Literary Pentathlon @ Sacred Heart College, Thevara, Kerala

Sacred Heart College

Thevara, Kochi

invites you to the

"SARGAPATHAM 2k17"

an All Kerala Intercollegiate Literary Pentathlon

on

26th & 27th of September 2017

This event starts with a SYMPOSIUM, - a rare genre of literary fest which will be a special experience for Everyone.

SYMPOSIUM

Topic of the Symposium: "Is Privacy a Fundamental Right?"

Moderator: C. R. Neelakandan [Political analyst]

On the panel: Dr. Alexander Jacob IPS (Nodal officer NUPSAS) and Adv. Harish Vasudevan (Environmental Activist)

PENTATHALONS

Essay writing (26-09-17, 10:30 am)

Extempore (26-09-17, 1:30 am)

Quiz (26-09-17, 11:30 am Prelims & finals, 2: 30 pm)

Mock Press (27-09-17, Prelims at 11:30 am & finals at 2:00 pm)

Group Discussion (27-09-17, Prelims at 10:30 am & Finals at 2:00 pm)

Confy @ MES Mampad College, Mampad, Kerala

Poetry Reading @ Sree Sankaracharya University, Kalady

Discussion on 'Indian Democracy' @ Samkaracharya University, Kalady

Confy @ Osmania University, Hyderabad

62nd All India English Teachers Conference

Organized by Osmania University Centre for International

Programmes (OUCIP), Hyderabad

under the Aegis of

The Association for English Studies of India (AESI)

on

Globalization: Emerging Trends in English Language and

Literature

18- 20 January 2018

OUCIP, OU Campus, Hyderabad-500 007, TS

AESI (The Association for English Studies of India)

In the early 1930's, Indian educationists began to feel the need of schemes and methods of teaching English in the country. In 1937 the first formal association was formed at Allahabad University and within next ten years it took its shape as IJES, now it is AESI. The executive Body plans and executes the academic decisions. Annual Conference is a major event of the Association conducted at various universities. So far 60 conferences have been organized successfully. The official website of The AESI is www.aesi-india.org. which can be visited by all to get the information about life membership, annual membership and the conference. The members are entitled to get a free copy of the Indian Journal of English Studies which is the official organ of the Indian Association for English Studies in India.

Osmania University

With a sprawling campus of nearly 1600 acres and buildings of majestic beauty and architectural splendor, Osmania University, is perhaps, the largest higher education system in the Country. It is a home to nearly 30,000 students pursuing their higher studies in its Campus, Constituent, Affiliated Colleges and District Centres. Its faculty and staff number nearly 5000. It is a multi-faculty and multidisciplinary university, offering rich and varied courses in the fields of Humanities, Arts, Sciences, Social Sciences, Law, Engineering, Technology, Commerce and Business Management, Information Technology and Oriental Languages. The University's strategic planning, teaching-and learning policies and research direction have always emphasized respect for the concerns of the society and the need to address the issues that challenge it. In recognition of its excellent academic achievements, Osmania University had the distinction of being awarded the 'A' Grade status by the National Accreditation and Assessment Council (NAAC) of the University Grants Commission, Government of India in the year 2008.

Seminar on 'Indian Knowledge Systems' @ NSS College, Pandalam, Kerala

Call for Papers

Department of English

N. S. S. College, Pandalam, Kerala

 is organizing a

Two-day UGC Sponsored

Multidisciplinary National Seminar

on

Sustaining Indian Knowledge Systems:

Academic Representations Through English Studies

05, 06 December 2017

The declining vestiges of colonialism are being replaced by the neo-colonialist machinations of global powers leading to cultural imperialism, cultural amnesia and Westoxication. The need of the hour is to rediscover and reaffirm the tangential domain of knowledge generated and disseminated from the subcontinent. The reinventing of indigenous knowledge systems is in fact a journey towards an inquiry into our own roots and identity. This multidisciplinary seminar proposes to harness the synergies of multiple areas such Philosophy, History, Literature, Linguistics, Music, Performance (Dance) and Folklore dwelling on perspectives that share certain common worldviews.

Thrust Areas:

Ancient/ Medieval/ Modern Texts

IKS and Eco-Aesthetics

Indian Aesthetics

Indian Arts and Music

Theatre: “The Play is the Thing”

Cinema: Representation and Critique

Literary Historiography and Criticism with reference to Bhasha Literatures

Indigenous Knowledge and Endogenous Development

Alternate Knowledge Systems: Dalit/Tribal/Gender Minority

Cultural Imperialism and Cultural Amnesia: Indian Experience

Application of IKS for a sustainable India

Confy on Diasporic Writing @ Central University of Gujarat

Centre for Study of Diaspora

Organizes a

Three-day International Conference

on

“Transnationalism, Culture and

Diaspora in the Era of Globalisation”

21-23 February 2018

at

Central University of Gujarat, Sector- 29, Gandhinagar

About the Conference

The conference will address the mutual relations and converging contours of Diaspora, Trans-nationalism and Culture against the unfolding process of Globalisation.

Some of the key concepts that are central to the discipline of Diaspora such as nation, nation-state, ethnicity, locality, identity etc. have undergone massive changes in the wake of globalisation.

Ato Quayson and Girish Daswani rightly point out that “a diaspora, of whatever character, must not be perceived as a discrete entity but rather as being formed out of a series of contradictory convergences of peoples, ideas, and even cultural orientations.” The shifting nature of the immigrants’/emigrants’ relations to places, both remembered and inhabited, and cultures, both inherited and acquired, across borders, both real and imagined, complicate their everyday perceptions and necessitate constant negotiations between their locations and origins. This is as much a cultural process as political or social.

Literature of the Diaspora is replete with long journeys across both space in search of one’s individual or collective self. The conference will examine these relations in terms of conceptual categories like ethnicity, nostalgia, identity, nation, nation-state etc.

Themes and Subthemes

Theoretical Perspectives of Diaspora

Global Diasporas

Indian Diaspora across the Globe

Diaspora, Media and Trans-nationalism

Diasporic Literature (pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial period)

Refugee Literatures, Exile Literatures and Travel Writings

Refugees, Exiles and Travelers

Diaspora Engagement Policies

Diaspora and Soft Power

Diaspora and Citizenship

Diaspora and International Relations

Effect of International Migration on Origin and Destination Regions

Confy on 'Space and Culture' @ IISST, Trivandrum

Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology

(An autonomous institute under Department. of Space, Govt. of India)

(Declared as Deemed to be University under Section 3 of the UGC Act, 1956)

Valiamala P O, Thiruvananthapuram - 695 547, Kerala

invites you for a

Three Day National Conference on 

Theorising Space: the Intersections of Space and Culture

14, 15, 16 December 2017

The three-day National Conference (14, 15 and 16 December 2017) will look at the intersectionalities that occur during the divergences of various readings of Space.

The recent emergence of Space as a vital theme in the humanities speaks volumes about its intersection with our existence, geography, habitat, history, myths, culture, sexuality and gender, cultural readings, apprehensions, expectations, and many more abstract and concrete practices. Far from the idea of an empty area evoked by its traditional usage, the term Space, today, invites new ambiguities and possibilities: How are Spaces political in their engagement with epistemes? What ideologies beset the concealment of this engagement? Which forces design and construct the framework of any given Space?

The three-day National Conference will look at the recent divergences in various critical readings of Space with special focus on intersectionality. It aims to look at the praxis and theories that are involved by analyzing the underpinnings of the cultural imaginations of Space and enquiries into contemporary spatial practices.

1. INTERDISCIPLINARY SPACES

Spatial Studies and its interventions across nationalism, imperialism, and colonialism; cultural globalization; gender and sexuality; urbanization; digital cultures, environmentalism and ecopoetics.

2. SPACE IN LITERATURE

Literature, being one of many “spatial” forms of art, is a complex site from which analyses of both space in literature and literature in spaces are possible.

3. SPACE AND CULTURE

Cultural conceptualizations of space are made visible in representations and location of space in culture. The ethos thus formed may be studied through an exploration of literary topographies, geocritical spaces, cultural codes in literary spaces, semiotics, linguistics, and diverse identities formed by specific  configurations of space.

Seminar @ St Aloysius College, Mangalore

International Seminar on The First World War: The Indian Context

St Aloysius College (Autonomous) Mangalore

5, 6 January 2018

The St Aloysius College plans to organize an international seminar on the theme The First World War: the Indian Context The College invites scholars in Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences and in related fields to participate in the Seminar.

The Theme and the Context

It is 100 years since the First World War took place. As all of us know, though the Great War was the result of complex political developments of Europe, it had large influence on Indian society, economy and political life. It was mainly due to the fact that India was a colony of the British. The British too wanted the cooperation of Indians. Mahatma Gandhi who had returned to India after his African sojourn during the war had encouraged Indians to join the British forces.

Indians had immensely contributed to the British war efforts in the form of men and ammunitions as well as financial resources. The Princely states in India were often compulsorily made to contribute to the war efforts. Leaders of numerous communities and groups in India were made to lead the fund raising programmes such as collection of clothes and other materials which were sent to the war front.

Politically, India made a few gains after the war came to an end such as the Act of 1919, which gave a few concessions to the Indians in their long and bumpy road to self-determination.

Confy on Deleuze and Guattari @ University of Madras

The Department of English, University of Madras

&

Department of Journalism and Communication

in association with

Deleuze and Guattari Studies in India Collective

and

The Association of Communication Teachers

Tamil Nadu and Puducherry (ACTTNP)

invites you to participate in the

International Conference

on

Contemporary Communication Cultures, Controls and Becomings

16, 17 February 2018

[International Deleuze and Guattari Camp – 14, 15 February 2018]

The contemporary world has been going through challenging times in the areas of information and communication, crucially marked by novel surveillance modes and archiving strategies. In particular, the modern state with its powerful techno-economic infrastructure becomes the main protagonist here. Its capabilities of information mapping and communication controls have expanded greatly in recent times, bringing more and more segments of the people’s life under its panoptic regime. Perhaps the most pernicious one in this context is the appropriation of the biological and personal profiles of the citizenry, which is speciously justified with reasons ranging from security and terrorism to welfare measures in health and education. Such incursions, which have deep ethical and political implications, are expedited by the melding of the biopolitical strategies of the state with the technological sophistication of advanced capitalism.

More importantly, the handle on communication and information has emboldened the state to further annex more facets of citizens’ life to its jurisdiction and governmentality. From what they should eat and wear to what they should believe and worship, the states, especially in the developing part of the world, are articulating their preferences and choices with an unabashed candor. Definitely such articulations are politically suspect.

On the other side, the semiotic and technological resources of communication and media are drawn upon by the people to register their dissent and muster social resistance. Those employed are forms like cinema, literature, painting, theatre, music, sculpture, street plays, and numerous subaltern forms of representation. The social media perhaps becomes the most powerful weapon of the weak at present to fight the excesses of the state and the brutalities of the present global order.

Deleuze’s paper on the societies of control untangles the complex strands of the modern information and communication regime with unusual clarity and verve. He clearly charts the progression from the “disciplinary society” of yesteryears, so skillfully analyzed by Foucault, to the present society of information and communication controls. It is not that the mechanisms and the institutions of the disciplinary society have disappeared, but that they are further supplemented and strengthened at present by the new information regime. To our chagrin, the kind of sophistication now achieved by modern science and technology in converting everything into information and codes has gone beyond the imagination of even Deleuze and Guattari. Nonetheless, it could also be convincingly argued that Deleuze and Guattari provide one of the most resourceful repertoire of theories and concepts to tackle both the wily and benevolent legacies of information and communication in the present times.

The Chennai conference on Deleuze and Guattari in February 2018 seeks to explore the different aspects of information, communication and controls in the present mediatized world from a Deleuzo-Guattarian perspective. It will provide a platform for academics, students, philosophers, and activists across the world to present their papers and exchange their ideas on the conference theme. The conference will be preceded by the well-known International Deleuze Camp which will help the aspiring students and scholars to hear and learn about Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy from the outstanding scholars in the field. Papers and abstracts for the conference presentation are invited from wide-ranging areas associated with information, communication and controls. Papers are also welcomed from relevant areas, though not listed below.

Themes for the Conference Presentation

Machinic/digital controls and new subjectivities

New panopticons and new control societies

Cryptic journalism/communication, encryption and hacking

Reminiscences on a Good Ol' Book

The library at Madras Christian College is host to a vibrant repertoire of very old books, some of which date back even to the 19^th century.

Among these many books from the past that adorn the library’s coveted holdings, one such book, you will be surprised, still finds mention in the syllabus of the II BA English Programme, here at MCC.

Miller Memorial Library, Madras Christian College 

Quite heartening at that!

Published in the year 1889 (the year our First PM Nehru was born!], this book on The Art of Rhetoric by Wayne C. Booth, has been prescribed for students for ages!

The pretty demy sized book is regally ensconced in a good hard-bound dark-blue cover, with all the pages compact and intact! And yes! It’s NOT the perfect binding types or the saddle stitching types that have been a rage in recent times! It’s the solid stitch-binding of yore that has kept the all the pages intact! Not even one page has fallen out of the binding – after 128 years of its lived history!

A Wonderful Book of yore – Mighty in letter, bright in print, and radiant in spirit!

Well, as I was handling this paper on ‘Prosody and Rhetoric’ for more than ten years, before my juniors could take over from me, not wanting the original to be spoilt at the rough and shoddy handling of the photocopier operator at the photocopier shops, who, [when they just press the book face down on the machine, as hard as they could get it], send a shivering chill down your spine every time the page is flipped recklessly!

To avoid such ‘harsh treatment’ to a good old book from the good ol’ past, i sat at my desk, with the book gently placed on a pedestal-like frame in front of me, and started typing out from it, word by word, all the three chapters that I needed for my II BA students.

After having got them in typeset, I promptly put it up on our blog too, years back! [You can find it HERE.] The masters of the past have said it all, for us! Not a word from these chapters has changed on the topic of Rhetoric even today!

Be it On Style, On Diction, On Figures of Speech, you have it all here. As simple and as eloquent as could be!

One could see students and teachers alike having borrowed it, as early as the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s 1970s, 1980s, etc., date-stamps etched in various hues and shades, on the first page.

With the present Librarian having taken up a vigorous and intensive renewal and restoration of the library and its holdings, I decided that, the book needs to be preserved for posterity and so promptly handed it over to him, for safe-keeping! There are scores of such books in Connemara Library, in the Adyar Library and Research Centre, at the Theosophical Society, and quite a few of them at the Anna Centenary Library too!

The question that comes to our minds is, what are the initiatives of the government to preserve her old treasures of the past?

The Metaphysical Poets - Lesson Summary

“The Metaphysical Poets” by T. S. Eliot

Eliot's Appreciation for Professor Grierson

By collecting these poems from the work of a generation more often named than read, and more often read than profitably studied, Professor Grierson has rendered a service of some importance.

Metaphysical School: Are they A Digression from the Main Current, Or?

The phrase ‘Metaphysical School’ has long done duty as a term of abuse, or as the label of a quaint and pleasant taste. The question is to what extent the so-called metaphysicals formed a school (in our own times we should say a “movement”), and how far this so-called school or movement is a digression from the main current.

The Elaboration of A Figure Of Speech To The Farthest Stage Of Ingenuity

Donne, and often Cowley, employ a device which is sometimes considered characteristically “metaphysical”: the elaboration (contrasted with the condensation) of a figure of speech to the farthest stage to which ingenuity can carry it. Thus Cowley develops the commonplace comparison of the world to a chess-board through long stanzas (“To Destiny”), and Donne, with more grace, in “A Valediction,” the comparison of two lovers to a pair of compasses.

Telescoping of Images: Brief words and Sudden Contrasts

Some of Donne’s most successful and characteristic effects are secured by brief words and sudden contrasts: A bracelet of bright hair about the bone, where the most powerful effect is produced by the sudden contrast of associations of “bright hair” and of “bone.” This telescoping of images and multiplied association is characteristic of the phrase of some of the dramatists of the period which Donne knew: not to mention Shakespeare, it is frequent in Middleton, Webster, and Tourneur, and is one of the sources of the vitality of their language.

The Most Heterogeneous Ideas Are Yoked By Violence Together

Johnson, who employed the term “metaphysical poets,” apparently having Donne, Cleveland, and Cowley chiefly in mind, remarks of them that “the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together.

Re-birth of a dying language!

I was quite fascinated to read a wonderful article on the revival of a delightful language (through its script) in Sunday’s ‘The Hindu’ dated 24 September 2017.

Something unique, quite ‘the rarest of rare’ types, and a revelation of sorts for language enthusiasts of every nation, age, and clime.

The article by Iboyaima Laithangbam titled, ‘Banished Manipuri script stages a comeback,’ was by all means, a ray of hope to linguaphiles all over.

Indeed, one of the main premises of postcolonial studies situates language at the heart of the colonial enterprise and power.

And yes! there’s more to it than meets the eye.

Language is more than simply a means of communication. It conditions our reality and our world-view by ‘cutting up and ordering reality into meaningful units.’

Interestingly, Ngugi wa Thiong’o echoes this sentiment, when he says,

“a specific culture is not transmitted through language in its universality but in its particularity as the language of a specific community with a specific history. Written literature and orature are the main means by which a particular language transmits the images of the world contained in the culture it carries. Language as communication and as culture are then products of each other. Communication creates culture: culture is a means of communication. Language carries culture, and culture carries, particularly through orature and literature, the entire body of values by which we come to perceive ourselves and our place in the world. How people perceive themselves affects how they look at their culture, at their politics and at the social production of wealth, at their entire relationship to nature and to other beings. Language is thus inseparable from ourselves as a community of human beings with a specific form and character, a specific history, a specific relationship to the world” (Decolonising the Mind 15, 16).

He adds on to say that, language does not just passively reflect reality; it also goes a long way towards creating a person’s understanding of their world! Indeed, “the British Empire did not rule by military and physical force alone. It endured by getting both colonising and colonised people to see their world and themselves in a particular way, internalising the language of Empire as representing the natural, true order of life.” (McLeod 19)

In 1992, linguists attending the International Linguistics Congress in Quebec agreed the following statement:

As the disappearance of any one language constitutes an irretrievable loss to mankind, it is for UNESCO a task of great urgency to respond to this situation by promoting and, if possible, sponsoring programs of linguistic organizations for the description in the form of grammars, dictionaries and texts, including the recording of oral literatures, of hitherto unstudied or inadequately documented endangered and dying languages.

UNESCO did respond. At a conference in November 1993, the General Assembly adopted the ‘Endangered Languages Project’ – including the ‘Red Book of Endangered Languages’ – and a few months later a progress report observed:

Although its exact scope is not yet known, it is certain that the extinction of languages is progressing rapidly in many parts of the world, and it is of the highest importance that the linguistic profession realize that it has to step up its descriptive efforts.

Hence, internalising another language due to, ‘colonial indoctrination,’ results in adverse psychological damage suffered by the people in question.

In 1995 an International Clearing House for Endangered Languages was inaugurated at the University of Tokyo. The same year, an Endangered Language Fund was instituted in the USA. The opening statement by the Fund’s committee pulled no punches:

Languages have died off throughout history, but never have we faced the massive extinction that is threatening the world right now. As language professionals, we are faced with a stark reality: Much of what we study will not be available to future generations. The cultural heritage of many peoples is crumbling while we look on. Are we willing to shoulder the blame for having stood by and done nothing?

Confy @ O. P. Jindal Global University, Haryana

English Literary Society

O. P. Jindal Global University

invites you to the

4th JGU INTERNATIONAL LITERARY CONFERENCE

24, 25 January 2018

For the fourth consecutive year, the English Literary Society of O. P. Jindal Global University is organizing an international literary conference. This time, the conference is not dedicated to a single theme. It is felt that for far too long, single-theme conferences have ruled the roost. It's time we threw the conference open to multiple themes. With this end in view, we invite you to be a part of this literary endeavor and enjoy the exchange of views with and fellowship of fellow academics and scholars in the field of literature. The aim of the present international conference is, therefore, to encourage academics, scholars and practitioners representing an exciting diversity of countries, cultures and languages to meet and exchange views and gain from one another's experience.

Literature has been talked of as mirroring the society. In that sense, the social, political and cultural aspects of society have found expression in it. Somewhere down the line, the individual psyche too became the prime focus in literature. If moral and philosophical messages were deduced from anecdotes and literary compositions at one time, we now see the reversal with the ideologies guiding the production of literature, as for example, the belief that it is the language that writes and not the author. The high tide of globalization has further impacted the outlook and methodology of literature. The present scenario identifies multiple concerns in literature produced in a mélange of styles, and the diversity is only growing with each passing day.

The following are some of the sub-themes giving orientation to literature today, though the list is far from being exhaustive:

Feminist literature today

Protest literature: Subaltern, Women, Queer, Dalit

Migrant and Studies: Effacing or perpetuating divisions?

Immigrant literature

New approaches

Comparative literature: National, Cultural, Temporal, to portrayal of psyche

Linguistic, etc. Digital humanities

Multiculturalism

Stylistic innovations in literature

Creative writing: process and problems

Postcolonial literature

Changes in language use

Reflection of postmodern society in literature

Developments in the fields of semantics and semiotics

Eco-criticism

Translated works

Concept of Nation: Postmodern vs. post 9/11

Call for papers

Confy on Ecocriticism @ Sikkim Government College

The Foundation for the Study of Literature and Environment

&

Sikkim Government College, Tadong

jointly organize an

International Conference

on

Why Ecocriticism!

November 21-23, 2017

at

Sikkim Government College, Tadong, NH-10, East District,

Gangtok - Sikkim

About FSLE-India

FSLE-India (nѐe ASLE-Delhi) is as an open academic forum for creative interaction among intellectuals, academicians, environmental activists, naturalists, nature-lovers, and those involved and earnestly dedicated to these issues and who are receptive and undogmatic to one another’s standpoints. It intends to amalgamate two relevant issues Gender and Human Rights with Literature and Environment primarily initiated by the Zonal Joint Secretary of ASLE-India, Rishikesh Kumar Singh, a researcher and counselor based in New Delhi, what he calls it the LEGH Movement (Literature, Environment, Gender and Human Rights). This is the first venture of its kind where all the four issues are juxtaposed together. This specialty makes this movement relevant. The head office of FSLE-India is in New Delhi and it operates in all the states of India.

About Sikkim Government College

The Sikkim Government College was established in 1977 as a small institution offering limited courses. Originally begun in rented rooms, it was later expanded and shifted to the present campus during 1984-85 and was, until recently, affiliated to the North Bengal University. The affiliation was shifted to Sikkim University in 2007. The college is governed by the Directorate of Higher Education, Human Resource Development Department, and Government of Sikkim.

The college has an enrolment of 3000 plus students, many of whom come from underprivileged backgrounds.

Why Ecocriticism!

The term ecocriticism, in general, is defined as the study of literature and the physical environment together. However, in its larger context, it could be seen as incorporating with

Workshop @ Tripura University

Six-day Workshop

On

Secularism, Identity, and the Enlightenment: India and the West

at

Tripura University

18 – 23 December 2017

Overview

The overall purpose of the course is to explore the basic issues of secularism and identity and political rationality by situating them in a framework of basic concepts of the Enlightenment such as liberty and equality and in the institutional setting of a democratic society, such as India is committed to being. The idea is to explore the extent to which we need to reconfigure this framework of concepts and provide thereby a better sense of the intellectual foundations of the form of polity and society that was adopted as an ideal and a goal in the Indian constitution. Not only will there be a focus on the historical background of our political framework in the ideas and ideals that can be traced back to the European Enlightenment but also via a critical examination of some of the elements of that European inheritance, drawing from the work of Gandhi and others, we will seek to transform that framework within the context of India’s own historical past and present.

The expected participants will learn these topics through lectures and tutorials. In order to make the participants fully conversant with the topics, there will also be full-length discussions on the topic in question. Number of participants for the course will be limited to fifty (50).

Modules A: The basic issues of secularism and identity in a broader conceptual framework of Enlightenment.

B: The importance of the concept of secularism for a democratic society.

C: Critically examine the basic difference between India’s and West’s idea of Secularism and Identity.

D: Understand the historical background of West’s and India’s political framework.

E: Understand how Gandhi and others had challenged the West’s idea of Enlightenment.

Dates: December 18th to 23nd December, 2017, (6 days), Venue: Tripura University.

You Should Attend If…

1. Post graduate (MA, M.Phil. and Ph.D.) students

2. Faculty from reputed academic institutions

3. From the industry with similar interests

4. Independent researchers and Intellectuals with similar interests