May 4th and 5th 2008
Kahin Center
640 Stewart Avenue
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
The basic intellectual goals of the conference include the following:
- to think about how to study Indian literature (in the various languages, including English) comparatively, moving beyond all the cultural chauvinist assumptions that we inherited in part from the colonial era and that have prevented genuinely comparative work from flourishing, from being a serious intellectual and cultural project.
- to explore the roles translation and the institutions of publication play both in South Asia and in the international context in the dissemination and critical analysis of South Asian literary texts.
- to think in depth about "the view from below" in South Asian literary traditions
- to think about the many alternative accounts of "modernity" that are available within South Asian cultural -- and in particular literary -- traditions
- to examine diasporic South Asian literature and culture, the diasporic experience, keeping the above themes in mind
Core texts (all from 19th century India, all recently translated):
Apparao, Girls for Sale (Indiana University Press) – originally published in Telugu
http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=41655
Senapati, Six Acres and a Third (University of California Press)
Originally published in Oriya
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9382.php
Barua, Fair Outside and Foul Within – originally published in Assamese (see “Conference Documents”)
Downloadable attached documents for the conference available at the “Conference Documents” tab
Book Reading
Saturday, May 3rd, 2008, 3-5pm
Refreshments provided @
The Bookery II, Dewitt Mall
Buffalo Street, Ithaca
Reading from their own works:
Kiran Nagarkar
S. Shankar
Tilottoma Misra
V. Narayana Rao reading from the recent translation of Apparao and Satya P. Mohanty reading from the recent translation of Senapati