Panel Title: Anthropology of Literature: Negotiating Cultural Paradigms

Convenors: Dr. Kalindi Sharma, Assistant Professor, IHBAS

Email: kalindi1sharma@gmail.com;  kalindi.ihbas@delhi.gov.in

Co- Convenor: Dr. Debashree Sinha, Assistant Professor (English), Deshbandhu College, University of Delhi

Email: sinhadebashree5@gmail.com

Discussant: Prof. Indranil Acharya, Professor & Head of the Department (English), Vidyasagar University

Abstract:
The panel will bring together researchers, academics, and professionals engaged in exploring the poetics and politics of anthropological and literary writing. Underscoring the fact that anthropology and literature share intellectual concerns, and that both disciplines have something to offer to each other, the panel will generate discourse amongst literary scholars and anthropologists working in traditional and non-traditional areas as they address the intersection of literature and anthropological theory in areas such as Ethnography, Folk Literature, Ethnographic Theory, Fieldwork etc. Collectively, the contributors of this panel will cover a wide range of literary texts, delve into a variety of anthropological perspectives, from the more palpable ethnographic studies to the liminal discussions of rites, rituals, and other cultural performances in literary texts. Both Anthropology and Literature cannot be regarded as absolute disciplines in their own regard thus the emanating critical discourse in each field do not form a single centre but take roots from a variety of sources which intersect at various non-contiguous points. The origins and the intersections of these two disciplines are thereby constantly revised, reconceived, or replaced, breaching boundaries that lead to creating new possibilities of understanding and explicating literary texts as well as Anthropological writings. Furthermore, reading a text becomes far more than identifying themes, ideas, and patterns embedded within the text. It becomes a way of relating the written word, oral documentation, interviews to the prevailing ideologies in which the work was produced. Whether it is an investigative analysis or a rhetorical dissection of a text/field, the process is literary because it allows the awakened imagination to reconsider and reconfigure the said text into a relevant socio-political context. Often the scientism of the literary text establishes links between the work itself and the existing socio-cultural values, institutions, and practices that shape its reading while an anthropological writing comes to encompass the text as a cultural artefact and as a tool of mapping resistance, agency and memory.

Through this panel a multidisciplinary, committed and involved community of researchers, professionals and academics will be brought together to engage in critical discussions on methodological challenges in reading the poetics and polemics of intersectionality of anthropology and literature studies. Some of the pertinent themes to be discussed in the proposed panel are:

Themes -

1. Literature as a social and cultural artefact
2. Field and Text- Anthropological and Literary context
3. Orature, Historiography, and Ethnographic Methods in Literature
4. Field journals, Fieldnotes, Diaries and the Autobiography
5. Rituoid – Experience of reading texts and how ritualised reading works
6. Reflexivity and liminality in literature and anthropological writing
7. Role of metacommunication in Anthropology
8. Role of Performativity in anthropological writing
9. Writing communities- indigenous and tribal literature
10. Myths, magic and spells -reading the uncanny in anthropology and literature
11. Monographs and memory
12. Linguistic anthropology
13. Writing the social and digital- anthropological approaches to contemporary problems
14. Poetics and Performativity of Truth
15. Translation of Ethnographic literature in the Regional Languages: Problems and Prospects

The panel aims to be a forum for knowledge exchange and sharing of experiences between the participants. It will also be an opportunity to publish selected papers in a special issue of a established journal or as an edited book.

Abstract Submission Guidelines: The word limit for the abstract should be between 250-300 words. The abstract should include outline of research in clear and precise manner.

Last Date for Submission of Abstract: 25th June, 2023

Notification for Acceptance of Abstract: 10th July, 2023

Last Date for Paper Submission: 20th July, 2023

Link for Submission and Registration:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf7jvjJtv2CZEZUge9YxMiNaLYWty-yfCxcZLbsabMrcT33qw/viewform

For more information about the World Anthropology Congress 2023 please visit

https://wac.kiss.ac.in/

You may contact the conveners in case of technical concerns while submitting the abstract or during the registration.