Media Release

Mangaluru, Feb 2: Karnataka Jesuit Fr Richard Rego from Mangaluru has been named LeRoux Chair at the prestigious American Jesuit Seattle University, Washington.

Dr Richard Rego joined the Seattle University's film studies department as professor of international cinema in the first week of January. He will be teaching all through this month.

Dr Rego is teaching a five-credit course in Indian cinema as part of the University's international cinema program, on Visions of Progress in Indian Cinema, charting the trajectory of progress in a variety of Indian language cinemas, and not just the bollywood.

Contrary to popular notions, for Dr Rego Indian cinema is not just the bollywood. He is convinced that bollywood makes up for approximately 15% of Indian cinema. Most of the contribution to Indian cinema comes from the four South Indian languages, viz Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu. In addition, Marathi and Bengali cinemas also contribute handsomely to Indian cinema.

In fact, Dr Rego says that the Mumbai-based bollywood is an insult to India's creativity since the very name bollywood is a copy of Hollywood.

The Jesuit scholar will also be delivering the LeRoux Endowment Public Lecture on "Deconstructing Media-tion, Interrogating Modi-fication: Politics of Imaging Public Personalities" on March 2.

Prof Rego currently teaches in the department of communication at the prestigious St Joseph's College Autonomous, Bengaluru.

Earlier, the Konkani writer and media critic taught journalism and mass communication at St Aloysius College (Autonomous), Mangaluru, where he founded the post graduate department of mass communication. He also established the campus-based community radio Sarang 107.8FM, which he ran 24x7, making it the only 24-hour community radio in the country. Radio Sarang 107.8FM also won two national awards, instituted by the ministry of information and broadcasting, for popularizing local culture.

After his 12 years of teaching at St Aloysius College, Fr Richie, as he is known, studied further and researched at the University of Warwick (2012-13), UK, and was Academic Visitor at the University of Oxford (2013-14). Upon his return to India, he joined St Joseph's College, Bengaluru and headed the department of communication. He also launched two novel UGC-sponsored bachelor of vocation (B Voc) courses in film production and animation.

Currently the media professor at St Joseph's College serves also as director of Post Graduate Studies and Research Centre of the College, giving a fillip to research activities of the College.

Dr Rego has double masters in communication as well as in film and television studies, besides a PhD in Kannada films from Pune University, and cleared National Eligibility Test conducted by UGC. In 2007-08, he completed a major research project for the government of Karnataka through Konkani Sahitya Academy, and in 2006-09, completed a major research project funded by UGC.

He has published widely in his mother tongue Konkani, Kannada, and English and in international journals.