Call for Papers

CEP International Conference

Interweaving Anthropology, Science, and Narrative: Postanthropocentric Mappings in the era of Climate Crises.

Event dates: 1st to 3rd November 2023 

Place: Department of Humanities and Social  Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, West Bengal, India

Extended Abstract Deadline: 30 September, 2023

This conference organised by Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Kharagpur in association with University of Oldenburg, Germany and IMIS Bhubaneswar, India can be attended both through online and offline mode.

Coordinator (s): Dr. Saswat Samay Das, Liberal Arts and Critical Humanities, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Kharagpur.

Prof. Bhagirath Behera, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Kharagpur.

Dr Ananya Roy Pratihar, Communication and Media Studies, Institute of Management and Information Science, Bhubaneswar, India.

Keynote Speakers: Prof. Dr. Anton Kirchhofer, Professor of English Literature, Institute for English and American Studies, Literary and Cultural Studies, University of Oldenburg.

Dr. Anna Auguscik, Linguistics and Cultural Studies, Institute of English and American Studies, University of Oldenburg. 

Overview:

With anthropocenity driving the planet towards brink of extinction, the survival of humanity hinges on reconfiguring its relationship with narratives. Rather than merely using narrative spaces to record encounters with phenomenological realities, narratives should become an effective mechanism for actualizing a post-anthropocentric imaginary. John Wyndham’s The Kraken Wakes, Amitav Ghosh’s The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables of Planet in Crisis, Rajat Chowdhury’s The Butterfly Effect, James Bradley’s Clade and Jaspreet Singh’s Face imagine such a world by combining multiple trans-disciplinary strands. In their bid to problematize and transcend the existent anthropocentrism these writers produce new ecocratic sensibilities through their narratives, searching for what can stand as foundational essences of the post anthropocentric world that we seek to actualize at this juncture.

Simultaneously, anthropocentric narrators maintain a disjunctive relationality with organization of modern narratives and engage with planetary sciences, emphasizing the need for a “new philosophical anthropology”. However, this is a process that partakes of side-lining modern narrative’s colonial genealogy and overlooking the degree to which precolonial knowledge systems were integral to planetary and geological sciences. Despite these challenges, anthropocentric narratives offer a powerful means of grappling with the urgent issues facing our planet and imagining a post-anthropocentric future.

Our conference would then aim to engage with the following questions:

1. In what ways do what we call anthropocene narratives repeat the patterns of modern narratives and in what respects do they strike a radical departure from such patterns, radically transcending the outlooks and characteristics of modernity?

2. How do these narratives revisit the conceptual territory of agency, concomitant with individuations (whether as cultural institutions or as narrative devices), while emphasizing geo-historicity and planetarity?

3. How do these narratives stand as the production house of philosophical anthropology and the supplemental ally of science?

4. Whether these narratives can be wedded to decolonial and postcolonial concerns or we need an exclusive set of new fictions that can yield what we may call decolonial ecosophy reflecting engagement with archived and minor alternative histories?

5. How does the literatures on and around climate narratives promote climate activism ?

6. How do interdisciplinary approaches to climate change shape public opinion and policy decisions?

Call for papers, posters and creative writings :

We invite papers, posters and creative writings making an attempt to link narratives with the following concerns and issues but of course not limited within the provided guideposts:

• Modernity, anthropocenity and accelerationism 
• Geo-planetary science and geo-planetary immanentism 
• Geo-history, events and minor histories
• Earth, materiality and smooth spaces
• Actual time and stratigraphy
• The ‘human’ in the context of colonization and decolonization 
• Historicizing the ‘human’ in the context of conceptions of modernity
• New forms of capitalisms, cancel cultures and post neo-liberalisms
• coloniality, planetarity and ecology
• Eco-activisms, new parallaxes and the decolonial vitalist praxis
• Eco-politics, green capitalism and ecosophy
• Cultures, stratifications and New Earth
• Capitalist mobilizations and material dynamics

Please send your extended abstract within 500 words to email clificonferenceiitkgp2023@gmail.com by September 30, 2023. 

Scholars and faculties with accepted abstracts will be invited to present their papers in the conference. All presenters will have 15 minutes to present their papers followed by 5 minutes of discussion.

Registration:

Physical Attendee registration includes entry to all sessions, conference kit, break refreshments, CEP approved conference certificate and the Gala Dinner.

Online participation registration includes entry to all sessions in online mode and CEP conference e-certificate.

Respective fees(i, ii, iii, iv) for registration and paper presentation 

Participants
i. Offline Participation Fees
ii. Online Participation Fees
iii. Offline Paper Presentation Fees
iv. Online Paper Presentation Fees

Faculty Members: i- 2500, ii - 1500, iii- 3000, iv- 2000

PhD. /Post.Doc: i- 1000, ii- 750, iii- 1500, iv- 1000

M.A students: i- 750. ii- 500, iii- 1000, iv- 750

Industry: i- 5000, ii-4000, iii- 7000, iv- 3000

All the fees are in INR.

Registration link:

https://erp.iitkgp.ac.in/CEP/courses.htm

Publication Opportunities: All selected abstracts will be published as conference proceedings with an ISBN number. Best four papers will be selected for an edited volume to be published by Bloomsbury Publishing.

For more details please contact:

Research Associates:

Dipra Sarkhel

Email: diprasarkhel@gmail.com

Ph: 9474106244

Dibyendu Sahana

Email: sahanadibyendu01@gmail.com

Ph: 7074365706