CFP: International Seminar on #Foucault and #Postcolonial Governmentalities in South Asia-24-25 May, 2024- ILSR, Kolkata, West Bengal, India

This seminar hinges on South Asian governmentalities (Legg and Heath, 2018), as experienced in postcolonial South Asian nation states. They were erstwhile colonies, liberated through intense anti-colonial struggles against the British, a move that involved totalizing discourses of autonomy and nation-making. The newly born nations, supposed to be democratic guardian states, however, adopted the sovereign logic of governmentality and gradually most postcolonial nation states in South Asia, engulfed in internecine conflicts, diluted its nourishing roles to legitimize structural authoritarianism. They often demonstrate autocratic tendencies, evolving into absolutist state-machines, adopting culturalist disciplinary technologies to govern its citizens. There are occasional signs of carceral despotism, liquidating norm-deviant voices, adopting bio-political control in the name of national integration, identity and securitization. All these 
governmentality-oriented highhandedness demand a fresh Foucauldian analysis of normative categories such as power, civil society, territoriality, identity, state control, security, etc in the South Asian contexts. Postcolonial scholars, so far, have primarily looked into the perspectival reservoir of indigenous thinkers (quite understandably and legitimately so) but a larger Foucauldian critical hermeneutics can offer fresh 
analytical tools to understand the postcolonial biopolitical predicament. This proposed Kolkata chapter of 
the World Foucault Congress will look into the postcolonial governmentality question through the 
Foucauldian lens.
Original scientific paper proposals are invited, focusing on but not limited to the following areas of 
research:

• Foucault, Postcolonial State and Governmentality
• Foucault, South Asian biopolitics and bio-sociality
• Gender and Sexuality in the Global South and Foucault
• Foucault and Postcolonial Literary, cultural Agenda 
• Prison Reform, Incarceration in South Asia and Foucault
• Foucault and Postcolonial Nationalist Discourses
• Foucault and Postcolonial Human Rights 
• Violence and Postcolonial Discourse of Power
• Foucault and the Question of Identity
• Foucault and the Question of Caste, Race and Religion in South Asia, etc
• Foucault, Neoliberalism and Subalternity
• Foucault, Anthropocene and Critical Animal Studies
• Foucault and Psychoanalysis

Method of submission of proposal:
Submit an abstract (300 words maximum) with a short bio-note (150 words) within March 10, 2024 to 
foucaultcongresskolkata@gmail.com
Selection results will be communicated within 25 March, 2024
Selected abstracts will be asked to submit a full paper of 3000-4000 words (for a presentation of 15-
20 minutes) within 15 May 2024
Confirmed Invited Speakers:
Deana Heath, University of Liverpool 
Srila Roy, University of the Witwatersrand 
Anup Dhar, Ruhr University Bochum 
Sreenanti Banerjee, University of Bristol 
Jonathan Saha, Durham University
Convenors:
Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha, ILSR, Kolkata
Subhendra Bhowmick, Sidho Kanho Birsha University
Mursed Alam, Gour College, University of Gour Banga
Selected candidates will be informed about the registration process in due course of time. For any 
queries reach us at foucaultcongresskolkata@gmail.com

Contact Information

Submit an abstract (300 words maximum) with a short bio-note (150 words) within March 10, 2024 to 
foucaultcongresskolkata@gmail.com
Selection results will be communicated within 25 March, 2024
Selected abstracts will be asked to submit a full paper of 3000-4000 words (for a presentation of 15-
20 minutes) within 15 May 2024

Selected candidates will be informed about the registration process in due course of time. For any queries reach us at foucaultcongresskolkata@gmail.com

Contact Email

foucaultcongresskolkata@gmail.com

URL

https://foucault40.info/kolkata/

Call For Articles: Postcolonial Interventions (ISSN 2455-6564) Call for Papers Vol. IX, Issue 2 (June 2024)

Postcolonial Interventions invites scholarly articles for an OPEN ISSUE to be published in June 2024. As this call is being circulated, the people of Palestine continue to suffer with excruciating agonies inflicted on them by Zionist imperial aggression, right-wing forces of xenophobia, discrimination and intolerance continue to gather momentum across the world, inequality and ecological crisis continue to escalate and new forms of precarity are being constantly negotiated. 

The next issue of Postcolonial Interventions seeks to explore such issues and more based on postcolonial experiences across the world.

Submission Guidelines:

1. Articles must be original and unpublished. Submission will imply that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere.

2. Written in Times New Roman 12, double spaced with 1″ margin     on all sides, in doc/docx format.

3. Between 4000-7000 words, inclusive of all citations.

4. With in-text citations and a Works Cited list complying with        Chicago Manual of Style (author-date) specifications.

5. A separate cover page should include the author’s name,                designation, an abstract of 250 words with a maximum of 5                 keywords and a short bio-note of 50 words.

6. The main article should not in any way contain the author’s name.  Otherwise the article will not be considered.

7. Reviews also need to follow the aforementioned guidelines.            However, word limit for reviews is 1500 words.

8. The contributors are responsible for obtaining permission to        reproduce any material, including photographs and illustrations         for which they do not hold copyright.

Please send all your contributions to postcolonialinterventions@gmail.com  within 30 April, 2024.

Call for Articles: Inaugural Issue of Creativitas: Critical Explorations in Literary Studies

 Inaugural Issue of Creativitas - Critical Explorations in Literary Studies (A Double-blind Peer-reviewed Journal of English Studies).

[We are in the midst of registering the journal under ISSN. However, as per guidelines, an issue has to be published prior to acquiring an ISSN. So, the inaugural issue will be published without an ISSN.]

Creativitas, an up and coming journal in the field of English Studies, invites scholars, researchers, and practitioners to submit original and innovative contributions for its inaugural issue. The journal aims to provide a platform for critical explorations in literary studies, fostering interdisciplinary discussions and pushing the boundaries of traditional approaches to literature.

Creativitas seeks submissions that engage with a broad spectrum of topics within literary studies. The theme for the inaugural issue is intentionally broad, allowing for a diverse range of perspectives and methodologies. We welcome papers that delve into, but are not limited to, the following areas:

·         Literary Criticism and Theory

·         Comparative Literature

·         Postcolonial Studies

·         Genre Studies

·         Cultural Studies

·         Digital Humanities and Literature

·         Eco-criticism

·         Intersectionality in Literature

·         Memory Studies

·         Global Perspectives in Literary Studies

·         Adaptation Studies

·         Narratology

·         Experimental Literature

·         Comic Books and Other Graphic Narratives

·         Literature and Film

·         Literary Translation Studies

·         Historical Approaches to Literature

Submission Guidelines: Authors submitting manuscripts to Creativitas for the inaugural issue are required to adhere to a comprehensive set of guidelines to facilitate the double-blind peer-review process. The journal follows the MLA Eighth Edition format, and authors are expected to submit an abstract for initial selection before the full manuscript.

Abstracts should be around 300 words long (with a maximum of five keywords), and should be sent to creativitasjournal@gmail.com with a copy of it sent to sapientia2024@gmail.com. The mail should bear the subject “Abstract Submission for Creativitas Inaugural Issue”.

Upon approval, authors can proceed with the full manuscript submission. Manuscripts must strictly adhere to the MLA Eighth Edition format guidelines. This includes proper citation style, page formatting, and referencing conventions.

Note: Authors submitting manuscripts to Creativitas for the inaugural issue are instructed to carefully anonymize their articles. To ensure a double-blind peer-review process, authors should remove any personal information, including names, affiliations, and acknowledgments, from the manuscript. Additionally, the document should not contain any metadata that may reveal the author's identity. Authors are encouraged to replace self-references in the text with generic terms (e.g., "the author") and ensure that any potentially identifying information is temporarily omitted.

Manuscripts, once prepared (according to the MLA Eighth Edition format) and anonymized, should be submitted as a Microsoft Word document via email to should be sent to creativitasjournal@gmail.com with a copy of it sent to sapientia2024@gmail.com, with the subject line: "Manuscript Submission for Creativitas Inaugural Issue".

The editorial team at Creativitas is committed to ensuring a fair and rigorous double-blind peer-review process. Authors are encouraged to reach out to the editorial team at sapientia2024@gmail.com for any clarification or assistance regarding the submission guidelines.

Important dates:

·         Deadline for Submission of Abstract – 01.03.2024

·         Notification of Acceptance of Abstract – 05.03.2024

·         Deadline for Submission of Full-length Manuscript – 15.04.2024

P.S. In the on-going process of registering Creativitas for an ISSN, it's important to note that, according to guidelines, an issue must be published prior to obtaining the ISSN. Consequently, the inaugural issue of Creativitas will be released without an ISSN. While this initial publication won't have the ISSN, it represents a crucial step in establishing the journal and facilitating academic discourse.

Contact Information

sapientia2024@gmail.com

creativitasjournal@gmail.com

Contact Email

contact@creativitasjournal.in

URL

https://creativitasjournal.in

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.