Concept Note

The Department of English, Bodoland University is organising a two-day national seminar on the theme Climate, Conflict and Pandemic: Literary responses from India’s Northeast. The event will also focus on the various approaches to study the literary works from India’s Northeast. In the past two decades, there has been a spurt in literary works from the region that scaled the attention of readers and critics beyond the region. While conflict and trauma remain the core area that underpins most of the literary output, there are proximal intervening issues that have shaped the oeuvre of Anglophone writings as well. The translated works also provide us with an alternate trajectory to a well-established gamut of literary works dealing with women's identity, love, climate change, pandemic, nature, history and many other diverse issues. It would not be too farfetched to claim that the formative period of regional literature was shaped by the nationalistic zeal while also experiencing literary influences from the West. In the 21st Century, with an emphasis on realism, literature in northeast India is steering its focus on issues related to daily life that afflict the quotidian life of the northeasterner. Literary responses may be considered a better way of navigating around the bottlenecks (See Sanjay Barbora’s Homeland Insecurities) related to conflicts and other contentious issues & it further enables interrogating the “images of self in the encounter with radical alterity” while facilitating a “mode to imaginatively train oneself to detect the trace of the other” (See Amit Rahul Baishya’s Contemporary Literature from Northeast India). The narrative domain, therefore, opens a polyphonous discursive space to the regional writers in negotiating with the multidimensional facets of reality. As there cannot be a single narrative on an issue, the multiplicity of voices that are emerging from this region provides us with a more comprehensive picture of the issues addressed in the literary works. As such these texts can also be put into a dialogue with each other to enable a discursivity of literary representation. To highlight the various literary trends, this seminar invites paper proposals on any aspect related to Anglophone Literature and Translated works (in English) from India’s Northeast.

Invited Speakers:

Ms Mitra Phukan, Writer, Translator & Columnist

Professor Nigamananda Das, Nagaland University

Professor Anjali Daimari, Gauhati University

Schedule

30th March

11 AM: Inaugural Session

11:30 AM: Meet the Author: talk by Ms Mitra Phukan

2:00 PM: Lecture by Professor Nigamananda Das

3:00 PM – 5 PM: Technical session -1

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31st March:

10:00 AM – 12 Noon: Technical Session 2

12:00-1:00 PM: Lecture by Professor Anjali Daimari

2:00 PM- 3:30 PM: Technical Session 3

3:30 PM – 4:00 PM: Valedictory session

Organising Committee:

Advisor: Professor Pradip Kumar Patra, Rector, Bodoland University

Patron: Dr. Subung Basumatary, Registrar, Bodoland University

Conveners:

Dr Debajyoti Biswas, Bodoland University

Dr Manab Medhi, Bodoland University

Coordinators:

Dr. Rustam Brahma, Bodoland University

Dr. Zothanchhingi Khiangte, Bodoland University

Dr Pratusha Bhowmik, Bodoland University

Dr Chandrima Sen, Bodoland University

Registration fee: There is no registration fee for participants.

Food & Accommodation: The participants will have to arrange accommodation and food on their own.

Concept Note

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