CFP: In-Comparative (Indian) Literatures National Conference 13-14 February 2025 Centre for Comparative Literature School of Humanities, University of Hyderabad

It has been 65 years since the Czech-American Rene Wellek brewed a crisis in the

disciplinary discourses of Comparative Literature. Ever since, almost all Comparatists are forced to take a stand for or against this elephant in the classrooms. Various ACLA Reports (Levin 1965, Green 1975, Bernheimer 1993, Saussy 2014 and Heise 2024) have all been, in one way or another, an apology for the in-disciplinarity, or even anti-disciplinarity, of

this so-called discipline.

Comparative Literature(s) in India have been no different, as the scholars find themselves

caught between the disciplinary battles among Cultural Studies, Dalit Studies, Gender Studies, Minority Studies, Translation Studies and Visual Studies, to name a few, and, of course, the Social Sciences. Still, no one seems to have stopped to ask, whose crisis are we carrying? Is this a Euro-American crisis forced upon us, or have we encountered our own crisis? If yes, then what are they? Is ‘crisis’ necessarily negative? Isn’t lack of crisis that stagnates the discipline, making it redundant? If disciplines are anyway historical formations, then, what does the never-ending debate on the disciplinarity of the discipline based on some ‘origin’ entail? Shouldn’t we rather be exploring the many ‘beginnings’ of the praxis? That is to conceive Comparative Literature as not something that originated in

Euro-America and then came to India, but to reconceive it as a practice that has parallel

beginnings across the world. That is nothing but to decolonize Comparative Literature(s) of India.

‘In-comparative’ is a framework we propose to make sense of the very many incomparable

spatial and temporal experiences, languages, literatures, cultures, communities and

civilizations of ‘India.’ Emily Apter has already drawn attention to ‘un-understandability,’

‘untranslatability’ and ‘incomparativity’ as theoretical constructs, along with Eric

Auerbach’s notion of ‘unGoethean’: “to critique the form of non-cosmopolitan World Literature or standardized literary monoculture” that nationalized itself. No wonder then

James Porter hailed Eric Auerbach as the father of incomparative literature! But that is also to assert that literatures of India are always already in comparative as well asincomparative.

Here, ‘in,’ like in Alain Badiou’s ‘inaesthetics,’ or Jacques Derrida’s ‘im-possibility,’ is not a negation, but an irreducible divisibility that affects the very essence of comparison, its lack of coevality and concomitant equivocality. In-comparative is to critically deconstruct the binary pitfalls that comparison has fallen into. In-comparative is also to resurrect comparison as insurrection, as critique, and not just finding the commonality that binds

together. It is to reach (for) the being-in-common rather than continue to search for a

common being. It is to deterritorialize, even absolutely, without reterritorializing despite territorial boundedness.

These are not some abstract crises that are imposed on Comparative Literature from

outside. They have emerged from the research happening in Comparative Literature and

allied disciplines in India. When the existing disciplinary discourses are insufficient to

address the questions and frameworks that animate and worry the actual works, it is

probably time to pause and unthink ‘in-disciplinarity.’

Please submit Abstracts of about 500 words by 29 December 2024.

- MT Ansari

ansarimt@gmail.com

CFP: Three-Day International Conference on “Whither Integrative Humanities? Paths And Challenges” -August 28 - 30, 2024. The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad,

Concept Note

Post-Technological Rationalist thought on natural and social phenomenon is marked by two major emphases: a. The move away from discipline-specific knowledge-systems, towards the construction of a transdisciplinary knowledge base/knowledge regime (Sverker Sorlin 2018), through the configuration of a knowledge-infrastructure to regulate the flow of ideas across established, as well as new/emergent knowledge-sites, and b. The recognition of the slippages across the traditional impact/value binary, with impact increasingly being seen as the first step in the direction of value creation. The emergent knowledge ecosystem suggests the tasks cut out for humanities, factoring in the seamless connection across natural, cultural, and technological phenomena that marks the planetary-scale crises confronting humanity. Offering a socially usable critique of established processes of knowledge production and building cultural structures of preparedness for the unforeseen (Helge Jordheim and Tore Rem 2014) are these crucial tasks. The ‘crisis’ in humanities can now be seen as the proactive response to these crucial, challenging tasks, justly viewed as opportunities. The favorable climate for inter and cross- disciplinary approaches in traditional humanities, and the emergence of bio-, techno-, medical-, geo-, digital-, public- humanities, lend credence to this belief.

The Three-day International Conference on Whither Integrative Humanities? Paths and Challenges offers a forum for scholars interested in understanding and disseminating the new role that humanities has come to assume, by deliberating on ways in which humanities can contribute to the socio-economic, cultural, and environmental challenges facing the world today.

Themes and Sub-Themes (List is not Exhaustive)

Post-Truth and Post-human Knowledge

• The Adventures of Philosophy in the Post-Truth Era

• Rethinking Critical Posthumanities

• Moves beyond Anthropocentrism

• New Academic Posthumanities

Situating the Posthuman Subject

• Apprehending Human and Non-Human Rationality

• Dealing with a Nonconscious Future: Agendas and Strategies

• Reclaiming Agency: Putative Action-Plans for the Cyborg Self

Public Humanities

• Humanities of the Street: Challenges and Responses

• Public Creation and the Discipline: Dealing with Ephemerality and Fluidity

• Knowledge Cocreation Ecosystem: Power, Trust and other Issues

• Citizen Humanities: Emerging Participatory Modes in Natural and Cultural Heritage

Varieties of New Materialism

• Revisiting Ethico-Onto-Epistemology

• Chronicling Acts of Diffractive Reading

• Agential Realism: Re-Configuration and Impact Evaluation

• The Academic Fortunes of New Materialist Vitalism

• Negative New Materialism: A Negative Moment or Constructive Aspect?

• Performative New Materialism: Critical Assessments

Innovative Medicine on the Moral/Ethical Plane

• The Research-Practice Continuum: Ethical Conundrums

• Assisted Reproductive Techniques: Unanswered Ethical Dilemmas

• Neuroethics: Plotting the Field

Technology, Embodiment and Gender

• Ubiquitous Technologies, Embodied Cognition and Interaction

• Technology and Embodiment in Learning Spaces

• Technology and Gender Equality in the Global South

Globalization of the Body

• The Unstable “We”: Vaccine Nationalism and Viral Sovereignty

• Re-configuring the Biomedical Technoscape

• Engaging with Ontological Wholeness and other Myths

• The Political-Economy of the Body: Globalization and Precarity

• Troublesome Discursive Formations: Eugenic Utopias

Alternative Schemes of Thought, Knowledge, and Self-Representation

• Comparative Relativisms: Way out of the Maze or Mission Impossible?

• Critical Constructivism: The Return of the Prodigal `Essence`?

• Epistemological Anarchism: Method’s Radical Other or its Uncanny Double?

• Forms of Self-Representation: Diachronic/Narrative or Episodic/Non-Narrative?

New Perspectives on the Anthropocene

• Deep Ecology: Tracing the Metabolic Connections with other Disciplines

• Varieties of Eco-Feminism: Sustainable Theory?

• Disenchantment and New Animism: Progressive or Atavistic?

• Social Ecology and Bioregionalism: Theorizing Eco-Justice

Understanding the Technological Sublime

• Artificial General Intelligence and the Technological Sublime

• Biotechnological Sublime: Views from the Intersection of Nature, Technology, Art

• Environment Narratives and/on Next Nature

Visuali0ty1and Image Studies

• Images, Circulation and Practices

• Visuality and the New Media

• Everyday Imaging, and Critical Thinking

Minority Discourses: New Approaches

• NewFrontiers in Dalit Literary Studies

• Film Studies

• Graphic Narratives: The Politics of Reception

• Globalization and Diaspora Literary Studies

• Alternative Literature Studies

Literatures of the Global South

• South Asian Literature

• Indian Art and Aesthetics

• Postcolonial Diaspora Art

• Refugee Literature

• Literature and Migration

• Identity: Representation, Culture and Politics

Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Narrative Traditions

• Theorising Orality

• The Ritual Revisited

• Issues in Performance Ethnography

• Performance and Public Spaces

• Folkloristics and Modern Narratives

• Retelling Myths: Critique, Ideology, Aesthetics

• Mythicizing Worldviews

Gender and Sexuality Studies

• Disciplinarity and Gender Studies

• Feminist Praxis

• Women’s Studies

• Masculinity Studies

• Queer Studies

• Gender Responsive Pedagogy: Issues in

• Ideology and Methodology

Original, Unpublished papers on the above themes are invited from members of university and college faculty and other institutions, independent researchers, research scholars registered with universities and research institutions.

Send your abstract, in about 250 words, with a title, your name, institutional affiliation, email Id and mobile number.

Email your abstract to: ihceflu2024@gmail.com

● Last date of Submission of Abstracts: July 5, 2024

● Communication regarding Acceptance of Abstracts: July 15, 2024

● Registration: July 30, 2024

● Submission of Full Papers: August 10, 2024

Send your abstract, in about 250 words, with a title, your name, institutional affiliation, email Id and mobile number.

Email your abstract to: ihceflu2024@gmail.com

Call for papers #Queer Cold Wars: Deconstructing Bipolar Visions of #Gender and #Sexuality

Editors: Tatiana Klepikova (University of Regensburg), Maryna Shevtsova (KU Leuven),

Emil Edenborg (University of Stockholm)

In the twenty-first century, “LGBTQ+” has emerged as a key discursive cornerstone to signal alliances and oppositions and underpin broader geopolitical claims in the international arena. From the US War on Terror, backed by the rhetoric that Jasbir Puar defines as “homonationalism” (Puar 2013) or the EU’s use of LGBTQ+ issues in enlargement processes (Shevtsova 2020; Slootmaeckers 2017) to bans on displaying “abnormal sexual relationships and behaviors” on television in China, the declaration of the “international LGBT movement” an extremist organization in Russia, or police raids in gay clubs in Venezuela, there has emerged a picture of a world allegedly firmly divided into two camps—of states supporting LGBTQ+ rights and ones vehemently opposing them. This binary has often been theorized through the opposition of “homonationalism” vs. “heteronationalism” (see, e.g., Renkin & Trofimov 2023), and its most recent visceral manifestation is Russia’s invasion into Ukraine under the banner of fighting for “traditional values” (see, e.g., Kratochvíl & O’Sullivan 2023). Additional binaries such as Christianity vs. Islam, West vs. “the rest,” and democracy vs. autocracy have often also underpinned this framing.

Yet, how do we reconcile such binary frameworks with facts such as, for instance, a growing sexual and gender diversity within religious institutions in the uncompromisingly Catholic Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico, where queer priest:esses have been increasingly appointed as heads of parishes or churches (Bárcenas Barajas 2014; Córdova Quero 2018)? Or with the hosting of events like the Queer Art Festival in Azerbaijan—the country consistently ranked as “the worst in Europe in terms of LGBTQ+ rights” by ILGA Europe (Safarova 2021; ILGA-Europe 2023)? At the same time, signals of conservative developments come from regions firmly seen as the “pro-LGBTQ+ camp”—the introduction of “LGBT-free zones” in Poland (Ploszka 2023), a ban on gender studies in Hungary (Pető 2021), decidedly homophobic claims by the German AfD (Doer 2021), or the denial of gender affirmation to trans-individuals in Florida (Human Rights Campaign 2023). Set alongside each other, these practices decidedly call for a more nuanced approach to the idea of a bipolar world.

The proposed edited volume seeks to deconstruct an alleged bipolarity in international relations and explore the entanglements and slippages between homonationalism and political homophobia as two global forms of ideological and cultural domination. Our reference to and modification of the historical Cold War is intentional. As this concept emphasizes international political competition, tension, and proxy conflicts between two adversary camps, scholars have debunked the myth of their monolithic and dichotomic nature by revealing both the plurality within them and the porosity of boundaries “separating” them (e.g., Klepikova & Raabe 2020). In theorizing the contemporary “queer Cold Wars,” the proposed edited volume attends to such pluralities of actors and political systems that are never uniform or fully aligned in their goals, seeking to explore the roles of states, supranational organizations, transnational movements, and local and global communities. It also advocates for examining the role of the globalized economy and the spreading of neoliberal capitalism as a vehicle for transporting and adopting (and adapting) ideas of homonationalism and political homophobia (think here, for example, of Rahul Rao’s concept of “homocapitalism”; Rao 2015). Finally, it recognizes the alignment of these new “Cold Wars” with the arrival of the era of digital cultures and interrogates the role of digital infrastructures and networks in troubling the alleged binaries.

We welcome papers that seek to trouble binary geopolitical visions of sexuality and gender from the following perspectives and beyond:

• religion (organized faith, economics of belief, etc.)
• economic perspectives (humanitarian aid, homocapitalism, etc.)
• education (schooling, ban on sex education, “protection of minors” discourse)
• research (challenges to queer research globally, bans of research institutions, ethics of transgressing boundaries of the global West/South/East divides)
• healthcare (regulations, adoption of ICD-11)
• media (representations, global cultures of queerness, streaming platforms as vehicles of queerness)
• culture (literature, film, arts; infrastructures of queerness – festivals, etc.)
• memory politics (museification; showcasing of national and/or transnational queer histories)
• mobility (sex tourism, asylum seeking, etc.)
• digital cultures (networked homophobia; digital activism, etc.)

Contributions from all Social Sciences and Humanities disciplines are welcome (Political Science, Social Science, History, Economics, Cultural Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Religion Studies, Media Studies, Memory Studies, Education Science, Medical Humanities, etc.)

Timeline and Requirements: Please submit a 500-word abstract and a short bio (one PDF) by May 31, 2024 (to maryna.shevtsova@kuleuven.be; tatiana.klepikova@ur.de; emil.edenborg@gender.su.se).

In case of acceptance (communicated by late June), a 4000-word extended draft should be submitted by October 11, 2024. The editors are currently seeking funding to workshop extended drafts among contributors—should this funding be granted, the workshop will take place on October 28–29, 2024 in Leuven, Belgium.

Full papers (up to 7,000–8,000 words, incl. footnotes and references) will be due by February 1, 2025. All contributions will undergo a rigorous peer review before publication. Editors are also securing funding to publish the edited volume in open access. They will submit a proposal to an international publisher following the selection of abstracts submitted in response to the call for papers.

Contact Information

Editors: Tatiana Klepikova (University of Regensburg), Maryna Shevtsova (KU Leuven),

Emil Edenborg (University of Stockholm)

Contact Email

tatiana.klepikova@ur.de

URL

https://marynashevtsova.com/call-for-papers/

Call for Chapters for Book on Indigenous Women by Indigenous Women

 This is a special call to submit a chapter for our book collection

 

We seek chapter proposals on the topic of Indigenous Women’s Research. The book positions our voices as central to engagements with Indigenous community life and to dismantling the research paradigms and practices that have not served us as Indigenous women.

 

We see questions of “voice” as vital issues of political articulation, creatively and wisely expressed in personal, collective and symbolic terms. We write for and with the Indigenous women we work alongside in the diverse fields we occupy. We believe in making our positions and perspectives – across gender, race, ethnicity, class, cultural, social, religious and relational contexts – more nuanced, accessible and expressive to the wider community of Indigenous women in the Global South. We dream of a defining moment when we can speak about who we are in the world for ourselves and with the Indigenous women around the world who inspire, challenge and move us.

 

This dream and aspiration – to present our voices for ourselves and with each other – sits at the heart of this proposed book collection on Indigenous women researching and reflecting on our most significant milestones and work to date. We embrace the idea of writing for and with each other as a collective voice contributing to the transformational, gendered and decolonising work urgently necessary at this point in history. In doing so, our focus is to flip the script, to forge new pathways for knowledge production and sharing that centre our voices and amplify our authentic narratives.

 

The way we can afford to do this meaningfully is to do so together through critical reflection, inclusivity and care.

 

Our book, titled Rematriation: Indigenous Women on Indigenous Women, provides a pragmatic context for our work to be understood across the spheres of the academy, community and everyday life. We write with community women in mind to engage Indigenous struggles, stories and circumstance. This is a call to ground our work as Indigenous women within the modes of engagement, exploration and agency that matter to us as Indigenous women, to oppose, criticise and challenge dominant notions of who we are, how we work and what we want to achieve. 

 

We are interested in chapter proposals that explore how our research opens up the field for other Indigenous women. How does our work create impacts for and with community women? Why should we care and how do we care?

 

Our goal is to bring new perspectives to understandings of community work from Indigenous worldviews – whether you are part of community, working at the nexus of the academy, activism and community, working at the coalface of land, water, environmental, educational, values- and rights- based or social justice concerns.

 

The land is life and law. We see spirit in all things. Indigenous wisdom is grounded in a myriad of complex and reciprocal interactions with community, the land, sea and sky. We have much to learn from each other and much to share.

 

What forms of Indigenous wisdom inspire us? What new work do we bring to the world? What new or old wisdoms do we wish to enshrine, where and how? What do we stand for and how do we stand with and as Indigenous women? Who are we?

 

This call invites you to respond to such questions just as much as it is an opportunity to pay homage to our ancestral and matrilineal connections. We aspire to build respect and acknowledgement across our communities, disciplines and fields of research as Indigenous women.

 

Rematriation means returning to the nurturing principles of Mother Earth, honouring the interconnectedness of all life and restoring balance to ecosystems. It involves the revitalisation of Indigenous knowledge systems, languages, and traditions suppressed by ongoing colonial and neocolonial forces. For us, rematriation is both land back and environmental consciousness. This practice offers ways to think outside the border logic of nation-states and reimagine relationships based on ancestral connections and ecology. We are stewards of the earth driven to oppose dominant paradigms of ownership, exploitation and extraction. Rematriation invites us to resee the land and resources beyond commodity fetishism.

 

We’d love to hear how you are contributing to the conversation on local, national or global issues and what this means for the communities you write about. The book’s thematic focus “on Indigenous women” in our title is about sharing this knowledge with each other through this collection rather than showing how your research is about Indigenous women. Put simply, the book is for us, by Indigenous women for and with Indigenous women.

 

As editors of this collection, we will be looking to find links between the different chapters submitted so we each speak to one another through strong, interconnected themes.

 

Possible themes for chapter proposals:

 

REMATRIATION: How can rematriation serve as a framework for addressing environmental justice issues affecting Indigenous communities, particularly women? How do Indigenous women navigate the complexities of rematriation in the context of ongoing colonial and neocolonial pressures? What are the strategies and initiatives led by Indigenous women to promote rematriation and decolonization within our communities and beyond? How can rematriation initiatives prioritise the voices and leadership of Indigenous women in decision-making processes regarding land, resources, and governance? What are the potential impacts of rematriation on future generations of Indigenous women and our relationships with the land, culture, and community?

 

KNOWLEDGE: What is Indigenous knowledge and in what ways is it gendered? How does women’s knowledge shape community life? How does our research include new knowledge about Indigenous women’s realities? 

 

VOICE: In what ways are Indigenous women leading the charge on environmental issues? How are Indigenous women’s voices different, enabled, silenced or actualised? How do Indigenous women’s voices influence local, national or global issues? On what issues are we most or least vocal? How are our voices unique, powerful, underrepresented or misheard?

 

IDENTITY: How does language, religion, gender, class, place or politics shape our identity? What are the differences between our personal, public, academic, historical or community identities? 

 

RELATIONALITIES: How do we work across differences with men, non-Indigenous women and researchers, across generations and cross-culturally? What is the relationship between us as Indigenous women on a local, national or global or an historical scale? In what ways can we talk about a global Indigenous movement of women? 

 

STORY: How does story ground our experience as women? In what ways do we share similar or different stories of Indigenous women’s experience? What are the most moving, uplifting or comical stories by or about Indigenous women?

 

COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE: What kind of community research is taking place, for instance on cultural revitalisation, language learning or regeneration or traditional practice, as well as specifically on Indigenous mothers, youth or elders? How is this research innovative, new or transformative?

 

PLACE-BASED RESEARCH: Where do Indigenous women choose to live and why? Where are the most vulnerable, dangerous, risk-laden or overlooked places? Why does place matter to Indigenous women? How do places shape Indigenous women’s lives, families and/or communities?

 

KNOWLEDGE HOLDERS: Who are the Indigenous female leaders we want to hold with the highest esteem? How do or have we acknowledge(d) their life experience? How can we learn from their legacy?

 

DEADLINES:

1 June 2024: Send your 300-word abstract with a brief profile

1 December 2024: Completed chapters due (5000 words) 

 

Email: IndigenousRematriation@gmail.com

Contact Information

Trixie Tangit

Contact Email

IndigenousRematriation@gmail.com

CFP: International #Conference: #Comparative #Literature as #Alternative #Humanities #Ethics, #Affect and the Everyday Social-#Delhi #University- September, 2024

In the last few decades, scholars in the Humanities have found it necessary to examine the fundamental underpinnings upon which their disciplines are built. One of the primary questions that animated this re-examination has been regarding the very terms of our engagement with countries and communities that inhabit radically different social and moral life-worlds, living as they do outside the orbit of European Enlightenment values that still regulate both organisation and practice within and outside the academy, across the world. Instead of accepting difference as a defining feature of the human condition, the grand narratives of the Enlightenment were used as colonial and imperial tools to homogenize the diversity of experience, emotion and expression as the high tide of colonial modernity swept the world. The consequent otherness and alienation that characterised human society have deeply impacted literary and cultural production. We witness a disjunction between the objective, scientific discourse with its claim to truth and the everyday social experience of the human subject which Humanities seek to understand. These asymmetries compel us to rethink the Humanities from alternative positions and perspectives to embody and address the plural orders of reality and the differences between them. How can the collection of disciplines we call the Humanities recover the capacity of self-reflection and self-criticism? Much has been written about how stereotypes invade our imagination to contaminate our experience and knowledge.

Comparative Literature’s commitment to alterity and plurality gives it a foundational interest in

the non-stereotypical, non-canonized, un-heard narratives of “others” that constitute a radical sense of the literary. Such articulations can only emerge from the confluence of different locations, experiences and identities, demonstrating how our vision of “others” projects our own versions of ourselves onto the outside world.

An alternative view of the Humanities will have to come to terms with the ideas of relationality, plurality and cultural mobility as the defining features of all epochs including that of the pre-modern. Texts, ideas, images, metaphors, themes, modes, genres, tales are all human endeavours and like humans themselves these have the capacity to travel across constructed, eternally given or pre-fixed borders, thereby defying the exclusivist, essentialist ideas of culture and literature. The prevailing inclination towards connected sociologies and connected histories, while a step in the right direction, often reflects the dominant discourses which impose homogeneity and hierarchy, evincing a lack of empathy for the precarious endeavour of encountering alterity and a lack of understanding of the transient and the contingent.

Thus, we propose plurality as a conceptual framework to address this eco-system of interconnectedness and relationality in terms of their manifestations in the languages and literatures of all nations, regions and communities, regardless of their location in the hierarchy of political and economic regimes, or of their internal stratifications. We would like to recover the mutuality of interconnections and interdependence between literatures and cultures across the world. The assertion that we live in a post-human world prompts us, as humans to consider our experience in terms of relationality and plurality. These emerge as conceptual tools for recasting our relations with the other - be it humans, animals or the non- living.

Texts are actualised through their immersion in the shared ideological and affective worlds that constitute the everyday world. From orality to print to the visual media, modes of intersubjective engagement are implicated in structures of power relations within society and our response to them. The very practice of Comparative Literature is an acknowledgement of plurality and a willingness to engage with difference. The discipline emphasises upon relationality, heterogeneity, multivocal perspectives, and direct engagement with alterity that translation offers as a process and a product. Built into the discipline is the interaction between literatures in multiple languages both within the nation and in other countries of the world. Furthermore, it takes orality and performance in its ambit. It reaches out to all other disciplines by asking the existential question : can we open ourselves to the location of the other and view the world from the vantage point of difference that we encounter outside ourselves? Can we frame a dialogic mode of interaction that reading teaches us to our relations with the world, to expand our view of the world outside our own limited subjectivity ? Hence, we propose Comparative Literature as an alternate paradigm - and invite reflections upon the possibilities inherent in the conceptual frame structured by the reciprocal, the relational and the plural. It is our hope that it will help to grasp and address the nature of the crisis that afflicts the Humanities today both in intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary framework.

Sub-themes

Some of the sub-themes in the context of the main theme that can be taken up for discussion are as follows:

Interrogating categorial binaries (tradition/modernity, nature/culture, regional/national, east/west etc.)/ Literature after theory/ Shifting paradigms between Literary Studies and Social Sciences/ The Post-human as a paradigm in literary studies.

Worlding literature / Historicising canons/ Global and local as contexts of reading. The idea of the classic in modernity: circulation or creativity ?

Translation and the encounter with difference. Translating “dialects”/ The oral texts/ Archaic texts.

The plural nation: stratification and resistance/ Literary historiography and geopolitics/ Intertextuality and chronotopes.

Polyphony/ Polysemy in literature/ Poetry and cosmopolitanism.

Interrogating “Minor” literature as category/ Identity theories as critiques of the Humanities / Life-writing from the margins.

The performativity of literature/ Screenplay as literature/ Intermediality in literature. South Asian literatures and cultures: relations, reciprocity and ruptures/ Population movements and literature.

Papers are invited from scholars of Comparative Literature,

Translation Studies, Cultural Studies, Theatre Studies, Gender Studies, Black Studies, Dalit Studies etc. or on any aspect of literature and culture that will help us understand and practice the Humanities in accordance with the ethical perspectives outlined above.

Abstracts of about 250 words along with a short bio-note of about 100 words may be submitted to clai2024@admin.du.ac.in

Upon acceptance, participants will be provided with registration details through email. The Registration Fee will include workshop kit, certificate, lunch, and refreshments during the three days of the conference. Participants would need to become members of CLAI on receiving their acceptance letters in order to present papers, if they are not already members of CLAI.

>

Important Dates:

Last date of abstract submission: 30th April, 2024

Selected participants will be notified by: 30th May, 2024

Last date of registration: 15th July, 2024

Registration Fee:

Faculty members: Rs.3500/-

Research scholars/students: Rs.2000/-

International participants: US$ 200

For further information please visit: https://www.clai.in/upcoming-event/

clai2024@admin.du.ac.in

Organising Committee, XVII Biennial International Conference

CFP: 4 PAN NIT Humanities and Social Sciences Research Conclave (HSSRC) - May-2024 on Humanities at the Crossroads: The Convergence of Language, Literature and Technology- NIT Warangal

Concept Note

The PAN-NIT Research Conclave on "Humanities at the Crossroads: The Convergence of Technology, Language, and Literature" seeks to explore the dynamic interplay between traditional humanities disciplines and emerging technological advancements. This conclave aims to provide a platform for intellectual exchange, interdisciplinary dialogue, and collaborative exploration among scholars, researchers, and students from 31 National Institutes of Technology (NITs) across India.

In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, the boundaries between technology, language, and literature are becoming increasingly blurred. The infusion of technology into humanities disciplines has opened up new avenues for analysis, interpretation, and expression, revolutionizing traditional approaches to scholarship and creative endeavors. This conclave aims to critically examine the challenges and opportunities presented by this convergence, exploring its implications for pedagogy, research, and societal engagement.

The PAN-NIT Research Conclave on "Humanities at Crossroads: The Convergence of Technology, Language, and Literature" promises to be a stimulating and enriching forum for exploring the transformative potential of technology within the humanities domain. By fostering interdisciplinary dialogue, promoting ethical reflection, and embracing innovative pedagogical practices, this conclave aims to empower scholars, researchers, and students to navigate the complex intersection of technology, language, and literature in the digital age.

The Research Conclave includes Directors’ Dialogue, Heads’ forum discussion, webinars, panel discussions and an International Conference 

Objectives of the Research Conclave

The conclave extends a warm invitation to faculty members, Ph.D./M. Phil scholars, postgraduate students, other academicians, and independent scholars engaged in diverse humanities, social sciences, and related fields to exchange their insights. The event aims to achieve the following objectives:

Facilitate Interdisciplinary Dialogue: 

Establish a platform for intellectual discourse that bridges the gap between humanities and technology.

Promote collaborative efforts among individuals from varied disciplines and institutions.

Foster a community dedicated to advancing knowledge at the confluence of technology, language, and

literature.

Explore Emerging Trends:  Delve into the evolving trends that are shaping the future landscape of humanities scholarship and creative expression.

Unravel the transformative influences propelling innovation in the realm of intellectual pursuits.

Promote Innovative Pedagogy:  Showcase inventive pedagogical methodologies and educational technologies.

Highlight strategies that empower learners to engage critically with the world around them.

Provide educators with tools to navigate the complexities of the 21st-century educational landscape.

Ignite Intellectual Curiosity: Cultivate an environment conducive to fostering intellectual curiosity.

Pave the way for new avenues of inquiry and exploration.

Themes and sub-themes

The conference covers the following areas, but are not limited to:

Language Education

English Literature

Phonetics and Linguistics

Cultural and Gender Studies

Digital Humanities, Medical Humanities, Posthuman Studies, Sustainability Studies, Disability Studies, Children’s Literature, Diasporic Literature, Partition Literature, Commonwealth Literature, Memory and Trauma Studies, Pandemic Literature, Classical Literature, Shakespearean Literature, Victorian Literature ELT in the era of new technologies, Innovative educational methods, approaches, and techniques, English Language Education in India, Translanguaging, Critical Pedagogy, Multi-lingualism, 21st Century Pedagogy Phonetics, Socio-Linguistics, Stylistics, Corpus Linguistics, Language Documentation and Revitalisation, PsychoLinguistics, NLP, Computational Linguistics, Linguistics Typology, Forensic Linguistics Queer Studies, Feminist Theory, Film Studies, Culture and Aesthetics, Indigenous Studies, Popular Culture, Postpartum Literature, Masculinity Studies, Graphic Narratives Sociology, Psychology, Political Science, Anthropology and other interdisciplinary areas.

Please submit your abstract within 250-300 words and with 4-5 keywords in this google form link:

https://forms.gle/Aq4r6QTrAEWjfuCQ6

All content must be original, and authors are responsible for obtaining necessary consent and permission to

use any third-party material.

Deadline for Abstract Submission: 10th April, 2024

Acceptance Status Update: Authors will be notified within 7 days of abstract submission

Registration Date: 20-30th April, 2024

For any related queries, contact us:

Email: pannit24.nitw@gmail.com

J Ravi Prakash

Contact:+918978145797

Mail id: jr720121@student.nitw.ac.in

Gopika Jayachandran

Contact : 8129694083

Mail id: gj22hsr1r02@student.nitw.ac.in

CALL FOR PAPERS: Special Issue on #Gender and #Climate Justice- Atlantis Journal

Special Issue: Gender and Climate Justice

Co-edited by Lori Lee Oates (Memorial University of Newfoundland) and Sritama Chatterjee (University of Pittsburgh)

This special issue of Atlantis Journal takes an intersectional approach to gender and climate justice. We invite work that explores a range of topics, including but not limited to:

• What should climate justice look like for women, trans people, and non-binary people?

• What is the role of masculinity in the climate crisis?

• What is ecofeminism in the contemporary world and what is its role in climate justice? How does ecofeminism relate to queer justice for the environment?

• What do queer and trans ecologies look like at present? How is this limiting for climate justice? What should they look like?

• What does disaster planning for the elderly and disabled look like? What should it look like to achieve true climate justice?

• How do historical colonial patterns of gender and racial inequality persist into the present and what does this mean for the climate crisis? Where are the intersections between race and gender?

• What are the links between climate justice movements and reproductive freedom activists? What should they be?

• What is petroleum patriarchy and where does it exist? How can it be addressed? Will a transition off fossil fuels be sufficient to address it?

• What are the limits of the politics of “the Anthropocene” for climate justice?

• How are gender and climate justice reflected in literature and arts?

• What kind of pedagogies are necessary to address gender and climate justice?

This call invites individuals to submit research articles (up to 7,000 words), literary writing (up to 3,000 words), and book reviews (up to 1,000 words). The editors are particularly interested in hearing from scholars and writers from the global south, Indigenous communities, queer and trans scholars, and those who engage with feminist or environmental activism. We envision this special issue as a forum both for acknowledging the urgency of the situation and presenting solutions from voices that are often excluded from the conversation. 

Submission Deadline: May 1,2024.

Please read full submission guidelines on our website before submitting.

https://journals.msvu.ca/index.php/atlantis/index

atlantis.journal@msvu.ca

Katherine Barrett (Managing Editor)

CFP: Intersecting Ecologies: Navigating Crises, Traumas, and Movements in Asian Comparative Literature and Film _ October 10- 12, 2024,

CFP: Intersecting Ecologies: Navigating Crises, Traumas, and Movements in Asian Comparative Literature and Film

Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association 77th Annual Convention

Conference Date: October 10-12, 2024

Location: Las Vegas, Nevada

The “Intersecting Ecologies and Narratives: Navigating Crises, Traumas, and Movements in Asian Comparative Literature and Film” panel welcomes scholars to an interdisciplinary exploration at the intersection of ecological themes, migration and refugee experiences, medical humanities, and the post-COVID era within the context of Asian literature and film.

Our panel aims to engage in comparative analyses across various regions and genres within Asian literature and film, focusing on their navigation of crises and traumas, particularly those related to ecological themes. We invite contributions that dissect not only ecological crises and traumas from diverse perspectives but also complex relationships between humans and nature, cultural identities and environmental narratives, ecofeminism, and ecology's implications in the age of globalization.

We seek to foster a dialogue that connects Asian comparative literature and film with the broader fields of environmental humanities, migration and refugee studies, medical humanities, and reflections on the post-COVID world. We encourage submissions that explore the intersections of ecological crises with human health, displacement, environmental activism, and migration narratives, offering new insights into the challenges and opportunities these intersections present.

Highlighted topics for exploration include but are not limited to:

• Reflections on nature and the human condition within Asian literary traditions.
• Analyses of nature, technology, and modernity, and their implications for health and displacement in Asian contexts.
• Intersections between environmental and medical humanities focus on Asian narratives that address the health implications of degradation.
• Explorations of gender and nature within the framework of feminist ecologies in Asian contexts.
• Investigations into the portrayal of animals and anthropomorphism in Asian literature and cinema.
• Cross-cultural and interregional narratives of ecology, crisis, and movement, including Forrester (forest-based) fiction that envision alternative ecological futures.
• Discussions on the dynamics between ecology, globalization, and their impacts on health, migration, and the environment in Asian comparative literature and film.
• Insights into the post-COVID landscape through world literature and cinema, with a lens on ecological activism.

Contact Information

Submissions should consist of a 250-word abstract and a brief biography (2-3 sentences), formatted as a DOC document, to be sent to Yueming Li at yul282@ucsd.edu by March 15, 2024. The convention’s presentations will be conducted in English.

Contact Email: yul282@ucsd.edu

CFP: Two-Day International Conference TRANSFORMATIONS AND TRANSITIONS: EMERGING TRENDS IN LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE STUDIES -KL University-11-12th March, 2024

ABOUT THE CONFERENCE

The Department of English is holding a vibrant and joyful two-day event to share the pleasure and power of language and literature on 11th, &12th of March 2024 in a glorious scenic and invigorating atmosphere at KL University campus. We are delighted to place on record that this International Conference shall be an exciting mix of research discourse and debates. This is a programme of educational and inspiring events in our esteemed university involving students, scholars, expertise professors and critics. In short, this International conference is deliberately planned to mark stimulating dialogue and discourse to provide a rare opportunity to the academics to meet and interact with eminent personalities.

ABOUT THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

The Department of English is headed by Dr. K. V. Divya, Associate Professor. The Department has 42 faculty members out of which 39 are Doctorates and 3 are pursuing P.hD. The sister Department, Communication and Soft skills has 6 Soft skills trainers who are vital to the University in achieving 100% campus placements in Campus drives. Two-year Post graduate course in English has been in progress since 2018. In 2023 it is restructured as M.A. in Digital Humanities and Language Studies. Research guidance to Ph.D scholars is actively in progress with 85 scholars and 35 scholars are awarded till date. The Department has published more than 500 publications in various reputed Scopus, WoS, International & National journals with high impact factor. The Department has also organized many workshops, seminars, National & International conferences including Literary Festival.

ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY

KL(Deemed to be)University is situated in a sprawling 100-acre campus on the banks of Buckingham canal of the river Krishna, 8 kms from Vijayawada city. Built within a rural setting of lush green fields, the University is a virtual paradise of pristine nature and idyllic beauty. The campus has been aptly named ‘Green Fields’ and the splendid avenue of trees and gardens bear testimony to the importance of ecology and environment. The campus ambience is most befitting for scholastic pursuits. The mission and vision of the University is to be in line with international universities in imparting quality-based

education with moral excellence. The University takes pride in achieving a rich bounty of Awards for Educational

CALL FOR PAPERS

Well-researched and unpublished articles are invited on the theme of the conference. The following are some of the sub-themes

Anthropocene and Literature

Petro fiction

Blue humanities and Nautical fiction

Energy humanities

Pandemic Literature

Digital age: Cyber Literature and Digital Media

Digital Pedagogy & Digital technologies

Research creation in Digital Humanities

Graphic and Twitter Fiction

Revisiting Indian poetics

Gender studies in the Era of technology

Gender and Queer Studies

Biopolitics

Pain Studies and Trauma Studies

Intersectionality: gender, class, race and LGBT+ representation

Marginality in Cultural Texts Feminist /Postfeminist voices

Feminist histories: memory and trauma

Women empowerment: Breaking stereotypes

Masculinity Studies

Urban and Suburban Studies

Comparative literature

Translation and Diasporic literature

Kitchen literature

Multiculturalism and Diasporic perspectives

Revisiting the Mythologies

Dalit Narratives

Ecofeminism & Ecocriticism and Green Cinema

Climate Fiction

Animal Studies, Zoo criticism and Phyto criticism

Posthuman Studies

Crip Theory and Disability Studies

Green ELT

Renewable English

Latest trends in English Language Teaching

Digital Language Teaching

Flipped/blended class rooms

Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality

Task-based Learning

Trends in Teaching ESL

IMPORTANT DATES AND DEADLINES

Abstract Submission: 25th February, 2024

Abstract Acceptance: 29th February, 2024

Registration:5th March, 2024

Conference Dates:  11th - 12th March, 2024

PUBLICATION

Selected Papers presented at the Conference will be published as book chapters with ISBN. Full-length articles received by 29th February 2024 will only be considered for publication.

ABSTRACT SUBMISSION

An abstract of 100-150 words should be submitted along with the information in this order: a) author b) affiliation c) email address d) title of the abstract, and e) the abstract. Send the

abstract to: kluenglishconference@gmail.com

ACCEPTANCE

Acceptance will be sent by the Convener & Registrations Committee, within a week from the receipt of the abstract.

ACCOMMODATION

Accommodation will be provided in the Guest House and Students' hostels of the University. Vijayawada /Guntur is moderately warm during the month of March. The temperature is expected to range from 30 to 32 degrees Centigrade during the conference days

Registration link

https://forms.gle/Dcb2DydfW5dcjftdA

For More Information Contact

Dr. K. V. Divya, 9866839934 | Dr. K. K. Sunalini, 9849942819

Dr. M. Suresh, 8500219841 | Dr. K. B. Glory, 9849592241

KONERU LAKSHMAIAH EDUCATION FOUNDATION

(Deemed to be University, Estd. u/s 3 of the UGC Act, 1956)

Green Fields, Vaddeswaram, Guntur Dist., A.P., India, 522 302

Phone: +91 - 8645 - 350200

CFA: XVII Biennial International Conference on Comparative Literature as Alternative Humanities Ethics, Affect and the Everyday Social organized by Comparative Literature Association of India and University of Delhi-10th-12th September, 2024

Comparative Literature as Alternative Humanities Ethics, Affect and the Everyday Social

In the last few decades, scholars in the Humanities have found it necessary to examine the fundamental underpinnings upon which their disciplines are built. One of the primary questions that animated this re-examination has been regarding the very terms of our engagement with countries and communities that inhabit radically different social and moral life-worlds, living as they do outside the orbit of European Enlightenment values that still regulate both organisation and practice within and outside the academy, across the world. Instead of accepting difference as a defining feature of the human condition, the grand narratives of the Enlightenment were used as colonial and imperial tools to homogenize the diversity of experience, emotion and expression as the high tide of colonial modernity swept the world. The consequent otherness and alienation that characterised human society have deeply impacted literary and cultural production. We witness a disjunction between the objective, scientific discourse with its claim to truth and the everyday social experience of the human subject which Humanities seek to understand. These asymmetries compel us to rethink the Humanities from alternative positions and perspectives to embody and address the plural orders of reality and the differences between them. How can the collection of disciplines we call the Humanities recover the capacity of self-reflection and self-criticism? Much has been written about how stereotypes invade our imagination to contaminate our experience and knowledge.

Comparative Literature’s commitment to alterity and plurality gives it a foundational interest in the non-stereotypical, non-canonized, un-heard narratives of “others” that constitute a radical sense of the literary. Such articulations can only emerge from the confluence of different locations, experiences and identities, demonstrating how our vision of “others” projects our own versions of ourselves onto the outside world.

An alternative view of the Humanities will have to come to terms with the ideas of relationality, plurality and cultural mobility as the defining features of all epochs including that of the pre-modern. Texts, ideas, images, metaphors, themes, modes, genres, tales are all human endeavours and like humans themselves these have the capacity to travel across constructed, eternally given or pre-fixed borders, thereby defying the exclusivist, essentialist ideas of culture and literature. The prevailing inclination towards connected sociologies and connected histories, while a step in the right direction, often reflects the dominant discourses which impose homogeneity and hierarchy, evincing a lack of empathy for the precarious endeavour of encountering alterity and a lack of understanding of the transient and the contingent.

Thus, we propose plurality as a conceptual framework to address this eco-system of interconnectedness and relationality in terms of their manifestations in the languages and literatures of all nations, regions and communities, regardless of their location in the hierarchy of political and economic regimes, or of their internal stratifications. We would like to recover the mutuality of interconnections and interdependence between literatures and cultures across the world. The assertion that we live in a post-human world prompts us, as humans to consider our experience in terms of relationality and plurality. These emerge as conceptual tools for recasting our relations with the other - be it humans, animals or the non- living.

Texts are actualised through their immersion in the shared ideological and affective worlds that constitute the everyday world. From orality to print to the visual media, modes of intersubjective engagement are implicated in structures of power relations within society and our response to them. The very practice of Comparative Literature is an acknowledgement of plurality and a willingness to engage with difference. The discipline emphasises upon relationality, heterogeneity, multivocal perspectives, and direct engagement with alterity that translation offers as a process and a product. Built into the discipline is the interaction between literatures in multiple languages both within the nation and in other countries of the world. Furthermore, it takes orality and performance in its ambit. It reaches out to all other disciplines by asking the existential question : can we open ourselves to the location of the other and view the world from the vantage point of difference that we encounter outside ourselves? Can we frame a dialogic mode of interaction that reading teaches us to our relations with the world, to expand our view of the world outside our own limited subjectivity ? Hence, we propose Comparative Literature as an alternate paradigm - and invite reflections upon the possibilities inherent in the conceptual frame structured by the reciprocal, the relational and the plural. It is our hope that it will help to grasp and address the nature of the crisis that afflicts the Humanities today both in intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary framework.

13%

Comparative Literature: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

₹799.00

3%

Glimpses Of Comparative Literature

₹595.00

15%

MEG-15: Comparative Literature: Theory and Practice (IGNOU Study Guide Book)

₹350.00

24%

Comparative English Literature

₹595.00

16%

Studies In Comparative Literature

₹695.00

14%

Comparative literature

₹3,592.00

Comparative Perspectives on Indian Literature

Comparative Literature: A Critical Introduction

30%

NEERAJ MEG-15 Comparative Literature : Theory And Practice- English Medium for MA- IGNOU - Chapter Wise Help Book / Guide including Many Solved Sample Papers and Important Exam Notes– Published by Neeraj Publications

₹320.00

20%

Comparative Literature in the Age of Multiculturism (Parallax: Re-visions of Culture and Society)

₹3,800.00

Sub-themes

Some of the sub-themes in the context of the main theme that can be taken up for discussion are as follows:

• Interrogating categorial binaries (tradition/modernity, nature/culture, regional/national,
• east/west etc.)/ Literature after theory/ Shifting paradigms between Literary Studies and Social Sciences/ The Post-human as a paradigm in literary studies.
• Worlding literature / Historicising canons/ Global and local as contexts of reading. The idea of the classic in modernity: circulation or creativity ?
• Translation and the encounter with difference. Translating “dialects”/ The oral texts/ Archaic texts.
• The plural nation: stratification and resistance/ Literary historiography and geopolitics/ Intertextuality and chronotopes.
• Polyphony/ Polysemy in literature/ Poetry and cosmopolitanism.
• Interrogating “Minor” literature as category/ Identity theories as critiques of the Humanities / Life-writing from the margins.
• The performativity of literature/ Screenplay as literature/ Intermediality in literature. South Asian literatures and cultures: relations, reciprocity and ruptures/ Population movements and literature.

Papers are invited from scholars of #Comparative #Literature,

#Translation Studies, #Cultural Studies, #Theatre Studies, #Gender Studies, #Black Studies, #Dalit Studies etc. or on any aspect of literature and culture that will help us understand and practice the Humanities in accordance with the ethical perspectives outlined above.

Abstracts of about 250 words along with a short bio-note of

about 100 words may be submitted to clai2024@admin.du.ac.in

Upon acceptance, participants will be provided with registration details through email. 

The Registration Fee will include workshop kit, certificate, lunch, and refreshments during the three days of the conference. Participants would need to become members of CLAI on receiving their acceptance letters in order to present papers, if they are not already members of CLAI.

IMPORTANT DATES:

Last date of abstract submission: 30th April, 2024 

Selected participants will be notified by: 30th May, 2024 

Last date of registration: 15th July, 2024

REGISTRATION FEE:

Faculty members: Rs.3500/-

Research scholars/students: Rs.2000/- 

International participants: US$ 200

For further information please visit:

  https://www.clai.in/upcoming-event/

Organising Committee, XVII Biennial International Conference.

clai2024@admin.du.ac.in