Dept of English, Govt. College Mokeri is all set to host its 2019 edition of national seminar. This year the focus is on Memory Studies, an emerging field in New Humanities, whose spectrum holds a multidisciplinary palette ranging from Foucauldian genealogies to Trauma theory. We’ve called the two-day event “Memory, Archives and Evolving Literary Sensibility” and it'll be held on 30th of September and 1st of October.
The event will be inaugurated by Dr. PK Rajasekharan whose work in the field is seminal and pioneering. He’s better known to Keralites as a scholar-orator and the author of such best-selling works as Boookstalgia, Ekantha Nagarangal and Vaakkinte Moonamkara which bridged academic research and popular curiosity. The seminar will open with Dr. Rajasekharan unraveling the depth of actual research work he has done in the nature of archives, popular memory and historiography.
The keynote address for the event will be delivered by one of the foremost literary critics India now has: Dr. EV Ramakrishnan. Honoured by the Sahitya Academy in 1994, Prof (Dr.) Ramakrishnan is also a recipient of many literary awards including the Odakkuzhal Award. Dr. Ramakrishnan has authored path-breaking studies in Indian literature such as Literature, Region, Modernity (2007), Locating Indian Literature: Texts, Traditions and Translations (2011), Novel in Search of the Nation and Making It New: Modernism in Malayalam, Marathi and Hindi Poetry (1995). He has also edited for the Sahitya Akademi, Indian Short Story 1900-2000 (2001) and We Speak in Changing Languages: An Anthology of Women’s Poetry in English (2006). The keynote will contextualize Memory Studies against Indian literature in general and Indian diasporic literary flourish in particular.
The first plenary will be delivered by Prof (Dr.) Mini Nirmala N, Head of the Dept of Music, Kannur University. A Sangeet Nataka Academy Award winner, she has participated in many prestigious invited audience programmes like Swathi Thirunal music festival, presented papers at several national and international music conferences and has around 50 major publications in the field. Dr. Mini N will be talking on “Music and Memory.” The session will also include vocal renditions by the expert.
The second plenary, on 1st of October, will be delivered by Dr. Sulfia Santhosh, Asst. Professor, TKM College, Kollam. Dr. Sulfia finished her PhD from EFLU and has since published and presented much in the field of gender studies and life-writing. The session looks at memory and women’s self-writing. Dr. A. Hariprasad, Asst. Professor, English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad delivers the third plenary which deals with films, archives and memory studies. The last plenary is by Sajai KV, critic, translator, poet and Asst Professor of English, Govt. College Madappally. Sajai looks at poetry as a mnemonic activity par excellence.
Apart from the plenary speakers, there are also about 30 research scholars, from across India, presenting research papers pertaining to the topic, over two days.
We welcome you wholeheartedly to Govt. College Mokeri to be part of this two-day thought pursuit.
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