THE ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES UNIVERSITY
HYDERABAD
Department of Indian and World Literatures
International Conference on
Indian Literature as World Literature: Past, Present, Future
18
to 20 January 2018
In recent
years Indian Literature in English has been generating renewed interest in its
writers and writings not just among students and scholars of literature but
also intellectuals and thinkers working in other areas of Humanities and Social
Sciences. There has also been a huge global increase in sales of literary works
produced by Indian writers living in India as well as writers of Indian origin
living outside the country. This new era in Indian Writing, as we all know, was
ushered in by the epic-success of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children published
in 1981. Today, interestingly, many of the works published in the 80s and 90s,
especially Rushdie’s own magnum opus, Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small
Things and Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger and others feature on the
reading lists of departments of World Literature in universities across the
globe.
Not very long
ago, classical literatures of India produced over the last two millennia, had
generated a similar interest among scholars of British India. English
translations of The Rāmāyaṇa, The Mahābhārata, Pañcatantra, Kathāsaritsāgara, Jātaka
Tales, Abhijñānashākuntala, Raghuvaṃśa, Mṛcchakaṭika, Svapnavāsavadattam, Harṣacarita,
Pṛthvīrāj Rāso and Padmavat began to come into the public domain as early as
the last quarter of the 1800s and after. The contribution of indologists and
translators like Ralph Griffith, Arthur Ryder, E. B. Cowell, Charles Henry
Tawney, Sir William Jones and others in the preservation and dissemination of
India’s most loved classical texts across the limits and boundaries of the
ancient languages is unquestionably one of the most important milestones in the
journey of Indian literatures. Sadly, however, these extraordinary texts, or at
least parts of them, despite their incomparable literary quality and universal
appeal have rarely been featured on reading lists of World Literature
departments.
The fate of
literatures produced in the regional languages of India has not been very
different. Most of the literature produced in Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Kannada,
Telugu, Malayalam and a host of other languages has to a large extent remained
unknown both to readers outside the language of its origin as well as to the
English-speaking world simply for lack of translation across languages within
India and of course, into English. Can an understanding of World Literatures
ever be complete without having known the worlds of Kalidas, Kabir, Meera, Mir
Taqi Mir, Mirza Ghalib, Kaifi Azmi, Gulzar, Sri Sri, Gurram Jashuva, Kuvempu,
Premchand, Sarat Chandra Chatterjee, Nirala, Sumitranandan Pant, Maithili
Sharan Gupt, Bhisham Sahni and O V Vijayan, to name a few?
Thus,
the range of possibilities and array of questions that glare at those engaged
in a serious and sincere promotion of the idea of “world literature” are
overwhelming and intriguing at the same time. But the ride, however bumpy and
bouncy it may seem, has also been immensely rewarding in terms of
the varied points of
arrivals, the reactive and commendatory responses, fresh challenges and new
possibilities in the domain of world literatures.
Today, “world
literature”, presents itself as a field of study with major thrust on global
circulation, transcultural reading methods, wide ranging stylistic patterns,
“intertextuality,” and interesting affiliations between texts and readers,
hitherto not so evident. Indian writers, in their elaborate visions of
particular locales/settings, have all along been challenging the notions of
worldliness as something divorced from the local and the indigenous as
something insulated from the world as the West would prefer to view them. These
writers preferred rather to display the synergies between the local, national,
regional, and global, and show how the local and the familiar function as the
co-ordinates of the world. Being quite in consonance with one of the major
pursuits of postcolonial literatures - fostering an understanding of the
traffic between the local and the global, and that of world literature
insisting that power and the way one is socially situated affect how one reads
and writes the world - Indian literature does not seem to have any different
purpose or end from that of world literature. The world then becomes not
something exotic, menacing, and inhospitable but an accretion of what we consider
home, a larger community to which we are all native.
The
conference aims to explore the promising avenues of exchange between Indian
literary studies and world literature. What role can writers, readers, critics,
scholars, teachers, translators, literary agents, publishers, journalists, film
makers, print and electronic media professionals etc. can play in promoting
Indian literatures in English and translation at the global level?
Consequently, the Conference looks to bring experts from various fields on to a
single stage, all looking to share their learning and expertise in addressing
the concerns.
Well-researched
and unpublished papers are invited on topics related to all aspects of Indian
literature and literary criticism in English, in translation as well as
regional language literatures. However, all submissions must strictly be in
English only. If you choose to make an impact submit your abstract in not more
than 250 words along with the keywords. Do not forget to mention your name,
place, affiliation, mobile number, and email address. All submissions and
correspondence may be made at [email protected].
Important
Dates:
§ Deadline
for submission of abstracts: 20 November 2017
§ Notification
of Acceptance: 30 November 2017
§ Deadline
for Registration: 15 December 2017
§ Full paper: 25 December 2017
Registration
Fee:
§ Faculty
Members (Out-station paper presenters) Rs 5000/-
§ Research
Participants (Out-station paper presenters) Rs 2500/-
§ Local
Participants (presenters & non-presenters) Rs 1500/-
§ EFLU
Research Scholars Rs 1000/-
§ Foreign Delegates 100 USD
Please
pay conference registration fee through Money Transfer to the bank account
provided below. You are requested to email us your name and complete
transaction details like amount, transaction number, date and name of the bank
along with a scanned copy of the counterfoil.
Beneficiary’s Name: Internal Income Account
Acc
No.: 62122901303
Type
of Account: Savings
State
Bank of India
IFSC
Code: SBIN0021106
Bank Address:
SBI, EFLU Branch, Hyderabad-500007
Payments
may also be made through a Demand Draft drawn in favour of Internal Income
Account, A/C 62122901303, SBI, EFLU Branch, Hyderabad and sent to The
Conference Convener, Dept. of Indian and World Literatures, EFL University,
Hyderabad, Telangana - 500007. Please furnish complete transaction details like
amount, Transaction number/DD No., date, Name of the Bank etc. in your
communication.
[The
Registration Fee includes the conference kit, two lunches, the conference
dinner on January 18, and tea & snacks at intervals. Outstation paper
presenters will be provided accommodation, breakfast on both days and dinner on
20 January. Participants making joint presentations need to register
separately.]
