4th International e-Conference
on
Exploring Crisis in Literary and Cultural Studies
Date: 19th & 20th October, 2023
To be Organized by
New Literaria- An International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities
in collaboration with
Department of English, Central University of Rajasthan (CURaj), India
CALL FOR PAPERS
CONCEPT NOTE
We are on the edge of disaster without being able to situate it in the future: it is rather always already past, and yet we are on the edge or under the threat, all formulations which would imply the future- that which is yet to come- if the disaster were not that which does not come, that which has put a stop to every arrival. ———Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of Disaster
Some form of eschatological orientation is almost ubiquitous in the narratives related to human history, mythology, literature, and culture. Be it the many workings of the Last Judgement in Medieval literature, the apocalyptic imagination of Blake and Shelley, the motif of Decadence in Modernism, the New Apocalypse Movement of the 1940s, the notorious millennialism informing Nazism, or the possibility of the Nuclear Holocaust clouding post-war literature, any conception of socio-cultural consciousness or communal identity appears inconceivable without some version of an apocalypse. However, as Frank Kermode highlights in his The Sense of an Ending (1967), these depictions of apocalyptic events or crises serve as a scaffold primarily within Western cultural traditions, allowing the seemingly chaotic course of historical events and collective cultural experiences to be domesticated and organized under the guise of a teleological closure. Even the prevalent discourse surrounding cultural historiography has been relativized, depersonalized, and perilously diluted under empty symbolic markers of anthropocenity where it lacks the necessary theoretical arsenal to address or combat what Slavoj Zizek in his work Living in the End Times (2010) identifies as the “four riders of the apocalypse”, namely, “the ecological crisis, the consequences of the biogenetic revolution, imbalances within the system itself (problems with intellectual property; forthcoming struggles over raw materials, food, and water), and the explosive growth of social divisions and exclusions.” With the lack even strongly felt over the imaginative spectrum enabled by a lurid experiential hiatus in textual and socio-political addressal of crisis between a subject’s being-in-the-world and its alienating past or future anterior temporalities (Ghosh 2016, Erikson 2020), the narratives in the contemporary times like The Postman, Tender is the Flesh, The Memory Police, When the Rain Stops, in keeping with the etymological and semantic connotations of crisis (a decisive turning point) and apocalypse (revelation/uncovering) are therefore, consistently engaging in experimentation, occasionally even subverting the regulated situatedness of historical, cultural and subjective experience, which tends to isolate itself from the chaotic immanence that underlies it. Such experimentations in a way decolonise the geospecificity, challenge the linearity of crisis narratives, consciously unmake and remake the politics of resilience and resistance underlying the catastrophes as well as form novel aesthetic assemblages towards a framework reflexive, plastic, and mutative enough to accommodate the real of the apocalypse which is contingent or happening or marked by a radical always-alreadyness.
Moreover, on the precipice of the ongoing Holocene extinction crisis, a multitude of discourses such as ecocriticism, posthumanism, transhumanism, energy humanities, and critical animal studies have been emerging to grapple with the gravity of this pivotal predicament. And yet, as Claire Colebrook and Jami Weinstein note in their works like Death of the PostHuman (2014) and Theorizing Beyond the Posthuman (2017), these theoretical and cultural discourses at times have the obverse effect of obfuscating the looming catastrophe by ensnaring us in their metaphorical allure. This complacency regarding the catastrophe can only be overcome after we shrug off the anthropocentrism in traditional eschatology, and instead, recircuit, reground, and reorient the traditional hermeneutic networks on the nonhuman and vitalist geohistorical forces. The affect and materiality that the crisis narratives of the present plug themselves into opens a floodgate to the fabulative potential of these anecdotal disciplines which were hitherto concealed under the pacified consonance of discursive temporalities (Kermode 1967). The imperative then and that which has already been undertaken and is being seriously practised, is to change our approach to the literary and cultural traditions. Instead of representing extremities within our stable narrative structures, the question should be asked how to unmake these stabilities and redirect subjective experiences to the telluric elan vital it is engendered from. For this to happen we should also interrogate whether our disciplines should cease the maddening quest after representability and instead register the affects that the uncanny and the unrepresentable engineers on the disciplines themselves; thereby, striving towards becoming-apocalyptic, restoring imaginative derangement back to its chaosmic roots and consequently becoming worthy of the event.
New Literaria is pleased to announce its 4th International e-Conference, aiming to reignite the ongoing “great derangement debate” initially identified by Amitav Ghosh a few years ago by exploring and addressing the various challenges, transformations, and disruptions currently faced by the discipline, fostering a critical dialogue on the future of literary and cultural studies amid crises. In this pursuit, the conference endeavours to assess the contemporary preparedness of literary and cultural studies in confronting not just imminent but ongoing end times. Accordingly, the conference welcomes proposals from scholars to document the ruptures, continuities, transformations, and innovative articulations within the discourse surrounding apocalyptic scenarios. These contributions will demonstrate how literary works, artistic expressions, and cultural and philosophical sources can bridge the divide between the conceptualization of crises and tangible praxis. Throughout the conference, diverse theoretical frameworks will be explored to ascertain their respective contributions in a context characterized by urgent interconnections.
As such, we invite interventions, interpretations, and contentions that respond to, speculate, and critique any of the following concerns:
- The Role of Literature in Shaping Environmental Consciousness: Crisis and Ecocriticism
- Posthumanism and the Crisis of Human Identity in Contemporary Literature
- Crisis and Decolonization: Reimagining Cultural Narratives
- Representations of Apocalypse and Utopia in Science Fiction Literature
- Crisis and Gender: Feminist Perspectives in Literature and Culture
- Literature as a Response to Political and Social Crises: Case Studies
- Crisis and the Postcolonial Condition: Literary Explorations
- Revisiting the Gothic Tradition: Crisis and Horror in Literature and Film
- Crisis and Memory: Trauma, Testimony, and Collective Remembering
- Crisis of Language: Literary Experiments and Innovative Forms of Expression
- Literary Responses to Economic Crises: Class, Capitalism, and Social Inequality
- Crisis and Diaspora: Exploring Transnational Identities in Literature
- Crisis and Technology: Transhumanism, Artificial Intelligence, and Posthuman Futures
- Crisis and the Animal Other: Critical Animal Studies and Literature
- Cultural Trauma and National Crises: Literary Representations
- The Ethics of Representation in Crisis Literature: Responsibility and Authenticity
- Crisis and the Postmodern Condition: Deconstructing Narratives and Meanings
- Environmental Catastrophe and Imaginative Possibilities: Climate Fiction and Speculative Literature
- The Crisis of Representation: Language, Symbolism, and Semiotics in Literature
- Crisis and Mythology: Archetypal Motifs in Literature and Culture
- Literature as Resistance: Crisis, Activism, and Social Change
- Crisis and the Body: Illness, Disability, and the Politics of Embodiment in Literature
- Apocalypse and Religious Imagery in Literature: Crisis and Spirituality
- Crisis and Globalization: Transcultural Exchanges and Hybridity in Literature
- Literary Aesthetics of Crisis: Beauty, Sublimity, and the Politics of Art
Abstracts for both individual papers and panel proposals (consisting of three or four participants along with a chair/commentator) are welcomed. Those presenting individual papers should send an abstract, including keywords, within a maximum limit of 300 words, along with a separate attachment containing a 100-word bio note, to newliteraria@gmail.com. For complete panels, please submit a proposal of no more than 750 words, along with individual 100-word bio notes for each participant, to newliteraria@gmail.com
We look forward to your insightful contributions and lively participation in this conference.
| SCHEDULE | |
| Conference Dates | 19th & 20th October, 2023 |
| Deadline for Submission of Abstracts (300 words) and Panel Proposals (750 words) | 15th September, 2023 |
| Acceptance of Abstracts | 20th September, 2023 |
| Registration | 20th – 25th September, 2023 |
| Last date for sending the full paper | 31st December, 2023 |
Platforms: ZOOM, GOOGLE MEET, FACEBOOK, YOUTUBE
SPEAKERS
Prof. (Dr.) Albrecht Classen
University Distinguished Professor
The University of Arizona, US
Dr.Arzuman Ara
Professor of English Language Education
EFLU, India
Dr Smita Mathur
Associate Professor, College of Education, Department of Early, Elementary, & Reading Education, MEMORIAL HALL, James Madison University, Virginia
Prof Smita Jha
Professor of English
IIT Roorkee India
Prof Claire Warwick
Professor of Digital Humanities, Department of English, Durham University, UK
Prof Sreejata paul
Assistant Professor, School of Humanities & Social Sciences, Shiv Nadar University, India
Prof Moumin Quazi
Professor & Director of Graduate Studies in English, Tarleton State University, USA
Prof Salila Kulshreshtha
Visiting Assistant Professor of History & Art History, New York University, Abu Dhabi
CONFERENCE COMMITTEE
Patron: Prof. Anand Bhalerao, Hon’ble Vice Chancellor, Central University of Rajasthan (CURaj)
Chief Advisor: Dr. Sanjay Arora, Associate Professor, Department of English and Dean, School of Humanities & Languages, Central University of Rajasthan (CURaj)
Conveners:
Dr. Tanmoy Kundu, Editor, New Literaria Journal & Assistant Professor of English, Midnapore College (Autonomous), West Bengal, India
Dr. Bhumika Sharma, Assistant Professor and Head, Department of English, Central University of Rajasthan (CURaj)
Dr. Parthasarathi Mandal, Editor, New Literaria Journal & Assistant Professor, Manbhum Mahavidyalaya, West Bengal, India
Dr. Neha Arora, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Central University of Rajasthan (CURaj)
Organizing Secretaries:
Dr Devendra Rankawat, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Central University of Rajasthan (CURaj)
Dr Ved Prakash, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Central University of Rajasthan (CURaj)
Dr Savita Andelwar, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Central University of Rajasthan (CURaj)
Gokul S., Associate Editor, New Literaria Journal
Subhankar Dutta, Associate Editor, New Literaria Journal
Moumita Bala, Senior Academic Editor, New Literaria Journal
Nisarga Bhattacharjee, Senior Academic Editor, New Literaria Journal
Dipra Sarkhel, Senior Academic Editor, New Literaria Journal
Saikat Chakraborty, Senior Academic Editor, New Literaria Journal
Sindhura Dutta, Academic Editor, New Literaria Journal
Zahra Ahmad, Academic Editor, New Literaria Journal
Advisory Committee:
Prof Anita Singh, Professor, Department of English, Banaras Hindu University, Banaras, India
Prof Rebecca Haque, Professor, Department of English, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh
Dr Chandrakant Langare, Associate Professor, Department of English, Shivaji University, Kolhapur, India.
Dr Elisabetta Marino, Associate Professor of English and American Studies, Department of History, Humanities and Society, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Italy
Dr B. J. Geetha, Associate Professor, Department of English Studies, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Central University of Tamil Nadu, India.
Dr Jai Singh, Associate Professor, Department of English Literature, The English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Hyderabad, India.
Dr Sanjukta Chatterjee, Associate Professor, Department of English, Raiganj University, West Bengal, India.
Dr. Suranjana Choudhury, Assistant Professor, Department of English, North-Eastern Hill University, India.
Dr Prasenjit Panda, Associate Professor, Department of English, Guru Ghasidas Vishwavidyalaya, Chhattisgarh, India.
Dr Subhadeep Paul, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Bankura University, West Bengal, India.
Dr Dhurjjati Sharma, Assistant Professor, Department of MIL & Literary Studies, Gauhati University, Assam, India.