{"id":4209,"date":"2013-10-26T04:20:47","date_gmt":"2013-10-26T04:20:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.eltweekly.com\/elt-newsletter\/?p=4209"},"modified":"2013-10-26T04:20:47","modified_gmt":"2013-10-26T04:20:47","slug":"conference-navigating-diaspora-march-2014-silchar-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eltweekly.humbeestudio.xyz\/?p=4209","title":{"rendered":"Conference: ‘Navigating Diaspora’, March 2014, Silchar-India"},"content":{"rendered":"

ELTWeekly Vol. 5 Issue#38 | October 28, 2013 |\u00a0ISSN 0975-3036<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Department of English, Assam University, Silchar, and Forum for English Studies, Assam\u00a0University, Silchar, will jointly organize a two-day National Conference on \u201cNavigating\u00a0Diaspora\u201d during 11-12 March, 2014. The conference will be organized around plenary sessions,\u00a0panel discussions and presentations by participants. Proposals for presentation at the Conference\u00a0are welcome from faculty members, research scholars and academicians engaged with research\u00a0on various aspects of diaspora studies.<\/p>\n

Concept Note<\/strong><\/p>\n

The multivalent term \u201cdiaspora\u201d, which has its etymological origin in the Greek gardening\u00a0tradition, referring to the dispersal of seeds, has come to be associated with exile and some sort\u00a0of suffering because of the mass relocation of people from their originary homelands to new\u00a0regions and a consequent sense of loss derived from an inability to return, with the Jewish\u00a0experience of forced exile from Jerusalem in the sixth century BC seen as the prototype diasporic\u00a0experience. The mass movement of Africans via slavery to the Americas can also be considered\u00a0to be a diasporic experience of a similar kind. More recently, of course, we have started talking\u00a0in terms of the diasporas of \u2018casualization\u2019, formed by groups of people who have moved from
\nmarginalized regions to metropolitan centres in search of, say, a better life.<\/p>\n

One of the most powerful ideas associated with the study of diaspora is the concept of a
\nremembered \u2018original\u2019 home, made all the more compelling by it being both temporally and\u00a0spatially distant and also by the competition it faces from other possible home spaces in the\u00a0diasporic subject\u2019s perceptions. The Conference intends to look into, amongst various other\u00a0issues, the multilayeredness of the notion of home in relation to the study of diaspora as well as\u00a0how cultural (dis)orientations given rise to by the phenomenon of diaspora influence literary\u00a0expression. In particular, the Conference would seek to explore the ways in which the experience\u00a0of the traumas induced by diaspora are memorialized in the rich literary responses to diasporic\u00a0experiences in the works of authors like V. S. Naipaul, Derek Walcott, Wilson Harris, Salman\u00a0Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi, Michael Ondaatje, Amitav Ghosh, and Jhumpa Lahiri, et al., authors\u00a0who speak from diasporic subject positions and explore the psychic terrain of diaspora, and who,
\nthrough their experience of multicultural mediation, challenge us in numerous ways to reconsider\u00a0the commonly held assumptions about identity, nation, home, memory, etc., in cross-cultural and\u00a0transnational contexts.<\/p>\n

Diaspora studies today is a broad church characterized by much multi- and interdisciplinary\u00a0work reflecting a tremendous cross-fertilization of ideas from disciplines like history, political\u00a0science, geography, sociology, anthropology, creole studies, postcolonial studies, culture studies,\u00a0etc.. Therefore, it is necessary to take a polyvocal approach in order to chart and navigate the\u00a0varied course of diaspora studies, bringing it into more explicit engagement with key intersecting\u00a0agendas and themes like politics, language and literary studies, various aspects of social relations\u00a0like race, gender and sexuality, etc. It is with this purpose in mind that the Conference intends to
\nbring together scholars and researchers (with dispersed interests on diaspora!) from across the\u00a0social sciences and the arts and humanities on one platform so that there is multidisciplinary\u00a0participation, interdisciplinary engagement and a vocal debate on issues related to diaspora\u00a0studies.<\/p>\n

Possible themes on which submission of proposals is sought include, but are not limited to, the\u00a0following:<\/p>\n