Confy @ EFLU, Hyderabad

 THE ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES UNIVERSITY

HYDERABAD

Department of Indian and World Literatures

International Conference on

Indian Literature as World Literature: Past, Present, Future

18 to 20 January 2018

In recent years Indian Literature in English has been generating renewed interest in its writers and writings not just among students and scholars of literature but also intellectuals and thinkers working in other areas of Humanities and Social Sciences. There has also been a huge global increase in sales of literary works produced by Indian writers living in India as well as writers of Indian origin living outside the country. This new era in Indian Writing, as we all know, was ushered in by the epic-success of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children published in 1981. Today, interestingly, many of the works published in the 80s and 90s, especially Rushdie’s own magnum opus, Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger and others feature on the reading lists of departments of World Literature in universities across the globe.

Not very long ago, classical literatures of India produced over the last two millennia, had generated a similar interest among scholars of British India. English translations of The Rāmāyaṇa, The Mahābhārata, Pañcatantra, Kathāsaritsāgara, Jātaka Tales, Abhijñānashākuntala, Raghuvaṃśa, Mṛcchakaṭika, Svapnavāsavadattam, Harṣacarita, Pṛthvīrāj Rāso and Padmavat began to come into the public domain as early as the last quarter of the 1800s and after. The contribution of indologists and translators like Ralph Griffith, Arthur Ryder, E. B. Cowell, Charles Henry Tawney, Sir William Jones and others in the preservation and dissemination of India’s most loved classical texts across the limits and boundaries of the ancient languages is unquestionably one of the most important milestones in the journey of Indian literatures. Sadly, however, these extraordinary texts, or at least parts of them, despite their incomparable literary quality and universal appeal have rarely been featured on reading lists of World Literature departments.

The fate of literatures produced in the regional languages of India has not been very different. Most of the literature produced in Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam and a host of other languages has to a large extent remained unknown both to readers outside the language of its origin as well as to the English-speaking world simply for lack of translation across languages within India and of course, into English. Can an understanding of World Literatures ever be complete without having known the worlds of Kalidas, Kabir, Meera, Mir Taqi Mir, Mirza Ghalib, Kaifi Azmi, Gulzar, Sri Sri, Gurram Jashuva, Kuvempu, Premchand, Sarat Chandra Chatterjee, Nirala, Sumitranandan Pant, Maithili Sharan Gupt, Bhisham Sahni and O V Vijayan, to name a few?

For the Love of Reading!

Well, if you’re an avid reader, and love taking a plunge into a book - for days and days and days in a row, - you are our kind.

Join us all, a vibrant group of professors of English, from all over India, on this nourishing garden of readers - Readers' Rendezvous, a vibrant watsapp community of readers, who are so passionate about reading!

Through this petit yet powerful reading group, our aim is to establish a knowledge bank, or a knowledge repertoire or a knowledge powerhouse that derives its nourishment and succour from three lively Skills - 

1. Reading
2. Reading
3. Reading

So we warmly welcome vibrant readers of all hues!

Well, we ain't yet another watsapp group for a mere timepass!

Nooo! We ain't!

We are trying out this wonderful initiative to enrich and to nourish one another, through our little little shares, cute comments, profound observations, witty remarks, lovely appreciations, beautiful illustrations, insightful opinions, etc etc and thereby bring out the rich potential within us all!

As the dictum goes, by enriching others we enrich ourselves!

So that's one reason we have almost zero tolerance for passives on the group!

If you have not contributed for longgg on the group, chances are you might have to be removed!

With these objectives in mind, we are on the lookout for like-minded noble souls from all walks of life, who could enrich and encourage each other with their delightful reads!

A Delightful and Enriching Readers' Conclave!

The group ain't going for the numbers game! Nooo! We ain't! 

We are a little flock! A very petit reading flock!

Yes we are!

So, you’re most welcome, only if you’ve taken to reading as a fish takes to water :-) 

Do send us a message,  introducing yourself, and we shall add you asap!

Rufus | Prem | Rasheeda

admins @ Readers' Rendezvous

PS: Adding (and removing passive, discourteous groupies) is at the sole discretion of the administrators! 

image design: Prof. Prem

Last date for submission of abstracts, extended to 30 November 2017

Lecture on Voices of Resistance @ St.Joseph's, Thrissur, Kerala

Confy on Environmental Justice at K. N. Modi University, Rajasthan

International Conference on

Environmental Justice

Culture, Resistance and Ethics

24 & 25 March 2017

at

Dr. K. N. Modi University

Newai, Tonk, Rajasthan, India

Concept Note

“Environmental Justice initiatives specifically attempt to redress the disproportionate incidence of environmental contamination in communities of the poor and/or communities of colour, to secure for those affected the right to live unthreatened by the risks posed by environmental degradation and contamination, and to afford equal access to natural resources that sustain life and culture.” – Joni Adamson, Mei Mei Evans & Rachel Stein, Introduction to The Environmental Justice Reader: Politics, Poetics, & Pedagogy.

Discoursing the politics of environmental justice, Gordon Walker asks two primary questions:

“Are the benefits of access to green space for all, or only for some? Do powerful voices dominate environmental decisions to the exclusion of others?” Both the questions would lead to a unanimous answer “yes” as the environment should be accessed by all people and decisions should not favour one or a few communities. There are number of environmental issues that we could identify locally and globally. If we analyse these issues we would realise that the basis of all these issues is denial of rights/access to their respective environments. Thus environmental justice is not merely an environmental problem; it is also a social, political, cultural and economic problem. To take the discussion further we might want to ask pertinent questions as: “Is it just to serve a single justice to all ecocultures, considering the peculiarities and cultural differences of cultural communities? Are some communities often deprived of their environmental rights?” These questions would initiate discussions on diversity, nature cultures, and peculiarities of every cultural community. David Schlosberg’s words―Cultural recognition is central in the struggle for environmental justice―are particularly relevant in this context.

The conference aims to recognize ecological spaces denied to cultural communities across the world and theorize them by understanding the ethics, justices and injustices involved. The conference will be a pioneering one in the academic area of Environmental Justice in India. The conference will create scholarship in all disciplines which will be a collective and collaborative effort. This discourse will encourage researchers and scholars to work in this upcoming and most relevant area and would help them launch courses and programmes.

Subthemes

Environmental Justice, Land, Water and Air

Environmental Justice and Food

Environmental Justice and Poverty

Environmental Justice, Energy, Development and Governance

Environmental Justice, Race, Caste, Indigeneity and Gender

Environmental Justice and Climate

Environmental Justice and Memory

Environmental Justice and Texts (literary and cultural)

Representation of Environmental Justice in Media

Politics of Environmental Justice

Policies on Environmental Justice

Ethics of Environmental Justice

Philosophy of Environment

Environmental Justice in Ecofilms/ecoart

Seminar on Transnational Narratives @ Kozhikode

The Department of English

Govt. Arts and Science College

Kozhikode

Invites you for a

Three-Day National Seminar

on

‘Traversing Boundaries: Readings on Transnational Narratives’

9 to 11 January 2018

Over the last few decades there has been a surge of interdisciplinary interest in the investigation of social transformations. In recent years, a significant body of interdisciplinary literature has recognized transnationalism as an important macro phenomenon emerging in relation to the de-territorialisation of cultural, social and economic practices, which are moving away from nationally rooted apparatuses. The term transnationalism has been used not only in social anthropology to account for new forms of social interaction resulting from intensified cross-border mobility (whether related to diaspora or triggered by economic factors) but also in political theory with regard to practices of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to highlight the fact that at least one of the actors involved is a non-state entity.

Transnationalism has thus conceptually emerged as a range of complex social phenomena which interface discursively with powerful narratives of cultural ‘inbetweeness’, territorial ‘unboundedness’, and post-national politics.

Transnational narratives aim at constructing literatures emerging through supplementing and challenging the existing models of literature based on fixed notions of space and time. The objective of transnational literature is to complicate the idea of place and location as fixed, making it cross cultural which in effect creates spatial and temporal understanding as fluid and ambiguous. Transnational narratives mainly focus on New Literatures. It has given a novel shape to literary and cultural studies since the last few decades.

The Department of English, Govt. Arts and Science College, Kozhikode proposes to conduct a Three-Day National Seminar on ‘Traversing Boundaries: Readings on Transnational Narratives’ from 9th to 11th January 2018.

Confy on Folklore Studies At KIIT, Bhuvaneswar

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

ON

INCORPORATING FOLKLORE STUDIES IN MANAGEMENT PRACTICES

26th -27th December 2017

AT

KIIT University, Bhuvaneswar

The word, ‘folk’ has wide range of understanding and connotations – ranging from ‘natural’ to ‘native’ to ‘traditional’ to ‘rural’ and in some cases ‘from the heart.’ The ‘outpourings from the heart’ of native or traditional people later takes the form of folklore. folklores are oral traditions, traditional knowledge and beliefs of cultures often having no written language and they are transmitted, generally, by word of mouth. Like the written literature they contain both prose and verse narratives in addition to myths, dramas, rituals etc. All the cultures have their own folklores. In contrast and traditionally, literature is understood to mean any written work.

Literature, in written form, helps in preserving the folklores and oral traditions. But for the literature in this form, the world would have lost almost all the folk and oral traditions. Written books, as recordings of folklores help in passing on the lofty thoughts and ideas to posterity with no or very little changes in contrast to oral traditions where they often get lost in transition. Literature also can highlight the relevance of the stories of the past to the generation of the present, something which the oral traditions cannot strongly do.The existing professional literature would have us believe that the primary managerial action is that of a reflective and systematic planner. Conversations with preservation practitioners and community members led him to identify 14 reasons. These include creativity, architecture, beauty, history, sacred, learning, sustainability, and economics, However ancestors, identity (individual, civil, state, national and universal), continuity, memory, and—perhaps most significantly—community can also be included . Significantly historic preservation needs to pay more attention to "cultural significance.

Heritage tourism, as a cultural tourism segment, is “the evocation of the past and inherently about visions or understanding of the present, and a key justification for the preservation of both material cultures and traditional practices, in what they can tell contemporary communities or tourists about themselves and others. It is something of a paradox of modernity that at the same time that relentlessly seeks modern people, also hankers after something older, more authentic, or traditional.”

Incorporating folklore literature in management practices in corporate world can definitely work wonders. It is argued that all businesses must have a plan and, if for but no other reason than by default, it is the manager's responsibility to see that one is developed. Therefore myths, stories, fables etc can be considered as exemplary in our daily life as professionals, leaders in corporate world.

Workshop on ESL Teacher Support @ MEPCO SCHLENK, Sivakasi

A Two Day Workshop

on

ESL Teacher Support and

Teaching Enhancement

Organised by

Department of English

 Mepco Schlenk Engineering College, Sivakasi (Autonomous)

in association with

Department of English

Anna University

Chennai

WHO CAN ATTEND

Faculty Members from Engineering, Arts & Science Colleges and Polytechnic Colleges can attend. Selection will be made on first come first serve basis.

REGISTRATION FEE : Rs.500/-

Demand Draft should be drawn in favour of “Mepco Schlenk Engineering College” payable at Sivakasi. Lunch, Snacks and Registration kit will be provided to all the participants.

Accommodation will be provided within the college campus on request at a nominal charge of Rs. 100/- per day.

Confy & Workshop on Translation Studies

Workshop on Theory and Literature @ BAIT, Erode

Confy @ SSRNM College, Virudhunagar

Seminar on 'Re-thinking Renaissance' @ West Bengal State University

Confy @ Jadavpur University, Kolkata

International Conference on Canadian Studies

9, 10, 11 January 2018

CENTRE FOR CANADIAN STUDIES

JADAVPUR UNIVERSITY

CALL FOR PAPERS

150 Years of “Solitude”: 

Narratives on Canada’s Conflicts and Reconciliations

The Canadian Confederation of 1867 had been instrumental in the consolidation and emergence of Canada as a nation. Today, in the year 2017, as Canada celebrates its 150 years as a nation, with pride and splendour, by organizing various cultural and academic events and distributing free entry passes to its national parks, museums, art galleries, this conference seeks to explore and interrogate the different forms of resistance- resilience, conflicts- reconciliations that have informed the myriad contours of Canada’s nation building process over the last century and half.

It also strives to look into the power politics involved in constructing the official discourse of history in Canada as a singular monolithic entity that takes cognition of only the history of the ‘founding’ nations, thereby undermining the necessity to understand the Canadian nation in terms of the multiple histories that informs the lives of its racially diverse population.

The concept of “two solitudes” that had been largely used to define Canada’s socio-political reality since the nineteenth century, predicated solely upon the equations shared by the members of its ‘founding nations’, the English and the French, is essentially exclusivist in nature, denying its indigenous and diasporic population the right to be a part of what Ben Jonson would call “the imagined community” of the nation. Even the name Canada, derived from the Spanish word acanada (“nothing here”), refutes the presence of the original inhabitants of the land prior to the establishment of the Euro-Canadian settler colony therein. While centuries of colonial battering and coercive forces of cultural assimilations have shaped the existence of Canada’s aboriginal communities, the diasporic communities were accorded a “visible minority” status and continue to face the onslaught of racial discrimination within the mainstream society. However, certain apologies offered by the Canadian government in the recent times have come as an acknowledgement of the hitherto denied disjunctions within its “multicultural mosaic”, marking the first step towards reconciliation, if not resolutions of age old conflicts. Do the present times promise the emergence of an idea of nationhood that would be more inclusive in its stance? It remains to be seen whether this attitude would finally induce Canada to abide by its promise of providing its citizens with equal rights and opportunities irrespective of their racial, ethnic and gender identities and help it to emerge as an all-inclusive multicultural nation.

The Conference invites papers that address the one hundred and fiftieth year of Canada’s independence with special reference to the ensuing conflicts and subsequent reconciliations. The abstracts may have direct bearing on one of the sub-themes mentioned below or may also address other related and relevant issues. However, interdisciplinary approaches would be preferred.

Welfare state histories

Immigration/ Migration / Diaspora

National myths

Landscapes

Story-telling

Nations and Nationhood

Memory/ Commemoration

Inclusivity/ Exclusivity

Federalism

Official Multiculturalism

Indigeneity and Social Policy

Abstracts (500 words) are to be sent to canadacentreju@gmail.com by 3rd December, 2017.

Spivak's Plenary @ SS College, Malappuram

Confy @ DRBCC Hindu College, Chennai

Workshop on Semantics @ Baroda, Gujarat

National Workshop

on

Radical General Semantics

(Based on The Book of Radical General Semantics)

15, 16, 17 December 2017

Balvant Parekh Centre For General Semantics and Other Human Sciences

Baroda, Gujarat

at

National Institute of Science and Technology

Berhampur, Orissa

The eleventh annual national workshop of Balvant Parekh Centre for General Semantics and Other Human Sciences will be organized in collaboration with The National Institute of Science and Technology on the theme, “Radical General Semantics” during 15-17 December 2017 at The National Institute of Science and Technology, Berhampur, Odisha. The Workshop will use The Book of Radical General Semantics as the study material. The author of the book, Gad Horowitz and the editor, Shannon Bell will conduct the workshop.

The Workshop will be based on Parts I-V of The Book of Radical General Semantics. However, for the benefit of participants with little experience with General Semantics, we shall begin with a video lecture which reviews Alfred Korzybski’s Structural Differential, the path breaking invention that brings General Semantics into being: A three dimensional structure that differentiates and relates the ‘event level’ (‘what is going on’ or ‘wigo’), the ‘object level’—abstracted from the event—where living beings see, hear, feel, smell, taste, move, grow old and die, and the ‘label levels’—abstracted from the object—where human beings construct meaning in language. We demonstrate how to work with the structural differential, including a discussion of the central General Semantics notions of ‘consciousness of abstraction’ and nonidentity. Sanity requires non-identification of these levels. Label is not object, object is not event.

We then engage with Part III of The Book of Radical General Semantics – “The Devices of General Semantics”. In this session we focus on the first of these devices – the Index – which facilitates liberation from the domination of experience by generalizations, concepts, etc., bringing into view the uniqueness, the singularity of each and every person and happening.

Confy @ Bilaspur University, Chhattisgarh

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

on

“QUALITY ENHANCEMENT OF

HIGHER EDUCATION IN INDIA & CHANGING PARADIGM”

Organised by

Bilaspur University, Chhattisgarh

on

4, 5 January, 2018

Venue:

Bilasa Auditorium, Bilaspur University

Bilaspur (C.G.) 495001

Objectives

The Conference is being organised to accomplish the following:

The new education policy prospective for enhancing the quality of education.

Innovative Teaching Learning Process.

Equity and Access for Quality Education.

Education and Entrepreneurship.

ICT and Online Education.

Education Abroad.

Inclusive Education.

Spivak @ SS College, Malappuram, Kerala

'The Dawn Watch'

Book Review

The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World

Sudipta Datta

Understanding our world through the stories of Joseph Conrad

Us versus them; you are with us or against us; black or white — as communication across lines break down, is the inability to understand each other pushing us to the brink? Amid an existential crisis, comes this remarkable retelling of Joseph Conrad’s life and work and its resonance with the present dysfunctional world by Harvard University historian Maya Jasanoff.

In 1975, Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe gave a public lecture, An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The novella, he said, “projected the image of Africa as the ‘other world’, the antithesis of Europe, and therefore of civilisation...” Calling Conrad, a “bloody racist,” Achebe found the book “rife with degrading stereotypes of Africa and Africans.” Jasanoff mentions Achebe, as also Barack Obama’s retort when asked by a friend why he was reading “this racist tract.” It’s because, he said, “the book teaches me things... About White people... A particular way of looking at the world.”

Jasanoff says she values Conrad’s perspective for the same reason — “not just despite its blind spots but because of them” — and what it tells about civilisation and savagery, imperialism, genocide, insanity and about human nature itself. She explores how in 1889, a Polish sailor, Konrad Korzeniowski, made a trip to the Congo.

He was supposed to stay three years, but quit after just one trip up and down the river between Kinshasa and Kisangani. “He saw in Congo a European regime of appalling greed, violence and hypocrisy,” and in 1899 after settling in England and anglicising his name, he recollected his experience in a novella called Heart of Darkness.

Jasanoff, in the writer’s footsteps, arrived in Congo wanting to see “whatever I could of what Conrad had seen.” The Democratic Republic of Congo is in turmoil, the people caught in an ongoing civil war. As she read in her guidebook, “this is a huge area of dark corners, both geographically and mentally... where man has fought continuously against his own demons and the elements of nature at large,” still a heart of darkness.

Seminar @ University of North Bengal

National Confy @ Ethiraj College, Chennai

Ethiraj College for Women (Autonomous)

Chennai

A Three-Day National Conference

On

Contextualising Asian Literatures

21, 22, 23 March 2018

Organised by

PG Research Departments of English and Tamil

 The last date for submission of abstracts has been extended to 20 November 2017 

Scholarly Papers from Research Scholars and Faculty Members are invited on the following topics - 

Asian Literature as Cultural Texts

Literary Genres and Forms in Asian texts

Critical Literary and Aesthetic Traditions of Asia

Asian Literature and the Politics of Positioning

History and Asian Literature

Temporality and Spatiality in Asian texts

Gender and Asian Literature

Spirituality and Asian Literature

Representation of Asia in Western texts

Asian Literatures in Translation

Tamil Legacy in Asian Literature

Special focus: Tamil words/root words in other Asian Languages

For more information, click on their brochure HERE

Workshop on Tribal Life @ Markadhana, MP

Workshop on Tribal Life, World View and Alternatives

Markadhana, Madhya Pradesh

29, 30, 31 December 2017

About the Workshop

The current times are one of the most difficult eras in history. Our society and civilization face grave dangers, be it through wars, environmental degradation, increasing inequality and injustice or poverty and unemployment.

Many young people in the decades of 80’s and 90’s went away from careers and seminars to live and work in different tribal areas and started political and innovative work there. In the process, they have found some ideas of how to challenge the current order and look for alternatives, through the indigenous/tribal world-view and resistance.

Last year, along with the Shramik Adivasi Sangathan/Kisan Adivasi Sangathan, we held a workshop in a tribal village about the role of indigenous thought and resistance in the efforts for socialism, change and alternatives.

We are organizing a similar workshop this year where Alok Sagar (activist working in the area for last 30 years), Phagram (Tribal political activist and representative), Anurag Modi (Activist and thinker on tribal issues), will be present along with local indigenous activists.

The workshop is to be self-financed by us, therefore participants are expected to pay or collect contributions for their travel expenses to the place and contribute Rs. 700 more for food and stay.

We are not offering any certificate, but a genuine chance to hold a one of a kind dialogue between activists, local residents and students/researchers interested in fundamental change.

Workshop Dates: December 29-31, 2017

Place: Markadhana village, District Betul, MP

The accommodation/food etc will be in sync with the local life, and therefore participants should be prepared for a different experience.

Excerpts from "Development Poetics: A tiNai Aesthetic View"

Excerpts from a scholarly chapter on Development Poetics: A tiNai Aesthetic View

By Dr. Nirmal Selvamony, Professor, Central University of Tamil Nadu, Tiruvarur.

If you are in need of the entire chapter, kindly mail me or write to Dr. Nirmal Selvamony at nirmalselvamony@gmail.com. I strongly recommend that you read this chapter in its entirety, to imbibe the qualities that go into the making of a good research paper. This is obviously a scholarly paper of the highest calibre. And well, Dr. Nirmal Selvamony needs no introduction. He is well-known to the academic fraternity the world over, for having pioneered Ecocriticism as a subject of study in Colleges/Universities across India, way back in the 1980s.

Development Poetics: A tiNai Aesthetic View

If our “late capitalistic”, crisis-ridden and post-humanist contemporary societies seek development, they should get rid of those unnecessary acquisitions since the post-primal era which began around 10,000 BCE (Selvamony 2015c). We should shake off those deterrents acquired from the time of state formation—agricultural economy, domestication of plants and animals and all contagions that disrupted the kinship relation among human and non-human members of the community—in order to realize the underlying ultimate eco-moral vision. In short, development consists in letting the primalness of a society manifest itself.

Primalness of societies consists in the primordial relation among the social members. In early Indian tradition, such relation was known as “tiNai”. Etymologically, tiNai is union, not unlike the "fifth relation in music in which the two tones become one and yet remain different like spouses (cilappatikaaram 8. 32; 3. 59–60). Such a relation, as among spouses and in kinship, is ontically continuous though differentiated.

Is it true that mantiram is an appropriate genre to convey the truth apprehended by seers? 

Aurobindo conveys this idea when he says that mantra is always 

the highest and intensest revealing form of poetic thought and expression. What the Vedic poets meant by the Mantra was an inspired and revealed seeing and visioned thinking, attended by a realization, to use the ponderous but necessary modern word, of inmost truth of God and self and man and Nature and cosmos and life and thing and thought and experience and deed (2012, 217).

We may compare Aurobindo’s idea of mantiram, derived from Vedic learning, with the one found in tolkaappiyam. According to the latter text, mantiram has three characteristics: It is uttered by those whose words take effect when uttered (niRaimozi, Tamil Lexicon IV, 2289).

...

Eliotic oxymoron is based on what we may call “absolute monism” (probably derived from Vedantic sources), which annihilates difference. Difference is ensured only by the categories of place and time, which govern the real world. Identification of one place with another and the annihilation of diachronic time result in anarchy. Such identification is different from its counterpart in the primal society. For example, the coastal girl who regards an Indian Laurel tree her sister (naRRiNai 172) identifies a particular tree (in a particular place) with her sister and such identification ensures continuity without violating the laws of place and time, and jeopardizing ontic difference.

For the entire chapter, kindly mail Dr. Nirmal at nirmalselvamony@gmail.com

Nirmal Selvamony

Central University of Tamil Nadu, Tiruvarur, India

© The Author(s) 2017

J. Clammer and A.K. Giri (eds.), The Aesthetics of Development,

DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-95248-9_11