REPORT OF THE 21ST INTERNATIONAL MELOW CONFERENCE
Illness, Healing and Literary
Imagination
12-14 November 2021
Held at Shoolini
University, Solan
As
you take a stroll into Shoolini University’s sprawling, immaculate and
aesthetically laid-out campus you breathe in the uncontaminated freshness,
impregnated with the heady essence of the tall pine trees, where nature is so
readily accessible in all its variable moods. Yet another dream was resurrected
by the Department of English and School of Liberal Arts by hosting the 21st
International Conference MELOW, the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic
Literatures of the World. The theme of the conference is apropos to the present
scenario: Illness, Healing and Literary Imagination.
The conference brought the issues and challenges of pandemic, disease,
isolation, loneliness, vulnerability, regeneration, and hope, to the fore.
Scholars from India and abroad deliberated upon the history and etymologies of
diseases that have plagued humankind for millennia and have almost become
coterminous with human evolution. Over the course of three days, over 70 papers
were presented on the said theme. From Tuberculosis, Bubonic Plague, Cholera
Epidemic, to the recent Covid-19 pandemic, the paper presenters spoke on a wide
array of topics. The scope of the conference was widened further with
discussions on speculative fiction, film adaptations, web series, and
population studies.
Inaugural
Session
The
Inaugural session opened with a short but crisp introduction to the event, its
theme, and the introduction of the dignitaries by Prof. Manpreet Kang,
Secretary (MELOW), followed by Prof. Manju Jaidka, President (MELOW) who
apprised the audience about society and the Dept. of English, Shoolini
University.
The
chief guest of the day was Mrs Saroj Khosla, President, Shoolini University,
who graced the event with her benign presence and words of encouragement. Prof.
P.K. Khosla, Chancellor, Shoolini University, acknowledged the role of
literature in one’s life and congratulated the Department of English for adding
another feather to its cap of achievements by organizing this conference. Prof
Atul Khosla, Vice Chancellor, formally welcomed all the dignitaries and
participants from various parts of the country. He also wished the conference success
and promised his continuing support for future conferences.
Prof.
Tej Nath Dhar welcomed and introduced the keynote speaker of the day, Prof.
Rajeshwari Pandharipande from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
In her address, Prof Pandharipande elaborated on the theme of the conference
and proposed that “looking forward is going back.” She explained how the
current crisis has been a powerful catalyst for creativity by citing examples
from the lives and works of various authors.
The
inaugural session was followed by the book launch of Prof Manju Jaidka’s latest novel, Gumshoe Mania by the chief guest, Chancellor, and Vice-Chancellor.
Suhail Mathur, the Head of Operations of The Bookbaker Agency, and Vishal Soni
the literary representative of Vishwakarma Publications were also present
during the launch. After the inaugural, the dignitaries and guests proceeded
towards the two venues—Alpha (A) in APJ Hall, and Beta (B) in Bosch
Skill Development Centre for the following sessions:
Day
One: 12th November 2021
Session
One (A)
11:30
AM to 1:00 PM
Chair:
Gyorgy Toth, University of Stirling, UK
Jason S Polley presented a paper on “Bombay Fever, the Toujours Vu, and Our Plague Era: A Phenomenology
of Reflexivity.” In his paper, he discussed the speculative medical thriller by
Sidin Vadukut and how it has gradually become a reality in the new normal.
Stephanie Laine Hamilton presented a paper on “Skepticism in Belief: Pandemic, Procopius and Political Schism.” She
discussed the 6th century Justinian plague that is mentioned in the
extant works of Procopius of Caesarea, a noted
Byzantine historian from the same era, and talked about scepticism as an
alternate system of belief to address the political schism in society.
Sunanda Sinha in her paper “The
Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side: Re-reading The Lady of Shalott as a
Socio–Economic Pandemic Construct” explained how the unprecedented term
and devastating effect of the present pandemic have altered our lives
permanently. Her paper reconstructed Tennyson’s famous poem “The Lady of Shallot” as a socio-
economic allegory of human excesses and critically reflected on her isolation
to draw parallels with the present.
Richa Dawar in her paper titled “Reading the Politics of Plague in British East Africa” referred to
the memoir From Jhelum to Tana by
Neera Kapur-Dromson and select texts by colonial explorers and administrators
to read the politics of plague in British East Africa.
Session
One (B)
11:30
AM to 1:00 PM
Chair: M. L. Raina, Professor
Emeritus, PU, Chandigarh
Abhishek
Sarkar in his paper “Illness as Resistance to Political Allegory: The Small Voice of History
in Akhteruzzaman Elias’ Chilekothar Sepai”
explained how the said Bengali novel by the Bangladeshi writer evokes illness
to gesture towards the personal experience that defies and eludes co-option by
grand discourses of public and statist history. Sarkar discussed about the
protagonist Osman Ghani who is a young government clerk and falls ill and then
total insane after people’s unrest and agitation against the authoritarian
Pakistani rule and the military crackdown on it.
Abin Chakraborty in his paper “Anatomy of an Ailment: Examining Hansda
Sowvendra Sekhar’s The Mysterious Ailment
of Rupi Baskey” spoke about the trope of sickness in the novel that
is used to explore the socio-political marginalization of Adivasis in
post-Independence India and their multiple negotiations with urbanization and
modernity. The speaker talked about the novel's focus on beliefs and practices related
to witchcraft with special reference to the Baskey family and the women who are
portrayed as witches.
Fouzia
Usmani presented on “Marguerite Duras’ L’Amour: Understanding Madness through Foucault’s
Concept of ‘Biopower’ and ‘Biopolitics’.” The speaker felt that
Marguerite Duras’ popular novel L’Amour presents
madness as a result of the repressive thought process that exists in society.
Her paper focused on madness through the lens of Foucault’s notions of biopolitics
and biopower.
Session
Two (A)
2:00
PM to 3:30 PM
Chair: Sushila Singh, Professor
Emeritus, BHU, Varanasi
Payel Dutta
Chowdhury in her paper “‘Wounded Bodies, Scarred Minds’: Reading
Mental Illnesses in Women from Conflict Zones in Narratives from India’s
Northeast” spoke about mental illnesses in north-eastern women. Focusing on the
interdisciplinary study, the paper talked about the ways in which women from
conflict zones deal with the same.
Kriti Kuthiala
Kalia in her paper “The Politics of ‘Diseased Dreams’ in Yan Lianke’s Dream of Ding Village” discussed how the
author has used an evocative fable to represent the succumbing
to the AIDS pandemic owing to the relentless business of blood-selling in rural
Henan province in China.
Lukesh Kalita in
his paper “Pandemic as War and Weapon” discussed the
devastating causes of the pandemic biologically, psychologically, emotionally.
He also reflected on the prevailing sense of alienation, loss of sanity and
cognitive ability as a result of the same.
Noduli Pulu
presented on “Analysing the Diseased Body of the ‘English’ Opium-eater as the
Site of European Imperialism in Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.” The
paper discussed the politics caused by the imperialist diplomacy in medicinal
science through the diseased body that De Quincey epitomises. It also focused on the delay in diagnosing
opium’s injurious influence and its long-life span as a potent medical aid in
Romantic literary imagination.
Richa Ahluwalia
in her paper “Pandemic and the Politics of the Puissance” discussed the
double-edged woes that afflicted women during the
pandemic by drawing a parallel with Monika Ali’s novel Brick Lane. The
protagonist Nazeen’s confinement by her husband echoes the mental and emotional
turmoil that the majority of women suffered during the lockdown.
Session Two (B)
2:00
PM to 3:30 PM
Chairs: Mukesh Williams,
Soka University, Japan and Manpreet Kaur Kang, GGSIP University, New Delhi
Serena Demichelis in her paper “Hypochondriac notions: the Language of Disease in J.D. Salinger’s
‘Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters’” discussed the 23 years old
protagonist, Buddy Glass, who functions as Salinger’s alter-ego in the short
story. The speaker also discussed the “topos of disease” and through that
talked about the notion of a “writer in distress.”
Priya
Meena in her paper “Representation of Illness and Death in Bollywood: A Comparative Analysis
of Devdas and Dil Bechara” discussed how Bollywood negatively depicts
diseases like cancer and tuberculosis as untreatable. She compared the two
movies and felt that Dil Bechara is
more optimistic of the two as it gives hope to the audience and cancer
patients. She also mentioned that Bollywood should give accurate knowledge
about diseases instead of scaring the audience.
Thakurdas
Jana in his paper “Comics and Infertility: Visualization of Medical Autobiography” discussed
the representation
of infertility by comic artist Alison Wong, cartoonist Jessica Olien, and
Christine MacDonough. The paper drew a necessary
connection between art, infertility, and medical humanities.
Nujhat
Nuari Islam in her paper “Representation of
Diseases in The X-Files through Fox
Mulder” discussed at length about the protagonists, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully,
who became forensic alien experts in the TV series. The speaker speculated that
the infection spread by the mysterious “black oil” is a representation of a pandemic.
Session Three (A)
3:45
PM to 5:15 PM
Chair: Kamaluddin Ahmed, Jagannath
University, Bangladesh
Nilak Datta and
Neha Yadav in their paper “Pandemic Woes, Undead Foes: A Case Study of the
CDC’s Zombie Pandemic Graphic Novel” outlined the disaster
preparedness strategy for citizens. Their paper demonstrated the graphic
novel’s affiliation with the mainstream middle-class and a broad neo-liberal
ideology.
Arnab Chatterjee
in his paper “Performance and Public Health: The Case of the Introduction of
the Theatre of the Oppressed in India” addressed the
implications of integrating medical issues related to theatre studies in India.
The paper also focussed on the ideology of Augusto Boal who believed that
theatre can be an effective medium for social change.
Monali
Chatterjee in her paper “Contagion:
The Compelling Thriller of a Prophetic Narrative” drew parallels between the
current Covid-19 pandemic and the film to show how the latter prophesied the
mayhem with keen scientific observation. The paper also elaborated upon the
positive human values and traits that the film chooses to focus upon as a means
of preserving human values.
Masrat Yousuf
presented a paper on “The Healing Power of Poetry: A Study of the Select Works
of John Keats” and voiced the healing and therapeutic power
of literature in personal and collective adversities while focusing on the
works of John Keats.
Anindita Chatterjee in her paper “Panic, Pain and Pandemic in Popular
Cinema” used the prompt of pandemic movies that have become lessons about
survival, saying how one needs to stay connected as a society to deal with the
threat in unison.
Session
Three (B)
3:45
PM to 5:15 PM
Chair: Amy Lee,
Open University, Hong Kong
Sakshi Sundaram and Purnima Bali presented a joint paper on “Loneliness, Isolation and Tuberculosis in
Krishna Sobti’s ‘Badalon Ke Ghere.’” The paper focused upon the
physical, emotional and psychological plights of the protagonists, Manno and Ravi,
which are as much due to the nature of the disease and medically prescribed rest-cure
as due to the familial perception and fear of the illness.
Samrat Sharma in his paper “Surviving
AIDS and Fighting Discrimination in the TV Series, Pose” examined
how LGBTQ+ People of colour in Pose fight for better access to medical
institutions and preventive care while battling other problems such as
homelessness, hunger, mistreatment from police, discrimination and violence
daily.
Hemant Kumar Sharma in his paper “Survival,
Guilt and Hope in Three Pre-Partition Narratives of Disease” explained
the theme of survival, guilt and hope in the writings of three exceptional
writers from the Indian subcontinent.
Day Two: 13th November
2021
Session Four (A)
9:45 am to 11:15 am
Chair: Stephanie Lee
Hamilton, Alberta, Canada
Daniel
Kalinowski in his paper “How to Heal a Nation with Freud? On the Treatment of
National Defects According to Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewiez” talked about the healing
of the Polish Nation’s flaws which according to Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz is
possible through the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud.
Navdeep
Kahol’s paper on “Pale Horse, Pale Rider:
A Modern Take on War and Pandemic” detailed and discussed the extensive use of
Symbolism and psychological treatment of death and disease in the modernist
novel Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter.
Navreet
Sahi in her paper “Death, Disease and Disillusionment: Logotherapy and Survival
Motivation in Somerset Maugham’s The
Painted Veil” juxtaposed Frankl’s Logotherapy on Somerset Maugham’s The
Painted Veil to analyse the theme of hope and find meaning and purpose of
life.
Nida
Ambreen’s paper on “Stigmatization of Mental Illness: Analysis of Women’s
Condition in ‘The Yellow Paper’” looked at Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short
story “The Yellow Paper” to explore mental illness in form of post-partum depression.
Session Four (B)
9:45 am to 11:15 am
Chair: Roshan Lal Sharma,
Dharamshala
Awasthy
R presented on “Plagues and Monsters in the Gothic Stories of Poe” which
explored contagious illness as a significant motif in Gothic literature and its
effect on past and present. The paper also focused on the depiction of plagues
in the stories of Poe and how they are significant in the present scenario.
Gurpreet
Kaur in her paper “Existential Anxiety and Fear in the Covid-19 Scenario: A
Study of the Role played by Literary Heroes” analysed the effect of Covid-19
along with the feeling of hopelessness and existential crises and how tragic
literary heroes can become a medium through which people can answer to
existential questions.
Mary
Mohanty’s “Socio-cultural implications of Cholera Pandemic: Revisiting Fakir
Mohan Senapati’s Rebati” discussed
Senapati’s depiction of various socio-cultural implications of the cholera
pandemic along with the transition of colonial Odisha from a superstitious
society to a modern one.
Kuldeep
Singh in his paper “Mirroring Human Destruction in Lawrence Wright’s The End of October” deliberated upon the
reason behind the destruction of the world in Wright’s novel. The novel which
was written during the pandemic and discusses the evolution and spread of the pandemic
virus is a haunting reminder of the fall of social, economic, and political
structures that one witnessed in real life.
Session
Five (A)
Time:
11:30 am to 1:00 pm
Chair:
Nilak Datta, BITS Pilani, Goa
Indrani
Das Gupta’s “Planetary Entanglements, Health, and the Pandemic: Examining
Netflix’s Show Sweet Teeth” explored
a multidisciplinary world of Sweet Teeth, where a health emergency opens the
threshold of de-anthropomorphic socio-cultural revolution.
JapPreet
Kaur Bhangu in her paper “Amidst the Pandemic: A Study of Katherine Anne
Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider”
looked at the individual and social experience of disease in Katherine Anne
Porter’s novel while relating it to the current Covid-19 pandemic.
Pratima
Agnihotri’s “Conspiracy Narratives and Pop Fiction” examined conspiracy narratives
and how they are depicted with special emphasis on Foucault and human reflex
where individuals feel vulnerable which in turn feeds to the conspiracy.
Nitika
Gulati’s “Unresolved Experience and Unrealised Imaginings: Reading Re-narration
as Disnarration in Gayathri Prabhu’s If I Had to Tell it Again” attempted to
understand the linguistic phenomena in Gaythri Prabhu’s text which uses Gerald
Prince’s concept of the “disnarrated.”
Session
Five (B)
11:30
am to 1:00 pm
Chair:
Payel Dutta Chowdhury, REVA University, Bengaluru
Sonika
Thakur’s “Loss of Humanistic Values: A Critical Study of Selected Short Stories
by Indian Writers” examined the effect of 1936-37 plague in India through the
works of Harishankar Parsai, Master Bhagwan Das and Rajinder Singh Bedi. In all
these texts, the human values of concern and sympathy get undermined the moment
fears and insecurities take over.
Saurav
Shandil’s paper “Identity Crises, Depression, Death and Political Allegory in
Salman Rushdie’s The Golden House”
examined motifs such as identity crises, depression, and death in Salman
Rushdie’s novel with an emphasis on the inability of the protagonist Dionysius
Golden to conform to gender binaries which leads to their depression and
subsequent suicide.
Suman
Swati’s “Exploring Socio-cultural Impact in Camus’s The Plague” addressed epidemic as an agent of regeneration by
referring to the people of Oran in Camus’ novel who come together to resolve
the problems of pain, suffering, separation and exile and turn it into a story
of the victory of the human spirit.
Swarnim
Subba’s paper “Narratives of Spiritual and Emotional Illnesses: Paradigms of
Recovery and Healing in Indigenous Women’s Poetry” explored the issues of
illness as evoked in the Native American and Northeast Indian indigenous
women’s poetry by a close examination of poems by Linda Hogan and Mamang Dai.
Swati
Vijay’s “A Coping Mechanism in Pandemic” tried to examine how music and
literature can be used as an art form to reduce the suffering of humans. It
explored how fear and trauma during distressing times are dwindled by the use
of songs in real life and literature.
Session
Six (A)
2:00
pm to 3:30 pm
Chair:
Daniel Kalinowski, Pomeranian University, Poland
Vibha
Sharma and Fatema Sultana in their paper “Survival of the Select Bangladeshi
Theatre Artists in the Time of COVID-19 Pandemic: A Perspective on their Role
in Reviving Society’s Hope and Creativity” spoke about the socio-economic
sufferings and survival of select Bangladeshi theatre artists during the
pandemic. The paper also focused on the resilience of the performers who at
first underwent severe psychological trauma due to lockdown but then found a
ray of hope and rejuvenation through the online platforms.
Samrat
Khanna’s paper “Caught Between Past and Present: A Study of Rajinder Singh
Bedi’s ‘Quarantine’” discussed the spirit of philanthropism in the short story,
which breaks the confines of disease and diseased.
Sudipta
Chakraborty’s paper “An Analysis of the Notion of Dis/eased Body from the
Shakta Tantric Perspective” discussed the unique epistemology of Shakta Tantra
which offers the possibility of redefining the concepts of health and sickness.
Tanupriya’s
paper “Social-cultural Impact of COVID 19: Understanding Pandemic through Literature
and History” contextualized epidemics and pandemics through classics such as
Camus’s The Plague (1947), Jack
London’s The Scarlet Plague (1912)
and Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera
(1985) as well as contemporary films on OTT platform like Pandemic (2020) and
Coronavirus Explained (2020).
Session
Seven: ISM Award Session
4:00
pm to 5:00 pm
Chair:
Meenakshi F. Paul, HPU, Shimla
In
memory of the late Prof. Isaac Sequeira, MELOW annually awards a prize for the
best paper presented by a young scholar at the conference. The award comprises
a certificate and a cash prize of Rs. 5,000. The competition is open to Indian
citizens who are members of MELOW. The competing participant/delegate should be
below forty years at the time of the conference. The three finalists of 2021
were Hem Raj Bansal, Sowmya Srinivasan, and Sudipta Saha.
Hem
Raj Bansal’s paper “Blindness as a Trope of Moral Depravity and Divine
Retribution in Jose Saramago’s Blindness”
discussed the metaphorical and literal blindness in the novel whereby losing
one’s eyesight becomes akin to becoming short-sighted. However, even in the
face of governmental and bureaucratic apathy, listlessness, hopelessness, and
existential angst, the female protagonist of the novel shows extraordinary
courage and resilience.
Sowmya
Srinivasan’s paper “Progeria and the Stigma of Aging in Fitzgerald’s “The
Curious Case of Benjamin Button” discussed the stigma of ageing as perceived in
human society and the invincible potency of progeria to demolish it with
reference to Fitzgerald’s short story. The case of Benjamin Button is a
fictionalized case of Progeria where Benjamin suffers reverse ageing. The paper
also questioned the idea of
normalcy, diseased condition of the human body, and ageing with its
sociological, psychological, and ontological implications, along with the
credibility of medical advancements devoid of humanitarian concerns.
Sudipta
Saha’s paper “‘Blindness’ as a Trope: Probing the Metaphorical Illness and
Understanding the Social-Political Reality in Jose Saramago’s Blindness” explored the epidemic of blindness
as an allegory to comment on human weakness and immorality. The paper argued
that the novel becomes a kind of Tiresias (the soothsayer in Dante's The
Divine Comedy) of the Western civilization which is falling apart and is
incapable of rapidly responding to pandemic situations.
Session
Eight: ISM Special Lecture
5:00
pm to 6:00 pm
Chair:
Richard J. Cohen, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA
The
ISM Special lecture titled “Interrogating
Isolation: Ways of Writing, Recollections and Recreating New Times” was
delivered by Dr Krishnan Unni from Delhi University. The lecture was a
kaleidoscopic view of isolation through the ages that also took into account
“political isolation.” From 3rd century BCE to contemporary Guantanamo
Bay accounts, Dr Unni’s lecture had the range and breadth of a real-life
encyclopaedia that ultimately sought to answer as to how one can restructure
the post-pandemic/new normal era using literature. According to the speaker,
the innate human imagination and the paradoxical human imagination will always
be in a state of conflict with each other. The real change will be when the
layman or the real person at the grassroots will take over as a form of new
literature and the centre so as to create a new world order.
The
concluding remark was by the Chair, Richard Cohen. Commenting on history he
said, history refuses to change. It is impossible to write history because it
is like an hourglass. We are in the middle, the future is the top and the past
is the lower half. Still, we have not owned up to our mistakes and misuse of
the human bodies for human labour. He concluded by bringing attention to the
unexplored and under-represented literature from the Indian Ocean region as a
means of expanding our understanding about the same.
Shortly
after the remarks, Hem Raj Bansal was adjudged as the winner of the ISM Award
for the best paper.
Session
Nine (A)
9:30
AM to 11:00 AM
Chair: JapPreet Bhangu,
Sant Longowal Institute, Punjab
Amrapalli Mohan
Sharma in her paper “The Mortal Condition: Epidemic in Five
Hindi-Urdu short stories” talked about five Hindi/Urdu short stories that explicitly
represent plague, cholera, and influenza outbreaks from the late-nineteenth
century to the early decades of the twentieth.
Charu Ahluwalia
in her paper “The Paroxysm of Pandemics: Human Mutation from Dysphoria to
Euphoria” dwelled upon The Plague by Albert Camus and his
theory of Absurdism to prove that pandemics can cripple a human body but not
the soul by showing how at the end it is love and hope that triumph over the
pandemic.
Aarifa Khanum in
her paper “Loneliness and Solitude: Reference to Paul Auster’s Masterpiece The
New York Trilogy” explored the opinion of Auster on the
function of loneliness in the postmodern society and attempted to establish
what the term signifies for the latter.
Amirtha
Devarajan in her paper “Disease, Desire and Death in Gita Hariharan's Remains
of the Feast” attempted to read disease and the fear of death as
means of liberation in Gita Hariharan’s short story “Remains of the Feast”
through the figure of its 90 years old widowed protagonist, Rukmini. The
realisation of Rukmini’s private desire of eating forbidden food sharply
contrasts with the denial of her public wish of wearing a red sari at her
funeral by her daughter-in-law.
Session
Nine (B)
9:30
AM to 11:00 AM
Chair:
Jason S Polley, University of Hong Kong
Amy Lee in
her paper “Detecting the Self:
Dis-eases and Spirituality in Contemporary Popular (Japanese) Literature” looked at
select stories from the
large Onmyoji collection which Yumemakura Baku published over
the last 30 years, to examine the meaning of dis-eases as depicted in the
contemporary popular fiction that in turn re-interpret the practices and beliefs of the Heian period (794-1185). Baku re-fashions the Heian yin-yang master Abe no Seimei (921-1005) into a
Sherlock Holmes figure and re-interprets human diseases as psychological
mysteries.
Nishi
Pulugurtha in her paper “Literary
Responses in These Times” examined select poems and
short stories that speak of responses to the new normal. The speaker proposed that literary
texts which deal with pandemics act as examples of how things were managed in
times of similar crises in past and give us ideas about how one might restructure
one’s society in the aftermath of pandemics.
Neepa
Sarkar’s paper “Illness Narratives, Popular Imagination
and Literary Criticism” explored
the genre of illness narratives in the contemporary context using the work of
certain theorists like Susan Sontag, Bruno Latour, Andreas Weber among others
to look at the concept of illness and its effect on the imagination and
literary response. The paper also examined a range of practices that emerge in
writing about illness and in critical work informed by concepts of embodied
suffering, mortality and loss.
Aishwarya Das Gupta in her paper “Diseased Bodies, Diseased Minds: A Representation of Illness in Poetry
Belonging to Different Spatio-Temporal Co-ordinates” examined four poems on pestilence
viz. Mary Latter’s
“Soliloquy XVI” (1759), Christina Rossetti’s “The Plague,” Rabindranath
Tagore’s “Puraton Bhritya” (“My Old Servant”), and Indulekha Agnihotram’s “Will
the Door Ever Open?” (2020). The paper also explored how these poems, located in different spatio-temporal
coordinates, respond and deal with the theme of disease and death.
Sarvesh Kumar Pandey and Ajay K. Chaubey in their joint paper titled “Locating Epidemic and Pandemic in Selected Hindu Scriptures: A Critical
Study” reflected upon the nature
of epidemic and pandemic through the lens of Hindu religious texts while
simultaneously trying to underscore their cause and outbreak prevention and
impact on various dimensions of the society at large. The paper also explored the root
cause of death, disease, suffering, and salvation through Manu's critique of the
invention and excessive usage of “Mega Machines.”
Session Ten (A)
11:15 AM to 12:45 PM
Chair: Hem Raj Kafle, Kathmandu University, Nepal
Gönül Bakay in
her paper “A Novel Approach to Life and Sickness: Science vs. Arts in Ian
McEwan’s Saturday” explored
how McEwan successfully probes the dualities of life: arts versus science,
emotion-reason, sanity-insanity to help the reader face the mystery of life in
his novel Saturday.
Neeraj Pizar
in his paper “Hope in Despair: A Study of Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend and its Film Adaptation”
critically reflected on the similarities and divergences between the Sci-Fi
novel and its screen adaptation by Francis Lawrence (1997) to reflect the way
in which both the texts hold the crucial element of “hope” against the
all-pervasive death, destruction, and loneliness.
Shruti Das and
Deepshikha Routray in their paper “Disease, Stigma and Representation: Mental
Health in Alice Munro’s The Progress of
Love” applied Cathy Caruth’s trauma theory to read
Munro’s stories. The speakers elaborated upon how Munro’s narratives foregrounds
the stigma and related cognitive behaviour that leads to stress disorder in the
fictional characters.
Jasajit
Ashangbam presented a paper on “The Phenomenon of Anxiety in Henry Melville’s Bartleby” which aimed
to decipher the abnormality seen in the protagonist, Bartleby, whether it be an
act of utter freedom, rebellion as an ascetic, or a grotesque aberration of
existing in a conformist society.
Session
Ten (B)
11:15
to 12:45 PM
Chair:
Nishi Pulugurtha, Brahmananda Keshab Chandra College, West Bengal
Nilakshi
Roy in her paper “Healing as Narrative Strategy in Fiction” examined healing
as a holistic solution to cope with prolonged illness and the resultant
suffering endured in Rabindranath Tagore’s The Post Office and
Roopa Farooki's The Way Things Look to Me. The paper also emphasised the unique connection between healing and
storytelling in these texts.
Mridu
Sharma’s paper “The Pangs of Suffering:
Theme of Nostalgia, Plague and Survival in Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague” looked at leitmotifs of suffering and survival, the memory of
gruesome horrors of the plague and nostalgia and yearning for the past or
pre-plague times as experienced by Granser in the novel, The Scarlet
Plague with special emphasis on environmental degradation and the
deterioration of human values and fall of civilization in such horrific
situation.
Somrita Misra
in her paper “‘The More You Remember, The More You Are Lost’: Memory, Loss, and Healing
during a Pandemic in Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven” analysed the effects of a pandemic
through the loss of loved ones borne by the characters and their coping
mechanisms. The speculative novel oscillates between the pre and post pandemic
world to talk about healing, hope, art, and human resilience.
With that, the three-day conference
concluded and overall was a great success. It was also covered extensively in
the local and national media.
Report
compiled by SAKSHI SUNDARAM
With
inputs from
Garima Faujdar
Hassan Nassour
Jagmeet Bhatti
Khushboo Thakur
Kritika varma
Navreet Sahi
Poulami Banerjee
Rsvika Tripathi
Ruchi Sharma
Ruchi Sharma Barsanta
Sakshi Sundaram
Samrat Sharma
Vaishali Thakur
Vedanshi Bhatia
