Call for Applications: Winter School in Oral History 2017, Bangalore.

Call For Applications:

The Centre for Public History, Bangalore announces the third Winter School on 'The Inner Life of Interviews: Oral history and Inter-subjectivity' to be held from November 1 to 10, 2017 in Bangalore. The Winter School, the first of its kind in India, began in 2013 with a focus on the role played by oral history in documenting social change. The last two editions of Winter School in Oral History were very successful.

This year's Winter School will explore the modes of meaning making within a life story interview, delving deeper into the positions of interviewer and interviewee and the relationships formed between them. The life story interview and the role of the interviewer have defined the field of oral history in significant ways and we seek to further examine the subjectivities that inform the practice. Some of the questions we seek to address are:

How is an oral history interview different from other forms of interviewing?

What shapes the dynamic between interviewer and interviewee? What are the ethical implications of engaging in such a practice? Have technological advancements blurred the boundaries between interviewer and interviewee?

This course will address these issues in a global context with examples from India and other South Asian countries, United States, and Italy.

The facilitators include eminent oral historians and practitioners like Alessandro Portelli (Italy), Martha Norkunas (USA), Anne Valk (USA), Indira Chowdhury (India), Nina Sabnani (India), and Deepa Dhanraj (India) among others who will present the latest research approaches through examples from their own work. The Winter School aims to have 20-25 participants who will have the opportunity to discuss their projects with the faculty.

The last date for the submission of applications is September 30, 2017.

To apply, fill in the Registration Form and email it to cph@srishti.ac.in.

Contact Info:

Center for Public History

Address: Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology (N5 campus), CA Site No. 21, 5th Phase, KHB Colony, Yelahanka New Town, Bangalore - 560064, India.

Phone: +91 80 49000836

Contact Email: cph@srishti.ac.in

URL: https://cphwinterschool.wordpress.com/

Call for Applications: Visiting Fellowships 2018, Topic area “Performing Knowledge: The Politics and Economics of European Studies”(Funded)

Call For Applications:

The Europainstitut (Institute for European Global Studies) of the University of Basel, Switzerland, welcomes applications for three Visiting Fellowships (three months in 2018, starting in spring or in autumn) in the field of European Global Studies, with special focus on the topic area “Performing Knowledge: The Politics and Economics of European Studies”.

The Institute for European Global Studies is an interdisciplinary research institute at Switzerland’s oldest university, the University of Basel. It develops new interdisciplinary concepts and methodologies designed to critically examine European integration as well as the relations that have shaped Europe in connection with other continents. We welcome applications from researchers who are interested in investigating actors and agencies in global contexts and who enjoy adopting a conceptual approach beyond the nation-state.

Applications should be in line with the Institute’s general research perspective on Europe in its global contexts and engage with a project from the topic area of “Performing Knowledge: The Politics and Economics of European Studies”. During the last decade, calls to put the academic study of Europe on a new theoretical footing have become more frequent, as established patterns of interpretation have lost analytic purchase in the face of fundamental economic, social and political crises. Various relational approaches to Europe have surfaced in academic debates on the nature and research focus of European Studies. Since the academic study of Europe is not entirely independent of economic and political interests, there is a need to advance empirical and theoretical work on European Studies. We therefore welcome proposals which focus on European Studies as object of research, understood as a global phenomenon, and its linkages to the worlds of economy and politics. This may include, but is not limited to, approaches from within anthropology, sociology, political science, history, law, or economics. 

Applications on “Performing Knowledge” should be related to one of the following fields:

• research on European Studies outside of Europe,
• global knowledge production and area studies,
• the European Union as an economic and political actor in the political economy of European (Union) Studies,
• theoretical work on a relational approach towards Europe in its global context. 

Prospective Visiting Fellows will benefit from the excellent academic conditions and exchange with international colleagues. They need to have completed their PhD and have an established track record in the research field of Europe in its global contexts. In addition, they should have cultivated the ability to think beyond the boundaries of academic disciplines. A Fellow’s project should provide a fresh contribution for his/her field of expertise, also in terms of methodological input. Visiting Fellows should be keen to share and discuss their research. The Institute for European Global Studies strongly encourages women scholars to apply. The Fellowship includes funding.

Please use the standard proposal form for your project proposal and your CV. Incoming applications without the standard form cannot be considered. Please submit your application to: fellowship-eib@unibas.ch. The application deadline is Friday, September 1, 2017.

Contact Info:

Europainstitut / Institute for European Global Studies

University of Basel

Gellertstrasse 27, P.O. Box

CH-4020 Basel

Contact Email: fellowship-eib@unibas.ch

URL: https://europa.unibas.ch

Call for Applications for Shastri Scholar Travel Subsidy Grants (SSTSG) 2017-18

Call For Applications

Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute is pleased to announce a Call for Applications for Shastri Scholar Travel Subsidy Grants (SSTSG) 2017-18 from SICI’s Canadian and Indian Member Institutions in good standing. SSTSG assists faculty members, doctoral or post-doctoral students, with travel subsidies to participate in conferences, workshops, seminars and academic meetings in partner countries (India or Canada) that are intended to establish institutional and scholarly linkages.

Please note the following points:

• The minimum number of grants and minimum funds available for each grant, as specified below, is guaranteed. 

• Although minimum grant amount is specified as CAD$1000, the award amount may reach up to CAD$1,500, if extra funds become available for this program. Therefore you may request SICI grant up to a maximum of CAD$1,500, while keeping in mind that you may receive only CAD$1,000. 

• Besides, SICI may consider awarding more number of grants as well, subject to availability of additional funds after due process of approval.

• Institutions may receive only one SSTSG award, and receipt of the award is subject to the institution being a SICI member in good standing with fully paid-up membership for the current year (2017-18).

• An individual who was awarded a SSTSG may not receive another Travel Subsidy Grant until at least one (1) year has passed. For example, an individual receiving a grant in 2016-17 will be eligible to apply for a second SSTSG grant in 2018-19.

• The selected awardees will have 2 weeks to confirm their acceptance of the SICI grant (subject to their institution’s eligibility).

• Any declined project grant or availability of surplus funds may result in award of grants among any of the wait-listed applications, subject to application of other rules of SICI which allows benefits to be more broadly distributed among its members.

Value:

• CAD$1,000 (to support the scholar’s international economy class airfare).
• Associated costs related to visas, meals, per diem and accommodation are not eligible under this grant.

Number of Awards:10 (ten)

Eligibility:

• Applicant must be a full time faculty member/researcher/student (doctoral and post-doctoral) of SICI’s Canadian or Indian Members Council Institution (in good standing in 2017-18). For a current list of member institutions please click here: (http://www.sici.org/about/members/).
• Grants to be used for Canadian scholar’s travel to India or Indian scholar’s travel to Canada.
• For institutional visits applicant must have been invited by an academic institution (which may or may not be a SICI member institution) in Canada or in India.
• For other visits related to the participation in conferences/workshops/seminars, the applicant’s paper must have been accepted for presentation by the organizing committee of the conference or the host institution.
• Applicants must be citizens or permanent residents of India or Canada.

Application Requirements:

1. Please submit your APPLICATION PACKAGE to http:// http://shastriinstitute.org/gms/ on or before 18th September 2017 by 1100pm (MST).

2. Mention: “Application for Shastri Scholar Travel Subsidy Grant (SSTSG) 2017-18” in the subject line. 

3. A COMPLETE APPLICATION PACKAGE should be a single pdf file with the following documents:

i. A completed electronic SSTSG 2017-18 Application Form (duly completed);

ii. A summary description of one pager describing the presentation/discussion topic containing: title, abstract or purpose, co-authors or counter parts, scholarly presence, etc.

iii. Curriculum Vitae of the applicant-not more than 3 pages. All additional pages after 3rd page will be removed and/or ignored during evaluation. 

iv. Curriculum Vitae (not more than 3 pages) of the counterpart/inviter at the host institution (for academic visit). All additional pages after 3rd page will be removed and/or ignored during evaluation. 

v. Letter of invitation from the host institution (for academic visit)

vi. Proof of acceptance of the Paper/Presentation from the organizer/host institution (for conference, seminar, workshop, etc. 

vii. Copy of Passports/PR Card (applicant)

Evaluation Criteria:

An adjudicating committee will make the final decision concerning successful applicants based upon the following criteria and marking system:

1 Institution/Event (4 points)

• Does the proposed meeting/event carry a significant weight in terms of scholarly inputs/outputs, rankings (i.e., type of the meeting/event, intended contributions/accomplishments, scholarly presence, participants attending, etc.)?

2 Contribution to faculty/student development and potential institutional linkages (4 points)

• How far the proposed event has likelihood to contribute to applicant’s own development (scholarly and other)?
• How far the proposed event has likelihood to contribute to any potential institutional linkages between the applicant’s host and visiting institutions?

3 Professional Background (2 points)

• Does the applicant have necessary academic and or research background related to the topic of the event that he/she proposing to attend?

4 Contribution to promoting/building academic linkages between India-Canada (4 points)

• How the proposed event will contribute to promoting/building academic linkages between India-Canada?

Disbursement of Funds:

• Subject to availability of funding, selected SSTSG awardees will be reimbursed with approved travel grant to use for scholarly travel w.e.f. 15 November 2016 to 30 September 2017.
• However, the SSTSG fund will be released to the scholar only upon receipt and acceptance of the final report by the Institute, following completion of the scholar’s proposed visit.

Application Deadline:

18 September 2017 (11:00pm MST)

Application Form:

SSTSG_Applicaiton_Form_2017-18.doc

Please note:

• Any travel that starts and finishes within the period of 1 September 2017 – 31 May 2018 will be eligible under this grant. Travel initiated or completed prior to the above mentioned timeline will not be eligible under this grant.

• SSTSG fund will be released to the recipient’s institution upon receipt of his/her final report. 

• Late and incomplete applications will not be considered.

• All application materials must be submitted through the Grant Management System online. Any material that is sent by other means (courier, post, fax or electronic) to our offices will not be entered in the competition.

• Please email Mahmuda Aldeen (maldeen@ucalgary.ca) instantly if you do not receive an ‘application receipt’ email from SICI by 25 September 2017.

• Names of the successful applicants will be uploaded on SICI website (http://www.sici.org/home/).

Report Form:

SSTSG_Final_Report_Form-2017-18.doc

Contact:

For more information, please contact Mahmuda at the Canada Office.

Mahmuda Aldeen

Program and Member Relations Officer

Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute

1418 Education Tower

2500 University Dr NW

Calgary AB T2N 1N4

Phone: (403) 220-3220 (direct)

Email: (maldeen@ucalgary.ca)

National Conference on THE ENGLISH TEXT IN A NORTH EAST CLASSROOM: PEDAGOGY, POLITICS AND SOCIOLOGY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE TEACHING November 2-3, 2017 Dept. of English, Tripura University

Call For Papers

The Department of English, Tripura University has decided to organize a 2 –day National Conference on “The English Text in a North East Classroom” during 2-3 November 2017.The Conference will be organized around Plenary Sessions, Paper Presentations and

Panel Discussions. Proposals for presentation at the Conference are welcome from academicians, scholars and teachers engaged in teaching of English Literature in the North East.

Concept Note

India’s North East is the language historian’s minefield, not only by virtue of its multiethnic and hence multilingual polyphony, but also its hospitality to English, the colonial master’s left over share of cake, which when distributed, soaked up a variety of distinctive flavors of the region. Under the watchful eyes of William Carey and the Serampore missionary project, English gradually became the second language of the household and the first language of school education in many parts of India’s North East, ranging from Assam, Arunachal, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Manipur and certain regions of Tripura. 

The North Eastern region in the erstwhile Empire era was known as the North Eastern Frontier Agency(NEFA) with its capital at Shillong. Shillong, the Scotland of the East, naturally imbibed the fruits of Anglicisation to the hilt, leaving the rest of the region at the mercy of local kingships, politics and ethnicity. With Independence, the region was subsequently divided into eight federal states, but each state had its own unique socio-cultural and political exigencies to attend to The missionary influence had been a powerful proselytising force since early nineteenth century on many a tribes, gradually anglicising and alienating them from their indigenous traditions. In such states, English had been made the state language, while in others, it became the second language. Notwithstanding local politics, English language and literature over ages acquired an enviable position in the region as a tool of social mobility and marker of social status.But in spite of decades of the language learning and training, the state of English education in the region, leaving apart a few select cities, is not at all a happy one. Lack of good study materials and properly trained teachers, fear of the Text and the language, cultural distanciation between the two contexts, exam-centric Teaching and Learning, lack of research to investigate classroom apathy and encourage Textual Teaching etc. are some of the several factors inhibiting Teaching of English Literature in most of the Northeastern states. A student in an Indian University is traditionally encouraged to approach English literature from an Anglocentric, universalist perspective and not in relation to his/her own socio-cultural context, consequently alienating the student from his/her immediate cultural context, while putting high stakes on imitation and imbibing Westernised cultural values. 

A good majority of students in an English class in the North East hesitate to take part in teacher-student interactions; coming from a rural agrarian background, they feel intimidated and often suffer from an inferiority complex vis a vis their urbanized counterparts. Not surprisingly, often English teachers themselves are to be blamed for drilling this sense of inferiority in those rural students. Though it has been observed that with a gradual loosening of Anglophonic rigour inside the classroom, such small town students tend to be at ease and develop confidence over time. With seven decades into postcoloniality, it is time we asked ourselves, as English teachers in the North East, what should be our role? How should we teach English texts in the class rooms? Do we want our children to be Westernised educated apes and cultural “others”? Should we neglect some students just because they lack an anglicized sophistication? Or should we teach them to interpret their own literary and cultural traditions in the light of the western ratiocinative texts and thought? 

This Conference will attempt to address these questions and related issues in the field of Teaching of the English Literary Text in an urban/suburban Classroom in the North East and try to theorize the different approaches to Textuality, and evolve a student-centric teaching methodology for facilitating creative and meaningful reception of the English Text. 

Broad Themes

Possible themes on which submissions are sought, but are not limited to,include:

• Crisis in the Classroom
• Pedagogy and the Curriculum
• Politics of the Canonical Text
• Sociology of English Literature Teaching
• Teaching the Translated Texts
• Ethnicity, Identity and the English Text
• Partition and the English Text
• Morality and English Literature
• Missionary impact and the Study of English Literature

Abstract Submission Guidelines

Abstract template:

The English Text in a Northeast Classroom

F. Author * and S. Author ^

*Department of English,

^Department of Linguistics, Tripura University

*Email: F. Author @gmail.com

Kindly copy and use the MS Word template above for your abstract preparation and submission.

Use the Times New Roman font everywhere.

The title (preferably of not more than 10 words) should be in 12pt bold; the name(s) of

author(s) should be in 11pt bold; the affiliation(s) should be in 11pt italic.

In case of there being two authors, the corresponding author should be indicated by a “*” and the email address should be given (please remove the hyperlink). Until here the document should be centred.

Leave a line between the title and the author affiliation, and another before the abstract.

The abstract body (one paragraph, 12pt, left and right aligned) should be of 300 words or less.

The abstract must be followed by 4-5 keywords.

Biographical information of the author(s) in the third person must be included at the end. The maximum number of words is 60.

Font: Times New Roman; Font size: 10; Spacing: Single space; Alignment: left and right aligned

Sample: Dr. Smith is a professor of Language Acquisition Research at the University of Hawaii.

He holds a PhD in Swahili. He is the author of Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Swahili and previously taught at the University of California. 

The last date for submission of abstract is August 31st, 2017.

Kindly send in your abstract as an email attachment to tuengcon@gmail.com mentioning in the subject line “Abstract Submission”. Acceptance of your paper and details regarding the process of registration will be communicated to you by email (after August 31st, 2017). Only one submission per presenter is allowed. A maximum of two presenters per submission is allowed.

The date of submission of full paper is November 2nd 2017. Submission of full paper before presentation is mandatory. All submissions (abstract and full paper), and presentation are to be in

English.

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Registration Guidelines:

All participants (including paper presenters) will have to register for the seminar by submitting online a filled-in Registration Form (which will be sent to them along with the letter of acceptance of

their proposal wherever applicable) after August 31st , 2017, along with a non-refundable Registration Fee as per the details given below.There will be no on-site Registration for paper presenters.

Registration Fee for: 

Participants with Presentations (other than Students and Research Scholars): Rs. 1500/-

Participants with Presentations (Research Scholars and Students): Rs. 1000/-

Participants without Presentations: Rs 300/-

The mode of payment of the Registration Fee will be communicated to all participants by the organizers in due course of time. Paper presenters whose proposals, in the form of abstracts, are accepted for presentation will be issued additional letters of intimation regarding the acceptance of their proposals.

The Registration Fee includes lunch and refreshments for the days of the seminar, seminar kit and the certificate of participation.

The participants will have to bear their own travel expenses. Limited Free Accommodations for selected paper presenters will be arranged by the Organizers on first come first serve basis.

Important Dates:

Conference dates: November 2-3, 2017

Last date for submission of Abstracts: August 31, 2017

Last date of Registration: October 10, 2017

Last date of submission of full paper: November 2, 2017

Organising Secretary:

Somdev Banik, 

Faculty, Department of English, Tripura University

(Mobile: 9436531090, email: somdev@tripurauniv.in)

Joint Secretary

Parthasarathi Gupta, 

Department of English, Tripura University

(Mobile:8575024944, email: parthsarathi@tripurauniv.in)

Third Annual Seminar on Research in Social Sciences-November 26, 2017, Mumbai.

Call For Papers: 

What is the Seminar about?

This day-long seminar will showcase undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral research in the social sciences in India. It will engage with wide-ranging contemporary topics in the social sciences and provide a forum for students from various institutions to engage in exchange of academic knowledge. Research topics in past seminars have ranged from social exclusion in cemeteries, to use of psychedelic therapy in treating substance abuse, among others.

To know more, click here.

Objectives of the Seminar

• Encouraging high quality research as an important part of the undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral curricula in India.
• Providing an opportunity to students from various disciplines within the social sciences to present their research.
• Engaging with topics of contemporary relevance and rigorous methods employed in social sciences research.
• Establishing an academic forum for students of the social sciences to receive a critical review of their work.

Keynote Address

Keynote speaker to be announced shortly. Past keynote speakers include Danielle Pereira (IIT Bombay, Mumbai) and Ketaki Chowkhani (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai).

What can Presenters expect to receive from the Seminar?

Presenters can expect to gain first-hand exposure to academia, by communicating their research with peers in the social sciences. They will present their research for 20 min (through an oral presentation format), followed by a 20 min discussion for each paper. They can expect to gain feedback on their work by experienced researchers in their area and/or allied areas in the social sciences. Those papers accepted for presentation will also be published online as part of the output from the seminar. Presenters can also vie for the Best Paper Award at the Seminar.

What can Participants expect to receive from the Seminar?

Participants can expect to hear about a wide variety of contemporary applied and empirical research in the social sciences. The papers presented at the seminar will reflect rigorous and high-quality student research in India, and this is expected to enable participants to learn more about planning and executing such research for their own theses or research projects and assignments.

Proposed Themes and Topics

There is no overarching theme or topic that the seminar will pursue. Instead, we encourage submission of high-quality research in the fields of psychology, economics, sociology, anthropology, gender studies, and public policy. We are particularly interested in presenting research that is multi- or inter-disciplinary in nature.

Submission Guidelines and Details

Depending on the area of research, we invite full text research papers and articles that adhere to editorial guidelines and word limits as mentioned below. All papers submitted will be rigorously evaluated by a scientific committee of subject matter experts at Monk® Prayogshala®. Papers that are part of Master’s or Doctoral theses are also welcome, conditional on their non-publication in any other form. Any instances of plagiarism will lead to immediate disqualification of the paper, without further notice.

All papers must be sent in MS Word format, after the Seminar Application form (see link at bottom of page) has been successfully submitted. All papers must be sent to lok@monkprayogshala.in with the subject “Monk Prayogshala Seminar 2017.”

Article Format:

Psychology, Quantitative Gender Studies - 7,000 words - American Psychological Association (APA)

Qualitative Gender Studies, Sociology, Anthropology, Economics and Public Policy - 10,000 words - APA, MLA, Harvard

Important Dates for Presenters

Submission deadline: 3rd October, 2017 (12 am IST)

Presenters (a maximum of ten) shall be informed of the committee’s decision latest by 27th October, 2017. Presenters will also receive guidelines for the oral paper presentation.

Pre-registration by presenters is mandatory by 31st October, 2017. 

The schedule of the seminar will be communicated to presenters by 13th November, 2017.

Important Dates for Participants

Registration deadline (Early): 3rd October, 2017

Registration deadline (Late): 31st October, 2017

Eligibility

• Undergraduate students
• Postgraduate students
• MPhil students
• PhD students
• Recent graduates (within one year) are also welcome to apply

Venue  

The seminar will be held  at 4116, 4th Floor, Oberoi Garden Estates, C Wing, Off Saki Vihar Road, near Chandivali Studios, Powai, Mumbai – 400072.

Nearest stations: Kanjurmarg (Central); Andheri (Western) Saki Naka (Metro Station)

Bus routes: 319, 335.

https://www.monkprayogshala.in/workshops/seminar-2017

National Conference- Thoreau and the Transcendentalists: Their Philosophy and Related Concerns March 15-17, 2018, Delhi.

Department of English, Bharati College 

and

India International Centre

mark the bi-centenary of the birth of

Henry David Thoreau

Call For Abstracts:

The year 2017 marks the bi-centenary of the birth of Henry David Thoreau (12 July 1817) whose writings -- especially his essay on civil disobedience -- changed the course of history through its powerful advocacy of passive resistance, a form of nonviolent protest later adopted in India by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, in the USA by Martin Luther King, and in South Africa by Nelson Mandela, among other national leaders. Gandhi declared that he never spent a night in jail without opening his trunk and re-reading the essay. Further, as an economist promulgating in the opening chapter of 'Walden' the doctrine of a radically different value system. Thoreau laid stress on a life of simplicity. This provided a blueprint for Gandhi's famous image of himself in a khadi (home spun) loin cloth at his charkha (spinning wheel) that broke the backbone of England's economy. Thus, quite apart from Thoreau's international reputation as a writer, India is indebted to him for his profound influence on Gandhi, resulting in the freedom movement led by him.

The three day conference is a salute to Thoreau for this, as well as for his awareness expressed of the close links between the current of his thought and the philosophy of India, as may be seen in the satisfaction he felt in the symbolic (as well as literal) confluence of "the pure Walden water" "with the sacred water of the Ganges" in the form of ice exported to "Madras and Bombay and Calcutta," affording relief to the "sweltering inhabitants" of these cities ('Walden', "The Pond in Winter").

A defender of individual liberty, an ecologist and environmentalist who saw the steam locomotive as a "devilish Iron Horse," a naturalist, a professional land surveyor, a maker of pencils that equaled the best imported from England, a philosopher, thinker, an explorer of the New England area, and, above all, an outstanding writer, Thoreau's life and work as well as the Transcendental movement that he, Emerson, Channing, and Margaret Fuller, among others, pioneered, needs our critical scrutiny, more so today than ever before when political, social, cultural and ideological pressures are becoming increasingly importunate. Not that such pressures were unknown to Thoreau: strongly opposed as he was to the institution of slavery and to the execution of John Brown the abolitionist, Thoreau described him as "a man of rare common sense and directness of speech and of action" ("A Plea for Captain John Brown"). When Thoreau was jailed for refusing to pay the tax for the Mexican War, Emerson asked him, "Henry, why are you here?". Thoreau replied, "Waldo, why are you NOT here?"

Research Papers are invited, largely upon, but not limited to the following sub themes:

Thoreau and Gandhi 

Thoreau the Revolutionary 

Forever Changed by Thoreau 

Thoreau the Transcendentalist 

Influences on Thoreau 

Thoreau, social justice and environmental justice 

Individualism, Idealism and Thoreau 

Thoreau and Solitude 

Relevance of Thoreau in the Anthropocene 

Thoreau and Walden 

Thoreau the Intellectual 

Reading Thoreau 

Research papers should not exceed 5000 words in length. They should be in 12 point size, font- Times New Roman, with 1.5 line spacing.

Research paper submission dates extend from September 16, 2017 to October 31, 2017. 

Acceptance of papers shall be notified on November 15, 2017.

The papers will be circulated in advance among all the paper readers, whose actual participation in the conference will be limited to a 15-minute summary of his/her paper, followed by a panel discussion.

Certificates for paper presentation/participation would be handed over in the valedictory function of the conference. The selected and peer-reviewed complete papers will be published as an edited volume with an ISBN number.

Papers should be sent at: englishdept@bharati.du.ac.in

Conference Director

Dr Mukti Sanyal

Officiating Principal,

Bharati College(University of Delhi),

New Delhi 110058,

India

Conference Convenor 

Dr Naila Anjum

Department of English,

Bharati College (University of Delhi),

New Delhi 110058,

India.

Contact Info: 

Bharati College, University of Delhi, C-4 Vidya Marg Janakputi New Delhi - 110058, India

Contact Email: englishdept@bharati.du.ac.in

URL: http://www.bharaticollege.com

International conference Dalit studies: Human Dignity, Equality and Democracy,22-24 January 2018 CSDS Delhi

Call For Abstracts: 

The rise of Dalit studies has provided the necessary platform for a new set of scholarly enquiries in the social sciences and humanities. The Dalit Studies International conference (2008) was an attempt to bring together academics and intellectuals for a productive conversation on new research agendas. This initiative resulted in the publication of an edited volume Dalit Studies (2016). We plan to continue to explore caste inequality, human dignity, democracy and similar concerns to further reflect on the possibilities and challenges of Dalit Studies in the proposed conference.

Dalit Studies may be thought of as a new academic practice rooted in resistance to the dominant epistemologies. It has enabled academia to engage with the grounded knowledge creation by the Dalit communities. Innovative approaches have been devised to read the colonial and missionary archives and to analyse social memories, oral narratives, and cultural practices of the Dalit communities. Such novel research initiatives have resulted in a new set of studies that foreground Dalit subjects as active agents of social change and action. As a location for the study of marginality, Dalit Studies has enabled a sustained critical attention to the anti-caste social movements, religious traditions, literary and performative cultures and the everyday lives and practices of Dalit communities. Another important aspect of Dalit studies is that it opened up the possibility of a global conversation on caste, race, and similar forms of inequality.

The last two decades have witnessed a serious engagement with Dalit struggles, experiences and perspectives. New histories of caste subalterns such as the new histories of Chamars in northern India or the slave castes of southern India particularly Kerala began to be explored. These studies have tried to develop substantial research questions that were either absent or only marginally dealt with in social science research in India. These studies offered new ways of reading slavery and untouchability by re-interpreting colonial and missionary archives. Given the limited historical records left by the Dalit people, the colonial and missionary records have proved valuable sources to recover the lives of the untouchables as human beings with a sense of their body and self. In contemporary India, the Dalit literary and cultural thought is constituted by a number of anthologies as well as analytical studies.

The powerful Dalit narratives represented the subjective experience of caste oppression and everyday life. For example, the recent studies on Dalit literatures in Marathi, Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, and Hindi languages have engaged with Dalit experience and aesthetics to demonstrate its valuable role in shaping a distinct Dalit identity. The explorations into the print and literary cultures have further revealed the gendered forms of caste and class domination. Caste is studied as sites of hegemony and power than simply reading it as an objective and homogeneous cultural system. Another set of studies documented and analyzed the significance of Dalit mobilizations, counter narratives of Dalit feminism, caste discrimination in labour market, inter-social group inequalities, subaltern religious movements and electoral success of Dalit parties. To sum up, questions of human dignity, citizenship, gender and caste inequalities, cultural identity, internal hierarchy of the lower castes, welfare, social justice, minority rights, political power and democratization are freshly posed and investigated in the field of Dalit Studies.

We propose to hold a three day international conference (22-24 January 2018) that would serve as a platform for intense and productive debates on the prospects of Dalit Studies. Given that the objective of this conference is to promote Dalit Studies and stimulate a constructive dialogue among scholars, we are keen to disseminate the new research through publications. We intend to publish the conference proceedings.

We invite proposals from independent scholars, research students, and those working within and outside of formal academic institutions on any theme which would broadly fall under the rubric of Dalit Studies. A committee will select the abstracts and its decision is final.

The Conference organizers will provide economy class airfare and local hospitality to all participants from within India, and local hospitality to participants from abroad.

Coordinators:

K. Satyanarayana, P. Sanal Mohan (Dalit Studies Collective)

Aditya Nigam, Prathama Banerjee (CSDS)

Deadline for paper proposals: September 15, 2017

Applications should include: (1) a two-page description of the research to be presented at the conference and its place within your larger work and goals (2) a two-page C.V.

Deadline for full papers: December 10, 2017

Please email your proposals to dalitstudies2018@gmail.com

http://www.dalitcamera.com/call-papers-dalit-studies-human-dignity-equality-democracy/