“Channels and Chokepoints: Tracing the Pathways of Long Nineteenth-Century Indian Fiction”

Sponsored by the NAVSA Empire & Colonialism Caucus

In line with ongoing calls by Victorian scholars to “widen” the conventional ambit of nineteenth-century British studies, this panel seeks to illuminate lesser-known Indian authors and texts within the vast transimperial literary landscape of the British Empire.  Situated at the intersection of colonial/postcolonial, adaptation, and translation studies, we invite papers that cast light not only the thematic investments and formal techniques of this still-as-yet underexamined body of literature, but also the particular pathways these authors and texts may have traversed to achieve public visibility at this time. How do Indian writers’ specific negotiations with canon, language, and media/genre stand to sharpen our overall understanding of the legibility and transmission of certain kinds of authors/texts/ideas within the British Empire? With specific attention to the intricacies of adaptation, appropriation, and translation, “Channels and Chokepoints” aims to highlight the various channels of cultural exchange open or closed to Indian authors during the long nineteenth century and their broader implications for canon formation, literary form, imperial citizenship and belonging, and the British imperial project writ large.

Though open to all genres, this panel is especially interested in periodicals, poetry, short fiction, and other works of popular culture. Panelists may approach their chosen texts through a variety of frameworks, including but not limited to: translation and adaptation studies, anticolonial and postcolonial studies, popular culture studies, print culture and periodical studies, narrative theory, and/or historical approaches. Our goal for the panel is to expand the conversation on empire and colonialism through sustained attention both to nineteenth-century Indian fiction and print culture, and to the necessity and potentiality of translation and adaptation studies for emerging scholarship in global nineteenth-century studies, British studies, comparative literature studies, Romanticism, and Victorian studies. 

Possible topics mayinclude, but aren’t limited to: 

• Indian-language translations or adaptations of British (or otherwise Anglophone) texts and their formal features

• Anglophone adaptations or translations of Indian-language texts and their formal features

• Other kinds of exchanges between Indian authors/texts and literary cultures beyond the Anglophone 

• Congestion, paralysis, or chokepoints that disrupt or otherwise impedethe flow of transimperial traffic in literature and print culture between India and other parts of the British Empire (and conversely, those avenues enabling such exchanges)

• The role of fiction, popular culture, and/or the periodical press in developing and transmitting ideas of imperial belonging/loyalty, disaffection, nationalism, etc.

• The role of fiction, popular culture, and/or the periodical press in developing transimperial, anticolonial, and/or international pathways to alliances between India and other countries of the British Empire

Please send a brief paper abstract or proposal (300 words or less) and 1-page cv to Katherine Judith Anderson (katherine.anderson@wwu.edu) and Monika Bhagat-Kennedy (bhagatke@usna.edu) by Wednesday, February 11, 2026. The joint NASSR/NAVSA/NACBS 2026 conference will be held on November 11-15, 2026, in Pasadena, California. For more information about the conference, please visit the conference website at: https://traffic2026.ucr.edu/.