Prashant studies the politics of film aesthetics with a focus on cinemas of India. He is particularly interested in tracing and theorizing the diverse forms, functions, and socio-political significance of comedy across popular, art-house, and documentary films. He also investigates allied questions of intermediality, reflexivity, subversion, and politics of form in cinema.
Before coming to Stanford, Prashant worked as an archivist for The Kabir Project to record, translate and curate a digital archive of folk songs from the oral traditions of South Asia. His poems have appeared in The Bombay Literary Magazine, Nether Quarterly, and Haakara among others. His essays and critical writing have been featured in Seminar and Deep Focus Cinema along with a book chapter in the edited volume Caste, Communication, and Power (2021).