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Tuesday, December 26, 2017

CFP: Anxiety and Authority in South Asia- 6th-7th April 2018-Princeton South Asia Conference. New Jersey, United States















Concept Note:
From fears of an imminent environmental crisis to pervasive concerns about security, we seem to be living in an age in which anxiety has permeated public discourse on an unprecedented scale.  While the intensity and scope of many contemporary fears might be new, recent scholarship has shown that anxiety -- broadly understood as fear without a definite object -- has been a longstanding feature of political life. No longer regarded as a purely private experience, anxiety has come to be recognized as an affective state that has shaped not only state policies but political subjectivities themselves.  Through their focus on anxiety, recent studies in disciplines across the humanities and social sciences have revealed the inadequacy of accounts that have viewed politics and the state purely through the prism of reason and rationality. In the context of South Asia, such studies have shown the extent to which the rule of the colonial and post colonial states has been marked by apprehensions emanating from epistemic and ontological uncertainties that have contributed to frequent slippages between the ordinary and extraordinary powers of the state. At a time when a politics of anxiety appears to have led to a surge in populism across the world, this conference invites applicants to probe anxiety as a public phenomenon in South Asia in both historical and contemporary contexts.

















The seventh annual Princeton South Asia Conference will bring together early career scholars (advanced graduate students and junior faculty) across disciplines that engage with South Asia. In keeping with the theme of the conference, we invite papers that engage with South Asia in a broad sense, including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Tibet, Nepal, the Maldives, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Myanmar or Burma, India, and transnational and diasporic spaces.

Papers may engage, but need not limit themselves to, any of the following topics related to the conference theme:

  • Empire and Colonial Difference
  • Movement and Migration
  • Gender, Caste and Social Hierarchies
  • Tradition and Modernity
  • Propaganda and Mass Media
  • The environmental crisis
  • Finance and Speculation
  • Identity and Culture
  • Science and Development
  • Infrastructure and Urban Crisis



















The event will be held on April 6-7, 2018 in Princeton, NJ. For more details please visit https://southasiaworkshop.wordpress.com
Questions can be directed to princeton.sas2018@gmail.com.

Please submit proposals at https://goo.gl/G48oEG by January 5, 2018. Proposals should include a title, a 250-word abstract, institutional affiliation, and contact information. 

Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Call For Publications: Studies in South Asian Film and Media- Intellect Books and Journals














Call For Publications:

We invite contributions from scholars, researchers and practitioners of South Asian film and media. Possible areas include but are not limited to:



  • Film and Media as social history.
  • Feminist analysis and theory in film/media studies and practice
  • Class, caste, and sexuality: The politics of subalterneity and marginalization in film/media studies.
  • Contemporary media/ documentary and the public sphere. Interviews with documentary film makers.
  • Global media consumer culture and labor in the cultural industries.
  • News, citizenship, democracy, and the neo-liberal restructuring of media industry.
  • Nationalism and Regional cinema in the context of neo-liberalism.
  • Globalization/Diaspora/ South Asian representation.
  • Cinema and the other arts. 
  • Contemporary arts practices, cinema, and visual culture.












Submission Guidelines

Articles should be between 6,000 – 8,000 words in length. Please note that articles should be original and not be under consideration by any other publication. For detailed submission instructions please click here

SAFM also, welcomes shorter pieces that are either creative or analytical (between 1,000 – 4,000 words) as well as visual material. All initial enquiries should be sent to the editors at aaj.safm@gmail.com.













Contact Info: 
Aarti Wani (Lead Editor)
Contact Email: aaj.safm@gmail.com

Call For Papers : English Forum: Journal of the Department of English, Gauhati University













CALL FOR PAPERS.
                English Forum: Journal of the Department of English, Gauhati University, invites original and well- researched papers for its 2018 Issue. The journal which is published annually invites scholars to contribute papers on English Literature, other literatures in English, and texts from various cultures translated into English. Texts are never produced in a vacuum and the understanding of any text entails the discovery of numerous themes/issues that are germane to its production. Moreover texts are also read and understood in a variegated environment provoking multiple readings.  Hence the Journal seeks papers which may situate texts in an interdisciplinary framework, point out their dialogue with the social, cultural and historical conditions of their production and grapple with ideas like representation, identity, subjectivity, nationhood, gender, culture, etc.











                English Forum: Journal of the Department of English, Gauhati University, which has been in circulation since 1996, is a peer-reviewed, UGC approved and indexed journal. 

All papers submit for publications undergo a two-tier process of screening. Initially all submissions are screened by the editorial board after which selected papers are sent for blind peer review. Only those whose papers have been selected are intimated with regard to any changes or modifications sought by the reviewer. No other correspondence is initiated by the journal with authors whose papers have not been selected.

 All submissions to the journal must be between 5000 and 8000 words, conform to the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (Seventh Edition) and endnotes, when used, should be entered manually and not with the automatic Notes and References insertion function of MS Word. 
Articles sent to English Forum should not have been submitted for publication elsewhere. 
Book reviews are also welcome, but they should have the necessary publication details and should not exceed 2000 words.  
All papers submitted for consideration will be scanned for plagiarized materials.
All contributions should be mailed to lalankishoresingh@gmail.com by March 30, 2018.














Contact Info: 
Editor: Lalan Kishore Singh
Department of English, Gauhati University, Gopinath Bardoloi Nagar, Jalukbari, Guwahati-781014

Contact Email: 



Friday, December 15, 2017

ICSSR Funded Workshop on: “Doing Ambedkarism Today: Issues of Caste, Gender, and Community” -19- 22 February 2018,CSSSC, Calcutta.







The Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC), is organizing a workshop on the above mentioned theme sponsored by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), New Delhi, for research orientation programmes intended exclusively for researchers from Scheduled Caste (SC)/Scheduled Tribe (ST) backgrounds, from 19-22 February 2018.









Concept Note on the Workshop

In a poll conducted in 2012, Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar was voted as the greatest Indian. The inspiration for several Dalit and backward caste parties and movements across India, Ambedkar is seen as a political figure that is simultaneously divisive and unifying. Whether they subscribe to his ideals or not, all major parties are compelled to pay obeisance to this icon. Over the past few decades, excellent academic and theoretical contributions have been made regarding the study of Ambedkar’s thoughts. Yet, as it is with any great thinker, there is still a need to expand Ambedkar beyond conventional readings.

How do we read Ambedkar today? How would Ambedkar want himself to be read and applied today? What are the kinds of political forces which seek to appropriate Ambedkar now and why? What are the new trends and tactics of Dalit assertion? What are the critiques that Ambedkarism and feminism pose to each other? What stake do women have in the present debates on Ambedkarism? Does it make sense to talk about unity among oppressed groups in a caste order? How does Ambedkarism engage with the emergence of other identities and contestations? How do we understand the responses of the so-called upper-castes to Ambedkarite scholarship and politics? How do equations of nationalism, region, and language play today and how to make sense of these from an Ambedkarite perspective? Is conversion an option for those who want to reject the caste order? How can Ambedkarite perspectives inform our debates on counting castes and tribes and categorizing them? Can a capitalist economy provide adequate representation for the marginalized? Has modernity exhausted itself?

The workshop invites applications from students and researchers of SC/ST backgrounds who are currently enrolled in an M Phil or PhD programme or engaged in post-doctoral research. The proposals for papers are expected to address the broad theme the questions that are laid out in the concept note. The workshop is intended to give young researchers an opportunity to share their work with the faculty of the CSSSC and other established and upcoming scholars in the field. The morning session of each day will be devoted to presentations of academics each of which will address a specific topic of significant relevance to the theme, contributing to a critical understanding of Indian politics, society, and history. The afternoon sessions are for participant presentations on pre-circulated papers. Participants will be given twenty minutes for their papers, followed by an interactive session.











Travel & Assistance

CSSSC will bear the expenses of AC three-tier rail travel, accommodation (on twin sharing basis) and food in Calcutta for all selected candidates. Priority will be given to women applicants.

Those wishing to participate in the workshop may apply with their current CV, indicating their current academic affiliation, educational qualifications and mailing address and email IDs. Applications must include a summary (500 - 750 words in Word file doc, .docx, .rtf) of the paper they intend to present at the workshop. It is also compulsory to include a scanned copy of the community certificate clearly indicating the category of the participant, i.e. SC or ST.

Application forms for the workshop are available for download on the CSSSC website.

E-mail applications must reach the organizers latest by 31st December 2017 at: cssscworkshop2018@gmail.com

Selected participants will be contacted at the latest by mid-January 2018 and first drafts of papers are expected by 10 February 2018.












For More Details:
https://roundtableindia.co.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9251:call-for-papers-doing-ambedkarism-today-issues-of-caste-gender-and-community&catid=129:events-and-activism&Itemid=195

Two-day Faculty Development Workshop on TEACHING ENGLISH WITH TECHNOLOGY 24 & 25 January, 2018 | 9 am – 4.30 pm Research Department of English St. Joseph's College (Autonomous), Tiruchirappalli, Tamilnadu













Concept Note:

The unprecedented development of technology has certainly influenced English language education. The web 2.0 has revolutionized pedagogy, roles of learners, teachers, parents, and policy makers, teaching tools, learning materials, teaching and learning strategies, etc. This dramatic change has thus disrupted the conventional system of teaching and learning English. However, English language teachers are not yet fully prepared to meet the challenges in preparing the Generation Z learners for their future careers that have not yet been created. The Generation Z, born between 1995 and 2012, is growing up in a world that is entirely different from what their parents and teachers grew up in. They are constantly on smart devices. They text instead of calling; they tweet; they instagram; they whatsapp; and they even design their own apps. On the contrary, their teachers lecture, use only blackboards, and expect learners to write elaborately in exams. 


Therefore, this faculty development workshop attempts to bridge this wide gap by familiarizing the participating teachers with the web tools that help them

  • to develop course sites with multimedia resources,
  • to set up discussion forums for engaging learners in creating new knowledge, and
  • to conduct formative assessment to help learners check their learning.
  • to develop course sites with multimedia resources,
  • to set up discussion forums for engaging learners in creating new knowledge, and
  • to conduct formative assessment to help learners check their learning.

Web Tools
The participants will be trained in the following web tools: 
  1. Kahoot
  2. Edmodo
  3. Plickers
  4. Nearpod
  5. Google Sites
  6. Google Drive
  7. Google Docs
  8. Google Forms
  9. Google Sheets
  10. Google Slides
  11. Whatsapp Groups and Broadcasts









Who can participate?

English language teachers (both Arts and Science and Engineering colleges)
Teacher educators from B.Ed colleges
Ph.D. research scholars



Benefits:


Hands-on training in using technology for learning and teaching
Take-home ideas for using technology in classrooms
Training manuals on web 2.0 tools
Network of teachers interested in educational technology


How to Register?

Registration fee is Rs 1000 per participant. Registration is restricted to only 40 participants on first come first served basis. Registration is done online. To register

Visit https://sites.google.com/view/tewt 

Fill-in your details in the online registration form on or before 05.01.2018

Print the filled-in registration form sent to you by email

Pay the registration fee. Either draw a demand draft in favour of The Principal, St. Joseph's College payable at Tiruchirappalli or pay through internet banking [Account Name - ; Account Number - ; IFSC Code - ; Bank, Branch - ; Branch Code- ]
Send the printed registration form along with the DD or the acknowledgement slip for online transfer to The Head, Department of English, St. Joseph's College, Trichy 620002 on or before 10.01.2018.



Trainers


Dr M. S. Xavier Pradheep Singh
Assistant Professor
Department of English
St. Joseph's College (Autonomous)
Tiruchirappalli


For Registration

Dr M. S. Xavier Pradheep Singh
Assistant Professor,
Department of English,
St. Joseph's College (Autonomous),
Tiruchirappalli, India
Email: pradheepxing@gmail.com
Call / Whatsapp: 8220777313



Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Call for Papers on Literature and the Mystical Foundations of Authority-UGC-SAP-DSA-I sponsored National Young Researchers’ Conference 2017 22-23 February 2018; JNU, New Delhi.













‘No, you don’t understand,’ the Knight said, looking a little vexed. ‘That’s what the name is called. The name really is “The Aged Aged Man.”’
‘Then I ought to have said “That’s what the song is called”?’ Alice corrected herself.
‘No, you oughtn’t: that’s quite another thing! The song is called “Ways and Means”: but that’s only what it’s called, you know!’
—Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass



Concept Note:

The White Knight’s formula, which is characterized by Giorgio Agamben as ‘the name of the name is not the name’ sums up the problem of the mystical and ineffable in language. Is it possible in language to express the very fact of the existence of language? The ineffability that all mystical literature essentially discloses is the unnameable opening that must precede language. Walter Benjamin, in a letter to Martin Buber, admits that he ‘can understand writing as such as poetic, prophetic, objective in terms of its effect, but in any case only as magical, that is as un-mediated’. Poetry and prophecy alone are capable of the ‘purest disclosure of language’s dignity and nature’. If literature as such has a relation to the mystical, not through its transmitted content but as pure disclosure, the study of its effectiveness must be channelled through certain critical considerations which this conference will try to outline. 

Contemporary religious discourse in the Indian subcontinent assumes a monopoly over the mystical but in most cases only to legitimize power. The discourse of godmen and saints is almost always willingly co-opted by the state. Literature, on the other hand, now more than ever, is under attack and censorship, usually in the name of ‘hurting religious sentiments’. In a world where censorship has become commonplace, both by state and religious authorities, it is crucial to ask what exactly is the nature of the threat art poses to power? How are we to understand the contemporary prevalence of censorship as rooted in a conflict over the provenance of the mystical?



Stephen Mallarme once wrote that ‘nothing takes place but the place’. Only the work of poets, writers and mystics, is able to bring about the manifestation of language as the space on which the political can be founded. Can the existence of state power and control over literature thought to be premised on a complicated relationship of jealousy, rivalry, dominance, and subservience? In Indian history we have stories of Sufi saints like Baba Shah Palangposh in the seventeenth century whose miraculous powers and knowledge of the ghaib or the unseen was used to prop up the military campaigns of various sultans and satraps in the Deccan. As Azfar Moin has pointed out in his book The Millennial Sovereign, the Mughal Emperors relied on Sufi saints of various orders, like the Nakshbandis and the Chishtis, to legitimize their rule. Even today, godmen and saints play a vital role in propping up political parties and solidifying vote banks. How does their mystical and spiritual appeal translate itself into the political? Can the ever-expanding corpus of what Srinivas Aravamudan called ‘Guru English’ be considered as a form of the literary utilized by such godmen to propagate their creeds and sell their products?

The triumphant return of the mystical can be seen in popular culture’s fascination with the elaborate mythologies of cinematic franchises like The Avengers among others. Can the popularity of such a hyper-technologized cinema be reconciled with its various mystical elements? The relation of the mystical to violence, law, and even technology is also what we wish to consider in this conference. What needs to be proposed are concepts of art and literature which do not merely subvert an existent authority. Rather, literature has to be thought as the provenance of the mystical and thus authority’s inaccessible ground. Can a critique of power be developed which proceeds from this perspective? This conference thus invites papers that engage with the mystical disclosure of literature and art from India and the rest of the world. Our aim is to open up, in a critical and rigorous way, the questions of ineffability, violence, law, language, and sovereignty. We invite papers on mystical texts, esoteric and religious works, popular religious literature, and any other texts which engage with the problems we have outlined above.
















Papers can include but not be restricted to the following themes:
• Modern interpretations, adaptations or translations of Sufi and Bhakti texts
• Popular religious literature 
• Problems of censorship and laws protecting religious sentiments
• Questions of sovereignty and political repression of literary texts
• Mystical elements in literary texts
• Scientism and pseudo-scientism in religious discourses
• Esoteric and occult practices or texts
• Discourses surrounding madness and insanity
• ‘Guru English’
• Messianic and pseudo-messianic discourses
• The space of literature and the role of the university
• Secularism and its discontents
• Subaltern mystical and occult practices
• Superstition and the magical
• Cinema and the technological mystical



Abstracts: of not more than 300 words, along with a brief bio (100 words) of the presenter, must be emailed to the conference coordinators at ces.sap.ugc@gmail.com. Please write ‘NYRC 2018 Abstract’ in the subject heading of the e-mail while sending the abstract.



Important Dates:
Last date of submission of abstract: 5 January 2018
Notification of acceptance of abstract: 10 January 2018
Last date of submission of full paper: 5 February 2018



















Note:
Participants must be registered MPhil/PhD candidates at a recognized university, postdoctoral fellows, young career academics, or independent researchers. Unfortunately, BA/MA students cannot present papers in this conference.
Accommodation for outstation candidates (on a twin-sharing basis) will be arranged and paid for by the organizers from 21–24 February 2018. 

Outstation participants will be provided a travel allowance based on return railway Sleeper Class fare between their point of origin and New Delhi, or actual fare incurred, whichever is less, irrespective of whether the participant has travelled by air, or by a higher class in rail. Please note that, if the travel has been conducted by rail, for reimbursement the tickets must have been booked directly from the IRCTC website or the railway counter, and no rail tickets booked from an intermediate site or through a travel agency will be reimbursed. The participants must provide copies of their tickets (and boarding passes, if the journey is conducted by air) for reimbursement. 

• Queries can be addressed to the Conference coordinators at ces.sap.ugc@gmail.com

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

The Ray Browne Conference on Cultural and Critical Studies April 6-8, 2018 Green State University Bowling , Ohio












Concept Note:

Borders are meant to separate. They delineate one from another. Issues of power arise when that delineation creates or exploits a marginalized “other.” Recent debates across the US and the world illustrate the importance of borders to establish and protect concepts of nationalism and safety; the plan for a “transparent” wall on the southern border of the United States, the refugee crisis which led to the limit of free movement in Europe, and the ethnic cleansing in Myanmar are all examples of the rise of xenophobia and global humanitarian crises. 

These debates have shed light on the porous nature of geographical borders, forcing citizens to decide who gets to come in and who gets forced out. Because the world is full of such borders, it is also full of borderlands, geographical and cultural areas occupying multiple physical spaces at once. Gloria Anzaldúa uses the term borderlands to refer to the geographical area that is most susceptible to “la mezcla” [hybridity], neither fully of Mexico nor fully of the United States. Those who occupy borderlands frequently occupy multiple geographical and cultural spaces. 



















Anzaldúa also expands the concept of border, defining it as, “a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A borderland can be a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition. The prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants.”1 In this sense, “border” and “borderland” accommodate people who do not identify with and within established borders, who instead occupy both worlds simultaneously and are expected to abide by compound cultural expectations. Many people occupy multiple cultural landscapes, identifying with all and none. This liminality between nation, bodies, flesh and machine, living and dead, and the fluid spectrum stretching between binaries can be political, geographic, imposed, claimed, and used for pride or marginalization (or both). These liminalities are sites of critical exploration that illuminate what it means to occupy cultural, personal, and spiritual borderlands. There are countless voices that do not bear one identity, but multiple, and those identities are often shifting from moment to moment. Bringing these voices and stories forward is crucial to understanding the relationship between borders and borderlands.

Through examination of cultural representations, treatments, and uses of borders in the arts and social justice movements, we can understand ourselves, our futures, and our relation to one another and to ourselves. The tasks of defining and dismantling concepts of borders have never been more important. Through multiple theoretical lenses and the exploration of popular culture, we can take a critical look at how and why borders, borderlands, and their usefulness as a means of engaging with intersectional identities are emerging as vital areas of study.












 We welcome papers, panels, art presentations/installations, and other creative work, including but not limited to the following subject areas: 
  • Global Borderlands
  • Cross-Disciplinary Discourses 
  • Liminal Identities
  • Refugee Crises
  • Media (film, television, video games, music and music videos, news, comic books, literature, social media, fan fiction, humor) 
  • Imagination and Representation
  • Alternative Time (dystopian futures, alternative presents, apocalypse narratives, time travel narratives)
  • Science Fiction (technology, humanity, the Uncanny Valley, cyborg liminality, artificial intelligence) 
  • Material and Visual Culture; and Fashion (trends, vintage, historical styles)
  • Politics (rhetoric, ideology, policy) 
  • Popular Culture (representations of borderlands in film, television, and popular fiction)
  • Gender and Sexual Identity (binary and non-binary conceptions of gender and sexuality) 
  • Race and Ethnicity (multi-ethnic identities, immigration) 
  • Disability Studies (neurological spectrums and other binary and non-binary borders)
  • Digital Humanities 
  • Spirituality and Religious Studies 












Abstracts should be up to 250 words and should be submitted no later than December 22, 2017. Questions may be directed to raybrowneconf@bgsu.edu. 

To submit your abstract, use the BGSU ScholarWorks page for this event at the link below. 

http://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/rbc/2018conference/












CONTACT
Dr. Susana Peña, Director
School of Cultural and Critical Studies
228 Shatzel Hall
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, OH 4340
419-372-2796
susanap@bgsu.edu

Website:https://www.bgsu.edu/arts-and-sciences/cultural-and-critical-studies/news-events/ray-browne-conference.html