Second International Seminar on Philosophy of Education
Tezpur University
Date: 14th-15th March, 2014

National Seminar The Practices of everyday life in North-East India: An Interdisciplinary Approach, 14th-15th March, 2014, Tezpur University. For details:

For details: http://www.tezu.ernet.in/notice/CFP-EVERYDAY-LIFE.pdf

North-east India has been ‘seen’ very often as a frontier land, a fractious place inhabited by numerous ethnic groups, once primitive and happy, now politically restive. Debates, discussions and writings (scholarly or public) on North-east India vis-à-vis mainland India tend to concentrate mostly on political marginalization, underdevelopment, insurgent related violence or the pristine cultural heritage. What is ignored or glossed over in such discussions are the daily lives – quotidian trials and tribulations – of “ordinary, everyday people”. In Western academia, everyday life in its multifarious aspects like housing, clothing, food habits, individual’s likes or dislikes, memories, anxieties, etc. has long been a subject of extensive scrutiny. Still as Ben Highmore states, everyday life remains “a problematic, a contested and opaque terrain, where meanings are not to be found ready-made”.

This seminar proposes to examine the practice of everyday life in North-east India. This is because everyday life as tethered to the larger social, economic and political concerns is a site that enables one to negotiate between the particular (microscopic level) and the macroscopic levels (of culture, society etc) and make visible the lives of those “nameless multitudes” who have been sidelined by dominant accounts of social life. We intend to interrogate what Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak termed as “‘sanctioned ignorance’” through a critique of the everyday life of this region. Through an interdisciplinary dialogue on the everyday life in North-east India we hope to invoke those practices and lives that have traditionally been marginalized or glossed over as inessential. A study of everyday life and material culture in all its aspects – visual, verbal, aural, olfactory etc. – may help us probe and challenge identity politics as it is currently understood or constructed. This seminar endeavours to attain a pluralistic understanding of the idea of North-east India. We would be looking for papers that engage with, critique, reflect, challenge and react to texts and contexts of everyday life in colonial and post-colonial North-east India. The papers can engage with multiple critical categories like literature, language, ethnicity, gender, class, culture, power, history, memory, nation and geography.

We invite papers based on theoretical, methodological and empirical work on everyday life from all areas including but not limited to literature, history, sociology, popular culture, feminist studies, postcolonial studies, media and film studies, material culture studies, performance and visual arts studies. Papers can be on the following sub-themes, the listing of which is merely indicative.

SUB THEMES:
o TRAJECTORIES OF EVERYDAY LIFE
o GEOGRAPHIES OF EVERYDAY LIFE
o ‘WRITING’ EVERYDAY LIFE
o OTHERS IN EVERYDAY LIFE
o GLOBAL IN EVERYDAY LIFE

The primary objective of the Seminar is to serve as a platform where academicians and experts from different parts of the country can participate in open dialogue and critical engagement with the field of everyday life.

Interested participants are requested to send their abstracts (1000 words) along with short bio-data by 5th December 2013. The acceptance of abstracts will be notified by 15th December 2013. Full papers (Latest MLA Style, 5000—8000 words) should be submitted by 14th February 2013 in soft copy. The time allowed for each participant to present her/his paper would be 20 minutes. All papers selected for presentation will be published in the Seminar Proceedings. Participants who do not submit their full papers in advance will not be allowed to present their papers. All participants are required to submit one hard copy at the time of presentation.

Email Address for sending Abstracts & Full Papers and all enquiries:
[email protected]

Address for Correspondence:
To Convenor
National Seminar on Everyday Life in Northeast India
Department of English & Foreign Languages
Tezpur University
P.O. Napaam, Sonitpur
Assam- 784028
Phone: 03712-275216 (O)

The Department website may be checked for updates.
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