South-Asian Fiction: Contemporary Transformations
3 November 2012
A one-day symposium organised by The Open University's Postcolonial Literatures Research Group in collaboration with the Institute for English Studies, University of London, Senate House
South-Asian fiction in English has become a major global publishing phenomenon in recent years: increasingly confident of its own hybrid traditions and cultural credentials, it commands greater readerships than ever before, and represents some of the most original and marketable literature being written today. Since it started to gain international recognition in the early 1980s, South-Asian literature has also been co-opted, often unwillingly, as a particular critical concern and a favoured cultural form of postcolonial studies. Yet, in the past two decades the political and economic contexts of South-Asian Anglophone fiction, its material circulation and its national and international audiences have changed dramatically.
In Pakistan, writers have renegotiated their country's hidden political histories and confronted the involvement of the country in the war on terror after 9/11; in India and Bangladesh, explosive economic growth and environmental changes have led to new debates about social justice, identity-politics and neoliberal models of development; and in Sri Lanka, the end of twenty-six years of civil war has reshaped the country's political terrain and posed new questions about its future. Alongside these changes, the South-Asian diaspora has both transformed and energised the cultural politics of the global North at the same time as its communities have become the focus of renewed concerns about multiculturalism, immigration and political radicalism.
With these momentous changes in mind, the South-Asian Fiction: Contemporary Transformations One-Day Symposium seeks to address emerging contexts and formal departures in South-Asian Anglophone fiction and, in the process, interrogate established critical and theoretical assumptions about this rapidly evolving body of writing. The conference will allow critics and scholars of South-Asian fiction to exchange ideas, challenge current paradigms in postcolonial studies, and map new areas of importance, especially where these involve recent economic and political developments in the region.
Topics will include:
- New popular genres: crime, chick lit and science fiction
- South-Asian fiction and the visual media
- Terrorism and political identities after 9/11
- New subaltern narratives
- Emerging regional and transnational genres
- Environmental and biotechnological issues
- New narrative forms; emerging literary aesthetics.
Convenors: Dr Alex Tickell, a.tickell@open.ac.uk and Pooja Sinha, P.Sinha@open.ac.uk
The School of Advanced Study is part of the central University of London. The School takes its responsibility to visitors with special needs very seriously and will endeavour to make reasonable adjustments to its facilities in order to accommodate the needs of such visitors. If you have a particular requirement, please feel free to discuss it confidentially with the organiser in advance of the event taking place.
Enquiries: Events Officer, Institute of English Studies, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU; tel +44 (0) 207 664 4859; Email: IESEvents@sas.ac.uk
