Some of the writers he reviewed or wrote essays about were: Raja Rao, Salman Rushdie, Gabriel García Márquez, Shobha De, Kiran Nagarkar, Vikram Seth, K V Puttappa, U R Ananthamurthy, SL Bhyrappa, Shivarama Karanth and Donald Richie (on Akira Kurosawa).
Seduced by the Familiar represents Raghavendra's first extended effort to understand popular cinema in a new way – i.e. neither as the output of authorial presences in the shape of directors nor as symptoms of psychological/social processes (psychoanalysis/ cultural studies) but rather as bodies of texts co-authored by a public to deal with socio-political concerns of their own.
Seduced by the Familiar, which eschews the usual jargon associated with academic writing on cinema and tries to be lucid, and is also important for two other things – an elaborate introduction charting the trajectory of scholarship on the mainstream Hindi film and a first chapter dealing with ‘narrative convention and form’.
\ The work hitherto described is academic criticism but Raghavendra has also written articles/criticism for the lay reader in newspapers and periodicals like Deccan Herald, The Hindu, Caravan, Frontline, The Indian Express, Pioneer, Times of India and online publications like The Wire, Firstpost and Dearcinema.
The collection of essays includes fiction features in a multitude of languages and genres, with examples as different as Salaam Bombay (Mira Nair, 1988), Samskara (Pattabhirama Reddy, 1970), Imagi Ningthem (Aribam Syam Sharma, 1981) and Amar Akbar Anthony (Manmohan Desai, 1977).
Instead of adopting a uniform method, the essays examine each film from its most interesting side – e.g.: Kamal Amrohi's Pakeezah for its baroque aesthetic, Adoor Gopalakrishnan's Mukhamukham for its authorial perspective, and K. Viswanath's Telugu dance-musical Sankarabharanam for its ideological aspects.
When Raghavendra received the National Award in 1997 the citation read as follows: “For his provocative and iconoclastic writing, which inspires debate and discussion, so rare in film criticism today.”[citation needed] Raghavendra has been visiting faculty at various institutions including Indian Institute of Management (Bengaluru), Shrishti School of Art and Design, Mauritius Film Development Corporation, Vishwabharati, Santiniketan, Alliance Francaise de Bangalore and the University of Hyderabad.