Contemporary Irish Poetry and Environmentalism

Department of English Literature

                                                 EFLU

Invites you to

A Lecture

by

Donna Potts
Professor of English
Kansas State University

on

"The Wearing of the Deep Green: Contemporary Irish Poetry

and Environmentalism,

 

Conference Room, Admin Block,  15 January, 2013

Time: 2 pm

Donna Potts has research interests in Irish, African, Canadian and American literatures. She has published articles on writers such as Katharine Tynan, Margaret Atwood, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Patrick McCabe, J.M. Coetzee, and Frank McCourt, as well as a book on the American poet Howard Nemerov, Howard Nemerov and Objective Idealism: The Influence of Owen Barfield. In 1997 she won a Fulbright Senior Lecturing Award to the National University of Ireland in Galway, and she returned there for her 2004-2005 sabbatical. Her teaching interests include Irish literature and film, African literature, Old English, History of the English Language, and poetry. Works in progress include a book on nature in modern and contemporary Irish poetry, and a book of creative nonfiction about prostitution in 1930's Fort Worth.



All Are Welcome!

Conference Programme

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

THE ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES UNIVERSITY 

HYDERABAD, INDIA

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE 

Unveiling a Secret Agreement: Revisiting the Contours of English Studies 

19-21 November 2012 

Venue: Room No. 1 (Ground Floor), New Academic Block, EFL-U

PROGRAMME 

DAY 1: MONDAY, 19 NOVEMBER 2012 

 8.30 AM• 9.00 AM: REGISTRATION

 9.00 AM–11.00 AM: INAUGURATION

WELCOME SPEECH 

  Professor G Thirupathi Kumar, Head, Department of English 

Literature 

CONFERENCE STATEMENT 

Dr Prakash Kona, Convener 

INAUGURAL ADDRESS 

 Professor Sunaina Singh, Vice-Chancellor, EFL-U 

KEYNOTE ADDRESS 

  Voice to the Peripheral: Some Views from the Centre and the Margins 

Githa Hariharan 

CONCLUDING REMARKS 

  Professor T Nageswara Rao, Dean, School of English Literary Studies 

VOTE OF THANKS 

 11.00 AM–11.15 AM:  T TEA BREAK  

11.15 AM• 12:00 PM: PLENARY ADDRESS 

Chair: Professor Syed A Syeed (EFL-U)

  Some Samples of Literary Orientalism in the Romantic Period ● Professor Abdur 

Raheem Kidwai (Aligarh Muslim University) 

   

 12.00 PM–1.00 PM: SESSION 1 

UNPACKING THE CANON

Chair: Dr. P.V. Amith Kumar (EFL-U)

  Kenneth Burke and the Methodology of Canon Formation ● Dr Satish Gupta (W.R. 

Government College, Arunachal Pradesh) 

  “One loses one’s classics”: Samuel Beckett and the Counter-Canonical Use of the 

Canon ● Arka Chattopadhyay (Jadavpur University)  

 (Re)forming the Canon: Multiculturalism and American Literature ● Kishori Nayak K 

(Mangalore University)

 1.00 PM• 2.00 PM:  T LUNCH

 2.00 PM–3.00 PM: SESSION 2

HOW SAFE IS THE CANON?

Chair: Professor B. Gopal Rao (Osmania University, Hyderabad)

  Politics of the Text ● Professor Hoshang Merchant (University of Hyderabad)

  Dalits and Marginalization ● Dr. J. Bheemaiah (University of Hyderabad)

 Disability as Critical Tool: Enabling the Canon to Theorize Normalcy ● Dr. Shilpaa 

Anand (Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad) 

 03.00 PM• 03.15 PM:  T TEA BREAK 

 03.15 PM• 04.00 PM: PLENARY ADDRESS 

Chair: Professor Sachidananda Mohanty (University of Hyderabad)

From a Crisis to the Crossroads: English Studies Then and Now ● Professor Prafulla C. 

Kar (Centre for Contemporary Studies, Baroda)  

   06.00 PM• 07.30 PM 

CREATIVE WRITING: A CONVERSATION 

  Professor Lakshmi Chandra in Conversation with Githa Hariharan 

 07.30 PM• 08.00 PM 

  POETRY READING ● Tejdeep Kaur Menon, IPS 

   

 08:00 PM:   Dinner hosted by the Vice-Chancellor 

DAY 2 TUESDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2012 

 09.00 AM• 10.00 AM: SESSION 3 

VOICES FROM THE MARGINS

Chair: Dr. Sonba Salve (EFL-U, Hyderabad)

  Problematizing Canon Literature with Subaltern Consciousness ● Ayon Haldar 

(Balainagar Junior High School, West Bengal) 

Pitching Poetry against Fundamentalism: A Subaltern Reading of Arun Kolatkar ● H. 

S. Komalesha and M G Hari (IIT Kharagpur)  

  Equality, Emancipation and English Studies ● Sudeesh K (EFL-U, Hyderabad) 

 10.00 AM• 10.15 AM:  T TEA BREAK 

 10.15 AM• 11.00 AM: PLENARY ADDRESS 

Chair: Professor Mahasweta Sengupta (EFL-U, Hyderabad)

Confronting the Canon Contrapuntally: The Example of Edward Said ● Professor Fakrul 

Alam (University of Dhaka, Bangladesh) 

 11.00 AM• 12.15 PM: SESSION 4 

CONTEXTS AND CONTINGENCIES IN LITERATURE 

Chair: Dr. Asma Rasheed (EFL-U, Hyderabad)U  Muslim Woman: Contextualizing the Secular Project ● Muhammadali PK (EFL-U, Hyderabad) 

 Where Women Dare to Tread: Yasmina Khadra’s The Swallows of Kabul ● Dr. 

Shahla Ghauri (Aligarh Muslim University) 

  Limiting Agency: “Veiled” Docility and the Monologue of “Unveiled” Resistance in 

Barsa ● A.K. Muneer Hudawi (EFL-U, Hyderabad) 

  Unpacking the Gendering of Food in the Indian English Novel ● Dr. Sami Rafiq 

(Aligarh Muslim University) 

 12.30 PM• 01:30 PM:  LUNCH 

 

01.30 PM• 02.30 PM: SESSION 5 

THE TRANSLATION ZONE 

Chair: Professor Sumita Roy (Osmania University, Hyderabad)

  Negotiating the Novel: A Bangla Novelist’s Attempts to Translate the Untranslatable

● Dipankar Roy (Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan) 

 Right Word, Wrong Sense: Question of Translation of Nonsense Verse ● Aritra 

Bhattacharya (Vivekananda Mahavidyalaya, Haripal, Hooghly) and Suvankar 

Ghosh Roy Chowdhary (Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan)  

  “Abol Tabol” to “Wordyguardyboom”: A Comparative Study of Sukumar Ray’s 

Selected Works and their English Translations ● Priyadarshini Bhattacharyya 

(Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi)

 

 02.30 PM• 03.15 PM: PLENARY ADDRESS

Chair: Professor Meenakshi Reddy (EFL-U, Hyderabad)

Figuration as Leitmotif of Literariness: Meaning Construction in Literary Texts ●

Rajvinder Singh (National Fellow, IIAS, Shimla) 

 03.15 PM• 03.30PM:  T TEA BREAK 

 03.30 PM•04.15 PM 

Chair: A. Shareeff (JNTU, Hyderabad)

 Translating Chanda: Gender Politics in the Urdu Gazal ● Dr. Scott Kugle (Emory 

University, U.S.A.) 

 05.30 PM–06.00 PM 

Book Release by Professor Sunaina Singh, Vice-Chancellor, EFL-U 

 06:30-07:30 

SESSION ON CREATIVE WRITING•POETRY 

Chair: Sridala Swami  

  English Voyage of Desi Poets ● Keki N. Daruwalla  

  Irony in Modern Poetry ● Shiv K. Kumar 

 8.00 PM:  T BANQUET DINNER 

DAY 3 WEDNESDAY 21 NOVEMBER 2012 

 09.00 AM• 10.00 AM 

SESSION 6 — LITERARY/ VISUAL CULTURES

Chair: Dr. Nikhila H. (EFL-U, Hyderabad)

The Formulation of Objects: A Reading of ‘Garo’ Production ● Akshi Singh 

(University of Delhi) 

Mapping Sea Island’s Culture in African American Artists ● Dr. Ashma Shamail  ●

(Jazan University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) 

  Precariousness and Performance ● Gade Jagadeesh (EFL-U, Hyderabad) 

 10.00 AM–10.45 AM: Plenary Address:  

Chair: Professor Dilip K. Das (EFL-U, Hyderabad)

English Literary Studies and the Sense of Borders ● Professor Udaya Kumar (University of 

Delhi) 

 10.30 AM• 10.45 AM:  T TEA BREAK  10.45 AM• 12.15 PM 

SESSION 7—CANONS IN INDIAN CLASSROOMS

Chair: Dr. T. Samson (EFL-U, Hyderabad) 

The Strange Case of Lyric: Impasse of Methodology and Trans-cultural Literary Study

● Diviya Pant (EFL-U, Hyderabad) 

 Canonizing Classrooms: Introspecting ‘English’ as a Discipline in Delhi University ●

Muhsina Ashraf (Ramjas College, Delhi University) 

  In Defence of the Canon: Re-thinking the re-thinking of English Studies in India ● Dr. 

Ashley Tellis (Miranda House, Delhi University) 

  The Evolution of English Studies in India: A Critique ● Ravindra B. Tasildar (S.N. 

Arts, D.J.M. Commerce and B.N.S. Science College, Sangamner, Maharashtra) 

 12.15 AM• 01.00 PM: PLENARY ADDRESS

Chair: Dr. Rashmi Dube Bhatnagar (University of Pittsburgh, U.S.A.)

Literary Inquiries: Some Future Anterior Reflections ● Professor D. Venkat Rao (EFL-U, 

Hyderabad) 

 01.00 PM• 02.00 PM:  TLUNCH 

  02.00 PM• 02.45 PM: SESSION 9 

PEDAGOGY AND LITERATURE(S) 

Chair: Professor Maya Pandit (EFL-U, Hyderabad)

 The Integration, Productivity and Semantic Coherence of Some Latinate Deverbal 

Suffixes in Middle English with Reference to Five Plays of William Shakespeare ●

Sirigiri Kodanda Ramaiah 

 English Language Education in Bangladesh: Linking the Doubly Colonized Past to the   

Present Situation ● Mian Md Naushaad Kabir (EFL-U, Hyderabad) 

 02.45 PM–04.00 PM: SESSION 8 

SECRETS OF THE TEXTS: READINGS AND CRITICISM 

Chair: Dr. Sherin B.S. (EFL-U, Hyderabad)

 On Storytelling, ‘Historytelling’ and the ‘Epic’ Form: Notes on Identity in the 

Postcolonial Context ● Saurav Dasthakur (Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan) U  Writing as an Attempt of Re-

Writing the Self: A Postcolonial Reading of 

V.S.Naipaul’s Novels ● S. Madanwad (Ardhapur, Maharashtra) 

 The Long Shadow: Muhammad Taqi “Mir” and New Criticism ● Shad Naved 

(University of California, Los Angeles, U.S.A.) 

  Reinventing the Region: A Note on Indigenous Interventions in English Studies ●

A.C. Sreehari (Payyanur College, Kerala) 

 

 04.00 PM• 04.15 PM:  T TEA BREAK 

 04.15 PM–5.00 PM: PLENARY ADDRESS

Chair: Keki N. Daruwalla 

  New Literature from the North-East ● Professor Temsula Ao (NEHU, Shillong) 

 05.10 PM-05.40 PM: VALEDICTORY SESSION 

Chair: Professor T. Nageswara Rao (EFL-U, Hyderabad) 

  Some Thoughts on Future Directions for English Studies ● Professor Rashmi Dube 

Bhatnagar (University of Pittsburgh, U.S.A.)  

 5.45 PM-5.50 PM 

SUMMING UP OF THE CONFERENCE by the Head of the Department 

 5.50 PM-6.00 PM 

VOTE OF THANKS by the Conference Coordinator U

To Register or Not to Register for the English Studies Conference

The Department of English Literature, The English and Foreign

Languages University, Hyderabad, is organizing an international

conference ‘Unveiling a Secret Agreement: Revisiting the Contours

of English Studies’ from 19 to 21 November 2012.

The conference is open to all members of the University, and
 no booking is required. But if you wish to attend its sessions as
a registered participant, you must send an email request by 10

November 2012 to englitconference2012@gmail.com, and also pay the Registration Fee at the Reception Desk outside Room No. 1, New Academic Block, EFL-U, on 19 November 2012 (Monday) latest by 9.15 am. If you fail to report to the Registration Desk by this time and pay the fee, your place will be deferred to another applicant through spot registration.

The Registration Fee is Rupees Five Hundred (Rs. 500/-) for students and research scholars, and Rupees One Thousand (Rs. 1000/-) for faculty members. Registration entitles you to the conference kit, lunch
on all three days of the conference, and a certificate of participation.

See you at the conference!

TALK ON NOV 1: Sufi Music of South Asia

The Department of English Literature

EFL University

invites you to a lecture by

Professor Scott Kugle
(Emory University, USA)

on 

Literature as Cultural Translation: Sufi Music of South Asia

at 3-5 pm on Thursday, 1 November 2012

at Conference Room, Admin Block

Professor Scott Kugle is an Assocaie Professor in the the Department of Middle Eastern and South
Asian Studies, Emory University, USA. He is the author of four books and numerous articles, including
Sufis and Saints' Bodies: Mysticism, Corporeality and Sacred Power in Islamic Culture (UNC Press,
2007) and Homosexuality in Islam: Critical Reflection on Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Muslims
(Oneworld Publications, 2010). Before coming to Emory, Kugle was an Assistant Professor of Religion
at Swarthmore College and, most recently, a research scholar at the Henry Martyn Institute for Islamic
Studies, Inter-Religious Dialogue, and Conflict Resolution in Hyderabad, India.

All Are Welcome

Conference: English Literature - EFLU

Call for papers

 Unveiling a Secret Agreement

Revisiting the Contours of English Studies

The Department of English Literature, The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, invites papers for a three-day international conference to be held from 19 to 21 November, 2012.

Dante, Homer and Virgil in Raphael's
Parnassus fresco (1511),
in which the Western canon 
is visualised

Does the phrase “English Studies” connote something greater than its so-called destiny as originally intended in a colonial framework? Can we imagine an English literary and language “community” outside the history of canon formation intertwined with the history of colonialism? The function of English in a nation-state such as India constituting many ‘nations’ and bound by a sense of Indianness—again an offshoot of anti-colonial politics of resistance—is certain to be entrapped in a liminal space where identities are at best fluid and in a state of flux. On the one hand, it professes loyalty to the Shakespeares, the Miltons and the Dr. Johnsons with the idea of reaching out to a forever "uncontaminated" space unaffected by the politics of the present. On the other hand, it seeks to engage with a version of the canon based on interpretations generated within specific cultural milieus such as the Caribbean writer Derek Walcott’s Omeros, the epic rereading of Homer’s Odyssey, and Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Teheran: A Memoir in Books—the latter in a more popular vein. Frederick Jameson argues that “[a]ll third-world texts . . . in a very specific way . . . are to be read as . . . national allegories.” Are "we" in the non-western worlds creating “national allegories” in the process of rereading/misreading the canon?

In the enigmatic text “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” Walter Benjamin notes that “[t]here is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. Our coming was expected on earth.” The global usage of English with a fetishized language component is more and more inclined towards a sterile emphasis on communication devoid of the literary and cultural dimension. The cultural understanding of English language and literature is equally nebulous, lost in contradictions that emerge from the “secret agreement between past generations and the present one.”

The aim of this conference is to discuss the problems and prospects in unveiling the “secret agreement” between the colonial past and the postcolonial present. In post-independence India, English education often tends to valorize with a dint of hidden irony the literature of Anglo-America, the roots of which may be traced to hegemonic agendas behind the introduction of English language and literature during the British rule. The interest in non-canonical texts in the wake of the advent of interdisciplinary studies has confined canonical studies to a position where departments of English award degrees without any required courses on Chaucer or Shakespeare. This conference proposes to problematize the anxieties of influence that go into the making of canons of English literature and to examine their plausible relevance to the present. Cultural materialists, political psychologists and literary theorists have engagingly looked at literature as part of an intertextual space reaching out to the ethos that produced it. With the arrival of Postmodernism/ Poststructuralism/ Postcolonialism the historicity and politics of a canonical text have become apparent making one wonder if “[o]ur coming was expected on earth.” In the process of revisiting the contours of English Studies this conference aspires to rekindle interest in what constitutes canons in view of a corporate global economy with a declared antipathy to conventional notions of the nation-state. At the same time, the sense of belonging that literary and cultural histories and historians have given the believer is threatened at a fundamental level.

Are canons based on imagined communities or are they relics of a feudal colonial past irrelevant to the present? Is the arrival of discourses such as postmodernism an “expected one”, well within the parameters of the conventional understanding of the canon? What is the shape of a future literary and cultural history given the power big publishers wield over the reading market? What kind of power relations along with languages of resistances can we expect in the emerging political economies of the future as embodied in literary texts? What role does literature and cultural studies, intensely isolated from mainstream disciplines, play in sustaining the idea of counter canon paradoxically bringing past writers into the present? This conference provides more questions than are likely to be answered in any conclusive manner. The debate on “revisiting the contours” is expected to generate a dialogue that responds to the transformative role of English Studies in creating arguments that bring a cautiously interpreted past into a redefined future.

Papers may broadly revolve around the following areas:

English Studies: Its Past, Present and Future

Towards Definitions of Culture and its Others

Translating the Un-translatable

Comparison as a Framework of Literary Thought

Canonizing the Subaltern

Literary Studies as Figurative Languages

Idioms of Multiculturalism

The Hyphen (-) As a Site of the Intertext

Transgressing Disciplinary Borders

Problematizing Research Methodologies

Art, Politics and Styles of Writing

Narrating the Histories of Words

LIST OF INVITED SPEAKERS

Prof. A. R. Kidwai (Aligarh Muslim University)

Prof. Fakrul Alam (University of Dhaka)

Prof. P.C. Kar (Forum on Contemporary Theory) 

Prof. Udaya Kumar (University of Delhi)

Prof. Rajvinder Singh (Poet & Semiotician, Berlin, Germany)

Keki Daruwalla (Poet and Novelist)

Githa Hariharan (Novelist)

Prof. Temsula Ao (Poet, Novelist and Academic)

Prof. Hoshang Merchant (University of Hyderabad)

Prof. Venkat Rao (EFL University, Hyderabad)

Prof Shiv K Kumar (Poet, Novelist & Academic)
Prof J. Bheemaiah (University of Hyderabad)Prof Shilpaa Anand (Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad)
Prof  Rashmi Dube Bhatnagar (University of Pittsburgh)

Scholars are encouraged to submit papers that are densely analytical and not limited to fact-gathering and data assortment. Each presenter will be allowed 15 minutes presentation time and five minutes for a question and answer session. Abstracts of not more than 300 words must be sent by 10 October 2012 to englitconference2012@gmail.com for being considered. Acceptance will be intimated by 15 October 2012.  

Stay and food will be arranged by the organizers for the delegates during all three days of the conference.

Registration Fee 

Non Paper Presenters:   500    (INR)

Faculty :                          1000  (INR)

(Registration for the conference will open in November. Please keep visiting our blog for updates.) 

Talk on 17th September, Monday, 2012

Department of English Literature

The English and Foreign Languages University

Hyderabad 500007

Invites You to a Talk By

Anant Maringati

On

Is it time yet for postcolonial urban imagination?

Date: 17^th  September 2012 (Monday), 3:30 P.M.

Venue: Room No. 1, Ground Floor, New Academic Building, EFLU

Abstract: Postcolonial thought has found its way slowly and steadily into urban studies over the last decade. Critical urban scholars have borrowed extensively from postcolonial criticism to rethink power relationships in and between cities, so much so that ‘provincializing’ urban studies has become a project in its own right. Yet, this traffic appears to be largely in one direction. In this talk, I will trace the trajectories of some key ideas borrowed and reworked by urban scholars and speculate on their future potentials and limits. I suggest that postcolonial thought has successfully disrupted the methodologies, models and planning regimes of the cold war era. Yet, perhaps unwittingly, in doing so, postcolonialism appears to have become inextricably entangled in the unfolding of neoliberal urban  imaginations. Rebuilding a critical urban studies agenda therefore needs a critical engagement with and reworking of postcoloniality for a world in which the  ‘cities’ and ‘regions’ rather than the ‘nation state’ are emerging as sites of new identity construction projects. The talk will draw on examples from postcolonial fiction – particularly on the notion of home and the world in Amitav Ghosh’s acclaimed novel ‘The Shadow Lines’   as well as from recent scholarship in critical urban studies. 

Dr.Anant Maringanti is a geographer based in Hyderabad. He coordinates the Review of Urban Affairs, published biannually by the Economic and Political Weekly and serves as the Executive Director of Hyderabad Urban Lab, a research programme supported by the Right to the City Foundation.  After receiving his PhD from the University of Minnesota in 2007, he was a post doctoral researcher at the National University of Singapore where he taught courses on global cities.