Call for papers for the panel P51 'Mediating South Asian diasporic experience in the 21st century: narratives across borders' for the EASAS (European Association for South Asian Studies) biannual conference in Paris, 24 - 27 July 2018. 

The deadline for abstract submission is 30th of November 2017.  To submit the abstract follow the instructions here: https://www.ecsas2018.org/call-for-papers/ 

Panel description: Vijay Mishra famously argued (2005) that “the nation-state needs diaspora to remind it of what the idea of homeland really is”. Indeed, considering that the history of the Subcontinent is marked by centuries of movement, migration and resettlement, diasporas are not only symbols of vibrant cosmopolitan cultures (Mannur and Sahni 2011) – they are also repositories of past national memories of pre-migration patterns. The diasporic space has been explored extensively in films and literature - narratives of diaspora stemming from diasporic authors as well as from South Asian-based authors. In the first case diasporas have been often analysed using the Bhabhian concepts of liminality, third space and the (very much contested, see Shackleton 2008) celebration of hybridity. On the other hand, narratives of diaspora from the subcontinent, especially those offered by Hindi popular cinema, tell a very different story and generally relate back to the internal social and political vicissitudes of India. In this panel we propose to open up a dialogue between these representations and to analyse how they are constructed, disseminated and/or challenged in relation to recent political developments in South Asia. We propose to explore how different authors narrate the diasporic experience through different representational practices (films, photography, literature, media etc.) and to explore their reception: how people engage with and craft (with the Internet, social networks, etc.) new ways to communicate the diasporic experience.

Contact Info: 

The panel is organized by Dr Deimantas Valanciunas (Vilnius University) and Dr Clelia Clini (University College London). For all conference related queries you can contact the organizers (contact information available at https://www.ecsas2018.org or by writing directly to Dr. Deimantas Valanciunas at deimantasval@gmail.com.