Call for Book Series Announcement - Afrasia: Contours, Crossings, Connections -University of Pittsburgh Press

 The University of Pittsburgh Press is pleased to announce the launch of Afrasia: Contours, Crossings, Connections (ACCC), a new scholarly book series that will examine how African and Asian peoples have encountered each other across diverse geographical and cultural contexts, in the past and present, with a focus on the frictions and solidarities of these encounters as catalyzed by contemporary trends in global migration, movement, and interrelation.

ACCC takes Afrasia as the conceptual and contingent space—historical and contemporary; sociocultural, political economic, and ideological; interpersonal, collective, and mass-mediated, among others—through which African and Asian peoples, as well as peoples of African and Asian descent, have engaged each other on and between their respective continents, across and through oceanic regions, and around the world. The series aims to establish a framework through which to understand the various interactions and enmeshments that took and take place between and across African and Asian actors—interactions that are neither stable nor unchanging but rather defined by their complexity, richness, mutability, and depth.

Welcoming interdisciplinary scholarship that explores the myriad dimensions of these exchanges, the series traces the contours of Afrasia to encompass West, Central, South, Southeast, and East Asia; Sub-Saharan and North Africa; and diasporic zones worldwide, including the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean, and the Americas.

ACCC will be edited by Marvin D. Sterling, associate professor of cultural anthropology, and Pedro Machado, associate professor of history, both of Indiana University Bloomington. An international editorial board of distinguished academics will advise the editors and the Press on series matters.

“The complex, myriad, and increasingly deep entanglements of Africans and Asians—and people of African and Asian descent—have chartered broad and wide-ranging trajectories whose contours and dynamics have shaped the currents of the global past and are defining the contemporary world,” states Machado. “Interest in exploring these enmeshments has been growing in recent years and this series will provide an urgently needed venue to showcase scholarship in this field.”

“In addition to the international political, economic, and similar terms in which the interactions between African and Asian peoples have been understood, we are invested in what have been under-explored perspectives that are socioculturally attentive, ethnographically attuned, and humanistic in their framings of the global histories, as well as the present and emergent futures, of these interactions,” offers Sterling. “In this way, the series is both forward looking, and decades overdue.”

The series invites proposals for monographs and edited volumes from new and experienced scholars. Inquiries should be directed to William Masami Hammell, senior acquisitions editor: whammell@upress.pitt.edu. Submission information is available on the Book Submissions page. Once up and running, the series aims to publish 2-3 books each year.

Contact Email

whammell@upress.pitt.edu

URL

https://upittpress.org/series/afrasia-contours-crossings-connections/

CFP: New Volume --The Practice of Pilgrimage in a Global Early Modern Context

 We are seeking contributions to a volume exploring pilgrimage in a global context from the mid-fifteenth to the mid-eighteenth century. This volume is under consideration for publication in the book series Reflections on Early Modernity / Réflexions sur la première modernité published by the journal Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme. Whether discussing visitations of local shrines or the great trans-regional events like the Hajj and pilgrimages to faraway lands, the rite of pilgrimage kept believers on the move, making pilgrims one of the most visible manifestations of mobility and religious devotion. At the same time, they served as central agents in reconstituting religious themes and notions throughout the early modern period.  Pilgrimage was an intensely social and cultural event, as groups of various travelers encountered each other, as well as other cultures, and experienced new modes of living and other ways of worshiping. As a popular rite, it was also an economic driver of local economies, providing services and goods for travelers, which served the interests of powerful authorities. After 1450, the expansion of maritime trading routes, wars, religious change and a sharp rise and legitimization of curiosity, were among the many forces that worked the extend the global reach of many faiths. These forces also reshaped the practice of pilgrimage in the process. 

It is in this context of an increasingly interconnected and changing early modern world that this volume will offer a forum for an investigation of early modern pilgrimage in a comparative context. We are seeking contributors working from the perspective of diverse disciplines (e. art history, history, literature, anthropology), religious traditions (ie. Buddhism, Shintoism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity) and regional contexts who could engage with one or more of the following themes: 

 

Pilgrimage and Identity

Journeys of pilgrimage created a space where encounters took place among pilgrims themselves, especially those who traveled in a group; between pilgrims and people or communities they met on their way, especially the communities who lived next to the holy places - the destination of the journey; an encounter with the holy sites; as well as with the pilgrim's own self. These encounters created many opportunities for the re-examination of the pilgrims' boundaries of identity - religious and cultural - as they were used to mark them in their countries of origin. What was the contribution of these encounters to shaping a pilgrim's religious identity? Or the identity of a pilgrim's community of origin?  Or alternatively: How the pilgrim's boundaries of identity are reflected in his description of the "other communities", of the holy sites, of the journey? 

These are only a few possible questions to be discussed.

 

 

Pilgrimage and the Construction of Power

Just as the purposes and motives of pilgrimage vary, so do the relationships between pilgrims and political rulers. Many institutions connected with sacred travel have been controlled or sponsored by such authorities, who could collect contributions from pilgrims visiting the shrines within their lands while promoting their reputations as devout leaders. How did these institutions used pilgrimage to build their power? How did it work when rulers and pilgrims were not of the same religion or culture? How did it work when the holy site was worshiped by more than one religion?

Pilgrimages have also prompted behaviors that have proved deeply threatening to political and religious authorities. How did the authorities react to the pilgrims' search for divine favor? How did they react to their temporary release from everyday life, and the volatile potential of a mass movement of people?

 

The Practice of Pilgrimage (ie. liturgy, relics, markets, hospices)

Although pilgrimage is considered to be a journey taken for spiritual reasons and it usually entails some separation from the everyday world of home, it creates a physical world of its own, not to mention pilgrimage sites tend to have a material focus. Pilgrimage involves, first and foremost, a movement across physical and cultural landscapes, that raises the questions of: routs, vehicles, inns, money-changers, translators, or guides. What are the souvenirs, or relics, that were being transported home? Their importance for the pilgrim's community? What were the cultural performances, or rituals, whether at the holy sites or in social encounters, that pilgrims were involved with?   

 

Shrines and their Replicas 

The phenomenon of establishing or creating equivalents to sacred sites – and occasionally, to an entire city (Jerusalem, Rome), is known in more than a few contexts. It can be a second burial site of a holy person, a sacred tradition being celebrated in more than one site, etc. Documenting the origin and the replicas of a holy site is one goal, yet another will be to discuss what makes a site an original? And what makes it a replica? What were the historical contexts, and purpose for their creation? And how did they affect pilgrimage routes and practices? 

 

 

Pilgrimage Testimonies: Written and Visual/Pictoral 

The testimonies (written, visual, pictoral, other) created by pilgrims testifies to the various ways in which the physical movement of pilgrims between places and cultures shaped the intellectual and material cultures of communities in both the pilgrims' places of origin and the places they visited. These testimonies also interacted with, and became vessels of, myriad intellectual and other traditions (scientific, theological, literary, other), traditions that during the early modern period were shifting in the ways that also came to reshape common perceptions of the world in which pilgrims lived including conceptions of the sacred.

 

Instructions for the Proposals 

Each chapter should address some of the questions raised in at least one of the emphases outlined above. The maximum word length for each article is 10,000 words, including all notes and images. To submit a proposal for an article, please send an abstract in either English or French of no more than 600 words and a brief c.v. to Dr. Orit Ramon oritra@openu.ac.il no later than March 31, 2024. You will hear by April 1, 2024 if your proposal to contribute a chapter to the volume has been accepted. We will accept proposals from authors at any stage from advanced graduate students to senior scholars.

 

For questions, please feel free to send an email to any of the editors:

Dr. Orit Ramon, Dept of History, Philosophy and Judaic Studies, Open University of Israel (oritra@openu.ac.il )

Dr. Megan Armstrong, Dept McMaster University, Canada (marmstr@mcmaster.ca )

Dr. Yamit Rachman-Schirre, Ben-Zvi Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities in the East (yamit.rachman@mail.huji.ac.il )

 

Contact Information

 

Dr. Orit Ramon, Dept of History, Philosophy and Judaic Studies, Open University of Israel (oritra@openu.ac.il )

Dr. Megan Armstrong, Dept McMaster University, Canada (marmstr@mcmaster.ca )

Dr. Yamit Rachman-Schirre, Ben-Zvi Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities in the East (yamit.rachman@mail.huji.ac.il )

Contact Email

marmstr@mcmaster.ca

Attachments

CFP for New Publication, Pilgrimage in a Global Early Modern Context

Call For Papers on Verge: Studies in Global Asias Issue 11.2 Special Issue: The Asian Century: Idea, Method, and Media

 

What is the Asian Century? Are we living in it? Do its recent invocations—by writers and readers, politicians and pundits, journalists and academics—mark a return to earlier eras of relative Asian centrality on the world stage or announce a future we have yet to inhabit? Is it a paranoid, U.S.-centered discourse of Western decline or a triumphant announcement of Asian economic-semiotic arrival? Is the Asian Century an aspiration or a threat—and to whom?

The term “Asian Century” has more than one origin story. Narrators are multiple, located in both Asia and the West. In a 1988 summit, China’s Deng Xiaoping, alongside Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, may have coined the phrase by calling it into question: “In recent years, people have been saying that the next century will be the century of Asia and the Pacific, as if that were sure to be the case. I disagree with this view.” For Deng, skepticism about the inevitability of Asia’s rise was going to be crucial to the India-China partnership against the “developed” world; his skepticism hasn’t aged well. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared a “pivot to Asia” in “America’s Pacific Century.” Clinton’s emphatic recapitulation of the “Asian Century” revived Western tropes of Asian ascendancy that predated Asia’s contemporary economic rise by more than a hundred years, while betraying American anxieties about the decline of US hegemony. In fact, both Deng and Clinton were responding to a process that had been underway since at least the early-1970s: the “long downturn” or tendential decline in profitability of Western economies that ran alongside the “economic miracles” of many Asian economies, including Japan’s Cold War-era boom and India’s and China’s eventual liberalization. For some, the Asian Century was, or is, a solution. Now, in an era of mounting deglobalization, its contradictions are just as sharply felt as its curious staying power.

What distinguishes the current round of Asian Century discourse is perhaps its mutual construction by “Asians” and “Westerners” alike. When the Asian Century came into wide currency in the 1990s, replacing a then-regnant “Pacific Rim” and “Pacific Century” rhetoric, it remediated a long history of similarly totalizing visions that issued not least from the “Asians” themselves: from Japan’s monstrous pursuit of the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere and Ferdinand Marcos’s dictatorial imposition of neoliberal programs in the Philippines, to the advertisement of the “Singapore model” and even China’s “century of humiliation,” which continues to vouchsafe its nationalist ressentiment. As Wang Hui’s analysis of the politics of imagining Asia has shown, visions of the Asian Century betray contradictory regionalist and nationalist ambitions that are held in focus by the apparatuses of the state and the culture industries. Thus Asian Century discourse is typically inflected by a nation or speaker’s position vis-a-vis key market and state brokers. Given that the meaning of “Asia” looks different depending on the vantage of Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, or for that matter Saudi Arabia, what is the role of pan-Asian alliances and inter-Asian competition in constituting the Asian Century? Is Asia “one”—or only in the eyes of the West?

This special issue invites critical perspectives from scholars working in and across multiple languages and disciplines. We seek submissions that explore the Asian Century as idea, method, and media, and that examine its genealogies and itineraries from a range of contexts and histories, including of labor, empire, capital, war, technology, pandemics, dispossession, modernization, culture, and aesthetics. With “idea, method, and media,” we intend to inspire, but not circumscribe, the possible range of disciplinary approaches and primary sources that might be enlisted in responding to this call. Indeed, the idea of the Asian Century may very well be predicated on counter-articulations of its impossibility. While the Asian Century may appear at first as periodizing marker or geopolitical diagnostic, we propose that it can also be read across media and cultural forms, as an affective relation to the past, present, and future, as a structure of feeling, and as a visual and sensorial regime. Finally, in proposing the Asian Century as method, we seek to revisit and reimagine the interdisciplinary stakes of the longstanding conversation on “Asia as method.”

For example, what humanistic and social scientific methods can best track the concept’s intellectual and institutional emergence, circulation, and mediation, including well before the 21st century? How might regional Asian rivalries shape the supply chains and the capital flows of emerging trade blocs like the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)? How have cultural production and intellectual exchange furnished the cognitive and affective frameworks for these blocs, and for Asian visions of global expansion like China’s “Belt and Road” initiative, South Korea’s cultural exports, and Taiwan’s advanced semiconductor industry? Given the increasing salience of the Asian Century as a concept for periodizing the contradictions of neoliberal capitalism, how might we trace its effects and iterations in and beyond political economy? What was the Asian Century, understood as visions and projections of Asia’s rise promoted by those who stood to benefit from such characterizations? What of the legacy and future of Third World decolonization and Indigenous struggles when Asian peripheries become, or have threatened to become, global powers? Rather than take for granted the rise of Asia as such, we seek to understand how and why Asia’s ostensible ascendance has seen not a lessening but rather a retrenchment of the conditions of planetary inequality.

Essay Submissions

Essays (between 6,000–10,000 words) and abstracts (125 words) should be submitted electronically through this submission form by May 1, 2024 and prepared according to the author-date + bibliography format of the Chicago Manual of Style. See section 2.38 of the University of Minnesota Press style guide or chapter 15 of the Chicago Manual of Style Online for additional formatting information.

Authors’ names should not appear on manuscripts; instead, please include a separate document with the author’s name, address, institutional affiliations, and the title of the article with your electronic submission. Authors should not refer to themselves in the first person in the submitted text or notes if such references would identify them; any necessary references to the author’s previous work, for example, should be in the third person.

Please direct all inquiries to verge@psu.edu.

Contact Email

verge@psu.edu

URL

https://sites.psu.edu/vergeglobalasias/

Attachments

verge-112-cfp-asian-century-idea-method-and-media.pdf

Call for Papers for an Ed. Vol., "Contested Memories in Contemporary Asia"

 Preserving contrasting past memories and narratives can be difficult in unreceptive social and political environments where prohibition of commemorative events and vandalism are employed hand in hand to sabotage memorialization efforts. At one level, problems with memorials are not confined to post-conflict societies: memorialization of those who lost wars – such as Japan in the Second World War – is often suppressed in the name of preserving liberal order. On another level, across the Asian region the emergence of ethno-religious nationalism against the backdrop of authoritarian regimes has become alarmingly common.   

The edited collection will probe how policing, obstruction and trivialization of memories play out in the contemporary socio-economic and political landscapes across Asia, using selected case studies. It would attempt to investigate how certain memories are selectively negated by some groups while new memories are sometimes constructed of events that never happened through the distortion and fabrication of history. How certain memories are weaponized and used as tropes in rhetoric against the targeted ‘other’ and abused to serve as justification for calls for genocidal violence, projected as ‘retributive’ in nature will also be explored. More broadly, the proposed book will investigate how both policing and weaponization of memorialization play out, not only affecting everyday lived experiences but also posing a barrier for democracy. We wish to invite scholars to explore the international politics of genocide denial and recognition, such as Turkey’s denial of the Armenian genocide, Pakistan’s denial of the Bangladesh genocide, Myanmar’s denial of genocide against Rohingyas, Indonesia’s denial of the genocidal violence in East Timor and against the communists, Sri Lanka’s and Japan’s denial of their war crimes, India’s denial of the massacres of its religious minorities, such as the 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms in Delhi and the 2002 anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat, etc.; apology and reparations; the lack of conviction in cases of mass violence; why and how the guilty escape justice; the challenges before prosecution, the obstacles and hurdles in achieving reconciliation; competitive victimhood; the act of justifying mass violence by describing it as retributive in nature, often accompanied by a deep seated sense of majority victimhood; the forces of resistance, both domestic and foreign, to state narratives of conflict; trivialization of genocide memory; the proliferation of genocide terminology; the phenomenon of blaming the victim; Holocaust inversion; disputes over historical legacies in public spaces; and any other aspect of memory contestation and conflict of narratives.    

Scope of the Edited Volume

In such context, the main objective of the proposed edited volume is to offer insights into contested memories in the Asian region. The prospective contributors will include scholars, academics, research students, activists, and peacebuilders, but will not be limited only to them. Through this book, we would like to initiate a wider thematic debate on memory discourse, local conditions and responses, inspired by the pluralist values, the rule of law and peace and reconciliation efforts.

Chapter proposals of around 300 words with a biographical profile of the author (around 200 words) as a single Word file are invited for the above mentioned envisioned edited volume latest by 1 April 2024. The successful contributors will be invited to submit their full paper between 5,000 - 8,000 words (excluding references) at a later date. The edited volume will be published by an international academic publisher.

Timeline

Year 1

• Month 1: Preparatory work
• Month 2: Call for Papers
• Month 3-4: Review of EOIs
• Month 5-7: Submission of full papers (first draft)
• Month 7-10: Editorial feedback
• Month 10-12: Submission of the second draft

Year 2

• Month 1-3: Line-editing of manuscripts
• Month 4-6: Copy-editing of manuscripts
• Month 7-9: Compiling the final draft
• Month 10-12: Identifying a potential publisher

Year 3

• Month 1-4: Line-editing by the publisher
• Month 5-8: Publication
• Month 9-12: Book launch and dissemination of findings

 

Bios of Editors

Dr. Navras J. Aafreedi is an Assistant Professor of History at Presidency University, Kolkata, a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, New York, and a Fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar under its Holocaust Education & Genocide Prevention Program and its Asia Peace Innovators Forum. Besides several papers in peer-reviewed journals, chapters in edited collections published by prestigious international scholarly publishing houses, such as De Gruyter, Routledge, Springer, Indiana University Press, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Lexington, etc., and op-eds in popular media, his numerous publications include a monograph Jews, Judaizing Movements and the Traditions of Israelite Descent in South Asia (New Delhi: Pragati Publications, 2016) and a co-edited collection Conceptualizing Mass Violence: Representations, Recollections, and Reinterpretations (London and New York: Routledge, 2021). He has held visiting fellowships at the universities of Tel Aviv (2006-2007) and Sydney (2015), and at the Woolf Institute, Cambridge, UK (2010). Dr. Aafreedi was a scholar-in-residence at the ISGAP-Oxford Summer Institute on Curriculum Development in Critical Antisemitism Studies at St. John's College, Oxford in 2017. He received the degrees of BA, MA and PhD from the University of Lucknow. He commenced his teaching career at Gautam Buddha University, Greater Noida in 2010 and has been teaching at Presidency University, Kolkata since 2016. His latest publication is a chapter titled "Hitler's Popularity and the Trivialization of the Holocaust in India" in Holocaust vs. Popular Culture: Interrogating Incompatibility and Universalization, edited by Mahitosh Mandal & Priyanka Das (London and New York: Routledge, 2023). His forthcoming publications will be brought out by Brill, Oxford University Press, Routledge, University of Nebraska Press, Wiley-Blackwell, Academic Studies Press, etc.

Dishani Senaratne is a doctoral researcher at the University of Queensland, focusing on the emergence of ethnolinguistic nationalism and its alignment with Sinhala Buddhist nationalism.  She's also the Founder/Project Director of Writing Doves, a non-profit initiative that employs a literature-based approach to enhance young learners' intercultural understanding. Earlier, she taught English at the University of Sabaragamuwa of Sri Lanka. In addition, she’s a Fellow at the Salzburg Global Seminar.  

Chapter Proposal Submission Deadline: 1 April, 2024

Email Addresses for Communication (Please email your proposal to both addresses given below):

Navras.His@PresiUniv.Ac.in

dish3000e@gmail.com

 

 

 

Contact Information

Dr. Navras J. Aafreedi, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Presidency University, Kolkata, India: navras.his@presiuniv.ac.in

Dishani Senaratne, PhD Scholar, School of Political Science & International Studies, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia: dish3000e@gmail.com

Contact Email

navras.his@presiuniv.ac.in

CFP: Panel on Family, Memory and Genealogy: Engaging Vernacular Modernities in South Asia on "Modernity Redefined' Conference Gitam University Feb 22-23, 2024

   

 We are organising a panel at the conference 'Modernity Redefined' at Gitam University Bangalore in February 22-23, 2024. This panel looks at ideas of genealogy, memory and family as they refracted through colonial modernity in South Asia. These ideas have been used by various communities for diverse purposes, from imagining a unified political identity, a glorious cultural past and for signifying status differences. A key aspect that lies at the heart of these imaginations is the views of sexual ordering and the reconfiguration of family relationships inaugurated by colonial modernity. Scholars like Kaviraj (2012), Udayakumar (2016) and Arunima (2003) have looked at novels, autobiographies and poetry which acted as discursive accompaniments and great archives of these transformations. Keeping these themes at the background, this panel probes into the ways in which various social groups in colonial South Asia imagined and sought to reformulate their own sense of selves and identities. The panel aims to move into the historical details as well as ethnographic impressions on changes to family histories, memories and genealogies retold from the colonial to post- colonial times in the Vernaculars of South Asia, including both established as well as spoken languages.

Contact Information

Please send a 150 words abstract to P.C. Saidalavi (saidalavi.pc@snu.edu.in) and Shaheen K. (shaheenkt@protonmail.com) by 19 December 2023.

Contact Email

saidalavi.pc@snu.edu.in

Call for Papers: NEW TRENDS IN #GENDER AND #DALIT #STUDIES November 30- December 2, 2023

 Call for Papers

Gender and caste have historically wielded immense influence as prevailing forms of social and cultural hierarchies in the Indian subcontinent. Consequently, they have taken center stage in discussions within the realms of social science, policy-making, and the pursuit of inclusive growth. A productive academic discourse has emerged, delving into various facets of Gender and Dalit studies in the broader context of Indian social science. Substantial transformations have transpired in the examination of marginalized groups and issues associated with social exclusion.

Over the past few decades, the primary thematic discourse has revolved around feminism, women's empowerment, and the predicaments of marginalized communities. Academia has also posed significant inquiries into how gender discrimination and power dynamics contribute to the perpetuation of social and cultural hierarchies and the subjugation of women and Dalits. Recently, novel perspectives and methodological practices have surfaced within the interdisciplinary social sciences. Therefore, it is imperative to thoroughly explore the diverse methodological and perspectival aspects of gender discrimination and social exclusion concerning women and marginalized groups such as Dalits.

Themes and Sub Themes

Theme 1: Gender Studies in Kerala

Sub-themes:

Historical Perspective:

Women's Status in Ancient-Medieval& Modern Kerala

Women's Movements in Modern Kerala

Gender and Politics:

Political Participation of Women in Kerala

Women in Leadership Roles: Case Studies

Cultural and Social Dynamics:

Impact of Literature and Arts on Gender Perceptions

Traditional Roles vs. Modern Aspirations

Contemporary Challenges:

Gender Disparities in Education and Employment

Economic Dimensions

Women's Health and Healthcare Access

Theme 2: Dalit Studies in Kerala

Sub-themes:

Historical Evolution:

Origin and Growth of Dalit Movements in Kerala

Dalit Icons and Leaders in Kerala

Dalit Writings and Politics

Economic Empowerment:

Dalit Entrepreneurship and Business Initiatives

Land Reforms and Dalit Communities

Educational Challenges:

Access to Quality Education for Dalit Communities

Role of Education in Dalit Empowerment

Social Issues and Discrimination:

Slavery & Humiliation in Kerala

Caste-based Discrimination: Realities and Challenges

Intersections of Gender and Caste Questions

Theme 3: Intersectionality and Marginalized Identities

Sub-themes:

Marginality- Every Day Experiences and Knowledge Production

Gender and Dalit Intersections:

Double Discrimination: Dalit Women’s Experiences

Dalit LGBTQ+ Experiences in Kerala

Legal Framework and Social Justice:

Legal Safeguards for Dalits and Women in Kerala

Challenges in Implementation: A Critical Analysis

Culture & Aesthetics

Gender and Dalit Issues in Literature -Art-Cinema- Performance and Theatre

Media Representation:

Portrayal of Dalits and Women in Kerala Media

Alternative Narratives and Media Activism

Theme 4: Empowerment Strategies and Interventions

Sub-themes:

Government Policies:

Effectiveness of Government Schemes for Women and Dalits

Policy Recommendations for Improvement

NGO Initiatives:

Role of NGOs in Empowering Dalits and Women

Best Practices and Lessons Learned

Education and Awareness Programs:

Impact of Awareness Campaigns on Gender and Dalit Issues

Integrating Gender and Dalit Studies in Education Curriculum

Social Justice and Affirmative Action

Education and Reservation Policies

NEP and Inclusive Education

Theme 5: Future Prospects and Challenges

Sub-themes:

Emerging Trends:

Digital Empowerment: Opportunities and Challenges

Changing Dynamics in Urban and Rural Spaces

Global Perspectives:

Comparative Analysis: Gender and Dalit Studies in International Context

Global Movements and their Influence on Kerala

Sustainable Development:

Sustainable Livelihoods for Dalit Communities

Gender-sensitive Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

We are pleased to invite research papers from teachers and research scholars related to the aforementioned themes and sub-themes. Kindly submit your abstracts by 31 October 2023 and your full papers by 10 November 2023. Please limit your typed paper to 10 pages with adequate referencing in the form of endnotes, using MS Word format (Times New Roman, 12 pt, double-spaced), and send it to hakeem@gasckkd.ac.in.

 

CFP: Young Researchers’ Conference on Trauma and Memory Studies: Responses from the Global South 19-21st January 2024 Department of English Jamia Millia Islamia

Memory and Trauma Studies have emerged as a key paradigm in the field of humanities, socialand cultural studies, especially towards the end of the 20th century. The intersections and interactions between these two fields have been employed by contemporary scholars to study human histories of war, atrocities, genocides, partition, displacement and discrimination. Building upon this enriched understanding of the intricate relationship between memory and trauma, scholars have extended their inquiries to explore the mechanisms through which societies and individuals navigate the aftermath of traumatic experiences. The exploration of coping strategies, memorialization practices, and the transmission of memory across generations has deepened our comprehension of how trauma reverberates through time and space. Central to this discourse is the recognition that memory and trauma are not static entities, but rather dynamic and evolving constructs. The ways in which societies remember, commemorate, and come to terms with their traumatic pasts are subject to a complex interplay of political, cultural, and social factors. The interdisciplinary nature of Memory and Trauma Studies allows for the examination of this process from multiple angles, such as artistic expressions, oral histories, or digital media.

In the Global South, where the legacies of colonialism, dictatorship, armed conflicts, and systemic injustices persist, Memory and Trauma Studies have provided a crucial framework for understanding the complexities of post-colonial and post-conflict societies. However, situated amidst such a diverse array of historical and political contexts, the theoretical frameworks emanating from Western scholarship often fall short in adequately encapsulating the intricate historical narratives pertaining to the realms of trauma and memory within the Global South. Western trauma theory often positions the Western, white subject as the universal subject of traumatic experience. This is exemplified by Steve Creps' critique of Cathy Caruth's analysis of the film ‘Hiroshima, mon Amour’. Creps argues that Western critics employ neo-colonially exported Western psychiatric concepts to postcolonial regions without considering their suitability. This entanglement between the post-colonial scholarship and trauma theory calls for a ‘decolonization’ of the theory itself. Michael Rothberg in his essay ‘Decolonizing Trauma Studies: A Response’, questions the pertinence of the Euro-centric conceptualization of trauma theory to study the ‘legacies of violence in the colonial/postcolonial world’. He calls for a reformation or an expansion of the contemporary conceptualizations within the literary trauma theory which remains stuck within EuroAmerican historical frameworks. Theorists like Jay Rajiva are also working on decolonising  the field by tackling the eurocentric, monocultural bias of Trauma theory. In his work “Postcolonial Parabola”, Jay Rajiva focuses on the need to represent decolonization as a traumatic event, along with identifying the challenges of situating the heterogeneity of postcolonial experience while developing new ways of representing it. As compared to the traditional trauma theory which is focused on isolated, individual and exceptional events, postcolonial trauma is not exceptional (or unusual) as it is woven into the political structure of a nation and expressed as a daily reality. It is characterized as the trauma of the everyday. Jay Rajiva thus focuses on the cross-cultural ethical engagement with postcolonial trauma. The thrust of works on Memory and Trauma Studies have been largely on national/international cataclysmic events such as Partition (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) and Holocaust to name a few. Some examples of creative works that have emerged from these cataclysmic events which have this inherent focus on the individual traumas and memories of central characters involved are Attia Hossain’s Sunlight on a Broken Column (1961) or Nayanika Mookherjee’s The Spectral Wound: Sexual Violence, Public Memories, and the Bangladesh War of 1971. The partition also laid bare gendered vulnerabilities. When one looks at autobiographies, memoirs and other forms of nonfiction that emerge from areas such as Kashmir, the North East, Punjab and Bengal, they narrativize individual instances of memory and trauma. The latest example of this is a book by Farah Bashir titled Rumours of Spring (2021). To contest the Eurocentric exclusivity which stands culpable for shadowing the universal application of trauma studies, it is incumbent that we cater to more accounts from the Global South- be it the complex history of violence, slavery, racism or marginalization in the Caribbean, the issues of internal displacement, Civil War and natural disaster in Sri Lanka, or the historical and transgenerational repercussions faced by the Africans. 

The works of Sri Lankan Tamil Poet Cheran are marked by the shrieks of resistance, anger,

and grief that lend a unique perspective on the suffering faced by Sri Lankan Tamils during the extensive civil war. The Anthologies- Two Times Removed Volumes I and II (2021-22) by Tiara Jade Chutkhan is another important recent work which highlights the nuances of Indo-Caribbean identity, intergenerational memory and trauma. Works like Traumatic Storytelling and Memory in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Performing Signs of Injury (2019) by Christopher J. Colvin and Trauma, Memory, and Narrative in the Contemporary South African Novel (2012) edited by Ewald Mengel and Michela Borzaga also focus on the complex relation between trauma, memory and narrative. These works see trauma as a consequence of an historical condition – in the case of South Africa, that of colonialism, and, more specifically, of apartheid.

This Call for Papers invites scholars and researchers to probe into the ongoing negotiations

between dominant historical narratives and marginalized voices, with a focus on the Global

South. This conference strives to look into how memory and trauma actualizes in the

psychological, social, cultural, historical, philosophical, religious, economic, political and

other aspects. A regional focus will help us unveil the disparities and imbalances in terms of

the representation of suffering in the Global South- South Asian, Caribbean, African and the

Arab world. In a world shaped by diverse historical narratives, the Global South stands as a

repository of unique experiences, memories and struggles. Therefore, there exists a pressing

need to unearth a novel analytical framework that can comprehensively emphasize on the years of violence and identity politics unique to the Global South.

Topics could include but may not be limited to:

•  Regional Representation: Conflict and Protest Literature in the Global South

• War and Post-war Atrocities in the Global South
• Decolonizing Trauma theory
• Re/Presentations of Trauma and Memory in Popular Culture in the Global South
• Digitizing Trauma and Memory in the Global South
• Reading the Global North from the Global South
• Theorizing the Other: Experiences of the marginalized communities in the Global South
• Contextualizing the disenfranchised in the Global South: Women and Children
• Trauma, Memory and Multilingualism in the Global South
• Bearing Witness: Perpetrators, Survivors and Bystanders in the Global South
• Institutionalizing Memory and Trauma in the Global South
• Memory Activism in the Global South
• Narratives and Representations in the Global South: Retellings, Censorships and
Contestations
• Resilience, Neuro-plasticity and Coping Mechanism in the Global South
• Indigenous ways of Healing: the Global South perspective
• Memory traces and Memory entanglements in the Global South
• Trans-cultural/ Trans-national/ Trans-generational perspectives and Migrant trauma
• Post-Pandemic Trauma and Trauma of the everyday in the context of the Global South

Important Dates:
Submission of Abstracts: 30th November, 2023
Intimation of Accepted Abstracts: 5th December, 2023
Submission of Full-Length papers: 5th January, 2024

Guidelines for Abstract and Paper Submission:
We invite abstracts of about 300 words along with a short bio-note of 100 words to be sent via email to yrcjmi2023jmi@gmail.com on or before 30th November, 2023. Full-length papers of accepted abstracts, of 4500-6000 words, in citation style MLA 9th Edition, should reach the same on or before 5th January, 2024.
Selected papers will be published in a collection of conference proceedings with a leading
international publisher.

 For further queries and submissions, kindly write to us at yrcjmi2023@gmail.com