Announcements
Venue: CATS Auditorium, 010.01.05 (Voßstraße 2, Building 4130)
Abstract: The nāmā is a text-name that traverses various forms of textual process spanning literally from fish to the moon, mimicking the wondrous journey of the Prophet in Farid-ud-din Attar’s Ilāhī-Nāmah (Book of God). This common text-name originates in the cultures of west Asia and enters the Indian subcontinent through contact with Islamicate cultures from Ghazna to Turkestan. This talk will explore the structuring effect that any text-name, generic markers, and repertoires of signification may have upon literary construction, undertaking our journey with the namah in the spirit of willing engagement with difference, not caring too much about the boundaries, borders, and identitarian studies that current literary theorizing seems to be concerned about. Rather, it asks whether the comparative frame of plurality and relationality does not better address the disregard shown by literary phenomena for the categories of thinking that currently regulate cultural contact and exchange, discerning instead the impulses that prompted cross-cultural hospitality and the exciting results that we can still contemplate as literature.
Prof. Ipshita Chanda is the head of the Department of Comparative Literature at the English & Foreign Languages University in Hyderabad, India. She is the author of "Packaging Freedom: Feminism and Popular Culture"; "Reception of the Received: A Case Study in Inter-Systemic Literary Reception"; "Tracing the Charit as a Genre"; "Selfing the City: Single Women Migrants and their Lives in Kolkata" etc. "Besides being a prolific translator of Indian literatures, having translated the works of Sukumar Ray, Mahashweta Devi, Satinath Bhaduri, and Phanishwar Nath Renu, she also has multiple edited volumes to her credit, including "Literary Historiography"; "Locating Cultural Change: Theory, Method, Process"; "Shaping the Discourse: Women’s Writings in Bengali Periodicals 1865-1947" (with Jayeeta Bagchi); "Emotion, Expression and Aesthetics"; and "Literature and the Other Arts".
Find more information on the Poster.
Find more information on the poster.
10 February 2023, 2:00 pm, room 130.00.03
Department for Modern South Asian Languages and Literature is cordially inviting you to a talk by Dr. Priyanka Basu.
Dr. Priyanka Basu is a Lecturer in Performing Arts in the Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries at King’s College London. Her first monograph, The Poet’s Song: ‘Folk’ and its Cultural Politics in South Asia is forthcoming from Routledge (South Asian History and Culture series).
Kobigaan (lit. song of the poet) is a verse-duelling and song-theatre genre practiced across the India-Bangladesh border. It is one of the many dialogic genres in South Asia highlighting the verbal virtuosity, bricolage, and storytelling abilities of performers (kobiyaals). While rural performances of this genre (most often tied with religious rituals and village fairs) can last as long as overnight sessions, Kobigaan’s other manifestations are often truncated and adapted according to diverse venues, audience tastes and artistic choices. This talk focusses on the questions of authenticity of Kobigaan as ‘folk’ genre while travelling with the performers as well as in and out of the literary archive. Caste, class, and gender, and identity politics intertwine with the larger cultural politics of ‘folk’ in the cross-border contemporary practices of Kobigaan. Consequently, several performing groups become ‘claimants’ of authentic Kobigaan as it travels from rural settings to urban festivals, and from Bengali cinema to television and the new media. Over time, the element of debate (kobir loraai) has become a synecdoche for Kobigaan. It has also come to signify people’s songs, national culture, folk heritage and even sound chronotopes (in cinema). Conflictingly, the perception of Kobigaan in Bengali cultural memory also relies on its status as ‘decadent’, ‘extinct’ or ‘obsolete’. This talk considers such varied conceptions of Kobigaan as a performance genre as it traverses local, national, and trans-national diasporic communities.
More information here.
NSP department and students of Tamil kindly invite you to celebrate the Tamil Pongal festival with us.
We are celebrating the festival with a potluck, performances, Tamil music and conversations.
More details here.
After the first event in Bonn in 2019 and a break due to the pandemic, the South Asia Institute at Heidelberg University will host the second Südasientag on 28-29 October 2022. The conference brings together both established and young scholars from all disciplines within humanities and social sciences who are interested in research topics in modern and contemporary South Asia.
Registration as an audience member is possible until 14 October 2022, please register by e-mail to hanni.truong@sai.uni-heidelberg.de.
More information on the program can be found here.
Organising team:
Prof. Dr. Hans Harder (Heidelberg University)
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Carmen Brandt (Bonn University)
Dr. Ira Sarma (Leipzig University)
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