Call for Papers
The 1st National Conference on Posthumanism and the Ecological Crisis organized by the Department of English, Brainware University will be held on January 29, 2022.The objective is to motivate and assist esteemed faculty members, research scholars and students from various institutions for sharing their work through presentations and publication of their state-of-the-art research.
Introduction
It would seem that the entity known as 'the human' and its many attendant humanisms have suffered blows to its narcissistic epistemological self-centering for centuries now. A hundred years ago, Freud in his 1915-1917 lectures titled Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis pointed out how Copernicus in the 16th century struck the first blow at humanity's self-love by claiming that the earth was not in fact at the center of the universe but one of many planets that revolved around the sun. Darwin was the deliverer of the next blow in the 19th century since he robbed man's status as the species created specially by God whereas Freud considered himself the progenitor of the third humiliation as he demonstrated that the ego was not even the master in its own house.
A strong anti-humanist tradition may be traced in mid-twentieth century philosophical thought as well, with Heidegger's criticism of Sartre's humanist existentialism in his Letter on Humanism, and Derrida's subsequent dismantling of the 'Human Sciences' in 'Structure, Sign and Play' which many take to be the inaugural moment of post structuralism. In the closing decades of the twentieth century and the opening decades of the twenty first, the acknowledgement of the climate emergency by international bodies and the growing consensus among climate scientists regarding human complicity in the same has lent an ecological accent to the many posthumanisms ascendant in the academy today.
The link between human history and natural history - a link extensively probed in the various Hegelian and Marxist traditions of inquiry - has acquired a new weight today with the proposal of the era of the Anthropocene by Krutzen in 2000: a classification of geological time which sees human activity post the Industrial Revolution as a geological force shaping the planet. The link between a possible human future and the future of the planet however, has become tenuous - it is easier to imagine an apocalyptic future devoid of any humans than it is to conceive one where humanity manages to survive the climate crisis.
Whether it be Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak's 'planetarity', Timothy Morton's 'ecology without nature', Dipesh Chakrabarty's four theses on the climate of history or Quentin Meillassoux's speculative materialist idea of the 'great outdoors' - the relation of 'the human' with 'nature', 'history' or 'the thing-in-itself' is being rethought with an urgency not previously felt.
Sub-themes
Proposals are invited for papers pertaining to (but not limited to) the following themes:
- Capitalism and the Anthropocene
- Posthumanism and Planetarity
- The Industrial Revolution and Climate Change
- Literature and Posthumanism
- Literature and Planetarity
- Literature and the Capitalocene
- Sci-Fi and Posthumanism
- New Media and the Climate Crisis
- Literature and the Ecological Crisis
- Migration and Climate Change
- The Literature of Objects
Keynote Speaker 1
Dr. Subhadeep Paul
Dr. Subhadeep Paul is presently Assistant Professor, Department of English, School of Literature, Language and Cultural Studies, Bankura University, West Bengal. He has previously taught at the P.G. Department of English, Maulana Azad (Govt.) College, Kolkata. He was Co-Director of a Two-Year Major Research Project (2016-18) entitled “Discoursing the Homeless Elderly: Tropes, Desires, Containment” (funded by the I.C.S.S.R., in collaboration with The University of Swansea, UK). He has co-edited Anxieties, Influences & After: Critical Responses to Postcolonialism & Neocolonialism (Worldview Publishers, in association with Wimbledon Press, UK, 2009) and authored Finite Sketches, Infinite Reaches (Writers Workshop, Kolkata, 2009). His forthcoming co-edited volume Beyond the Heteronorm: Interrogating Critical Alterities has been endorsed by Lexington Books Rowman & Littlefield.
Keynote Speaker 2
Dr. Arka Chattopadhyay
Arka Chattopadhyay is assistant professor of literary studies and philosophy in the department of Humanities and Social ciences at IIT Gandhinagar, India. He is a B.A., M.A., MPhil in English Literature, from Presidency College and Jadavpur University, India. He has written his MPHIL thesis on Samuel Beckett and Alain Badiou and finished his PHD from Western Sydney University on Beckett and Lacanian Psychoanalysis with a Dean’s Thesis Prize. He has been published in books like Deleuze and Beckett, Knots: Post-Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Literature and Film, Gerald Murnane: Another World in this One etc., and journals such as Textual Practice, Interventions, Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui, Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society, Sound Studies and The Harold Pinter Review. He has co-edited the book, Samuel Beckett and the Encounter of Philosophy and Literature and has guest-edited the SBT/A issue on Samuel Beckett and the Extensions of the Mind. Arka is the founding editor of the online literary journal Sanglap (http://sanglap-journal.in/) and a contributing editor to Harold Pinter Review. His first monograph, Beckett, Lacan and the Mathematical Writing of the Real has been published by Bloomsbury Academic UK in 2019. He has recently co-edited a volume on Nabarun Bhattacharya for Bloomsbury India in 2020 and is working on a monograph on Posthumanism, contracted by Orient Blackswan and two edited volumes on Affective Ecologies and Badiou and Modernism. He has won MLA and ACLA travel grants and successfully organised national and international conferences in India and Australia.
Session Chair
Dr. Mukulika Dattagupta
Dr. Mukulika Dattagupta is currentlyworking as an Associate Professor inthe department of English Languageand Literature of School of LiberalArts and Culture Studies at AdamasUniversity, Barasat. She has beenteaching since 2006 in severalcapacities at Jadavpur University andat Adamas University. She hascompleted her B.A., M.A. and Ph.Dfrom the department of ComparativeLiterature at Jadavpur UniversityKolkata. She has also worked as ayouth volunteer in a collaborativeproject of UNICEF and the School ofMedia Communication and Culture,Jadavpur University. She was hostedby the University of South Carolina,Aiken, USA as a Fulbright-NehruDoctoral Research Fellow, 2014-15.She has delivered quite a number ofinvited class lectures at theUniversity of South Carolina, Aiken,USA, and The Appalachian StateUniversity, USA and at JadavpurUniversity, Kolkata. Her researchinterests are in African Americanliterature and children’s literature.Currently she is working on travelwriting as well.
Submission Guidelines
• Full paper (2000-3000 words) along with an abstract (250-300 words) need to be submitted to the following: dkm.hu@brainwareuniversity.ac.in
• Paper and abstract need to be formatted as per the MLA 8th edition.
• Font Name: Times New Roman, Font Size: 12 for Body, 14 (Bold) for Header, Line Spacing: 2.0, Alignment: Justified
• Last date for submission of full paper and abstract: January 17, 2022
Paper Submission Through
dkm.hu@brainwareuniversity.ac.in
Publication
All accepted and presented papers will be published as conference proceedings.
Important Dates
Last date for the submission of full paper along with abstract | January 17, 2022 |
Notification of acceptance | January 20, 2022 |
Last date for registration for paper presentation | January 24, 2022 |
Date of the conference (Online Mode through Google Meet) | January 29, 2022 |
Organizing Committee
Chief Patron
Mr. Phalguni Mookhopadhayay
Chancellor Brainware University
Patron
Prof. (Dr.) Sankar Gangopadhyay
Vice Chancellor Brainware University
Convenor
Ms. Anandita Das
HOD Department of English & Literary Studies
Co-convenor
Mr. Alankar Das Dalal
Assistant Professor Department of English & Literary Studies
Mr. Sourav Das
Assistant Professor Department of English & Literary Studies
Technical Committee Members |
Ms. Shrestha Chatterjee Assistant Professor, Department of English & Literary Studies, Brainware University |
Mr. Dibyokamal Mitra Assistant Professor, Department of English & Literary Studies, Brainware University |
|
Advisory Committee Members |
Ms. Anandita Das Assistant Registrar, Brainware University |
Publicity Committee Members |
Ms. Monamie Mukherjee Assistant Professor, Department of English & Literary Studies, Brainware University |
Ms. Oindrila Roy Assistant Professor, Department of English & Literary Studies, Brainware University |
|
Finance Committee Members |
Ms. Monamie Mukherjee Assistant Professor, Department of English & Literary Studies, Brainware University |
Registration Fee
Indian Presenters | ₹ 500/- |
For Participants Only | ₹ 200/- |
International Presenters | 15 USD |
Payment Details
Bank Name | ICICI Bank |
Account Holder’s Name | Brainware University |
Account No. | 082401002764 |
Account Type | Savings |
IFS Code | ICIC0000824 |
Branch Name | Barasat |
Contact Details For Queries
Shrestha Chatterjee | ✆ 9051821504 ✉ shc.hu@brainwareuniversity.ac.in |
Dibyokamal Mitra | ✆ 9836056003 ✉ dkm.hu@brainwareuniversity.ac.in |
Schedules pertaining to the conference will be intimated to the Paper Presenters/ Participants in due course of time.