[ELTWeekly Volume 7, Issue 18 | October 26, 2015 | ISSN 0975-3036]
A Two-day International Conference on
(Re)envisaging India’s Northeast: Ethnicity, Identity, Culture, Literature
March 29-30, 2016
Department of English, Assam University, Silchar
Introduction:
The Department of English, Assam University, Silchar, has decided to organize a two-day International Conference on “(Re)envisaging India’s Northeast” during 29-30 March, 2016. The conference will be organized around plenary sessions, panel discussions and presentations by participants. Proposals for presentation at the conference are welcome from faculty members, research scholars and academicians engaged with research on various aspects of Northeast studies.
Concept Note:
One of the most diverse regions of India, both ethnically and linguistically, Northeast India, comprising eight states – Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura, Meghalaya and Sikkim – is also one of the most militarised regions of the country with a long troubled history of secessionist movements, often regarded as a region far removed from the national consciousness, with the engagements with the histories of its peoples being few and far between, leading to a feeling of alienation amongst the peoples here, a feeling further deepened by the geographical remoteness of the region from mainland India. This distinctive troubled region is often seen as India’s ‘Mongoloid fringe’, especially in the context of the racial and other similarities it has with the highland societies of South East Asia. This, although in a rather negative way, makes some people think of the region to be less and less akin to the traditional conceptualisation of what is India, in another sense, it also has a great advantage, with the proximity, both physical and otherwise, of the region with the South East Asian countries, all of which belong to the ASEAN group, leading to a possibility of the Northeast emerging as the country’s bridge to several growth quadrants across its borders, a land of opportunities for both the ‘natives’ and the ‘outsiders’. In this way, a disadvantageous geographic location could actually give way to a great eco-strategic advantage for India. In this way, the Northeast could also be viewed not as a periphery but as a centre of a thriving and integrated economic space with a network of highways, railways and transmission lines criss-crossing the region, a vision quite in sync with India’s Look East foreign policy. However, what has often thrown a spanner in the works in the realization of this vision is the deep-rooted politics of ethnicity and indigeneity in which the Northeast has always been enmeshed, a kind of politics of identity of, what has often been called, ‘the nations from below’, which in the Northeast have been formed on ethnic lines, often expressed in anti-state armed struggle, in ethnic cleansing, and other similar expressions. Of course, the aspirations of different ethnic groups inhabiting the region with regard to retaining their cultural identity and also getting an adequate share of political and economic power are to a great extent legitimate but these have also given rise to conflicts when they got connected with the idea of exclusive administrative boundaries for self-governance, creating not only the detrimental indigenous/outsider binary, a division sustained by often arousing ethnic passion in myriad ways, but also a rather falsifying belief that the indigenous communities will be absolutely safe in their ethnic cocoons for now there is a strain of thought which believes that the ‘struggle’ of ‘the nation from below’ in the Northeast, often resulting in the formation of smaller states and autonomous district councils, has not been able to effectively arrest the ever-increasing class differences within the ethnic communities or to protect the rights of the tribal people. These and various other cognate issues have found expression in not only the writings of sociologists and political thinkers both from within the region and outside but also the literature emanating from the region which has been vested with rich literary traditions, both in the written form and in the oral traditions of numerous tribes, with the written word, especially in English, having now gained a significant attention from readers across the world. Authors like Mamang Dai, Temsula Ao, Siddhartha Deb, et al. have in their writings given expression to both the troubled political climate and also the beautiful landscape of the region. In addition to this fictional writing in English, there is a rich body of literature in various regional languages which have given expression to these issues.
In the light of the above discussion, it is believed that an exploration of the possibilities of (re)envisaging the Northeast of India, as the title of the conference suggests, is imperative. With this end in view, submissions are invited from academics drawn from different disciplines such as literature, sociology, economics, history, political science, geography, anthropology, linguistics and philosophy who are working on issues concerning Northeast India to present their work and nurture a possible network.
Possible themes on which submissions are sought include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Poetics and politics of representation of Northeast India
- Ethnicity and contemporary Indian nation-building in the context of the Northeast
- Identity and conflict in Northeast India
- Oral narratives, performative traditions and visual cultures of Northeast India
- Migration and Northeast India
- India’s ‘Look East’ policy vis-à-vis the Northeast: Creating alliances with Southeast Asia
- Literary representations of the Northeast from within and beyond
Organising Committee:
Chairperson:
Dipendu Das, Head, Department of English, Assam University, Silchar
(Cell: +91-9435172416)
Convenor:
Anindya Syam Choudhury, Faculty, Department of English, Assam University, Silchar
(Cell: +91-9435334546)
Joint Convenor:
Saugata Kumar Nath, Faculty, Department of English, Assam University, Silchar
(Cell: +91-9435179050)
Abstract Submission Guidelines:
Abstract template:
International Conference on (Re)envisaging India’s Northeast: Ethnicity, Identity, Culture, Literature
- Author* and S. Author†
Department of English
† Department of Sociology Assam University, Silchar-788011, Assam
* Email: f.author@aus.ac.in
- Kindly copy and use the MS Word template above for your abstract preparation and Use the Times New Roman font everywhere.
- The title (preferably of not more than 10 words) should be in 12pt bold; the name(s) of author(s) should be in 11pt bold; the affiliation(s) should be in 11pt italic.
- In case of there being two authors, the corresponding author should be indicated by a “*” and the email address should be given (please remove the hyperlink). Until here the document should be centred.
- Leave a line between the title and the author affiliation, and another before the abstract.
- The abstract body (one paragraph, 12pt, left and right aligned) should be of 300 words or less.
- The abstract must be followed by 05 keywords.
- Biographical information of the author(s) in the third person must be included at the The maximum number of words is 60.
Font: Times New Roman; Font size: 10; Spacing: Single space; Alignment: left and right aligned
- Sample: Smith is a professor of Language Acquisition Research at the University of Hawaii. He holds a PhD in Swahili. He is the author of Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Swahili and previously taught at the University of California.
- The last date for submission of abstract is December 31, 2015.
- Kindly send in your abstract as an email attachment to aus@gmail.com mentioning in the subject line “Abstract Submission”. Acceptance of your paper and details regarding the process of registration will be communicated to you by email (after December 31, 2015). Only one submission per presenter is allowed. A maximum of two presenters per submission is allowed.
- Those who wish to participate in the conference without paper presentation may kindly wish to communicate their desire to do so by sending an email to the organisers at aus@gmail.com by December 31, 2015. They will then be informed about the process of registration
- The date of submission of full paper is March 29th
- All submissions (abstract and full paper), and presentation are to be in English
Registration Guidelines:
- All participants (including paper presenters) will have to register for the seminar by submitting online a filled-in Registration Form (which will be sent to them along with the letter of acceptance of their proposal wherever applicable) after December 31, 2015, along with a non-refundable Registration Fee as per the details given below.
- Early Bird Registration Fee (from January 01, 2016 to January 31, 2016) for Participants including Presenters other than Students and Research Scholars: Rs. 1500/-
- Early Bird Registration Fee (from January 01, 2016 to January 31, 2016) for (Participants including Presenters) Students and Research Scholars: Rs. 1000/-
- Late Registration Fee (from February 01, 2016 to February 29, 2016) for Participants including Presenters other than Students and Research Scholars: Rs. 2000/-
- Late Registration Fee (February 01, 2016 to February 29, 2016) for (Participants including Presenters) Students and Research Scholars: Rs. 1500/-
- The mode of payment of the Registration Fee will be communicated to all participants by the organisers in due course of time. Paper presenters whose proposals, in the form of abstracts, are accepted for presentation will be issued additional letters of intimation regarding the acceptance of their proposals.
- The Registration Fee includes lunch and refreshments for the days of the seminar, seminar kit and the certificate of participation.
- Please note that there is no provision for on-site registration for the conference.
- The participants will have to bear their own travel and accommodation expenses. The organizers will, however, provide the participants with all the help required in finding accommodation in hotels in Silchar.
Important Dates:
Conference dates: March 29-30, 2016
Last date for the submission of abstracts: December 31, 2015
Early Bird Registration: January 01, 2016 to January 31, 2016
Late Registration: February 01, 2016 to February 29, 2016
For more information, please write to anindyasyam AT yahoo.com.