Friday, November 04, 2011
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Conference on Dalit Experience and the Question of Marginality
Department of English, University of Delhi
Annual Conference 2012
The Dalit Experience and the Question of
Marginality
16-18 February 2012
Call for Papers
Recent times have seen a rapid growth of interest in marginality in literary and cultural studies. Marginal cultures and identities are by definition the ‘other’ of hegemonic cultural formations; their place and plight are always determined by and peripheral to the dominant culture. Typically, Dalits are framed as socially
frail, politically powerless and economically backward. However, in India, while the nature of traditional caste society does make Dalits a marginalized people, the discourse of marginality needs to be taken in conjunction with the fact that Dalits (along with Bahujans) constitute a majority work force. Further, the decisive alterations to the public sphere made by an assertion of Dalit political consciousness must be recognized.
Against this background the Department of English, Delhi University is organizing a conference on “The Dalit Experience and the Question of Marginality” from February 16 – 18, 2012. The conference aims to probe the relation between the public sphere consolidation of Dalit identity and the continued devaluation of Dalit labour. At what point, can these different coordinates of the Dalit experiences be mobilized to constitute a counterhegemonic citizenship? What are the various theorizations of caste reality as it pertains to questions of symbolic and not-so-symbolic acts of violence? What are the limits and possibilities of framing the Dalit question as an identity question? How do we critically examine the institutional practice of Dalit studies especially within the cultural rubric of experience and affect? A core part of our conference intends to open up the question of modernity as imagined by Dr. Baba Saheb Ambedkar, given that 2012 will see the celebration of his 120th birth anniversary. In so far as the idea of the annihilation of caste remains central to Ambedkar, the embrace of modernity cannot simply be seen in terms of reconciliation. It was envisioned very much as a transformative project.
Papers can be from any discipline. They should address but not be limited to the
following topics:
• Theorizing Dalitness: rigorous location in caste versus more open-ended category of the downtrodden.
• Myths of origin: invented or historical proofs of indigeneity which trace Dalit ancestry to the broken men, nagas, rakshashas, adi-dravida, namashudras, Buddhists etc. and the expression of this genealogy in
contemporary politics.
• Questions of faith: differentiations within a broad Hindu habitus, relationship with Hindutva and conversion to Buddhism or other faiths.
• Dalit Citizenship: the articulation of Dalit citizenship in relation to the issue of affirmative action as well as human rights.
• Using the Media: representation of Dalits in the upper caste media and Dalit intervention in the different branches of mass media—print, electronic, publishing, theatre and films.
• Globalisation and Dalit entrepreneurship: the role of the emergent Dalit diaspora; the indigenous Dalit bourgeoisie and the political class’s complicity with neoliberal policies on the one hand and Dalit (and tribal)
displacement and resistance on the other.
• Dalit and gender question: specificities of Dalit patriarchy.
• Dalit aesthetics and the Dalit intellectual: the question of Dalit aesthetics and the forms of Dalit expression.
Please send your abstract (300 words) and a brief bionote (150
words) to the following email or postal address by 9 December 2011:
Dr. Raj Kumar
Department of English
Delhi University, Delhi – 110007
Email: bedamatiraj AT yahoo.co.in
Conference Committee:
Dr. Raj Kumar (Director), Dr. Hany Babu,
Dr. Tapan Basu, Dr. Nandini Chandra
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Thursday, October 13, 2011
National Seminar New Media Technologies and Emerging Challenges in Communications.
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) Commission for Social Communications, New Delhi, in collaboration with the U.S. Consulate General in Kolkata, is organizing a national seminar for students of media departments and faculties of colleges and universities in India. The theme of the seminar is New Media Technologies and Emerging Challenges in Communications. The two-day seminar will be held on December 1-2 at the American Center, Kolkata. We invite each university and college to send a maximum of four students and one faculty member of the Department of Journalism/Mass Communication/Media Studies to participate in the seminar. While the participants have to bear the travel costs, the seminar costs- including food and accommodation during the seminar days will be taken care of by the organizers.
The Commission founded in 2009 a national network called Media Faculties Network (MFN). The network conducted a two-day national seminar in 2010 at Christ University,
The theme chosen for the 2011 National Seminar is - New Media Technologies and Emerging Challenges in Communications. The seminar aims at providing student delegates of media and their teacher representatives a platform to interact with each other and foster greater participatory learning and collaboration in academic field. Sub themes include:
• New Media Enhancing Participatory Democracy in India
• Mobile Phones Bridging Information Divide
• Internet as a tool for Empowerment
• Do we communicate better or worse in the age of New Media? A critique of media
• New Media as a tool of Empowerment for the Masses
• New Media and the Global Village, Global Citizenships
• Is new media a threat to traditional media: how to synergize?
• New Media and Gender Issues
• Convergence in Communication Technology and its Impact
Colleges and Universities are invited to send the names of a maximum of 4 students who would benefit by the seminar and are able to contribute to the deliberations. They may be accompanied by one faculty member. Student delegates would be offered useful information on opportunities of higher studies in media in the U.S., and an info-pack comprising useful materials on the theme of the seminar.
Colleges and institutes wishing to send student delegates may kindly register by completing the following form and send it to the address, mentioned in the attached registration form latest by October 31st.
With warm regards,
Sincerely,
George Plathottam sdb
Executive Secretary
CBCI Commission for Social Communications Director, American Center
CBCI Commission for Social Communications Director, American Center
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
BA V Semester Postcolonial Literatures Model Question Paper
Answer Any Five of the Following. (5x8=40)
1. Orientalism
2. Kipling as an Orientalist
3. Macaulay's views on Arabic and Sanskrit
langauges being taught in India
4. Fanon's views on the 'Native
intellectual'
5. Harlem
Renaissance
6. Wide Sargasso Sea as altering reading of Jane
Eyre
7. The significance of the Praise Singer
Answer Any Four of the Following. (4x15=60)
9. Delineate the shift from commonwealth
literature to postcolonial literature? Emphasise on the historical
circumstances that necessitated such a shift.
10. What are the criticisms of Orientalism?
If the criticisms are valid what is the relevance of Orientalism for you today?
Explain.
11. Explain the images, sounds and colors
used by Senghor in 'New York
12. Attempt a postcolonial gothic reading
of Wide Sargasso Sea.
13 Wole Soyinka utilises the conventions of
the ‘western’ tragedy in the play Death
and the King’s Horseman. He succeeds in refuting the ideology and the
aesthetic on which the ‘western’ conventions are based. Apply this statement to
discuss the structure of the play.
14. Which are
the 'many separate worlds' that Naipual talks about in his essay 'Reading
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Sunday, October 09, 2011
Philosophy and Literature class notes - 1st Oct. 2011
Class notes for October
1, 2011 (Saturday)
Chapter 6, The Aesthetics
of Semiotics: Greimas, Eco, Barthes,
was read and discussed in class. There was a discussion on the semiotic
concepts of Greimas and Eco. The chapter
helped us to understand the ‘aesthetic heterogeneity
of semiotics’ and how Greimas develops a semiotic theory of the content
plane. Greimas’s structural semiotics
was discussed with the example of Oedipus Rex. The monosemic and polysemic nature
of texts were demonstrated through the structural relations in Oedipus Rex. Concepts of semantic isotopies, classemes, and sememes were discussed. The nuances
of academic writing were also discussed in class. The stress was on maintaining
a uniformity of style while writing.
citation
Pinto, Anil. Literature and Philosophy. Christ University. 1 Oct. 2011. Lecture.
Zima, Peter. The Philosophy of Modern Literary Theory. New Jersey: The Athlone Press, 1999. Print.
Bijoy Philip V.G
(1134101)
Model questions for Philosophy and Literature course.
Chapter 1:Nomi
1) Explain the concepts 'expression plane' and 'content plane' with reference to the philosophies of Kant and Hegel.
2) What are the philosophical foundations of Kant and Hegel in literary theory?
3) Trace the development of philosophical thought in literary theory from Romanticism and Young Hegelianism to Nietzche.
Chapter 2- Fathima
1. How did the early literary foundations by Kant and Hegel paved the
way for New Criticism and Russian Formalism? Explain.
2.How does Russian Formalism dwell in between the philosophy of Kant
and Avant-Garde? Elaborate.
3.How Kant's'expression' is different from Croce's 'expression'?
Explain with suitable examples.
3. How the arguments of Czech structuralism are different from the arguments of New Criticism? Explain in the light of Kantian idea of aesthetic and Hege’s idea of concepts.
Sharon Abraham : chapter 5
1) Explain the concepts 'expression plane' and 'content plane' with reference to the philosophies of Kant and Hegel.
2) What are the philosophical foundations of Kant and Hegel in literary theory?
3) Trace the development of philosophical thought in literary theory from Romanticism and Young Hegelianism to Nietzche.
Chapter 2- Fathima
1. How did the early literary foundations by Kant and Hegel paved the
way for New Criticism and Russian Formalism? Explain.
2.How does Russian Formalism dwell in between the philosophy of Kant
and Avant-Garde? Elaborate.
3.How Kant's'expression' is different from Croce's 'expression'?
Explain with suitable examples.
(Chapter 3- Ipshita
1. Discuss
the arguments of Czech structuralism in the light of Mukarovsky and Jacobson.
2. Compare
and contrast the arguments of Czech structuralism and Avant Garde movement.3. How the arguments of Czech structuralism are different from the arguments of New Criticism? Explain in the light of Kantian idea of aesthetic and Hege’s idea of concepts.
Sharon Abraham : chapter 5
1) How does philosophy distinguish Marxism from critical theory?
2) Analyze the Hegelian philosophy that overlooked the 'magic aspect of language'?
3) Analyze Marxist aesthetics with reference to postmodernism ?
Gracy simon : Ch 6
1) How does Eco occupie intermediate position between Greimas and Barthes?
2) Explain the Greimas' literary and non literary text ?
3) Distinguish between Barthe's readable text from the writable text?
Dhanya G Nair : chapter 7
1) How do "iterability" and "dissemination" work in Derrida's analysis?
2) How does Hartman, through his explicit critique of Hegelian classicism opposes a Romantic and Nietzschean idea of the text?
3)
"Nietzsche's theory of language eliminates the metaphysical conceptual
dimension which Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hegels and Kant's
philosophy thrive on." Discuss
Chapter - 8- Suschismitha
1. compare and contrast Lyotard's notion of the sublime and Kant's notion of the beautuful.
2. Discuss how LYotard uses Kant's notion of the sublime to develop an aesthetic of contradiction.
3. Discuss Lyotard's aesthetic of the sublime.
Chapter -9 Vipin George
1. Explain the critical theory of literature that Zema proposes.
2. How does Zema try to reconcile the dichotomy between Kant's and Hegel's literary theories? explain.
3. Hos does Zema propose a permanent dialogue between particular and hetrogeneous theoretical positions theough his notions of literary theory?
Thursday, October 06, 2011
Literature and Philosophy class notes- 4th oct.2011
Today
the last chapter, “Towards a Critical Theory of Literature” from The
Philosophy of Modern Literary Theory by Peter Zima, was discussed in the
class. This chapter concludes with the ideology of Literature and Philosophy
and he conveys the concept of literariness; that every idea has a philosophical
background. In the poststructuralist view, it’s asking questions to its own
very foundation therefore it’s a theoretical improvement of questioning the
literary text. Through this chapter Zima suggests how to build up a new theory
and shows the dialectic between openness and closure, polysemy and monosemy;
and the relationship between expression plane and content plane. Research
therefore is primarily meant to build theory. It synthesises the literary
theory which aims at certain degree of universality that can be obtained by
permanent dialogue between heterogeneous and particular positions..
The objectives of a research is to build up
theory, by this, one may reject the existing theory, find gap in the existing
theory and propose a new theory. A good research, essentially be a construction
of literary text, with its multiple possibilities that distinguishes and analyses
to verify in what extent it is relevant.
Each literary theory comes out with its own ideology, constructed to convey its
truthful representation. In this process the reader has a multiple engagement,
he engages himself with the theoretical text very closely. So, for a scholar
any text is a material to analyse, justify, categories and find something new
Although
the book The Philosophy of Modern
Literary Theory began its chapters with Kantian concept; that one literary
text cannot anchor itself to other concept. But as per Jameson and Jacobson’s’
view that one can keep one’s own ideology and
stand on its own field, at the same time
it’s possible to appreciate the ideology of the others, so it’s moving
away from Kantian ideology. This sheds new light on the conceptuality of
literary structures that exists in literary texts with in particular
theoretical perspectives.
Then
we moved on to the topic of how to make the class room teaching and learning,
interesting and alive. In the class room,
discussions may be one of the solutions, where interactions, sharing ones ideas,
and asking questions. Thus every participant actively participates in the discussion and learns something new from the
work that is being read and the teacher would be totally engaged and alert in
the class.
Prepared
by Gracy SimonCitation
Pinto, Anil. Literature and Philosophy. Christ University. 4 Oct. 2011. Lecture.
Zima, Peter. The Philosophy of Modern Literary Theory. New Jersey: The Athlone Press, 1999. Print.
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