Call for Proposals for Special Issue -Interdisciplinary Humanities -Designing Our Future: Humanities-Centered Teaching, Learning, and Thinking in the 21st Century

 Special Issue Description

What does the future hold for the humanities? Now, perhaps more than ever, the humanities have the opportunity and the urgency to innovate and adapt to the shifting dimensions of the twenty-first century. The humanities provide valuable habits of minds and skills that prepare students for their professional and personal lives. They teach us about the human condition: how we relate to each other; how we understand and work with differing perspectives; how we express ourselves; how we act ethically; and, how we better come to know ourselves. The disciplined university has traditionally organized the humanities within majors, minors, certificates, and general education courses. This structure creates silos where subjects are taught within a particular discipline with an occasional slippage into other disciplines. With the increasing corporatization of the university and the shrinking of higher education, the humanities have become subject to market forces and student demand, positioning academics to continually demonstrate the “value” of their program, degree, or course.

 

To push against this rigid structure, some colleges and universities are being creative and innovative with the humanities. Some are trying to infuse the humanities in places where traditionally they have been absent, and some are reconceptualizing and repackaging them. For example, how do the humanities give us a roadmap to determine the ethical boundaries of the non-human, cyborgian networks of knowledge generated by artificial intelligence? Or, how does the growing emphasis on incorporating multidisciplinary “real-world” problem-solving in general education courses demonstrate the necessity of humanities thinking? 

 

Thus, this special issue which aims to highlight the strategies and unique ways in which we are adapting and responding to the shifts in higher education. What we note is rather than a focus on disciplinary content, we see an emerging emphasis on humanities thinking and its “real-world” application. We have obstacles to confront and many possibilities before us. For example, the pandemic has shown that higher education can pivot quickly, and with those changes, many of us are seeing the speed of change continue to increase amidst the challenges colleges and universities face. Do we continue to operate within and make small changes to the siloed structures that have defined the American university? Or can we imagine new configurations and ways of thinking about our disciplines, courses, and pedagogies that empower us to design our futures?  

 

Accordingly, we invite scholars to contribute essays that engage with the following questions: 

• How do we center the humanities in interdisciplinary work through meaningful and productive collaborations?
• How do we design humanities courses or programs that generate student interest and demonstrate their value?
• How do we survive the shrinking of higher education amidst an unknown future?
• In what ways can the humanities be positioned as central to institutions’ strategic priorities?
• How can we capitalize on higher education’s emphasis on experiential learning and career preparedness to strengthen our offerings?
• How can innovative pedagogies inform new approaches to the humanities?
• How can online learning be leveraged to extend the reach of what the humanities tell us how to relate to another?
• How does the growth of generative AI impact humanities education in productive, innovative ways?
• What are institutions’ creative responses to the obstacles of interdisciplinarity?
• How do we prepare graduate students for a higher education landscape that is unlikely to provide them with full-time employment in academia?
• How are community colleges drawing connections between the humanities and workforce readiness? 

 

Proposal Submission Guidelines and Process

Submit essay proposals to futureofthehumanities@gmail.com by Friday, April 26, 2024, including the following information: 

• Proposed essay title
• Abstract of 250 words 
• Name(s) of author(s) and academic affiliation(s)
• Brief bio(s) (100 words of less) of author(s)

 

Essay Guidelines

Essays will meet the following norms:

• 5,000 to 7,000 words (including notes) 
• double spaced, 12-points Times New Roman font, 1” fully-justified margins
• adheres to latest version of The Chicago Manual of Style
• Endnotes only (notes should show full citations followed by shortened citations for the same sources; single-spaced and 10-points Times New Roman font))
• no bibliography
• quotes over three lines in length need to be in a free-standing block of text with no quotation marks, indented on the left side of the block, and starting the quotation on a new line, with the entire quote indented 1/2 inch from the left margin while maintaining double-spacing;
• permissions to reprint images and illustrations, if any, are the responsibility of the author and should be arranged for and paid before submitting the article;
• sent electronically in MS Word file to editors

 

Important Dates and Timeline

• Essay proposals deadline: Friday, April 26, 2024
• Notification of accepted essay proposals: Friday, May 10, 2024
• Completed essay deadline: Friday, September 20, 2024
• Anticipated publication: Spring/Summer 2025

 

Process

Essay proposals will be evaluated on relevance to topic, originality, and clarity. Essay drafts will undergo a double-blind peer review process where reviewers will evaluate originality, clarity, and documentation, and scholarly contribution to decide if the essay is suitable for publication, in need of revision, or not publishable.  

 

About the Journal

We encourage you to take a look at past issues here to familiarize yourself with the journal and the published works. Per HERA’s website, “The Humanities Education and Research Association's Scholarly Journal: Interdisciplinary Humanities is a refereed scholarly journal, published three times a year. The journal accepts articles that deal with ‘any learning activities with content that draws upon human cultural heritage, uses methods that derive from the humanistic disciplines, and has a purpose that is concerned with human values.’ Articles dealing with the interdisciplinary humanities or humanities education at all levels (K-12, college, and adult learning) are welcome, as are creative works of poetry, fiction and non-fiction that reflect the journal's interests and the themes of specific issues.” 

Contact Information

Editors: 

Katy Hanggi, Chair & Associate Professor, Dept. of Focused Inquiry, Virginia Commonwealth University

Julianna Grabianowski, Assistant Professor of Business, Doane University

Jared List, Associate Professor of Spanish, Doane University

Contact Email

futureofthehumanities@gmail.com

Attachments

cfp-interdisciplinary-humanitiesfinal.pdf

Call for Chapters for Book on Indigenous Women by Indigenous Women

 This is a special call to submit a chapter for our book collection

 

We seek chapter proposals on the topic of Indigenous Women’s Research. The book positions our voices as central to engagements with Indigenous community life and to dismantling the research paradigms and practices that have not served us as Indigenous women.

 

We see questions of “voice” as vital issues of political articulation, creatively and wisely expressed in personal, collective and symbolic terms. We write for and with the Indigenous women we work alongside in the diverse fields we occupy. We believe in making our positions and perspectives – across gender, race, ethnicity, class, cultural, social, religious and relational contexts – more nuanced, accessible and expressive to the wider community of Indigenous women in the Global South. We dream of a defining moment when we can speak about who we are in the world for ourselves and with the Indigenous women around the world who inspire, challenge and move us.

 

This dream and aspiration – to present our voices for ourselves and with each other – sits at the heart of this proposed book collection on Indigenous women researching and reflecting on our most significant milestones and work to date. We embrace the idea of writing for and with each other as a collective voice contributing to the transformational, gendered and decolonising work urgently necessary at this point in history. In doing so, our focus is to flip the script, to forge new pathways for knowledge production and sharing that centre our voices and amplify our authentic narratives.

 

The way we can afford to do this meaningfully is to do so together through critical reflection, inclusivity and care.

 

Our book, titled Rematriation: Indigenous Women on Indigenous Women, provides a pragmatic context for our work to be understood across the spheres of the academy, community and everyday life. We write with community women in mind to engage Indigenous struggles, stories and circumstance. This is a call to ground our work as Indigenous women within the modes of engagement, exploration and agency that matter to us as Indigenous women, to oppose, criticise and challenge dominant notions of who we are, how we work and what we want to achieve. 

 

We are interested in chapter proposals that explore how our research opens up the field for other Indigenous women. How does our work create impacts for and with community women? Why should we care and how do we care?

 

Our goal is to bring new perspectives to understandings of community work from Indigenous worldviews – whether you are part of community, working at the nexus of the academy, activism and community, working at the coalface of land, water, environmental, educational, values- and rights- based or social justice concerns.

 

The land is life and law. We see spirit in all things. Indigenous wisdom is grounded in a myriad of complex and reciprocal interactions with community, the land, sea and sky. We have much to learn from each other and much to share.

 

What forms of Indigenous wisdom inspire us? What new work do we bring to the world? What new or old wisdoms do we wish to enshrine, where and how? What do we stand for and how do we stand with and as Indigenous women? Who are we?

 

This call invites you to respond to such questions just as much as it is an opportunity to pay homage to our ancestral and matrilineal connections. We aspire to build respect and acknowledgement across our communities, disciplines and fields of research as Indigenous women.

 

Rematriation means returning to the nurturing principles of Mother Earth, honouring the interconnectedness of all life and restoring balance to ecosystems. It involves the revitalisation of Indigenous knowledge systems, languages, and traditions suppressed by ongoing colonial and neocolonial forces. For us, rematriation is both land back and environmental consciousness. This practice offers ways to think outside the border logic of nation-states and reimagine relationships based on ancestral connections and ecology. We are stewards of the earth driven to oppose dominant paradigms of ownership, exploitation and extraction. Rematriation invites us to resee the land and resources beyond commodity fetishism.

 

We’d love to hear how you are contributing to the conversation on local, national or global issues and what this means for the communities you write about. The book’s thematic focus “on Indigenous women” in our title is about sharing this knowledge with each other through this collection rather than showing how your research is about Indigenous women. Put simply, the book is for us, by Indigenous women for and with Indigenous women.

 

As editors of this collection, we will be looking to find links between the different chapters submitted so we each speak to one another through strong, interconnected themes.

 

Possible themes for chapter proposals:

 

REMATRIATION: How can rematriation serve as a framework for addressing environmental justice issues affecting Indigenous communities, particularly women? How do Indigenous women navigate the complexities of rematriation in the context of ongoing colonial and neocolonial pressures? What are the strategies and initiatives led by Indigenous women to promote rematriation and decolonization within our communities and beyond? How can rematriation initiatives prioritise the voices and leadership of Indigenous women in decision-making processes regarding land, resources, and governance? What are the potential impacts of rematriation on future generations of Indigenous women and our relationships with the land, culture, and community?

 

KNOWLEDGE: What is Indigenous knowledge and in what ways is it gendered? How does women’s knowledge shape community life? How does our research include new knowledge about Indigenous women’s realities? 

 

VOICE: In what ways are Indigenous women leading the charge on environmental issues? How are Indigenous women’s voices different, enabled, silenced or actualised? How do Indigenous women’s voices influence local, national or global issues? On what issues are we most or least vocal? How are our voices unique, powerful, underrepresented or misheard?

 

IDENTITY: How does language, religion, gender, class, place or politics shape our identity? What are the differences between our personal, public, academic, historical or community identities? 

 

RELATIONALITIES: How do we work across differences with men, non-Indigenous women and researchers, across generations and cross-culturally? What is the relationship between us as Indigenous women on a local, national or global or an historical scale? In what ways can we talk about a global Indigenous movement of women? 

 

STORY: How does story ground our experience as women? In what ways do we share similar or different stories of Indigenous women’s experience? What are the most moving, uplifting or comical stories by or about Indigenous women?

 

COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE: What kind of community research is taking place, for instance on cultural revitalisation, language learning or regeneration or traditional practice, as well as specifically on Indigenous mothers, youth or elders? How is this research innovative, new or transformative?

 

PLACE-BASED RESEARCH: Where do Indigenous women choose to live and why? Where are the most vulnerable, dangerous, risk-laden or overlooked places? Why does place matter to Indigenous women? How do places shape Indigenous women’s lives, families and/or communities?

 

KNOWLEDGE HOLDERS: Who are the Indigenous female leaders we want to hold with the highest esteem? How do or have we acknowledge(d) their life experience? How can we learn from their legacy?

 

DEADLINES:

1 June 2024: Send your 300-word abstract with a brief profile

1 December 2024: Completed chapters due (5000 words) 

 

Email: IndigenousRematriation@gmail.com

Contact Information

Trixie Tangit

Contact Email

IndigenousRematriation@gmail.com

CFP: Call for Additional Chapters--Reiterating #Urbanisms: Staging the City in #Literature and #Media from the Global South

 

We are seeking additional chapters for our volume. Proposals for chapters discussing cities of Southeast Asia and Latin America are invited. Proposals for essays within 500 words and a short bio are to be submitted by April 30, 2024, with complete articles within 8,000 words (excluding works cited and endnotes), expected by June 15, 2024. We are using the MLA Handbook 8th Edition in this book. Submissions of abstracts, completed essays, and queries will be directed to citiesglobalsouth@gmail.com. For details regarding the scope of the volume, please refer to the original CFP below.

 

Original CFP below:

The Global South has become a representative of political, social, economic, and, to some extent, geographical markers of the countries that fall under the scaffolding of the term. However, the Global South is more than the sum of its parts: it has been gradually shaping up to be a cultural denominator that shapes national and cultural imaginaries into producing artefacts of literary and media consumption, sociopolitical/geopolitical commentaries that develop new narratives of and for the geographies that join together and form this Global South or the postcolony. For a term that has historically come to categorise nations with lower levels of industrialisation, lower per capita incomes, and a history of colonialism or dependence on the Global North, stretching across Africa, Latin America, Asia (barring Japan), and the Caribbean, the Global South is the site for massive upscaling in urbanisation as demographies strive to shift from areas of geographical disadvantage to urban centres that offer better amenities and economic prospect. Current urbanisation projections suggest that cities in the Global South, especially in East Asia, South Asia, and Africa, could be at the receiving end of 96% of an over three billion increase in urban population by 2050 (UN-Habitat 2020), while the global projections for net urban demography stand at growing from 55% presently to 68% by 2050. The growth in the urban population in the Global South far outpaces the growth of population, let alone urban demography growth in the Global North, which has started to show a decline in urbanisation over the past couple of decades (Quintero and Restrepo 2019). Starting with the postcolonial epoch beginning towards the end of the long nineteenth century and lasting till the later decades of the twentieth, the Global South has slowly and surely carved out an identity for itself and its population centres, urbanising in its own way, not resorting to the practices laid out by the Global North, but rather adapting the cities to the unique demographies that reside in them, the issues of resources, overpopulation, congestion, residual underdevelopment, disparities, deficits, and marginalisation. Due to the significant affiliation that urbanisation has had with the psyche of the Global South, these urban clusters are an intricate part of their cultural manifestations.

Whether it is the postcolonial city itself (Mumbai, Delhi, Rio De Janeiro, Manila, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Cairo, Lagos, and many others) or the postcolonial subject in a city of the Global North, manoeuvring the politics of the colonial geography with their postcolonial identity, literature, and media from the Global South has interacted heavily with the city. These interactions have also, in turn, produced new historiographies of the city, new hagiographies, geographies, radical politics, social and cultural paradigms, and polarisations, and the affectations of overlapping media, languages, religions, and practices in a boiler pot often found missing in their counterparts from the Global North. Cities are not merely historical or cultural but simultaneously ahistorical and influential characters in these artefacts. As such, it is often difficult to isolate the idea of the urban from the works of literature and visual media that conform to these standards. Whether it is in the fiction, poetry, and theatre of Rushdie or Achebe, Garcia Márquez, Emecheta, Naipaul, Mistry, Anita and Kiran Desai, Ondaatje, Karnad, Davis, Fugard, Suleri, Césaire, Walcott or Adichie, or the cinema of Mrinal Sen, Satyajit Ray, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Wong Kar-wai, Ann Hui, Lav Diaz, Tsai Ming-Liang, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Eric Khoo, Fernando Meirelles, Alejandro Amenábar, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Alfonso Cuarón, Neill Blomkamp, Garin Nugroho, Moufida Tlatli, Djibril Diop Mambéty, and Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina among several others, the city has been a staple that has either been the staging ground for the narrative, part of the ecology, stood in contrast or as an opposition to the focus of the narrative. 

The proposed edited volume seeks to look at this dynamic relationship between cities and their cultural artefacts, the literary and other medial production that emerges out of the interactions between the geography and the writer/director, and acts as a performative agent or actant towards developing a new consciousness for the cultural manifestations of the Global South. We seek essays looking at authors, poets, playwrights, directors, and artists whose works have explored the dynamism between the population and the urban centres, directly or tangentially. Essays could focus on multiple works by the same creator, their entire oeuvre, or individual pieces, or even offer comparative studies between the works of diverse creators, but must seek to unravel the urban ethos contained within these narratives or how the city functions within the narrative paradigms laid out by their creators.

Deadline for Submissions: 

April 30, 2024

Full name / Name of organization: 

Subashish Bhattacharjee and Indrajit Mukherjee

Contact email: 

citiesglobalsouth@gmail.com

Call For Videos: 4th Annual Smartphone Short Film Competition-Talking Films Online (TFO)

**𝐖𝐡𝐨 𝐰𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐞**:

Talking Films Online (TFO), a forum for discussing cinema since 2020.

**𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐞 𝐝𝐨**:

Attempt to bridge the gap between those who make films and those who study them

**𝐇𝐨𝐰**:

Bring on the same platform teachers, students, researchers, reviewers, critics, cinephiles, etc. on the one hand and producers, directors, actors, cinematographers, screenplay writers, subtitlers, etc. on the other.

** 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐭𝐨, 𝐛𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐳𝐞𝐬**:

Their films will be viewed and feedback offered by experts on cinema from all over the world, as well as by those currently in the business of cinema.

**𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞 𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐧**:

By an independent Jury consisting of top filmmakers and film critics

𝑺𝒕𝒖𝒅𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒔, 𝒔𝒆𝒏𝒅 𝒊𝒏 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒇𝒊𝒍𝒎𝒔 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒑𝒆𝒕𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒆𝒂𝒄𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒔, 𝒅𝒐 𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒓𝒂𝒈𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒔𝒕𝒖𝒅𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒄𝒉𝒊𝒍𝒅𝒓𝒆𝒏 𝒕𝒐 𝒔𝒆𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒊𝒓 𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒔 𝒕𝒐 𝒖𝒔!

CFP: International Conference "Literary transitions / Transitional literatures"

Vitoria-Gasteiz, Faculty of Arts, UPV/EHU,  Spain ,January 15-17, 2025

The concept of transition – characterized as a historical moment with a beginning and an end, encompassing a defined and significant period – awaits systematic reflection, according to Cristina Moreiras-Menor (2011). Although Richard (2001) points out that transition, as a proper noun, represents a temporal rationale, this term is generally understood as the shift between two times, a before and an after, presented linearly and laden with transformations. A transition is an evanescent stage that precedes another that emerges with remarkable power. This evanescent stage feels like an abyss that represents the ruin of a past and the emergence of an unwritten future.

We focus on the historical collapse that the transition entails, the landscape of change from one historical moment to another, and how that change is mirrored in literary and cultural documents. We specifically examine literary documents that contemplate the end of an era and explore the transition towards a new phase that accompanies this end. This transition is often portrayed as either innovative or as the dismantling of the preceding period. This time of transition – of change, uncertainty, and contradiction – is a time to confront the inherited legacy and transform it into something different, into a promise that implies several future directions. As Derrida (1995) suggests, a legacy is never univocal and natural; instead, it challenges interpretation by presenting itself as a secret to unveil. Thus, we are particularly interested in interpreting, deciphering, and reinterpreting that legacy on its emotional, subjective, political and ideological levels.

We understand transitions as a time of change in the historical trajectory – this trajectory can be collective and individual, vital, or literary – and as a stage in which new knowledge, new epistemologies, and new ways of understanding life and society are formulated. This separation between the past and the future opens a space for emerging discourses, new imaginaries, new expressions of experience and new individual and social identities. Besides, it affects all traditions. Precisely for these reasons, the members of the research group “IdeoLit: Literature as a historical document” have organized this conference, which is aimed at all those researchers who study the concept of transition in literature from the classical times to the present day.

1. Personal/Individual Transitions:
   • Growth, coming of age or Bildungsroman
   • Gender transition (trans realities)
   • Childhood, adolescence, maturity, old age, relationship with death (our own or someone else's death and its effect on the individual
   • Change/awareness
2. Collective transitions:
   • Political transition: regime changes and their implications in different fields
   • Social transition: revolutions, social movements, and other social transitions.
   • Changes in the emotional, family and community sphere
   • Ecology: structural changes to face climate disaster, collapse, degrowth or energy transition, among other aspects.
   • Transitional process of societies going through collective trauma
   • Technological transition: AI, posthumanism
3. Literary transitions:
   • Generic or formal transition: exhaustion or appearance of literary genres, in new forms
   • Aesthetic transition: changes in aesthetic currents, ruptures
   • Thematic transition: in relation to the historical context, the appearance of new themes that represent that moment of transition
   • Comparatist transition: opening of new lines, new perspectives that break with the past

Bibliography:

Derrida, Jacques (1995): Espectros de Marx: el Estado de la deuda, el trabajo del duelo y la nueva internacional, Madrid: Trotta.

Jameson, Fredric (2000): Las semillas del tiempo, Madrid: Trotta.

Moreiras-Menor, Cristina (2011): La estela del tiempo. Imagen e historicidad en el cine español contemporáneo, Madrid-Frankfurt am Main: Iberoamericana-Vervuert.

Rancière, Jacques (2006): Política, policía, democracia, Santiago de Chile: LOM.

Resina, Joan Ramon (ed.) (2000): Disremembering the Dictatorship: The Politics of Memory in the Spanish Transition to Democracy, Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Richard, Nelly y Alberto Moreiras (eds.) (2001): Pensar en la posdictadura, Santiago de Chile: Cuarto Propio.

Ricoeur, Paul (1980): “Narrative Time”, Critical Inquiry 7, 1 (On Narrative), autumn, pp. 169-190.

Subirats, Eduardo (2002): Intransiciones. Crítica de la cultura española, Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva.

Vilarós, Teresa M. (1998): El mono del desencanto. Una crítica cultural de la transición española (1975-1993), Madrid: Siglo XXI.

 

SUBMISSION OF PROPOSALS

Proposals must include the following information for ALL authors: name and surname, organization or institution, email, the title of the proposal, a 15-20 line abstract, and biographical information (maximum: 10 lines).

Proposals can be sent to the following email address in Word (or compatible) format until May 31: congresotransicion.ideolit@ehu.es

The organizing committee's decision will be notified by July 15.

Proposals will be accepted in Spanish, Basque, English, French or German. Each speaker will have 20 minutes for their presentation, followed by a brief Q&A session. All presentations must be made in person.

 

Contact Information

 

Main Organizers:

• M. Carmen Encinas Reguero (University of the Basque Country, UPV/EHU)
• Garbiñe Iztueta Goizueta (University of the Basque Country, UPV/EHU)
• Natalia Vara Ferrero (University of the Basque Country, UPV/EHU)

Contact Email

congresotransicion.ideolit@ehu.es

URL

https://www.ehu.eus/en/web/ideolit-literatura-documento-historico/call-for-pape…

CFP: International #Conference on #Hermeneutics of #Divine Soundscapes: Decoding the #Musical Signatures of Sri #Guru #Granth Sahib -October 2024-#Punjab University, India

 About The Conference

The relationship between spirituality and music is deeply rooted in the sacred verses of Sri Guru Granth Sahib. This conference aims to interpret the divine soundscapes within Sri Guru Granth Sahib and uncover the layers inherent in its musical signatures. By bringing together scholars, musicians, theologians, and practitioners, this conference aims to foster the understanding of the spiritual and interpretative dimensions of Sikh musical traditions. The conference has several objectives, such as investigating the symbolic meanings and semiotic nuances embedded in the musical signatures of Sri Guru Granth Sahib and exploring how they contribute to the overall discourse. The role of music in the spiritual and normative practices associated with Sri Guru Granth Sahib and its impact on the spiritual experience of practitioners is another area that will be explored.

The conference aims to facilitate dialogue on how the various interpretations of divine soundscapes in Sri Guru Granth Sahib resonate with and influence diverse cultural and religious practices and contexts. Finally, it will discuss the contemporary relevance of the divine soundscapes in the context of evolving religious thought and cultural dynamics.

Sub-themes:

• Ragas in Sri Guru Granth Sahib

• Ghar in Sri Guru Granth Sahib

• Dhuniyan (melodies) in Sri Guru Granth Sahib • Chhant in Sri Guru Granth Sahib

• Pauries in Sri Guru Granth Sahib

• Partaal in Sri Guru Granth Sahib

• Poetic Signatures in Sri Guru Granth Sahib

• Sikh Musical Traditions (e.g. Gharane)

Guidelines for Abstract and Paper Submission

We invite abstracts between 200-300 words along with a bio-note of not more than 100 words. Full-length papers should be 3000-5000 words long. The Authors can present their papers in Punjabi/English. The abstract can be e-mailed at head_bvsc@pbi.ac.in or nmiannualconference@gmail.com

Accepted papers will be presented at the conference and included in the proceedings published by the Nad Music Institute in a dedicated volume. Lodging and boarding shall be covered for all the conference participants. Full or partial travel grants will be provided to the selected participants. The selected young researchers shall be encouraged with special rewards.

Important Dates:

Submission of Abstracts: 25th April 2024

Intimation of Accepted Abstracts: 30th April 2024

Full Paper Submission: 1st September 2024

Intimation of Acceptance of the complete paper: 15th September 2024

About Bhai Vir Singh Chair

Bhai Vir Singh Chair was formally established in 2013. Padma Bhushan Bhai Vir Singh, an acclaimed figure in the literary world, is widely recognised as the father of modern Punjabi literature. His contribution to Punjabi language and literature has been remarkable, having dedicated 50 years of his life to our traditional heritage through modern scientific idioms. Emulating the tradition of philosophy, knowledge, and experience set forth by Guru Nanak Sahib, Bhai Vir Singh created various forms of literature, including poetry, fiction, rhetoric, editing, interpretation, and research, all of which have played a significant role in shaping modern Punjabi literature.

About Nad Music Institute

Nad Music Institute, a non-profit organization headquartered in Washington (USA), established in 2018, is committed to advancing Sikh music through academic research, collaboration with musicians and musical societies, and the creation of educational resources.

Contact Information

Dr. Jaswinder Singh, In-charge, Bhai Vir Singh Chair, Punjabi University, Patiala 

Dr. Manjit Singh, Nad Music Institute, USA

Contact Email: nmiannualconference@gmail.com

URL:http://www.punjabiuniversity.ac.in/

Attachments

cfpbhai-vir-singh-chair-nmi.pdf

CFP: International #Conference: #Comparative #Literature as #Alternative #Humanities #Ethics, #Affect and the Everyday Social-#Delhi #University- September, 2024

In the last few decades, scholars in the Humanities have found it necessary to examine the fundamental underpinnings upon which their disciplines are built. One of the primary questions that animated this re-examination has been regarding the very terms of our engagement with countries and communities that inhabit radically different social and moral life-worlds, living as they do outside the orbit of European Enlightenment values that still regulate both organisation and practice within and outside the academy, across the world. Instead of accepting difference as a defining feature of the human condition, the grand narratives of the Enlightenment were used as colonial and imperial tools to homogenize the diversity of experience, emotion and expression as the high tide of colonial modernity swept the world. The consequent otherness and alienation that characterised human society have deeply impacted literary and cultural production. We witness a disjunction between the objective, scientific discourse with its claim to truth and the everyday social experience of the human subject which Humanities seek to understand. These asymmetries compel us to rethink the Humanities from alternative positions and perspectives to embody and address the plural orders of reality and the differences between them. How can the collection of disciplines we call the Humanities recover the capacity of self-reflection and self-criticism? Much has been written about how stereotypes invade our imagination to contaminate our experience and knowledge.

Comparative Literature’s commitment to alterity and plurality gives it a foundational interest in

the non-stereotypical, non-canonized, un-heard narratives of “others” that constitute a radical sense of the literary. Such articulations can only emerge from the confluence of different locations, experiences and identities, demonstrating how our vision of “others” projects our own versions of ourselves onto the outside world.

An alternative view of the Humanities will have to come to terms with the ideas of relationality, plurality and cultural mobility as the defining features of all epochs including that of the pre-modern. Texts, ideas, images, metaphors, themes, modes, genres, tales are all human endeavours and like humans themselves these have the capacity to travel across constructed, eternally given or pre-fixed borders, thereby defying the exclusivist, essentialist ideas of culture and literature. The prevailing inclination towards connected sociologies and connected histories, while a step in the right direction, often reflects the dominant discourses which impose homogeneity and hierarchy, evincing a lack of empathy for the precarious endeavour of encountering alterity and a lack of understanding of the transient and the contingent.

Thus, we propose plurality as a conceptual framework to address this eco-system of interconnectedness and relationality in terms of their manifestations in the languages and literatures of all nations, regions and communities, regardless of their location in the hierarchy of political and economic regimes, or of their internal stratifications. We would like to recover the mutuality of interconnections and interdependence between literatures and cultures across the world. The assertion that we live in a post-human world prompts us, as humans to consider our experience in terms of relationality and plurality. These emerge as conceptual tools for recasting our relations with the other - be it humans, animals or the non- living.

Texts are actualised through their immersion in the shared ideological and affective worlds that constitute the everyday world. From orality to print to the visual media, modes of intersubjective engagement are implicated in structures of power relations within society and our response to them. The very practice of Comparative Literature is an acknowledgement of plurality and a willingness to engage with difference. The discipline emphasises upon relationality, heterogeneity, multivocal perspectives, and direct engagement with alterity that translation offers as a process and a product. Built into the discipline is the interaction between literatures in multiple languages both within the nation and in other countries of the world. Furthermore, it takes orality and performance in its ambit. It reaches out to all other disciplines by asking the existential question : can we open ourselves to the location of the other and view the world from the vantage point of difference that we encounter outside ourselves? Can we frame a dialogic mode of interaction that reading teaches us to our relations with the world, to expand our view of the world outside our own limited subjectivity ? Hence, we propose Comparative Literature as an alternate paradigm - and invite reflections upon the possibilities inherent in the conceptual frame structured by the reciprocal, the relational and the plural. It is our hope that it will help to grasp and address the nature of the crisis that afflicts the Humanities today both in intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary framework.

Sub-themes

Some of the sub-themes in the context of the main theme that can be taken up for discussion are as follows:

Interrogating categorial binaries (tradition/modernity, nature/culture, regional/national, east/west etc.)/ Literature after theory/ Shifting paradigms between Literary Studies and Social Sciences/ The Post-human as a paradigm in literary studies.

Worlding literature / Historicising canons/ Global and local as contexts of reading. The idea of the classic in modernity: circulation or creativity ?

Translation and the encounter with difference. Translating “dialects”/ The oral texts/ Archaic texts.

The plural nation: stratification and resistance/ Literary historiography and geopolitics/ Intertextuality and chronotopes.

Polyphony/ Polysemy in literature/ Poetry and cosmopolitanism.

Interrogating “Minor” literature as category/ Identity theories as critiques of the Humanities / Life-writing from the margins.

The performativity of literature/ Screenplay as literature/ Intermediality in literature. South Asian literatures and cultures: relations, reciprocity and ruptures/ Population movements and literature.

Papers are invited from scholars of Comparative Literature,

Translation Studies, Cultural Studies, Theatre Studies, Gender Studies, Black Studies, Dalit Studies etc. or on any aspect of literature and culture that will help us understand and practice the Humanities in accordance with the ethical perspectives outlined above.

Abstracts of about 250 words along with a short bio-note of about 100 words may be submitted to clai2024@admin.du.ac.in

Upon acceptance, participants will be provided with registration details through email. The Registration Fee will include workshop kit, certificate, lunch, and refreshments during the three days of the conference. Participants would need to become members of CLAI on receiving their acceptance letters in order to present papers, if they are not already members of CLAI.

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Important Dates:

Last date of abstract submission: 30th April, 2024

Selected participants will be notified by: 30th May, 2024

Last date of registration: 15th July, 2024

Registration Fee:

Faculty members: Rs.3500/-

Research scholars/students: Rs.2000/-

International participants: US$ 200

For further information please visit: https://www.clai.in/upcoming-event/

clai2024@admin.du.ac.in

Organising Committee, XVII Biennial International Conference