The existence of a sense of contact within a particular culture remains inherently interdisciplinary and intersectional in terms of literature, the performative arts, and the social sciences. Contact essentially entails a continuity, one that consciously evolves from the preceding line of thought to facilitate the production of the interiority of further signification. As human societies evolved, diverse communities established distinct cultural, social, and literary traditions. The resultant intersections foster and foreground the ‘unconforming’, resulting in the emergence of new socio-cultural utterances. From the oral performative traditions and the means of its recording being memorial transmission, civilizations around the world saw a gradual shift in terms of the technology used to record and create texts. This would change the style of engagement between the creator and their creative process, requiring them to structure the written text in various modes and forms. The advancement of printing technology would further radicalise the evolving forms of written texts and their circulation, intended audience, and aesthetic treatment. Along with this, local cultures would come in contact with colonialist endeavours, where imperialist coercion and ensuing resistance would generate diverse hybridities, emerging from fundamentally cross-cultural interactions.

Bengal, since the 19th century was caught in a flux as colonial contact had facilitated a series of inter-cultural exchanges resulting in the development and evolution of a series of new genres. A prevalent tendency, definitive of the epoch, was the adaptation of genres such as the novel, long narrative poems, and sonnets, with the performative space exposed to the arrival of the European proscenium. Contesting the initial imitation of the coloniser’s vision of cultural/aesthetic production, there was a rise of anti-colonial sentiments in private and public political life. This led to subversive themes coming up in the classical-canonical monolithic forms and modes that parody and stretch the scope of themes and genres. Through the reception of these influences and counter-influences, cultural modernity had been shaped in Bengal. Madhusudan Dutt can be considered one of the pioneers of this tendency as he embraced the logic of comparativism in Bangla literature. He evidently borrowed from the repository of Western literature while simultaneously defamiliarizing the thematic corpus of the Indian mahākāvya and the western epic tradition with texts like Meghnādvadh Kāvya and Vīrāṅganā Kāvya. Thus, as we celebrate two hundred years of the legend, the idea of literary transactions and cultural contact gets foregrounded as the central theme keeping in mind the contribution of Michael Madhusudan Dutt in this regard.

While contact bridges the gaps between the various possibilities and impossibilities, one cannot help but take cognizance of the inherent violence that it facilitates. Predicated upon the creation of the ‘self’ and the ‘other’, it germinates invariably into a process of acculturation. The Indian subcontinent, fraught with the horrors of colonisation, witnessed the silencing of the colonial subjects through systemic erasure of their history, language and culture. Contact is often posited within an inherently hierarchical framework, with the dominant functioning as the custodian of such transactions, ensuring sensuring the ‘right kind of contact’ to sustain these hierarchies. Contact connotes the silent, the ‘unsayable’ within the very possibility of reclamatory expressions to disrupt the normal course of history. To read contact, both intra-culturally and inter-culturally, thus, is to see how it enunciates, refers to, names, describes, imparts knowledge, informs (a transformation of) the relationship with the ‘other’, where the ‘other’ does not exist as a mere opposite of the normative, but as the very condition or chance of the norm itself. Engagement with repressive state apparatus manifests within various cultural idioms, with cultural spaces functioning as areas for both autocratic imposition and mobilised resistance.

An array of interwoven performative traditions and literary genres are constantly at play bridging boundaries between forms into the making of the genre of visual media such as film. Imtiaz Ali’s Tamasha (2015) is an ideal example of a contemporary film-text invigorating literary forms from oral storytelling to the traditions of Marathi folk theatre. How such varied strategies of storytelling are contained within the performative space of creative production serves to be our focus. The Dalit Panther Movement, in its inceptive stages, found a means of articulation when Dalit university students came across a Time magazine article covering the Black Panther Movement. Presently, city-wide protests in reaction to the brutalities of sexual violence have led to the cancellation of various cultural events ranging from concerts to sports across the globe. This is reflective of the state’s apprehension about cultural spaces of mass gathering becoming the loci of organised resistance. Parallel moments such as the ‘Joy Bangla’ inscription on the bat of a player from the Pakistani cricket team at Dhaka’s Bangabandhu Stadium (February 26, 1971) is a case in point. The folk tune, “Deshta Tomar Baaper Naki”, rooted in the popular Jhumur tradition, has become a vital component of tracing solidarity across national borders, bridging the rejection of institutional oppression in Bangladesh with rallies against gendered violence in Kolkata. This encounter fosters a cross-cultural relationship grounded in shared experiences of systemic dehumanisation, ultimately leading to the creation of genres that radicalise the means of production of political, theoretical, literary, and cultural discourses in the Indian context.

We look to explore the genres and modes of contact that shape these spaces of resistance, extending beyond physical locales to the likes of film, theatre, music, sport, and newspaper archives.

We expect abstracts of not more than 300 words, exploring the varying genres and interpretations of cultural contact. Abstracts may be written in English, Bangla, or any other Indian language as long as a translation into English is provided. We will be accepting abstracts from UG and PG students.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Reception of Michael Madhusudan Dutta in the 21st century
• 19th century Bengal and the quest for nationhood
• Sites of resistance in film, music, theatre and art
• Exploring ‘identity’ and ‘home’ in diasporic literature
• Contact in a post-pandemic world
• Role of gender and sexuality in engendering cultural experience
• Transactional hierarchies in the reception of culture
• Cross-cultural resistance and reclamation
• The comparatist and the archive
• Oral records and memory as legitimate sources for historical database building.

Please note:

• Abstracts to be e-mailed to dbmssju@gmail.com by 16 November 2024.
• Along with the abstract, a bio note not exceeding 50 words is mandatory.
• Abstracts will be accepted only in pdf or docx format.
• While sending abstracts, the file name and subject line of the email should be in the given format: Abstract_DBMISS 2024-25_Name   of the Student.
• Intimation of abstract acceptance will be provided by 20 November 2024.
• The seminar will take place on 12 and 13 December. In this case, the presenters will have to make their own travel and accomodation arrangements.
• Online panel will be available only for the overseas presenters.

For any further queries, please write to Team DBMISS at dbmssju@gmail.com or contact: 7439503531 (Srobona Chakraborty), 8697146807 (Arghya Debnath) and 8240055611 (Subhayu Chatterjee).