MELUS India
CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT (HYDERABAD, JANUARY 5-7, 2006)
MELUS-INDIA (The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States – India Chapter) invites you to its Seventh International Conference.
Dates: January 5-6, 2006
Venue: Inter University Center for International Studies (formerly ASRC), Hyderabad.
THEME: “DIALOG ACROSS CULTURES: BRIDGING DIFFERENCES IN AMERICAN LITERATURE”
MELOW (The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the World) Invites you to its first International Conference which will dove-tail into the MELUS-India 2006 Conference.
Date: January 7, 2006
Venue: Inter University Center for International Studies (formerly ASRC), Hyderabad.
THEME: “DIALOG ACROSS CULTURES: INDIA AND THE WORLD”
Description:
The context for a dialog is any situation where one is exposed to a new experience or a fresh idea. The context, therefore, may be as varied as lectures, seminars, laboratories, theaters, museums, concert halls, pizza parlors, internet chat rooms, mailing lists and coffee houses, debates and discussions, or, more simply, times of quiet reflection in the library or even while taking a stroll. In short, there is a vast array of circumstances where we can encounter a new idea, whether between groups, or through one-to-one interactions between individuals, or the more solitary confrontation of the individual alone with himself. These encounters can result in the emergence of new worlds of understanding.
Dialog may be in the form of reading a book, discovering the beauty of a work of art, listening carefully to a musical masterpiece, developing a new idea, or designing a new experiment. In all these cases, dialog may take you to places unexplored hitherto. Boundaries and prevalent notions may be challenged or approached with a newer perspective, inaugurating and invigorating the existing canon. Sometimes silent communication also takes place, formless and voiceless, where articulation takes place through gestures and delicately nuanced body language. Or through alternate languages and mediums of expression.
The MELUS 2006 Conference (Jan 5-6, 2006) will explore these and related issues, taking up diverse genres – not literature alone but also cinema, theatre, media, and popular culture. 250-word abstracts of papers related to the theme in these areas are invited from members of MELUS-India. The focus will be American Literature but interdisciplinary perspectives are encouraged.
The MELOW 2006 Conference (Jan 7, 2006) will explore the same issues, focusing on India and her relationship to the world. How does the world see us, our writers and our literary traditions? How does our popular culture, our films, our folk traditions compare with those of other cultures? Where do we stand ! vis-à-vis our foreign counterparts? 250-word abstracts of papers related to these areas are invited. The focus will be Indian Writing in English (including translations into English) taking a comparatist perspective, elaborating on the theme of the Conference, i.e., “Dialog Across Cultures”. (However, please note, this conference will not include topics related to Diasporic Writing from India as we have already exhausted the topic at an earlier conference.)
For both the conferences, we are looking for papers that fall under the following heads:
- Theories that deal with Dialog between Disparate Groups
- Dialog Across Barriers: Race and / or Ethnicity
- The Gendered Voice
- Trans-cultural Dialog in Films, media or popular culture
- Relationships between texts or genres
- Power games in the creation, reception and dissemination of texts
- Literary concerns and strategies that cut across boundaries
- Texts that straddle multi-cultural spaces
Delegates should state clearly whether their abstracts are for MELUS-India (related to American Literature) or to MELOW (related to Indian literatures from a comparative perspective).
Deadline for all abstracts is Monday, August 31, 2005. However, send in your abstracts early. Email them to mjaidka@sify.com not as attachment but as part of the text message. Abstracts received after the deadline may not be considered.
Acceptance letters to selected participants, along with further details of the conference, will be mailed latest by the 30th of September, 2005. Selected participants will be asked to send in their papers and Delegate fee.
The deadline for full papers and Delegate Fee will be 30th November, 2005.
Please note: these dates are NOT flexible as proper arrangements have to be made in advance and rooms have to be booked at the venue.
For any queries contact: Manju Jaidka (Secretary, MELUS-India, MELOW), Professor and Chairperson Or Prof. Anil Raina, Dept of English, Panjab University, Chandigarh – 160014, Email: mjaidka@sify.com or anilraina@glide.net.in
