Three-Day International Conference On Rethinking Memory, History and Representation in India and Canada Feb 2016

Three-Day International Conference On

"No map, no trail, no footprint, no way home": Rethinking Memory, History and Representation in India and Canada

16 – 17 – 18 February 2016

Organized by Centre for Canadian Studies

Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, Kolkata - 700 032

"No map, no trail, no footprint, no way home" is a refrain uttered by the characters in Monique Mojica's Princess Pocahontas and the Blue Spots. The words, in particular, were echoed Lady Rebecca – the Christian name for Pocahontas – who was taken to the Elizabethan court as a specimen from the 'New World'. The refrain creates narratives of wandering and forgotten homelands and reiterates the process of remembering/ memory. The complex relationship between memory and history reveals that "history is willing to question the epistemological status of its object of study—the past—but less ready to engage with how 'the past' itself is variously conceptualised and constituted as history, memory, or archive." (Hodgskin and Radstone 2003: 3). The conference would explore the role of memory and historical events within local, national, transnational contexts and temporalities in pluralist societies as existing in India and Canada. Moreover, we live in an era engulfed by the powers of globalization where 'identity' has become more volatile, fragmented and split. Consequently, heterogeneous identities have led to the development of 'New Centres' from 'Old Margins' despite resistance from various national, ethnic and religious communities which advocate a centered, homogenous self. Further, 'reenactments' in socio-cultural and literary spheres are used to access lost or inaccessible areas. Such 'representation' serves as a vehicle to cultural memory, a witness to a forgotten past. This conference would invite papers in the context of India and Canada which discuss the inter-relation between historical encounters and its consequences, shifts in pedagogy and alternative aesthetics. How is 'home' and 'belonging' transformed through intervention of stories within shifting geographies? How have literary, visual, performance-oriented, historical, political, sociological, or 'cultural' texts situated 'transformations' unique to India and Canada?  How have cosmopolitanism, feminism, canon debates, new historicism, Indigenous studies, transnationalism, queer studies, diaspora studies, digital humanities and ecocriticism shaped the socio-cultural and literary imagination in Canada and India?

The conference therefore invites submissions which explore the trajectory of memory, history and representation in India and Canada within the scope of the critical spaces offered but not restricted by the following:

·         Old Margins, New Centres

·         Alternative aesthetics and shifting pedagogies

·         Political movements and literary transactions

·         Literary history and generic configurations

·         Forgotten histories and reenactments

·         Peripheral modernities and shifting identities

·         Cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism

·         Archival repository vs contemporary existence

·         Environmental balance and social regeneration

·         Sovereignty, Policy and Law

Conference Coordinators:

Professor Suchorita Chattopadhyay, Coordinator, Centre for Canadian Studies, Jadavpur University, Kolkata

Dr. Debashree Dattaray, Deputy Coordinator, Centre for Canadian Studies,  Jadavpur University, Kolkata

Abstracts of about 300 words, with a 50-word note on the speaker, must be emailed to the Conference Coordinators atcanadacentreju@gmail.com before 15^th December 2015. Acceptance mails will be sent by 31^st December, 2015.