[ecrea] CFP: South Asian Literary Association Annual Meeting

CFP...
Beyond the Postcolonial?: Meaning-Making and South Asian Studies in the 
21st Century‬‬/ SALA (South Asian Literary Association) 2017 Meeting

Jan. 2-4, 2017 – Philadelphia, PA

Like Walter Benjamin's “Angel of History,” South Asian literary studies 
has been marked by the backward glance and its attention to the past—its 
preoccupation with the (post)colonial. Indeed, ideas of the 
postcolonial, postcoloniality, and postcolonial theory inform the 
boundary condition within which we come to understand the placement of 
South Asian literatures and cultures. Analyses of South Asia's 
multiply-inflected literatures have mobilized around prominent 
postcolonial themes such as home/homelessness, diasporic and hybrid 
consciousness, and race and ethnic difference. Additionally, South Asian 
literary studies has gained visibility from its cultural proximity to 
postcolonial theorists with connections to the subcontinent (Gayatri 
Chakravorty Spivak, Homi Bhabha, Arjun Appadurai) to a point where 
imbrications between postcolonial theory and South Asian studies are 
ubiquitous and near synonymous.

Given the framing of the field, particularly in the period between the 
1980s through the 1990s, what kinds of reflections and questions about 
the past, present and futures of South Asian literary cultures have we 
put aside? Anthony Appiah asserts in the CFP for the 2017 [Presidential 
Theme on Border and Boundaries] MLA that “traditions of scholarship have 
developed indifference towards how literature and other representational 
arts cross the ethnoterritorial.” How does postcolonial studies in the 
current historical moment characterize or complicate “the 
ethnoterritorial”? If so, what are the ontological, environmental, 
ethical, and aesthetic implications of our continued marking of time and 
space via the imperial-colonial project? Is South Asian literary studies 
being haunted by a spectre, and is that spectre postcolonial theory? Can 
we reconcile Robert J. C. Young's energizing endorsement of the value of 
the postcolonial in his 2012 essay, "Postcolonial Remains" with novelist 
Amit Chaudhuri’s desire to discuss "culture as distinct from the 
post-colonial discourse?" As we settle into the 21st century, in what 
ways is the imperial-colonial project important or even pertinent to a 
subcontinent now marked in some ways by neoliberal globalization and 
shifting diasporic and transnational flows?

 We need to map the frontiers of the postcolonial beyond ahistorical 
imaginations and reductive identities. As newer generations of those who 
write on South Asia, we must ask ourselves about what constitutes the 
“newness” of such projects. How can analyses of the recursive nature of 
theory help us to develop alternative and radical discourses that can 
lead to transformational politics? To this end, we invite panels to 
define, interrogate, and analyze spaces and places that affect our 
understanding of South Asian literary and cultural projects. That is, we 
invite panels and papers that approach the spaces and places in the 
context of postcolonial studies such as:

 concerns in governmental policy and policing
‪shifts in the production of knowledge and art
‪crossing disciplinary divides in research and pedagogy
‪absolutes and liminality in articulations of gender and sexuality
‪the advance of film, digital humanities, and social media
‪oceanic studies and national and cultural contact zones
‪'travelling theories' especially across East/West and global North/South
‪the representation and reception of hybrid and diasporic texts
themes of transnational world order(s) in the age of terror
‪eco-criticism, animal studies, and the postcolonial anthropocene
‪emergent critical approaches, recent authors, and developing forms
the nuclearization of South Asia
Comparative Partitions
Head gear as signifiers of pathology/religious affiliation

Please submit your abstract of no more than 300 words, institutional 
affiliation, and a/v needs by the firm deadline of July 15, 2016 to: 
(salaconference2017 /at/ gmail.com)

Queries can also be sent to the above address. Notification of 
acceptance/rejection of abstracts will be sent via e-mail by August 15, 
2016.

Organizers:

Priya Jha
Associate Professor, English
University of Redlands

 Prathim-Maya Dora-Laskey
Assistant Professor
English and WGS
Alma College



Melanie R. Wattenbarger
Early Stage Researcher/Doctoral Fellow
University of Mumbai
European Union Marie Curie Initial Training Network
Diasporic Constructions of Home and Belonging (CoHaB)

Please note that all accepted participants will be expected to become 
members of SALA by October 15, 2016. For membership and other details, 
please visit the SALA website at 
http://www.southasianliteraryassociation.org/. Conference participants 
are expected to present their accepted papers in person. SALA does not 
encourage proxy presentations or Skype presentations.

 Contact Email:
(salaconference2017 /at/ gmail.com)
URL:
http://www.southasianliteraryassociation.org

________________________________
Priya Jha
Associate Professor, English
University of Redlands
1200 E. Colton Avenue
Redlands, CA 92373

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