CFP: Two days seminar on Tales of Timelessness: Understanding the Heritage of Bengal-March 21- 22, 2024, Kazi Nazrul University

 Call For Papers

Panchakot Mahavidyalaya, Purulia, is organizing a two-day seminar on 'Tales of Timelessness: Understanding the Heritage of West Bengal' from 21st and 22nd March 2024. On this occasion, we are pleased to announce a call for papers, inviting research students and independent scholars to submit their original research (300-400 words abstract) along with their bio-note to suvajit.halder@panchakotmv.ac.in.

Last Date of Abstract Submission: 1st March 2024.

Concept Note

Understanding/conserving heritage is more than creating museums or collecting artifacts, stories, and songs. Heritage is a living experience that weaves together the threads of our past, present, and future. It goes beyond the surface, delving into the stories, values, and legacies that shape our identities as individuals and communities.

At its core, heritage encapsulates tangible and intangible expressions of human creativity and achievement. It encompasses historical sites, cultural practices, languages, folklore, and collective memories that bind a society. Heritage is a repository of knowledge, a bridge between generations, and a testament to the diversity of human experiences.

Heritage is dynamic, evolving with time while retaining its intrinsic essence. It reflects the continuous interplay between tradition and modernity, adaptation, and preservation. Recognizing and safeguarding heritage becomes a collective responsibility as it contributes to a sense of belonging and shared identity within communities.

Moreover, understanding heritage fosters an appreciation and respect for cultural diversity. It encourages cross-cultural dialogue, allowing individuals to embrace the richness of traditions different from their own. Heritage becomes a source of inspiration, a reservoir of creativity that sparks innovation while grounding societies in their roots.

In essence, understanding heritage is an invitation to explore the roots of our existence, to appreciate the cultural mosaic that defines us. It prompts us to preserve, celebrate, and transmit our heritage to future generations, ensuring that the stories of our past continue to resonate in the present and echo into the future. Heritage is not merely a static snapshot of history; it is a vibrant, ever-unfolding narrative that invites us to connect, learn, and carry forward the legacy of our shared human experience.

Nestled in the eastern part of India, Bengal is a state that exudes cultural richness and historical significance. Many of its treasures are still unexplored but significant in understanding the richness of Bengali culture. For instance, Garh Panchakot of Purulia district, which holds immense significance in the history of this region, remains historically unexplored. Another example is Telkupi village, containing the finest and largest number of temples in one place in the Chota Nagpur circle of Bengal, unknown to many Bengalis. Moreover, the opulent tradition of handicrafts, paintings, dance, and plays in these regions remains unheard of by many scholars and the common masses. Therefore, to explore and understand the heritage of Bengal more thoroughly, we invite scholars and professionals to present their research in the seminar entitled 'Tales of Timelessness: Understanding the Heritage of West Bengal.'

Objective: 

The primary objective of this seminar is to provide a comprehensive exploration of West Bengal's heritage, shedding light on its historical, cultural, and architectural significance. Participants will gain insights into the evolution of the state's heritage and its impact on contemporary society.

 

Themes

Historical Narratives:

• Historical events, chronology of lesser-known dynasties, epigraphic, and numismatic studies.

Cultural Narrative:

• Exploring the vibrant festivals and traditions that define the cultural ethos of West Bengal.
• Analyzing the role of literature, music, and performing arts in preserving and promoting cultural heritage.

Architectural Marvels:

• Investigating the architectural heritage of West Bengal, including iconic structures, temples, and palaces.
• Discussing the fusion of indigenous and foreign architectural styles that characterize the region.

Food/Dress/Residence:

• Delving into the unique culinary traditions of West Bengal, including the world-famous Bengali cuisine.
• Understanding the historical and cultural significance of traditional dishes and culinary practices.
• Exploring diverse traditions of dresses of Bengal.
• Different styles of houses and their ornamentation.

Craftsmanship and Handicrafts:

• Showcasing the intricate craftsmanship and traditional handicrafts passed down through generations.
• Discussing the role of artisans in preserving and promoting West Bengal's artistic heritage.

Socio-economic study of different heritage sites.

Exploring the possibility and making a plan to make lesser-known Heritage sites a tourist attraction.

 

Exploring the Heritage sites of Purulia with special reference to Garh Panchakot and its surrounding areas.

 

Expected Outcomes

• Increased awareness and appreciation of West Bengal's rich heritage.
• Creation of a platform for interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration.
• Generation of research and documentation to contribute to the preservation of West Bengal's cultural legacy.

Free accommodation may be offered at the college hostel, subject to availability. The seminar committee can also arrange accommodation at resorts (Panchet Hill) for participants on payment. No TA will be provided to the participants. 

 

Registration fees: 

For offline presentation: INR 1500/- 

For online Presentation: INR 500/-

Selected papers will be published in a special issue of PANCHAKOTesSAYS: Multidisciplinary, Refereed, International Journal, ISSN: 0976-4968.

https://journal.panchakotmv.ac.in

For any queries, please feel free to write to us at suvajit.halder@panchakotmv.ac.in.

N.B.: A guided tour of Garh Panchakot will be organised for the Participants after the Seminar.

Contact Information

For any queries, please feel free to write to us at suvajit.halder@panchakotmv.ac.in.

Contact Email

suvajit.halder@panchakotmv.ac.in

Attachments

tales-timelessness.pdf

CFP: Seventh OHAI Conference on Oral History in the Digital World- 2022-Jadavpur University, Kolkata

Seventh OHAI Conference 2022: Call for Papers

Oral History in the Digital World

organized by

Oral History Association of India

in association with

Jadavpur University, Kolkata

March 4-5, 2022

ONLINE

CALL FOR PAPERS

With the turn of the century, the transformation from the Oral to the Digital, in terms of practice as well as pedagogy had taken roots and is here to stay. Until recently, the work of oral historians resulted in taped audio or video recording stored in box on a shelf in a repository where a researcher had limited access. But modern expectations of immediate access are changing that practice; anyone on the Internet can listen to the recordings as and when desired. This is all the more evident as we stepped into the global pandemic in early 2020s.

The initial reaction to the Covid pandemic was to retreat, to slow down our work, reduce it to the essentials while we waited for the public health concerns to abate. As public spaces emptied and physical meetings ended, there was a sudden, panicked shift to the online, digital mode. Education and research, office work, trade and shopping, entertainment, all lurched in a panic – not just epidemiological but also moral – to a digitised, and sanitised, virtual world. The pandemic has taken its toll, not just in the loss of the “old” familiar ways of research and education, but in very real terms of illness and death.

And yet, over these two years the virtual and the digital have perhaps been domesticated. The virus has perhaps been the midwife of digitality as a state of being. As the waves of the pandemic have washed upon us over these two years, the tide has perhaps finally turned towards making the world virtual.

As oral history practitioners this is a good moment to pause and reflect on what the past two years have done to the field. Digital technologies and the practices they entail had been adopted by oral history practitioners for years now, and yet this moment can perhaps be seen as a watershed in how we self-consciously relate to the digital. What does it imply for oral history when the digital mutates from being a tool to being the ground on which we conduct our research? How does the structure, content, and context of the oral change in this pervasive digitality? What happens to oral history when the meeting of researcher and subject is irreducibly virtual? Does digitality erode the discursive power of the researcher, or does it entrench it? Can we think of the oral outside the digital anymore? How do we think of research practices which allow a more participative and democratic modes of oral history? How do we develop protocols which support those who find the digital turn overwhelming? How do we now work with questions of knowledge production, privacy, ownership and the global commons? How does Oral history practice deal with the digital panopticon?

In short, what happens, and has happened to oral history, both as practice and purpose, with this digital turn?

The 7^th Conference of the Oral History Association of India calls for papers, presentations and panels to explore and discuss the varied relations between orality and digitality.

Not surprisingly, this conference too will be held online.

Submission of abstract: February 5, 2022

Selection of abstracts: February 14, 2022

Final program: February 21, 2022

Last date of registration: Not yet open

Online login details sent to fully registered participants:

Abstract or session submission guidelines:

Your submission can be in the form of an online presentation of a paper/poster/slides/film/audio documentary/art, organizing a panel or discussion forum, or any other online mode you want to explore. Abstracts must be within 200 words. Participants who wish to present papers are requested to provide their name, designation & institution and email id along with the title of the paper. The abstract should be sent to: oralhistoryindia@gmail.com on or before the abstract submission deadline mentioned above.

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.