english Archives - 51 /tag/english/ Thu, 18 Apr 2024 07:13:59 +0000 en-US hourly 1 /wp-content/uploads/2021/08/favicon.png english Archives - 51 /tag/english/ 32 32 Saikat Majumdar appointed a Fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Study, South Africa /saikat-majumdar-appointed-a-fellow-at-the-stellenbosch-institute-of-advanced-study-south-africa/ /saikat-majumdar-appointed-a-fellow-at-the-stellenbosch-institute-of-advanced-study-south-africa/#respond Mon, 31 Oct 2022 07:42:03 +0000 /?p=36893

<strong>Saikat Majumdar appointed a Fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Study, South Africa</strong>

The Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Study, located in Stellenbosch, near Cape Town, is one of the leading research centres in Africa. Here, leading researchers and intellectuals from across the globe are supported to think innovatively and to pursue sustainable strategies to the challenges facing the world, with a special reference to, but not limited to Africa. Recent fellows include the writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, 2021; Tsitsi Dangarembga, novelist from Zimbabwe; James Ferguson, the leading African anthropologist; Derek Attridge, noted literary scholar.

STIAS launched the Nobel in Africa Initiative in partnership with Stellenbosch University, under the auspices of the Nobel Foundation and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences with funding from the Knut & Alice Wallenberg Foundation. The Nobel Symposium activities were initiated in 1965. Through the Initiative, STIAS will become the first institution outside of Scandinavia to host Nobel Symposia on behalf of the Nobel Foundation.

Saikat Majumdar has been awarded the fellowship to support his research project – The Amateur: autodidactism and self-making in the postcolony, a book about unexpected forms of reading, writing, and learning as they unfolded on the corners of the historical British Empire. It offers accounts of autodidactism and personal growth under forms of colonial rule and repressive or exclusionary systems of education – and the consequent amateurism that have shaped public intellectuals of wide and popular appeal.

The book draws on three locations: a group of black intellectuals in mid-century South Africa in the aftermath of the exclusionary Bantu Education Act of 1953, a number of 20th century Caribbean writers who offer diffident encounters with England as part of their literary bildung, and a group of writers from late-colonial and early-postcolonial India whose intellectual amateurism chart dissident relations with the British project of professionalizing a particular kind of colonial subject. The book will be published internationally by Bloomsbury, who has also published a collection of essays on this subject, The Critic as Amateur (2019), edited by Saikat and Aarthi Vadde from Duke University, with contributions from India, US, UK, Australia, and South Africa.

“I’ve been working and thinking about this project for several years now,” Saikat said. “the core question I’m trying to address is whether thinking and writing about art and literature is a specialist pursuit, or can anyone with passion for them join the conversation productively, irrespective of training or background. As a novelist who also writes about literature and education for the mainstream media, the idea of amateur, popular, or generalist criticism has occupied me for a long time. Looking at the growth and development of writers and thinkers who variously struggled with poor or exclusionary education systems in the colonized world but developed as entertaining amateurs has given me many insights.”

“South Africa, particularly black intellectuals under apartheid, play a crucial role in this book, so I’m excited to be able do some of the work while based at the Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Study.”

Some of Saikat’s work on this subject has already been published – in the journals PMLA (Publication of the Modern Language Association) and New Literary History, and is forthcoming in the Cambridge Companion to the Essay, as well as in popular venues such as the Los Angeles Review of Books, Hindu, Scroll, etc.

“This project, along with the South African experience,” Saikat said, “I’m hoping, will also re-energize my teaching as a return to Ashoka after my sabbatical, particularly with my Foundation course, Literature and the World, and my course for English majors, Postcolonial Literature.”

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<strong>Saikat Majumdar appointed a Fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Study, South Africa</strong>

The Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Study, located in Stellenbosch, near Cape Town, is one of the leading research centres in Africa. Here, leading researchers and intellectuals from across the globe are supported to think innovatively and to pursue sustainable strategies to the challenges facing the world, with a special reference to, but not limited to Africa. Recent fellows include the writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, 2021; Tsitsi Dangarembga, novelist from Zimbabwe; James Ferguson, the leading African anthropologist; Derek Attridge, noted literary scholar.

STIAS launched the Nobel in Africa Initiative in partnership with Stellenbosch University, under the auspices of the Nobel Foundation and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences with funding from the Knut & Alice Wallenberg Foundation. The Nobel Symposium activities were initiated in 1965. Through the Initiative, STIAS will become the first institution outside of Scandinavia to host Nobel Symposia on behalf of the Nobel Foundation.

Saikat Majumdar has been awarded the fellowship to support his research project – The Amateur: autodidactism and self-making in the postcolony, a book about unexpected forms of reading, writing, and learning as they unfolded on the corners of the historical British Empire. It offers accounts of autodidactism and personal growth under forms of colonial rule and repressive or exclusionary systems of education – and the consequent amateurism that have shaped public intellectuals of wide and popular appeal.

The book draws on three locations: a group of black intellectuals in mid-century South Africa in the aftermath of the exclusionary Bantu Education Act of 1953, a number of 20th century Caribbean writers who offer diffident encounters with England as part of their literary bildung, and a group of writers from late-colonial and early-postcolonial India whose intellectual amateurism chart dissident relations with the British project of professionalizing a particular kind of colonial subject. The book will be published internationally by Bloomsbury, who has also published a collection of essays on this subject, The Critic as Amateur (2019), edited by Saikat and Aarthi Vadde from Duke University, with contributions from India, US, UK, Australia, and South Africa.

“I’ve been working and thinking about this project for several years now,” Saikat said. “the core question I’m trying to address is whether thinking and writing about art and literature is a specialist pursuit, or can anyone with passion for them join the conversation productively, irrespective of training or background. As a novelist who also writes about literature and education for the mainstream media, the idea of amateur, popular, or generalist criticism has occupied me for a long time. Looking at the growth and development of writers and thinkers who variously struggled with poor or exclusionary education systems in the colonized world but developed as entertaining amateurs has given me many insights.”

“South Africa, particularly black intellectuals under apartheid, play a crucial role in this book, so I’m excited to be able do some of the work while based at the Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Study.”

Some of Saikat’s work on this subject has already been published – in the journals PMLA (Publication of the Modern Language Association) and New Literary History, and is forthcoming in the Cambridge Companion to the Essay, as well as in popular venues such as the Los Angeles Review of Books, Hindu, Scroll, etc.

“This project, along with the South African experience,” Saikat said, “I’m hoping, will also re-energize my teaching as a return to Ashoka after my sabbatical, particularly with my Foundation course, Literature and the World, and my course for English majors, Postcolonial Literature.”

51

]]> /saikat-majumdar-appointed-a-fellow-at-the-stellenbosch-institute-of-advanced-study-south-africa/feed/ 0 The Novelist as Professor: In Conversation with Saikat Majumdar /the-novelist-as-professor-in-conversation-with-saikat-majumdar/ /the-novelist-as-professor-in-conversation-with-saikat-majumdar/#respond Tue, 01 Mar 2022 04:44:22 +0000 /?p=25433

The Novelist as Professor: In Conversation with Saikat Majumdar

It’s 5 PM on a Wednesday evening. As customary, Professor Saikat Majumdar has just wound up his day of teaching English and Creative Writing at 51, albeit in a virtual mode. The sun is gradually inching towards the horizon and the campus wears a deserted look, almost like a forlorn lover ~ patiently waiting for the students to return and transform it into an oasis of knowledge and bliss that Ashoka is synonymous with.

There is a sense of euphoria in the air, a sparkle in Prof Majumdar’s eyes as he appears on the screen for this interview. A household figure in Indian publishing and easily one of the most accomplished South Asian novelists, Prof Majumdar’s name is bound to send shivers down the spine of his interviewer. 

But the advantage of being a seasoned academic is that one is able to transform any gathering into a classroom, and lest we forget, Prof Majumdar’s classes are known for being conversational as opposed to ones that are framed around monologues and lectures. With his simplicity and down-to-earth approach, his presence immediately uplifts the atmosphere and allows the interviewer to draw him in on a range of subjects, reflecting on a life around words and teaching while also setting the context for his latest offering. But I may be getting ahead of myself. 

Born and raised in what was then Calcutta, some of Saikat’s earliest adventures were centered around books. By the time he was in the twelfth standard, he was already an inquisitive reader, devouring classics and other books that appealed to the then teenager. The British Council Library came as a blessing to the young lad as he now had access to many more books than he could have fathomed. What is also noteworthy here is that Saikat was reading a lot of Books in English as well as in Bangla ~ one of the exclusive advantages of growing up in the Cultural Capital of India. 

And then he met Purushottama Lal, known for his transcreation of the Mahabharata, who was also the founder of publishing firm Writer’s Workshop. This was no ordinary meeting for the memories remain vivid even over a decade after Lal’s passing. He encouraged Saikat to write and published some of his earliest stories too. Who could have then thought that the world was his stage and fate had much greater plans for Saikat? 

He would spend most of the following years in the West before teaching at Stanford University, and being named a Fellow at the Humanities Centre at Wellesley College. In the shoes of an academic, Prof Majumdar has since touched and inspired many young minds and has found a home for his creative talents at 51 where he is Head of the Department of Creative Writing. 

But writing isn’t something that he only teaches, it is also a very personal and experiential journey for him. 

“It is a very isolated activity,” he quipped, before adding that literature is the most intellectual of all art forms because all other art forms are very sensual as they appeal to the senses directly. Literature, he maintained, is the only art form that happens through a medium that is entirely artificial, language. 

And so is the personal journey of a writer; it can’t be picked up like Engineering but is more of a process of self-training and discovering the realms that cannot be taught. “There is something wild about writing, it’s a lot like life that happens everywhere and you cannot leave any slice out,” said Prof Majumdar, who has earlier authored acclaimed novels The Scent of God, The Firebird, and Silverfish, besides publishing a book of literary criticism ~ Prose of the World, a general nonfiction book on higher education ~ College: Pathways of Possibility, and co-edited a collection of essays ~ The Critic as Amateur. 

He loves teaching but the advantage of being at 51 is that none of the professors here are just teachers, they are researchers, scientists, writers, public intellectuals and are actively contributing to their respective fields. This liberty is perhaps what has kept the fire alive in the novelist of our subject and what better way to assess the heat than turning the gaze on his latest offering ~ The Middle Finger. 

This novel is the melting pot of a writer and a professor, set in a campus and told through the eyes of two female characters. Though it is a fictional story, the experiences that he has had teaching in both India and the West must have found their way somewhere in the manuscript. On being probed about the distinction between fiction and nonfiction and whether a novel set in a campus allows a greater degree of freedom for the writer who also happens to be a professor, he said that he was drawn to the idea of imagining the Ekalavya myth in a contemporary college campus, particularly with the debates around equity and access to education, and those around the nature and limits of the student-teacher relationship. 

There is something more about The Middle Finger that will intrigue you to visit the nearest bookstore and grab a copy. This novel is Prof Majumdar’s closest brush with poetry; he says he has never been a poet but the protagonist of The Middle Finger is a poet, which takes us back to what he said earlier about writing ~ that there is something wild about writing that can only be discovered through the very act!

(Written by Saket Suman)

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The Novelist as Professor: In Conversation with Saikat Majumdar

It’s 5 PM on a Wednesday evening. As customary, Professor Saikat Majumdar has just wound up his day of teaching English and Creative Writing at 51, albeit in a virtual mode. The sun is gradually inching towards the horizon and the campus wears a deserted look, almost like a forlorn lover ~ patiently waiting for the students to return and transform it into an oasis of knowledge and bliss that Ashoka is synonymous with.

There is a sense of euphoria in the air, a sparkle in Prof Majumdar’s eyes as he appears on the screen for this interview. A household figure in Indian publishing and easily one of the most accomplished South Asian novelists, Prof Majumdar’s name is bound to send shivers down the spine of his interviewer. 

But the advantage of being a seasoned academic is that one is able to transform any gathering into a classroom, and lest we forget, Prof Majumdar’s classes are known for being conversational as opposed to ones that are framed around monologues and lectures. With his simplicity and down-to-earth approach, his presence immediately uplifts the atmosphere and allows the interviewer to draw him in on a range of subjects, reflecting on a life around words and teaching while also setting the context for his latest offering. But I may be getting ahead of myself. 

Born and raised in what was then Calcutta, some of Saikat’s earliest adventures were centered around books. By the time he was in the twelfth standard, he was already an inquisitive reader, devouring classics and other books that appealed to the then teenager. The British Council Library came as a blessing to the young lad as he now had access to many more books than he could have fathomed. What is also noteworthy here is that Saikat was reading a lot of Books in English as well as in Bangla ~ one of the exclusive advantages of growing up in the Cultural Capital of India. 

And then he met Purushottama Lal, known for his transcreation of the Mahabharata, who was also the founder of publishing firm Writer’s Workshop. This was no ordinary meeting for the memories remain vivid even over a decade after Lal’s passing. He encouraged Saikat to write and published some of his earliest stories too. Who could have then thought that the world was his stage and fate had much greater plans for Saikat? 

He would spend most of the following years in the West before teaching at Stanford University, and being named a Fellow at the Humanities Centre at Wellesley College. In the shoes of an academic, Prof Majumdar has since touched and inspired many young minds and has found a home for his creative talents at 51 where he is Head of the Department of Creative Writing. 

But writing isn’t something that he only teaches, it is also a very personal and experiential journey for him. 

“It is a very isolated activity,” he quipped, before adding that literature is the most intellectual of all art forms because all other art forms are very sensual as they appeal to the senses directly. Literature, he maintained, is the only art form that happens through a medium that is entirely artificial, language. 

And so is the personal journey of a writer; it can’t be picked up like Engineering but is more of a process of self-training and discovering the realms that cannot be taught. “There is something wild about writing, it’s a lot like life that happens everywhere and you cannot leave any slice out,” said Prof Majumdar, who has earlier authored acclaimed novels The Scent of God, The Firebird, and Silverfish, besides publishing a book of literary criticism ~ Prose of the World, a general nonfiction book on higher education ~ College: Pathways of Possibility, and co-edited a collection of essays ~ The Critic as Amateur. 

He loves teaching but the advantage of being at 51 is that none of the professors here are just teachers, they are researchers, scientists, writers, public intellectuals and are actively contributing to their respective fields. This liberty is perhaps what has kept the fire alive in the novelist of our subject and what better way to assess the heat than turning the gaze on his latest offering ~ The Middle Finger. 

This novel is the melting pot of a writer and a professor, set in a campus and told through the eyes of two female characters. Though it is a fictional story, the experiences that he has had teaching in both India and the West must have found their way somewhere in the manuscript. On being probed about the distinction between fiction and nonfiction and whether a novel set in a campus allows a greater degree of freedom for the writer who also happens to be a professor, he said that he was drawn to the idea of imagining the Ekalavya myth in a contemporary college campus, particularly with the debates around equity and access to education, and those around the nature and limits of the student-teacher relationship. 

There is something more about The Middle Finger that will intrigue you to visit the nearest bookstore and grab a copy. This novel is Prof Majumdar’s closest brush with poetry; he says he has never been a poet but the protagonist of The Middle Finger is a poet, which takes us back to what he said earlier about writing ~ that there is something wild about writing that can only be discovered through the very act!

(Written by Saket Suman)

51

]]> /the-novelist-as-professor-in-conversation-with-saikat-majumdar/feed/ 0 ‘We are still in the closet in our thinking about desire’ /we-are-still-in-the-closet-in-our-thinking-about-desire/ /we-are-still-in-the-closet-in-our-thinking-about-desire/#respond Thu, 24 Feb 2022 07:56:54 +0000 /?p=25183

‘We are still in the closet in our thinking about desire’

Ashoka Professor of English and noted queer theorist Madhavi Menon has always been interested in the law. Her latest book, The Law of Desire: Rulings on Sex and Sexuality in India, has just arrived on the stands with rave reviews from leading newspapers and magazines. Published by Speaking Tiger, the offering presents the many ‘conundrums and paradoxes’ that result when the law is entangled with sex and sexuality.

A go-to guide for everybody interested in gender, desire, sexuality and obscenity and how the Indian judiciary has reacted to it over time, the book is up for grabs at leading bookstores across India and e-commerce platforms.

We sat down with Professor Menon, who is also the Director of the Centre for Studies in Gender & Sexuality at 51, to understand her motivation behind writing this book as well as to assess the key arguments that she has put forth in this timely offering. In her responses to some specific questions pertaining to her book and a few rhetorical ones, Professor Menon provides an overview of her book and is unflinching in calling a spade a spade, contending that like many judiciaries and legal systems around the world, India’s too is steeped in misogyny and sex-phobia.

Excerpts from an interview:

What is your motivation behind writing The Law of Desire? How did this process begin and can you take us through the journey of writing this book?

I have always been interested in the law. As the overarching structure within which we live our daily lives, the law affects us on both micro and macro levels. Law is both upper-case and lower-case: social laws both produce the Law and are produced by them. Does a change in the Law trickle down to changes in social and sexual laws? Is law ~ both lower- and upper-case ~ only restrictive or does it also create spaces for flourishing? Does restriction enable desire to thrive instead of only thwarting it? These are some of the questions I was interested in exploring in The Law of Desire. Despite the use of the definite article "the" and the upper-case "Law" in the title, I explore the ways in which law is always multiple and capable of different interpretations. It can neither define nor be defined with universal precision.

The blurb of the book asserts that we need to play with, rather than stay with, the Law of Desire. Are you suggesting that we need to introspect and reevaluate the laws that seem to govern desire in our society?

The book suggests that both law and desire have a fundamental relationship with plurality rather than singularity. This means that both law and desire preside over realms that are too multiple to be fathomed in any one way alone. But the difference between the law and desire is that law has aggrandised itself to such an extent over the centuries that it now believes itself to be The Truth. All the language surrounding the law is steeped in the absoluteness of religion ~ you "pray" to the Court, judges are called "Your Lordship" (even when they're women), and you can be held in "contempt" of court for criticising it. Law attempts to place itself above the realm of the common, on a perch from which it can direct the ways in which people should live and list the punishments that will accrue to them if they do not live in that prescribed manner. And when it comes to desire ~ even in cases where there is no victim, as in the case with homosexual or trans* desire ~ the law prescribes what people should and should not do, and where they should or should not do it. This is where law and desire are most at odds, with the former trying to squeeze multiplicity into a one-size-fits-all paradigm. But this attempt to squeeze can also be pleasurable, and desire has historically found ways of getting around the vice-like grip of the law.

What is your evaluation of the judiciary’s handling of gender, sexuality and obscenity in India?

Like many judiciaries and legal systems around the world, ours too is steeped in misogyny and sex-phobia. This means that no matter how progressive an individual judgment might seem to be, it continues to depend on ideas of sex that are closely attached to shame. Thus, the wonderful 2018 Supreme Court judgment on Section 377, for instance, which decriminalised "carnal acts against the order of nature," nonetheless continues to think of sex as something that should only happen in private. Whether criminal or not, then, we are still in the closet in terms of how we think about desire and its "proper" realm. As for obscenity, this is famously the legal realm that lacks all definitional precision. What is obscene for one person is not so for another, and this is true also for judges. Different judges look at the same piece of art or literature differently, and rule accordingly. Obscenity might mark the limit of the law's narrative about its own clarity and objectivity. 

Is it necessary to ensure heterosexuality in our society?

 If this were a face-to-face interview, then I would laugh at this point! It is so delicious, isn't it, to think that something we consider "normal" and "natural" might actually be legally mandated and reinforced? But I do think that is the case. In an overwhelming confluence between big Laws and small ones, heterosexuality is socially-procreated and legally protected. Every child is assumed and then encouraged to be heterosexual, just as many laws are premised on a husband and wife unit. What makes this heterosexism delicious, though, is the fact that if heterosexuality really were "natural," then surely it would not need to be mandated, and people would not need to be encouraged to move in its direction? This is a good example of how the law pretends that only one desire is natural even and especially when it is faced with multiple versions of desire.  

From where does desire gain its legitimacy? Is it dependent on the law to approve of its existence or is it a natural process that needs no hindrance from the law?

As my previous answer suggests, I am very wary of using the word "natural" to describe any aspect of desire. Doing so immediately opens us up to judgments about desires that are "unnatural. After all, what is deemed "natural" needs to be pitted against something that is deemed to be its opposite. But at this moment in our history, we carelessly equate what is legal with what is natural, without thinking for a minute about the contingent status of both these categories. Even further, we equate what is legal with what is natural with what is good. Thus, different people want their sexual desires to be validated by the law in order to feel good about themselves. To my mind, such dependence on the law to validate one's desire and one's being sets a dangerous precedent. It allows the law to categorise neatly what can only be understood and experienced as the messiness of desire. We then start to feel like our desire too should be neat, legal, and natural rather than unruly, but it never can be, and so that becomes a source of tension for us. I think it's time that we start to enjoy messiness rather than categorisation as the hallmark of desire. This would mean that instead of rushing to the law to have our desire "recognised," we should bring the law to its limit, where it is faced with its own incoherence. For instance, "carnal acts against the order of nature" has been interpreted legally to mean non-reproductive sex. This class of sex acts covers all sexual orientations even as the law has settled it narrowly on homosexuality. Instead of rushing to legitimate homosexuality, then, we should insist that heterosexuality too is, within this definition, illegal. 

Tell us about one major judgment around desire that you think was not necessary?

There are so many! But the Hadiya judgment, to take one fairly recent example, is something that I consider not just unnecessary, but also pernicious. I have written about this case in detail in The Law of Desire, but for now, suffice it to say that this case showcased the most misogynistic and communal strands of thinking that seem rampant in the legal system in our country. The Kerala High Court in 2017 dissolved the marriage of Hadiya and Shafin Jahan because Hadiya's father said she was a young and impressionable girl and should be under her father's care rather than being allowed to choose what religion to follow and who to marry. Shockingly, the Court agreed with this paternalistic argument despite the fact that Hadiya was then a 24-year-old adult.  The Supreme Court overturned this ruling in 2018, though it allowed the NIA to investigate Shafin Jahan based on the spurious allegations of Hadiya's father. The NIA found no grounds to prosecute Shafin Jahan, but the conviction of a Muslim man's criminality and women's unreliability in matters of desire is an old trope that te law never seems to tire of. Indeed, it seems to have got a fresh lease on life with the insidious political insistence on "love jihad," where the woman is too foolish to know her own desires and therefore needs to be "protected" by the pater and the paternalistic law.  

Going forward, what is your prescription for improving the laws that seem to be built on very weak and often casteist and patriarchal assumptions?

I am not sure I have a prescription for the law. Instead I have a plea for us all: that we be creative and critical thinkers who assume nothing and question everything. The law pretends it is based on truth, but it reflects the worst phobias that plague our society. Lawyers were once upon a time great intellectuals and radicals ~ that is why they were able to lead India to independence from the British ~ but now they seem increasingly politically corrupt and intellectually moribund. Perhaps they need a liberal arts education at Ashoka in order to understand that the law requires more flexibility and imagination? The fear, though, is that then it will no longer remain the law.   

(Written by Saket Suman)

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‘We are still in the closet in our thinking about desire’

Ashoka Professor of English and noted queer theorist Madhavi Menon has always been interested in the law. Her latest book, The Law of Desire: Rulings on Sex and Sexuality in India, has just arrived on the stands with rave reviews from leading newspapers and magazines. Published by Speaking Tiger, the offering presents the many ‘conundrums and paradoxes’ that result when the law is entangled with sex and sexuality.

A go-to guide for everybody interested in gender, desire, sexuality and obscenity and how the Indian judiciary has reacted to it over time, the book is up for grabs at leading bookstores across India and e-commerce platforms.

We sat down with Professor Menon, who is also the Director of the Centre for Studies in Gender & Sexuality at 51, to understand her motivation behind writing this book as well as to assess the key arguments that she has put forth in this timely offering. In her responses to some specific questions pertaining to her book and a few rhetorical ones, Professor Menon provides an overview of her book and is unflinching in calling a spade a spade, contending that like many judiciaries and legal systems around the world, India’s too is steeped in misogyny and sex-phobia.

Excerpts from an interview:

What is your motivation behind writing The Law of Desire? How did this process begin and can you take us through the journey of writing this book?

I have always been interested in the law. As the overarching structure within which we live our daily lives, the law affects us on both micro and macro levels. Law is both upper-case and lower-case: social laws both produce the Law and are produced by them. Does a change in the Law trickle down to changes in social and sexual laws? Is law ~ both lower- and upper-case ~ only restrictive or does it also create spaces for flourishing? Does restriction enable desire to thrive instead of only thwarting it? These are some of the questions I was interested in exploring in The Law of Desire. Despite the use of the definite article "the" and the upper-case "Law" in the title, I explore the ways in which law is always multiple and capable of different interpretations. It can neither define nor be defined with universal precision.

The blurb of the book asserts that we need to play with, rather than stay with, the Law of Desire. Are you suggesting that we need to introspect and reevaluate the laws that seem to govern desire in our society?

The book suggests that both law and desire have a fundamental relationship with plurality rather than singularity. This means that both law and desire preside over realms that are too multiple to be fathomed in any one way alone. But the difference between the law and desire is that law has aggrandised itself to such an extent over the centuries that it now believes itself to be The Truth. All the language surrounding the law is steeped in the absoluteness of religion ~ you "pray" to the Court, judges are called "Your Lordship" (even when they're women), and you can be held in "contempt" of court for criticising it. Law attempts to place itself above the realm of the common, on a perch from which it can direct the ways in which people should live and list the punishments that will accrue to them if they do not live in that prescribed manner. And when it comes to desire ~ even in cases where there is no victim, as in the case with homosexual or trans* desire ~ the law prescribes what people should and should not do, and where they should or should not do it. This is where law and desire are most at odds, with the former trying to squeeze multiplicity into a one-size-fits-all paradigm. But this attempt to squeeze can also be pleasurable, and desire has historically found ways of getting around the vice-like grip of the law.

What is your evaluation of the judiciary’s handling of gender, sexuality and obscenity in India?

Like many judiciaries and legal systems around the world, ours too is steeped in misogyny and sex-phobia. This means that no matter how progressive an individual judgment might seem to be, it continues to depend on ideas of sex that are closely attached to shame. Thus, the wonderful 2018 Supreme Court judgment on Section 377, for instance, which decriminalised "carnal acts against the order of nature," nonetheless continues to think of sex as something that should only happen in private. Whether criminal or not, then, we are still in the closet in terms of how we think about desire and its "proper" realm. As for obscenity, this is famously the legal realm that lacks all definitional precision. What is obscene for one person is not so for another, and this is true also for judges. Different judges look at the same piece of art or literature differently, and rule accordingly. Obscenity might mark the limit of the law's narrative about its own clarity and objectivity. 

Is it necessary to ensure heterosexuality in our society?

 If this were a face-to-face interview, then I would laugh at this point! It is so delicious, isn't it, to think that something we consider "normal" and "natural" might actually be legally mandated and reinforced? But I do think that is the case. In an overwhelming confluence between big Laws and small ones, heterosexuality is socially-procreated and legally protected. Every child is assumed and then encouraged to be heterosexual, just as many laws are premised on a husband and wife unit. What makes this heterosexism delicious, though, is the fact that if heterosexuality really were "natural," then surely it would not need to be mandated, and people would not need to be encouraged to move in its direction? This is a good example of how the law pretends that only one desire is natural even and especially when it is faced with multiple versions of desire.  

From where does desire gain its legitimacy? Is it dependent on the law to approve of its existence or is it a natural process that needs no hindrance from the law?

As my previous answer suggests, I am very wary of using the word "natural" to describe any aspect of desire. Doing so immediately opens us up to judgments about desires that are "unnatural. After all, what is deemed "natural" needs to be pitted against something that is deemed to be its opposite. But at this moment in our history, we carelessly equate what is legal with what is natural, without thinking for a minute about the contingent status of both these categories. Even further, we equate what is legal with what is natural with what is good. Thus, different people want their sexual desires to be validated by the law in order to feel good about themselves. To my mind, such dependence on the law to validate one's desire and one's being sets a dangerous precedent. It allows the law to categorise neatly what can only be understood and experienced as the messiness of desire. We then start to feel like our desire too should be neat, legal, and natural rather than unruly, but it never can be, and so that becomes a source of tension for us. I think it's time that we start to enjoy messiness rather than categorisation as the hallmark of desire. This would mean that instead of rushing to the law to have our desire "recognised," we should bring the law to its limit, where it is faced with its own incoherence. For instance, "carnal acts against the order of nature" has been interpreted legally to mean non-reproductive sex. This class of sex acts covers all sexual orientations even as the law has settled it narrowly on homosexuality. Instead of rushing to legitimate homosexuality, then, we should insist that heterosexuality too is, within this definition, illegal. 

Tell us about one major judgment around desire that you think was not necessary?

There are so many! But the Hadiya judgment, to take one fairly recent example, is something that I consider not just unnecessary, but also pernicious. I have written about this case in detail in The Law of Desire, but for now, suffice it to say that this case showcased the most misogynistic and communal strands of thinking that seem rampant in the legal system in our country. The Kerala High Court in 2017 dissolved the marriage of Hadiya and Shafin Jahan because Hadiya's father said she was a young and impressionable girl and should be under her father's care rather than being allowed to choose what religion to follow and who to marry. Shockingly, the Court agreed with this paternalistic argument despite the fact that Hadiya was then a 24-year-old adult.  The Supreme Court overturned this ruling in 2018, though it allowed the NIA to investigate Shafin Jahan based on the spurious allegations of Hadiya's father. The NIA found no grounds to prosecute Shafin Jahan, but the conviction of a Muslim man's criminality and women's unreliability in matters of desire is an old trope that te law never seems to tire of. Indeed, it seems to have got a fresh lease on life with the insidious political insistence on "love jihad," where the woman is too foolish to know her own desires and therefore needs to be "protected" by the pater and the paternalistic law.  

Going forward, what is your prescription for improving the laws that seem to be built on very weak and often casteist and patriarchal assumptions?

I am not sure I have a prescription for the law. Instead I have a plea for us all: that we be creative and critical thinkers who assume nothing and question everything. The law pretends it is based on truth, but it reflects the worst phobias that plague our society. Lawyers were once upon a time great intellectuals and radicals ~ that is why they were able to lead India to independence from the British ~ but now they seem increasingly politically corrupt and intellectually moribund. Perhaps they need a liberal arts education at Ashoka in order to understand that the law requires more flexibility and imagination? The fear, though, is that then it will no longer remain the law.   

(Written by Saket Suman)

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]]> /we-are-still-in-the-closet-in-our-thinking-about-desire/feed/ 0 Revisiting William Faulkner with Prof. Johannes Burgers /revisiting-william-faulkner-with-prof-johannes-burgers/ /revisiting-william-faulkner-with-prof-johannes-burgers/#respond Wed, 02 Feb 2022 08:00:42 +0000 /?p=23710

Revisiting William Faulkner with Prof. Johannes Burgers

Ashoka Professor of English and Digital Humanities, Dr. Johannes Burgers has been co-awarded a USD 147,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for a project titled Teaching and Learning William Faulkner in the Digital Age. Dr. Burgers will co-direct the digital humanities project with Prof. Christopher Rieger of Southeast Missouri State University, and Prof. Worthy Martin of the University of Virginia will serve as director of technology.

The announcement comes at a time when many teachers around the world have been experimenting and innovating with digital learning due to the pandemic. The grant will try to formalize these practices by working with a dedicated team of instructors to create a series of digital learning modules based on the information available through Digital Yoknapatawpha, a site that reimagines Faulkner’s fictional world in digital form.

We sat down with Professor Burgers to guide us through Faulkner’s life and work, and how it led to a radically new approach to studying literature through Digital Yoknapatawpha.

Excerpts from an interview:

What drew you to William Faulkner?

When I was in graduate school, I was studying for my oral exam, which basically means you get a couple of months to read about a hundred books. It was absolutely grueling, and it made me wonder why I ever wanted to pursue a PhD in the first place! Then I picked up Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, one of the books for the exam, and from the minute I opened its first, radically experimental pages I couldn’t put it down. It made me fall in love with literature all over again.

How do you look back at his literary career?

Faulkner’s career is an object lesson in what it takes to become a great writer. He constantly dealt with rejection, revised endlessly, and, despite many years of personal and financial hardship, he stayed true to his vision. In the end, he took his small town in northern Mississippi, and put it on the map because of his stories.

Yoknapatawpha, the fictional county where his novels and short stories were set is based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most of his life. How you think Faulkner’s writings have been influenced by his own experiences in life?

While it is true Faulkner drew a lot of inspiration from his “postage stamp” of native soil, I think it would be a mistake to draw a one-to-one correspondence. What makes him such a powerful writer is that he takes his very local setting and turns it into a massive saga that connects to the broader human experience. 

Coming to Digital Yoknapatawpha, it is indeed a new type of information literacy. What does the platform contain currently and what strides do you hope to make with the new grant received from the National Endowment for the Humanities? 

The platform started out as a “deep atlas” of all of the characters, locations, and events in Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha fictions. That is, an interactive map on which users could project the different stories and learn about them through different tools. Since that initial phase of the project, we have added all sorts of features, including: advanced visualizations, archival manuscripts, audio recordings of Faulkner speaking about his work, character genealogies, scholarly commentaries, historical photographs, a biography of every character and location in the fiction, and an index of keywords for each event. We have also been developing lesson plans that will allow teachers to use the materials in class. While I think the current lessons are great, they have all been designed by people who have helped build the site. If you are very familiar with the technology, it can be hard to remember what it might be like for someone using it for the first time. For the upcoming NEH grant, we have recruited faculty from different backgrounds to help us translate the material to their own classroom through new learning modules. Their fresh perspective will be invaluable when it comes to improving usability.

How has the response to the platform been so far?

We have been working on the platform for ten years, and we are finally at the stage where we have accrued a consistent user base. In fact, we have about 2,000 visitors to the site every day. That’s nothing compared to a cute cat video, but by academic standards that’s pretty significant. I don’t think more than even 20 people have ever read any one of the articles I’ve published in an academic journal! That said, we would like to see the site become a more established resource in the classroom. Ultimately, we are doing this because we want to help other students and scholars get excited about Faulkner, and to provide new ways of thinking about literature through digital methodologies.

Where are all these information and materials drawn from? Is it also a step towards archiving?

The materials on the site come from a variety of sources. The bulk of the content has been created by our dedicated team of collaborators. We have had to enter each character, location, and event into the database manually. This is very time-consuming work because it involves a lot of collaboration and peer-review. Still, the result has been a very rich database of everything in Faulkner’s fiction that, in many respects, does function like an archive. 

There are also supplementary materials such manuscript pages, photographs, and audio recordings. The majority of these materials have been shared with us by the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia. Other libraries have also been kind enough to give us permission to digitize and display parts of their collections. In doing so, we are making important parts of different archives available to people. We hope that this is a valuable resource for scholars and students who may not necessarily be able to travel to the various libraries to view the originals.

Do you have similar plans for Ashoka that we can look forward to?

In my digital humanities classes we have been using a similar methodology to document characters, locations, and events in novels and short stories about the Partition. This project is still in its very early stages, but already it is fascinating to see what types of spaces Partition literature focuses on and how those spaces are represented. Hopefully once this grant is completed, I can start thinking about funding for this Partition project.

51

]]>

Revisiting William Faulkner with Prof. Johannes Burgers

Ashoka Professor of English and Digital Humanities, Dr. Johannes Burgers has been co-awarded a USD 147,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for a project titled Teaching and Learning William Faulkner in the Digital Age. Dr. Burgers will co-direct the digital humanities project with Prof. Christopher Rieger of Southeast Missouri State University, and Prof. Worthy Martin of the University of Virginia will serve as director of technology.

The announcement comes at a time when many teachers around the world have been experimenting and innovating with digital learning due to the pandemic. The grant will try to formalize these practices by working with a dedicated team of instructors to create a series of digital learning modules based on the information available through Digital Yoknapatawpha, a site that reimagines Faulkner’s fictional world in digital form.

We sat down with Professor Burgers to guide us through Faulkner’s life and work, and how it led to a radically new approach to studying literature through Digital Yoknapatawpha.

Excerpts from an interview:

What drew you to William Faulkner?

When I was in graduate school, I was studying for my oral exam, which basically means you get a couple of months to read about a hundred books. It was absolutely grueling, and it made me wonder why I ever wanted to pursue a PhD in the first place! Then I picked up Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, one of the books for the exam, and from the minute I opened its first, radically experimental pages I couldn’t put it down. It made me fall in love with literature all over again.

How do you look back at his literary career?

Faulkner’s career is an object lesson in what it takes to become a great writer. He constantly dealt with rejection, revised endlessly, and, despite many years of personal and financial hardship, he stayed true to his vision. In the end, he took his small town in northern Mississippi, and put it on the map because of his stories.

Yoknapatawpha, the fictional county where his novels and short stories were set is based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most of his life. How you think Faulkner’s writings have been influenced by his own experiences in life?

While it is true Faulkner drew a lot of inspiration from his “postage stamp” of native soil, I think it would be a mistake to draw a one-to-one correspondence. What makes him such a powerful writer is that he takes his very local setting and turns it into a massive saga that connects to the broader human experience. 

Coming to Digital Yoknapatawpha, it is indeed a new type of information literacy. What does the platform contain currently and what strides do you hope to make with the new grant received from the National Endowment for the Humanities? 

The platform started out as a “deep atlas” of all of the characters, locations, and events in Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha fictions. That is, an interactive map on which users could project the different stories and learn about them through different tools. Since that initial phase of the project, we have added all sorts of features, including: advanced visualizations, archival manuscripts, audio recordings of Faulkner speaking about his work, character genealogies, scholarly commentaries, historical photographs, a biography of every character and location in the fiction, and an index of keywords for each event. We have also been developing lesson plans that will allow teachers to use the materials in class. While I think the current lessons are great, they have all been designed by people who have helped build the site. If you are very familiar with the technology, it can be hard to remember what it might be like for someone using it for the first time. For the upcoming NEH grant, we have recruited faculty from different backgrounds to help us translate the material to their own classroom through new learning modules. Their fresh perspective will be invaluable when it comes to improving usability.

How has the response to the platform been so far?

We have been working on the platform for ten years, and we are finally at the stage where we have accrued a consistent user base. In fact, we have about 2,000 visitors to the site every day. That’s nothing compared to a cute cat video, but by academic standards that’s pretty significant. I don’t think more than even 20 people have ever read any one of the articles I’ve published in an academic journal! That said, we would like to see the site become a more established resource in the classroom. Ultimately, we are doing this because we want to help other students and scholars get excited about Faulkner, and to provide new ways of thinking about literature through digital methodologies.

Where are all these information and materials drawn from? Is it also a step towards archiving?

The materials on the site come from a variety of sources. The bulk of the content has been created by our dedicated team of collaborators. We have had to enter each character, location, and event into the database manually. This is very time-consuming work because it involves a lot of collaboration and peer-review. Still, the result has been a very rich database of everything in Faulkner’s fiction that, in many respects, does function like an archive. 

There are also supplementary materials such manuscript pages, photographs, and audio recordings. The majority of these materials have been shared with us by the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia. Other libraries have also been kind enough to give us permission to digitize and display parts of their collections. In doing so, we are making important parts of different archives available to people. We hope that this is a valuable resource for scholars and students who may not necessarily be able to travel to the various libraries to view the originals.

Do you have similar plans for Ashoka that we can look forward to?

In my digital humanities classes we have been using a similar methodology to document characters, locations, and events in novels and short stories about the Partition. This project is still in its very early stages, but already it is fascinating to see what types of spaces Partition literature focuses on and how those spaces are represented. Hopefully once this grant is completed, I can start thinking about funding for this Partition project.

51

]]> /revisiting-william-faulkner-with-prof-johannes-burgers/feed/ 0 Yoknapatawpha along the Yamuna /yoknapatawpha-along-the-yamuna/ /yoknapatawpha-along-the-yamuna/#respond Mon, 03 May 2021 09:00:42 +0000 /?p=16669

Yoknapatawpha along the Yamuna

This is embarrassing. I have spent a significant part of my life mapping a place that does not exist. For nearly a decade, I have been working on the Digital Yoknapatawpha project. This project is an international collaboration between more than two dozen scholars and technologists who are encoding all of the characters, locations, and events in William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha fictions. 

Based on his hometown of Oxford in Lafayette County, Mississippi and totaling 54 short stories and 14 novels, Faulkner’s saga traces the lives and times of an interwoven cast of characters from the early nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. He spent most of his thirty-year writing career building the fictional town of Jefferson and the surrounding Yoknapatawpha County, and we, at the DY project, are on track to spend at least half as much time re-creating it in digital form. Featuring interactive deep maps, advanced data visualisations, documentary and aural archival materials, sophisticated relational searches, and a robust scholarly commentary, the site is one of the most comprehensive single-author resources available on the web (). It is also absolutely free.  

Unremarkably, maps of imaginary places have limited immediate use value, but they can tell you a surprising amount about how people create the world around them. Places are deeply embedded in narrative. True, we can use all sorts of reference systems – an address, GPS coordinates – to indicate where a location is, but it is not until we attach a name, an environment, and people to those locations that they become legible and meaningful. Your house address is a location, your home is a place. Fiction is similar. An author reserves a name – Atlantis, El Dorado, Orbis Tertius – and tells the stories that make that a place, even if it could never have existed.  

Mapping fiction teaches us that while the world appears to us a coherent whole, it is, in fact, a far more fragmented and contradictory place. Locations in Faulkner are not stable. The rivers hop around on the map, houses shift from story to story, and distances between places are sometimes only a walk, and at other times a day’s a mule ride. Faulkner, I should note, received a Nobel prize for literature and not cartography. Remarkably, even the most assiduous readers are not all to bothered by this. We can gloss over inconsistencies in fictional worlds precisely because we can navigate spatial ambiguity in the actual world. Depending on who asks, Ashoka is in Delhi or Sonipat, you might know your favorite restaurant because it is near your favorite bookshop, or something might be close or far depending on the day, the traffic, the weather, or even the person you are meant to meet. Our language is littered with innumerable uncertainties about what is where and how to get there. Yet, we get around. We arrange the network of locations that constitute our spatial experience into a coherent whole. 

An example. In normal times, I ask my class their weekend plans. Inevitably, they want to go to Delhi. When I ask them what Delhi means, the response is predictable: Majnu Ka Tila, Chandi Chowk, CP, Khan Market, Green Park, Hauz Khas, or maybe as far as Saket. There are significant demographic and commercial differences between these spaces, but they are all part of one unified version of Delhi: places on the metro’s yellow line within an hour from the campus shuttle stop at Jahangirpuri! Their conception of the city is actually a very narrow strip of places determined by commuting times. Yet, their experience of Delhi is no less complete, and feels coherent precisely because space is being unified to their relative position.   

In as much as narratives of places help us organize them, Faulkner also reminds us to be critical of these stories. The story the South tells itself after the American Civil War justifies a racial apartheid regime. The stories the North tells about the South mask the silences in its own past. Faulkner asks us to question why we call some places good neighborhoods, others bad neighborhoods, why people in certain states are “those types” of voters, and why whole entire nations we only know from maps, news, TV, and the internet might become either friend or foe based on the stories we have been told. Whether it is in Yoknapatawpha or along the Yamuna, knowing a place is really just a story you tell yourself.  

 is an Assistant Professor of English and Digital Humanities at 51. The views expressed are his own.

51

]]>

Yoknapatawpha along the Yamuna

This is embarrassing. I have spent a significant part of my life mapping a place that does not exist. For nearly a decade, I have been working on the Digital Yoknapatawpha project. This project is an international collaboration between more than two dozen scholars and technologists who are encoding all of the characters, locations, and events in William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha fictions. 

Based on his hometown of Oxford in Lafayette County, Mississippi and totaling 54 short stories and 14 novels, Faulkner’s saga traces the lives and times of an interwoven cast of characters from the early nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. He spent most of his thirty-year writing career building the fictional town of Jefferson and the surrounding Yoknapatawpha County, and we, at the DY project, are on track to spend at least half as much time re-creating it in digital form. Featuring interactive deep maps, advanced data visualisations, documentary and aural archival materials, sophisticated relational searches, and a robust scholarly commentary, the site is one of the most comprehensive single-author resources available on the web (). It is also absolutely free.  

Unremarkably, maps of imaginary places have limited immediate use value, but they can tell you a surprising amount about how people create the world around them. Places are deeply embedded in narrative. True, we can use all sorts of reference systems – an address, GPS coordinates – to indicate where a location is, but it is not until we attach a name, an environment, and people to those locations that they become legible and meaningful. Your house address is a location, your home is a place. Fiction is similar. An author reserves a name – Atlantis, El Dorado, Orbis Tertius – and tells the stories that make that a place, even if it could never have existed.  

Mapping fiction teaches us that while the world appears to us a coherent whole, it is, in fact, a far more fragmented and contradictory place. Locations in Faulkner are not stable. The rivers hop around on the map, houses shift from story to story, and distances between places are sometimes only a walk, and at other times a day’s a mule ride. Faulkner, I should note, received a Nobel prize for literature and not cartography. Remarkably, even the most assiduous readers are not all to bothered by this. We can gloss over inconsistencies in fictional worlds precisely because we can navigate spatial ambiguity in the actual world. Depending on who asks, Ashoka is in Delhi or Sonipat, you might know your favorite restaurant because it is near your favorite bookshop, or something might be close or far depending on the day, the traffic, the weather, or even the person you are meant to meet. Our language is littered with innumerable uncertainties about what is where and how to get there. Yet, we get around. We arrange the network of locations that constitute our spatial experience into a coherent whole. 

An example. In normal times, I ask my class their weekend plans. Inevitably, they want to go to Delhi. When I ask them what Delhi means, the response is predictable: Majnu Ka Tila, Chandi Chowk, CP, Khan Market, Green Park, Hauz Khas, or maybe as far as Saket. There are significant demographic and commercial differences between these spaces, but they are all part of one unified version of Delhi: places on the metro’s yellow line within an hour from the campus shuttle stop at Jahangirpuri! Their conception of the city is actually a very narrow strip of places determined by commuting times. Yet, their experience of Delhi is no less complete, and feels coherent precisely because space is being unified to their relative position.   

In as much as narratives of places help us organize them, Faulkner also reminds us to be critical of these stories. The story the South tells itself after the American Civil War justifies a racial apartheid regime. The stories the North tells about the South mask the silences in its own past. Faulkner asks us to question why we call some places good neighborhoods, others bad neighborhoods, why people in certain states are “those types” of voters, and why whole entire nations we only know from maps, news, TV, and the internet might become either friend or foe based on the stories we have been told. Whether it is in Yoknapatawpha or along the Yamuna, knowing a place is really just a story you tell yourself.  

 is an Assistant Professor of English and Digital Humanities at 51. The views expressed are his own.

51

]]> /yoknapatawpha-along-the-yamuna/feed/ 0 Ashoka’s Research Quest | Understanding English as a language of Global Literature /ashokas-research-quest-understanding-english-as-a-language-of-global-literature/ /ashokas-research-quest-understanding-english-as-a-language-of-global-literature/#respond Wed, 10 Feb 2021 09:00:18 +0000 /?p=8515

Ashoka’s Research Quest | Understanding English as a language of Global Literature

Saikat Majumdar, HOD, Creative Writing and Professor of English and Creative Writing at 51 is a literary scholar and a celebrated novelist. His work has two dimensions – academic research in literature and literary criticism, and artistic practice as a novelist. Over the last few years, a third dimension has developed at the intersection of academic and artistic: a writer and critic of arts, literature and higher education for popular and mainstream media.

Saikat’s central scholarly focus has been the emergence of English as an international literary language.  He studies this in conjunction with the cultural history of the global British Empire, which has enabled the emergence of English as a transnational literary language and the subsequent phases of decolonisation and globalisation. “Certain broad questions have energised my work: how does the hierarchical structure of colonial modernity create cultural categories such as the provincial and the cosmopolitan? How have these categories driven patterns of artistic exchange and migration across the globe and shaped the production of literature?” said Saikat. 

Saikat’s first academic monograph Prose of the World: Modernism and the Banality of Empire examined the emotional consequences of the aforementioned historical and cultural categories, and their subsequent impact on literary form. It also examined the link between boredom and historical marginality as articulated in 20th and 21st Century British and Anglophone fiction. It argued that one of the greatest ideological consequences of the British Empire is the feeling that history is concentrated in the metropolitan heart of the empire, while the colonial periphery is a place where nothing happens, where life is banal, boring and devoid of historical meaning. 

Talking about this, Saikat said, “Drawing on anthropological, historical, and psychological scholarship, I analysed the representation of boredom as an emotional consequence of poverty and marginality, especially under the shadow of imperialism. Modern literature’s revolutionary preoccupation with the ordinary and the banal cannot be fully understood without attending to the colonial anxiety of being left in the backwater of progress and excitement. This is an anxiety which a group of visionary writers have transformed into a vital and innovative narrative force. 

In the process, they have boldly disavowed the aesthetic of the spectacle which has dominated acclaimed national narratives about decolonisation and postliberation progress. By reading such negative aesthetic categories as a central concern of modern and contemporary fiction, this study sought to make sense of an apparent conundrum – namely, that much of the twentieth and twenty-first century’s groundbreaking English-language fiction has come from the provincial backwaters of the British Empire.”&Բ;

https://youtu.be/GTzqPCnBGu8

Presently, Saikat has also been involved in literary criticism. The overarching question regarding this that asks – Is literary criticism a professional act or is it the work of an amateur? 

He continued, “This research examines literary criticism as an activity productively suspended between the professional and the amateur impulse. It continues my analysis of the cultural impact of colonialism on the uneven distribution of sociocultural authority across the globe. The key focus is on a group of South-Asian, Caribbean, and African writers who emerge from their struggle with poor and provincial colonial educational systems as autodidactic and amateur intellectuals of wide public appeal. I examined this trajectory in an article for the journal New Literary History, and an article published in the Publication of the Modern Language Association of America examined a particular figure, the Bengali memoirist Nirad C. Chaudhuri. A collection, The Critic as Amateur, a collection of essays on this subject by leading critics from all over the world, also came out in 2019, co-edited by me and a colleague from Duke University.”&Բ; 

His work in this area has also brought him closer to literary activism, initiated by the writer Amit Chaudhuri, who is presently a Professor of Creative Writing at Ashoka. 

Saikat said, “The idea is to make an intervention, through a series of lectures, symposia and publications, on behalf of the idea of the literary that now feels embattled in the public as well as the academic sphere, under a range of forces from the commercialisation of publishing spaces to the academic marginalisation of literature in favour of other fields seen as more instrumental and socially relevant.  

I also see myself as a participant in this movement, if you will, through my scholarly championship of important literature that has escaped critical attention, as well through more mainstream journalism, as for instance through my column for the Los Angeles Review of Books, “Another Look at India’s Books,” where I discuss Indian books that haven’t received due attention.”&Բ;

Saikat is often held as one of the most profound storytellers in contemporary India. Talking about his work, he said,  

“Novels come from a wild and private place, but once you’re done writing, you are often struck to recognise the spirit of the times in the work.” 

His work as a popular critic and columnist has earned him rave reviews. He writes on arts, literature, and higher education, and occasionally reviews books. He writes two regular columns: Cheat Sheet, on academic and campus life, for , and Another Look at India’s Books, on books from India that haven’t received due attention, for . He also contributes articles in Hindustan Times, Hindu, Times Higher Education, Indian Express, Scroll, Telegraph, and Times of India. 

Talking about this, he said, “I like writing for popular media, as it allows me to assume an intimate and personal voice while talking about larger issues in art, literature, and education. Making an argument, in many ways, is like telling a story. It has temporal and spatial aspects, just like the narrative and the descriptive aspects of fiction. But the sensory immediacy of fiction is supplemented by the abstraction of thought, especially conceptual exploration of larger patterns. I enjoy bringing these two together – sometimes the coming together is a jagged conflict, and sometimes a seamless fusion, but it’s always a fun experience.”&Բ; 

Saikat Majumdar previously taught at Stanford University and was named a Fellow at the Humanities Centre at Wellesley College. His research and teaching interests include Modern and Contemporary World Literature in English, Modernism, Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, the Novel and Narrative Theory, Critical University Studies, the History of Criticism, Fiction and Non-Fiction Writing. Know more about him here. Understand more about his research . 

_________

Ashoka’s Research Quest Campaign 

Ashoka Research Quest is a campaign that showcases the in-depth research that 51 offers. This will be a recurring affair. Get an insight into various subjects through a detailed conversation with the faculty.  

So, let’s talk about research!  

51

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Ashoka’s Research Quest | Understanding English as a language of Global Literature

Saikat Majumdar, HOD, Creative Writing and Professor of English and Creative Writing at 51 is a literary scholar and a celebrated novelist. His work has two dimensions – academic research in literature and literary criticism, and artistic practice as a novelist. Over the last few years, a third dimension has developed at the intersection of academic and artistic: a writer and critic of arts, literature and higher education for popular and mainstream media.

Saikat’s central scholarly focus has been the emergence of English as an international literary language.  He studies this in conjunction with the cultural history of the global British Empire, which has enabled the emergence of English as a transnational literary language and the subsequent phases of decolonisation and globalisation. “Certain broad questions have energised my work: how does the hierarchical structure of colonial modernity create cultural categories such as the provincial and the cosmopolitan? How have these categories driven patterns of artistic exchange and migration across the globe and shaped the production of literature?” said Saikat. 

Saikat’s first academic monograph Prose of the World: Modernism and the Banality of Empire examined the emotional consequences of the aforementioned historical and cultural categories, and their subsequent impact on literary form. It also examined the link between boredom and historical marginality as articulated in 20th and 21st Century British and Anglophone fiction. It argued that one of the greatest ideological consequences of the British Empire is the feeling that history is concentrated in the metropolitan heart of the empire, while the colonial periphery is a place where nothing happens, where life is banal, boring and devoid of historical meaning. 

Talking about this, Saikat said, “Drawing on anthropological, historical, and psychological scholarship, I analysed the representation of boredom as an emotional consequence of poverty and marginality, especially under the shadow of imperialism. Modern literature’s revolutionary preoccupation with the ordinary and the banal cannot be fully understood without attending to the colonial anxiety of being left in the backwater of progress and excitement. This is an anxiety which a group of visionary writers have transformed into a vital and innovative narrative force. 

In the process, they have boldly disavowed the aesthetic of the spectacle which has dominated acclaimed national narratives about decolonisation and postliberation progress. By reading such negative aesthetic categories as a central concern of modern and contemporary fiction, this study sought to make sense of an apparent conundrum – namely, that much of the twentieth and twenty-first century’s groundbreaking English-language fiction has come from the provincial backwaters of the British Empire.”&Բ;

https://youtu.be/GTzqPCnBGu8

Presently, Saikat has also been involved in literary criticism. The overarching question regarding this that asks – Is literary criticism a professional act or is it the work of an amateur? 

He continued, “This research examines literary criticism as an activity productively suspended between the professional and the amateur impulse. It continues my analysis of the cultural impact of colonialism on the uneven distribution of sociocultural authority across the globe. The key focus is on a group of South-Asian, Caribbean, and African writers who emerge from their struggle with poor and provincial colonial educational systems as autodidactic and amateur intellectuals of wide public appeal. I examined this trajectory in an article for the journal New Literary History, and an article published in the Publication of the Modern Language Association of America examined a particular figure, the Bengali memoirist Nirad C. Chaudhuri. A collection, The Critic as Amateur, a collection of essays on this subject by leading critics from all over the world, also came out in 2019, co-edited by me and a colleague from Duke University.”&Բ; 


His work in this area has also brought him closer to literary activism, initiated by the writer Amit Chaudhuri, who is presently a Professor of Creative Writing at Ashoka. 

Saikat said, “The idea is to make an intervention, through a series of lectures, symposia and publications, on behalf of the idea of the literary that now feels embattled in the public as well as the academic sphere, under a range of forces from the commercialisation of publishing spaces to the academic marginalisation of literature in favour of other fields seen as more instrumental and socially relevant.  

I also see myself as a participant in this movement, if you will, through my scholarly championship of important literature that has escaped critical attention, as well through more mainstream journalism, as for instance through my column for the Los Angeles Review of Books, “Another Look at India’s Books,” where I discuss Indian books that haven’t received due attention.”&Բ;

Saikat is often held as one of the most profound storytellers in contemporary India. Talking about his work, he said,  

“Novels come from a wild and private place, but once you’re done writing, you are often struck to recognise the spirit of the times in the work.” 

His work as a popular critic and columnist has earned him rave reviews. He writes on arts, literature, and higher education, and occasionally reviews books. He writes two regular columns: Cheat Sheet, on academic and campus life, for , and Another Look at India’s Books, on books from India that haven’t received due attention, for . He also contributes articles in Hindustan Times, Hindu, Times Higher Education, Indian Express, Scroll, Telegraph, and Times of India. 

Talking about this, he said, “I like writing for popular media, as it allows me to assume an intimate and personal voice while talking about larger issues in art, literature, and education. Making an argument, in many ways, is like telling a story. It has temporal and spatial aspects, just like the narrative and the descriptive aspects of fiction. But the sensory immediacy of fiction is supplemented by the abstraction of thought, especially conceptual exploration of larger patterns. I enjoy bringing these two together – sometimes the coming together is a jagged conflict, and sometimes a seamless fusion, but it’s always a fun experience.”&Բ; 

Saikat Majumdar previously taught at Stanford University and was named a Fellow at the Humanities Centre at Wellesley College. His research and teaching interests include Modern and Contemporary World Literature in English, Modernism, Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, the Novel and Narrative Theory, Critical University Studies, the History of Criticism, Fiction and Non-Fiction Writing. Know more about him here. Understand more about his research . 

_________

Ashoka’s Research Quest Campaign 

Ashoka Research Quest is a campaign that showcases the in-depth research that 51 offers. This will be a recurring affair. Get an insight into various subjects through a detailed conversation with the faculty.  

So, let’s talk about research!  

51

]]> /ashokas-research-quest-understanding-english-as-a-language-of-global-literature/feed/ 0 Webinar – Why Study English at Ashoka? | Register now! /webinar-why-study-english-at-ashoka-register-now/ /webinar-why-study-english-at-ashoka-register-now/#respond Sat, 26 Dec 2020 09:00:56 +0000 /?p=5502

Webinar – Why Study English at Ashoka? | Register now!

51 invites you for a webinar - ‘Why Study English at Ashoka?’ on 29th December at 6 PM.

In this webinar, we will cover -

  • Why English at Ashoka?
  • Classroom environment
  • Choices available to students to design their own course
  • Faculty and pedagogy
  • Career opportunities and higher studies after pursuing English

 

Speaker:
Prof. Jonathan Gil Harris
HoD and Professor, English
51
Ph.D, University of Sussex   

51

]]>

Webinar – Why Study English at Ashoka? | Register now!

51 invites you for a webinar - ‘Why Study English at Ashoka?’ on 29th December at 6 PM.

In this webinar, we will cover -

  • Why English at Ashoka?
  • Classroom environment
  • Choices available to students to design their own course
  • Faculty and pedagogy
  • Career opportunities and higher studies after pursuing English

 

Speaker:
Prof. Jonathan Gil Harris
HoD and Professor, English
51
Ph.D, University of Sussex   

51

]]> /webinar-why-study-english-at-ashoka-register-now/feed/ 0 Master of Arts in English at 51 /master-of-arts-in-english-at-ashoka-university/ /master-of-arts-in-english-at-ashoka-university/#respond Fri, 01 Nov 2019 09:00:32 +0000 /?p=5884

Master of Arts in English at 51

The new MA in English programme will train students to read literature and culture in the context of an interdisciplinary liberal arts curriculum, under the guidance of internationally acclaimed faculty who are innovative teachers as well as prolifically published scholars. The programme aims to occupy an important space in the current landscape of higher education in India. It will provide a unique intellectual experience for students while carving out a much-needed path to higher studies both abroad and within India. 

The MA in English is committed to thinking across boundaries of genre, culture and chronology. Our coursework allows for exposure to a wide array of texts, theories and disciplinary formations from around the world. MA students will also have the opportunity to pursue courses in other departments at Ashoka thus bringing new lenses to bear on literary studies. Above all, students will pursue their study of literature in relation to the larger world they live in and ask pertinent questions of it. 

For more information about the course structure and other academic information, please visit the MA in English page.

Admission to 51 is based entirely on merit. For further information about the application process, important dates and financial aid, please visit the MA in English Admissions page.

51

]]>

Master of Arts in English at 51

The new MA in English programme will train students to read literature and culture in the context of an interdisciplinary liberal arts curriculum, under the guidance of internationally acclaimed faculty who are innovative teachers as well as prolifically published scholars. The programme aims to occupy an important space in the current landscape of higher education in India. It will provide a unique intellectual experience for students while carving out a much-needed path to higher studies both abroad and within India. 

The MA in English is committed to thinking across boundaries of genre, culture and chronology. Our coursework allows for exposure to a wide array of texts, theories and disciplinary formations from around the world. MA students will also have the opportunity to pursue courses in other departments at Ashoka thus bringing new lenses to bear on literary studies. Above all, students will pursue their study of literature in relation to the larger world they live in and ask pertinent questions of it. 

For more information about the course structure and other academic information, please visit the MA in English page.

Admission to 51 is based entirely on merit. For further information about the application process, important dates and financial aid, please visit the MA in English Admissions page.

51

]]> /master-of-arts-in-english-at-ashoka-university/feed/ 0 Literature and Beyond /literature-and-beyond/ /literature-and-beyond/#respond Wed, 01 Mar 2017 09:00:12 +0000 /?p=6203

Literature and Beyond

If literature is a modern phenomenon bound by print and the solitary act of reading, genres such as poetry and drama, and especially epics like The Ramayana and The Mahabharata, far predate such modernity. They also transcend the understanding of literature as something invented, or fictitious, and rooted in the original imagination of a single author. Paris- based author Karthika Nair’s modern epic, Until the Lions, the winner of the Tata Literature Live Fiction Award for 2015, offers entirely a different kind of originality by retelling The Mahabharata, or rather parts of it through the eyes of a range of neglected characters: nameless soldiers, outcast warriors and handmaidens, abducted princesses, tribal queens and a gender-shifting god. When Nair visited the 51 Campus this February, audience was captivated by Nair’s reading from the epic. She deepened the spell by showing clips from the dance-drama version of the retold epic, produced by the renowned choreographer Akram Khan.

Nair’s talk was organised by the department of English and Creative Writing at the campus. Indeed, for students of literature and creative writing, February was awash with poetry and colour and song. Three remarkable poets and thinkers came to campus and took audiences away to whole new worlds, flung wide apart in time, space, and sensibility. They gave lectures, read from their work, visited classes, shared artwork and performance, dance and drama. Students had much to talk about, many questions to ask; faculty members were energised by the wealth of new perspectives. For a couple of events, people came from all over the NCR, such as Gurgaon and Noida.

Following Karthika Nair on Wednesday, February 8; on there was a lecture and presentation on the 14th on Islamic and European travellers to medieval India by Jyotsna Singh, a scholar of the Renaissance and Professor of English and Michigan State University. And on the 22nd of the month, the poet and environmentalist from north Bengal, Sumana Roy, came here and read from her new book, How I Became a Tree.

Saikat Majumdar, the Coordinator of the Creative Writing Program tells us that events like these push far and wide our notion of literature. The particular constellation of events that took place in February also help us to imagine literary studies in a larger, expansive context, including religious studies and art history, and strikingly, environmental and ecological studies. Karthika Nair visited Majumdar’s class, “Forms of Literature,” which was discussing The Iliad, and spoke about adaptations of classical epics. Sumana Roy visited his fiction workshop and spoke about writing and publishing in today’s landscape.

Jyotsna Singh’s lecture, “Transcultural Islam,” brought together colourful Mughal miniatures, Sufi poetry, and stories by early European travellers. Singh was introduced by Jonathan Gil Harris, author of the bestselling The First Firangis and an expert on the Renaissance; following her lecture, Singh was in conversation with Abir Bazaz, Ashoka’s own scholar of medieval Islam and popular teacher of Sufi poetry on campus. It was a rich conversation that drew much participation from the audience and revealed how fascinating religion appears when framed within the context of literary studies.

Sumana Roy’s talk and reading were about the tantalising merging of trees and people; of the union and human and botanical identity. She read poems and essays that spoke of a deep empathy with nature – plants, flowers and grass; of a deep longing for, and the desire to embody the still life of flora. She spoke of the scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose, who detected plant life, the poet Rabindranath Tagore who imagined himself in harmony with nature. In the process, she spoke of the ethereal nature of literary life and articulated a trepidation about the very word ‘writer’ that trembled like tremors like a shiver through leaves of grass. Art and plant life, we learned, has much in common with each other.

We were left longing for more.

51

]]>

Literature and Beyond

If literature is a modern phenomenon bound by print and the solitary act of reading, genres such as poetry and drama, and especially epics like The Ramayana and The Mahabharata, far predate such modernity. They also transcend the understanding of literature as something invented, or fictitious, and rooted in the original imagination of a single author. Paris- based author Karthika Nair’s modern epic, Until the Lions, the winner of the Tata Literature Live Fiction Award for 2015, offers entirely a different kind of originality by retelling The Mahabharata, or rather parts of it through the eyes of a range of neglected characters: nameless soldiers, outcast warriors and handmaidens, abducted princesses, tribal queens and a gender-shifting god. When Nair visited the 51 Campus this February, audience was captivated by Nair’s reading from the epic. She deepened the spell by showing clips from the dance-drama version of the retold epic, produced by the renowned choreographer Akram Khan.

Nair’s talk was organised by the department of English and Creative Writing at the campus. Indeed, for students of literature and creative writing, February was awash with poetry and colour and song. Three remarkable poets and thinkers came to campus and took audiences away to whole new worlds, flung wide apart in time, space, and sensibility. They gave lectures, read from their work, visited classes, shared artwork and performance, dance and drama. Students had much to talk about, many questions to ask; faculty members were energised by the wealth of new perspectives. For a couple of events, people came from all over the NCR, such as Gurgaon and Noida.

Following Karthika Nair on Wednesday, February 8; on there was a lecture and presentation on the 14th on Islamic and European travellers to medieval India by Jyotsna Singh, a scholar of the Renaissance and Professor of English and Michigan State University. And on the 22nd of the month, the poet and environmentalist from north Bengal, Sumana Roy, came here and read from her new book, How I Became a Tree.

Saikat Majumdar, the Coordinator of the Creative Writing Program tells us that events like these push far and wide our notion of literature. The particular constellation of events that took place in February also help us to imagine literary studies in a larger, expansive context, including religious studies and art history, and strikingly, environmental and ecological studies. Karthika Nair visited Majumdar’s class, “Forms of Literature,” which was discussing The Iliad, and spoke about adaptations of classical epics. Sumana Roy visited his fiction workshop and spoke about writing and publishing in today’s landscape.

Jyotsna Singh’s lecture, “Transcultural Islam,” brought together colourful Mughal miniatures, Sufi poetry, and stories by early European travellers. Singh was introduced by Jonathan Gil Harris, author of the bestselling The First Firangis and an expert on the Renaissance; following her lecture, Singh was in conversation with Abir Bazaz, Ashoka’s own scholar of medieval Islam and popular teacher of Sufi poetry on campus. It was a rich conversation that drew much participation from the audience and revealed how fascinating religion appears when framed within the context of literary studies.

Sumana Roy’s talk and reading were about the tantalising merging of trees and people; of the union and human and botanical identity. She read poems and essays that spoke of a deep empathy with nature – plants, flowers and grass; of a deep longing for, and the desire to embody the still life of flora. She spoke of the scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose, who detected plant life, the poet Rabindranath Tagore who imagined himself in harmony with nature. In the process, she spoke of the ethereal nature of literary life and articulated a trepidation about the very word ‘writer’ that trembled like tremors like a shiver through leaves of grass. Art and plant life, we learned, has much in common with each other.

We were left longing for more.

51

]]> /literature-and-beyond/feed/ 0 Shakespeare’s Ashes: Celebrating 400 years of Shakespeare in Literature /shakespeares-ashes-celebrating-400-years-of-shakespeare-in-literature/ /shakespeares-ashes-celebrating-400-years-of-shakespeare-in-literature/#respond Mon, 31 Oct 2016 09:00:27 +0000 /?p=6835

Shakespeare’s Ashes: Celebrating 400 years of Shakespeare in Literature

The year 2016 marks the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. Yet Shakespeare is arguably more alive than ever, performed across the world more than any other playwright. Even as his plays have acquired a global currency, they have been dispersed into and absorbed by, a myriad of local non-English forms and traditions. This is particularly the case in India. Shakespeare is a popular screenplay writer – or muse – in Hindi cinema, where plays such as The Comedy of Errors, Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, Othello, and Hamlet have all received acclaimed Indian makeovers. More strikingly, his plays have found congenial afterlives in various local theatrical traditions from the Nautanki of North India and the Bhangwadi of Gujarat to the Jatra of Bengal and the Kathakali of Kerala. This dispersal is also, in a sense, a return, inasmuch as Shakespeare’s stories themselves derive from an extraordinary array of global sources that include tales from the Levant and the Silk Route.

The Shakespeare Society of India, in association with 51 and The British Council recently conducted a two-day conference – “Shakespeare’s Ashes” at The British Council. The title of the conference is at once commemorative of Shakespeare’s death and recognizes the dispersed Indian post-lives that Shakespeare has enjoyed. It also hints at how Shakespeare’s stories have themselves always been comprised of the ashes of other stories, many of which have Asian genealogies.

“Shakespeare’s Ashes was an extraordinary conference — an opportunity to mark Shakespeare’s 400th death anniversary this year, but also an opportunity to celebrate his rich and varied afterlives in India.  It was extraordinary too because of the Chahat ki Dastaan, a specially commissioned translation of Shakespeare’s Sonnets into 11 different Indian languages and 11 different cultural forms.  The Chahat ki Dastaan showcased 51 as a powerhouse of creative talent; best of all, it brought together faculty, students and staff in an amazing, moving, unforgettable ensemble piece — a wonderful reminder of how Ashoka’s culture is being co-created by talented people from *every* part of the university,” says Jonathan Gil Harris, Dean, Academic Affairs, 51.

Shakespeare’s Ashes scattered all over the globe is revived in culturally unique ways. The Conference comprised of events such as ‘JܲԻ徱’ (Conversations between guest speakers on Topics like ‘A midsummer’s night redreamed’, ‘Desiring Shakespeare’ and a Shakespeare adaptation’), Seminars on Shakespeare and Folk Forms, Chahat ki Dastaan, and various Film-Screenings.

Undoubtedly, the highlight of the conference was ‘Chahat ki Dastaan’- a regeneration of Shakespeare’s Sonnets in regional languages, and through art forms like song and dance.

Madhavi Menon, Professor, English at Ashoka  concludes, “Ashes was a unique experiment on the Indian academic scene in as much as it combined the intellectual rigour of an academic conference with the energy, liveliness, and variety of a literary festival. Meditations on death in King Lear sat alongside Chahat ki Dastan, a translation of Shakespeare’s sonnets into Indian languages and performance styles. Films jostled with plays, high seriousness with low humour, fancy rhetoric with the performing body — this conference contained all that is best and most exciting about a Shakespeare play itself.  Shakespeare scholarship in India will never be the same again.”

The Conference successfully revived a holistic sense of Shakespearean works and proved to be a landmark, the first of its kind in India.

51

]]>

Shakespeare’s Ashes: Celebrating 400 years of Shakespeare in Literature

The year 2016 marks the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. Yet Shakespeare is arguably more alive than ever, performed across the world more than any other playwright. Even as his plays have acquired a global currency, they have been dispersed into and absorbed by, a myriad of local non-English forms and traditions. This is particularly the case in India. Shakespeare is a popular screenplay writer – or muse – in Hindi cinema, where plays such as The Comedy of Errors, Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, Othello, and Hamlet have all received acclaimed Indian makeovers. More strikingly, his plays have found congenial afterlives in various local theatrical traditions from the Nautanki of North India and the Bhangwadi of Gujarat to the Jatra of Bengal and the Kathakali of Kerala. This dispersal is also, in a sense, a return, inasmuch as Shakespeare’s stories themselves derive from an extraordinary array of global sources that include tales from the Levant and the Silk Route.

The Shakespeare Society of India, in association with 51 and The British Council recently conducted a two-day conference – “Shakespeare’s Ashes” at The British Council. The title of the conference is at once commemorative of Shakespeare’s death and recognizes the dispersed Indian post-lives that Shakespeare has enjoyed. It also hints at how Shakespeare’s stories have themselves always been comprised of the ashes of other stories, many of which have Asian genealogies.

“Shakespeare’s Ashes was an extraordinary conference — an opportunity to mark Shakespeare’s 400th death anniversary this year, but also an opportunity to celebrate his rich and varied afterlives in India.  It was extraordinary too because of the Chahat ki Dastaan, a specially commissioned translation of Shakespeare’s Sonnets into 11 different Indian languages and 11 different cultural forms.  The Chahat ki Dastaan showcased 51 as a powerhouse of creative talent; best of all, it brought together faculty, students and staff in an amazing, moving, unforgettable ensemble piece — a wonderful reminder of how Ashoka’s culture is being co-created by talented people from *every* part of the university,” says Jonathan Gil Harris, Dean, Academic Affairs, 51.

Shakespeare’s Ashes scattered all over the globe is revived in culturally unique ways. The Conference comprised of events such as ‘JܲԻ徱’ (Conversations between guest speakers on Topics like ‘A midsummer’s night redreamed’, ‘Desiring Shakespeare’ and a Shakespeare adaptation’), Seminars on Shakespeare and Folk Forms, Chahat ki Dastaan, and various Film-Screenings.

Undoubtedly, the highlight of the conference was ‘Chahat ki Dastaan’- a regeneration of Shakespeare’s Sonnets in regional languages, and through art forms like song and dance.

Madhavi Menon, Professor, English at Ashoka  concludes, “Ashes was a unique experiment on the Indian academic scene in as much as it combined the intellectual rigour of an academic conference with the energy, liveliness, and variety of a literary festival. Meditations on death in King Lear sat alongside Chahat ki Dastan, a translation of Shakespeare’s sonnets into Indian languages and performance styles. Films jostled with plays, high seriousness with low humour, fancy rhetoric with the performing body — this conference contained all that is best and most exciting about a Shakespeare play itself.  Shakespeare scholarship in India will never be the same again.”

The Conference successfully revived a holistic sense of Shakespearean works and proved to be a landmark, the first of its kind in India.

51

]]> /shakespeares-ashes-celebrating-400-years-of-shakespeare-in-literature/feed/ 0 Shakespearean Extravaganza at 51 /shakespearean-extravaganza-at-ashoka-university/ /shakespearean-extravaganza-at-ashoka-university/#respond Mon, 01 Feb 2016 09:00:04 +0000 /?p=5889

Shakespearean Extravaganza at 51

51 is back with the yearly Shakespeare festival. Enthusiasm flowed in from all corners of the Multipurpose Hall at the University, which was filled with Young India Fellows as 22 teams performed chimerical reimaginings of Shakespeare’s texts The Tempest and Othello, creating a convivial atmosphere during the two-day long festival. Students turned out in large numbers to cheer the collective effort, while Madhavi Menon (Professor of English) and Jonathan Gil Harris (Dean of Academic Affairs) appraised the performances. The duo was critical of the performances but was exuberant in praise for the innovative ideas.

Students had explored a gamut of mediums to present their reimaginings, ranging from stage shows and musical performances to documentaries, shadow dances, poetry, games, short films, comic strips, and diary entries. The presentations raised several contemporary social issues underpinning the themes explored in the two texts, including those of globalization, terrorism, science fiction, identity crisis, and alienation to name a few.

Here is a glimpse of three encapsulating performances.

Nobody is Home 

This group took the audience through the journey of an Indian couple who travelled abroad in search of their ‘American Dream’ via a series of documented skype calls. The performance was a re-imagining of Othello, dealing with the concepts of multiplicity and diaspora. While the wife adapts to the new life and embraces the otherness arising out of the new-found life, the husband finds it hard. The recession exacerbated the differences between the couple. The performance ended with an unnerving ambiguity, as audience witnessed the husband struggle with his overwhelming loss of belonging. The concept, being so close to home, it felt like real life was playing out on stage.

I Name Thee Othello

This performance presented an intriguing card game with elements from the characters of Othello. A group of six players were present on stage. Character cards were distributed amongst the players, with each card bearing the name of a character, along with a list of that particular character’s most distinguishing traits. Each player then made comments on an object card which was drawn from a deck, always cognizant of the traits of the character they had in hand. Based on these comments, one of the players, who was assigned the ‘General’ card, was supposed to find his counterpart Othello and declare him so by saying “I name thee Othello”. A failed attempt killed the character and the game went on until the general found the real Othello. The game propelled the players and audience alike, to think deeply about the traits of the characters in the play.

Café Temple

Imagine the characters from The Tempest and Othello coming together for a talk over dinner. Othello is a connoisseur of food and a famous critic who visits the restaurant Café Tempello with Desdemona for a formal critique. Prospero, who owns the restaurant sends Miranda and Caliban in disguise to influence the review. The four of them end up on the table dealing with their dilemmas and conflicts. While Othello and Desdemona crib over their fractured relationship, Miranda is awed by Othello’s charisma and Caliban struggles with his pretense as a wealthy critic. The performance left the audience wondering about the noise emanating from the intermixing of the two texts.

“The exhilaration of entering a Shakespeare text and making something of it is a significant achievement. In this year’s festival, the ideas of globalization, alienation, naxalism, feminism, science fiction, and communalism, to name just a few, were showcased with aplomb.  And the best part of it is that Shakespeare would not be turning in his grave at the thought that his texts are providing fodder for such a variety of ideas.  He would have loved it!” said Prof. Madhavi Menon when asked for her opinion on the performances.

The event pushed the students to read Shakespeare’s texts between the lines and rekindled the spirit of imagination.

“Working on the reimagination was an experience that I will remember over the years. Composing a song based on the tempest is definitely something I had not imagined doing. It was brilliant to see how such a work of art came out within 4 hours with our collective efforts,” said the Dream Team (Kartik, Abhishek, Anasuya, Kanika, Nayanika.)

For most of the Fellows hailing from diverse backgrounds, this was a whole new experience adding another perspective to their thought. The Fellows had a wonderful time reimagining Shakespeare’s world.

51

]]>

Shakespearean Extravaganza at 51

51 is back with the yearly Shakespeare festival. Enthusiasm flowed in from all corners of the Multipurpose Hall at the University, which was filled with Young India Fellows as 22 teams performed chimerical reimaginings of Shakespeare’s texts The Tempest and Othello, creating a convivial atmosphere during the two-day long festival. Students turned out in large numbers to cheer the collective effort, while Madhavi Menon (Professor of English) and Jonathan Gil Harris (Dean of Academic Affairs) appraised the performances. The duo was critical of the performances but was exuberant in praise for the innovative ideas.

Students had explored a gamut of mediums to present their reimaginings, ranging from stage shows and musical performances to documentaries, shadow dances, poetry, games, short films, comic strips, and diary entries. The presentations raised several contemporary social issues underpinning the themes explored in the two texts, including those of globalization, terrorism, science fiction, identity crisis, and alienation to name a few.

Here is a glimpse of three encapsulating performances.

Nobody is Home 

This group took the audience through the journey of an Indian couple who travelled abroad in search of their ‘American Dream’ via a series of documented skype calls. The performance was a re-imagining of Othello, dealing with the concepts of multiplicity and diaspora. While the wife adapts to the new life and embraces the otherness arising out of the new-found life, the husband finds it hard. The recession exacerbated the differences between the couple. The performance ended with an unnerving ambiguity, as audience witnessed the husband struggle with his overwhelming loss of belonging. The concept, being so close to home, it felt like real life was playing out on stage.

I Name Thee Othello

This performance presented an intriguing card game with elements from the characters of Othello. A group of six players were present on stage. Character cards were distributed amongst the players, with each card bearing the name of a character, along with a list of that particular character’s most distinguishing traits. Each player then made comments on an object card which was drawn from a deck, always cognizant of the traits of the character they had in hand. Based on these comments, one of the players, who was assigned the ‘General’ card, was supposed to find his counterpart Othello and declare him so by saying “I name thee Othello”. A failed attempt killed the character and the game went on until the general found the real Othello. The game propelled the players and audience alike, to think deeply about the traits of the characters in the play.

Café Temple

Imagine the characters from The Tempest and Othello coming together for a talk over dinner. Othello is a connoisseur of food and a famous critic who visits the restaurant Café Tempello with Desdemona for a formal critique. Prospero, who owns the restaurant sends Miranda and Caliban in disguise to influence the review. The four of them end up on the table dealing with their dilemmas and conflicts. While Othello and Desdemona crib over their fractured relationship, Miranda is awed by Othello’s charisma and Caliban struggles with his pretense as a wealthy critic. The performance left the audience wondering about the noise emanating from the intermixing of the two texts.

“The exhilaration of entering a Shakespeare text and making something of it is a significant achievement. In this year’s festival, the ideas of globalization, alienation, naxalism, feminism, science fiction, and communalism, to name just a few, were showcased with aplomb.  And the best part of it is that Shakespeare would not be turning in his grave at the thought that his texts are providing fodder for such a variety of ideas.  He would have loved it!” said Prof. Madhavi Menon when asked for her opinion on the performances.

The event pushed the students to read Shakespeare’s texts between the lines and rekindled the spirit of imagination.

“Working on the reimagination was an experience that I will remember over the years. Composing a song based on the tempest is definitely something I had not imagined doing. It was brilliant to see how such a work of art came out within 4 hours with our collective efforts,” said the Dream Team (Kartik, Abhishek, Anasuya, Kanika, Nayanika.)

For most of the Fellows hailing from diverse backgrounds, this was a whole new experience adding another perspective to their thought. The Fellows had a wonderful time reimagining Shakespeare’s world.

51

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