CFP: Indian English Poetry: An Appraisal

Call For Papers:

Indian English Poetry: An Appraisal

Editor

Dr. Vishwanath Bite

Dear All,

I am pleased to forward this call for my 7th book tentatively titled Indian English Poetry: An Appraisal Scholarly articles/ papers are invited from Scholars, Critics and Academicians before 25^th Feb. 2012 The book will be published by well-known publisher with ISBN.

Editing requirements:

·     Paper size: A4, Font & size: Times New Roman 12, Spacing: Single line, Margin of 1 inch on all four sides.

·     Title of the paper: bold, Sentence case (Capitalize each word), centered.

·     Text of the paper: justified. Font & size: Times New Roman 12.

·     References: Please follow MLA style (Only Author-Date or Number System) strictly. Don’t use Foot Notes, Use End Notes

·     Titles of books: Italics.

·     Titles of articles from journals and books: “quoted”.

·     Articles should be submitted as MS Word 2003-2007attachments only.

·     The paper should not usually exceed 11 pages maximum, 6 pages minimum in single spacing.

·     Each paper must be accompanied by

i)                    A declaration that it is an original work and has not been published anywhere else or sent for publication

ii)                 A short bio-note of the contributor(s) indicating name, institutional affiliation, brief career history, postal address, mobile number and e-mail, in a single attachment. Please don’t send more attachments.

The papers submitted should evince serious academic work contributing new knowledge or innovative critical perspectives on the subject explored.

Mode of Submission:

Each contributor is advised to send full paper with brief bio-note, declaration and abstract as a single MS-Word email attachments to email addresses: vishwanathbite@gmail.com  up to 25th Feb. 2012

No Need to send hard copy of your paper

Selection Procedure:

All submissions will be sent for blind peer reviewing. Final selection will be made only if the papers are recommended for publication by the reviewers. The details of the selection of your paper will be informed to you telephonically or on your email. The editor has the right to make necessary editing of selected papers for the sake of conceptual clarity and formatting. Non-selected papers will not be sent back to the contributor in any form. So, all contributors are advised to keep a copy of their submission with them.

Plagiarism Alert:

All submissions should be original. Contributors are advised to adhere to strict academic ethics with respect to acknowledgment of original ideas borrowed from others. The editor(s) / publisher will not be responsible for any lapse on part of the contributor. If plagiarism found an author will be blacklisted and will be disclosed publically.

For any queries contact Editor,

Dr. Vishwanath Bite

Assistant Professor,
Department of English,
Bharati Vidyapeeth's
MBSK Kanya Mahavidyalaya, Kadegaon,
Tal. Kadegaon, Dist. Sangli.
Maharashtra, India. 415 304.
Mobile: 09423278008

Editor-In-Chief,
The Criterion: An International Journal in English ISSN (0976-8165)
http://www.the-criterion.com/

http://www.facebook.com/vishwanathbite (Find me on facebook)

Indian Villages

India lives in its villages. Although this romantic notion about India has not changed much with rural India still accounting for roughly three-fourths of its population, the village in itself has changed much over the years. Village studies have been central to our understanding of many of the concepts used in modern social sciences. One of the reasons for the centrality of the village in studying rural India has been the fact that it is the lowest level of administrative unit. But even for sociologists and anthropologists, village has often been the object of research notably because the village is not only an administrative unit but is also the smallest political and social unit.
Sociologist, anthropologists and political scientists have often used the technique of village studies where more often the village itself is an object of research unlike the economists who have used village studies mostly as a site for research. The differences are obvious but in a subtle way. It is partly to do with the requirement of the research objective such as caste, class and social relations which are centred on the village and can only be observed through studying the village as an object. For economists, it is the administrative unit of village which facilitates easy validation of quantitative estimates but also the nature of economic relations, notably tenancy, credit, labour which are easily understood in the closed context of a village economy. But in both cases, the village has been the central object of research.
Just as India is fortunate to have a statistical system which is comparable to the best in the world, it has also been fortunate to have large number of village studies starting from the pre-independence days (the Slater villages in Tamilnadu). Some of these have now been resurveyed over the years. Some of these have been used to get insights for formulation and understanding of economic theories while some have been used to validate our existing knowledge of the various actors in the closed setup of a village. This tradition of village studies is again back in fashion with a large number of village studies underway in various parts of India. While some of them are resurvey of old villages which again is crucial in providing a historical perspective on development, some are fresh villages with particular areas of interest such as the suicide prone areas of Vidarbha and Telangana.
But what can we learn from village studies which is not already available from secondary sources? Another obvious question is whether finding from one village out of six lakh villages in India is good enough to generalise on common issues confronting economic theory or development policy. That is, how representative is the village to be generalised over a large geographical unit such as the state or the country. This has often been the bone of contention, particularly if two village studies contradict in their findings about similar issues. Needless to say, such differences are obvious because villages are not homogenous entities. But more often than not, such differences also arise due to the personal involvement of researchers, objective of the research and most importantly the instruments of research.
Coming back to the first issue of what can we learn from village studies? It is definitely not to reproduce the secondary data which is already available and in many cases up to the village level. Secondary data has its own limitation and is certainly incapable of capturing some variables, for example tenancy. And it is precisely because of that, such exercises should be avoided. The objective of using quantitative aggregates is mainly to provide a context in which the insights on the functioning of markets, interaction of various agents and the dynamism of these over time.
These are challenging times for the world because of the financial crisis aggravating in the new year. But more than anything else, and despite claims of the financial mandarins, one must admit the shortcomings of economic theory in dealing with the changing world. And this is not only true for the fast changing world of finance and global capitalism but is also true for the village economies. Not for anything but the fact that the world in one year has seen episodes of spiralling food prices and commodity prices to them nose-diving within a span of six months. The food crisis and riots have given way to the financial crisis not because the vulnerabilities of the rural economies of developing world have been fully mitigated but the enormity of the financial crisis which is spreading like a wild fire. The vulnerabilities have become even more gruesome despite the falling prices and in some cases because of falling prices.
It is this changing nature of the village economy which needs a careful study. Needless to say, the globalised world and the integration of the local village with the global village has altered social, political and class complexities. But more importantly, the village is no more a self-contained closed economy with overdependence on agriculture and limited interaction with outside world. The village and the neighbouring towns and the metropolitan centres are now a continuum and the village is no more isolated from the vagaries of the financial markets of London or Newyork. Agriculture accounts for less than one fifth of the Indian economy. Even within rural areas, agriculture now contributes just over half of the economy. But more than the declining importance of agriculture, what makes studying village economies challenging is the way villages are getting integrated to the neighbouring and distant urban areas through non-farm employment, migration and remittances. This is also true from the developmental perspective where village is also the terrain on which development policies are tested. The NREGA is one example of this. Hopefully, some of the village studies currently underway will enrich our understanding of the changing nature of village economies.

Indian English Drama: Translations

Indian English Drama: Translations

            Indian Drama in English translation has made bold innovations and fruitful experiments in terms of both thematic concerns and technical virtuosities. It has been increasingly turning to history, legend, myth and folklore tapping their springs of vitality and vocal cords of popularity with splendid results. Plays written in various Indian languages are being translated into English and other languages as they are produced and appreciated in the various parts of the country. A closer contact is being established between the theatre workers from different regions and languages through these translations. Thus, regional drama in India is slowly paving a way for a ‘national theatre’ into which all streams of theatrical art seem to coverage. The major language theatres that are active all through the turbulent years of rejuvenation and consolidations are those of Hindi, Bengali, Marathi and Kannada.

            The plays mentioned so far, both under the Pre-Independence and the Post-Independence phase were originally written in English. Among the plays translated into English, there are a few, which were first written in the regional languages and subsequently translated into English by the authors themselves. Though, strictly speaking, these works cannot be called fully English plays, they can be mentioned under the topic, in view of the fact, that at least some of them are transcreations and not simply translations. Rabindranath Tagore, Mohan Rakesh, Badal Sircar, Vijay Tendulkar, and Girish Karnad have remained the most representative of the Indian English drama not only in Bengali, Hindi, Marathi and Kannada respectively but also on the pan-Indian level.

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Indian English Drama: Women Playwrights

Indian English Drama: Women Playwrights 

            Apart from the substantial contributions rendered in Indian English Drama by the noted dramatists like Asif Currimbhoy, Nissim Ezekiel, Girish Karnad, Badal Sircar, Mohan Rakesh, Vijay Tendulkar and Mahesh Dattani, some Indian English women playwrights have also published their plays in the contemporary phase. Mrs. J. M. Billimoria in her play My Sons (1963) presents a picture of five students of Bombay University who, in spite of sharp differences in their religion and language live like real brothers.

            Dina Mehta’s first full length play The Myth Makers (1969) won an award from Sultan Padamsee Playwriting Competition in 1968 and Tiger Tiger (1978) - a play on Tipu Sultan, Brides are not Burning (a play on dowry deaths) won the first prize in a worldwide competition sponsored by B. B. C. in 1979. Getting Away with Murder was on the short list of seven specially commended radio plays out of 902 entries submitted for the B. B. C. World Playwriting Competition, 1989. Her other famous plays are One Plus One Makes Nine and Sister Like You. Her Getting Away with Murder deals with childhood, sexual abuse, infidelity, and insecure relationship. It gives an account of three women friends who pass through their own private hells and finally emerge as strangers to one another. Mrs. Mehta brings to life the extremely parochial mentality of some residents of cities like Mumbai.

           FULL ARTICLE IS DELETED FOR COPYRIGHT PURPOSE 

            The Indian drama in English is yet to be flourished but we can predict a rich and fertile soil for the blooming and blossoming of the tree of the same. In fact, there have been serious and sincere efforts for the theatre-oriented plays. The women playwrights have something distinct to offer to the audience. They have given new dimensions by infusing new type into this genre. They focus the issues like violence: physical, mental and several other aspects of it. They have proved through their plays that they fulfil the specific demands of theatre. 

Indian English Fiction: Postmodern Considerations

Indian English Fiction: Postmodern Considerations

Editor

Dr. Vishwanath Bite

C O N T E N T S

1.      Imagery of Goddess in Gita Mehta’s A River Sutra: A Feminist Approach

Dr. Vishwanath Bite

2.      An Exploration of Narrative Technique in Gita Mehta’s A River Sutra

Mrs. Madhuri Bite

3.      An Eco-critical reading of Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide

Sophia Jaychandran

4.      Women’s Empowerment and Personal Mobility in the Novels of Shashi Deshpande and Nayantara Sahgal

Grishma Manikrao Khobragade

5.      Individuality and Space in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction: A Postmodern Perspective

Mohamed Hamoud Kassim Al-Mahfedi

Abdulmonim Ali Ben Ali

6.      Interpreting Anita Desai’s In Custody in the Light of Susan Sontag’s critical essay Against Interpretation

Kirti B. Vitthani

7.      Postmodern Diasporic Sensibility: Rereading Jhumpa Lahiri’s Oeuvre

Pinaki Roy

8.      Salman Rushdie’s Grimus as an Alternative History

Abdulmonim Ali Ben Ali

9.      The Spiritual Sense of Alienation in Diasporic Life: Reading Anita Desai, Bharati Mukherjee, Sunetra Gupta and Jhumpa Lahiri

Dr. Amit Shankar Saha

10.  Trimetric of Land, Culture and Identity in Indian English Fiction

Dr. G.A. Ghanshyam

11.  Nayantara Sahgal’s Rich like Us: A Thematic Analysis

Dr.Kiranjeet Kaur Bedi

12.  Postmodern Feminism in The Fiction of Indian Women Writers

Dr Vimmie Manoj

13.  Sociological Status of Women in Geeta Mehta’s A River Sutra

Dr. D. G. Thakor

14.  The World of Marginalised in Mahasweta Devi’s Play Mother of 1084

G. Gulam Tariq

15.  Nergis Dalal’s Skin Deep: Sister- Knot In Conflict?

Mrs. G. Sundari and Dr. K. Sandhya

16.  Poile Sengupta’s Thus Spake Shoorpanakha, So Said Shakuni As A Postmodern Text

Dr.L.V.Padmarani Rao

17.  Soul-Body Concept in The Selected Novels Of R.K.Narayan

Jothilakshmi.R & Dr.G.Meenakshi Sundaram

18.  East- West Encounter in R.K.Narayan’s The Bachelor of Arts

Dr. Kapil Dev Sharma & Dr. Pradeep Kumar Talan

19.  Theme of Love in Manjul Bajaj’s Come, Before Evening Falls

Dr. K.K.Sunalini

20.  Shiv K Kumar’s A River With Three Banks: Revisiting Partition

Dr. P.R. Shewale

21.  From Routes to Roots: Diaspora in the Novels of Salman Rushdie.

Janmejay Kumar Tiwari

22.  Salman Rushdie As A Children’s Writer: Reading Haroun And The Sea Of Stories And Luka And The Fire Of Life

Ved Mitra Shukla

23.  Interrogating The Metanarratives On Indian Independence With Reference To Partition Narratives

Raj Sree

24.  Theorizing The Saga of Lost Dreams From The Perspective Of Post Modernism

Nancy S. Rethinam

25.  Culture of Consumerism as Reflected in Chetan Bhagat’s One Night @ Call Center

Yatri D. Dave

26.  The Avante-Garde Experience Of Silence In Ambai’s Yellow Fish

Dr. Paula Hayes

Deadline Extended: Indian English Drama: Thematic Reflections

Deadline Extended Call For Papers:

Indian English Drama: Thematic Reflections

Editor

Dr. Vishwanath Bite

Dear All,

I am pleased to forward this call for book tentatively titled Indian English Drama: Thematic Reflections Scholarly articles/ papers are invited from Scholars, Critics and Academicians before 30^th November 2011 The book will be published by well-known publisher with ISBN.

Editing requirements:

·     Paper size: A4, Font & size: Times New Roman 12, Spacing: Single line, Margin of 1 inch on all four sides.

·     Title of the paper: bold, Sentence case (Capitalize each word), centered.

·     Text of the paper: justified. Font & size: Times New Roman 12.

·     References: Please follow MLA style (Only Author-Date or Number System) strictly. Don’t use Foot Notes, Use End Notes

·     Titles of books: Italics.

·     Titles of articles from journals and books: “quoted”.

·     Articles should be submitted as MS Word 2003-2007attachments only.

·     The paper should not usually exceed 11 pages maximum, 6 pages minimum in single spacing.

·     Each paper must be accompanied by

i)                    A declaration that it is an original work and has not been published anywhere else or sent for publication

ii)                    Abstract of paper about 100-200 words and

iii)                 A short bio-note of the contributor(s) indicating name, institutional affiliation, brief career history, postal address, mobile number and e-mail, in a single attachment. Please don’t send more attachments.

iv)               Give these things in a separate attachment.

The papers submitted should evince serious academic work contributing new knowledge or innovative critical perspectives on the subject explored.

Mode of Submission:

Each contributor is advised to send full paper with brief bio-note, declaration and abstract as a single MS-Word email attachments to email address: vishwanathbite@gmail.com   up to 30^th November 2011 The contributors are also supposed to submit one hard copy of the same i.e. (i) Full paper (ii) A declaration (with signature) (iii) Abstract and (iv) Brief bio-note typed in above mentioned format on any of postal address given bellow. One hard copy is required for our record. Without hard copy no paper will be considered for publication.

Selection Procedure:

All submissions will be sent for blind peer reviewing. Final selection will be made only if the papers are recommended for publication by the reviewers. The details of the selection of your paper will be informed to you telephonically or on your email. The editor has the right to make necessary editing of selected papers for the sake of conceptual clarity and formatting. Non-selected papers will not be sent back to the contributor in any form. So, all contributors are advised to keep a copy of their submission with them.

Plagiarism Alert:

All submissions should be original. Contributors are advised to adhere to strict academic ethics with respect to acknowledgment of original ideas borrowed from others. The editor(s) / publisher will not be responsible for any lapse on part of the contributor.

Deadline Extended: CFP: Shashi Deshpande’s Fiction: A Study

Call for Papers:

Shashi Deshpande’s Fiction: A Study

Editor

Dr. Vishwanath Bite

Dear All,

I am pleased to forward this call for book tentatively titled Shashi Deshpande’s Fiction: A Study Scholarly articles/ papers are invited from Scholars, Critics and Academicians before 15^th July 2011 The book will be published by well-known publisher with ISBN.

Editing requirements:

·     Paper size: A4, Font & size: Times New Roman 12, Spacing: Single line, Margin of 1 inch on all four sides.

·     Title of the paper: bold, Sentence case (Capitalize each word), centered.

·     Text of the paper: justified. Font & size: Times New Roman 12.

·     References: Please follow MLA style (Only Author-Date or Number System) strictly. Don’t use Foot Notes, Use End Notes

·     Titles of books: Italics.

·     Titles of articles from journals and books: “quoted”.

·     Articles should be submitted as MS Word 2003-2007attachments only.

·     The paper should not usually exceed 11 pages maximum, 6 pages minimum in single spacing.

·     Each paper must be accompanied by

i)                    A declaration that it is an original work and has not been published anywhere else or sent for publication

ii)                    Abstract of paper about 100-200 words and

iii)                 A short bio-note of the contributor(s) indicating name, institutional affiliation, brief career history, postal address, mobile number and e-mail, in a single attachment. Please don’t send more attachments.

iv)               Give these things in a separate attachment.

The papers submitted should evince serious academic work contributing new knowledge or innovative critical perspectives on the subject explored.

Mode of Submission:

Each contributor is advised to send full paper with brief bio-note, declaration and abstract as a single MS-Word email attachments to email address: vishwanathbite@gmail.com   up to 15^th July 2011 The contributors are also supposed to submit one hard copy of the same i.e. (i) Full paper (ii) A declaration (with signature) (iii) Abstract and (iv) Brief bio-note typed in above mentioned format on any of postal address given bellow. One hard copy is required for our record. Without hard copy no paper will be considered for publication.

Selection Procedure:

All submissions will be sent for blind peer reviewing. Final selection will be made only if the papers are recommended for publication by the reviewers. The details of the selection of your paper will be informed to you telephonically or on your email. The editor has the right to make necessary editing of selected papers for the sake of conceptual clarity and formatting. Non-selected papers will not be sent back to the contributor in any form. So, all contributors are advised to keep a copy of their submission with them.

Plagiarism Alert:

All submissions should be original. Contributors are advised to adhere to strict academic ethics with respect to acknowledgment of original ideas borrowed from others. The editor(s) / publisher will not be responsible for any lapse on part of the contributor.

Dr. Vishwanath Bite
Assistant Professor,
Department of English,
Bharati Vidyapeeth's
MBSK Kanya Mahavidyalaya, Kadegaon,
Tal. Kadegaon, Dist. Sangli.
Maharashtra, India. 415 304.
Mobile: 09423278008

Chief Editor,
The Criterion: An International Journal in English ISSN (0976-8165)
http://www.the-criterion.com

http://www.facebook.com/vishwanathbite (Find me on facebook)