Confy on Language Endangerment and Revitalisation @ Mysore

6TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON

ENDANGERED AND LESSER KNOWN LANGUAGES (ELKL-6)

SCHEME FOR PROTECTION AND PRESERVATION OF ENDANGERED LANGUAGES (SPPEL)

CENTRAL INSTITUTE OF INDIAN LANGUAGES

MANASAGANGOTRI, MYSURU - 570006

“LANGUAGE ENDANGERMENT AND LANGUAGE REVITALIZATION:

POLICIES, PLANNING AND PRACTICES”

21 – 23 FEBRUARY 2018

CALL FOR PAPERS

We invite submissions on the following and related sub-themes:

Documentation of endangered and lesser-known languages

Language ecology

Language endangerment scenario

Language policy and language planning

Language revitalization

Community’s participation in language revitalization process

Intercollegiate Student Seminar @ WCC

The PG & Research Department of English

Women’s Christian College (Autonomous), Chennai

presents

Intercollegiate Student Seminar

Pen, People, Protest:

Mahasweta Devi in Contemplation

28 July 2017

9 am to 1 pm

Regn Fee: Rs. 250

Details HERE

MIDS Seminar Series

Politics and Poetics in the Reign of Kulottunga Chola

Speaker

Dr Whitney Cox

Chair, Department of South Asian Languages & Civilizations,

University of Chicago

Chair

A.R. Venkatachalapathy

Professor, MIDS

Day & Date

July 20, 2017     Thursday     3:30 p.m.

Venue

Adiseshiah Auditorium, MIDS

Confy @ Virudhunagar

MIDS Seminar Series - 'Women & Work in India'

Topic

A Conjectural History of Cultural Ideas on Women and Work in India

Speaker

Karen Pechilis

Distinguished Professor of Humanities, Drew University (New Jersey), and 2016-2017 Fulbright-Nehru Senior Scholar

Chair

S. Anandhi

Associate Professor, MIDS

Date & Time

July 17, 2017     Monday     3:30 p.m.

Venue

Adiseshiah Auditorium, MIDS

Memorial Lecture @ Univ of Kerala

Noplag Scholarship Essay contest

Win $3500 Student Scholarship from Noplag!

NoPlag is happy to announce the start of the Noplag Scholarship Essay contest.

1. The length of the essay should be at least 700 words.

2. The essay must correspond with the suggested topic.

3. It must be written in English.

4. The essay is to be typed and double-spaced. Font must be no smaller than 12 point Times New Roman.

5. The essay must be coherent and correspond with the structure of the chosen essay type.

6. Reference style - per your choice, no specific requirement.

7. The essay must have an introduction with a thesis statement, body paragraphs and a conclusion.

8. It must include standardized citations and a bibliography as well as follow accepted standards regarding attribution of quotations, arguments, and ideas of others.

9. Please make sure the essay you submit is original. You can ensure in the originality of the text using plagiarism checker here.

10. Please consider the following topics to focus the essay on:

Workshop @ O. P. Jindal's

O. P. Jindal Global University

Sonipat, Haryana

Two-day Workshop on Academic and Research Writing

28, 29 July 2017

The O. P. Jindal Global University is organizing a two day workshop on Academic and Research Writing at its magnificent campus in Sonipat, Haryana. The resource persons for the workshop will include experts from the O.P.Jindal Global University, IFLU Hyderabad, IFLU Lucknow, IGNOU and Delhi University.

Topics to be covered in the workshop

Academic Writing: An Introduction

Dr Nandini Sahu, Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), New Delhi

Writing a Research Paper

Dr Anand Mahanand, English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Hyderabad

Critical Academic Writing

Dr Rajneesh Arora, English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Lucknow

Note-taking, Note making, Summary, Abstract, Literature Review

Dr Gopa Nayak, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana

Introduction to Research Methods

Dr Kishore Kumar, English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Hyderabad

Common Errors in Academic Writing

Dr Bhuvaneswari Raman, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana

Research writing in a multi-lingual Context

Dr Farida Irani, University of Delhi, New Delhi

Confy @ Central University of Gujarat

Centre for English Studies

School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies

Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar

A TWO-DAY INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON

WOMEN AND SECTARIAN VIOLENCE

IN SOUTH ASIA: FICTION AND REALITY

9-10 November 2017

The conference aims to enquire how South Asian women, situationally, moving beyond the traditional notions of motherhood, family and ‘womanhood’, creates a trail of some yet unexplored trait. Is she trying to re-create the notion of ‘woman’ in her ‘context of situation’, region and gender? Has there been an insistent attempt to re-contextualize herself?

 Themes under discussion
v Sectarian violence and Women
v Caste, Society and Violence
v Women and the mutilated body
v Humiliation and Self
v After-rape: Recovery, Revival and Reconciliation
v Experience and Body: Vulnerable and Viable
v After-experience: Body, trauma, memory and forgetting
v War and Women
v Widows, half-widows and war-widows
v Visual culture and women
v Cinematic (mis)representation of the traumatic woman
v Memory, history and women

Confy @ American College, Madurai

International Conference

On

English Language, Literature and Linguistics

At

The American College, Madurai

26 July 2017

Last date for registration, submission of abstract and full paper is 24 July 2017

Link to the Brochure HERE

Confy @ Sree Sankaracharya, Trivandrum

UGC Sponsored National Seminar

Organized by

DEPARTMENT OF MALAYALAM

Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit

Th­iruvananthapuram Regional Centre

(First University in Kerala accredited with A Grade by NAAC in the First Cycle)

In association with

Kerala State Youth Commission

27 – 30 June 2017

Final Schedule of Events HERE 

'Bonding with Ruskin'

Madras Players

present

Bonding with Ruskin

23 June at 19:00 to 25 June at 21:30

at the

Museum Theatre, Egmore

The Play which has a feast of colour and sound, looks to recreate the innocence and irreverence of Ruskin Bond’s stories on stage. As it is with most retellings of famous writers’ on stage, Ruskin Bond himself plays a pivotal character in most of his stories. The greatest attribute of the stories threaded together as a play you will see, is the range of his writing – in terms of plot, landscapes, characters and genre. From his love for the quiet hills of Deoli to the haunted mansions in Dehra. From innocent tales of unrequited love to terrible stories of violence in marriage. We as an audience journey into each story as his characters journey through a train - and at each stop – a different tale awaits. The play attempts to weave together a variety of musical & story telling techniques with the text of bond providing a completely different yet honest perspective of the writer’s best stories.

Dear Students of II MA English,

Please find below, the link to two important texts that we intend to discuss in class, during the course of this semester.

'Structuralism and Literary Criticism,' by Gerard Genette, HERE.  
We shall start working on this seminal text from Monday, 03 July 2017 onwards.

'The Metaphysical Poets,' by T. S. Eliot, HERE.
&
Eliot's Notes for 'The Metaphysical Poets,' HERE. 
We shall start working on this significant text from Wednesday, 28 June 2017 onwards.

'Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,' by Derrida, HERE

Gear up! Let's get started!

Best wishes,

Dr. Rufus

Course Teacher

We must subject the canon to criticism!

There is a need to interrogate concepts such as 

‘nation’, ‘sovereignty’ and ‘culture’ 

to arrive at more pragmatic ways of living

In one of Buddhism’s canonical texts, Sangiti-suttanta, monk Sariputta offered an explanation on why the early Jainas failed to thrive unlike, presumably, he and fellow Buddhists. He claimed that a great schism had emerged among the Jainas and that they were bent on killing each other because their “doctrine and discipline were so ill-proclaimed”.

By ‘ill-proclaimed’, he meant that keeping the Buddhist sangha together required them to reiterate their adherence — via chanting and memorisation — to the Buddha’s originary discourses. In essence, according to Sariputta, an elaborate and intricate network of Buddhist lives could only thrive and survive if they collectively tied themselves to the mast of ritual and routine.

Sariputta’s diagnoses of what can drive groups to divisions — mishearing, misremembering, misunderstanding the originary discourse, infidelity to the primordial text — have emerged in various guises over time. Historically, those without any creedal affiliations to a text, even ostensibly strange ones, were often described away as ‘barbarians’. Who remembers the Visigoths now? But we are inundated with Roman history, even if the latter killed many times over.

Look them in the eye with confidence...

“The one minute that changed Constance’s dynamics with the world, her outlook and worldview, forever”

I met Constance, a 40-year-old adult literacy worker from Sierra Leone, at a leadership training conference in Singapore in 1996. We shared a room during the three weeks the conference lasted. She was chatty and fun to be with.

Dr. Usha  Paulraj

“When I was young,” said Constance during a chat, “I was very thin and small. At the street tap the big fat women always assumed right of way and made straight for the tap ignoring queues formed by puny ones like me. I used to envy them and thought, if I were fatter I could enjoy more freedom of speech.”

“But a day came,” continued Constance, “when I surprised myself with the power of my tongue. A big-built woman pushed me aside saying she needed water more than I did. I retorted, ‘Of course you do. I know you have many nappies to wash for you’ve been giving birth every year.’ The woman was shocked speechless. Then began a torrent of abuse. She yelled at me like mad. But I got more respect from her from that day.”

Constance’s newfound felicity with freedom of speech was short-lived. It had not grown with her years, obviously. Our conference schedule included a course in effective speaking. As part of the training we were called on to make one-minute speeches about ourselves.

Constance was visibly uneasy as she prepared for her speech, and when the time came for her to address the class, her composure failed her totally. I was both shocked and amused to find her extremely nervous. Her feet shifted uneasily and her hands clutched her skirt at the sides. When she spoke her eyes vaguely fixed on something beyond the window and what she said went over our heads. She was rated poor by the instructor, who suggested she leave her skirt alone, steady her feet and look at the audience in the eye when she talked.

Confy @ IITM

The Department of Humanities and Social Sciences

 Indian Institute of Technology Madras

invites papers for the

International Seminar & Workshop on Anglo-Indian Studies

4, 5 August 2017

on

“Midnight’s Orphans”: Problematising the Postcolonial in the Telling of Anglo-Indian (Hi)stories

 

The compelling contrast between the ‘Midnight’s Children’ and the ‘Midnight’s Orphans’ has been used in multiple contexts to highlight what/who have been left behind/left out in the Postcolonial scenario. Pertinent questions in this regard have already been asked and continue to be asked in studies related to literature, culture, gender and society. This seminar cum workshop is an attempt to locate the scholarship on the Anglo-Indian community within the broad canvass of Postcolonial Studies thereby allowing an interdisciplinary and transnational approach towards the understanding of the Anglo-Indian in India and the diaspora.

Book Review Competition 2017 @ UCC

II MA English - Literary Criticism - Texts

Dear Students of II MA English,

Kindly have a personal copy of the following texts handled by me this current semester for the paper on Literary Criticism.

We shall begin the Literary Criticism class with Eliot’s essay on “The Metaphysical Poets.”

Arnold’s “Study of Poetry” [SR]

            T. S. Eliot’s “The Metaphysical Poets” [SR]

Harold Bloom’s “Preface and Prelude” from the Western Canon [SR]

Confy @ Amity University, Noida

Amity Law School, Amity University

invites you for an

Interdisciplinary National Conference

on

POSTCOLONIALISM:

INDIAN RESPONSE AND TRANSFORMATION

22, 23 August  2017

AMITY LAW SCHOOL, NOIDA

The objective of this Interdisciplinary two days National Conference on “Postcolonialism: Indian Response and Transformation” is to trace India’s specific responses to colonialism and to analyse the postcolonial understanding of the same. To landmark the intellectual developments of the Postcolonial Indian times and to critically analyse the different school of thoughts of the period of transformation which realised in current era. To trace the socio- political intricacies of contemporary Indian times and to identify the indigenous legal patterns and traits of society. To analyse the period of transformation and to look over the changing status of growth and to identify its impact on present juncture. To have a better understanding of India’s specific responses to colonialism and postcolonialism among researchers, students and the masses.

Proposed outcome of the conference -

Ø  To access the impact of colonialism.

Ø  To analyse the period of transformation.

Ø  To trace the intricacies of contemporary India.

Ø  To identify the indigenous traits of the Indian society.

Ø  To landmark the intellectual developments of the Postcolonial Indian times.

Ø  To develop better understanding of Postcolonialism among researchers, students and masses.

IMPORTANT DATES

Confy on Ageing @ Jadavpur University

A Two-Day National Conference

(under the CAS III programme)

on

Ageing, Ageism and Cultures

by

Department of English, Centre for Advanced Studies, Jadavpur University

Dates: 21, 22 September 2017

Concept Note

This conference seeks to address discourses of ageing and ageism, taking off from the definition of the term ‘ageism’ inaugurated by Robert N. Butler’s pioneering works on the subject. Ageism, as Butler observes, is non-normative, vis-à-vis youth, since society is largely structured on the assumption that the majority is not old. By the late 19th century, the ageing body had acquired a negative signification, when 19th century science, to quote J. A. Vincent (2006), “reconceptualized death as an internal phenomenon of the body”. Vincent roots his argument in Foucault (1973) who observes how the aged body was reduced to a degenerative state whereby the meanings of old age and the body's deterioration seemed condemned to signify each other.

The negative stereotyping of ageing is most apparent in social prescriptions regarding how one is supposed to age. Just as certain forms of gendered behaviour are regarded as unbecoming of men or women, the ageing individual, irrespective of gender, is expected to adhere to a set of performative codes in order not to violate norms of respectability. For instance, ageing is often associated with austerity, detachment from materialistic pursuits and renunciation, and any digression from this norm is often frowned upon. But, is ageing all about loss of power and agency? Although within discourses of ageism, elderly people are most often perceived as victims and ageing is seen as aberration with respect to the more ‘valued group’ of younger people, it is not always the younger generation that ‘others’ the elderly.

At last! Bob Dylan's Nobel Lecture in Literature!!!

When I first received this Nobel Prize for Literature, I got to wondering exactly how my songs related to literature. I wanted to reflect on it and see where the connection was. I'm going to try to articulate that to you. And most likely it will go in a roundabout way, but I hope what I say will be worthwhile and purposeful.

If I was to go back to the dawning of it all, I guess I'd have to start with Buddy Holly. Buddy died when I was about eighteen and he was twenty-two. From the moment I first heard him, I felt akin. I felt related, like he was an older brother. I even thought I resembled him. Buddy played the music that I loved – the music I grew up on: country western, rock ‘n' roll, and rhythm and blues. Three separate strands of music that he intertwined and infused into one genre. One brand. And Buddy wrote songs – songs that had beautiful melodies and imaginative verses. And he sang great – sang in more than a few voices. He was the archetype. Everything I wasn't and wanted to be. I saw him only but once, and that was a few days before he was gone. I had to travel a hundred miles to get to see him play, and I wasn't disappointed... ...

Read Bob Dylan's complete speech at the Official Website HERE

The YouTube version of Bob's lecture, recorded on 04 June 2017, can also be accessed, HERE.

Course in Husserl's Phenomenology @ Pondicherry

Centre for Phenomenological Studies

Invites you for a

One-month’s

Foundation Course in Husserl's Phenomenology

in the Gurukula System of Education

for

students and research scholars in philosophy and allied disciplines 

from 

01 October to 31 October 2017

at

Sri Aurobindo Center for Advanced Research, Pondicherry

The course aims to provide a comprehensive training in phenomenological themes focusing on the works of Edmund Husserl. The course will impart necessary skills and knowledge in phenomenology to undertake research in the area of existentialism, critical theory, postmodernism, consciousness studies, philosophy of mind and other contemporary schools of thought including phenomenology of religion, theology and the like.

ELTAI Confy at Ernakulam welcomes you!

ELTAI welcomes you to attend the

12th International

&

48th Annual Conference

at

St. Teresa's College

Park Avenue Road, Ernakulam (Cochin), Kerala

29th, 30th June to 1st July 2017

(Thursday, Friday & Saturday)

On

English Language Acquisition: Western Theories and Eastern Practices

Several significant and informative events are organised:

Plenaries

 Tete-a-tete with Professionals

Workshops

My Experiments

'Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob'

Writing a good novel about the Internet is almost as difficult as shooting a good film about the effects of drugs. You may try all the available fireworks, and you’ll still fail. Blurred images, out-of-focus edges, tweaked sitar sounds, ridiculous echoes, and still you’ll get nothing close to representing the experience.

So far, defining the Internet with the language of literature has been as hard as explaining consciousness. Attempts to subsume the Internet into contemporary literature have been embarrassing. How can the instrument of knowledge understand itself? How can our own mind, slowly melting into a server where we store our photographs, memories, comments, emotions, chats, bank details, dreams and aspirations, understand its own technological nature? More importantly, how can a powerful instrument of meaning like literature be used to understand what seems to be its nemesis, the constantly distracting need for useless and disconnected novelties—the Internet of social networks?

One writer has succeeded in this mission, and in such a creative manner that, although everything indicated he would miss the mark, he triumphed. First of all, he wrote it on a computer. And he sees the contradiction: “Now writers used computers, which were the by-products of global capitalism’s uncanny ability to run the surplus population into perpetual servants. All of the world’s computers were built by slaves in China.”

Jarett Kobek, the author of I Hate the internet knows what he’s doing. And he tells you. In detail. It’s beyond meta-literature. It’s pure brilliance.

Writing “a bad novel”

It’s hard to write about the Internet because it is so ephemeral. Harder still is it to have the guts to self-publish a novel built with the hyperbolic language of online interaction. And then to market it as “a bad novel” that promises to mimic the Internet “in its irrelevant and jagged presentation of content.”

Kobek delivers on the promise, because his style is a mix between a troll’s rant against Silicon Valley’s tech barons and the language of Wikipedia entries, which is actually inspired by Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5.

I Hate the internet—A Useful Novel Against Men, Money, and the Filth of instagram, as the full title explains, has become an immediate sensation after an enthusiastic review in The New York Times. But it is a text that most publishing companies couldn’t print because of its candid attack on so much that Western society stands for. Including publishing companies. Funnily enough, success arrived thanks to the Internet. Kobek used his enemy’s weakness for the first successful pushback against the culture of Silicon Valley’s smiling billionaires—the perfect Judo move.