Conference details, speakers, abstract submission and registration links – all the relevant details are for our conference on Indian Writing in English to be held in association with West Bengal State University and Sister Nivedita University on 13-14 March 2026. Deadline for abstract submission – 31.12.2025.
Call for Abstracts
Postcolonial Interventions in association with Centre for Studies in Gender, Culture and Media, West Bengal State University and the Department of English, Sister Nivedita University invites abstracts for an international conference on Indian Writing in English to be held in Sister Nivedita University, New Town, West Bengal on 13-14 March 2026.
Indian Writing in English in the 21st Century: Negotiations, Resistance and Alternatives
With the passage of the first quarter of the new century, India as a nation has been witnessing a series of sweeping changes in terms of technology, social relationships, cultural forms and value systems which often function in the form of polyvocal multidimensional interactions that demand intersectional interrogation from varying vantage points. Democratic backsliding, communal hostility, ethnic clashes, ecological crises, stunted economic development, growing inequality and many other issues continue to lacerate the national polity in countless ways. Indian writing in English has been negotiating with these rapid developments through various different genres including graphic narratives, life-writings, instapoetry and much else. The proposed conference seeks papers from emerging and established scholars about all such related issues in order to ensure a critical evaluation of trends, counter-narratives and avenues of future development.
Abstracts of 250-300 words are invited on topics which may include but are not limited to the following:
- Imagining 21st century India
- Religion and Culture and Evolving identities
- Literary and Cultural representations of subalternity
- Textual Construction of Publics and Counterpublics
- India and LGBTQI Communities
- Patriotism and Dissent in the Postcolony
- Dialectics of Development
- Literature and Climate Crisis
- Voices of Adivasis and Aborigines
- Representing Alterity and Diversity in the Nation-state
- Toxic masculinities and en-gender-ed resistance
- Indigenous aesthetics
Abstracts of 250-300 words, with name, affiliation, bio-note and contact details may be submitted through the following Google Form link within 31 December, 2025.
https://forms.gle/iaaByafktAymDz217
Selected Participants will be emailed the relevant details for submission of registration fees in due course. In case of a joint paper, each participant will have to register separately.
Registration fees: Rs. 2000/- for all participants. To be paid within 31 January.
Full papers are to be submitted within 15th February 2026 in MS WORD by email.
Select papers may be published in the form of an anthology or may be included in a special issue of Postcolonial Interventions: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Postcolonial Studies (ISSN 2455 6564)
All queries may be sent to postcolonialinterventions@gmail.com OR 9830781698 (Whatsapp)
Relevant links:
Postcolonial Interventions: https://postcolonialinterventions.com/
Department of English, West Bengal State University: https://wbsu.ac.in/web/department/english-2/
Department of English, Sister Nivedita University: https://www.snuniv.ac.in/department-details.aspx?id=14&sid=46
Call for Papers
for
Essays in Honour of Professor Krishna Sen – a Festschrift
Every once in a while one comes across an academic who is able to combine expansive erudition with excellence in classroom teaching, international acclaim with cordial affection for young students and scholars, scholarly brilliance with jargon-less lucidity. Such individuals become a source of inspiration for countless scholars across generations who carry within themselves scattered specks of light emanating from that phenomenal mentor which continue to light their heterogeneous journeys with the constancy and illumination of a pole-star “whose worth’s unknown, though height be taken”. The University of Calcutta has been blessed to have several such teachers across different disciplines who have contributed to its abiding search for excellence. One such Teacher of Eminence is Professor Krishna Sen, a stalwart of the Department of English who not only enchanted hundreds of students across decades but directly and indirectly shaped the evolution of a discipline in numerous ways, both through her individual contributions and through a whole host scholars and academics who owe much of their blossoming to her mentorship. The proposed anthology, Essays in Honour of Professor Krishna Sen, seeks to foreground her contributions and pay homage to her genius through a tripartite structure that will help to illustrate her role as a teacher, a guide, beyond the context of dissertations, and as a precious human being whose life and company offer manifold lessons in humanistic virtues, in particular the virtue of humility. The anthology will be edited by Dr. Abin Chakraborty, Dr. Piyali Gupta and Sayan Aich Bhowmik.
The first section will include essays on different aspects of the texts that she had taught during her long tenure in the University of Calcutta such as Aristotle’s Poetics, Joyce’s The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, T.S. Eliot’s The Murder in the Cathedral, Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines, Anita Desai’s The Clear Light of Day, Virginia Woolf’s Essay on Modern Fiction, Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?”, various aspects of diasporic literature and cosmopolitanism and much more.
The second section will feature papers written by her former students who will demonstrate how some of her teachings and insights which stayed with them led to the germination of individual critical insights in their own areas of research across different genres and periods.
The third section will include recollections illustrating her wonderfully warm personality through experiences shared by academics and students who have come to know her well over the last five decades or so.
Contributions are invited from academics across the world in particular from the many scholars whose academic journeys Professor Krishna Sen, our beloved KS, has helped to shape.
The anthology would be published by a reputed publisher with ISBN number. The proposal would be submitted after the screening of the submissions.
Submission Guidelines:
- Papers for the first category, focusing on texts taught by Professor Sen, should be within 5000 words in MLA 9 format, with parenthetical citations and a works cited list without endnotes/footnotes.
- Papers for the second category should carry an opening section about how the paper was inspired by particular insights shared by Professor Sen.
- Papers for the third category should be within 2000 words.
- All papers for the first two categories should be accompanied by an abstract of 500 words, 5 keywords and a 75 words bio-note of the author. Papers for the third category would require only bio-notes.
- The abstracts and submissions should be sent to tribute2KS@gmail.com within 30th November 2024.
- All prospective contributors are free to share their queries about the publication by sending an email to the aforementioned mailing address.
Editors:
Dr. Abin Chakraborty, Assistant Professor in English, Chandernagore College
Dr. Piyali Gupta, Assistant Professor in English, Bethune College
Sayan Aich Bhowmik, Assistant Professor in English, Shirakole Mahavidyalay
Two Day International Conference on Postcolonial Studies
Date: 11-12 May 2023
Venue: Lady Brabourne College, Kolkata
Call for Papers
Theme: Postcolonial Literary and
Cultural Signposts and Contemporary Interventions
The ever-expanding domain of postcolonial studies has been consistently grappling with various global and local issues which have been diversely explored by authors and artists across the world. From the rise of authoritarian populism to migrant and refugee crises of varying degrees to systemic economic exploitation of multitudes by the networks of global capital to growing threats of ecological disasters brought about by unchecked global warming – the dangers are manifold and with complex intersections. Such developments and their diverse representations through several media have necessitated both a re-evaluation of earlier theoretical strands as well as a re-configuration of the canons of postcolonial literature and culture.
The conference on Postcolonial Literary and Cultural Signposts and Contemporary Interventions, to be organised by Advanced Research Centre for Indian Writing in English – P.G. Department of English and IQAC, Lady Brabourne College, Kolkata in collaboration with Postcolonial Interventions: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Postcolonial Studies, invites papers on texts and cultural representations of the last two decades which will explore all these issues and more while being mindful of trajectories of departure and possibilities of future developments.
Abstracts of 250-300 words are invited on topics which may include but are not limited to the following:
- Postcolonial Aesthetics
- Poetics of Diaspora and Transnation
- Literary and Cultural representation of subalternity
- Textual Construction of Publics and Counterpublics
- Nation and LGBTQI Communities
- Freedom and Dissent in the Postcolony
- Empire and Networks of Global Capital
- Literature, Climate Crisis and Empire
- Voices of Adivasis and Aborigines
- Representing Alterity and Diversity in the Nation-state
- Gender in the Postcolony
- Literary and Cultural Response to Re-Emergence of Imperial Aggression
Important Dates:
| LAST DATE FOR ABSTRACT SUBMISSION | 1.3.23 |
| INTIMATION TO PRESENTERS | 15.3.23 |
| LAST DATE OF REGISTRATION BY PRESENTERS | 22.3.23 |
Abstracts are to be sent to: lbcpococonference@gmail.com
Selected candidates will have to submit full papers within 30 April 2023.
Selected papers will be published in the form of an edited anthology/in a special issue of Postcolonial Interventions.
Registration Fees Submission Details:
| Paper presenters | Rs.1500/- |
| Faculty participants | Rs.1000/- |
| Students | Rs. 200/- |
Bank and Branch: Axis Bank, CIT Road, Kolkata 700014
Account Name: Department of English-Lady Brabourne College
Account Number: 910010032362003
IFSC Code: UTIB0000161
Registration Form: https://forms.gle/QrTyrP7KioX6J97H7
For queries email at lbcpococonference@gmail.com or Whatsapp at 9830781698/6289935412.
Seeking Expressions of Interest from Kolkata-based HEIs for a conference on Postcolonial Studies
Postcolonial Interventions (https://postcolonialinterventions.com/) invites expressions of interest from Departments of English in Kolkata-based HEIs for the organization of an international conference on Emerging Trends in Postcolonial Literature in summer 2023.
- While PI will take responsibility of arranging speakers and chairs for different sessions, the host institution will have to provide logistical support in the form of auditorium/seminar hall/conference rooms, TA for keynote/plenary speakers, refreshments and conference kits for all participants, printed certificates, audio-visual arrangements and permissions from concerned authorities, as per requirement.
- PI will also prepare and circulate CFP, screen abstracts, and prepare schedules in consultation with the host institution.
- Faculty members and researchers associated with PI may also participate in various capacities in the conference.
- Abin Chakraborty, as Editor of PI will be the co-convener alongside any one faculty member chosen by the host institution.
- PI will not be involved in any financial transaction including collection of registration fees from participants. PI will also not demand any monetary assistance from the host institution.
- Full conference papers will have to be submitted to PI before the conference for confirmation of participation. Registration fees can only be accepted after the submission of full papers.
- 12/14 chosen conference papers will be published in an anthology by a reputed publisher.
Link to Registration form: https://forms.gle/CTKttv1gJsoF41BfA
Call for Papers: Anthology of Critical Essays on
Postcolonial Popular Culture: Texts, Artefacts and Affects
In a recent article Nobel laureate Professor Amartya Sen regretfully asked: “We did understand in our colonial past the inferior status of being a citizen of the British Raj. But can we really accept having a similar subjugation in our own democracy?” (ndtv.com. 16 April 2020). However, it is not just the political reality of contemporary India that resonates with reverberations of colonial heritage. The typical postcolonial dream of provincializing Europe and by extension the West, remains a distant mirage as various aspects of contemporary Indian reality continue to longingly look west in search of models that may be emulated. The entire cultural world as a whole bears testimony to this phenomenon in the form of multiple texts, artefacts and attendant generation of affects. The quest for NRI grooms, popular Indian cinema, tourism industry, advertisements, reality shows, fashion trends, cartoons and merchandise, cosmetics and cafes – all exhibit varying degrees of conscious and unconscious mimicry, generated by the hegemonic authority of Western culture and its negotiations with diverse currents of the Indian popular cultural domain. At the same time, this domain also remains fissured by competing conceptions associated with self, family, community and nation, based on hierarchies of gender, sexuality, class, caste, religion etc., born out of India’s pre-colonial and contemporary socio-cultural history, which necessarily condition the contours of cultural representations of various kinds. Added to these are growing concerns regarding ecology as various Indian communities, urban and rural, grapple with pressing problems associated with shortage of water, energy crisis, pollution, loss of habitat and so on. All of these concerns are reflected, explored and embodied through a series of popular cultural artefacts inclusive of films, advertisements, graphic novels, bestselling texts, real estate development, television programmes, music shows, stand-up comedy performances, web-based programmes, social media content, diverse commodities and much more.
The proposed anthology aims to focus on such examples in order to analyse how such concerns shape and structure the realm of popular culture as a whole and the various ideological and discursive pressures that impinge on cultural products and their reception. We are looking for papers that would analyse different aspects of this vast realm from multiple theoretical perspectives in order to present a holistic picture of the diverse and polyvalent world of Indian popular culture, especially in the last two decades.
The entire anthology would be divided into different sections, focusing on specific sectors of popular culture and analysing individual cultural manifestations across multiple media such as
Bestsellers and Graphic novels
Commodities and material cultures
Media and communication
Leisure and sports
Ecology and activism.
The proposed sections are, of course, not finalised and other groupings may well be possible based on availability of papers. Nor should it be supposed that such categorisation in any way encourages watertight compartmentalisation of intersecting representations. For example instances of Crick-Lit or shows like Inside Edge or films like Panga can belong either to the realm of Bestsellers or Media and Communication or Sports. Likewise ‘Leisure’ may include a variety of consumerist pursuits, from salons and spas, to cafes to eco-tourism to mushrooming malls. The issue of activism is of course something that straddles multiple realms of experience at once and spans across diverse media with a kind of protean fluidity that of course demands analysis. The purpose of the anthology and the aforementioned structure is to offer a holistic, inter-disciplinary examination of popular culture that would combine the material and the discursive, the textual and physical, the virtual and the actual in one interlocking grid mindful of evolving heterogeneities.
Such an anthology would be targeted not just at scholars of different forms of popular culture but also at students and academics who have to grapple with such issues in accordance with changing demands of syllabi on the one hand and on the other, the changing horizon of academic research.
The papers should be within the range of 3000 to 5000 words, written in MS WORD (.doc/.docx) with Times New Roman, font size 12, margins of 1’’ on all sides and in accordance with MLA Stylesheet, 7TH Edition. Citations should be parenthetic. Avoid footnotes. Add endnotes, if unavoidable. Block quotes should be indented 1”. Suggestive templates can be sent on request.
Authors will be responsible for necessary copyright permissions, if any.
Prospective contributors should send their papers to pocopopculture@gmail.com within 30th May 2020.
Summary of Important Information:
Tentative Name of the Anthology: Postcolonial Popular Culture: Texts, Artefacts and Affects
Editors: Abin Chakraborty, Ramanuj Konar, Sayan Aich Bhowmik
Publisher: A renowned international publisher has expressed interest. However, as per their usual custom, they would confirm only after going through the full papers selected by the editors.
Send Full Paper/Query to: pocopopculture@gmail.com
Deadline for submission: 30th May 2020.
Communication of Acceptance: 4 weeks after close of deadline
[Authors may initially send their abstracts to check with us whether the paper fits the framework of this anthology or not. In that case, please send us the abstract, keywords and bio-note within 10th May 2020. Communication will be sent within 3days of receiving abstract.]
A copy of the full CFP may be downloaded from here.
Postcolonial Interventions: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Postcolonial Studies 
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