Three-day International Conference on “Transnationalism, Culture and Diaspora in the Era of Globalisation” - February 21-23,2018, Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar .

Call For Abstracts: 

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. AtoQuayson 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.

About the Conference

The conference has been divided into the following themes and subthemes. However, these themes and subthemes are not absolute.

Themes and Subthemes:

• Diaspora and Development
• Diaspora and Conflict (Resolution): Peace
• Makers or Wreckers
• Diaspora andYouth
• Diaspora Philanthropy
• Diaspora and Civil Society Organisations
• DiasporicAssociations or Organisations
• Diaspora and Entrepreneurship
• Gender and Diaspora
• Technology and Diaspora
• Diaspora as Economic, Social, Cultural and Political Capital
• Methodological Issues of Migration and Diaspora
• International Migration and Human Rights
• Illegal Migration
• Migration and Identity
• 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
• Migration and Globalisation
• International Migration and Human Trafficking 

Important Dates

Last date for receiving abstract (Tentatively) 02 Dec 2017

Communication about selection (Tentatively) 10 Dec 2017

Last date for receiving full paper (Tentatively) 15 Jan 2018

Date of Conference (Tentatively) 21-23 Feb 2018

Venue of Conference (Tentatively) Central University of Gujarat

Registration Fees

Academician / Professional / Faculty Member : 1,000 INR

Research Scholar/Student: 500 INR

For More Details:

Please send your abstracts in about 200-250 words to the

e-mail id. : cugdiasporaconf2018@gmail.com

For any further information or query please contact Dr. Atanu Mohapatra at

Tel : 079-23977436, Mob. : 93748 31813 

http://www.cug.ac.in/sem_conf/pdf/CSD_CUG_%20Conference_Brochure.pdf

International Conference on WOMEN & SECTARIAN VIOLENCE IN SOUTH ASIA: FICTION & REALITY 9-10 Nov, 2017, Central University of Gujarat, India

Centre for English Studies

School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies

Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar 

Concept Note

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

The South Asian region has been witness to many-layered  onflicts: be it the Partition, the Sikh and other riots in India; the historical trajectory of violence in Afghanistan;, the ethnic violence in Sri Lanka; or the minority conflicts in Pakistan,, women have been the carnage, the sub-stratum through which Patriarchy has waged war. She has been torn, ravaged, mutilated, humiliated, and burnt. There is nothing more that she can fear or encounter. There is nothing more that she can remember to forget. She is inscribed by a violent earth, colonized by man, culture, religion, caste, ethics and morality. The historical and social/cultural terrain has had its role to play in the enormity perpetuated. There is a need to re-visit this territory and engage with it critically. One needs to ask whether ‘Literature’ has captured all this. Do writers remember to forget? Can one write to make our countries remember? Do we forget to remember? Nevertheless, the psychological dimension is something that one cannot afford to forget. 

In an area where censors, bans, riots and sectarian violence have historically been a part and parcel of everyday life, South Asian women have inspired the world by living through the trauma. Her body has become a contested site and the possibility of an imaginary is not yet born. Her ‘values’ are eroded on the streets and in the psyche, yet she has not given up.In the face of interminable violence, she is ‘abducted’, ‘returned’ and ‘recovered’. She traverses through this terrain, through tears, through fights, and perhaps through the yearning that one day, there might be light on the horizon. 

This conference is an attempt to re-discover this ‘traversing’, an attempt to understand her myriad moods and pathways, not roles. To dissolve, devour and evaporate the vicious circle that she is enmeshed in. The search stretches in as well as out, into the interiors of the mind and the land called South Asia. The aim is not to encase and embalm women in strict compartments, nor to stick to a particular genre, but to break boundaries and borders. An exercise to translate, transcreate and transliterate. It is also a calling out to women who have not been heard or published, women who cannot write, but who can only reproduce narratives. These are not just testimonies, oral/gendered histories, creative/critical writings, satires, poems, or short/long fiction. It is this and much more. The conference will have a section on the visual forms such as graphic images, paintings and photographs to explore this other ‘reality’.

Themes under discussion:

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

Last date for abstract submission: 10th August, 2017

For queries: southasianremembering@gmail.com

Registration charges:-

Students/ Research Scholars: Rs. 2000/-

Faculty Members: Rs. 3000/-

Guest Convener:

Prof. Rachel Bari

Kuvempu University

Shimoga 

Contact No: 9448244273 

Conveners: 

Prof Atanu Bhattacharya 

Dr. Ishmeet Kaur 

Contact No: 9974092042