THE WAR LITERATURE: MAPPING THE UNHEARD VOICES ACROSS THE GLOBE

Concept Note:

I am the enemy you killed, my friend.

I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned

Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.

I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.

Let us sleep now. . . (Wilfred Owen: Strange Meeting)

The inaugural literature about ‘romanticizing war’ and the ‘pity of war’ started with the War poets during Modern period. Interestingly, as long as there has been war, there have been writers trying to understand it, altering the battlefield horrors into narrative thereby giving the world food for thought to ponder upon out of the debris created due to War.

There are myriads of works and memoirs of war such as Who Killed Daniel Pearl? (Melville House, 2003), the international best-seller by Bernard-Henri Levy; and Jarhead (Scribner, 2003) by Anthony Swofford, an ex-marine who fought in the first Gulf War and later attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. In recent timeline, an unusually high number of soldier memoirs have been released by American publishers. Some of these include My War: Killing Time in Iraq by Colby Buzzell, published last month by Putnam; Love My Rifle More Than You: Young and Female in the U.S. Army by Kayla Williams, published by Norton in September; and The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier’s Account of the War in Iraq by John Crawford, published in August by Riverhead. Different countries portrayed the loss and destruction by creating Memoirs about the war in Iraq like Burning Baghdad as well.

Now the interesting questions which bind all War narrative are:

• Do we really fight for patriotism or to balm our wounded self?
• Can the loss be paid ever?
• Is it that the war is a novice concept? Had it been not there when we had Classical texts like Ramayana and Mahabhartha? Was the war the reality or the teachings behind the war?
• Has the partition really served the purpose? How it created the locale and tenor for future wars?
• Is it that Cinema is portraying the dark sides of War or Patriotism at the backdrop of War?

Whether or not their books will stand the test of time, writers continue to write about war to find the unarguable point of it. And readers read about war for the same reason. It’s no surprise, of course, that this goal is never reached. Still, writers struggle to tell the truest tale, to form true opinions, and to make sense of something that is hard to understand.

For the convenience of the scholars, some topics have been listed below but they are only suggestive and the scholars are free to choose their areas of interest within this wider framework. The sub-themes are as follows:

1. 1.      War and Anti-War as a ‘narrative’
2. 2.      Inexplicable Patriotism and Humanity
3. 3.      War: Death and Loss
4. 4.      Migration and War
5. 5.      Partition and the effects of War
6. 6.      Multi-Cultural mosaic and War
7. 7.      The War of “ISMS”
8. 8.      Existentialism and War
9. 9.      Classical literature and War
10. 10.  War and Cinema

Editing Requirements:

• ● Font & size: Times New Roman 12, Spacing: 1.5 lines, Margin of 1 inch on all four sides
• ● Title of the paper: bold, Sentence case (Capitalize each word), centered
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• ● References: Please follow MLA style (8th Edition)
• ● Articles should be submitted as MS Word attachments only ● The length of article should be 3000-5000 words

Important Dates:

• 28th feburary 2018- abstract along with a brief bio-note and keywords
• 30th March Full Paper
• April 15 – Intimation of Acceptance

 Authentic, scholarly and unpublished research papers are invited from scholars/ faculty/ researchers/ writers/ professors from all over the world. The book will be published with an ISBN by a renowned publisher.

Contact Info:

 Editor

 Dr. Manoj Kumar, Asst. Professor, Amity University Rajasthan.

Email: criticalessays@gmail.com