CFP:International Conference on “Performance Art and the Prospects of Folkloric Tribal Culture of Eastern India” -20 & 21 March 2018-Department of English, Vidyasagar University, Medinipur, West Bengal, India.

“The fourth world is at present incipient, not fully realized; seeds, not yet wholly grown. This fourth world of aesthetics needs to organize itself as “non-aligned,” neither capitalist, whether of the US, European, or Chinese brand, nor communist/socialist, nor fundamentalist-religious whether Islamic, Hindu, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, or whatever. The vanguard of this new fourth world are — and here I hope you won’t think me too arrogant — performance theorists and performance artists who practice collaborative performance research; persons who know that playing deeply is a way of finding and embodying new knowledge. What would be the manifesto of this Performance Fourth World? It has four axioms:

• To perform is to explore, to play, to experiment with new relationships.
• To perform is to cross borders. These borders are not only geographical, but emotional, ideological, political, and personal.
• To perform is to engage in lifelong active study. To grasp every possibility as a script — something to be played with, interpreted, and reformed/remade.
• To perform is to become someone else and yourself at the same time. To empathize, react, grow, and change.”

Richard Schechner, from “Performance in the 21st century”

Concept Note:

A group of spectators sits around an empty space. An oil lamp hangs from each of the four posts on four corners of the surrounded space. This is how folkloric tribal performances improvise their own stage and create a symbolic stockade to mark off its distance from the viewers. The Mundaris, Kurmis, Shabars et al. continue to represent their folk cultural forms in such spartan conditions. Any piece of behaviour/ doing/action that is marked off or framed can possibly be called performance. Framing contextualizes performance and enables us to comprehend it as an entity. The flexibility of space and décor realizes the community’s potential for adaptation to changing order and fosters re-contextualization of its cultural identity.

Folk memory on the one hand carries over the wisdom of the former age to newer constitutions of identity and on the other seems to be unaffected by institutional forms of inequality based on class, caste and ethnicity. It is the unique capacity of folk culture to address the universal from its vantage form of the local that makes it an indispensable part of contemporary Indian society. In spite of the distinctiveness of the specific tribal ways of life, the spirit of tribal folklore underlines global values that natural religion can offer to other faiths. From performatives of their daily social and religious life to performances of entertainment – all presentations of tribal culture express the organic interrelatedness of god, man, nature and spirit. Representations of these forms appear not to be suitable for traditional models of theatre that – a la Richard Schechner – regard the spectator merely as a customer and divide space into exclusive hierarchies of class, race, ethnicity and aesthetic forms. Folklore in eastern India is a cultural category that accommodates non-confrontational coexistence as much of cultivated and folk traditions as of Brahmanical, caste Hindu, Muslim, tribal and Christian cultural practices. Folkloric performance therefore becomes a tool of cultural intervention or a crucial site for juxtaposition of cultures. It blurs the boundary between the oral and the literary. Mahasweta Devi, for example, re-constructs the “Book of the Hunter” (“Vyaad Kaand”) of Mukundaram’s medieval Bengali epic Chandi Mangala to bring to life the lost oral tradition of the Shabar tribe. Nilakanth Ghoshal uses the folklore of Bhadu to rewrite Bhumi Kanya (Earth maiden). Some of the oral forms are inscribed, creating a gap between the word and the speaker for creative imaginations to fill. A sort of post-modern endeavour is required to ensure that folk forms can be sustained as living traditions in which collective identities are constructively affirmed.

This conference seeks to address issues related to the sustenance of tribal folk art forms of eastern India in performance. It will recognize the necessity of informing these forms with epistemological ideas born of new researches in performance art and theory as well as scour the possibility of how elements of these forms in turn can contribute to the enrichment of performance art in totality. Abstracts (250 words) for papers of 15 min duration are invited on the theme of the conference. Presenters can use the following sub-themes (not inclusive) as guidelines:

• Tribal identity, folk art and performance
• Performative, Performance and Performativity of Tribal cultural practices
• Religious equity and tribal folkloric performance
• Gender equity and tribal folkloric performance
• Globalization and tribal folklore in performance
• Colonization and tribal folk performances
• Nation, Resistance and tribal folk performances
• Borderlands and tribal folk performance
• Psychogeography and tribal folk practices
• Traditional history and tribal folklore in practice

Publication:
The Conference Proceedings will be published in the Rupkatha Journal (indexed by Scopus, EBSCO, MLA, ERIHPLUS)

Selected papers will go into an anthology to be brought out by an international publisher.

Registration Fee:

Rs 500/- per head.

Accommodation:

We cannot provide but we can suggest places to stay in like (name a few hotels etc).

Contact:

Send your abstracts for consideration to any of the following members by 15 Feb 2018:

Mr Rony Patra, M: 9434042124; Email: rony.vueng@gmail.com

Mr Mir Ahammad Ali, M: 9046425106; Email: mirahammadali1990@gmail.com

Ms Anjali Atto, M: 9064898574; Email: anjaliecute91@gmail.com

International Conference on Advances in English Studies, Women Empowerment, Business, Humanities & Social Sciences- Dec 28 - 30 , 2017, Goa, India.

Welcome to International Conference Goa 2017

​The International Conference on Advances in English Studies, Women Empowerment, Business, Humanities & Social Sciences - 2017 is one of the largest conference in the Social Sciences community held in conjunction with the UGC Approved Arts & Education International Research Journal by International Multidisciplinary Research Foundation (IMRF), Center for Scientific Research Education (CSRE) and DRPF University Macedonia. 

This International Conference on Advances in English Studies, Women Empowerment, Business, Humanities & Social Sciences - 2017 is designed with Special Invited Research Lectures, Paper-Presentations and Poster Presentations and is honored by bringing UGC Approved Arts & Education International Research Journal Vol 4 Spl Issue with ISSN 2349-1353 with all Peer Reviewed Conference Accepted Papers intended to reflect the pioneering state of the Social Sciences Research. 

The Organizers will also arrange special events such as non-technical talks connected with promotion of research in Social Sciences as well as cultural events

Call for Papers 

Original research papers/posters from Post Graduate Students, Research Scholars, Academicians, Scientists etc., in the manifold fields of English Language etc., disciplines related to Life Sciences are invited for presentation at the Conference.

English Studies

• Linguistics |Sociolinguistics |Discourse analysis |Language learning and teaching | Literature
• American literature – including African American literature |Jewish American literature
• Southern literature | Australian literature |British literature |Canadian literature | Irish literature
• New Zealand literature |Scottish literature |Welsh literature |South African literature | Translations

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Women Studies 

• Feminist method |Gender studies |Gender mainstreaming |Gynocentrism |Kyriarchy |Matriarchy |Women's studies | Patriarchy |Écriture féminine | Leadership etc., and allied subjects

​

Business Sciences

• Accounting |Actuarial science |Computer science | Economics |Finance |Information systems |Law
• Marketing |Organizational psychology |Quantitative finance |Quantitative management | Banking and finance | Business |Business Ethics | E-commerce |Human Resources |Management etc., and allied fields

​

Social Sciences 

• Anthropology |Archaeology |Criminology |Demography |Economics |Geography (human) |History International relations |Jurisprudence |Linguistics |Pedagogy |Political science |Psychology |Science education |Sociology | Public Administration |Journalism etc., and allied subjects.

​

Submission of Papers 

Participants intending to present papers before the Conference are requested to submit soft copy of the abstract if its is for oral presentation or poster presentation and full paper if interested in publication (neatly typed in MS word format with 1.5 line spacing 12 point Times New Roman font on A-4 size paper) incorporating the motivation, method of solution and important findings of their investigation to icgoa2017@gmail.com

Important Dates

• Abstract/Full Paper Submission Lat Date 10/12/2017 
• Acceptance Date Will be served in 2 to 3 working days from the date of receipt 
• Registration Last Date 15/12/2017 

​Contact Us. ​

Carmel College for Women

Nuvem, Goa, India

To Talk. ​

+ 91 9618777011; + 91 9533421234.

Write to Us :icgoa2017@gmail.com ​

Visit Us: http://icgoa2017.wixsite.com/conference

International Conference:9/11 and the Beginning of the End of Liberal Democracy: Fictional Perspectives, 27-28 February 2018,Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India

Call for Papers :

The conference hopes to bring together original research papers on the images of Islam and Muslims post 9/11 in literary texts and media discourses and engage meaningfully with Islam as a human and historical phenomenon where Muslims are neither victims nor threats but active participants within modern liberal structures of societies that are themselves ready to shift from an ‘an uncritical acceptance of the category of religion’ to a ‘critical interrogation of religion as a category’ to understand Islam.

Concept Note 

‘Mankind’s ideological evolution’ seemed, for many, to have reached ‘the end of history as such’ in the worldwide triumph of liberal democracy and market capitalism - visually signified by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989- as the logical culmination of the Western civilization. This narrative was ‘spectacularly’ interrupted by the events of September 2001 which seemed to signal the beginning of the end of the utopia of liberal democracy where capitalism had ‘broken free from the shackles of democracy’. The ensuing ‘global war on terror’ may be justified by ‘the state of exception’ but not all in the ‘West’ or in the ‘Muslim world’ (both conceptual rather than territorial categories that are not monolithic) endorse or wish to be involved in this war. This fact-of-the-matter however gets neutralized, if not lost, in the nuanced language games of fiction, written after the events of 9/11, and its own politics of words and images.

In the wake of an unprecedented scale of global violence and the spread of extremism by individuals and states, both in the ‘West’ as well as in the ‘Muslim world’, it becomes all the more disconcerting to realize that there are no ‘visible enemies’ that ‘triumphant globalization’ is fighting. Secularist triumphalism, the twin of triumphant globalization, which had rolled over traditional religious establishments, had been shaken by the Rushdie Affair in the late 1980s and the fundamentalist retaliations continuing till the early 2000s exposed not only the ‘uncertainties and insecurities of Western societies about the worth of basic liberal values’ (Malak) but also the distance Muslims had travelled away from the spirit and ethos of Islam. Far from being a liberating force, a kinetic social, cultural and intellectual dynamic for equality, justice and human values, Islam on 9/11 seemed to have internalized what the false Western representations had done to demonize it for centuries. (Sardar).The phenomenon of the ‘resurgence of religion’ cannot be seen separately from the hegemonic understanding of religion in the narrow and closed discourse of secularism. In the resultant ‘clash of fundamentalisms’, of Western secularism and Islamism, Baudrillard’s contention that the enemy, in the form of Islamic terrorism, could not in any meaningful way be regarded as an alien phenomenon coming from outside but from within the unchallenged triumphalism of a distorted logic of ‘civilization’, though controversial may not be entirely unfounded. It rises from a deep sense of concern for a globalization that as it grew more and more powerful, so did its cultural and spiritual crisis.

‘Provoked’, as it were, by some of these concerns and the sense that ‘the existing conceptualizations of Islam have in various ways failed to convey the fullness of the reality of what it is that has actually been (and is) going on in the historical societies of Muslims living as Muslims’ (Shahab Ahmad) this conference hopes to bring together original research papers on the images of Islam and Muslims post 9/11 in literary texts and media discourses and engage meaningfully with Islam as a human and historical phenomenon where Muslims are neither victims nor threats but active participants within modern liberal structures of societies that are themselves ready to shift from an ‘an uncritical acceptance of the category of religion’ to a ‘critical interrogation of religion as a category’ to understand Islam. With some of these intended aims we invite original papers of 30 minutes duration.

Sub themes may include but are not restricted to:

• Islam, Islamism and Secularization
• Politics or Policing of Recognition in Liberal Democratic Societies
• The ‘Representability’ of Islamic Fundamentalism
• The ‘Rushdie Affair’ and the Post 9/11 Novel
• Post-colonialism and the Migrant Muslim Writing
• The ‘Resurgence of Religion’ and the Neo-colonial Reality
• The War on Terror and the Global State of Exception
• Contemporary British Muslim Fiction
• Multiculturalism and Neo-oriental Narratives
• Globalization, the End of History and Prophetic Religions
• Holy War in the Media

Abstracts of about 500 words, with a 50-word note on the speaker, must be emailed to Dr. Rafat Ali before 15 January 2018 . Email; asdak.yunzi@gmail.com

Out-of-town delegates will be notified as soon as possible, to expedite the process of travel bookings. We regret that we cannot offer reimbursement for travel and accommodation, but we could assist delegates in making arrangements for accommodation, if required.

ICSSR NRC sponsored International seminar: Policing in South Asia: Dilemmas of Governance and the Making of Participatory Communities 6th January 2018 Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, India

Concept Note

The police play a key role as an interface between the people and the state. Yet despite this, studies of the institution from a sociologically- and historically-informed perspective, especially in the context of South Asia, are relatively scarce. The state has been studied as embodied in everyday practices and the interactions of various institutions, and thus as actively shaped by experiences and practices of those who perform it (Gupta 1995; Fuller & Benei 2010), as well as of the role it plays in shaping, and of the ways it is shaped by, society (Skocpol 1979, Mann 1993, Migdal 2001).The role of the police in such processes is, however, unclear, since the linkages between police institutions and structures and the socio-historical context of their operation have received little scholarly attention. This is particularly the case in post-colonial contexts in which the police first emerged as a colonial institution. The aim of this seminar is to begin to address such a scholarly lacuna by bring together an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars to consider the role of the police in shaping both state sovereignty and social order in South Asia. It will do so through considering the following key questions: How has the state historically been embodied in everyday practices of policing in South Asia, and what are the legacies of such practices; what role has the police played in shaping both the state and society; and in what way has society in South Asia shaped the institutions and practices of policing?

The seminar will explore such questions through considering four key issues. The first is the relationship between crime, punishment and state formation. Crime and social control have been concerns of human history prior to the modern era, and the South Asian sub-continent has a long history of disciplining techniques rooted in indigenous texts and traditions that pre-date the formation of modern nation-states – colonial and post-colonial – in the region. The principle of Danda in the Arthashastra tradition, for example, focused on the crucial role of punishment in statecraft (Troutman 1979). However, the colonial institution of the police as it emerged by the mid-nineteenth century discarded such traditions and introduced a model of policing based on the principle of ‘colonial difference’ (Chatterjee 1993) that prioritised the maintenance of the security and sovereignty of the colonial state rather than serving the interests of South Asian subjects. This seminar aims to shed new light on the nature of both pre-colonial and colonial policing by examining how concerns with crime control and security have historically worked out in practices of policing, and how they have been influenced by local texts and traditions, colonial rule, national-state formation and the emergence of constitutional democracy.

The second issue that the seminar aims to explore is the role of policing as a mechanism of social control and an institution of coercive power, in particular its relationship to, and role in shaping, marginal groups, including women. Marginalization is a process of exclusion resulting from material, social or gendered resourcelessness on both sides of the divide between state and society. In considering how marginalization is produced through practices of governing, the seminar aims to consider how to move towards a democratization of the means of making societies more secure, and how to ensure participation of all sections of society in the development of a cooperative social fabric. 

The third issue that the seminar will interrogate is that of the ‘margin’ as a locale. In a deliberation on policing with an awareness of the marginality that exists on both the side of the police and the policed, the seminar also hopes to throw light on the concerns of the geographical margins, such as slums, that are sought to be rationally classified and organized (Das & Poole 2004) by police work.

Such an engagement with the historical, sociological, geographical, political and administrative aspects of policing as an institution and policing as a practice in South Asia would not only address a gap in the presently available literature on policing, the state and society, but would also offer valuable policy insights into how to effectively police societies in the postcolonial world. The seminar therefore aims, lastly, to offer policy perspectives on democratic policing in South Asia. Bringing together scholars and practitioners to develop comparative understandings and to propose long-term sociological and systemic changes, this seminar would be an important contribution to the study of the police in South Asia.

Tentative themes of the seminar include but are not limited to the following:

• Indigenous traditions and colonial impact on policing in South Asia
• Policing and marginality
• Gender and policing
• Justice, Law and police work
• Policy framework for effective policing and for generating trust

Please email 250-300 words abstracts to khanikarsantana@gmail.com

Last date for receiving abstracts: 30th November 2017

AC 3tier train fares would be reimbursed to selected participants travelling to Delhi from other parts of India. International travel funding is not available. Food and lodging will be arranged by the organizers. 
If selected, full papers will be due by 20th of December 2017. 

For any queries feel free to send an email at khanikarsantana@gmail.com 

Film Studies International Conference on In Search of the Hero(es) within the Genre and Beyond: 23-24 February 2018, BHU,India.

Concept Note:

“A Hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.”-Joseph Campbell

The world today has become a confused arena populated with masses having no clue of what is going on around them, and more especially, with them. The enthusiasm and optimism that foregrounded the most part of the 20th century, despite the great wars and mass killings, turned pessimistic in last few decades, and now paranoia dictates us. Our present bearing is so fittingly described by Cooper in the movie Interstellar that “We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our places in the stars. Now we just look down and worry about our places in the dirt.” We used to exalt our lives with the sublime conduct by following examples of people like Gandhi and Buddha. We used to be inspired by the stories of people, real or fictional, displaying extraordinary demeanor against hostile forces. Now, we have turned them into commodities with which we satisfy our fetish devours by owning them. What led humanity to arrive here? The old tales are not working now and new ones are not in the making. A bizarre wasteland surmounts us inhabited by a lot that is passive and disinterested, lacking moral convictions, aspiring to be rescued and purged by someone else for their sins. However, whom they chose to be rescued by, that posits the question.

This question consciously or unconsciously has become a part of our day-to-day discourse. Metaphors ranging from the semiotics of avant-garde to pop-culture, from real to surreal, from genres and beyond, wobble around the same question – What sort of hero you want to choose to redeem yourself? But before one can delve into this question, one needs to ask, who and what is a Hero? Joseph Campbell weighs over the concept of hero and elucidates that a hero is someone who makes a journey into an experience that is lacking in life or is not permitted to the members of society. The hero, thus, takes an adventurous journey to have an access to that knowledge and then returns back with some message; hence, a cyclical process of going and returning. If so, can we call each one of us heroes, as Norman Mailer said during Kennedy’s Presidential bid in 1960, “each of us was born to be free, to wander, to have adventure and to grow on the waves of the violent, the perfumed, and the unexpected, had a force which could not be tamed.” If these are the interpretations of being and becoming a hero, then what are the (im)possibilities of academics, theologians, philosophers, and ascetics to become one? One can notice the repetition of journeys that Campbell talks about have been witnessed in the stories ranging from Jesus to Ram to Buddha to Krishna to Beowulf to Ulysses to Robin Hood to Milton’s Satan to even contemporary encashment of “hero-making” and “hero-worshipping” in the likes of Obama to Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin to John Cena to Shahrukh Khan to Batman. It is in the later body of folks where the concept goes awry because by the time one reaches to this end of the string, it becomes hard to decipher between the hero and the image. And thus, is witnessed the emergence of myth-making of heroes from tribal, local, regional, ethnic, racial, gendered, religious, national and international communities.

And it becomes more convoluted and twisted because we are strolling in an age where the stratosphere everywhere is breathing with its own kind of personal and private heroes conflicting with the other. Orrin E. Klapp justly remarks in his article, “The Creation of Popular Superheroes,” which seems to be an astute remark for our times that “an age of mass hero worship is an age of instability,” and it would be rash on our part if we blind eye ourselves to this fact. ‘The best are lacking in all convictions’ as W B Yeats once remarked, ‘and the worst are full of passionate intensity’. Only if one can dare to confront such ‘heroes’ like Bob Dylan emphatically does, “I see through your eyes/And I see through your brain/Like I see through the water/That runs down my drain” (Masters of War). So, what is the solution? Shall the heroes be abandoned? Shall the search be for a Hero rather than heroes? The matter of fact is we are in a mad house and we are all mad as the Cat mentions to Alice in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland:

‘How do you know I’m mad?’ said Alice.

‘You must be,’ said the Cat, ‘or you wouldn’t have come here.’

Now, if we can’t abandon the idea of leaving the premises of the madhouse, it is better then to reconstruct the formula of madness afresh. If we can’t bail out of our heroes for a Hero (having whom would again be nightmarish), if we can’t go back to the world where heroes acted as a beacon to overcome our mortal fears, then the need is as Paul Meadows illustrates, to ‘identify the social interaction of the hero in its myriad form: social control, leadership, imitation, propaganda, the social movement, crowd psychology’ (“Some Notes on the Social Psychology of the Hero”).

This conference, therefore, aims to bring forth the scholars and researchers to deliberate upon the various concepts and jargons about heroes within the genres and beyond of political, social, cultural, and literary, with hopes to construct and rejuvenate ideas from scratch out of the stale ones.

Following are the sub-themes (but not limited) that this conference aims to dwell upon:

• Hero or Leader
• Hero as Character/Protagonist
• Hero/Anti-hero/Villain/Criminal
• Hero as Poet/Prophet/Philosopher
• Female Hero or Heroine
• Hero in Transition
• Alternative Hero
• Hero as Outcaste/Pariah
• Superhero
• Artist/Author as a Hero
• Hero with Mask
• City/Space as Hero
• Genre Heroes
• Medium/Technology as Hero
• Statesman as Hero
• Nation as Hero
• Hero as Myth/Hero in Mythology
• Hero as Explorer
• Hero as Guardian

List of Speaker(s)

Keynote Speaker:Alicia Maree Malone

The famous film reporter, host, writer and self-confessed movie geek. She first gained notice hosting movie-centric shows and reviewing films in her native Australia, before making the leap to Los Angeles in 2011.Since then, Alicia has appeared on CNN, the Today show, MSNBC, NPR and many more as a film expert. Currently, she is a host on FilmStruck, a cinephile subscription streaming service run by the Criterion Collection and Turner Classic Movies, and she is the creator and host of the weekly show, Indie Movie Guide on Fandango.

She is the writer of the book 'Backwards and in Heels' about the history of women in Hollywood.

Alicia has traveled the world to cover the BAFTAs, the Oscars, the Cannes Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival and SXSW. She is a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association, and over the years has interviewed hundreds of movie stars and filmmakers.

Plenary Speaker(s)

Prof. Dr. Ursula Kocher

Professor of General Literary Studies and Older German Literature in the European context at the Bergische Universitaet, Wuppertal, Germany. Prof. Ursula Kocher studied German, Romance, Rhetoric and History at the Otto- Friedrich University, Bamberg as well as Eberhard Karls Universitaet, Tübingen, Germany. From 1991 to 1999 she was a scholarship fellow at the German Cultural Foundation. In 2000 and 2001, Kocher was a research associate of the DFG Research project “The Invisibility of the Imagination in Elizabethan Culture” at the Humboldt-Universität, Berlin, and then until 2006 a scientific assistant at Freie Universität, Berlin. She is pioneer for starting many Projects with Indian. 

Dr. Jyoti Sabharwal

She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of Delhi, India. Her expertise lies in German Exile Literature from 1933-1945, with a special focus on India as a place of exile; Representations of India in post war novels and shorter prose, the emergence of migrant writing and questions of history and memory.

Key Points

Last date for sending abstract of the paper: 31 December 2017

Last date for sending complete paper: 28 January 2018

Send abstract/paper to the conference email id: heroconferencebhu2018@gmail.com

Selected Presenters will be notified by 10 January 2018

Conference Dates: 23-24 February 2018

Registration Fee: Rs 2,000 (for Research Scholars); Rs 2,500 (for Faculty Members); and 100 USD (for International delegates)

Format for the Application

Full Name:

Sex:

Address (including telephone and email id): 

Nationality: 

Institutional affiliations:

Department:

Academic qualification:

Presently pursuing any course or present occupation/position:

Publications, if there (mention the best three):

Specific research area/topic (if any):

Abstract of your presentation in the Conference:

For more Details About Conference, Please Mail us  

@ amarsnghbhu@gmail.com