CALL FOR PAPERS
IACLALS ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2019
Call for Papers
Co-hosted by the Department of English, Pondicherry University
February 6-8, 2019
Literature, Culture, and Society in the Age of Post-Truth
When Sri Aurobindo claimed that “knowledge” was the “reasoned acceptance of false appearances,” he was indicating an awareness of how truth is mediated by the contingencies of everyday life. The term “Post-Truth” has been recently coined to express the false appearances under which we, as citizens of a new age of global flows of peoples and capital, explore our world. Initially a term that helped lessen the embarrassment of global hegemonies of the First World, “post-truth” has increasingly been understood as a “condition” if not an aesthetic or even a new epistemology. In this brave new world, aesthetics and politics aspire to become the handmaiden of the market.
However, while the coinage is new, the condition has achieved a patina of its own. Digitally mediated realities, regimes of flexible accumulation, long-range international public policies, rapid balkanization, the increasing suppression of free speech, the rise of new democratic autocracies, and various forms of politically hybrid sub-cultures (such as Wikileaks and tabloidization) have become the dominant forms of aesthetico-politics of this new age. Our conference theme “Literature, Culture, and Society in the Age of Post-Truth” seeks to understand the cultural expressions of this new and anxious age. Such a condition is similar but not identical to that known as the post-modern where the multiplicity of texts and the mingling of high and low culture allow us to question the differences between factuality and fictionality, and bring out hidden relationships between knowledge and power. Of particular interest in this new age then is the post-modern condition of the proliferation of textualities, their constructed nature, their claims to truth, and their status as verifiable cultural utterances.
In this post-truth age, literary texts, graphic texts, oral narratives, advertising copy, journalistic texts, tourist texts –all partake of this duality almost as if this were part of a new cultural DNA. Perhaps, the new “epistemology” has made us more aware of the vulnerable nature of truth, for the circulation of any belief system and its establishment as “truth” is a legacy, for many, of nineteenth-century colonialism. Any sustained meditation on post-truth must also wonder if this new age is not carrying the epistemological burdens of the past even as it wears the Emperor’s new technological clothes.
Our conference aims to interrogate the following:
Proposals for papers may explore the above areas or any others that pertain to the theme of the conference. Papers may deal with literature as well as intersections of literature, media, and performance.
The conference is open only to members of IACLALS (visit www.iaclals.com to know how to become a member).
Abstracts (250 words) with a short bio (max 70 words) to be sent to iaclalsconferences@gmail.com by November 5th, 2018.
Acceptance will be intimated by November 20th, 2018
If you wish to be considered for the CD Narasimhaiah Prize for the Best Paper presented at the conference, please submit complete papers by December 15th, 2018.
Others must submit complete papers by December 30th.
Please note that you will have twenty minutes to read your papers.
Registration to be completed by January 5th, 2019 (details will be sent with acceptances)
IACLALS also announces the next edition of the Meenakshi Mukherjee Prize for the Best Paper published in the previous block of two years (2017-18) by a member of the IACLALS.
Please submit your published paper with all details to iaclalsconferences@gmail.com by October 15th, 2018. You must have been a member of IACLALS when you published the paper.
Past winners of the Meenakshi Mukherjee Prize can submit entries for the prize only after the completion of three years from the year they received the award.
Papers submitted for the award earlier cannot be submitted again.
About our hosts
The Department of English, one of the oldest Departments of the University, was established on 1st December, 1986, and since inception the Department has been the hub of teaching and research activity, attracting a cross-section of students and research scholars from all over the country. It has established itself as a stronghold of Comparative Literature, teaching Comparative Literary Theory and fostering Comparative Literary studies between Indian Languages and English. Please visit http://www.pondiuni.edu.in/department/department-english for details.
The Organizing Secretary is: Dr. H. Kalpana, Professor and coordinators are Dr. K. Reshmi, Associate Professor and Dr. Lakhimai Mili, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Pondicherry University (PU), Puducherry 605014.
HOD: Dr. Clement S. Lourdes, Professor, DOE, PU
Members of the host committee:
Prof. Sujatha Vijayaraghavan, Professor
Dr. T. Marx, Professor
Dr. Binu Zachariah, Associate Professor
Dr. Ujjwal Jana, Associate Professor
Dr. S. Visaka Devi, Assistant Professor
Call for Papers
Co-hosted by the Department of English, Pondicherry University
February 6-8, 2019
Literature, Culture, and Society in the Age of Post-Truth
When Sri Aurobindo claimed that “knowledge” was the “reasoned acceptance of false appearances,” he was indicating an awareness of how truth is mediated by the contingencies of everyday life. The term “Post-Truth” has been recently coined to express the false appearances under which we, as citizens of a new age of global flows of peoples and capital, explore our world. Initially a term that helped lessen the embarrassment of global hegemonies of the First World, “post-truth” has increasingly been understood as a “condition” if not an aesthetic or even a new epistemology. In this brave new world, aesthetics and politics aspire to become the handmaiden of the market.
However, while the coinage is new, the condition has achieved a patina of its own. Digitally mediated realities, regimes of flexible accumulation, long-range international public policies, rapid balkanization, the increasing suppression of free speech, the rise of new democratic autocracies, and various forms of politically hybrid sub-cultures (such as Wikileaks and tabloidization) have become the dominant forms of aesthetico-politics of this new age. Our conference theme “Literature, Culture, and Society in the Age of Post-Truth” seeks to understand the cultural expressions of this new and anxious age. Such a condition is similar but not identical to that known as the post-modern where the multiplicity of texts and the mingling of high and low culture allow us to question the differences between factuality and fictionality, and bring out hidden relationships between knowledge and power. Of particular interest in this new age then is the post-modern condition of the proliferation of textualities, their constructed nature, their claims to truth, and their status as verifiable cultural utterances.
In this post-truth age, literary texts, graphic texts, oral narratives, advertising copy, journalistic texts, tourist texts –all partake of this duality almost as if this were part of a new cultural DNA. Perhaps, the new “epistemology” has made us more aware of the vulnerable nature of truth, for the circulation of any belief system and its establishment as “truth” is a legacy, for many, of nineteenth-century colonialism. Any sustained meditation on post-truth must also wonder if this new age is not carrying the epistemological burdens of the past even as it wears the Emperor’s new technological clothes.
Our conference aims to interrogate the following:
- Post-truth as a new aesthetic and/or a new politics of culture
- Understanding post-truth phenomenon as defining the artistic and the mundane
- The constitution of cultural production with respect to the notion of post-truth
- Post-truth and history
- The relation of post-truth with propaganda
- Humanities and literature as a space for reflection and resistance
Proposals for papers may explore the above areas or any others that pertain to the theme of the conference. Papers may deal with literature as well as intersections of literature, media, and performance.
The conference is open only to members of IACLALS (visit www.iaclals.com to know how to become a member).
Abstracts (250 words) with a short bio (max 70 words) to be sent to iaclalsconferences@gmail.com by November 5th, 2018.
Acceptance will be intimated by November 20th, 2018
If you wish to be considered for the CD Narasimhaiah Prize for the Best Paper presented at the conference, please submit complete papers by December 15th, 2018.
Others must submit complete papers by December 30th.
Please note that you will have twenty minutes to read your papers.
Registration to be completed by January 5th, 2019 (details will be sent with acceptances)
IACLALS also announces the next edition of the Meenakshi Mukherjee Prize for the Best Paper published in the previous block of two years (2017-18) by a member of the IACLALS.
Please submit your published paper with all details to iaclalsconferences@gmail.com by October 15th, 2018. You must have been a member of IACLALS when you published the paper.
Past winners of the Meenakshi Mukherjee Prize can submit entries for the prize only after the completion of three years from the year they received the award.
Papers submitted for the award earlier cannot be submitted again.
About our hosts
The Department of English, one of the oldest Departments of the University, was established on 1st December, 1986, and since inception the Department has been the hub of teaching and research activity, attracting a cross-section of students and research scholars from all over the country. It has established itself as a stronghold of Comparative Literature, teaching Comparative Literary Theory and fostering Comparative Literary studies between Indian Languages and English. Please visit http://www.pondiuni.edu.in/department/department-english for details.
The Organizing Secretary is: Dr. H. Kalpana, Professor and coordinators are Dr. K. Reshmi, Associate Professor and Dr. Lakhimai Mili, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Pondicherry University (PU), Puducherry 605014.
HOD: Dr. Clement S. Lourdes, Professor, DOE, PU
Members of the host committee:
Prof. Sujatha Vijayaraghavan, Professor
Dr. T. Marx, Professor
Dr. Binu Zachariah, Associate Professor
Dr. Ujjwal Jana, Associate Professor
Dr. S. Visaka Devi, Assistant Professor
IACLALS ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2018
REPORT
IACLALS Annual Conference 2018
February 8 – 10, 2018
Aligarh Muslim University
‘Tolerance and Bigotry: Contestations in Indian Literatures in English’ – this was the theme of the three-day Annual International Conference of the IACLALS (Indian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies) this year. Hosted by the Department of English, Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) on 08-10 February 2018 at Aligarh, a place of great cultural and literary heritage, it was a memorable event for all of us.
Heritage it was -- visible everywhere. The Heritage Walk was only a part of the heritage journey. More than 60 participants and guests warmed up the chilly late winter days of the campus with their presentations and deliberations. As the report at the Valedictory said, there were 48 presenters in all, of which “31 were females and 17 males”.
The inaugural was graced by eminent academic and scholar Masood-ul Hasan as Chief Guest and noted poet and writer Keki N. Daruwalla with Mohd Asim Siddiqui, Chairperson, Department of English, GJV Prasad, Chairperson IACLALS, M. Asadduddin and Subhendu Mund, Vice Chairs, IACLALS, and Angelie Multani, Treasurer, IACLALS on the dais. The speakers expressed concern over the growing bigotry and intolerance and hoped that the scholarly deliberations in the coming three days would try to explore the various aspects of bigotry and intolerance in art, literature as well as the social fabric.
In his keynote address, eminent poet and writer Keki N. Daruwalla expressed his concern over the rise of intolerance. He said that writers need not necessarily be either ‘colluding or colliding’ with the political establishment. He concluded his speech by stating that writers have a right to have a voice of their own but they should avoid falling into binaries. He also averred that things are not as alarming as we think them to be, and by and large, Indian society believes in tolerance and harmony. The keynote address was followed by two book releases: Subhendu Mund's Odia Identity: History, Culture, Language, Literature and M. Asaduddin's Premchand: The Complete Short Stories.
Like the previous year, this year too there were five finalists, as against the usual four in the CD Narasimhaiah panel: Srinjoyee Dutta (“‘Refugee from Belief’: ‘Affective’ Disunities and Ethno-Sexual Identity Formation in the Ghazals of Agha Shahid Ali”), Sania Hashmi (‘Anatomy of a Provocation: Bigoted Apostasy at the Limits of Intentional Fallacy’), Shinjini Basu (“Kunal Basu’s Kalkatta: Making the city Tolerable at its seams”), Amrapali Saha (‘The Liberation of Sita: Formulating a Feminist Mythopoesis’) and Chinmaya Lal Thakur (“Subalternity and the Question of Responsibility: Reading Upamanyu Chatterjee’s English, August”). As the Iaclals Chair indicated, the contest had been very tough from the very preliminary stage, and those present in the hall witnessed how close the papers were in merit. The Jury this year comprised Rohini Mokashi Punekar (IIT Guwahati) and Meena Pillai (University of Kerala) in the preliminary round; and Mohammad Asim Siddiqui (AMU), Amritjit Singh (Ohio University) and Margaret L. Pachuau (Mizoram University) during presentation.
The prestigious Meenakshi Mukherjee Prize went this year to Fatima Rizvi of Lucknow University for her published paper “Politics of Language, Cultural Representation and Historicity: ‘Shatranj ke Khiladi’ in Self-translation and Adaptation”. The judges were Rina Ramdev, Rita Kothari and Alex Tickell. It was wonderful to watch Dr Rizvi in conversation with Dr Asaduddin, the editor of the volume where the paper was published.
There were two plenaries this time: Professor Radhika Mohanram (Cardiff University) spoke on ‘Textures of Indian Memory’ and Prof. Amritjit Singh (Langston Hughes Professor of English, Ohio University) on the pedagogy of tolerance.
One of the highlights of the conference was the Writers’ Meet in which writings in various bhashas were presented by such well-known poets and writers of the country as Keki N. Daruwalla, Sami Rafiq, Tariq Chhatari, Namita Singh, Asif Naqvi and Subhendu Mund.
On the second day, there was a delightful cultural programme. It began with a ‘nukkad natak’ (street play) based on a story of Dr Rashid Jahan, followed by musical performance by the Western Music Club (AMU), and an adapted play ‘My Last Maharani’ (‘My Last Duchess’) staged by ‘The Raleigh Literary Society’ (Department of English, AMU).
Professor Emeritus Farhatullah Khan and Prof A. R. Kidwai, Director, Academic Staff College attended the Valedictory Session. Prof Subhendu Mund and Dr Siddhartha Chakraborti proposed the vote of thanks on behalf of Iaclals and AMU respectively.
Every year there is a general feeling that this year’s conference is the best so far, and the warmth of hospitality was something which indeed touched everyone, thanks to the extremely caring organisers (which includes the ever-smiling students) and, on the top of everything, the delicious food which was served.
Subhendu Mund
Vice-Chair
IACLALS
IACLALS Annual Conference 2018
February 8 – 10, 2018
Aligarh Muslim University
‘Tolerance and Bigotry: Contestations in Indian Literatures in English’ – this was the theme of the three-day Annual International Conference of the IACLALS (Indian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies) this year. Hosted by the Department of English, Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) on 08-10 February 2018 at Aligarh, a place of great cultural and literary heritage, it was a memorable event for all of us.
Heritage it was -- visible everywhere. The Heritage Walk was only a part of the heritage journey. More than 60 participants and guests warmed up the chilly late winter days of the campus with their presentations and deliberations. As the report at the Valedictory said, there were 48 presenters in all, of which “31 were females and 17 males”.
The inaugural was graced by eminent academic and scholar Masood-ul Hasan as Chief Guest and noted poet and writer Keki N. Daruwalla with Mohd Asim Siddiqui, Chairperson, Department of English, GJV Prasad, Chairperson IACLALS, M. Asadduddin and Subhendu Mund, Vice Chairs, IACLALS, and Angelie Multani, Treasurer, IACLALS on the dais. The speakers expressed concern over the growing bigotry and intolerance and hoped that the scholarly deliberations in the coming three days would try to explore the various aspects of bigotry and intolerance in art, literature as well as the social fabric.
In his keynote address, eminent poet and writer Keki N. Daruwalla expressed his concern over the rise of intolerance. He said that writers need not necessarily be either ‘colluding or colliding’ with the political establishment. He concluded his speech by stating that writers have a right to have a voice of their own but they should avoid falling into binaries. He also averred that things are not as alarming as we think them to be, and by and large, Indian society believes in tolerance and harmony. The keynote address was followed by two book releases: Subhendu Mund's Odia Identity: History, Culture, Language, Literature and M. Asaduddin's Premchand: The Complete Short Stories.
Like the previous year, this year too there were five finalists, as against the usual four in the CD Narasimhaiah panel: Srinjoyee Dutta (“‘Refugee from Belief’: ‘Affective’ Disunities and Ethno-Sexual Identity Formation in the Ghazals of Agha Shahid Ali”), Sania Hashmi (‘Anatomy of a Provocation: Bigoted Apostasy at the Limits of Intentional Fallacy’), Shinjini Basu (“Kunal Basu’s Kalkatta: Making the city Tolerable at its seams”), Amrapali Saha (‘The Liberation of Sita: Formulating a Feminist Mythopoesis’) and Chinmaya Lal Thakur (“Subalternity and the Question of Responsibility: Reading Upamanyu Chatterjee’s English, August”). As the Iaclals Chair indicated, the contest had been very tough from the very preliminary stage, and those present in the hall witnessed how close the papers were in merit. The Jury this year comprised Rohini Mokashi Punekar (IIT Guwahati) and Meena Pillai (University of Kerala) in the preliminary round; and Mohammad Asim Siddiqui (AMU), Amritjit Singh (Ohio University) and Margaret L. Pachuau (Mizoram University) during presentation.
The prestigious Meenakshi Mukherjee Prize went this year to Fatima Rizvi of Lucknow University for her published paper “Politics of Language, Cultural Representation and Historicity: ‘Shatranj ke Khiladi’ in Self-translation and Adaptation”. The judges were Rina Ramdev, Rita Kothari and Alex Tickell. It was wonderful to watch Dr Rizvi in conversation with Dr Asaduddin, the editor of the volume where the paper was published.
There were two plenaries this time: Professor Radhika Mohanram (Cardiff University) spoke on ‘Textures of Indian Memory’ and Prof. Amritjit Singh (Langston Hughes Professor of English, Ohio University) on the pedagogy of tolerance.
One of the highlights of the conference was the Writers’ Meet in which writings in various bhashas were presented by such well-known poets and writers of the country as Keki N. Daruwalla, Sami Rafiq, Tariq Chhatari, Namita Singh, Asif Naqvi and Subhendu Mund.
On the second day, there was a delightful cultural programme. It began with a ‘nukkad natak’ (street play) based on a story of Dr Rashid Jahan, followed by musical performance by the Western Music Club (AMU), and an adapted play ‘My Last Maharani’ (‘My Last Duchess’) staged by ‘The Raleigh Literary Society’ (Department of English, AMU).
Professor Emeritus Farhatullah Khan and Prof A. R. Kidwai, Director, Academic Staff College attended the Valedictory Session. Prof Subhendu Mund and Dr Siddhartha Chakraborti proposed the vote of thanks on behalf of Iaclals and AMU respectively.
Every year there is a general feeling that this year’s conference is the best so far, and the warmth of hospitality was something which indeed touched everyone, thanks to the extremely caring organisers (which includes the ever-smiling students) and, on the top of everything, the delicious food which was served.
Subhendu Mund
Vice-Chair
IACLALS
