ICSSR Sponsored Three-Day International Conference

 

 Urban Metamorphoses: Understanding the Dynamics and Diversity of South Asian Cities

 

Organised by 

The Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IISER Bhopal

Date:

27 February-01 March 2025

Venue: IISER Bhopal

Deadline for Abstract Submission: 5 December, 2024

 

1. About the Conference: 

 

The spatial fabric of the city has been re-conceptualised, built, rebuilt and in myriad ways responding to the necessities of time. Ascribing a single premise to the concept of a city is never possible as the nature, structure, and functioning of cities are diverse and dissimilar. Likewise, defining the city has a scope that is widely spread across a cluster of disciplines like planning and architecture, history, anthropology, heritage studies, sociology, visual arts, literature and cultural studies, innovation and policy research, and others under the rubric of “urban”. With the exponential growth of population in South Asian cities, academic inquiries focus on new settlement agglomerations, migration, precarity and climate crisis, community-based provisions, sustainability, equitable distribution of public and private resources and other economic and cultural trajectories as windows to explore the multilayered reality of the metropolitan landscape, encompassing heterogeneous communities, neighbourhoods and practices. A key intervention in the neoliberal transformation of cities with Smart technologies in the age of climate action also urges for an ecologically sensitive mode of urban dwelling and an acknowledgement of the environmental histories and memories, embedded in spatio-cultural practices, communities and their quotidian lifeworlds. In this context, the question of urban heritage becomes crucial in envisioning sustainable goals that braid the past, present and future in meaningful ways.

 

In this conference, we aim to gather the multifaceted perspectives on the city-space, which is rapidly growing and reflecting the changing impulse of the region loosely termed South Asia, in relation to the Global South and the world. Simultaneously, the conference also seeks to push the boundaries of traditional scholarship to re-imagine the evolving urban space and the stories they tell by invoking diverse conceptual and artistic apparatuses. It explores the urban heritage and its representation not merely through a collection of “built edifices” but through people and their vernacular traditions, religion, eclectic cultural exchanges, the evolution of foodways, literary conventions, political movements, folk and demotic forms of art and entertainment that define a city’s identity across time. Here, the “urban phenomenon” equally engages with chequered histories of movement and displacement, desires and aspirations of social mobility, as well as the variegated conversations, food and friendship that foster new synergies across the cities in the global South and North.

2. Download the CFP link (PDF of CFP): Find it in email.   A QR: To scan to find the CFP/website

2. Call for Papers

(Content of CFP in text form)

 

What is a city? What constitutes its structure and who belongs to its system? Questions like these have permeated human thought and action through the ages. The social and spatial fabric of the city has been re-conceptualised, built, and rebuilt in myriad ways responding to the necessities of time. The urban form exhibits contradictory traits of cohesiveness and radical openness to incommensurable, fragmentary, chaotic and contingent cultural exchanges as charged “contact zones” where identities are repeatedly forged and dismantled. Ascribing a single premise to the concept of a city is, thus, never possible as the nature, structure, and functioning of South Asian cities are diverse and dissimilar. Thus, defining the city has a scope that is widely spread across a cluster of disciplines, like planning and architecture, history, anthropology, heritage studies, sociology, visual arts, literature and cultural studies, innovation and policy research, and others, under the rubric of “urban”. 

 

With the growing population in South Asian cities, academic inquiries focus on new settlement agglomerations, migration, precarity and climate crisis, community-based provisions and equitable distribution of public and private resources. The dynamics of political democracy and other economic and cultural trajectories serve as windows to explore the “polysensorial” and multilayered reality of the metropolitan landscape. The conference invokes heterogeneous communities, neighbourhoods and practices that stretch across as well as transition through multiple thresholds and rapidly shifting contours which define the urban experience.

 

Urban affairs mirror the intrinsic complexities of the global South in terms of the evolving ethos and emergent challenges that reciprocally inform the dominant modes of representation and planning in writing the city. The conference, thus, seeks to ask: How are cities both real and imagined understood to be zones of heterotopias? How has the city sustained its cultural past notwithstanding the influence of neoliberal capitalism? What unique characteristics differentiate modern cities from each other amidst the prevailing tendency of homogenisation? How can the contemporary global dialogues in social sciences and humanities address the socio-spatial transformations and enable policies that break down rigid hierarchies? How does the city produce and reproduce disproportionate affects ensuing from entrenched social inequalities and exclusionary urban management practices that divide the city? 

 

A key intervention in the neoliberal urban transformation of Indian cities in the age of climate action, for instance, urges for an ecologically sensitive mode of urban dwelling. Human-non-human interactions become crucial in understanding inherent sustainability issues if the goal of equity and mutual development is to be met. Formal and informal ways of grasping the evolving nature of cities engage with new conceptual, economic and infrastructural realignments initiated by projects such as the Smart City Mission (SCM). Bringing these dialogues together, the conference seeks to push the boundaries of traditional scholarship to re-imagine evolving urban spaces and the stories they tell by invoking diverse conceptual and artistic apparatuses. It explores urban heritage and its representations not merely through a collection of “built structures” but through people, their perceptions, lived experiences and everyday sensory encounters in their intersecting worlds chequered with histories of movement, as well as the variegated cultural practices, conversations, food and friendship that foster new identities and mobilities across the world. Thus, by engaging with international perspectives and scholarships across the board, we aim to gather multifaceted visions of contemporary South Asian cities which reflect the changing impulse of the region and its “local” contexts in relation to the Global South and North. 

https://cityconference2025.com/

 

We welcome submissions on themes including, but not limited to the following: 

Ecology, Sustainability and the City-Space

• The non-humans in the city

• The cities and rivers/ghats of the city

• Waste and the city 

• Eco-friendly/green urban development

 

Cultural Dynamics of Cities

• Impact of globalisation on local cultures

• Festivals, rituals, and religion in cities

• Urban socialities - addas/sports/clubs

• The nocturnal city and urban nightlife

 

Smart cities and technological advancements

• Digital urban governance and IoT 

• Urban infrastructure and economic growth

• Changing suburbs and urban development

• Cities of the New Millennium

 

Inclusivity, Diversity and Alienation

• Migration, mobility and urban diversity

• Gender dynamics in urban spaces

• Urban isolation and the neo-liberal city

• The urban poor and social inclusion

 

History, Heritage, and Archive

• Monuments, architecture and preservation

• Sustainable heritage

• Tangible and intangible heritage

• Urban ruinscapes and endangered histories

• Dark heritage and histories of trauma

Sensory Encounters in the City

• The anti-ocular turn in urban studies

• Sensory regulation/censorship in the city

• Affect and the senses

• Sensory historiography

 

Urban Gastronomies 

• Foodways and migration 

• Eateries, coffee houses and urban public sphere

• Caste, class and culinary practices

• Public culture of eating in cities

 

Neighbourhoods, Space and Contestations

• Belonging, citizenry, and activism

• The subaltern and public space

• Urban neighbourhoods and communities 

• Cultural history of neighbourhoods

 

The City (Re)imagined

• Cities in global/local literary imaginations

• (Post)colonial cities and its discontents

• Provincial cities

• The uncanny in the city

• Cities in visual arts/performative traditions/folk art forms

• Cities in modernist/avant-garde narratives

• Urban flaneur

• Urban nostalgia

• Urban heterotopias/dystopias

• Cosmopolitanism in the global city

• Important Dates and Information:

Interested participants should submit an abstract of approximately 300 words to cityconference2025@gmail.com by December 5, 2024. Each submission must include a title and a brief biographical statement of no more than 100 words. Selected presenters will be notified by December 15, 2024.

Those chosen to present are required to submit a preliminary draft of their paper (1,000-1,200 words) by January 15, 2025, for inclusion in the conference proceedings. 

Participants are also encouraged to provide a one-minute video presentation summarising the crux of their paper by January 15, 2025. Selected presenters will be invited to contribute to a curated volume of essays from the conference, which will be submitted to a reputable international journal or publisher.

A guided immersive city walk of Bhopal will be conducted on the final day of the conference.

             Venue: Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh

3. Schedule (coming soon)

4. Resource Persons 

 

Amit Chaudhuri

Novelist, Creative Writer, Professor of Creative Writing at Ashoka University

Amit Chaudhuri is the author of eight novels, including his most recent work, Sojourn (2022). He is also a poet, essayist, critic, short story writer, and musician. In 2024, his first three novels were reissued under the New York Review Books Classics imprint, with introductions by Colm Toibin, James Wood, and Wendy Doniger. Sweet Shop: New and Selected Poems was published in 2023 in the NYRB Poets series. Chaudhuri has garnered several awards, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Betty Trask Prize, the Encore Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, the Sahitya Akademi Award from the Government of India, the Rabindra Puraskar from the Government of West Bengal, and the inaugural Infosys Prize in Literary Studies in the Humanities. He is currently a Professor of Creative Writing and the Director of the Centre for the Creative and Critical at Ashoka University, having previously served as Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of East Anglia from 2006 to 2021.

 

Anasua Chatterjee

Assistant Professor

Department of Sociology, RKSMVV, West Bengal State University

 

Anasua Chatterjee teaches Sociology at RKSMVV, Kolkata, India. Her research interests include urban diversity, inequalities, and spatial transformation with an emphasis on ethnographic methods. Her first detailed fieldwork, conducted for her doctoral dissertation, was on a Muslim predominant neighbourhood in Kolkata, which was published as a monograph by Routledge (2017). She has also contributed widely in edited volumes and international peer-reviewed journals on aspects of urban identity, belonging, and change. She is currently working on her second book project which engages with experiences of middle-class residential neighbourhoods of Kolkata, tentatively titled Shifting Dynamics of Urban Dwelling in Kolkata: Neighbourhoods of Everyday Life, with the Amsterdam University Press (AUP). Besides, she enjoys being in the field, exploring possibilities of ethnographic documentation in the contexts of cities of South and Southeast Asia.

Arko Datto

Photographer, Artist Curator and Educator

 

Arko Datto is an artist, lecturer and curator. Datto’s work thematically examines a range of urban forms, forced migration, digital surveillance in the panopticon, vanishing islands, nocturnal landscapes, and the psychosomatic stress experienced by captive animals. While his subjects are varied, they collectively address the existential dilemmas of our times. Through the incorporation and evolution of diverse visual languages, narratives, and styles, Datto expands the boundaries of both still and moving images. His photographs have been published in TIME, National Geographic, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Trouw, de Volkskrant, Vrij Nederland amongst others. He received grants from the Prince Claus Fund, Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, IDFA Bertha Fund. Recent shows have been at Fotografia Europea, Light Work, SFO Museum, Fotomuseum Den Haag, Hamburger Bahnhof. He has published three photo books: Pik-nik (Editions Le bec en l’air, 2018), Mannequin (Edizioni L’artiere, 2018), and Snakefire (Edizioni L’artiere, 2021). As a curator, he has been associated with Galleri Image, Kochi Biennale, Obscura Photography Festival and Chennai Photo Biennale. Datto is currently working on a commissioned photography project by the British Academy on the creative reinterpretation of Nandini Das’ Courting India which won the British Academy Book Prize in 2023.

Arunima Bhattacharya 

Lecturer in English 

Edinburgh Napier University 

 

Arunima Bhattacharya is a Lecturer in English at Edinburgh Napier University. Her research interests include colonial urban cultures, early twentieth-century travel literature and island ecologies. Bhattacharya has an active interest in museums and the heritage sector, particularly with community participation and co-creation. She is currently a co-lead on an AHRC-funded project titled, “White Thinking” And the Failed Promise of Diversity in Scottish Heritage”, jointly run by Edinburgh Napier University and the University of Strathclyde. She is working on widening community participation in urban cultural heritage with a focus on British colonial history and migrant communities from postcolonial countries. Her most recent published work includes a journal article titled, ‘Beyond the developmental narrative of postcolonial nation-time: The Materialities of Water and Geological Faultlines in Shubhangi Swarup’s Latitudes of Longing’ in Postcolonial Text (2024), and a co-edited special issue titled “Between the Field and the Gallery: Exploring Anthropological Knowledge in South Asia in the journal South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies (2024). She has also co-edited a book volume titled, Literary Capitals in the Long Nineteenth Century: Spaces beyond the Centres (Palgrave, 2022).

 

Kama Maclean

Chair of History, South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg

 

Professor Kama Maclean holds the Chair of History in the South Asia Institute at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, and is Honorary Professor in the Department of Humanities and Languages at UNSW, Sydney. She is the author of Pilgrimage and Power (OUP, 2008), A Revolutionary History of Interwar India (OUP 2015), and British India, White Australia: Overseas Indians, Intercolonial Relations and the Empire, 1901-1947 (UNSW Press, 2020), and numerous articles in scholarly books and journals. She is currently working on a DFG-funded research project on Sonic Aspects of Anticolonialism in Interwar India. 

Manish K. Jha 

Professor, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai

 

Manish K. Jha is a Professor at the School of Social Work at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai. He has served as the Chairperson of the Centre for Community Organisation & Development Practice from 2012 to 2015. He was a faculty in the Department of Social Work at the University of Delhi from 1999 to 2003. With over two decades of experience in teaching and research, Prof. Jha’s work focuses on Social Policy, Social Action, Social Movements, Rural Society and State, and Community Organization and Development Practice. He has authored books and edited volumes on the Politics of Social Justice and Development, as well as numerous articles on topics such as migration and the middle classes in Indian cities, popular politics, social justice, poverty and urban space, and disaster and development. Additionally, he has contributed to various reports and research projects for government agencies and non-profit organizations, and he serves on the governing boards of multiple universities, research institutions, and NGOs.

 

Mythri Prasad-Aleyamma 

Critical Geographer, Former Post-Doctoral Fellow, Centre for Place, Culture and Politics, Graduate Center, City University of New York

Mythri is a critical geographer whose research interests primarily revolve around migration and urban transformation in contemporary India. She received her PhD from the Centre for Development Studies in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. Building on political economy, radical geography and ethnographic methods, her doctoral research traces the different types of recruitment of migrants and local Malayali workers that reflect political contests and settlements between trade unions, corporate construction companies and recruitment agencies.  She is currently working on her book manuscript based on her dissertation. Among her recent publications are two articles: “Cards and Carriers: Politics of Identification in Kerala, South India” in Contemporary South Asia and “The Cultural Politics of Wages: Ethnography of construction work in Kochi, India” in Contributions to Indian Sociology.

Rajarshi Mitra

Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIIT Guwahati

Rajarshi Mitra is an Assistant Professor and Head at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Information Technology, Guwahati. Before joining IIIT Guwahati, he taught at the Department of English, Central University of Karnataka. Mitra earned his PhD in 2014 from The English & Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, where he focused on natural history narratives from India between 1857 and 1950. His research interests encompass the history of cinema, the British city and colonial press, natural disasters, and discourses surrounding the leisure cultures of the British Empire. Mitra has published articles on various topics, including the Bengali experience during the First World War, famine rhetoric in British India, cinema propaganda in colonial India, and the culture of big game hunting during the Raj era. He is currently involved in two collaborative projects: "The British Empire, Scotland and Indian Famines: Writings on Food Crisis in Colonial India," funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh Research Network, and "Fairground Experience in Cooch Behar," An Arts Practice project supported by the India Foundation for the Arts.

 

.

 

Rashmi Varma

Professor, University of Warwick

 

Rashmi Varma is a professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. She began her teaching career at Jesus and Mary College, University of Delhi, before moving to the United States to pursue a PhD in English and Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Rashmi then served as an Assistant Professor of English and Cultural Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before joining Warwick in 2004. She is the co-editor (with Robyn Warhol and others) of Women’s Worlds: The McGraw-Hill Anthology of Women’s Literature in English (2008). Her research focuses on the postcolonial city, postcolonial theory in Indian and African contexts, global feminism, representations of indigeneity in postcolonial India, and the theory of world literature. She is the author of The Postcolonial City and its Subjects: London, Nairobi, Bombay (Routledge).

 

 

 

Stuti Khanna

Associate Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Delhi.

Stuti Khanna serves as an Associate Professor of Literature in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. She earned her Master’s degree from Delhi University and her D.Phil. from Oxford University, where her doctoral research focused on a comparative study of urban representation in the fictions of James Joyce and Salman Rushdie. Her research interests encompass a variety of fields, including urban studies, modernism, post-colonialism, South Asia, gender studies, translation, and cinema. Khanna authored the monograph The Contemporary Novel and the City: Re-conceiving National and Narrative Form (2013), which examines the fragmented landscape of the twentieth-century city and its profound influence on narrative fiction. This work connects two pivotal "world authors" from opposite ends of the century, exploring the colonial and postcolonial cities of their birth: James Joyce and Dublin, and Salman Rushdie and Bombay. Khanna also edited the volume of essays Writing the City: Looking Within, Looking Without, published in 2020 by Orient Blackswan.

5. Registration 

Registration (National/International):

Full-time Academics and Professionals: ₹4500 (includes hostel accommodation, plus breakfast and lunch for three days)

Students and Researchers: ₹3500 (includes hostel accommodation, plus breakfast and lunch for three days) 

Un-affiliated Researchers: ₹1500 (includes hostel accommodation, plus breakfast and lunch for three days)

Registered Participants (non-presenters): ₹1500 for three days (accommodation not included)

All participants and presenters must register for the conference. Information regarding the registration process will be provided after the final selection of papers.

Registration Link: coming soon

6. Venue 

Venue: Visitor’s Hostel, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Bhopal, Bhopal Bypass Rd, Bhauri, Madhya Pradesh - 462066, India

Reaching IISER Bhopal

Airport

IISER Bhopal is situated 11 km from Raja Bhoj International Airport. Visitors can easily reach the institute by hiring an Ola or Uber, while local auto-rickshaws charge approximately 200 rupees for a one-way ride.

Railway Stations

From Bhopal Junction, IISER Bhopal is 21 km away, and it is 27 km from Rani Kamlapati (Habibganj) Junction. Ola and Uber are available from all these stations. Local auto fares are 400 rupees from Bhopal station and 500 rupees from Rani Kamlapati.

Local Transport

For bus travel, you can catch a bus to Chirayu Hospital from anywhere in Bhopal. These buses shuttle between Chirayu Hospital and Mandideep, stopping at Lal-Ghati (near Sant Hirdaram station) and Rani Kamlapati Station. From Chirayu Hospital, local autos to IISER Bhopal charge about 150 rupees.

Approximate travel costs are 400 rupees (auto) and 450 rupees (taxi) from the railway station to IISER Bhopal, and 200 rupees (auto) and 300-350 rupees (taxi) from IISER to the airport. Ola and Uber services are also readily available in Bhopal.

 

Convener: Dr Anuparna Mukherjee, 

Email: anuparna@iiserb.ac.in

Student Convener: Nakshatra Chatterjee

Email: nakshatra21@iiserb.ac.in