06/10/2015
About the Seminar In the present era of globalization, multiculturalism, and supposed intellectual openness, we are witnessing a gradual abolishing of the erstwhile borders between the centre and the margins. One factor involved in this movement from the periphery to the centre is the increasing globalization of culture, especially the publishing phenomena, whereby ‘third world’ or ‘post-colonial’ writers either writing directly in English or being quickly translated, have been successfully marketed. Another factor is the insistent pressure from ‘the periphery,’ with the development there of various critical and theoretical schools that have been ‘writing back’ to the metropolitan centers with a confidence and sophistication that have demanded attention. Indeed not just writing back, but as Francis Barker says, the movement of communities has become a complicating feature to which much attention has been paid, with terms like ‘migration’, ‘diaspora’ and ‘nomadism’ taking on new burdens of significance. As each work of literature emerges out of a context, we need to focus our attention on how art and literature is produced in contemporary times, how it circulates across nations and across time, and the multiple contexts and forms in which it is interpreted. Shifting focus to non- western scholarship, the seminar will offer an analysis of the production of texts, their contexts, and their reception at home and abroad. It will explore the forces that shape their production in their respective countries, the tensions between, and within, local and international politics, and differences between those who grew up in the struggle against the colonial history and those coming of age today.
We invite researchers/scholars, academicians and social activists to submit their abstracts for the seminar, not less than 250 words latest by 16th October 2015 to [email protected] on the following themes:
Literary works from the peripheries
Issues and challenges of being "non-Western"
Postcolonial theory and non-Western literature
Minority/Marginal voices In Literature
Gender issues in literatures from the periphery
Markets and the reception of texts
Complex histories surrounding the production and reception of non-western literary works
Connection of history to a text's accumulation of meaning Transnational flows and emergent subjectivities
Reconstituting canons for the 21st century
Neocolonial/neoliberal practices and the resultant subalternization Globalization and Diaspora
