Call for Papers for an Edited Volume

Train Narratives in India: Marking 100 Years of the Electric Train in India (1925–2025)

Concept Note

2025 marks the centenary of the electric train in India, a moment that invites us to reflect on the rich and complex presence of trains in the subcontinent’s cultural imagination. From their colonial introduction as instruments of control and commerce to their transformation into symbols of progress, partition, migration, and everyday life, trains have profoundly shaped the way India moves—and tells stories.

This centennial provides a timely occasion to critically engage with train narratives across Indian literature and cinema, examining how the railway has functioned not just as infrastructure, but as a powerful metaphor and narrative device. The train compartment becomes a microcosm of society—both intimate and public—where strangers meet, destinies intertwine, and histories are made.

We invite original, unpublished papers that explore the railway and the electric train as narrative and symbolic sites in Indian textual and cinematic traditions. Contributions are welcome from all language, traditions and regions within India, and from a wide range of critical frameworks.

Suggested themes include, but are not limited to:

• Commemorating 100 Years of the Electric Train: historical reflections, symbolic meanings, cultural representations

• Trains and Partition: violence, memory, migration

• Colonial infrastructure and postcolonial imagination

• Class, caste, and gender politics aboard the train

• The railway as a site of labour, movement, and identity

• Love, longing, and coming-of-age through train journeys

• Trains in regional literatures and cinemas

• The aesthetics of motion: time, rhythm, and narrative pacing

• Horror, the uncanny, and the grotesque in train settings

• Documentary and realist portrayals of railway life

• Children’s literature and the train as fantasy and escape

• Comparative perspectives between literature and film

• Trains in the digital age: nostalgia, decay, and reinvention.

Submission Guidelines:

• Full papers (MLA 9) submission: 20th Nov, 2025. Word limit 3500-4500 words. (Extension of word limit is allowed).

• Should have Abstracts of 250 words with 4-5 Keywords.

• A short bio (100 words) with institutional affiliation to be added at the end of the paper.

• Submit proposals to: bookchapters89@gmail.com  

Selected papers may be considered for inclusion in an edited volume commemorating the centenary of the electric train in India. For further enquiries, or if extension is needed by 1 week, contact (+91) 9674562664.