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Tuesday, January 23, 2024

Call for Papers - Indian #Folklife Journal - ‘#Translating #Texts, Translating #Cultures’-#Indian #Folklife a Quarterly quasi-research #Journal-June 2024



 “Translation is the performative nature of cultural communication” (Homi Bhabha )




The process of translation and the interpretation of any given text are intimately intertwined with the notion of culture. In the past two to three decades, translation has undergone a notable transformation, emerging as a more creative and noticeably active discipline. Translations go beyond mere translation of words and sentence structures; they encapsulate ideologies, values, and ways of life specific to a particular culture. In traditional discussions on translation, the challenges, often labeled as "culture-specific," centre around crucial elements that pose intricate difficulties in conveying them with precision.




Literary translation stands out as a primary means of communication across cultures. It is imperative to acknowledge that literary texts are essentially cultural constructs, where language functions as the medium for cultural expression. Literary texts as such exhibit numerous linguistic nuances, along with reflections of social and cultural aspects of our lives. The translation of a literary text is thus no longer a mere exchange between two languages but a nuanced negotiation between two distinct cultures. The ability of culture to engage in translation is therefore a crucial aspect to be considered at this point. Cultural dynamics predominantly operate through translational activities as the incorporation of new texts is essential for cultural innovation and the recognition of its distinctiveness.  



Translation is a process for folklore ethnographic research as well. The translation of folk literature necessitates an exploration into the thought processes of the narrator, the translator, and the reader. More so in the native contexts. Clearly, these considerations merit discussion within the context of translating both texts and cultures. There appears to be an imminent need to safeguard and reserve a modest space for the translations of folk literature and folklore ethnography in this postcolonial-postmodernist era, where constant innovation arises through the lens of cultural translation. In the new century, there exists an increased understanding of the cultural significance of translated texts, especially on folk literature and folklore ethnography, in relation to their influence on the identity of the receiving culture.


Indian Folklife a Quarterly quasi-research Journal [https://indianfolklore.org/index.php/if] invites original, unpublished research/reflective papers for the forthcoming issue (June 2024). The theme for the papers is on ‘Translating Text, Translating culture’ within the context of folklife in general. The word limit for the papers is 1500-2000. 

Contributions in English should be submitted in MSWord (.docx or.doc) to 

jocicausa@gmail.com [Dr JP Rajendran- Special Editor] 

and 

muthu@indianfolklore.org 

[CC to Dr MD Muthukumaraswamy - Director, NFSC] on or before 31st March 2024. Indian Folklife follows the latest MLA Stylesheet. For article submissions, please follow the guidelines in the website. https://indianfolklore.org/index.php/if/about/submissions 

Contact Information

National Folklore Support Centre (NFSC), having its address at #508, Fifth Floor, Kaveri complex, 96, Mahatma Gandhi Road, Nungambakkam, Chennai- 600034 Tamilnadu India. NFSC is a non governmental, non-profit organisation, registered in Chennai, dedicated to the promotion of Indian Folklore, research, education, training, networking and publications.

Contact Email
jocicausa@gmail.com

Call for Papers on #South #Asian #Crime #Fiction since the 1950s -#FilmStudies #Cinema #Regionalcinema, #Vernacular -June 2024


Crime Fiction has been one of the popular genres for the South Asian reading public since colonial times. The simultaneous emergence of murder mysteries, detective fiction, thrillers in the metropolis as well as the colonies has been richly documented by the brilliant work done in Urdu, Hindi and Bangla by Naim (2023), Brueck and Orsini (2022), Roy (2020, 2017), Oesterheld (2009), Daeschel (2003) and others. Moving beyond arguments of imitative models into debates on the postcolonial in crime fiction, world crime fiction, gender in twentieth century crime writings, espionage narratives during the Cold War and more, this edited volume proposes to launch into broader yet interconnected themes of crime fiction in the regional languages and cartographies in South Asia. We broadly define the region as that of India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The proposed volume will shift the focus away from anglocentric studies of crime fiction to explore the production, reception, and scholarship of crime fiction in the indigenous languages of South Asia since the 1950s. We seek chapters that address the following themes but are not necessarily restricted to them:  

 

  1. Vernacular crime fiction in the shadow of the Cold War
  2. Crime fiction published in the early days of the young nations of India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka  
  3. Women as actors, writers, and publishers in South Asian crime fiction
  4. Configurations of gender: women criminals, vamps, molls, and women detectives
  5. Urban crime or the city as the centre of crime and detection. How does the character of a metropolis interact with the mechanics of crime fiction?
  6. Migration and crime fiction in the late twentieth century 
  7. Film and crime fiction (our primary interest is fiction)
  8. Translations, adaptations, and imitations 
  9. Vernacular print cultures such as magazines and newspapers and crime fiction
  10. Readership and vernacular crime fiction
  11. Pulp fiction/Lowbrow fiction and crime fiction in regional languages
  12. Gothic and crime fiction in South Asia 

 

Submission guidelines:

Please send your abstracts (500 words) and a short bio-note (50 words) by March 15th to southasiancriminality@gmail.com. We will get back to you with our responses promptly by 1st April. If selected, full chapters (4,000 - 6,000 words) are to be submitted no later than 30th June, 2024. In case of any query do not hesitate to contact us on the email address provided. 


 Editors:

 Shweta Sachdeva Jha (Associate Professor, Department of English, Miranda House, University of Delhi), 

Garima Yadav (Assistant Professor, Department of English, Shaheed Bhagat Singh College, University of Delhi)

 

Contact Email
southasiancriminality@gmail.com

CFP: 58th Annual #Comparative #World #Literature Conference(#Hybrid) on #Writers of Extreme Situations: A #Multidisciplinary Perspective-#California State University-April 2024



Family crises, exilic conditions, forced migrations, excessive poverty, armed conflicts, political warfare, environmental calamities, workers’ exploitation, pandemics, and all manner of natural or man-made disasters have been rising to unprecedented levels over the last decades. How are extreme situations or situations so extraordinary as to defy imagination represented? What are the poetics underlying them?

We welcome conversations about how extreme conditions and situations, (individual, collective, or global) are expressed, analyzed, and engaged from a multidisciplinary perspective, including but not limited to: Literature, Journalism, Geography, Anthropology, Political Science, Criminology, Linguistics, Ethnic Studies, Women and Gender Studies, Disability Studies, Media Studies, Geology, Human Development, and more.

This conference invites paper and panel proposals on all aspects of extreme situations. Possible topics can include but are not limited to:

-Literature of extreme situations

-Investigative Journalism

-Trauma literature

-Literatures of genocide

-Holocaust memoirs

-Feats of survival

-Crime narratives

-Narratives of addiction

-Natural and man-made disasters

-Innocent Project LA

-Victims speak up: truth to power

-The rise against femicide

-Wars and exilic narratives

-Refugee narratives

-Pandemic narratives

-Medical malpractice and botched surgeries

-Ethics of survival and survivors’ guilt

-The Family Secret and the wounded individual

-Dementia and violence: nursing homes

-Perpetrators and victims

-Asylum seekers and their fate in the US

-Ethical ordeals: surviving the unimaginable

-Memory as a repository of horror

-Collapse of ethical systems in a digital world

-Institutional responses to catastrophes

-Crossing the Mediterranean: the Syrian refugee crisis

-Extreme geo-political conflicts

-Journalism at work: covering extreme conditions

-“The Banality of Evil” in urban settings.

-State terrorism and extreme-isms

-Millennial fatigue and extremist stances

-Monuments of shame

-The Kafkaesque in our daily lives

-Systemic risks in the 21st Century

-Extreme environments

-Soft White Underbelly: Mark Laita interviews

–The Trials of Frank Carson Podcast (Christopher Goffard)

-Deaths in the Grand Canyon and Other National Parks.

We are thrilled to announce that the plenary talk will be delivered by Christopher Goffard, Pulitzer Prize winner, journalist for the LA Times, novelist and podcaster, on Wednesday, April 17th, at 2PM (PDT). The title of his talk is:

“Crossing the Impossible Bridge in a Dynamite Truck: Observations on Film, Friendship and Collaboration”

In “Crossing the Impossible Bridge in a Dynamite Truck,” Goffard will reflect on his friendship and collaboration with one of cinema’s great poets of desperation and obsession, William Friedkin, and of their efforts to bring some of Goffard’s riskier stories to the screen. As a crystallization of Friedkin’s danger-courting artistry—and as a metaphor for their quest to get controversial projects made— Goffard invokes an image from the filmmaker’s 1977 masterpiece Sorcerer, in which a truck laden with nitroglycerin attempts to cross a crumbling suspension bridge in the South American jungle.



Submissions for individual presentations and 90-minute sessions are welcome from all disciplines and global / historical contexts that engage with historical, personal, or social instances of extreme conditions and situations.



Proposals for 15-20 minute presentations should clearly explain the relationship of the paper to the conference theme, describe the evidence to be examined, and offer tentative conclusions. Abstracts of no more than 300 words (not including optional bibliography) should be submitted by March 1, 2024. Please submit abstracts as a Word document in an email attachment to comparativeworldliterature@gmail.com



NB: Please do not embed proposals in the text of the email. Make sure to indicate your mode of preference (Zoom on April 18 and in person only on April 16 and 17) for planning purposes

While the conference will be hybrid, all Zoom presentations will take place only on Thursday, April 18, and in-person presentations will take place on Tuesday-Wednesday, April 16-17 (and will be Zoom-projected). We cannot accommodate pre-recorded presentations.



The conference committee will review all proposals, with accepted papers receiving notification by March 15, 2024.





Dr. Kathryn Chew

Monday, January 22, 2024

CFP: Tales of #Resistance and #Resilience: #Cinemascapes from #Contemporary #India-#Symbiosis Institute of #Media and #Communication

 Cinema in contemporary India has been evolving in multifarious ways, technological innovations and the multiplicity of digital platforms significantly altering the experience of film production and reception. Apart from the mainstream Hindi cinema that enjoyed a national viewership till recent times, regional films have also emerged as popular forms of entertainment across the nation. Popular Indian cinema is being redefined and in this new environment, regional content is appreciated, new genres are welcomed, and a new viewing experience is well appreciated. Film production methods have also changed radically, with independent films gaining in popularity especially among the urban audience. In this new world of film production and reception, tales of resistance and resilience are also acknowledged and appreciated. Films like Jai Bhim (2021) directed by T J Gnanavel, or Sardar Uddham (2021) directed by Shoojit Sircar speak the voice of resistance to power in different ways. Similar films in various Indian languages, produced from across the country have been appreciated and evaluated critically for its content and form. Apart from the production of new content, there have been scholars and critics re-evaluating older tales of resistance, using the lens provided by new epistemological practices.

Culture of resistance has resulted in social changes over time and films have been part of this culture. Films of resistance have been hailed as alternate voices using innovative techniques and devices to articulate dissent. Filmmakers who challenge hegemonic structures have found creative ways to address social issues and these films have not always been part of the mainstream industry.  This work will look at films that have managed to negotiate with social inequalities and systemic violence, analyse and evaluate them from multiple perspectives – production, consumption as well as critical discourse analysis based on the content and semiotics of the filmic texts. Moreover, there has been re-readings and re-defining of older films in contemporary times, where the parameters have evolved from the socio-cultural shifts shaping the discursive patterns in the nation. This proposed work will study two categories of films that fall under the category of tales that narrate the stories of resistance and resilience. One section of the text will work on films produced and released since the new millennium, in any of the Indian languages. Since the work studies cinemascapes, the various dimensions of film industry will be critically evaluated, to comprehend the methods used to capture the stories of resistance. The second category will seek to re-visit older films that can be categorised as tales of resistance or dissent.

We hope to bring a balanced yet nuanced approach to the whole work, with some of the chapters reading into the visual texts while others look at the production and reception of filmic texts. The style and format for this edited text will be Chicago style citation and formatting.

Possible titles and chapters

  • Analysis {discourse, content, semiotics} of resistance and resilience cinema of the new millennium
  • Re-reading the older films of resistance and resilience: comprehending discourses around them
  • Resistance and resilience cinema as the harbinger of socio-cultural shifts in the nation
  • Discourses on production and reception of the cinema of resistance and resilience
  • The narrative of the culture of resistance as created by these filmmakers: old v/s new
  • Audience reception studies: mixed-methods approach to interpret audiences of the new millennium




Deadline for submissions:  March 30, 2024
contact email:  resistancecfp@gmail.com

Full name / name of organization: 

Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication

Resistance and resilience cinema’s addition to the corpora of culture studies and film studies

CFP: The 19th Bi-Annual International #Virtual Conference on "#Discrimination, #Bias, and #Repudiation"-May 20-28, 2024- Ovidius University of Constanta

 Welcome to a pivotal gathering of minds and voices, a conference that aims to challenge, inspire, and transform our understanding of "Discrimination, Bias, and Repudiation". Hosted in a dynamic online space, this event brings together a spectrum of scholars, activists, and thought leaders from around the globe.

Our mission? To delve into the complex layers of societal discrimination and bias, unraveling them through a multitude of perspectives and disciplines. From keynote speeches by leading experts to engaging panel discussions and interactive workshops, we are set to explore the intricacies of these pressing issues.

This is more than a conference. It's a movement. A call to action for those who seek to reshape the narrative, to bring forth a future where inclusivity isn't an ideal but a reality. We're bridging gaps, challenging norms, and building a foundation for meaningful change.

Your voice is crucial in this discourse. Your research, your experiences, your insights - they are the pieces we need to complete this complex puzzle. Share your latest work, engage in enriching discussions, and collaborate with fellow visionaries.

Key Themes and Questions:

Six Diverse Panels: Dialogo Conference features six distinct panels, each focusing on a specific aspect of "Discrimination, Bias, and Repudiation." This varied approach ensures a comprehensive exploration of the theme from multiple perspectives.

I. Psychological Dimensions of Bias and Acceptance
II. Societal Structures and Discrimination: Breaking the Chains
III. Ethical Policy-Making in the Face of Backlash
IV. Cultural Dynamics: Literature, Taboos, and Stigmatized Identities
V. Economic and Health Impacts of Social Conflicts
VI. Technology, Identity, and Xenophobia

Distinguished Guest Speakers [confirmed so far...]
* Mark Juergensmeyer - Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the University of Santa Barba, CA
* Stephen David Edwards - Professor Emeritus of the University of Zululand
* Stephan A. Schwartz - Distinguished Associated Scholar California Institute

Extended Engagement: Engage in nine days of stimulating online discussions, culminating in a special Virtual Video Meeting on May 24th, from 6-10 PM UTC. This format provides ample opportunity for in-depth dialogue and networking.

Rigorous Review Process: Benefit from our double peer-review system, ensuring the highest quality of scholarly discourse and feedback.

Recognition and Impact: Contributions to Dialogo are recognized internationally, with many papers indexed in prominent academic databases. This offers an excellent opportunity for your work to gain visibility and influence.

Event dates:
Earlybird Deadline for full-paper submission is from January 15 to February 29, 2024
Regular Deadline submission by April 30, 2024
Author notification of acceptance by May 10, 2024
Webex video meeting with guest Speakers: May 21, 2024 - 6-10 pm UTC

Join us during May 20-28, 2024 online at https://www.dialogo-conf.com/call-for-papers/#1stevent. Together, let's break barriers and build bridges. We can't wait to hear from you and see all your current work!