Bulbul Tiwari's digital performative dissertation, “Maha Multipedia: The Mahabharata reworked in mixed media for a nine night performance,” explores Indian visual culture of the last 2,000 years; it traverses ritual, classical dance-drama, folk theatre, sculpture, film and television narratives to create an original version of an ancient Indian epic. It was the first entirely digital dissertation at the University of Chicago and only the third of its kind in the U.S. In her talk she will begin by giving a guided tour of this project and then continue to discuss the pitfalls of her approach, the future of the project and perils of doing something new. Tiwari's work blurs the distinction between scholarship and documentary filmmaking and ranges from studies of the heritage of the great Indian epics to documentary films about self-employed women's associations in India, one act plays and "Carriers," a film about truckers in India.