CFP: 4th International Conference of the Indian Association for South Asian Studies (IASAS) on #Subalterns in South Asia, 21-22 June, 2024

We are accepting abstracts for the Indian Association for South Asian Studies (IASAS) International Conference, which will take place at Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology, Bhubaneswar, Odisha from June 21-22, 2024. Researchers and scholars from across the disciplines will participate in this two-day conference that will be concentrating on South Asian studies. The central theme for the above is ‘Subalterns in South Asia:.

The term "subaltern," popularized by Antonio Gramsci, conceptualized subaltern groups as those excluded from hegemonic power, encompassing peasants, workers, and other marginalized factions. However, in Subaltern Studies led by Ranajit Guha, the term broadens to denote the quality of being subordinate in South Asian society, irrespective of its manifestation in class, caste, age, gender, or office.

The collective, initially comprising scholars such as Shahid Amin, David Arnold, Partha Chatterjee, David Hardiman, Gyanendra Pandey etc., aimed to give voice to the historically marginalized. Subaltern Studies encompassed diverse subjects, including history, politics, economics, and sociology of subalternity, along with associated perspectives, ideologies, and belief systems. The initiative aimed to counter elitist historiography by allowing subaltern voices to emerge within its pages, representing and amplifying the voices of the oppressed.

The theory posited that the elite in India did not merely have a hegemonic role but played a dominant one, enabling the subaltern to be seen as independent historical actors. This perspective countered the notion that the subaltern were passive recipients of elite guidance, emphasizing their independent agency within the political system. 

In line with the subaltern understanding, this conference extends a warm invitation to panels and paper submissions that specifically emphasize non-elite discourses. The conference aims to spotlight and explore narratives, perspectives, and voices that have traditionally been marginalized or overlooked in favour of dominant, elite perspectives. Connecting historical studies to disciplines like gender studies, cultural studies, sociology, economics, demographics, politics, psychology, and others are also welcome. By prioritizing non-elite discourses, we aspire to create a space for critical discussions and insights that challenge established norms and contribute to a richer understanding of the diverse, often unheard, voices in South Asian societies. 

The conference hopes to be able to encourage more research by generating new perspectives by exploring new as well as alternative and evolving research ideas and methods.

IASAS 2024 conference welcomes panels and papers in English or in Hindi on any theme of South Asian Studies employing interdisciplinary and theoretical perspectives inspired from History, Philosophy, Political Science, Anthropology, Ethnography, Sociology, Psychology etc. Hence, the conference aim is to bring historians and social scientists into conversation with each other. We encourage submissions from research students, early career scholars, faculty members, and independent social scientists whose research falls under the spectrum of South Asian Studies. The conference hopes to generate new perspectives by exploring new as well as alternative and evolving research ideas and methods. 

There would be at least four presenters in each panel session. Presentations will be limited to 20 minutes each.

1. Abstracts of up to 500 words should be submitted on or before 15 April, 2024.

2. Acceptance letters for proposals will be e-mailed by 30 April, 2024. All abstracts will be peer-reviewed.

 

In the Subject window of your e-mails, please type the following words: IASAS Bhubaneswar 2024.

Email: iasasconference@gmail.com

Delegates fees:

For paper presenters:

1. Faculty Members: 6000 INR (with hostel room accommodation single occupancy for two days) 
2. Faculty Members :5000 INR (without accommodation) 
3. Research Students:5000 INR (with hostel room accommodation single occupancy for two days)
4. Research Students : 4000 INR (without accommodation)
5. Guests and Listeners: 2500 INR

Note:

• The organizing committee is not in a position to provide participants with financial support.
• All participants are advised to seek funding through their respective institutions or other sources.
• The venue of the conference is Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology, Bhubaneswar, Odisha.

Contact Information

Centre for Alternative Studies in Social Sciences, New Delhi

Indian Association for South Asian Studies, New Delhi

 

Email: iasasconference@gmail.com

Contact Email

iasasconference@gmail.com

Attachments

cfp-iasas-2024.pdf

Call for Papers on #Edward #Said’s legacy in the context of current events-Edited Volume; MLA 2025 conference special session

Twenty years after his death and fifty years after the publication of Orientalism, Edward Said, the best-known Palestinian American public intellectual, seems more relevant and more controversial than ever before. As the middle-east is torn apart by the most horrific violence since the creation of Israel, Said has already been blamed for providing academic cover to Hamas’s murderous actions. Said, these critics say, was a rabid anti-Western, anti-Semitic, Arab extremist who legitimized the use of violence by terrorists calling themselves freedom fighters. But others have recalled the intellectual clarity and moral urgency Said brought to the Palestine question. Those who respect Said see him as a cosmopolitan, liberal, secular humanist who consistently critiqued colonialism, whether Western or Israeli. Both sides, however, acknowledge that something remarkable is happening in the West, particularly the United States: for the first time, a generational divide has opened up between the elders who stand steadfastly by Israel and the youth who are speaking up for Palestinians. This generational battle is being fought on elite college campuses where student protests against unconditional US aid for Israel’s war on Gaza have put college presidents in the crosshairs and upended careers. Articulated in a Saidian language of anti-colonialism and Orientalism, this youth protest is more aligned with the political position of the non-West/global South than the older West/global North which views the conflict largely in terms of its own troubled history of anti-Semitism and the holocaust. What should we make of Edward Said and his legacy at this global conjuncture? How have Said’s intellectual preoccupations and political commitments shaped today’s divided discourse about the middle-east? What is the long-term impact of Said’s literary preoccupations and cultural interventions within and beyond academia?

We invite original scholarly papers for a proposed edited volume that explores the legacy of Edward Said in the wake of the current Israel-Palestine war.

While we would like to include a wide range of topics and perspectives in the edited, the following areas will be of particular interest:Said, democracy, and decolonization in the context of (de)globalization, the rise of China, great power competition

Said, zionism, and the politics of Palestine today

Said’s influence on public opinion in America/the West/other regions about the Middle East

Said’s cosmopolitanism/secularism/humanism/liberalism: scope, relevance, limits

“Orientalism” today

Said’s influence on literary and cultural studies as practiced today

Please send abstracts of 300 words, a 100-word bio, and five keywords by March 15, 2024 to

revathi.krishnaswamy@sjsu.edu

or noelle.brada-williams@sjsu.edu

Let us also know if you’d like your abstract to be considered for inclusion in a proposed special session at the 2025 annual Modern Language Association conference scheduled for 9-12 Jan in New Orleans.

Full articles of 5000-8000 words should be submitted by November 30th, 2024.

revathi.krishnaswamy@sjsu.edu

CALL FOR PAPERS :National Conference on New National Allegories: Twenty-First Century India in the Indian English Novel from 1990s to the present 1st March 2024 -Zakir Husain Delhi College (Evening) University of Delhi

Since its earliest formative years, the Indian novel has been preoccupied with the thematic of the nation, its formation, its articulation and its narration. Early novels like Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Anandamath, Tagore’s Home and the World and Raja Rao’s Kanthapura set the initial trends in the modes of allegorizing the Indian nation. Along its long trajectory, over the twentieth century, the literary form managed to permeate almost all the languages of the Indian subcontinent, picking up other thematics such as the anti-colonial struggle, gender, caste and class concerns, communal, regional and ethnic questions. Even while being ostensibly focused on these concerns and questions, the Indian novel in English remained largely centred around the ideations and elaborations of the Indian nation. As the first nation-republic, installed in 1950, began to transform, irrevocably, in 1991 under global and domestic imperatives, the corollary cultural impacts and their cultural products, such as the Indian novel, were also bound to transform. The Indian nation emerged anew as an interesting subject where writers from various social, political and economic groups vied with each other to present and represent the ‘real’ and the ‘imaginary’ India. In other words, the post-1991 India which laid the foundations of twenty-first century India produced a newer version of the Jamesonian ‘national allegory’, as much as it had been produced pre- and post-1947. It is this post-1991 ‘national allegory’ that the proposed conference aims to investigate. Understanding the manners in which the post-1991 Indian novel addresses the issues and questions of Indian representations (to the home and the world), both from nationalist and decolonial as well as postcolonial points of departure is to form the anchor of the conference. To this end, the conference invites scholarly research papers in English on how the nation has been discussed, imagined, represented and narrated in the works of English language writers located within or outside India. Therefore, without placing a limitation, it is encouraged to bring the works of such writers to the fore who have followed the generation of Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, VS Naipaul, Vikram Seth, Rohinton Mistry, Jhumpa Lahiri and such others. This may include Arvind Adiga, Chetan Bhagat, Jeet Thayil, Amish Tripathi, Ashwin Sanghi, Manu Joseph and their contemporaries. The papers may include but may not be limited to the following topics:

Indian nation in the Indian novel in the twenty first century

Neo-nationalism/national self-assertion in the Indian novel

Postcolonialism versus decolonialism in the Indian novel

Return the white western gaze in the twenty-first century

Cognising neo-orientalisms and neo-imperialisms

Indian literary subjectivity in the twenty-first century

Abstracts of 300-350 words along with a brief bionote may be sent to zhceengconference@gmail.com by 18th February 2024.

The acceptance will be notified by 21st February 2024. Full papers may be submitted up to 5 days prior to the conference.

Registration fee and the payment process will be shared upon acceptance.

CFP: International Conference(Hybrid Mode) on “Posthuman Condition in the Anthropocene” on 02-03 March 2024. -Centre for Research in Posthumanities, Bankura University

CFP & Concept Note:

Humans are no longer biological agents of this planet. They have become geological agents in the Anthropocene era. What does this agentic transmutation imply? Since a ‘geological force has no sense of purpose or sovereignty’(Chakrabarty 2023: 33), how, then, are we supposed to re/configure ‘the human’ who is attributed with autonomy and freedom-seeking agency? Critical posthumanists, who argue for an inclusive way of thinking, might be tempted to rearticulate the normative conception of the human in the first place: who or what is anthropos? Perhaps, the ontic problem rests with the European Enlightenment modernity’s projection of the human, which now stands on an increasingly slippery ground. Bernard Stiegler, Bruno Latour, Michel Serres, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Donna Haraway argue for locating human in entanglements with nonhumans. Many of them even view human autonomy as the mankind’s self-created myth; and also argue that the human is always already entangled with nonhumans. 

Despite the heated debate surrounding the term Anthropocene for promoting the return of white universal man, naturalizing tendency, colonial outlook and exclusivity, the term is nonetheless being used as an operative critical tool for interrogating and re-assessing our understanding of the existing relation between humans and nonhumans. Rather than pondering too much on the term’s limitations, it would be more profitable to think of the future produced by the mingling of human history  and planetary history. It will be worthwhile to think about collaborative survival with other planetary cohabitants. As the humanity’s ecological footprint affect the trajectory of the Earth System, ‘humans now unintentionally straddle three histories (the history of the earth system, the history of life including that of human evolution on the planet, and the more recent history of the industrial civilization) that operate on different scales and at different speeds’ (Chakrabarty 2023: 89).

The collision of human and planetary temporalities calls for a new totalizing framework and requires a new way of thinking in the social sciences and humanities. In the Anthropocene, socio-cultural and political world orders get entangled with material and energy cycles of the Earth, which eventually co-produces a new (post)human condition. The Anthropocene pushes the boundaries of our existing disciplines to their limits and makes the social-only understanding ineffective.

The proposed conference also seeks to cite India’s G-20 presidency (2023) as an articulation, on a diplomatic level, of the theoretical premises of this conference. The pro-planet theme of India’s G20 presidency – “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam”(the world is one family) – significantly seeks to recognise the entangled planetary existence, which embraces both the human and non-human. The emphasis on green and sustainable development, climate finance, ‘net-zero’ carbon reduction testifies to the fact that social-only understanding of human politics is no longer tenable. Incorporation of green elements in its conceptual construction was long overdue.

The proposed conference seeks to focus on, though not strictly limited to, the following areas:

• Re-figuring the anthropos in the Anthropocene

• Problems in Nomenclature: Anthropocene or Capitalocene

or Plantationocene or Homogenocene or Chthulucene?

• Anthropocentrism and its Discontents

• Thinking Through Harman’s ‘OOO’ in the Anthropocene

• Configuring New Onto-Epistemic System in the Anthropocene

• Planetary Crises and Planetary Solidarity in the Anthropocene

• Future of the Humanities and Social Sciences in the Anthropocene

• Greenhouse Culture in the Anthropocene

• Non-human Turn in the Anthropocene

• New Materialisms and the Anthropocene

• Posthumanities and the Anthropocene

• Animal Studies in the Anthropocene

• Plant Humanities and the Anthropocene

• Greening Democracy and International Relations

in the Anthropocene

• (Re)writing Cli-fi in the Anthropocene

• India’s G-20 Presidency and Green Diplomacy

• Plastic Pollution and E-/Waste Management in

the Anthropocene

• Populism and Climate Change Denial

• Re-thinking Carbon democracy in the Anthropocene

• Blue Humanities and the Anthropocene

• Global Climate Activism and Climate Solidarity in

the Anthropocene

[Suggestive Bibliography:

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. One Planet Many Worlds: The Climate Parallax. Brandeis UP, 2023.

Haraway, Donna. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke UP, 2016.

Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern. Translated by Catherine Porter. Harvard UP, 1993.

Stiegler, Bernard. The Neganthropocene. Translated by Daniel Ross. Open Humanities Press, 2018.

Serres, Michel. The Parasite. Translated by Lawrence Schehr. U of Minnesota Press, 2007.]

Key Facts and Necessary Information:

Abstract might be sent to crpbku2.0@gmail.com in within 25.02.2024

(Participants are advised to send an abstract of about 200 words and a short bio-note in single word file. ‘CRP Conference

Submission 2024’ should be mentioned in the subject line of Gmail.)

Registration Form (Mandatory):

Time & dates of the conference: 02-03 March 2024; 09 am to 4 pm IST

Registration Fees:

Faculty: 2000 INR

Researcher and Students: 1500 INR

International Participants: 50 USD

Participation Fees: 800 INR

Fee Payment Details

G-pay/PhonePay: 9832850405
HDFC BANK
A/C- SUKHENDU DAS
Account Number: 50100174070610
IFSC: HDFC0002505, Branch: BANKURA, Account Type: SAVING

Registration fees cover conference kit, tea, snacks, working lunch on both days.

Publication Prospect: Select papers will be considered for an international publication after double-blind peer review process. However, the

discretion and recommendation of the peer-board will be considered final in this case.

Participants are advised to attend the conference in person. Virtual presentation slots are very limited and not open to all.

All queries relating to conference might be directed to the email id mentioned above.

CFP: A Two-Day National Seminar on History of #Translation of #Tribal #Literature in India March 21-22, 2024-Department of #Comparative #Indian #Language and Literature, #University of Calcutta

Concept Note

Indian literature as a site is multi-ethnic and therefore a curious space for comparison. The literary studies in India is mostly dominated with a limited number of selected texts repeated from similar sets of languages and cultures. The understanding of margin in literary practices inside the discipline is also repetitive. Therefore, Indian academia needs continuous expansion of literary horizons by reading, translating and discussing new literary texts from various languages. Universities and literary disciplines need to talk about literature beyond their narrow linguistic responsibility towards a single language and imposed borders among literary areas. More and more collective initiatives of public funded translation workshops, writing workshops and seminars are needed to create interactive spaces among various literatures produced in different languages.

Literature represents the very pulse of a nation by resonating its social, political and economic history, its ethnographic identity as well as its ecological realities and therefore presenting a wholesome view of life and beyond. In the context of India, the representation of Indian life/literature would be incomplete if we do not include Tribal literature along with ‘mainstream’ literature because Tribal life/literature constitutes the soul of India’s plurilingual-pluricultural existence. A large corpus of Tribal literature (mostly existing in oral forms) remain unrecorded and those recorded/documented/written mostly remain unexplored and inaccessible due to lack of propagation. In such a circumstance, translation of this body of Tribal literature becomes not only the most inevitable way of dissemination but also an effective means of proclamation of tribal life, assertion of self-identity and testimony of resistance because translation, besides being a mode of lingual proliferation, has always emerged as an instrument of claiming rights and questioning discriminations.

This seminar, therefore, primarily focuses on the history of translation of Tribal literatures in India (into English or other Bhashas or vice-versa), enquiring into the politics/nature of translation, the necessities, quantitative and qualitative analysis of such translations and instigating further discussions on other relevant aspects. We invite papers on translation of any Tribal/Adivasi literature from any part of India and the languages are not limited only to the scheduled languages but we encourage papers on the literature of non-scheduled Tribal languages as well.

Call for Papers:

Abstracts within 300 words along with a title, 3/4 keywords, contact details and affiliation are invited from interested faculty members/scholars/students latest by 18th February 2024. Abstracts (in Bengali/ English) are to be submitted to this following Google Form link.

https://forms.gle/yWwCNWSUyVcMnSwUA

The papers may address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

Themes/ Sub-themes:

History of Translation between Tribal languages

History of translation between Tribal and Non-Tribal languages

Politics of translation of marginal literatures

English and Translation of Tribal literature

Publishing houses and Tribal literature

Little magazine and Tribal literature

Tribal literature as Comparative Literature

Cultural Activism and Tribal Literature and Translation

Multilingualism, Education and Tribal literature

Process, Problem and Possibilities of Translation of Tribal literature

Oral/ Performative text to written text and translation

Note: 

Intimation of Acceptance of paper by 20th February 2024

Registration fees: Faculty Members-1000/-; Research Scholars-500/-; Students-300/-

No provision of TA/DA/Accommodation for paper presenters/participants.

A post seminar volume may be published either in a book form or as a journal special issue (UGC-CARE/SCOPUS Indexed Journal).

Convenors: Dr. Mrinmoy Pramanick, Head & Assistant Professor, Dept. of CILL, C.U.

Dr. Dipanwita Mondal, Assistant Professor, Dept. of CILL, C.U.

For queries related to seminar:

Shreya Datta (PhD Scholar,CILL)--+919836984536

Avijit Halder (PhD Scholar,CILL)--+919875368108

Nilanjan Mishra (PhD Scholar,CILL)--+917003804524

Contact Information

Dr. Mrinmoy Pramanick, Head & Assistant Professor, Dept. of CILL, C.U.

Dr. Dipanwita Mondal, Assistant Professor, Dept. of CILL, C.U.

https://www.caluniv.ac.in/seminar/seminar.html

Contact Email

cill.cu2005@gmail.com

URL

https://forms.gle/yWwCNWSUyVcMnSwUA

Call for Papers : ‘The English Classroom- Journal’ Volume 26, No.1, June 2024- Regional Institute of #English South India, Bengaluru

Regional Institute of English South India, Jnanabharathi Campus, Bengaluru is a premium organisation that trains primary and high school teachers of member states of South India ( Karnataka, Andhrapradesh, Tamilnadu, Kerela, Tamilnadu and Telengana).

The institute publishes a peer-reviewed bi annual journal titled ' The English Classroom.'

Papers are invited for the next volume to be published in June 2024.

‘The English Classroom’ is a bi-annual peer reviewed journal published by the Regional Institute of English South India, Bengaluru. The journal is being published for the past 20 years. A range of topics on English Language Education including teacher education courses, using literature, technology and web resources in second language classrooms has been covered over these years.

The articles submitted to the journal are subjected to blind review by experts in the field of English Language Education. The published articles are thus based on rigorous scrutiny, screening and review by the expert team. The journal, over the years, has contributed to the advancement of available information in the field and paved the way for further research works.

You can send the article to riesi.bangalore@gmail.com

We DO NOT charge money for publication and the authors whose articles are published would receive a FREE copy.

The word limit is: 3000 words

Last date for submission is 30th March 2024.

Editor: Dr. Pooja Giri, Faculty RIESI

Call for paper

https://www.riesi.ac.in/call-for-papers-for-the-english.../

Institute website

https://www.riesi.ac.in/

Call for# Contributions: #Funded #Max #Weber Foundation #Conference on #Harmful #Entanglements. #Orient-Institute Istanbul, May 14th–15th, 2024.

Entanglements are the order of the day. In the last two decades or so, the notion of entanglement has not only been very popular with historians (histoire croisée, Verflechtungsgeschichte), but also on fields such as comparative literature, cultural anthropology, archeology, and some social sciences. The concept of entanglement enables researchers to avoid dealing with clearly (pre-)defined social or political entities. It has awarded researchers the opportunity to attain a freely chosen vantage point with regard to both their evidence and concepts. Finally, it has proved especially suitable for the analysis of social, intellectual and political agency and interdependencies because of the concept’s capacity to break down asymetries, dilute binaries and highlight questions of process (how?) over quiddity (what?) and cause (why?).

The conference on ‘Harmful Entanglements’ thus addresses a phenomenon caused not so much by a principal methodological flaw in the concept of entanglement. Rather, it aims to answer to the unacknowledged conditions of the concept’s ubiquity, or, with other words, by its own ‘entanglement’ in a particular political context. Arguably, the study of and the various approaches to entanglements are products of an era of run-away globalisation and the heuristic possibilities it has enabled/unleashed. Scholars also began to ask questions that, to a degree, mirror the concerns and expectations of this kind of neo-liberal instability and acceleration. While many studies of entanglement were fed by general optimism in their transformative power, significant research has also been conducted on problems created by entanglement that encompasses topics such as environmental history, international law and diplomacy, (post-) colonialism, and the position of racist and fascist cultural production in the history of modernity or the project of modernism.

By and large, however, a silent assumption has been dominant: entanglement has come to be considered a phenomenon that obeys a logic of accretion. Entanglement by default seems not to lead to disentanglement but to a new level of tighter entanglement.

The last few years with their crises of contagion, war, and economic rifts and collapses may offer a good occasion to question this assumption. It seems to be time to look at those who in the past or today reject to be entangled and at those etanglements that apparently proved detrimental. We aim to ask questions such as: What kind of entanglements have been regarded as sufficiently “bad” (harmful, exploitative, morally or legally unjustifiable, politivcally flawed, economically costly and so on) to provoke attempts at disentanglement? As dependencies (they may be understood as mutual as ever) involve power inequalities, the question of agency in disentanglements becomes crucial: What regimes of power trigger decolonialisation and neo-colonialisation processes? Do harmful entanglements lead to cultures of the vernacular, the backwater, the obscure – or at least to a longing for them? Do ever-increasing entanglements continuously diminish agency and lead to an animosity against connectedness  (as is observable in the present conjuncture of failing optimism in globalization)? Which actors are prone to fear or reject entanglements as principally dangerous or disastrous? When and why do attempts at disentanglement fail?

This year's Max Weber Foundation Conference is already the eighth such meeting organised by the Max Weber Foundation for German Humanities Institutes Abroad. The previous conferences of this format took place at the German Historical Institutes in Paris, Warsaw, Moscow, Washington, Kairo, Rome, and Tokyo. The Foundation Conference format takes up research topics from the institutes of the Max Weber Foundation and discusses them in an internationally comparative, trans- and interdisciplinary manner. The Foundation Conferences involve all of the Foundation's institutes and their partners.

The conference will take place in connection with the opening of the new building of the Orient-Institut Istanbul in the centre of Istanbul, in Galip Dede Caddesi 65, close to the Galata Tower. Keynotes will be delivered by Prof. em. Dr. Monica Juneja (Heidelberg University) and Prof. Dr. Eugene Rogan (Oxford University).

We invite papers that engage with these or related problems in the past or present and from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Funding (travel-expenses, board and lodging) are available for participants not affiliated with the Max Weber Foundation. The language of the conference is English. A volume of contributions will be published.

Please apply with an abstract of two pages and a cv to https://www.oiist.org/cfc/. Deadline for applications is Sunday February 25th.

Contact Information

Prof.Dr. Christoph K. Neumann

Orient-Institut Istanbul

Şahkulu Mah., Galip Dede Cad. No: 65

Beyoğlu - İstanbul TR-34421

Contact Email

neumann@oiist.org

URL

https://oiist.org

Attachments

Call for contributions: Harmful Entanglements, Istanbul May 14th to 15th, 2024