Call for Panel: Peripheral Modernity and South Asian Literary-World (24th European Conference on South Asian Studies, Warsaw, 2016)
This is a panel I'm holding along with Dr Priyanka Basu (SOAS, London) at the 24th European Conference on South Asian Studies (ECSAS), to take place at the University of Warsaw, Poland, July 27-30, 2016. The panel reads,
"The 2008 global downturn has compelled the social sciences and humanities to refocus on the concept of "crisis" in capitalism and rethink the relations between "core" and "periphery." What is crucial to this era of crisis is the emergence of the BRICS countries and the corresponding shifts in the world system. Debates on world literature and comparitivism have been alert to these readjustments (Moretti, 2000; Orsini, 2003; Damrosch, 2005; Warwick RC, 2015) as well as the proliferation of the neo-social realist novel (Adiga, Hamid, etc).
Given the important place of South Asia in contemporary literary and cultural studies debates, this panel would like to interrogate the South Asian region through the lens of "peripheral modernity" (Parry, 2009). Is South Asia a periphery to the capitalist world system or has it set up its (associated) system of core and peripheries (enabled by the strategic and economic negotiations between India and other SAARC nations)? What role do 'social' components such as space, gender, caste play in understanding the peripherality of modernity? Could terrorism or civil war, petro-capitalism or religious fundamentalism tell us more about this specific arena of capitalist modernity? How do we situate the vernacular aesthetics or the contemporary popularity of white collar English novels in this? Finally, how are we making a "literary world-system" in South Asia through the international circulation and reception of Anglophone literature and awards? The panel invites proposals based on literary, visual, and performance-based texts to uniquely situate South Asian transformations in the past decades."
We invite proposals of 250 words that address these and related questions on literature, culture and politics in South Asia. Further details of the panel and the guidelines for submission could be found here: http://nomadit.co.uk/easas/ecsas2016/panels.php5
Our panel no is 48. The abstract submission closes on November 30, 2015.
--- Sourit Bhattacharya, Doctoral candidate, English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick, UK
Sourit Bhattacharya, Doctoral candidate, English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick, UK
Email: sourit.bhattacharya@warwick.ac.uk
Postal Address: 26 Leam Terrace, Leamington Spa, CV31 1BB, United Kingdom
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