CONFERENCE REPORT:
The 16th International MELOW Conference on
"Facts, Distortions and Erasures: Literature as History; History in
Literature" was held in Chandigarh from 3-5 March 2017. It was attended by
approximately 125 delegates. A total of 102 speakers presented papers in 27
different sessions.
Among the international delegates who attended the
conference were Manuel Broncano from Texas, Mukesh Williams, Kaoru Kinoshita
and Ui Teramoto from Japan, and a few international Ph.D. Scholars.
In the inaugural session Manpreet Kang—Jt.
Secretary—welcomed the delegates, Manju Jaidka—the Secretary—gave a brief
outline of the history of MELOW, Anil Raina—the President of MELOW—delivered
the presidential address, and Vijay Sharma—the Vice-President—gave the vote of
thanks.
The Keynote Address was delivered by Prof. Manuel
Broncano on "Master Narratives, Grand Narratives, Meta Narratives and
the Apocrypha: Some Preliminary Considerations on the Relations between History
and Literature." He focused on the classic Don Quixote and how the text is related to the historical
situation prevalent in those times.
The Isaac Sequeira Memorial Special lecture was
delivered by Prof. R. W. Desai who spoke on "The Rape of Lucrece as a Conspectus of the Rise of Parliamentary
Democracy in Tudor England," a subject closely linked to the
literature-history theme of the conference.
There were four plenary sessions in all while the
rest were parallel sessions. The various sessions of the conference were
chaired by Anita Sharma, Ashu Vashisht, Brajesh Sawney, Debarati Bandyopadhyay,
Dipankar Purkayastha, Jyoti Desai, K.B Razdan, Kaoru Kinoshita, Manpreet Kang,
Manuel Broncano, Mukesh Williams, Namrata Nistandra, Natasha Williams Vashisht,
Neela Sarkar, Nilakshi Roy, R.W Desai, Radha Gautam, Ranjita Pati, Roshan
Sharma, Rimika Singhvi, Suneeta Patnayak, T.N. Dhar, and Vijay Sharma.
In the penultimate session Certificates were
distributed to all the participants by K.B. Razdan, the senior most member in
the gathering, and by Brajesh Sawhney from Kurukshetra University.
The General Body Meeting of MELOW was held at the end of the
conference. The audited accounts of MELOW were presented to the
house and passed unanimously. The chief office bearers interacted with the
members, invited observations and suggestions on further activities of the
Society.
Several important issues were discussed and the following
decisions were taken:
1.
The
thrust of the Society is World Literature, so an effort has to be made in all
future conferences that a balance is maintained in the papers that are
presented. In the past few conferences the tendency of members is to send
abstracts on just one category (Indian literatures) ignoring the rest of “world
literature.” This has to be rectified and balance is to be restored.
2.
The academic standard of papers needs further
improvement. It was suggested that full papers should be invited before the
conference so that they may be scrutinized and quality be maintained.
3.
An effort should be made to bring in more
members from the Southern and Western states which are under-represented.
Further, international linkages need to be strengthened and there should be
greater participation of delegates from abroad.
4.
The venue for the next MELOW Conference was
discussed. Roshan Sharma from Central University of Himachal Pradesh,
Dharamshala, offered to host the next conference on his campus after a
discussion with his Vice-Chancellor. Further details will be worked out in the
weeks that follow.
5.
The tentative theme for the next conference
was discussed. The Executive Committee will further discuss the matter online,
draw up a Conference call and circulate the same in due course.
6.
The MELOW Journal, MEJO, will be edited by Manpreet Kang. Articles will be selected
and published in the online journal and also on Kindle in a paperback form.
7.
All participants interested in submitting
their conference paper for possible publication need to send in the final paper
by a date to be announced. The papers will follow the latest (8th)
MLA Handbook. Further guidelines will be circulated by Manpreet Kang.
8.
Changes were made in the Executive body of
MELOW. Dipankar Purkayastha and Radha Gautam were added in place of Ashis
Sengupta and R.G. Kulkarni. Suneeta Patnayak was also added to the executive
council
The
updated list of Office Bearers is as follows:
President: Prof Anil Raina (Chandigarh)
Vice-President: Dr Vijay Sharma (Delhi)
Secretary: Prof Manju Jaidka (Chandigarh)
Jt. Secretary: Prof Manpreet Kaur (Delhi)
Treasurer: Dr Meenu Gupta (Chandigarh)
Executive Members:
1. Prof Sushila Singh (Varanasi)
2. Prof Dipankar Purkayastha (Silchar)
3. Prof Debarati Bandopadhyay (Santiniketan)
4. Prof Ravichandran (Kanpur)
5. Dr Roshan Sharma (Dharamshala)
6. Dr Seema Bhupendra (Udaipur)
7. Dr Neela Sarkar (Kolkata)
8. Dr Jyoti Mishra (Chattisgarh)
9. Dr Vandhana Sharma (Jammu)
10. Dr Suneeta Patnayak (Chandigarh)
11. Dr Radha Gautam (Surat)
Advisory
Board:
Giorgio
Mariani (University of Sapienza, Rome, Italy)
Shirley
Geok Lim (University of California, SantaBarbara)
Rajeshwari
Pandharipande (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA)
Mukesh
Williams (Soka University, Japan)
Pawel Jędrzejko (University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland)
