Report: IACLALS ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2020
IACLALS ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2020
CO-HOSTED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, JADAVPUR UNIVERSITY
FEBRUARY 5-7, 2020
“Reimagi(ni)ng Identities in the Global South: Challenges, Transgressions and Articulation”
A three-day Annual Conference of IACLALS was held from 5 to 7 February, 2020 at Jadavpur University, Kolkata. Participants gathering during the pleasant winter of Kolkata at the beautiful campus of JU were welcomed by Prof. Nandini Saha, HoD of the Department of English, who introduced the theme and arrangements of the conference. Opening remarks were made by Prof. GJV Prasad, Chairperson IACLALS followed by an introduction to IACLALS by Prof. Subhendu Mund, Vice Chairperson, and vote of thanks by Rina Ramdev, Secretary of the Association. The Keynote Address was delivered by Prof. Sukanta Chaudhuri, Professor Emeritus, Department of English, JU. He cast his net wide to reflect on the identity question and adduced a range of global thinkers who have meditated on the question of identities. Chaudhuri excavated the works Tagore, Amartya Sen, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Akhtar Zaman to underline multiple dimensions of identities and how those identities are constituted by assimilating ingredients from varied sources. Any argument regarding the purity of genealogy or tradition is regressive and has dangerous consequences for humanity. He pointed out in great details how identities in the global south have been fluid and evolving over centuries of impacts and influences, amalgamation and assimilation.
Ten sessions of paper presentation were held on the first day. In one session, presenters engaged with female friendship and solidarity in the age of revivalism, the potency of subaltern female imaginary to interrogate imperial hegemonies, and the extension of the domestic in the public realm for refugee women. Another session saw the examination of the migrant quest beyond nationality and its binaries, as well as travel across plural spaces creating new identities. The third parallel session included several interesting juxtapositions - of Ghalib with Manto, of Eastern India with Eastern Europe, and of a High court judgement with a poem- to make a case for hearing unheard voices, emphasizing the precarity of the self in a fast changing fragmented world, and reimagining the forest as a heterotopic space.
The next session engaged with fictional visions of a world without borders; with poetry and translations haunting the rhetoric of borders, and the possibilities/limitations of cultural transgression in border crossing. Another session included papers about the possibility of lateral solidarity between the mothers of Association of the Parents of the Disappeared Persons (Kashmir) and of Madres de Plaza de Mayo movement (Argentina), Kashmiri fictional narratives on the liminal lives of children, and the memoirs of wrongfully imprisoned and exonerated prisoners. Another parallel session interrogated the categories of the global south, postcoloniality and humanity with papers dealing with narratives about emigrant girmityas and “free” Indians in Africa, early colonial emigration to Ireland, disconsolate homelands in Sri Lanka, and organ trafficking based on the exchange of body parts. Yet another session dealt with both drama and film to investigate Heisnam Kanahailal’s theatrical productions from Manipur, Shyam Benegal’s Manthan, blockbuster film Baahubali and 20th c. Hindi theatre to examine the concepts of resistance, subjugation, post-truth and marginality.
The next round of paper presentations included evaluation of the representation of Sundarbans tigers, as well as national/universal fictions from Bangladesh; papers also dealt with myth making about true patriots, invocation of epics in drama and folklore in novels; and queer narratives in Kannada and diaspora fictions.
The invigorating first day of the conference ended with a GBM of the IACLALS, which included presentation of the report of activities and finances over the last three years, the election of a new team, but most importantly a moving farewell to the outgoing team that successfully lead and nourished IACLALS over the past several years. Under the Election Officer, Prof Somdatta Mandal, the existing team comprising of Subhendu Mund, M. Asaduddin, Rina Ramdev and Angelie Multani, led by GJV Prasad, handed over the charge of the organization to M. Asaduddin, who took over as the new Chairperson alongside Swati Pal as Vice Chair, Albeena Shakil as Secretary and Kalyanee Rajan as Treasurer.
The second day of the conference started with papers examining the transition of the Assam movement from 1979to the present times, and partition memories/oral accountsby third-generation survivors living in rural West Bengal. A parallel session examined fictions around the cities of Allahabad, Bangalore and Varanasi to interrogate geographical contours, social inequalities and destabilizing changes. Papers in another session looked at the global south from the prism of Indian Ocean historiography and early colonial adaptation of Malik Muhammad Jayasi’s Padmavati into Bengali, Toni Morrison’s utilization of wide forms of black expressivity and a comparison of Palestinian, Kashmiri and Tamil poets living in exile.
The CDN Prize finalists this year were Huzaifa Omair Siddiqi, Ishita Sareen, Srinjoyee Dutta, Diksha Beniwal and Ritwick Bhattacharjee. Based on pre-conference submissions, the finalists were shortlisted by a panel comprising Prof Rajiva Varma and Dr Anuradha Ramanujan. The finalists presented their papers in the packed HL Roy hall. The CDN Prize jury comprised of Prof. Supriya Chaudhuri, Prof. Angelie Multani and Prof. Murari Prasad. Setting a new record, Srinjoyee Dutta won the CDN Prize for the second successive time for her paper - ‘More vegetal than sexual’: An ontological reading of gender and madness in Han Kang’s ‘The Vegetarian’.
This was followed by the award of the Meenakshi Mukherjee Memorial Prize 2020 to Ritwick Bhattacharjee for his paper, “The Politics of Translation: Disability, Language and the In-between”, published in Disability in Translation: An Indian Experience, eds. GJV Prasad, Someshwar Sati. The Jury members this year were Sirpa Salenius, University of East Anglia, Tapan Basu, University of Delhi and Subhendu Mund, Vice Chair of the IACLALS. Ritwick discussed his published paper in a lively conversation with Dr. Someshwar Sati.
The second day ended with papers presented across three parallel sessions. These included papers on Indian female stand-up comics on YouTube and other web streaming platforms, an analysis of Divakaruni’s Draupadi and the case of orientalising India in award-winning film, Smile Pinki. Papersinterrogatedcolonial science myths of visualizing the invisible, recent intercultural and transcultural approaches in pedagogical exercises in Europe, transnational and transcultural retellings of Chinese fiction, and the history of emotions in South Asia, particularly in early Hindi historical novels. Another session also included papers that evaluated recent education policies in Indiaespecially the NEP-2019, the case of democratic contentions on caste on open platforms like Wikipedia in contrast with Twitter and other platforms, and the archaeology of memory in building in digital archives of music in India.
Presentations on the third and final day continued till the afternoon with papers on recent memoirs by Dalit women breaking new grounds in Dalit women’s autobiography, and the digital archiving of resistance through the Dalit Camera, a YouTube channel since 2012.Papers also examined emotional manifestations of unproductive time in the globalised South, sexuality and transnational identity in recent Afghani fiction, and thanatopolitics and restructuring of individual and collective memory in post-2003 Iraqi fiction. Another session included papers that examined south-to-south relations through evaluation of eleventh century Bengali Buddhist scholar Atiśa, the ambivalence of Southern urbanization in Delhi fictions, and deformed, reimagined or reimaged homes in narratives. The final parallel sessions of the conference saw one set focus on children and childhood to examine difference, trauma and adolescent identities in multiple forms of literature including graphic novels. Another session included papers examining the intersection of health, masculinity and identity in colonial Bengal, and novel-in-stories about violence and fragmentation in Karachi. Papers in another session demonstrated the eccentricity and intersection of identities in the Indo-Caribbean 19th century diaspora from a queer perspective, neoliberal rationality and representational tropes of the queer subject on the Indian screen, and heterotopia of transgressive identities and the crisis and/of deviation in Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.
Alongside theoretical investigations, the intellectually stimulating conference was significant both for its focus on South Asian literatures as well as a significant number of papers looking East. Such food for thought was matched if not exceeded by the actual food served throughout the duration of the three days of the conference, especially the delightful conference dinner. The IACLALS Annual Conference 2020 ended on a note of a deep sense of gratitude to the Jadavpur University team for the impeccable organization of the conference and the outgoing IACLALS leadership for their outstanding contribution in nurturing the links of the association with successive generations of young scholars.
Prof. Albeena Shakil
Secretary, IACLALS
CO-HOSTED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, JADAVPUR UNIVERSITY
FEBRUARY 5-7, 2020
“Reimagi(ni)ng Identities in the Global South: Challenges, Transgressions and Articulation”
A three-day Annual Conference of IACLALS was held from 5 to 7 February, 2020 at Jadavpur University, Kolkata. Participants gathering during the pleasant winter of Kolkata at the beautiful campus of JU were welcomed by Prof. Nandini Saha, HoD of the Department of English, who introduced the theme and arrangements of the conference. Opening remarks were made by Prof. GJV Prasad, Chairperson IACLALS followed by an introduction to IACLALS by Prof. Subhendu Mund, Vice Chairperson, and vote of thanks by Rina Ramdev, Secretary of the Association. The Keynote Address was delivered by Prof. Sukanta Chaudhuri, Professor Emeritus, Department of English, JU. He cast his net wide to reflect on the identity question and adduced a range of global thinkers who have meditated on the question of identities. Chaudhuri excavated the works Tagore, Amartya Sen, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Akhtar Zaman to underline multiple dimensions of identities and how those identities are constituted by assimilating ingredients from varied sources. Any argument regarding the purity of genealogy or tradition is regressive and has dangerous consequences for humanity. He pointed out in great details how identities in the global south have been fluid and evolving over centuries of impacts and influences, amalgamation and assimilation.
Ten sessions of paper presentation were held on the first day. In one session, presenters engaged with female friendship and solidarity in the age of revivalism, the potency of subaltern female imaginary to interrogate imperial hegemonies, and the extension of the domestic in the public realm for refugee women. Another session saw the examination of the migrant quest beyond nationality and its binaries, as well as travel across plural spaces creating new identities. The third parallel session included several interesting juxtapositions - of Ghalib with Manto, of Eastern India with Eastern Europe, and of a High court judgement with a poem- to make a case for hearing unheard voices, emphasizing the precarity of the self in a fast changing fragmented world, and reimagining the forest as a heterotopic space.
The next session engaged with fictional visions of a world without borders; with poetry and translations haunting the rhetoric of borders, and the possibilities/limitations of cultural transgression in border crossing. Another session included papers about the possibility of lateral solidarity between the mothers of Association of the Parents of the Disappeared Persons (Kashmir) and of Madres de Plaza de Mayo movement (Argentina), Kashmiri fictional narratives on the liminal lives of children, and the memoirs of wrongfully imprisoned and exonerated prisoners. Another parallel session interrogated the categories of the global south, postcoloniality and humanity with papers dealing with narratives about emigrant girmityas and “free” Indians in Africa, early colonial emigration to Ireland, disconsolate homelands in Sri Lanka, and organ trafficking based on the exchange of body parts. Yet another session dealt with both drama and film to investigate Heisnam Kanahailal’s theatrical productions from Manipur, Shyam Benegal’s Manthan, blockbuster film Baahubali and 20th c. Hindi theatre to examine the concepts of resistance, subjugation, post-truth and marginality.
The next round of paper presentations included evaluation of the representation of Sundarbans tigers, as well as national/universal fictions from Bangladesh; papers also dealt with myth making about true patriots, invocation of epics in drama and folklore in novels; and queer narratives in Kannada and diaspora fictions.
The invigorating first day of the conference ended with a GBM of the IACLALS, which included presentation of the report of activities and finances over the last three years, the election of a new team, but most importantly a moving farewell to the outgoing team that successfully lead and nourished IACLALS over the past several years. Under the Election Officer, Prof Somdatta Mandal, the existing team comprising of Subhendu Mund, M. Asaduddin, Rina Ramdev and Angelie Multani, led by GJV Prasad, handed over the charge of the organization to M. Asaduddin, who took over as the new Chairperson alongside Swati Pal as Vice Chair, Albeena Shakil as Secretary and Kalyanee Rajan as Treasurer.
The second day of the conference started with papers examining the transition of the Assam movement from 1979to the present times, and partition memories/oral accountsby third-generation survivors living in rural West Bengal. A parallel session examined fictions around the cities of Allahabad, Bangalore and Varanasi to interrogate geographical contours, social inequalities and destabilizing changes. Papers in another session looked at the global south from the prism of Indian Ocean historiography and early colonial adaptation of Malik Muhammad Jayasi’s Padmavati into Bengali, Toni Morrison’s utilization of wide forms of black expressivity and a comparison of Palestinian, Kashmiri and Tamil poets living in exile.
The CDN Prize finalists this year were Huzaifa Omair Siddiqi, Ishita Sareen, Srinjoyee Dutta, Diksha Beniwal and Ritwick Bhattacharjee. Based on pre-conference submissions, the finalists were shortlisted by a panel comprising Prof Rajiva Varma and Dr Anuradha Ramanujan. The finalists presented their papers in the packed HL Roy hall. The CDN Prize jury comprised of Prof. Supriya Chaudhuri, Prof. Angelie Multani and Prof. Murari Prasad. Setting a new record, Srinjoyee Dutta won the CDN Prize for the second successive time for her paper - ‘More vegetal than sexual’: An ontological reading of gender and madness in Han Kang’s ‘The Vegetarian’.
This was followed by the award of the Meenakshi Mukherjee Memorial Prize 2020 to Ritwick Bhattacharjee for his paper, “The Politics of Translation: Disability, Language and the In-between”, published in Disability in Translation: An Indian Experience, eds. GJV Prasad, Someshwar Sati. The Jury members this year were Sirpa Salenius, University of East Anglia, Tapan Basu, University of Delhi and Subhendu Mund, Vice Chair of the IACLALS. Ritwick discussed his published paper in a lively conversation with Dr. Someshwar Sati.
The second day ended with papers presented across three parallel sessions. These included papers on Indian female stand-up comics on YouTube and other web streaming platforms, an analysis of Divakaruni’s Draupadi and the case of orientalising India in award-winning film, Smile Pinki. Papersinterrogatedcolonial science myths of visualizing the invisible, recent intercultural and transcultural approaches in pedagogical exercises in Europe, transnational and transcultural retellings of Chinese fiction, and the history of emotions in South Asia, particularly in early Hindi historical novels. Another session also included papers that evaluated recent education policies in Indiaespecially the NEP-2019, the case of democratic contentions on caste on open platforms like Wikipedia in contrast with Twitter and other platforms, and the archaeology of memory in building in digital archives of music in India.
Presentations on the third and final day continued till the afternoon with papers on recent memoirs by Dalit women breaking new grounds in Dalit women’s autobiography, and the digital archiving of resistance through the Dalit Camera, a YouTube channel since 2012.Papers also examined emotional manifestations of unproductive time in the globalised South, sexuality and transnational identity in recent Afghani fiction, and thanatopolitics and restructuring of individual and collective memory in post-2003 Iraqi fiction. Another session included papers that examined south-to-south relations through evaluation of eleventh century Bengali Buddhist scholar Atiśa, the ambivalence of Southern urbanization in Delhi fictions, and deformed, reimagined or reimaged homes in narratives. The final parallel sessions of the conference saw one set focus on children and childhood to examine difference, trauma and adolescent identities in multiple forms of literature including graphic novels. Another session included papers examining the intersection of health, masculinity and identity in colonial Bengal, and novel-in-stories about violence and fragmentation in Karachi. Papers in another session demonstrated the eccentricity and intersection of identities in the Indo-Caribbean 19th century diaspora from a queer perspective, neoliberal rationality and representational tropes of the queer subject on the Indian screen, and heterotopia of transgressive identities and the crisis and/of deviation in Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.
Alongside theoretical investigations, the intellectually stimulating conference was significant both for its focus on South Asian literatures as well as a significant number of papers looking East. Such food for thought was matched if not exceeded by the actual food served throughout the duration of the three days of the conference, especially the delightful conference dinner. The IACLALS Annual Conference 2020 ended on a note of a deep sense of gratitude to the Jadavpur University team for the impeccable organization of the conference and the outgoing IACLALS leadership for their outstanding contribution in nurturing the links of the association with successive generations of young scholars.
Prof. Albeena Shakil
Secretary, IACLALS
