Forum on Contemporary Theory

XIV International Conference

Theme: “Transcending Disciplinary Decadence: Exploring Challenges of

Teaching, Scholarship, and Research in the Humanities and the Social Sciences”

Date: 18–21 December 2011

Venue:  Fortune Bella Casa Hotel, Jaipur in collaboration with the IIS University,

Jaipur, Rajasthan, India

Convener: Prof. Lewis R. Gordon, Temple University, USA

 

The fourteenth International Conference of the Forum on Contemporary Theory will be held in Jaipur, Rajasthan, from the 18th to the 21st of December 2011 at the Fortune Bella Casa Hotel in collaboration with the IIS University, Jaipur.

Thematic Introduction

The Martinican psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon had observed in the past century that the human sciences suffered from forms of colonization not only at the level of their avowed epistemological goals but also at that of the methods by which they were conducted.   These considerations were later taken up in similar form in the thought of Michel Foucault, Edward Said, Enrique Dussel, Michel Rolph-Trouillot, Gayatri Spivak, and Arjun Appadurai (among others) with regard to the conditions by which even coloniality could be posed as a category of study in the human sciences, which in their turn were in need of interrogation for the subjects they cultivated.   Together, these considerations offer concerns about the colonization of thought and the institutions by which it is cultivated.  The modern university, with its divisions into the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, life sciences, and, in many instances, professional schools, is among those institutions.  Once confidently building the stock of knowledge for a prosperous age, universities around the world now suffer from a prevailing condition of decline and crises from challenged legitimacy.

More than a century ago, Friedrich Nietzsche, who had a considerable influence on the thought of Fanon and Foucault, argued that decay is a natural consequence of life.  As this process unfolds at a social level, however, its accompanying system of values often collapses into nihilism, whose form includes the collapse of purpose, meaning, and creativity in the production of knowledge and the institutions by which it is produced.  He was writing during times in which the German university was the undisputed leading institution of research, scholarship, and teaching.   Its eminence was such that its influence continued well into the beginning of the twentieth century, where it became the model for the rising super powers, even those from such opposing goals as the United States and the Soviet Union. Yet, the German university suffered a fate that baffled its most staunch proponents:  How could such a citadel of reason fall prey to the forces of barbarity at the fall of the Weimar Republic and the takeover by Nazism to become a paragon of shame by the second quarter of the twentieth century?  

Although at first adopting the German model, the U.S. University soon transformed itself into a hybrid institution in tension with elite aspirations on one hand and efforts at democratic education on the other. This experiment in mass education, adopted across the globe in various forms, was fueled by Cold War investments to stave off the ideological force of correlative aspirations in Eastern European universities.   The normalization of higher education as an expectation of human development raised challenges to polities dependent on subordinated labor populations, especially those with histories marked by caste, class, gender, and racial discrimination.   More educated people meant, and continues to mean, more people demanding higher standards of living and access to heretofore institutions of exclusion and power.   The results include radical shifts in social relations as universities became more than places of producing knowledge and preparing generations of representatives of human intelligence.  Although linked in a complex genealogy to the earliest of human efforts to produce a world governed by peculiarly human activities—what the ancient Greeks called skolê (leisure time), from which derived the word school—the university and its concomitant constellation of disciplines now face challenges to their purpose as humanistic and humanizing institutions.  Such challenges include declining material investments in the humanities and similar developments in the social sciences reflecting any humanistic purpose.

Divergence from the humanistic foundations of schools and universities raises questions on the viability of knowledge produced without such bases.   If the human being is an obstacle for other avowed goals—such as the naked pursuit of profit or the instrumental organization of institutions according to projects of order—the university, if necessarily humanistic, faces at first the neurotic task of undermining itself by becoming an inhuman human institution.   Moreover, if the goal is to shake off human participation in the production of knowledge, especially so in an age of technocratic fetishism, the university’s demise may also have in its wake the cultivation of radically different kinds of institutions for the production of knowledge and the transmission of skills needed for the continuation of that enterprise.

This question of alternative institutions comes to the fore in the economic and technological transformation of societies in the geopolitical localities that have come to be known as the Global South.   As countries such as Brazil, China, and India now expand and pose challenges to North American and Western European economies and orderings of knowledge, with Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and the African continent negotiating their relations to this development, questions of the kinds of institutions suitable for research, scholarship, and teaching in this changed context emerge.  Are universities prepared for the challenges posed by the impact of cyberspace on the mechanisms by which knowledge is acquired and produced?  Should the infrastructure of universities change to address the transformations to intelligence waged by the ever-evolving technologies?  And with regard to populations “from below,” is the university equipped to address the imaginative potential of the shifting sites of creativity and reason, at times emerging from the underclass and displaced populations not only from the Global South but also those of the shaken Western powers? 

Questions of imagination, creativity, and epistemic practice raise problems of disciplinary decadence, which emerges when researchers, scholars, and teachers fetishize their disciplines and methods at the expense of reality and wider commitments.  An offspring of disciplinary decadence is the colonization of knowledge, where, as we have seen, the modes of producing knowledge could be colonized by political, economic, or instrumentalist projects, prevails.   Such a predicament includes also the subordination of free inquiry to market forces and professional coercion.  The effort to transcend such impositions at times takes the form of a creative synthesis, of bringing different disciplines together in constructive ways.  And at other times it takes the form of going beyond extant disciplines through the production of new disciplines or, more radically, going beyond disciplines as the organizational model of producing knowledge.   Are such efforts possible?   And if so, are they desirable?

This conference will bring together scholars from across the humanities, social sciences, life sciences, and the natural sciences, to discuss these and other varieties of challenges faced by higher education in this second decade of the twenty-first century and their significance as humanity struggles, amid many social, political, cultural, economic, and environmental upheavals, to lay the groundwork for the twenty-second.   The triumvirate of research, scholarship, and teaching is here offered to unsettle the dominating binary of research and teaching, where scholarship is often excluded as an aspect of the academic’s vocation.  As well, the addition of scholarship raises considerations on the practice of teaching, for where teaching is guided by scholarship it becomes an activity by which the teacher is also the dedicated student, the devotee of learning committed to pedagogical imperatives of intellectual growth.

The following topics are here offered to help those who are interested in participating in the conference in formulating their proposals for submission.  They are, however, only suggestive and not exhaustive.  Each is meant to be considered either from the perspective of the participant’s discipline or from that of the project of a dialogue in or across disciplines:

      ·         What are the challenges faced by the humanities and the social sciences today? 

·         What are the unique challenges posed for research, scholarship, and teaching in the humanities and social sciences in what has become known as “the global south”?

·         What is the impact of caste, class, gender, race, and sexuality on the humanities and social sciences today and what considerations do they pose for the future?

·         What should scholars in the humanities and social sciences be doing to prepare for the twenty-second century?

·         A correlate of the previous question: what should we expect to be the challenges for higher education at the end of the twenty-first century?

·         How might problems of disciplinary decadence be overcome as researchers, scholars, and teachers attempt to do their work into the next century?

·         How do disciplines relate to each other across the humanities and social sciences?  

·         What are the limits and strengths of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches?

·         What is the potential of other conceptions of “mixed” methodologies and disciplines, such as comparativism, creolization, and bricolage, for problems of research, scholarship, and teaching?

·         Is a decolonization of knowledge possible?  If so, how might it be achieved and what are its implications?

·         How should research, scholarship, and teaching be treated in a world of increased global diversity?

·         What is the impact of technological developments on research, scholarship, and teaching?

·         What alternatives are there to the market considerations posed by neoliberal and neoconservative prescriptions for the university in an age of globalism?

·         How should academics respond to the scarcity of employment opportunities at a moment when the demand for higher education is higher than ever?

 Special Session

In conformity with our earlier practice, a plenary session on a regional text will be one of the special features of the conference schedule.  This year’s choice for the panel is Premchand’s Hindi novel Godan (1936), translated into English as The Gift of a Cow. Godan, set in rural India in the 1930s, is a landmark publication during the time of India’s struggle for independence. It depicts the simple lives of peasants, who are caught between tradition and modernity, but struggle to maintain their dignity in the face of severe odds posed by both colonialism and local feudalism. Although it appears to have an apparently simple narrative teleology, it has a complex thematic texture crisscrossed by nationalistic, colonial, and economic threads constituting in their totality the dark realism of the period. But despite its atmosphere of overall gloom and pathos, it suggests a ray of hope epitomized in the character of its protagonist Hori, who, like a Bakhtinian character, is pulled by contradictory forces that do not allow him to become a stereotypical victim-figure pulled down by social injustice and inequality. One could read in his struggle the heroic attempt of a subaltern hero to pose a challenge to the conventional historiography of the emerging nation which does not take into account small erasures and disruptions in the grand edifice of that historiography. In a way, this novel makes a radical departure from the social realism of the conventional fiction in order to suggest a new direction to fictional writing.    

 Submission Deadline

500-word abstract or proposal is due by September 9, 2011. The abstract should have a title for the presentation along with the name and institutional affiliation of the presenter and should be mailed as an email attachment to Lewis Gordon, the Convener of the Conference (lewgord.CFT@gmail.com). Complete papers should be limited to 12 pages (approximately 20 minutes of reading time). A longer version may be submitted for possible publication in the Journal of Contemporary Thought or in the conference volume brought out by the Forum.  The completed paper should reach the Convener of the Conference by November 15, 2011.

 Conference Volume

Select papers from the conference and from those submitted in response to the “Call for Papers” will be included in the conference volume, which will be ready for formal release at the 2012 conference of the Forum. Completed papers should reach the Conference Convener as email attachments by April 1, 2012.

Registration Deadline

The last date for receiving the registration fee is September 20, 2011.  The fee may be paid through a bank draft drawn in favor of Forum on Contemporary Theory payable in Baroda.  Overseas participants may pay through checks drawn in favor of Forum on Contemporary Theory. The amount should be sent to the address mentioned on this leaflet. We encourage the participants to register early so that their accommodation in the hotel where the conference will be held is secured. All participants need to be pre-registered. The registration fee is non-refundable. Each participant will share the room with another participant. The following are the details of the registration fee:

1. Participant from India (life member of the Forum)           Rs.5000/

2. Participant from India (non-member)                              Rs.7000/

3. Overseas Participant (non-SAARC country)                 US $400/

4. Overseas Participant (SAARC country)                        US $200/

5. Local Participant (non-member)                                     Rs.4000/

6. Local Participant (life member of the Forum)                 Rs.2000/

7. Student Participant (from The IIS University )                  Rs.1000/

 The registration fee from the outstation participant will take care of board and lodging from the afternoon of the 18th to lunchtime on the 21st. The hotel’s checking out time is: 12 noon. The participants should arrive after noon on the 18th and stay on until the end of the conference on the 21st with lunch. Here is a link to the hotel: http://www.hotelbellacasa.com/. The conference will begin at about 9 am on the 19th. The 18th afternoon could be utilized for local sight seeing, for which an additional fee will be charged.                     

Conference Convener

Lewis Gordon is the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Philosophy, Religion, and Jewish Studies at Temple University, where he also directs the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies, and Visiting Professor of Philosophy and Government at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica. He is the author of Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism (Humanity Books, 1995), Fanon and the Crisis of European Man: An Essay on Philosophy and the Human Sciences (Routledge, 1995), Her Majesty’s Other Children: Sketches of Racism from a Neocolonial Age (Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), which won the Gustavus Myer Award for Outstanding Work on Human Rights in North America, Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential Thought (Routledge, 2000), Disciplinary Decadence: Living Thought in Trying Times (Paradigm Publishers, 2006), An Introduction to Africana Philosophy (Cambridge UP, 2008), and, with Jane Anna Gordon, Of Divine Warning: Reading Disaster in the Modern Age (Paradigm Publishers, 2009).  His edited and co-edited books are Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy (Routledge, 1997), Fanon: A Critical Reader (Blackwell, 1996), A Companion to African-American Studies (Blackwell, 2006), which was chosen as the NetLibrary eBook of the Month for February 2007, and Not Only the Master’s Tools: African-American Studies in Theory and Practice (Paradigm Publishers, 2006).  Professor Gordon has received many accolades for his work, including, more recently, the James and Helen Merritt Distinguished Service Award for Contributions to the Philosophy of Education.  Studies of his work include The C.L.R. James Journal’s summer 2008 issue entitled “Teleological Suspensions in Africana Philosophy,” and the spring 2011 of the Atlantic Journal of Communication, entitled “Beyond Disciplinary Decadence: Communicology in the Thought of Lewis Gordon.” He was President of the Caribbean Philosophical Association from 2003 till 2008.

 Keynote Speaker

Professor Arjun Appadurai, the Goddard Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University will deliver the keynote address.  He is a prominent contemporary social-cultural anthropologist, having formerly served as Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at The New School in NYC. He has held various professorial chairs and visiting appointments at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Chicago, Yale University, and The New School University. In addition, he is a founding editor of Public Culture, one of the most influential cross-disciplinary journals, and has served on several scholarly and advisory bodies in the United States, Latin America, Europe and India. Dr. Appadurai’s books include Fear of Small Numbers (Duke UP, 2006), Globalization (Duke UP, 2001), Modernity at Large (U. Minnesota, 1996), The Social Life of Things (Cambridge UP, 1986), and Worship and Conflict Under Colonial Rule: A South Indian Case (Cambridge UP, 1981). The nature and significance of his contributions throughout his academic career have earned him the reputation as a leading figure in his fields.

 

Plenary Speakers

 a) Enrique Dussel is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at the Iztapalapa campus of the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (Autonomous Metropolitan University, UAM) and also teaches courses at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (National Autonomous University of Mexico, UNAM).  A world-renown scholar in philosophy, history, and theology, he has published more than forty books in these disciplines, has been the subject of many dissertations, scholarly monographs, anthologies, and articles, and has been awarded the Doctorates Honoris Causa from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and the University of San Andrés in Bolivia. He is the founder with others of the movement referred to as the Philosophy of Liberation.  For full bibliography, see: http://www.enriquedussel.org/works.html

 b) Paget Henry is  Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Brown University .  His specializations are Dependency Theory, Caribbean Political Economy, Sociology of Religion, Sociology of Art and Literature, Africana Philosophy and Religion, Race and Ethnic Relations, Poststructuralism, and Critical Theory. He has served on the faculties of SUNY-Stony Brook, University of the West Indies (Antigua), and the University of Virginia.   He is the author of Caliban's Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy (Routledge, 2000), which won the Frantz Fanon Prize for Caribbean Thought, Peripheral Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Antigua (Transaction Books, 1985), and co-editor of C.L.R. James's Caribbean (Duke UP, 1992) and New Caribbean: Decolonization, Democracy, and Development (Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1983).  Henry is editor of The C.L.R. James Journal and co-editor of the Routledge series Africana Thought.  His awards and fellowships include Research Fellow at the Bildner Center for Western Hemispheric Studies, Research Fellow at the Center for Inter-American Relations, and a Ford Foundation Grant.  At SUNY, Henry was a recipient of the Annual Award for Excellence in Teaching four consecutive years (1976 to1980). Henry's distinction also includes the Frederick Sperling Award in Philosophy (City College, 1970).

For further information any of the following may be contacted:

 Prafulla C. Kar

Convener, Forum on Contemporary Theory, Baroda

Tel: 0265-2338067 ®; (0265) 2320870 (O)

Email: prafullakar@gmail.com

Lewis Gordon

Convener of the Conference

Philosophy Department

Temple University

Email: lewgord.CFT@gmail.com

Narendra K. Jain

Local Convener

Dean, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, The IIS University, Mansarovar, Jaipur

Email: enkjain@gmail.com; Mobile: 0-9829714433; 0-9982600018

 

Program-Schedule

Sunday, December 18

Registration at the Hotel

Monday, December 19

9.00-10.15 am

Inauguration

Venue: Daffodil

Chair: Ashok Gupta, Vice Chancellor, The IIS University

9.00-9.05 am          Welcome by Narendra Jain, Dean, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, The IIS University, Jaipur

9.05-9.15 am          Welcome by Prafulla C. Kar, Convener, Forum on Contemporary Theory, Baroda

9.15-9.45 am          Welcome and Thematic Introduction by Lewis Gordon, Convener of the Conference

9.45-10.00 am        Release of the Special Number of the Journal of Contemporary Thought on “Punctuated Renewals: Rabindranath Tagore in the 21st Century” by Arjun Appadurai

10.00-10.10 am     Address by the Chair

10.10-10.15 am     Vote of Thanks by Raakhi Gupta, Rector and Registrar, The IIS University

Opening Song/Poem

10.15-10.30 am

Tea/Coffee

10.30-11.30 am

First Session

Venue: Daffodil

Chair: Lewis Gordon

Keynote Address

Speaker: Arjun Appadurai, The Goddard Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University

Topic: “The Empire of Discipline: Telos, Power and Inquiry in Euro-Modernity”

11.30-1.00 pm

Second Session

A: From a Literary Point of View–Part I

Chair: Rajul Bhargava

Venue: Daffodil (Fifth Floor)

a) Supriya Agarwal, “Challenges for Humanity: Meher Pestonji’s Pervez”

b) Shilpa Bhat D, “Considering Interdisciplinary Studies in Children’s Literature and Management–the Creativity Perspective”

c) Bhumika Sharma, “Interdisciplinary Aesthetics: A Postmodernist Study of Bharati’s Andha Yug”

d) Manashi Bora, “Transcending Disciplinary Decadence in Literary, Especially English Studies”

e) Joya Chakravarty, “Transcending Disciplinary Decadence: Re-Reading Rabindranath Tagore’s Selected Lectures and Addresses”7

B: Critical Pedagogies from the Global South–Part I

Chair: Meera Chakravorty

Venue: Daffodil Pre-Function (Fifth Floor)

a) Sharada Ajit, “Text as Pretext: Teaching English at the Tertiary Level”

b) Arzuman Ara “Critical Humanities and Teaching of English in India ”

c) Baishakhi Bhattacharya, “Interaction, Action, Education: Learning to Teach Communication in English”

d) Pathik Roy, “Rethinking Pedagogy and Indian Writing in English: The Politics of Exclusion and Exclusivity”

e) Renu Josan, “Contours of Higher Education: Worldliness vis-à-vis Better Worldliness”

C: Critique of Canonical Reason, Critique of Theoretical Reason

Chair: Santosh Gupta

Venue: Board Room (Fourth Floor)

a) Hosam Aboul-Ela, “The Postcolonial Divide in Canons of Theory”

b) Narendra Kumar, “Race and the Politics of Representation: Epistemological Challenges Posed by the Revisionary Studies of Canonical Literatures”

c) Sunil Agnani, “Hating Empire Properly: Enlightenment Anticolonialism at Its Limit”

d) D. Laura Dameris Chellajothi, “Disciplinary Decadence: An Enquiry”

e) Anjana Raghavan and Jyotirmaya Tripathy, “Unbodied Knowledges: Eliding the Corporeal in Theory”

Lunch

1.00-2.00 pm

2.00-3.30 pm

Third Session

A: From a Literary Point of View–Part II

Chair: Jyotirmaya Tripathy

Venue: Board Room

a) Meera Chakravorty, “Tagore’s Varsity: Exploring Challenges”

b) Rakesh Desai, “The Negotiation of the Sacred and the Profane: A Subaltern Reading of Premchand’s Godan”

c) Prakash Joshi, “Intertextualities and Narratologies: A Study of Namita Gokhale’s ‘A Himalayan Love Story’ and ‘The Book of Shadows’”

d) Arun Soule, “Heteroglossia in Godan: The Subversive Role of the Minor Characters”

e) Tore Mukherjee Holst, “ Reading and Touring the Slums”

B: Critical Pedagogies from the Global South–Part II

Chair: Sudha Rai

Venue: Daffodil Pre-Function

a) Sukhdeep Ghuman, “Disciplinary Divide and Rule: Perspectives from a Department of English”

b) Rashmi Mathur, “Bricolage of English Studies as English for Special Purposes”

c) Chitra Panikkar, “Living with a Discipline Critically: Theoretical Shifts in Literary Studies, and Pedagogical Challenges”

d) Divya Joshi, “ India ’s Dialogic Tradition and Humanities’ Classrooms”

e) Charulata Singh, “New Communication Technologies, Higher Education and Human Development”8

C: Rebellions, Existential and Otherwise, in the Midst of Decadence–Africa, the Middle East, and South America

Chair: Paget Henry

Venue: Daffodil

a) Tunde Bewaji, “Destroyed Past, Truncated Present, Dubious Future – Africa in the Throes of Disciplinary Decadence”

b) Lawrence Ogbo Ugwuanyi, “From Geopolitics to ‘Geosophy’: Advancing and Applying an African Tradition of Philosophy to Construct a Knowledge Base for the South”

c) Ayman Bakr, “Post-Autocracy Era in the Middle East : The Shift of Legitimacy in Arabic Academia”

d) Adriana Barreiro-Díaz, “Social Sciences in Uruguay : Agendas, Decolonizations, Challenges and Sisyphus”

e) Costica Bradatan, “‘Not even death is what it used to be’: Notes on a Certain Philosophical Decadence”

3.30-5.00 pm

Fourth Session (Plenary)

Reading Orientalism, Reading Genomics

Chair: Arjun Appadurai

Venue: Daffodil

a) Sonia Dayan-Hezbrun, Professor Emerita of Gender Studies and Political Sociology at University Paris 7 and at the Ecole des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris), “Edward Said’s Orientalism in France: Misreading or Misunderstanding?”

b) Dorothy E. Roberts, Kirkland & Ellis Professor, Northwestern University School of Law, “Race, Genomic Science, and the Disciplinary Battle over the Meaning of Humanity”

5.00-5.15 pm

Tea/Coffee

5.15-6.45 pm

Fifth Session (Plenary)

Premchand’s “Godan”

Chair: R. Radhakrishnan

Venue: Daffodil

a) Jasbir Jain, Director, Institute for Research in Interdisciplinary Studies, Jaipur, “Contradictory Discourses: Fractures in Realism”

b) Jagdish N. Sharma, Former Professor of English, Jay Narayan Vyas University , Jodhpur , “Godan’s Women”

6.45-7.00 pm

Closing Day Poem/Song

Tuesday, December 20

9.00-9.15 am

Opening Day Poem/Song

9.15-10.45 am

Sixth Session (Plenary)

Afro-Caribbean, Indo-Caribbean Philosophy and Literature

Chair: Nikolas Kompridis

Venue: Daffodil9

a) Paget Henry, Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Brown University , “Afro- and Indo-Caribbean Philosophies: Their Contributions to Contemporary Theory”

b) Brinda Mehta, Germaine Thompson Professor of French and Francophone Studies, Mills College , Oakland , California , “Kala Pani Discursivity: Framing Indo-Caribbean Literature”

10.45-11.00 am

Tea/Coffee

11.00-12.30 pm

Seventh Session

A: From a Literary Point of View–Part III

Chair: Rakesh Desai

Venue: Board Room

a) Janesh Kapoor, “A Glance Beyond Disciplinary Bounds: Re-Writing and Transcreating History on Literary Canvas”

b) Mini Nanda, “In the Mahatma’s Footsteps with Evolving Literary Sensibility: Premchand’s Godan”

c) Jaspal Kaur Singh, “A Comparative Postcolonial Analysis: The Construction and Representations of Sikhs in Colonial and Postcolonial English Literature”

d) James J. Winchester, “Not Just Helen’s Vice: The Life-Affirming Other Pleasures in Morrison’s Love and Adiga’s White Tiger”

e) Shefali, “Cultural Identity: Interdisciplinary Relevance of Indian Diaspora Fiction”

B: Critical Pedagogies from the Global South–Part III

Chair: NDR Chandra

Venue: Daffodil Pre-Function

a) Asima Ranjan Parhi, “Decolonizing the Classroom in 21st Century: Ideology, Theory and Value”

b) Sushila Rathore, “Developing Communication Competence in the Students through Face to Face Conversation”

c) Saumya Kanti Biswas, “Contesting Problem of Disciplinary Decadence: A Dialogical/Critical Approach towards the Communicative/Expressive Diversities and Their Limitations”

d) Shelly Narang, “Teaching in a World of Contestable Shiftiness: Challenges and Alternatives”

e) Marie Fernandes, “Preparing Undergraduates to Face the Challenges of the Real World”

C: Embodiment, Gender, Sex, Sexuality: Engendering and Queering Disciplinarity, Embodying Theory

Chair: Nikhil Moro

Venue: Daffodil

a) Krishna Menon, “The Creative Uncertainty of Contemporary Political Theory”

b) Anup Shekhar Chakraborty, “Detoxification, Alteration, Mutation & Hybridization: ‘Queering’ Social Science Research in the South”

c) Sunita Manian, “Behind the Shroud of Heteronormative Silence: Tales of Same-Sex Desire”

d) Joe Demsy Christopher, “More Than Play: A Case for Study of Sports in Humanities”

e) Lucia Trimbur, “Invisible Instruction: The Critical Pedagogies of Boxing Trainers”10

12.30-1.00 pm

Eighth Session (Plenary)

Making Internet Technologies Accessible

Chair: Lewis Gordon

Venue: Daffodil

Speaker: Rama Sundaram, “Using Appropriate Technological Tools to Connect Students to University Education”

1.00-2.00 pm

Lunch

2.00-3.30 pm

Ninth Session

A: Interdisciplinarity and Transdisciplinarity–Part I

Chair: Sunita Manian

Venue: Daffodil Pre-Function

a) Santosh Gupta, “Interdisciplinary Pedagogy: The Challenges for Scholarship”

b) Preeti Bhatt, “Bridging the Gap between the Humanities and the Sciences through Interdisciplinary Studies”

c) Neeti Mahajan, “An Interdisciplinary Approach to Studying English Literature in a Technocratic, Globalized World”

d) Diksha Sharma, “Interdisciplinarity: An Antidote to Disciplinary Decadence”

e) Urmil Talwar, “Alternate Pedagogies”

B: Decolonizing Education

Chair: Jagdish N. Sharma

Venue: Board Room

a) Rajul Bhargava, “Working towards an Organic Whole: The Dialectics of Decolonising Education”

b) Tal Correm, “Councils in the Classroom: Reframing Politics and Education Following Hannah Arendt”

c) William D. Pederson, “Abraham Lincoln’s Global Legacy in Education”

d) Tora Mahanta, “The Purpose of Education and Self Realization in Present Times”

e) Rachana Sharma, “Arts, Humanities and Sensitivity”

C: Popular Culture, Critical Epistemologies, and the Poetics of Decadence

Chair: Mohamed Mehdi

Venue: Daffodil

a) Sanjay Kumar, “Exploring Cultural Nuances through Literature and Cinema”

b) Golam Rabbani, “Books or Films or Television: Difficulties in Recognizing English Literature as an Interdisciplinary Discourse in Bangladesh ”

c) Anand Mahanand, “Folklore and Critical Thinking”

d) Padam Nepal, “Oppressed Epistemologies: Critical Engagement with the Counter Hegemonic Discourses in Protest Movement Politics”

e) Rimika Singhvi, “Poetry in the Times of Global Diversity”

3.30-3.45 pm

Tea/Coffee

3.45-5.15 pm

Tenth Session

A: Interdisciplinarity and Transdisciplinarity–Part II

Chair: C. N. Ajit

Venue: Board Room11

a) Sony Pellissery, “Methods for Wisdom?: How Trans-Disciplinary Inquiry Worked in Ancient Greece and India ”

b) Nizara Hazarika, “Decolonization of Knowledge and the Emergence of New Humanities”

c) Mashrur Shahid Hossain, “How Much English Is (Should) English (Be) Now: Humanities vis-à-vis Disciplinary CONvergence”

d) Sudha Rai, “Convergence: Emerging Trends and Future Possibilities for Interdisciplinary Re-formation in the Humanities and Social Sciences”

e) Jyoti Rane, “Countering Decadence: Mapping a Society of the Future”

B: Questioning Technologies

Chair: William Pederson

Venue: Daffodil Pre-Function

a) Sunita Agarwal, “Negotiating Knowledge: Intervention of Technology”

b) N.D.R. Chandra & B. K. Patel, “Lived Inquiry into Ecology of Human Condition: Knowledge, Technology and Commodity”

c) Aruni Mahapatra, “Critical Pedagogy in the Digital Age”

d) Rajbala Singh, “Relevance of Humanities and Social Sciences: A Qualitative Exploration among Technical Students”

e) Fritz Umbach, “Making Objects Speak: New Pedagogies and New Technologies in the Museum”

C: Critiques of Method

Chair: Jaspal Kaur Singh

Venue: Daffodil

a) Shikha Dixit, “Social Representations of Humanities and Social Sciences Education among Engineering Students”

b) Bini B. S., “The Process, Poetics and Politics of Historiography: Some Epistemological and Methodological Concerns”

c) Julia Suárez-Krabbe, “Other Than Scientific? ‘Methodological Proximity’ as a Decolonizing Methodology”

d) Ariella Werden, “Holistic Approaches to Judaism: Studying Jewishness Outside of a Center-Margin Framework”

e) Pankaj Roy, “Disciplinary Decadence in the Humanities: Challenges to Teaching Methodology, Role of Faculty and Media”

5.15-6.45 pm

Eleventh Session (Plenary)

Disciplining and Undisciplining the Humanities

Chair: Bishnu N. Mohapatra

Venue: Daffodil

a) Nikolas Kompridis, Professorial Fellow in Philosophy and Political Theory at the Centre for Citizenship and Public Policy, University of Western Sydney , “Toward a Counter-Science of the Human: Renewing the Role of the Humanities in the 21st Century”

b) R. Radhakrishnan, Chancellor’s Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California , Irvine , “At home, in the world, within the discipline: or, how worldly is the world?”12

7.00-8.00 pm

Cultural Program by Students of The IIS University

Venue: The IIS University Auditorium (Transportation will be provided. The bus will leave the hotel at 6.45 pm.)

8.30-9.30 pm

Dinner at the Hotel (All Participants are Invited.)

Wednesday, December 21

9.00-10.30 am

Twelfth Session

A: The Future of the Humanities

Chair: Tunde Bewaji

Venue: Daffodil Pre-Function

a) K. M. Johnson, “Mondialisation and Cosmopolitanism: The Future of the Humanities”

b) Mohamed Mehdi, “The Humanities as a Movement: Leisure and Politics”

c) Deepa S. P. Mathur, “Humanities and Culture: Rethinking the ‘Discipline’ in a Globalised World”

d) Alice Samson, “New Media and Literary Studies in India ”

e) Ashes Kumar Nayak, “Media & the Politics of Knowledge”

B: Call for Innovation

Chair: James J. Winchester

Venue: Board Room

a) C.N.Ajit, “Challenges for Research: Some Generic Factors”

b) M. Roja Lakshmi & V. Dileep Kumar, “Doing Social Sciences and Humanities Research: Problems and Challenges”

c) Mahesh Sharma, “Narrativizing the Research in Humanities: A New Technique of ‘Telling Research’”

d) Anu Sabhlok and Chetna Sood, “‘Sleeping with the Enemy’: Creating Space for Humanities and Social Sciences in Science Institutes”

e) Sonu Shiva and Chakravarti JN Shrimali, “From ‘Next Year’ to ‘This Monday’: A Need for Quick Goals and Outcomes”

C: Crises in the Human Sciences, Liberating the Social and Life Sciences

Chair: Brinda Mehta

Venue: Daffodil

a) Thorsten Botz-Bornstein, “The Crisis of the Human Sciences”

b) Lars Jensen, “ Finding Ways of Getting Rid of New Public Management and the Neoliberal Order: A Work in and on Progress”

c) Mandakini V. Jha, “A Critique of Sociology and Its Nativization in India”

d) S. Uma Devi “Some Reflections on the Agenda for Future Sociology in India”

e) Pushp Lata, “Inculcating Critical Thinking among Technocrats through Public Speaking Course: A Tool to Contain Disciplinary Decadence”

10.30-10.45 am

Tea/Coffee13

10.45-12.15 pm

Thirteenth Session (Closing Plenary)

“On the State of the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Today”

Chair: Dorothy E. Roberts

Venue: Daffodil

a) Lewis R. Gordon, The Laura H. Carnell Professor of Philosophy, Religion, and Jewish Studies at Temple University, “ Open Letter to a Reporter on the State of the Humanities and Social Science Research and Teaching”

b) Bishnu Mohapatra, Senior Visiting Fellow, South Asian Studies Programme, National University of Singapore, “‘Discipline’ and Perish?– Challenges of ‘Un-Belonging’”

a) Patricia Pisters, Chair, Department of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam “The Neuro-Image: Methodological Challenges of Exploring the Neuro-Turn in the Humanities”

c) Narendra K. Jain, Dean, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, The IIS University, Jaipur, “Sustaining Academic Standards: Challenges from Money Culture and Theory”

d) Prafulla Kar, Director, Centre for Contemporary Theory, Baroda, “The Need for the Humanities in a Digital Age”

12.15-1.00 pm

Open Session, Valedictory and Closing Song

Chair: Prafulla C. Kar

Venue: Daffodil

1.00-2.00 pm

Lunch