The Role of Individuals in the task of building a growing economy!

Madras Institute of Development Studies

cordially invites you to a

book release function and lecture

The Broken Ladder

The Paradox and the Potential of India’s One Billion

by

Anirudh Krishna

The Edgar T. Thompson Professor of Public Policy and

Professor of political science at Duke University, USA

Prof. K.L. Krishna, Chairman, MIDS

will chair the session and release the book.

April 28, 2017    |   3:30 pm

Adiseshiah Auditorium, MIDS

Despite becoming a global economic force, why does India win so few Olympic medals, and why do so many of its people live in conditions of poverty? Why have opportunities not become available more broadly? How can growing individuals assist with the task of building a growing economy?

Summer Workshop-Seminar on Heidegger @ Calicut

PATHWAYS 2017

Making Sense Of Heidegger

Centre for Phenomenological Studies plans to organize the Summer Workshop-Seminar on the theme, “Making Sense of Heidegger,” in Calicut (Kozhikodu), Kerala from 23 to 25 June 2017. Faculty members and research scholars who are actively pursuing research in the broad area of phenomenology and existentialism are encouraged to participate in the workshop. 

The principal themes of the workshop-seminar are (1) Intersubjectivity and the four-fold in Heidegger, (2)Heidegger and the Religious Phenomenon, (3) Technological and the Ecological Concerns in Heidegger, (4)Heidegger and the Political, and (5)Issues arising from Division III of Being and Time.

Requirements to participate 

All  scholars wishing to participate in the workshop-seminar will be required to present  a 3-page paper on any one of the 5 themes stated above. Although we will be happy if you kindly prepare your  paper on any one of the above 5 themes,you will definitely get a opportunity to present your paper even  if it is on some  other aspects of phenomenology/existentialism. However, in the absence of a paper, participation in the workshop-seminar will be difficult. I believe that the 3-page paper that you present in the seminar-workshop  will be the abstract of a full paper which you need  to write if your 3-page  abstract is selected for publication.Your 3-page abstract paper must be typed double space and mailed to the e-mail id given below on or before 10th June 2017 positively. 

Lecture on 'Women Writing in India'

Madras Institute of Development Studies

Cordially invites you for its

Annual MIDS Founder’s Day Lecture

on Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Prof. Susie Tharu, a well- known scholar, author and formerly Professor, Department of Cultural Studies, EFL University, Hyderabad, will deliver the lecture “25 Years Later: Women Writing in India Reconsidered”.

The lecture will be held in the Adiseshiah Auditorium, MIDS, and the function will start at 5.30 pm.

About Susie Tharu

You are Invited...

MIDS Seminar Series - April 2017

Topic: The Multinationalisms of WEB Du Bois and Rabindranath Tagore

Speaker: Hari Ramesh, PhD Candidate, Political Science, Yale University

Chair: A. R. Venkatachalapathy, Professor, MIDS

Date & Time: Wednesday, 12 April 2017, 3:30 pm

Venue: Adiseshiah Auditorium, MIDS

All are Invited!

Rabindranath Tagore and WEB Du Bois are two prominent figures frequently cited as representative of the soul of a people.

Du Bois rose to national prominence as the leader of the Niagara Movement, a group of African-American activists who wanted equal rights for blacks. In his numerous writings on India, Du Bois returned time and again to an analogy that would come to be called the internal colony thesis, claiming, as he does in 1943, that “we American Negroes are the bound colony of the United States just as India is of England.”

The picture attached is a rare copy of the manuscript of the Letter from Rabindranath Tagore to W. E. B. Du Bois, ca. July 12, 1929, which contains the poet's message of peace to the readers of the "Crisis."

The Doctor as a Fictional Character...

The doctor as a Character in literature has always enthused the literati of all ages and in all climes – for their multifarious depictions – from the nefarious to the generous, from the avaricious to the capricious, from the fabulous to the disastrous, from the mischievous to the adventurous – well, you have ‘em all here, giving us the culturati, goody-goody reasons to witness both the Jekylls and the Hydes of a doctor’s persona.

This three-part series on ‘Docs in Lit,’ seeks to throw further light on Docs of all hues and shades!

So it’s basically Doctors all the way!

Dr. Faustus (1588), a play by Christopher Marlowe, is a dramatization of the Faust legend and a masterpiece of Elizabethan playwright Marlowe.

Doctor Faustus (1947), a novel by Nobel Laureate Thomas Mann. Nobel Prize winner Mann wrote this book in the United States, after fleeing both Nazi Germany and Switzerland during World War II. This novel is a fictional return to the Germany Mann left, and an attempt to come to terms with the society that had forced him out.

Doctor Zhivago (1957), a novel by Nobel Laureate Boris Pasternak. The book was refused publication in the USSR, due to its independent-minded stance on the October Revolution.

Doctor Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party (1980), is a novel by Graham Greene. This somewhat bleak novel centers on a rich Englishman living in Geneva who gives dinner parties in which he humiliates his guests.

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a novella by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson first published in 1886. The story is about a man who alternates between two personae - Dr. Henry Jekyll and Mr. Edward Hyde. Today, the names of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, have become synonymous with someone who exhibits a split personality - between their private and public selves. 

The Country Doctor, a novel by Honoré de Balzac, published in 1833 as Le Médecin de campagne. Dr. Benassis is a compassionate and conscientious physician who ministers to the psychological and spiritual as well as physical needs of the villagers among whom he has chosen to practice medicine. He has been instrumental in transforming the once-impoverished community into a progressive and healthy town.

The Story of Doctor Dolittle, Being the History of His Peculiar Life at Home and Astonishing Adventures in Foreign Parts (1920), written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting, is the first of his Doctor Dolittle books, about a man who learns to talk to animals and becomes their champion around the world.

'Anatomising' Literature!

‘Anatomy’ in Literature

Have you ever wondered about this curious streak of having an oxymoronic terminology, incorporating the ‘scientific’ to the ‘literary’?

Well, we do have good examples that vouch to this fusion, in the renowned Russian physician and short story writer Anton Chekov, whose famous lines -

"Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress; when I get tired of one, I spend the night with the other,”

speaks volumes to a physician’s love for literature.

Now let’s hack the difference in usage between these two terms!

Anatomy in medicine would denote the science dealing with the form and structure of living organisms.

Whereas

Anatomy, in literature, would mean the dividing of a topic into parts for detailed examination or analysis.

A few examples of ‘Anatomy’ in Literature

Lyly’s Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit - 1578

Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit (1578), marked the beginning of John Lyly’s literary career, made him a best-selling author, and afforded him a reputation as one of the most prominent prose writers of the era.

It is perhaps more accurately remembered for its inflated language known as euphuism, a highly artificial style adopted from Latin prose and never before attempted in English.

Congrats Heber!

Congratulating Bishop Heber College, Tiruchirappalli, on finding a prestigious place among the TOP FIVE COLLEGES in India. Kudos Heber!

It’s no easy task to find a place among the Top Five Colleges in the whole of India, and especially when it's certified by the Ministry of HRD, Govt of India!

Although many many factors have contributed to this top notcher status in India, one special feather in the cap to Heber would be its magnificent library (Can’t help recollect Lamb’s Oxford in the Vacation!)

Well, yes! the Library at Heber, would by all means, be one of THE BEST among all the libraries that you’ve come across in Indian Colleges and Universities, I bet!

If at all you pay a visit to Tiruchirappalli, yes, please pay a visit the famous Rock Fort Temple (Ucchi Pillayar Temple), in Chathiram Bus Stand, and the second stop for you should be the Bishop Heber College Library!  No exaggerations on that!

With a visionary par excellence as the Librarian who is all dedication personified and always passionate about his students’ academic progress and great future in mind, you need not worry about your studies and your future at all!

Such commitment, such passion for excellence, can rarely be rivaled.

  

You just need to surrender yourself in toto, to the Librarian and to the Great Library @ Heber, and the rest is taken care of! 

For a peek into the layout and the holdings in the three huge floors of this magnificent library, please click HERE.

The librarian Dr. Manalan doubles up as a parent, as a local guardian, as a counsellor all rolled in one, and he is available 24x7 @ Heber. The fact that he’s retiring in two more years, gives me the shudder and literally brings tears to my eyes!

Such was his impact on me – an insignificant speck! 

(Imagine how happy i must've been when i saw my 'guiding light' Dr. Jesudoss Manalan, being one of the first to turn up for my PhD defence!)

This blog post HERE is one among a host of testimonies to the fact that Bishop Heber deserves a prestigious regal and royal recline at the pinnacle, among the TOP FIVE COLLEGES in India, ranked by none other than the National Institutional Ranking Framework that comes under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Govt of India.

Kudos Heber!

the Concept of 'the Other'

Notes on ‘the Other’

As used by the French writer Simone de Beauvoir, the concept of ‘the Other’ describes women’s status in patriarchal, androcentric cultures. While men are ‘the One’ (in other words, beings in and of themselves), women are ‘the Other’, beings defined only in relation to men. A woman, de Beauvoir wrote, is ‘defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute – she is the Other’ (1997 [1953]: 16).

De Beauvoir’s ideas on women as the Other were set out in The Second Sex (first published in English in 1953). Drawing on the philosophical arguments of Hegel and Sartre, de Beauvoir saw that relationships between individuals were marked by a fundamental contradiction. Each individual self seeks to act freely and autonomously, but simultaneously requires interaction with others in order to define that self. In de Beauvoir’s words, ‘the subject can be posed only in being opposed’ (1997: 16). Generally, individuals are forced to recognise the reciprocity of Otherness. Through our encounters with other individuals, it becomes evident that, just as we see them as ‘the Other’, we ourselves are seen by them as ‘the Other’. However, in the case of women and men, this reciprocity of Otherness is not recognised. Instead, ‘one of the contrasting terms [men] is set up as the sole essential, denying any relativity in regard to its correlate and defining the latter [women] as pure otherness’ (1997: 17–18).

De Beauvoir offers a range of reasons for women’s status as the Other, including the role played by women’s reproductive capacities in limiting their autonomy in the eyes of men. An important aspect of her argument, though, lies in identifying women’s complicity in their subordination. Men, in defining themselves as ‘the One’, position women as ‘the Other’. Women do not regain the status of being ‘the One’, according to de Beauvoir, because they largely accept this state of affairs. ‘Thus, woman may fail to claim the status of subject because she lacks definite resources, because she feels the necessary bond that ties her to man regardless of reciprocity and because she is often very well pleased with her role as the Other’ (1997: 21). Therefore, it is suggested that women identify with the patriarchal, androcentric image of themselves (particularly as reproductive and sexual beings) and so regard themselves as the Other. They have ‘chosen’ to remain ‘beings in themselves’ rather than become ‘beings for themselves’ (Okely 1986: 59), because this status offers them benefits, including the evasion of full, adult moral responsibility and autonomy (Evans 1985: 61).

Fully-funded International PhD Programme for PostGrads in Literature!

Dear final year PostGrads in Literature,

Alison Donnell

On behalf of Alison Donnell, Professor of Modern Literatures in English, SFHEA, I would like to call your attention to a wonderful opportunity for you to do a fully-funded PhD studentship for 39 months starting 1 October 2017 to work on a project on Caribbean Literary Heritage funded by the Leverhulme Trust (CoA Prof Kei Miller).

The project entails sustained exploration of West Indian writing published and written for local and educational contexts and will investigate why these writings accrued less literary value than those by writers who migrated to the UK and writings published by metropolitan literary houses. The research will be underpinned by the methodologies of feminist recovery research, book and publishing history, as well as postcolonial literary theory. Archives to be consulted include: publishers archives (Reading, UK); BBC Written Archives Centre (Caversham); Caribbean Examinations Council archives & Special Collections of University of the West Indies, Cave Hill (Barbados), and the West Indiana Collection, UWI (Trinidad).

The successful student will have input into the final project design and, as part of the project team, will join in project events and publications.

To apply for this studentship you will have - 

ESSENTIAL:-

• Academic qualifications in Literature, including knowledge of postcolonial literatures (preferably Caribbean literature) at BA or MA level
• Skills and disposition to help organise, deliver and participate in public engagement activities & social media channels
• Good organisation and time-management skills
• Self-motivation and the ability to work as part of a team