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Friday, November 17, 2017

Sponsored AIW Workshop- April 10-13, 2018. -Ghent University









Concept Note:


The 2018 AIW is titled “Arrows of Time: Narrating the Past and Present,” and the organizers want to explore this theme on three related fronts.

Firstly, the organizers would particularly like to highlight the historical connections –political, cultural, and academic – between the Low Countries, modern day Belgium and the Netherlands, and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Interest in Early Modern Indigenous interactions with the Dutch in New Amsterdam is growing, but some lesser-known intersections have recently begun to draw wider attention. For example, in 2016, Ghent played host to a popular exhibition on Father Pieter-Jan de Smet and his mission to the Americas. At the same time, the city’s football team came under fire for its use of an ‘Indian’ logo and mascots, giving rise to debate regarding its origins and appropriateness. Other connections, such as Margaret of Austria’s collection of artefacts from the New World kept at her court in Mechelen, or Frans Olbrecht’s fieldwork among the Eastern Cherokee, have garnered comparatively little scholarly attention.









Secondly, the 2018 AIW organizers invite contributions that problematize the uses and notions of ‘history,’ especially with reference to present day conflicts. This a very timely subject as the contested past is increasingly coming to the fore in the contested present. For example, the Idle No More and NoDAPL movements of the last five years rely heavily on the relatively recent past in their discourses about the present, and projected/envisioned/anticipated futures. Meanwhile, research published in Nature in 2017 that may push the peopling of the Americas back by 100,000 years has ignited a firestorm of controversy among the scientific community, and it may well become more widespread. The Clovis First and Bering Strait Land Bridge theories already play a prominent role in public discourses regarding ‘indigeneity’ in North America, and the possible impact of these new findings on ongoing debates remains to be seen. Additionally, there is growing interest in how non-Western and syncretic communities conceptualize such notions as ‘the past.’

Thirdly, the organizers wish to explore the pedagogical and institutional side of history. The decolonization of academia is starting to gain traction, with increased discussion among educational policy makers on how to diversify curricula. How can this be achieved with reference to secondary and university history classes without trivializing the subject material and how can these topics be presented to a wider audience? Additionally, how can we accomplish the decolonization of the past within academia itself – especially in light of the recent controversies surrounding appointments at Dartmouth and elsewhere?









Papers are welcome from any field on any topic relating to history and the Native Peoples of North America. However, priority will be given to those that also address the 2018 conference’s central themes. The organizers particularly wish to invite submissions for paper, panels, and poster presentations on – but not limited to – the following subjects: 


  • Contested histories
  • Discourses on the past in function of present conflict
  • Low Countries connections
  • Reception and representation of the past
  • Time and history as concepts
  • Memory communities
  • Practices of history
  • Philosophies of history
  • Decolonizing academia, and the field of ‘history’ in particular
  • Decolonizing museums
  • Pedagogies of history and decolonizing classrooms









Submission Deadlines:

The submission deadline for paper/panel proposals is December 15, 2017. 
The submission deadline for poster proposals is January 31, 2018. 
Paper/panel presenters will be notified of acceptance by January 15, 2018, and poster presenters by February 15, 2018. 
Proposals for papers/panels and posters (max. 400 words) should be submitted together with a short biography (max. 250 words) to ThomasDonald.Jacobs@ugent.be.







Venue & Sponsorship:
The 39th edition of the AIW, titled “Arrows of Time: Narrating the Past and Present,” will be held in Ghent, Belgium. It is being hosted by Ghent University, and is being sponsored by the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, the History Department, Institute for Early Modern History, and TAPAS – Thinking About The Past. The workshop will take place from April 10-13, 2018. 

For more Details: https://aiw2018.org/

Thursday, November 16, 2017

Funded International Conference 'Modalities of Displacement in South Asia' - June 7-8, 2018











Call For Abstracts:

The displacement of large numbers of people is a central feature of the rapid economic expansion that characterises contemporary South Asia. Rooted in violent processes of state formation, including partition, militarisation, and the repression of regional secessionist movements, South Asia’s modern polities are actively consolidating and incorporating erstwhile economically and politically marginal spaces. These processes of consolidation have been accompanied by the emergence of religious nationalisms and ethnic identity politics that legitimize the ideological or even physical segregation of ‘others’, conjoining land struggles and development projects with socio-cultural contestations around home and belonging. The conference ‘Modalities of Displacement’ interrogates some of these complexities through the notion of ‘displacement’.












While displacement has emerged as a keyword across research in historical, anthropological, geographical, and cultural studies, as well as in fields of migration, urban and rural development, and memory or heritage, inter-disciplinary dialogues are often rare. In this conference, we intend to bring together different disciplinary perspectives and empirical case studies, to think about what the modalities of displacement in contemporary South Asia can be. We think of physical displacement (e.g. in migration studies), ideological displacement (e.g. in anthropological discussions about the politics of belonging), emotional displacement (e.g. in considerations of the ‘unheimlich’ in cultural studies), economic displacement (e.g. in studies of land issues and dispossession), and aesthetic displacement (e.g. in urban geography). The panels of the conference will be organised to produce interdisciplinary conversations on these different and overlapping modalities of displacement, providing a platform for established and emerging researchers to connect and share insights.










This two-day conference is organised in the context of the projects Postcolonial Displacements: Migration, Narratives and Place-Making in South Asia (LIAS/CA-DS) and Rerouting Relations (IIAS) at Leiden University. We particularly welcome submissions that address perspectives from urban peripheries, rural hinterlands, borderlands, transnational contexts, and the margins of national imaginations. Apart from a select set of panels dedicated to the modalities of displacement, we will also host a workshop at IIAS (upon invitation) on residential segregation and religious politics. Furthermore we invite presentations based on audio-visual materials, such as films or art works.
















Send your abstracts (300 words) to: displacement@hum.leidenuniv.nl, along with key-words, a short bio, contact details, and, if applicable, information about the duration and nature of the audio-visual materials.


Deadline for submissions: 22 January, 2018.  

Selection: Mid February 2018 (tentative).

Funding: Very limited partial funding is available for a small number of participants.













Convenors:

Dr. Erik de Maaker, Department of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology (CA-DS), Leiden University.

Dr. Sanjukta Sunderason, Leiden Institute for Area Studies (LIAS), Leiden University.

Dr. Sanderien Verstappen (coordinator), Leiden Institute for Area Studies (LIAS), Leiden University, fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), Leiden.

Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Funded UK - US Early Career Research Collaboration Workshop,10th–Sunday 11th February 2018, USA








Saturday 10th–Sunday 11th February 2018
136 Irving Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA



Call For Applications:

The British Academy, in collaboration with the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, is inviting applications for early career researchers in the humanities and social sciences to attend a research collaboration workshop on the broad theme of violence. The workshop format will enable the exchange of ideas across disciplinary as well as national boundaries with the aim to help create and build exchange, cooperation and partnership between the researchers attending in the short- and long-term.










Purpose and Focus
Violence is a near ever-present reality for much of humanity, but there are significant limits to how narratives and experiences of violence are understood in the public imagination and policy process. This workshop will investigate how violence is defined and conceptualised by fostering an interdisciplinary discussion of some key themes related to our understanding of violence, and considering the implications for research and policy engagement.

Some seed funding will be made available at the end of the workshop to support collaborations between UK and US scholars on a competitive basis for research proposals formulated by participants, which will be presented in a group session on the final afternoon of the workshop. This funding is only one of the ways in which the Academy will provide mechanisms for participants to continue the conversations and research ideas developed through the workshop and of course the participants will be welcome to discuss and collaborate outside any Academy support.










The Workshop
The workshop will take place in Boston from 10th–11th February 2018. The British Academy will meet the costs for travel, accommodation and subsistence for all participants over the course of the workshop. 






Application Process
Applicants should provide a CV which should not exceed two sides of paper. Applicants are also asked to provide a justification (not exceeding two sides of paper) explaining:


  • Why they are interested in violence based on their research and/or teaching areas;
  • What disciplinary and interdisciplinary skills and/or experience they would contribute to the workshop; and,
  • How the workshop could help to develop their own research and career development.

Applications should be sent to c.moorhouse@britac.ac.uk no later than 5pm (GMT) on Wednesday 6 December.








Contact Info: 
Christina Moorhouse
Contact Email: c.moorhouse@britac.ac.uk
URL: 

Friday, November 10, 2017

Funded International Conference on Translating Feminism: Multi-disciplinary Perspectives on Text, Place and Agency- 13-15 June 2018-University of Glasgow, United Kingdom








Organised by the Leverhulme Trust International Network
'Translating Feminism: Transfer, Transgression, Transformation' 
University of Glasgow, United Kingdom 
13-15 June 2018 








CALL FOR PAPERS
The transformation of women's sense of self - individually and collectively - is one of the most significant socio-cultural events of the past 50 years to have occurred around the globe. Western-focused historiographies of 'second-wave' feminisms have only made the first few steps in addressing the geographical biases in their self-narration and in the very definition of feminism. A whole world unfolds when one considers the many guises of female agency aimed at social transformation, and articulated through text. 
The focus of this Conference is on the translocal, transcultural and translingual connections between such texts and their authors. In what ways do texts connect activists operating in different local environments? How are actors influenced by intellectual and political sources originating from other localities and different cultural environments? What happens to a text when it is adapted to a new environment and is politically operationalised in different circumstances? 








We adopt a broad understanding of 'text', which includes both published and unpublished work, recorded and unrecorded words, and can range from literary fiction to oral testimony and activist pamphlets. Feminism, too, is defined here in very broad terms - including any action aimed at subverting the gender status quo and foregrounding female agency. Finally, we understand translation as a process of cultural transfer across languages, but also within the lexicons and registers of single languages. While the prime focus of the Network has been on the period since 1945, papers incorporating longer-term perspectives and earlier periods are very welcome. 








Confirmed keynote speaker: Professor Claudia de Lima Costa (UMass Amherst) 


Panels and themes will include: 
* Intersectional approaches in translation 
* Feminist vocabularies and dictionaries 
* Patterns of transmission/questions of centre and periphery 
* Self-translation/intimate translation 
* Intergenerational translation 
* Pedagogies of feminist translation 
* Sexism in/and language 
* Feminism and specialized translation (e.g., medical or legal translation) 
* Feminisms and literary translation 
* Feminism, translation and international institutions (e.g., the UN International Women's Year 1975) 
* Men and feminism 
* Multilingual contexts and the absence of translation 
* Multilingual spaces of negotiation (e.g., book fairs) 
* Social media 








Please note the Conference will also feature a strand on 'Feminist Translating: Activists and Professionals', organized in collaboration with Glasgow's Centre for Gender History, and involving roundtable discussions and workshops with activist-translator communities and publishers working with a feminist ethos. All Conference delegates will be welcome to attend, and its programme will be announced alongside the main Conference programme. 


Please send us your abstract by 15 January. You will be notified of acceptance by 15 February. The programme will be announced and registration will open on 1 March. 







Your abstract should be between 250 and 350 words. Please include your email address and (if applicable) institutional affiliation, as well as a three-sentence biography. All abstracts, as well as queries, should be sent to: translatingfeminism@gmail.com









'Feminist Translating: Activists and Professionals': If you would like to be involved in the activist-translator strand please contact us separately by email. 


Limited funding to cover travel and accommodation is available for researchers working on temporary contracts, and for academics working outside Europe and North America. If you wish to benefit from this please clarify in your cover letter how you meet these criteria. 









Organisers:
Dr Maud Bracke, Senior Lecturer in Modern European History, University of Glasgow 
Dr Penelope Morris, Senior Lecturer in Italian, University of Glasgow 
Dr Emily Ryder, Network Facilitator, Lecturer in Italian, University of Glasgow 
Ruth Abou Rached - Translation and Intercultural Studies 
School of Arts, Languages and Cultures 
University of Manchester 


Wednesday, November 8, 2017

International Conference on Indian Literature as World Literature: Past, Present, Future -18 to 20 January 2018. EFL University, Hyderabad, Telangana





Call For Abstracts:

In recent years Indian Literature in English has been generating renewed interest in its writers and writings not just among students and scholars of literature but also intellectuals and thinkers working in other areas of Humanities and Social Sciences. There has also been a huge global increase in sales of literary works produced by Indian writers living in India as well as writers of Indian origin living outside the country. This new era in Indian Writing, as we all know, was ushered in by the epic-success of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children published in 1981. Today, interestingly, many of the works published in the 80s and 90s, especially Rushdie’s own magnum opus, Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger and others feature on the reading lists of departments of World Literature in universities across the globe.







Not very long ago, classical literatures of India produced over the last two millennia, had generated a similar interest among scholars of British India. English translations of The Rāmāyaṇa, The Mahābhārata, Pañcatantra, Kathāsaritsāgara, Jātaka Tales, Abhijñānashākuntala, Raghuvaṃśa, Mṛcchakaṭika, Svapnavāsavadattam, Harṣacarita, Pṛthvīrāj Rāso and Padmavat began to come into the public domain as early as the last quarter of the 1800s and after. The contribution of indologists and translators like Ralph Griffith, Arthur Ryder, E. B. Cowell, Charles Henry Tawney, Sir William Jones and others in the preservation and dissemination of India’s most loved classical texts across the limits and boundaries of the ancient languages is unquestionably one of the most important milestones in the journey of Indian literatures. Sadly, however, these extraordinary texts, or at least parts of them, despite their incomparable literary quality and universal appeal have rarely been featured on reading lists of World Literature departments.







The fate of literatures produced in the regional languages of India has not been very different. Most of the literature produced in Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam and a host of other languages has to a large extent remained unknown both to readers outside the language of its origin as well as to the English-speaking world simply for lack of translation across  languages within India and of course, into English. Can an understanding of World Literatures ever be complete without having known the worlds of Kalidas, Kabir, Meera, Mir Taqi Mir, Mirza Ghalib, Kaifi Azmi, Gulzar, Sri Sri, Gurram Jashuva, Kuvempu, Premchand, Sarat Chandra Chatterjee, Nirala, Sumitranandan Pant, Maithili Sharan Gupt, Bhisham Sahni and O V Vijayan,  to name a few?
Thus, the range of possibilities and array of questions that glare at those engaged in a serious and sincere promotion of the idea of “world literature” are overwhelming and intriguing at the same time. But the ride, however bumpy and bouncy it may seem, has also been immensely rewarding in terms of the varied points of arrivals, the reactive and commendatory responses, fresh challenges and new possibilities in the domain of world literatures.








Today, “world literature”, presents itself as a field of study with major thrust on global circulation, transcultural reading methods, wide ranging stylistic patterns, “intertextuality,” and interesting affiliations between texts and readers, hitherto not so evident. Indian writers, in their elaborate visions of particular locales/settings, have all along been challenging the notions of worldliness as something divorced from the local and the indigenous as something insulated from the world as the West would prefer to view them. These writers preferred rather to display the synergies between the local, national, regional, and global, and show how the local and the familiar function as the co-ordinates of the world. Being quite in consonance with one of the major pursuits of postcolonial literatures - fostering an understanding of the traffic between the local and the global, and that of world literature insisting that power and the way one is socially situated affect how one reads and writes the world - Indian literature does not seem to have any different purpose or end from that of world literature. The world then becomes not something exotic, menacing, and inhospitable but an accretion of what we consider home, a larger community to which we are all native.








The conference aims to explore the promising avenues of exchange between Indian literary studies and world literature. What role can writers, readers, critics, scholars, teachers, translators, literary agents, publishers, journalists, film makers, print and electronic media professionals etc. can play in promoting Indian literatures in English and translation at the global level? Consequently, the Conference looks to bring experts from various fields on to a single stage, all looking to share their learning and expertise in addressing the concerns. 









Well-researched and unpublished papers are invited on topics related to all aspects of Indian literature and literary criticism in English, in translation as well as regional language literatures. However, all submissions must strictly be in English only. If you choose to make an impact submit your abstract in not more than 250 words along with the keywords.  Do not forget to mention your name, place, affiliation, mobile number, and email address.  All submissions and correspondence may be made at efluiwlconference2018@gmail.com








Important Dates:
Deadline for submission of abstracts: 20 November 2017
Notification of Acceptance: 30 November 2017
Deadline for Registration: 15 December 2017
Full paper: 25 December 2017
Registration Fee:
Faculty Members (Out-station paper presenters) Rs 5000/-
Research Participants (Out-station paper presenters) Rs 2500/-
Local Participants (presenters & non-presenters) Rs 1500/-
EFLU Research Scholars Rs 1000/-
Foreign Delegates 100 USD
Please pay conference registration fee through Money Transfer to the bank account provided below. You are requested to email us your name and complete transaction details like amount, transaction number, date and name of the bank along with a scanned copy of the counterfoil.
Beneficiary’s Name: Internal Income Account
Acc No.: 62122901303
Type of Account: Savings
State Bank of India
IFSC Code: SBIN0021106
Bank Address: SBI, EFLU Branch, Hyderabad-500007








Payments may also be made through a Demand Draft drawn in favour of Internal Income Account, A/C No.62122901303, SBI, EFLU Branch, Hyderabad and sent to The Conference Coordinator, Dept. of Indian and World Literatures, EFL University, Hyderabad, Telangana - 500007. Please furnish complete transaction details like amount, Transaction number/DD No., date, Name of the Bank etc. in your communication. The Registration Fee includes the conference kit, three lunches, the conference dinner on January 18, and tea & snacks at intervals. Outstation participants will be provided breakfast on all three days. Accommodation will be available from 3 pm on 17 January to 10 pm on 20 January. ¬-Participants making joint presentations need to register separately.










Our Distinguished Conference Speakers

Prof. Graham Huggan, Professor of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Literatures, University of Leeds, UK will deliver the Keynote Address. Prof. Huggan is one of the world’s most renowned critics in the comparative postcolonial literary/cultural studies.








Prof. Vinay Dharwadker, Professor of Comparative Literatures and Folklore Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, is an expert in Indian and South Asian literatures and culture. 









Prof. Aparna Dharwadker, Professor of English and Interdisciplinary Theatre Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, specializes in comparative modern drama, modern Indian theatre and contemporary world theatre.







Mr. Ananth Padmanabhan is Chief Executive Officer of HarperCollins India and was former senior vice-President of Penguin India, the biggest multinational publishing houses in India. Mr. Padmanabhan has been at the helm of publishing business in India for more than 20 years now.








Dr. Arshia Sattar specializes in South Asian languages and civilizations and Indian narrative. She is one of the finest experts in Ramayana, an extraordinary translator of ancient texts and author of several books inspired by Indian mythology.










Volga is a popular Telugu novelist, short story writer, poet and translator. She was honoured with the Sahitya Academi Award for her collection of short stories titled Vimuktha.








Ms. Bhawana Somaaya, film journalist, critic, author and historian will deliver the Valedictory Address. Ms. Somaaya was recently honoured with the Padma Shri, India’s fourth highest civilian award, by the Honourable President of India Shri. Pranab Mukherjee. She has also served on the advisory panel of the Central Board of Film Certificate.









ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Prof. N. Ramadevi Murru, Dean, School of Literary Studies
Conference Coordinator
Dr. Chinnadevi Singadi, Assistant Professor
Joint Coordinator
Dr. Thoty Subramaniam
Head, Department of Indian and World Literatures
The EFL University, Hyderabad





Sunday, November 5, 2017

International Conference on Cultural Practices of Labour in Migration- April 20-21, 2018, TISS Patna.













Call For Abstracts:

The purpose of this conference is to bring together works from diverse fields and discipline that will re-examine the making and unmaking of cultural practices that accompanies labour migration both historically as well as in contemporary times. How does labour migration mutate the established genres? How does it create new ones? What is the role of memory and acts of forgetting? What are the processes through which the culture industry commodify the cultural practices of migrant labour and sell it back to them and in the process not only accumulate surplus value through their labour but also through their hitherto non-commoditized cultural artefacts? Is it possible to revisit and reconceptualise such concepts like hybridity, multiculturalism, exile, and so on by keeping at the centre of our analysis workers in plantation, or mining, or shipping, or as is the case in contemporary times, in the globalized construction industry? Are these workers creating new methods of articulation of cultural practices which literary studies, cultural studies, and social sciences in general need to unearth? These are only some of the questions that we want to address in the seminar.










The papers in the seminar would be on following subjects which are only indicative and can go beyond these stated themes:
  • Literary genres in migration
  • Cultures of resistance, association, and intersectionality
  • Memory, loss, identity
  • Language and its development through labour migration
  • Genealogy of cultures created through labour migration
  • Gender and sexuality
  • From folklore to mass production of culture
  • Representation of labour and migration
  • Transitions and Translations of Culture
  • Migrant Labour and Urban Culture
  • Migration and Indigenous Culture











Please send an abstract with title of the paper (250 words max) to mithilesh.kumar@tiss.edu and patnacentre@tiss.edu.
The last date for submitting the abstract is January 10, 2018.
Authors whose papers are selected will be informed by January 15, 2018.
Full paper should be submitted latest by April 1, 2018.
Papers can be presented in English, Hindi, or Urdu.
Poster exhibition and documentaries are welcome. A copy of the art work will be housed and catalogued in the repository of the Migration Archive of the Centre.











Organised by: Centre for Development Practice and Research, TISS Patna.
Conference Coordinator: Mithilesh Kumar, Research Fellow, TISS Patna Centre; Shanker Dutt, Professor, Department of English, Patna University; and Pushpendra Kumar Singh, Professor, TISS Patna Centre.
Date: April 20-21, 2018
Venue: TISS Patna Centre
Contact Email: mithilesh.kumar@tiss.edu