CFP: South Asian Literary Association Annual Conference (6/1/05; 12/26/05-12/27/05)

Call for Papers for SALA's (South Asian Literary Association) 6th
Annual Conference (December 26 and 27, 2005; to be held in conjunction
with the MLA)

For its 6th annual conference, the South Asian Literature Association
invites proposals (of no more than 200-300 words) on the subject:
Secularism: Possibilities and Limits.

Though secularism is a subject addressed most frequently in the social
sciences—especially history, sociology, and political science—it is of
great importance to literary and cultural studies as well. The 6th
annual SALA conference, therefore, will address secularism in South
Asian culture and the arts—literature, cinema, and other audiovisual
and textual media.

The goal is not simply to reaffirm that secularism is good and
religious communalism is bad. We are particularly interested in
looking closely at issues and texts that are somewhat ambiguous or
conflicted with regards to their secularity—Tagore's poetry, Narayan's
mystical stories, or Mohammed Iqbal's writings, to name just three.
And theoretically, we are interested in interrogating the basic terms
and assumptions that are often made regarding the "secular" nature of
the public sphere.

Some suggested questions and themes are:

* Is there a secularist mode of criticism?
* How important is it for critics and teachers that cultural texts be
unambiguously secular?
* What is the relationship between literature and politics in the
Indian subcontinent?
* Is there anything unique or particular about secularism in South
Asia? What can people in other parts of the world learn from Indian
secularism in particular?
* What impact has the recent rise of the Hindu Right had on secularism?
* How do debates over aesthetic postmodernism (magical realism,
non-linearity, pastiche) relate to secularism?
* How has postcolonial theory addressed (if it has indeed addressed)
the question of secularism and secularization?
* What impact have stories where secularism is at issue—for example,
in fiction about Partition or about communal conflagrations—had on
public debates on secularism in India and abroad?
* What impact has technology had on the impact and reception of South
Asian cultural secularism around the world?

Individual writers and literary scenes, and filmic genres might be:

* Contributions to secular thought from writers in Indian regional
languages—for example, Tamil Dalit writers have written on social
change that eschews dominant cultural/religious models
* The Bengali Renaissance
*The Progressive Writers' Association
* Urdu Poets
* Diasporic literature and cultural artifacts:
* V.S. Naipaul
* Salman Rushdie
* Qurratulain Hyder
* R.K. Narayan
* Rabindranath Tagore
* Classic Hindi films
* Recent South Asian cinema
* Essays and pamphlets on secularism by literary writers

Please email abstracts of 200-300 words electronically or by regular
mail to: Anuradha Dingwaney Needham (anuradha.needham_at_oberlin.edu)
Department of English; Oberlin College; Oberlin, Ohio 44074
and
Amardeep Singh (amardeep_at_gmail.com)

by June 1, 2005.

The SALA conference will be held on December 26 and 27 in Washington
DC, parallel to the MLA convention.

         ==========================================================
              From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List
                        CFP_at_english.upenn.edu
                         Full Information at
                     http://cfp.english.upenn.edu
         or write Jennifer Higginbotham: higginbj_at_english.upenn.edu
         ==========================================================
Received on Wed Apr 06 2005 - 19:27:28 EDT