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Call For Papers

History, Literature, Translation: Bhasha Culture and its Pervasive Networks

5th Researchers' At Work Conference (RAW.CON)

Centre for Comparative Literature


University of Hyderabad
9th-11th September 2015

The aim of RAW.CON had always been to provide a forum for debate and discussions on research
matters; new avenues of research and perspectives. RAW.CON provides space for researchers from
around the country to meet, exchange ideas, share information, consult specialist resource persons
invited to the conference. RAW.CON 2015 aims to bring together scholars to explore innovative
ways of critically engaging with the aspects of literary productions, public life, and multiple
modernities in India. The conference will explore the diverse means by which literature is
constantly shaped, moulded, and discussed. The culture of enlightenment and colonial modernity
with its conjunctional technologies not only ushered in an era of technological expressivity for
public consumption but also influenced the pattern of production and reception. The advent of new
knowledge along with new sensibility in the form of colonial modernity challenged old traditions,
even in their efforts to understand and make meaning of them. Indigenous traditions of literary
production were shunned until the newly forged self-reflexivity of the 'public' started revisiting,
translating and rebuilding the vernacular networks. This conference aims to bring forward fresh
academic intrusion by deliberating on the process of reworking those complex networks of Bhasha
literatures and literary cultures which had been witnessing successful and varied mutations.

The organisers have the following interrelated aims:

The first is to rethink assumptions about literary aesthetics. The vernacular literary traditions which
flourished in the precolonial era and even in the early colonial times, had shown symptoms of a
developing syncretic culture steeped in multiple linguistic, religious and cultural sensibilities. Such
instances of syncretic or composite culture had been variously addressed and analysed. By
underlining these aspects of vernacular literary traditions, histories, this conference aims to help the
scholars to see literary traditions as cultural norm which, when comes under pressure from different
factors, gets repressed and censored, becomes a living testimony of oblivion.

The second aim is to interrogate the relationship between various public interfaces of literary
productions, their origin, pattern and the nature of growth. History of different Bhasha literatures in
India are dotted with instances of such interfaces. Literature and all such aspects of public life like
religion, politics, identity-community, reformatory movements and so on thus have engaged each
other in a symbiotic relationship to produce a literature of their own. Literary movements,
traditions, canons were built around these public activities and were challenged in the course of
time to be replaced by new sensibilities. But this relationship, this public life of literature had been
one of multiple mutations, turns and twists. Consequently, literature had been not only a centre for
creative production but also of charges of seditions, of disrespect, of vulgarity. This conference aims
to move beyond the notion of literature being 'mirror' or the 'lamp' and to create new ways of
looking at it which will weave their interpretations along the anecdotes of its public life.

Third, the organisers hope to explore these questions in a way that connects as many literary,
linguistic traditions and historiographies as possible so that a comparative understanding of
recurring patterns (if any) can be observed besides providing the new research scholars a glimpse of
varied realities which though invites academic curiosities but resists theorising through its multiple
differences.

Topics may include (but are not limited to):

The growth of syncretic traditions in literatures;


Literary historigraphies;
Public life of literature;
Literature, performance and spectacles;
Literary activism and Popular Media;
Colonial Modernity and literary Mutations;
Role of Translations, Retellings, Adaptations in networking literatures;
Religion and literary productions;
Literature and socio-cultural reformations;
Literature, Censorship, State and the charges of sedition, vulgarity;
The role of Comparative Literature in India.

The organisers invite proposals from scholars working in all disciplines to apply. Please include the
following information with your proposal:

a) Paper title
b) Name, institutional affiliation as researcher, and email address
c) Brief description of the proposed paper (up to 250 words) explaining the substance of the
proposed paper, sources used, and topics relationship to the conference themes
d) Please send your entries in doc or docx format only.

Conference Structure

Each session will be about 1.5 hours long, consisting of four-five presenters, each speaking for up
to 20 minutes, with 5 minutes discussion. The conference language is English. For pre-circulation
to the invited respondents invited participants will be asked to submit papers of approximately
5,000 words in length by 1 st August 2015 along with a statement that the current work is free from
plagiarism.

The conference also invites proposals from paper presenters for separate sessions of short films,
documentaries, digital documentation and archival work on their fields of research. Proposals for
this category are requested to be limited within a duration of 10-20 minutes.

Shared accommodation and food will be arranged for outstation participants. The conference
committee may consider a limited number of minimum travel allowances depending upon the
availability of funds.
The deadline for sending proposals is 1 st May 2015. Both accepted and rejected proposals will be
notified by individual mail by 10th May 2015.

Proposals and inquiries should be sent to RAW.CON Coordinators:


raw.con2015@uohyd.ac.in

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