Schedule: The Indian World(s) of Indian English Literature

14^th March 2013

Session 1: 10-11.30

a.      Introduction and Welcome

b.      Explorations

1.      D VENKAT RAO, Literary Inquiries: Some Future Anterior Reflections

2.      MAKARAND PARANJAPE, "Indian English Literature--Changing Wor(l)ds."

Chair: Nageswara Rao

TEA 11.30-11.45

Session 2: 11.45-1.15

Among Indian Literatures

1.      MADHUMITA ROY, ANJALI GERA ROY, The Talismanic Stories: A Comparative Study of Chandrakanta and Haroun and the Sea of Stories

2.      KOMAL AGARWAL, History and Authenticity from Local to Global Encounters: Continuity in ‘Regional’ Cultural and Linguistic Inflections in Phanishwar Nath Renu’s Maila Aanchal and Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies

3.      BRATI BISWAS, Marichjhapi massacre in Fiction: Language, Caste and Location

Chair: Avadesh Kumar SIngh

LUNCH 1.15-2.00 PM

Session 3: 2-3.30

Locations

1.      AVADESH KUMAR SINGH, "Worlds with the World: World literature and Indian Worlds in Indian English Literature."

2.      MINI CHANDRAN, Local Worlds in a Global Language

3.      ROHINI MOKASHI-PUNEKAR, 'Aspects of Subalterneity in IWE: some reflections'

Chair: Harish Trivedi

TEA 3.30-3.45

Session 4: 3.45-5.15

Mediations

1.      ARSHAD SAID KHAN, Desissies: Mapping a School of Indian Transgender Erotica Online

2.      MEENA PILLAI, Is there an ‘Indian English’ Cinema? Midnight’s Children and the Circuits and Traces of Indian English Literature in Diasporic Cinematic Imagination

3.      PRIYA KUMAR, The Making of the Sunderbans in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide

Chair: GK Das

Conference Dinner 7.30 pm onwards

Poetry Reading by Nabina Das, Makarand Paranjape, Dhananjay Singh, GJV Prasad, and others. Entertainment programme by CES.

15^th March 2013

Session 5: 10-11.30

Contexts

1.      M ASADUDDIN, The Contiguous Worlds of IE Writers: Some Observations

2.      RINA RAMDEV AND DEBADITYA BHATTACHARYA, The Indian Troubadour: Circuits of Authorship and Patronage in the Age of the Literature Festival

3.      SOMESHWAR SATI, Packaging India in Indigenous Narrative modes: The poetics, politics and economics of the novelistic practice

Chair: Makarand Paranjape

TEA 11.30-11.45

Session 6: 11.45-1.15

Interrogations

1.      MARGARET L.PACHUAU, Situating Indian English Literature :The Mizo Dynamics  

2.      VEIO POU, Making of a Frontier Literature: Writings in English from the Northeast

3.       SOMJYOTI MRIDHA, Ethnonationalism in recent ‘Kashmiri’ English Writings: Politics of Identity and (Un)Belonging

Chair: M Asaduddin

LUNCH 1.15-2.00 PM

Session 7: 2-3.30

Identities

1.      ANGELIE MULTANI, Crossing the Lakshman Rekha: Transgressive Women Artistes

2.       RAJ KUMAR, Radicalization of Dalit Self: A Reading of Dalit Literature

3.       MEENAKSHI MALHOTRA, The Different Life-Worlds of Indian Lifewriting

Chair:  D Venkat Rao

Tea 3.30-3.45

Session 8: 3.45-5.30

Poetics

1.      SHRUTI SAREEN, Frontiers: Dividing and Connecting Places – in the poetry of Arundhathi Subramaniam, Anjum Hasan, C.P. Surendran and Tabish Khair

2.      WAFA HAMID “Ravishing (Dis)unities” : The Poetics of Spatial and Religious Identity in Agha Shahid Ali’s Ghazals

3.      ANURIMA CHANDA Depictions of India through Indian English Children’s Literature: From Didacticism and Nonsense towards Entertainment

4.      DHANANJAY SINGH  "Reading Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children in a Classical Indian Paradigm"

Chair: Raj Kumar

5.30: Valedictory

National Conference on Dalit Art and Imagery

Depiction and aspiration through visual imagery

The movement of Dalit arts and imagery began concomitant to Ambedkar anti-caste civil right movement between early 1920’s to mid 1950’s. It gathered visible recognition in the early 1990’s drawing the attention of international who began to conceptualize and discuss the same more clearly only in the 2000’s. The movement through Art and Imagery captured various dimensions of the Dalit experience and history with untouchability, exclusion from society the hierarchies of the caste system, oppressive religious summons etc. What qualifies as Dalit Art and Imagery is a subject of negotiation but the importance of its role in providing insights into the social transformation needed for a casteless society are evident.

Prof. Gary Tartakov is an eminent international author, among the first academics who began to capture and ideate creatively the movements’ conscious on various public platforms. The recent Oxford University Press book Dalit Arts and Visual Imagery is a series of articles showcasing and discussing various distinct depictions themed on the Dalit movement in India. This landmark book has brought to the limelight the Dalit Art and Imagery movement and highlighted various aspects.

This National conference will draw together artists, writers, activists, academics, policy makers and other persons concerned with the arts and literature from across the nation. To be held at the Jawaharlal Nehru University Convention Centre from the 4^th to the 6^th of March 2013 from 10 am. Central to this conference will be the launch of the book and an exhibition of Dalit Art from leading Dalit artists showcasing their work.

We invite student papers for a panel entitled ‘Dalit in Popular Imagination’ to be held on the second day of the conference. The papers can be from a range of topics relating to Dalit expression and representation in terms of art, cinema and literature. The last date for the submission of abstracts is the 18^th of February. Abstracts are to be sent to: sap.ces@gmail.com.

Ahdaf Soueif at the CES

The Indian World(s) of Indian English Literature

March 14-15, 2013

 

Indian English Literature has had a history of reception in India where it has been questioned on every count but mainly on account of its authenticity – whether the language can ever be capable of representing Indian realities. There has also been a history of reaction from Indian English writers and critics. Interestingly, influential anthologies of Indian English poetry have been titled anthologies of Indian Poetry, almost as if it is only in English that you get India; recently an anthology has gone beyond the borders and called itself an anthology of English poetry. For quite some time now Indian English literature has been represented outside India by Diasporic writers and has come to be almost synonymous with their works.

 

However, we have always had a strong body of writing that takes part in the construction of the contexts and the contestation of Indian spaces and makes its place in various worlds that constitute India. Indian English literature is one of India’s many literatures. It is not only politics or social life that Indian English literature shares with other Indian literatures but also aesthetics, attitudes to language and the sense of the literary. Indian English works have not just experimented with Indian literary forms, they have also situated themselves in the continuities of Indian literatures.

 

It would be fruitful to study Indian English literature in conjunction with other Indian literatures including in terms of the market and popular genres. How does Indian English literature construct or mediate with Indian world(s) in newer genres, and in newer media?

 

It is time to study Indian English literature in terms of its Indian world(s) and we hope that the conference will provoke further thinking in the area. 

 

Abstracts of 250 words to be submitted by February 14^th to sap.ces@gmail.com

End of January Talks!

Centre for English Studies

Invites you to

‘From Hooker to Tenzing: Moving, Eating, and Working in the Eastern Himalayas'

A Talk by Dr. Jayeta Sharma, University of Toronto

On the 30^th of January at 4 pm

In Room 016, SLL&CS

&

‘A Place in the Head’

A Talk and Bookreading by

             Anjum Hassan            

On the 31^st of January at 4 pm

In Room 212 (Committee Room), SLL&CS

Seminar Schedule

24^th January 2013

9.00 am to 10.00 am                           Inaugural Session

·        Welcome Address – Prof. GJV Prasad

·        Opening Remarks and Vote of Thanks – Lakshmi Menon & Samana Madhuri, SAP Fellows

10.00 am to 11.00 am                       Session I: Englishing the World: Queries, Methods and Subversions

                                                           Respondent: Prof. Makarand Paranjape

·        Adiba Faiyaz - Discursifying English: The Hegemonic Messiah of India

·        Ankur Konar - Language of Global Cities: Fabrication of Communication and Inclusiveness in Pijush Jha’s Mumbaistan

11.00 am to 11.15 am                        Morning Tea Break

11.15 am to 12.45 pm                      Session II: Through the Looking Glass: Revisiting Canon

                                                           Respondent: Prof. GJV Prasad, CES, JNU

·        Arup K Chatterjee - A Twice-Born Canon and its Reifiction: The Indian Hill Writings of EmilyEden, Fanny Parkes, John Lang, Andrew Wilson, et al.

·        Jyotsna Phanija - Reversing history in reconstructed literature: Ophelia Revisited

·        Sakshi Chanana - Disnarrated as a narrative technique: A Study of Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist and Eleven Minutes

12.45 pm to 1.45 pm                         Lunch Break

1.45 pm to 3.15 pm                         Session III: India in Literature, Indian Literatures

                                                           Respondent: Dr. Hemachandran, CSDS

·        Somjyoti Mridha - Violence as a Trope: Representing Kashmir Conflict in contemporary Indian English Texts.

·        Arindam Ghosh - Language in the Novels of Amitav Ghosh: Socio-lingual Explorations Combining Demographic Concerns, Cultural Resistance and Environmentalism

·        Dhritiman Chakraborty, Anindya Shekhar, Sanchayita Paul - Calibanising English: The Master Signifier Lending Hands to the Peripheral Voice

3.15 pm to 4.45 pm                            Session IV: Around the World in Eighty Literatures

Respondent – Dr Angelie Multani

·        Arunabha Ghosh - Re-mapping America for ‘Being Together’: The Poetics of Change in Gary Snyder’s Turtle Island

·        Pritika Nehra - Reflexive Thinking and Politics-The case of Hannah Arendt and Franz Kafka

4.45 pm                                               Evening Tea

7.30 pm to 9 pm                                Cultural Evening Followed by Dinner at the University Cafeteria

25^th January 2013

10 am to 11.30 am                              Session V: Mapping the Popular Post 9/11

Respondent: Dr. Brinda Bose, Delhi University

·        Ved Prakash - Hip Hop Vip Hop HayeRabba: Music of Sense and Sensibility?

·        Violina Borah - Phantasmic Phoenix: A Study of Post 9/11 American Superhero Movies

·        Ritu Mohan Singh - The Impact of Post-9/11 lucidities on Diaspora Literature and Film Adaptations:   A Case Study of Bride and Prejudice and The Namesake

11.30 am to 11.45 am                         Morning Tea

11.45 am to 1.15 pm                          Session VI: Revisiting the Canon: New Centres, New Margins

Respondent: Dr.Saumyabrata Chaudury, CSDS

·        Murlidhar Sharma - En-visioning the ‘New’: Dance Writings of Ranjabati Sircar

·        Varada Nikalje - Autobiography of Imagination : The Talk-Story as a new genre

·        Daiarisa Rumnong - Memoir: Transgressing Boundaries

1.15 pm to 2 pm                                 Lunch

2 pm to 3.30 pm                                 Session VII: The Final Frontier? Boldly Going Through Cyberspace

Respondent – Dr. Simi Malhotra

·        Lakshmi Menon - “The Wand Chooses the Wizard” (and his boyfriend): Online Slash Fan-fiction, fan-art and the rewriting of the Canon

·        Rijuta Komal Das - The Center And The Virtual: Re-Imaginings Of English In The Digital Space

·        Sapna Dudeja - Studying Alternative Protest in Cyber Space: Through the Prism of the Pink Chaddi Campaign

3.30 pm to 3.45 pm                            Evening Tea

3.45 pm to 5.15 pm                            Session VIII: Battling Babel: Literatures in Translation

Respondent: Prof. Asaddudin, Jamia Millia Islamia

·        Divya Nair – Translating and Transnationalising the “Sub-Altern”: Reading the “regional” “marginal “and the “oppressed” in the discourse of the English translations of the Contemporary Malayalam Dalit Poetry

·        Tenzin Norbu - Translation & Nation Building: A Study of Like Gold That Fears No Fire

·        Jharana Rani - Translating the Untranslatable: The Politics of Language in the English Translation of Yajnaseni

5.15 pm                                               Valedictory Session