Concept Note:

Storytelling, from the metamorphic narratives of the Indian epics such as the Mahabharata and the Ramayana and Ovid’s ancient transmutations to the evolving interfaces of the present, has been an act of survival through transformation. Metamorphosis is the underlying imperative of the twenty-first century; it is not just a biological inevitability but a relentless ontological pulse beating beneath the surface of our global narratives. We inhabit a world amid a grand moulting, where the traditional mediums of storytelling, like the printed page, the physical body, and the ancestral soil, are being reshaped under the pressures of a planetary crisis.

The most visceral shift begins with the Anthropocene transfiguring the environment from a silent backdrop to a demanding and volatile protagonist. As we navigate what Amitav Ghosh calls the ‘Great Derangement,’ we find that the boundaries between the human and non-human, as celebrated since the Enlightenment era, are becoming unstable. This ecological metamorphosis, flowing through the maritime histories of the Indian Ocean and the sinuous paths of river narratives, demands a new vocabulary that breathes with the earth itself. These tales are often etched upon ‘mythic palimpsests,’ where epic traditions and indigenous folklore are summoned to haunt the contemporary with storytellers adeptly using them to reveal modern truths. Here, adaptation becomes what Linda Hutcheon describes as a repetition without replication, a delicate interlacing of memory in which old myths provide the loom on which new and radical fabrics of meaning are woven.

As the earth shifts, so does the narrative skin of the ‘self’. The rigid architectures of identity have given way to the fluid, somatic transformations of the posthuman, where the body is no longer a fixed temple but a site of constant negotiation and existing in “crip-time” which Alison Kafer in Feminist, Queer, Crip describes as “flex time not just expanded but exploded; it requires reimagining our notions of what can and should happen in time, or recognizing how expectations of ‘how long things take’ are based on very particular minds and bodies.” In the neon-lit corridors of contemporary Sci-Fi and the quiet resilience of disability narratives, we encounter the ‘cyborg’ – a being simultaneously animal and machine, populating worlds ambiguously natural and crafted, and as Haraway points out in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, “is a matter of fiction and lived experience that changes what counts as women's experience.”  

This somatic flux is deeply intertwined with a sociopolitical awakening. In the memoirs of Dalit and indigenous storytellers, metamorphosis is the primary tool of agency against epistemic violence. Dalit futurism explores how the ancient phenomenon of the caste system interacts with, and often mutates within, emerging technoscientific cultures. Drawing on Ambedkarite ideology, the framework seeks to defamiliarise the familiar structures of Brahmanical patriarchy by projecting them into alternate or future worlds.

Critical to this concept is the use of the ‘novum’, that is, new or modified elements that differ from the reader's reality, to foreground the arbitrary and constructed nature of caste hierarchies. For example, in novels like Generation 14 and Chosen Spirits, genetic engineering and digital platforms like the Flowverse serve as tools to amplify or mask caste biases. Ultimately, Dalit futurism challenges the myth of a “post-caste” world, illustrating how historical disadvantages are re-fashioned into modern, tech-driven nodes of oppression and resistance. In these contemporary metamorphoses, that space is actively constructed through literature that de-territorialises the dominant tongue.

The narrative structure is likewise undergoing a structural revolution, moving away from the safe, linear paths of the past toward the demanding terrain of ‘Ergodic Play’. These digital and ludic landscapes turn the reader into a co-author who must struggle against the ‘death of the author’ to find meaning. A similar structural flux is mirrored in the ‘Media Metamorphoses’ of our transnational age, where the ‘K-Wave’ and Manga aesthetics collide with local sensibilities to create a vibrant ‘Convergence Culture’. As Henry Jenkins observes in Convergence Culture, this is the space where “old and new media collide, where grassroots and corporate media interact, where the power of the media producer and the power of the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways,” transfiguring the consumer into an active participant. We also witness the metamorphosis of language itself through the emergence of a ‘New Mother Tongue’ where Hinglish and translingual syntaxes break the hegemony of the colonial English novel.

The Department of English, Tezpur University, invites academicians, educators and scholars across Humanities and Social Sciences to investigate these shifting arcs and explore how the processes of metamorphosis reshape contemporary Indian storytelling across various media. We invite papers on topics including, but not restricted to, the following sub-themes:

Ecological Metamorphoses
Climate Fiction (Cli-Fi) and the Anthropocene; Indian Ocean maritime histories and littoral spaces; Riverine narratives; Ecofeminist narratives.

Sociopolitical & Identity Metamorphoses
Queer and feminist discourses, Narratives of disability in media; Agency, resilience, and futurism in Dalit and subaltern literature.

Entangled Metamorphoses
Posthumanism, AI and cyborg identities; Surveillance, “Dataveillance”, and algorithmic governance; Bio-violence and the colonised body; Mnemotechnics of conflict; Kalpavigyan and the decolonisation of science fiction.

Mythic Palimpsests
Contemporary reworkings of Indian epics; Indigenous folklore adaptations; Adaptation as cultural memory and historiographical metafiction.

Media Metamorphoses
Transnational pop culture flows (e.g., the K-Wave in India), Participatory cultures and fan-generated media; Streaming ecologies (OTT) vs. traditional cinema; Graphic narratives and sequential art.

Structural Metamorphoses
Proto-ergodic structures in ancient Indian literature; Indigenous board games as early models of spatial storytelling; Exotification of Indian aesthetics in contemporary videogames; Postcolonial game design; Nationalism and agency in contemporary videogames.

Linguistic Metamorphoses
Vernacularising English narratives through local syntaxes (e.g., Hinglish); Podcasts and the reemergence of neo-oral traditions; Politics of translation. 

Important Dates:

Deadline for abstract submission: 3rd July 2026

Notification of acceptance: 20th July 2026

Submission of full paper: 31st October 2026

Registration and Abstract Submission:

·         Please register and upload your abstracts in this Google Form (https://forms.gle/437g4eyrz3AyRo4x9).

·         Abstracts should be within 300 words with keywords, clearly outlining the research question, methodology, and key arguments. Format: PDF. Please check the Google Form for more details.

·         Please upload a brief bio-note (100 words) with institutional affiliation, designation, and email address in a separate PDF document in the same Form.

·         Full papers (4500–7000 words) should follow MLA 9th edition guidelines.

·         Selected papers may be considered for publication in an edited volume following peer review.

·         For further queries, please reach out to us at restoryingindia@gmail.com

·         Department website: https://www.tezu.ernet.in/deng/

    Download CFP: https://www.tezu.ernet.in/deng/pdf/CFP%20Re-storying%20India.pdf   

Registration Fee:

₹3000/- for Faculty Members

₹2000/- for Research Scholars

$100 for International Participants

The account details for fee submission will be shared with the selected participants. The fee covers the conference kit, high tea and lunch for both days of the conference.

Accommodation:

 Details for accommodation at the University Guest House will be sent to the selected participants through email in due time.