported by fellowships including a J. Paul Getty Post-Doctoral Fellowship in the History of Art and the Humanities and a Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship from the Center for Media, Culture and History at New York University. Dr. Jacob holds a Ph.D. in art history from the University of California, Los Angeles, and was educated in India and the U.S.A.