5th Annual Debrupa Bal Memorial Students’ Seminar...

• • Call for Papers

    
    

    5th Annual Debrupa Bal Memorial Students’ Seminar

    
    

    Organized By: Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University

    Date: 24th and 25th January, 2012

    
    

    Text, Stage and History

    
    

    ‘Text’ in itself is a problematic term especially when placed alongside ‘Stage’, another (if not more) multi-stranded conceptual unit. The intricacies of the problematic get heightened when an attempt at conceptually threading these two ends of the spectrum is made given that even if it is possible to think of the former in abstraction the later denies any such possibilities. The initial question that has baffled theorists and practitioners of the stage time and again and which this seminar aims at asking anew is whether the term ‘text’ and the concept of the ‘stage’ inhabit a continuous space at all. Whatever the answer might be (if there be any), it cannot be absolute and one-dimensional. Not only across space and time but within a specific spatial and temporal zone also several contending conceptualizations of both these categories exist. In India, the interventional experiments of Badal Sircar, responsible for revolutionizing Indian theatre in general and Bangla theatre in particular, bear testimony to the continuation of the old debate. The sad demise of Sircar earlier this year, implying the end of an epoch in Indian theatre, prompts us to rethink the relation between the ‘stage’ and ‘text’, especially in an Indian situation where parallel and sometimes mutually-interactive theatrical traditions have existed in both the ‘classical’ and the bhasha languages. This seminar aims at looking at the complex patterns informing the construction of the ‘text’ and how those patterns take on newer forms when an effort to connect the ‘text’ with the ‘stage’ is made. These issues have been dealt with extensively in the past, albeit in different ways at different historical conjunctures. Diachronic studies of how people in different times and places have reflected over the problematic linkage between the ‘text’ and the ‘stage’ are equally encouraged.

    Contributions are invited but not limited to the following topics:

    
    

    Text, Stage and their connections

    Different dimensions of the concept of ‘stage’ across various literary-performative cultures around the world

    The Indian situation, before and after print

    Comparative Literary methodology, Intermediality and the concept of ‘text’ 

    Historical analysis of the problematic in general

    
    

    
    

    Abstracts clearly mentioning the title of the paper, name and designation of the author(s) and not exceeding 300 words are to be submitted by 10th January, 2012 to debashreedattaray@gmail.com. Acceptance of the abstract would be notified by 15th January, 2012.