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)
