Non-metropolitan Modernisms
[An Interdisciplinary Conference of the Department of English, University
of Delhi]
Dates: 23-25 March 2009
Venue: University of Delhi
Ever since the cultural politics of modernism began to be 'unmasked,' not
infrequently following narrow reductionist methodologies, the earlier
elision of colonial history from the narrativisation of cultural
modernism has been sought to be redressed in scattered critical circles.
The nexus between colonialism and modernism since then, too, has received
increasing critical attention in disciplines beyond literary studies,
focusing on a wide range of locations: from the Latin American to the
African and South Asian nations. More recently, modernity and its
relationship with modernism are areas which have received fresh
revisionist approaches. Finally, there has been a growing interest, even
within metropolitan modernism, in expressive energies that have come from
below. Surprisingly though, discussions of modernism continue to
reiterate the high-modernist overemphasis on the autonomous aesthetic
realm. Where ideologies of modernism are critiqued at all, the emphases
continue to be on the metropolitan cultural products. Even here cultural
modernist / new historicist and feminist approaches have succeeded in
offering revisionist versions of modernism and its relationship with
modernity, but postcolonialism's relationship to modernism is not
secured.
Papers for the conference will consequently focus on vernacular
modernisms which were not always and necessarily nationalist. A few may
attempt to move beyond strictly verbal representations and to the visual-
verbal-aural interface. The proposed conference seeks to address the
following areas:
1. Vernacular Modernisms
2. Shifting Peoples, Shifting Territories: Migration, Displacement
and Modernism
3. Non-metropolitan political imaginings / Modernism from below.
Abstracts of papers addressing the above issues are invited from scholars
across disciplines.
Conference Committee:
Sumanyu Satpathy (sumanyus_at_yahoo.com); Sambudha Sen (ssen1956_at_yahoo.com);
Udaya Kumar (udayaxkumar_at_gmail.com); Gautam Chakravarty
(gxchakravarty_at_yahoo.com); Rimli Bhattacharya(rimlibi_at_gmail.com)
Postal Address :
Co-ordinator, Conference Committee
Department of English
Delhi University
Delhi 110007
--
Yemisi Ogunleye
www.iq4news.com
Head of Communications,
MeCCSA Post-Graduate Network
website: http://www.meccsa.org.uk/pgn/
Media & Communications Dept.,
Birmingham City University,
City North Campus,
Birmingham
B42 2SU
