The Centre for Postcolonial Studies at Nottingham Trent University, UK, in collaboration with the research centre EMMA at the Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, France, is in the process of creating an international academic network which will enable a multi-disciplinary dialogue on Indian literature produced by Dalits (formerly known as Untouchables) by hosting a series of workshops and conferences on the production, translation, dissemination and analysis of Dalit literature. The international conference on "Contemporary Approaches to the Analysis of Dalit Literature" is the first conference of the series.

Dalit literature is the most significant development in Indian literature in the last three decades, which has received surprisingly little attention from academics outside India. This conference seeks to bring together scholars in the field of literary and cultural studies, postcolonial studies, South Asian literatures, history and cultures and translation studies to discuss this fascinating corpus of literary texts.

We invite papers that explore and delineate the analytical methods that are currently employed in the study of Dalit literature and point to areas that need to be researched in greater detail or new theoretical and critical approaches that should be employed in the analysis of the often experimental and innovative literary and aesthetic features of Dalit literature.

Confirmed keynote speakers are K. Satyanarayana (English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad), the co-editor of the two-volume anthology on South Indian Dalit literature, No Alphabet in Sight and Steel Nibs Are Sprouting (Penguin, 2011-13), and M.S.S. Pandian (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi), the author of Brahmin and Non-Brahmin: Genealogies of the Tamil Political Present (Permanent Black, 2007/2008) and co-editor of Muslims, Dalits and Fabrications of History: Subaltern Studies: Writings on South Asian History and Society, vol. 12 (Permanent Black, 2005).

Please send abstracts of paper proposals of up to 300 words to Dr Nicole Thiara (nicole.thiara@ntu.ac.uk) and Dr Judith Misrahi-Barak (judith.misrahi-barak@univ-monp3.fr) by 30 January, 2014. Notification of acceptance will be given by 30 March, 2014.