In the Name of Chughtai: One Hundred Years of Celebration (1915-2015)
Three-Day International Conference
January 13-14-15, 2016
Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, Kolkata
Ismat Chughtai has been believed to have said that the first word uttered by her was 'why'. The spirit of questioning permeates relentlessly through her oeuvre of eleven novels and novellas, nine short stories and one play. Her lifelong commitment to freedom in all contexts- personal, sexual, economical and intellectual, her involvement with the Progressive Writers' Movement and the rebellion against its perceived orthodoxy and rigidity, her fearless and outspoken projection of experiences hitherto unheard of in the world of Urdu letters – are stuff that legends are made of. With an abiding belief in mazhab-e-insaniyat, Chughtai carves a niche for herself among her illustrious contemporaries – Rajinder Singh Bedi, Saadat Hasan Manto and Krishan Chander.
In the year of Ismat Chughtai's birth centenary, we would like to revisit the 'Indian' author whose view of life, sense of history and progress, ideas on social justice, religious tolerance, paradigms of human relationship and power structures have undergone continuous transformations since the twentieth century till the present day. Focusing on the pan-Indian literary dialogue initiated by the Progressive Writers' Association, the conference would encourage discussions on the alternative sensibilities of 'national' belonging which emerged from the experimental and iconic works of the PWA. What happens to the spatial, temporal, affective embodied, performative and literary imagination and memory every time one reads, teaches, performs, sees, feels and thinks of the Chughtai's oeuvre? How altered realities have baffled human convictions and have transformed into objects of struggle, transgression and anxiety?
The 'author' finds herself caught between political tensions, social upheavals, engaging debates between literary styles and diction, possibilities of new forms of expressions, narrative structures, diverse registers of different language systems, dramatic modes and performative gestures. How have the works of Chughtai adhered to or resisted systems belonging to spatially, historically or culturally defined categories and have consequently led to the transmutation of 'traditional' approaches and formation of stylistic invocations? What has been the potential of the imaginative, the ironic and the performative for radical litterateurs? The conference would further explore how have dynamic and radical aesthetic innovations constituted revolutionary feelings and ruptures within literary modes?
The conference therefore invites submissions which explore the 'modern' 'Indian' author within the scope of the critical spaces offered but not restricted by the following:
· Fundamentalism and Censorship in literary transactions
· Canon and the popular in literature
· Linguistic tensions and ambivalence
· Political movements and literary transactions
· Myths and Modern Indian Literature
· Literary history and generic configurations
· 'Tradition' and radical change
· Transgressive desires and essentialized gender norms
· 'Deviant' sexual practices and identities; heteronormative and compulsory heterosexual frameworks
Conference Coordinators:
· Ms. Epsita Halder, Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, Kolkata (epsita.halder@gmail.com)
- Dr. Debashree Dattaray, Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, Kolkata (debashreedattaray@gmail.com)
Abstracts of about 500 words, with a 50-word note on the speaker, must be emailed to the Conference Coordinators before 31 September 2015. Acceptance mails will be sent by 7 October, 2015.
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