CFP: Three-Day International Conference on Comparative Literature: Frames, Methods and Practice

 Shreemati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey Women’s University

Department of English and Department of Marathi

in Collaboration with

Calcutta Comparatists 1919 are

Organizing

A Virtual Three-Day International Conference

On

Comparative Literature: Frames, Methods and Practice 

4^th – 6^th March 2022

Concept Note

For its linguistic polyphony and cultural syncretism, India is one of the most curious literary sites to the comparatists. Indian Literature, since its very beginning, carries imprints of thoughts from different Parampara (traditions). Each Indian Literature is grounded within its own literary, historical and cultural receptions from other literary traditions.  In essence, any singular Indian literature is never single but comparative by nature. Due to shared access to English and the recorded histories of colonial modernity, Indian literary traditions find more common ‘comparative’ grounds with English or European Literature than Indian literary traditions and texts.

Despite the obvious scope of comparative frameworks in reading Indian literary practices, monolingual literary scholarship in Indian literature has flourished. Comparative approaches in the Indian context continue to be mediated through English largely in the form of translations. Comparative study of Indian Literature can be done best by establishing communications among people with expertise in multiple Indian languages and English. Gradual paradigm shifts in literary studies in different literature departments in India also promotes comparative approaches though not always in the name of Comparative Literature.  It often presents itself as ‘Indian Literature’, 'Indian Literature in Translation’, 'Indian Literature in English Translation', 'Literatures of the South-Asis', 'Marginal Literatures' or by introducing literary area studies, like 'North-East Indian Literature', etc. Moreover, various new approaches from social sciences also provoke comparative study of literature. The likes of Dalit Literature, Partition Literature, Literature of Migration, Minority Discourses, etc, often engage in comparative methodologies. 

Comparative Literature as a discipline re-examines the established canon of literature by historicising the literary system and establishing access into the source language of the origin of the texts and translations. Dialogue with source language in a literary study is required for foregrounding a text within and outside a particular knowledge system. That can be done best with a liberal study of literature in different disciplines. By the liberal study of Literature, we do not mean relinquishing single literature disciplines but establishing an easy dialogue between multiple traditions.

In the past few decades, literary practices have undergone momentous changes to actively challenge forms of ‘reading’ literature. This has meant that literatures often do not remain in their sanitized quarters but seek dialogues with multiplicitous literary practices and disciplines. As literatures broaden, mutate and expand we probably need to revisit ways and means of ‘doing’ comparative literature. This means re-thinking terms of exchange between various literary practices, revisiting comparative frameworks, reworking methodologies of ‘reading’ comparative networks. This conference is aimed at drawing from the complex intellectual history of comparative literature studies in India to respond to the growing need for new methods, frames and practices of comparative approaches. 

Call for Papers

A 300 word abstract of papers on the proposed concept is invited from the students, scholars and teachers from different fields by 10th February 2022. The papers for presentation should be no longer than 15 minutes followed by 5 minutes discussion. Besides, individual presentations, we also seek proposals for special panels on Comparative Literature. The first institutional comparative study of literature was conceptualised and introduced in India by Sir Asutosh Mookerjee in 1919 at the University of Calcutta. This conference pays homage to the pioneer of the discipline by naming a panel to discuss his idea and legacy. There will be a special panel called, “Sir Asutosh Mookerjee Panel on Comparative Indian Language and Literature in Single Literature Discipline” by Calcutta Comparatists 1919. Prof. Tutun Mukherjee, taught Comparative Literature, at the University of Hyderabad and contributed a lot in the discipline from South India. Her untimely demise is observed as an immense loss to the discipline. This conference also pays homage to Prof. Mukherjee by introducing a panel on her contribution. Another special panel called “Professor Tutun Mukherjee Memorial Panel on Comparative Literature” also will be there. 

Apart from these two panels, we will have several other panels. Panel proposal of 500 words on the relevant topic may be sent for a 45 minutes presentation followed by 15 minutes discussion. Each panel may contain 3 to 5 members. The papers may be focused on but not limited to the below-mentioned areas:

-        Comparative Literature in India and/or Comparative Indian Literature

-        Comparative Literature as a Course in a Single Literature Discipline

-        Comparative Literature as an Approach in the Single Literature Discipline

-        Single Literature as Comparative Literature

-     Bhakti and Sufi Traditions of India

-     Digital Humanities and Comparative literature 

-        History of Translation of Indian Literature into Indian Language/s

-        Indian Literature in English Translation and scope for Comparative Literature

-        Publishing Industry in India and Corpus of Indian Literature

-        Works on Comparative Literature in Indian Languages

-        Dalit Literature as/and Comparative Literature

-        Literature of Migration and Comparative Literature

The papers will be accepted in English, Bangla, Hindi and Marathi only. All the abstracts and queries related to the conference should be addressed to comparativeliterature2022@gmail.com . Authors of the selected papers will be intimated by 15^th February 2022 through an email. All the paper presenters and registered participants will be given a certificate for presentations/ participation. Full paper should be 5000 to 7000 words long excluding bibliography, notes, and bio. Author should follow MLA 7th edition for style sheet and end notes instead of footnotes. Full papers for peer-review for publication in a book to be published by a reputed international publishing house must be submitted by 15^th March 2022. Selected authors will be informed of the review result by 15^th April 2022. The final manuscript will be forwarded to the publisher by 7^th May 2022. Papers written in English only will be considered for this proposed book on Comparative Literature. Please note that No Extension about submitting papers at any stage will be entertained. 

Registration

There is no registration fee for the students, scholars and teachers of SNDTW University. Paper presenters from outside the university are required to pay registration fees as follows:  Participants (not presenters)- 150/-, MA- 150/-, PhD Scholars and Independent Researchers- 400/-, Faculty Members 700/-. The registration fee is the same for Indian and South Asian participants. Participants from outside South Asia requires to pay 30 US dollars as a registration fee. Registration fees should be deposited in the account of Calcutta Comparatists 1919. Registration details will be provided once the candidate is selected to present a paper at the conference. 

Coordinators

Dr Aruna Dubhashi, Head and Associate Professor, Dept. of Marathi, SNDTWU

Dr Dhrupadi Chattopadhyay, Head and Assistant Professor, Dept. of English, SNDTWU

Dr Manisha Ghatage, Assistant Professor, Dept. of English, SNDTWU 

Dr Mrinmoy Pramanick, Assistant Professor, Calcutta University and President, Calcutta Comparatists 1919

Contact Info: 

Dr Mrinmoy Pramanick, Assistant Professor, Calcutta University and President, Calcutta Comparatists 1919Dr Mrinmoy Pramanick, Assistant Professor, Calcutta University and President, Calcutta Comparatists 1919

comparativeliterature2022@gmail.com

mpcill@caluniv.ac.in

 

Contact Email: 

comparativeliterature2022@gmail.com

URL: 

https://www.calcomp.org/

EXTENDED DEADLINE: Contested Solidarities: Agency and Victimhood in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures

 Keynotes/Plenaries/Writers

Sinan Antoon (Iraq/USA) | Abubakar Adam Ibrahim (Nigeria) | Blessing Obada (Germany/Nigeria) | Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor (Kenya) | Michael Rothberg (UCLA) | Arundhati Roy (India)

Extended deadline for individual papers and panels: 15 February 2022

If Anglophone literatures and cultures worldwide once sprang from a contested terrain of solidarities emerging in the shadow of colonialism, many of them have been struggling with the legacies of these solidarities, with ideals of liberation that turned into new forms of oppression, and with the clamorous or muted appeal of old and new victimhoods for more than half a century now. Ethnic, racial or national victimhood and solidarity have been invoked in a cynical politics of exclusion all over the globe – from an aggressive assertion of Hindu hegemony in India to the militant Buddhism in the guise of nationalism in Sri Lanka and Myanmar, the abuse of anticolonialism as an ideology of oppression in Zimbabwe. In a quite different setting, victimhood has also become a mainspring of the anxiety-infested xenophobia spawned by right-wing populism in contemporary Europe. At the same time, the oppression of minorities and the plight of political, economic and environmental refugees has generated new forms of sociality as well as solidarity.

While the 21st century has seen the exhaustion of ‘enchanted’ or ‘unconditional’ solidarities rallying around idealized images of oppressed ‘postcolonial’ or ‘third world’ collectivities, sections of academia continue to see ‘resistance’ as form of catharsis, or even a panacea for a myriad of victimhoods and grievances. Yet, Anglophone literary texts and cultural productions themselves have long since engaged in self-reflexive encounters that have undermined trite formulations of perpetrators and victims and have explored the tribulations of what Michael Rothberg has recently called ‘implicated subjects’ (2019): all modern subjects are involuntarily implicated both in the history of oppression and victimhood, often simultaneously – not only in the formerly colonizing, but also in the formerly colonized regions of the world. More often than not, these implications, which call for a ‘disenchanted’ or ‘conditional’ solidarity that holds the abuses of victimhood in the name of agency accountable, cut across habitual East/West or North/South divides: as large parts of the world are rightly admiring civil resistance against the current military rulers of Myanmar and deploring the overthrow of Aung San Suu Kyi, the memory of how her own government was complicit with the persecution of the Rohingya minority in Burma seems to be waning. At the same time, European admonitions to respect democracy and protect the Rohingya refugees are timely but hardly beyond reproof given the background of calculated misery in its refugee camps in the Mediterranean and unceasing daily deaths at its external frontiers.

The 2022 Annual Conference of the Association for Postcolonial Anglophone Studies (GAPS) will engage in a wide-ranging reassessment of implicated subjects, of the uses and abuses of victimhood, of different forms of agency, and of the manifold implications of English as a medium of literary and cultural expression in anglophone literatures, cultures and media. Participants are invited to scrutinize fictional encounters with ‘internal’ forms of oppression, with the ‘enemy within’ (Nandy) and ‘the danger of a single story’ (Adichie), or the excessive display of wealth and power by local bourgeoisies (Mbembe). They are also encouraged to engage in a self-reflexive discussion on the role of ‘unconditional’ and ‘conditional’ solidarities in Anglophone literary cultures and on the role of victimhood in recent debates on globalization, world literature and the Anthropocene. Furthermore, participants may wish to tackle the new solidarities expressed through concepts such as cosmopolitanism (Appiah), Afropolitanism (Selasi), conviviality (Gilroy) or environmental justice and to explore the role of anglophone literatures and cultures as ‘resources of hope’ (Raymond Williams). Participants are further welcome to focus on transitions from a politics of victimhood to a poetics of agency in anglophone literatures and cultures and to scrutinize the role of English in plurilingual contact zones across the world.

We invite contributions exploring the conference theme in areas such as:
⦁ Internal rifts: the struggle against oppressive populisms and authoritarian power in anglophone literatures and cultures
⦁ Unfinished business? The role of national and other liberations in contemporary literature and cultures
⦁ Three decades of Postcolonial Studies: Past and present understandings of agency and victimhood
⦁ Neoliberal and other capitalisms: critiques of globalization and populist resentment
⦁ The poetics and politics of indigenous sovereignty
⦁ Uneasy linkages: indigeneity and migration
⦁ Intimate enemies: “Traitors” in contemporary anglophone literatures and cultures
⦁ Civil war and after: reconciliatory imaginaries in literature, film and other media
⦁ Beyond victimology: war narratives in a decentred world
⦁ Convivial imaginaries: Resources of hope in Black and Asian British cultural production
⦁ Old and new South-South relations in anglophone studies
⦁ Victims or perpetrators? Implicated subjects in the Anthropocene
⦁ The New Anglophones: English-language writing in the Arab world
⦁ Comparisons: Franco-, hispano- and anglophone literatures in the contact zone
⦁ Teaching complexity: implicated subjects as a challenge to pedagogical practice

Work in progress in anglophone postcolonial studies – including M.A./M.Ed., PhD and Postdoc projects as well as ongoing research projects in general – can be presented in the “Under Construction” section, for which poster presentations are also welcome.

Conference Format:

Given the current dynamics of the Covid 19 pandemic, it is unlikely that we will be able to organize the conference as a full presence event. However, we remain hopeful that a hybrid format with some delegates and speakers being present at Goethe University and others joining via a video system will be possible. We are also prepared to set up the conference as a fully digital event if necessary. The final decision on the conference format will be taken at the beginning of the academic summer term at Goethe University and communicated by 15 April, 2022 at the latest.

Conference Fees:

Conference fees for those participating in presence at Goethe University (in case this will be possible) are:

GAPS members*                    Non-members/non-presenters

90 € employed **                    100 € employed **

45€ students                           50€ students

* all presenters, excluding invited speakers, are required to be GAPS members. GAPS membership form can be obtained here.

**full-time faculty and employed postdocs

For those participating digitally, there will be no conference fees.

Conference Registration:

Conference registration will open on 1 March, 2022. All conference delegates, including those participating digitally, will need to register. Access to all conference events will be possible after registration only.

If a hybrid conference format is possible, payments for those attending the conference at Goethe University will have to be made after 15 April, 2022. In this case, an early-bird rate will be available until 1 May, 2022.

Conference Dinner / Hospitality:

If a hybrid conference format is possible, delegates attending the conference at Goethe University will be informed about the conference dinner and hospitality arrangements by 15 April, 2022.

Conference convenors:Dr. Pavan Kumar Malreddy and Prof. Dr. Frank Schulze-Engler, Institute for English and American Studies, Goethe University Frankfurt.

Contact: info@gaps2022.com

Contact Info: 

Pavan Malreddy & Frank Schulze-Engler

Institut für England- und Amerikastudien
Goethe-Universität Frankfurt
Norbert-Wollheim-Platz 1
D-60629 Frankfurt a.M.

Office: IG-Farben-Haus, 4.156

 

 

 

Contact Email: 

malreddy@em.uni-frankfurt.de

URL: 

https://www.gaps2022.com/

CFP-Online Conference on Women’s Narratives of Ageing and Care Conference (18 March 2022)-

 

Women’s Narratives of Ageing and Care Conference (18 March 2022)-
Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women’s Writing (CCWW)
INSTITUTE OF MODERN LANGUAGES RESEARCH

School of Advanced Study • University of London

Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women’s Writing Online Conference 

Care is fundamental to human survival, yet it is often overlooked, undermined, and undervalued. Care of the old, in particular, is low in status and too readily occluded. This event seeks to explore why and how, to examine some of the powerful responses to relationships of care in recent creative works by women, and to investigate ways in which care might be redefined and reconceptualized. Taking as its focus the representation or narrativization of care, in theory, literature and visual culture, it seeks to engage with contemporary female-authored texts from diverse cultural contexts, encouraging the development of comparative, cross-cultural perspectives. Narrative is key here; as Sarah Falcus claims: ‘Telling and reading stories of age … open[s] up debate and embrace [s] complexity, and may challenge our ways of thinking.’

Programme

9.00-9.15 Introduction and Welcome 

Conference Organisers: Emily Jeremiah (Royal Holloway, University of London) and Shirley Jordan (Newcastle University) 
  

9.15-10.45 Panel 1: Narratives and Counternarratives of Age
Chair: Emily Jeremiah (Royal Holloway University of London)

Avril Tynan (University of Turku), ‘Counternarrating Loss in Women’s Dementia Fiction in French: Collaboration, Continuity, Care’ 
Jordan McCullough (Queen’s University Belfast), ‘«Tu trouves pas quand même absolument fabuleux d’en connaître un peu moins?»’: Dementia and the “Second Childhood” as Shared Learning in Sophie Fontanel’s Grandir (2010)’ 
Martina Pala (Durham University), ‘«Non vorrei toccarla»: daughters repulsing ageing mothers.
Laudomia Bonanni, Donatella Di Pietrantonio, and Maria Grazia Calandrone in comparison’

10.45-11.00 Break

11.00-12.30 Panel 2: Care and Caring 
Chair: Shirley Jordan (Newcastle University)

Kate Averis (Universidad de Antioquia), ‘Still the Carer Sex: Women Ageing and Caring in Contemporary Women’s Writing’ 
Alice Hall (University of York), ‘Women’s Work: Reading, Writing and Archiving as Forms of Care in The Carers UK Archive’ 
Siobhán McIlvanney (King’s College London), ‘The Cultures of Caring (for) Women in Contemporary French and Francophone Writing’

12.30-13.10 Lunch 

13.10-15.00 Panel 3: Narrativizing Care 
Chair: Emily Jeremiah (Royal Holloway University of London) 

Julia Dobson (University of Sheffield), ‘Co-presence as Care: The Hyperreal Figures in Bérangere Vantusso’s Work’ 
Margarita Saono (University of Illinois Chicago), ‘The Old Woman Comes out of the Attic’ 
Kathleen Venema (University of Winnipeg), ‘“I guess there’s Nice Meddling and Meddler’s Meddling”: Women’s Graphic Narratives of Ageing and Care’ 
Susan Ireland (Grinnell College) and Patrice J. Proulx (University of Nebraska Omaha), ‘Textualizing the Maison de Retraite in Contemporary Narratives by Francophone Women Authors’

15.00-15.15 Break 

15.15-16.00 Book Launch: Sarah Falcus and Katsura Sako, eds., Contemporary Narratives of Ageing, Illness, Care (Routledge, 2022).

16.00-16.20 Collective Conclusions 
Chair: Shirley Jordan (Newcastle University)

Conference Organisers: Emily Jeremiah (Royal Holloway, University of London) and Shirley Jordan (Newcastle University)  

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All are welcome to attend this free online event, starting at 09:00 GMT, UK time. You will need to register in advance to receive the online joining link. Please click on the Book Now button below to register. Advance registration essential.

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Download guidance on participating in an online event (pdf)

International Conference on Gandhi in the Private and the Public Sphere: Image, Text, and Performance March 4-5, 2020, University of Delhi

The Department of English

University of Delhi

organizes an

International Conference

on

Gandhi in the Private and the Public Sphere:

Image, Text, and Performance

March 4-5, 2020

Call For Papers

On the occasion of 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, the international conference will focus on the steadily growing debates around the multi-layered discourses that circulate with regard to the figure of one of the most influential and complex public personas of our times. The circulation of the Gandhi signature in variegated registers includes, but, is not confined to the fields of print culture, to the newspaper archive and other media, to visual and cinematic studies, to performances, to scholarly and popular textual works, to his influence on the plastic arts and other art forms, moving onto the recent reformulation in new genre music and graphic culture. To effectively mine the rich and palpably living network that has

is the locus of the diverse and ever growing interest globally we set the inclusive parameter of the well-documented life and after-life of Gandhi in both the private as well as the public sphere. The conference invites academics and scholars to interrogate some of the following areas of critical enquiry:

Themes

• Gandhi’s personal life and its reception and representation in the public sphere.

• ‘Gandhi as an idea’ in a transnational dimension.

• The adoption/appropriation/ re invention of Gandhi’s ideas and thoughts in contemporary socio-political and commercial discourses.

• Gandhi and the problematic of race and caste.

• Gandhi’s ideas of ‘ahimsa’ and ‘satyagraha’ and their operation in conflicts zones.

• Gandhi and his contemporaries.

• Gandhi in fictional, cinematic, artistic and graphic culture.

• Gandhi in Asian and European thought worlds: then and now.

• Gandhi and the narration of Trauma.

• Gandhi and Cosmopolitanism.

In summation, how his image, his words, his ideas have shaped us multi generationally and cross culturally.

Deadline for Abstracts

Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be submitted as Word documents/PDF to gandhiconf.du@gmail.com by 10 January, 2020.

Convenors:

Prof. Raj Kumar (Head of the Department)

Dr. Anjana Sharma. Dr. Haris Qadeer

International Conference "Tolstoy to Gandhi: a Philosophical Journey", Gandhi Bhawan, University of Delhi 21-22 November 2019.

To mark 150th Birth Anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi & 110th Death Anniversary of Leo Tolstoy, The Gandhi Bhawan, University of Delhi has the pleasure to announce an International conference titled

“Tolstoy to Gandhi: A Philosophical Journey”

21-22 November 2019

The conference aims at focusing on a variety of possible approaches to Tolstoy’s ideas & Gandhian thought. We would like to welcome academics who represent various methodologies and perspectives on philosophy, religion, spirituality, peace, humanity, society, literature & culture.

CONCEPT-NOTE

On the occasion of 150th Birth Anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi & 110th Death  Anniversary of Leo Tolstoy, it is natural to relook and rediscover these two great

thinkers and philosophers of their times. They were rare luminaries who preached and followed their beliefs. The remarkable original thinking they brought to their times acquires great significance because they put their ideas into practice.

Vladimir Tolstoy, the great great grandson of Leo Tolstoy, Adviser to the President

of the Russian Federation & Ekaterina Tolstoy, Director of the Leo Tolstoy Estate

Museum “Yasnaya Polyana” have said: “It is gratifying to recognize the fact that the thoughts of these two great personalities who preached the philosophy of ‘non- resistance to the evil by force’ as the Law of Life, continue to hold significance and evoke repercussion in the modern world”.

As is well known, that Tolstoy’s treatise “The Kingdom of God is Within You” became one of the important books in the life of Mahatma Gandhi. In his own words: “Before the independent thinking, profound morality, and the truthfulness of this book, all the books seemed to pale into insignificance”.

There is lot in common between Leo Tolstoy and Gandhi but they stand distinct in their own ways. The idea that brought Tolstoy & Gandhi closer was the philosophy of






non-violence, and the law of love. Both of them have been the two greatest exponents and practitioners of non-violence and non-violent resistance, who personally never met each other but in the last years of Tolstoy they communicated through letters. Their correspondence is a witness to not only their mutual admiration but also the commonality of ideas related to non-violence and passive resistance. In his last letter written just two months before his death, Tolstoy wrote: “the fact that love, that is the striving towards universal brotherhood and the resulting actions, is the supreme and unique law of human life”. Prof. Yogesh Tyagi, Vice Chancellor, University of Delhi has said: “Their famous correspondence opened up new horizons for generations to come and their thoughts still mentor many people in search of peace, harmony and universal brotherhood”.

Tolstoy’s and Gandhi’s thoughts, especially the religious and philosophical aspect of their spiritual experience have captivated many. In the opinion of Mr. Nikolay Kudashev, Ambassador of Russia to India: “Tolstoy and Gandhi had come to the strong conviction that love is an essential core of the human soul and the only one genuine basis for possible unity of the humankind. In their case, it was not just a fancy meaningless phrase but it led to concrete actions influencing the world”. This conference will be a platform for scholars & experts to celebrate the philosophical journey of Tolstoy’s thoughts to India, influencing Gandhi, and to emphasize the relevance of their ideas and philosophy in modern context and for future generations, who can learn so much from the lives of these two great personalities.



The list of suggested topics for the conference presentations may include, although will not be limited to, the following issues:



v Tolstoy & Gandhi: Impact on Aesthetics, Ethics and Spiritual Regeneration

v Forgiveness, Compassion and Reform: Tolstoy & Gandhi for Social Change

v Tolstoy’s Ideas & Gandhian Thought, their relevance today

v Tolstoy-Gandhi Correspondence

v Gandhi & Leo Tolstoy’s Philosophical Works

v War & Peace in Modern World

v Education & pedagogy: Influences of Gandhi & Tolstoy

v Tolstoy in India & Gandhi in Russia

v Tolstoy & Gandhi in Cinema

v Leo Tolstoy’s Personality, Life, Works and Philosophical Heritage, its Influences

v Leo Tolstoy in Russian & World Literature, culture

v Language & Style of Leo Tolstoy’s works

v Leo Tolstoy in Indian Literature, Culture and Society


Each presenter will be given 30 minutes (20 minutes plus 10 minutes for discussion). The conference languages are Hindi, Russian, English.






Important dates:
Abstract submission: 08 November 2019

Confirmation of acceptance: 10 November 2019
Conference: 21-22 November 2019

Date of arrival & Departure for delegates: 20 & 23 November respectively

Abstract submission: Abstracts describing the topic of a presentation in up to 300 words should be sent to tgcdu2019@gmail.com no later than 8 November 2019.

Conference venue and fee: The conference will be organized in University of Delhi. Registration fees can be paid on arrival at the conference venue.

For foreign participants - 75 Euro: For participants from India -1000 Rupees
Please note that accompanying person(s), if any, also have to register.



The fee for foreign participants covers:

- 3 nights in the University International Guest House in a twin/single room

- conference materials

- the costs of publishing a post-conference monograph






Contact e-mail for abstract submission: tgcdu2019@gmail.com




Conference Director: Prof. Ramesh Bhardwaj Gandhi Bhawan, University of Delhi



Conference convener:

Dr. Girish Munjal Tel. 9810033877

Email: girishmunjal2012@gmail.com




Address for all postal correspondence:

Gandhi Bhawan, 32, Chhatra Marg, University of Delhi, Delhi – 110007. Phone 91-11-27666243, E-mail: gandhibhawan32@gmail.com

International Conference- Languaging and Translating: Within and Beyond 21 - 23 February 2020,Indian Institute of Technology Patna.

Concept Note

Humberto Maturana in “Biology of Language: The Epistemology of Reality” raised crucial questions pertaining to the process that must take place within an organism to establish a linguistic domain with another and the linguistic interaction that permits an organism (us) to describe and to predict events that it may experience. These questions transcend the notion of language outside the precincts of linguistic verbiages towards a multi-contextual, multidisciplinary and cognitive platform of ‘languaging’ in which language becomes a “process of making meaning and shaping knowledge and experience” (Swan 96). According to the 2011 census, there are only 22 scheduled languages spoken by nearly 96.71 percent of the Indian population but there are more than 19500 existing languages or dialects that are spoken by the remaining population. Given, the kind of role language plays in its social discourse, it may be inferred that they are not only a tool for communication but help a great deal in social integration, historical documentation, development and so on and so forth. It may not be exaggeration to also infer that language makes literature and in turn literature also becomes the savior of the language in which it is written, expanding its horizon and not just being a tool of thought-transference. In such a context, it becomes imperative to investigate the methodologies in which one realizes that languaging has always been seminal towards validating and authenticating various forms of epistemological and ontological existence, within and beyond words.

2019, has already been declared the ‘International Year of Indigenous Languages’ that stridently echoes the 2008 sentiment “languages matter” and plays a pivotal role in ‘sustainable development, peace-building and reconciliation’(2019). It insisted that retaining the diversity of language was of extreme importance for it adds to the vantage point of multilingualism, a key feature of Indian mental, emotional and intellectual make-up. Till date, research on languages has been underpinned with multifarious approaches by scholars from diverse academic backgrounds. Scholars from linguistics, literature, translation and computational linguistics have adopted different independent methodologies and incompatible styles but in current scenario there is an imperative need to look into the possibilities of a collaborative framework that sustains the language, especially the indigenous ones. 2019 has already set the tone towards this mélange and an extension of the same vision and mission with an enthusiastic fervor from academia will benefit society at large and languages in particular. Keeping these arguments at the backdrop, this conference takes up the Fanonian challenge of turning a new leaf by bringing together various groups whose objectives are similar in generating new concepts which will reinvent the existing process of languaging and translating and explore its de-hierarchized dimension.

In this conference the participants are invited to contribute in the following areas:

Languaging and translation

Language and literature

Language acquisition and learning

Interpreting language: beyond linguistic associations

Language as/and power

Indigenous languages and folk literature

Language and capitalism

Academic and non-academic languages

Social, cultural, and political contexts of language teacher education

Coloniality and social justice in revitalization of language

Language as a decolonial pedagogy

Intercultural education

Language and existence

Digitalization and language preservation

‘Endangered’ and/or ‘less implemented’ / ‘less spoken’ / ‘only spoken and not written’

Machine translation

NLP applications

Phonology, Morphology and word segmentation

Semantics: lexical, sentence level, textual inference and other areas of semantics

Sentiment analysis, Stylistic analysis, and Argument mining

Syntax: Tagging, Chunking and Parsing

Innovation in language teaching and learnings

Language teaching methodology

Corpus Linguistics

Forensic Linguistics

Historical Linguistics

Neurolinguistics and Psycholinguistics

Orthography, Pragmatics, Rhetoric and Stylistics

Language in every day use, social media and virtual communications

Sociolinguistics and Dialectology

Politeness and Discourse Analysis

In addition to the above mentioned broad areas, we also solicit papers suitable to the theme of the conference. Selected presenters will be invited to contribute to an edited volume to be brought out by a reputed publisher. The edited book in four volumes will broadly comprise chapters from Literature, Linguistics, Translation and Computational Linguistics. Along with the conveners, Dr. Asif Ekbal will be co-editing the volume. Further details will be provided after the conference.

Submissions

We invite abstract submission from scholars of all backgrounds for regular presentation. Individual abstracts of about 200-250 words on the above mentioned themes must be submitted on/by 30 November 2019 to hssconferenceiitpatna@gmail.com. The selected presenters will be notified by 20 December 2019. The selected participants are required to register by 10 January 2020 and submit their full paper by 31 January 2020. All the documents need to be prepared according to the MLA 7th Edition format. To encourage student’s participation, there will be a student “works-in-progress”/poster session. Questions and requests for more information should be directed to Dr. Priyanka Tripathi (priyankatripathi@iitp.ac.in)

Contact Us For more detailsDr. Priyanka Tripathi
Room No 513, Block 6
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
Indian Institute of Technology Patna
Bihta- 801 103 (Bihar), INDIA
Phone: +91 612 3028182 (Office)
Email: hssconferenceiitpatna@gmail.com

https://www.iitp.ac.in/ilc/?fbclid=IwAR3n3Up9oXvfc16wsUPYXbqVf7mCDl6kdBhmRPkk5MLXGeNKRS3huzNbDyo#concept_note