• Home
• » 2023 Conference Program

2023 Conference Program

SOUTH ASIAN LITERARY ASSOCIATION (SALA)
ANNUAL MEETING
April 1-2, 2023

“Envisioning Black & South Asian Solidarity: History, Culture, Praxis”
Virtual via Zoom: https://osu.zoom.us/j/98454820019?pwd=Z3Irb1J2MkVQTUVpN3dwWUwzR2hDdz09

Conference Co-Chairs:            Pranav Jani, The Ohio State University
Priya Jha, University of Redlands
Ayesha Irfan, Dyal Singh College, University of Delhi

Conference Assistant:             September Dancel, University of Redlands

KEYNOTE ADDRESS

Saturday, April 1, 11:45am-12:30pm CDT

5:45pm UK, 6:45pm Egypt, 9:45pm Pakistan, 10:15pm India

Dr. Rajinder Dudrah

Professor, Cultural Studies and Creative Industries

Birmingham City University

(Introduction: Priya Jha)

Panel 10A: PROFESSIONALIZATION ROUNDTABLE

Sunday, April 2, 2-3:30pm CDT: Session 10A

8pm UK, 9pm Egypt, 12am Pakistan, 12:30am India

Professional Challenges: Re-engaging in a Post-pandemic Academia

Co-Chairs: Aniruddha Mukhopadhyay, Texas A&M University-Kingsville, and Moumin Quazi, Tarleton St. University

1. Aniruddha Mukhopadhyay, Texas A&M University-Kingsville
2. Meghan Gorman-DaRif, San José State University
3. Esther Daimari, Tezpur University
4. Maryse Jayasuriya, University of Texas at El Paso
5. Moumin Quazi, Tarleton State University

Panel 10B: THEMATIC ROUNDTABLE

Sunday, April 2, 2-3:30pm CDT: Session 10B

8pm UK, 9pm Egypt, 12am Pakistan, 12:30am India

Perspectives on Black/South Asian Solidarity: An Interdisciplinary Roundtable

Chair, Pranav Jani. The Ohio State University

1. Adélékè Adéẹ̀kọ́, The Ohio State University
2. Leslie Alexander, Rutgers University
3. Khury Petersen-Smith, Institute of Policy Studies
4. Martin Joseph Ponce, The Ohio State University
5. Vanita Reddy, Texas A&M University
6. Pranav Jani, The Ohio State University

HAMARA MUSHAIRA: Open Mic

Saturday, April 1, 8-10:30pm CDT

Apr 2, 2am UK, 3am Egypt, 6am Pakistan, 6:30am India

Zoom link: https://tarleton.zoom.us/j/9585717745

SALA General Business Meeting

Sunday, April 2, 11:30am-12:25pm CDT

5:30pm UK, 6:30pm Egypt, 9:30pm Pakistan, 10:00pm India

AWARDS CEREMONY AND CONFERENCE CONCLUSION

5:30-6:30pm CDT

11:30pm UK, Apr 3 12:30am Egypt, 3:30am Pakistan, 4am India

PANELS

Panel 1A: Gendered Experiences, Intersectional Embodiments, and Narratives of Solidarity

Chair: Ruma Sinha, Syracuse University

1. Nidhi Shrivastava, Western University, “Revisiting the Politics of Inter-Racial Relationships, Sexuality, and Friction in Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala in the Post-Floyd Era” 
2. Ruma Sinha, Syracuse University, “Unlearning Caste: Transnational Feminist Embodiments and the Myth of South Asian Identity”
3. Billie Guarino, Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi, “Cultural Homicide, Militarized Violence and Gendered Experiences of Conflict in India’s Northeast”

Panel 1B: Knowing Me, Knowing You: Framing Solidarities I

Chair: Ayesha Irfan, Dyal Singh College, University of Delhi

1. Karno Dasgupta, NYU-Abu Dhabi, “Blackbrown, brownBlack: Whose Chromatics, Whose Coalition?”
2. Abin Chakraborty, Chandernagore College, “Solidarity through Suffering: Examining Affective Cosmopolitanism and Utopian Potentialities in My Name is Khan”
3. Deepak, Jawaharlal Nehru University, “Interrogating the (Im)Possible Citizen: Politics of Representation in Early Twentieth Century Indian Nationalism and Ambedkar’s ‘Evidence Before the Southborough Committee on Franchise’”
4. Ayesha Irfan, Dyal Singh College, University of Delhi, “Toni Morrison to Black Lives Matter: Pandemic and the Protest”

Panel 2A: Performing Crafty Resistances to Fundamentalisms in South Asia and the United States

Chair: Pramila Venkateswaran, SUNY Nassau

1. Pramila Venkateswaran, SUNY Nassau, “Crafting Rhythms of Resistance”
2. Alka Kurian, University of Washington, Bothell, “Goddess, Whore, Hunter: Women at the Service of Patriarchy”
3. Shreerekha Pillai Subramanian, University of Houston-Clear Lake, “The Better Poet: Love Songs for the Son”
4. Fawzia Afzal-Khan, Montclair State University, “Becoming Me, Becoming Us: An Aesthetics of Solidarity”

Panel 2B: Recasting Race and Class I

Chair: Jyotsna Pathak, Delhi College of Arts & Commerce, University of Delhi

1. Jyotsna Pathak, Delhi College of Arts & Commerce, University of Delhi, “Colourlines: Blackness and Brownness”
2. Ashonshok Kachui, Indian Institute of Technology – Jodhpur, “‘I’m an Indian not Chinese’: How Northeast Indian rappers are fighting back racism through rap music”
3. Aman Nawaz, University of Delhi, “Reading Literature on Riots As Affective Testimonies”
4. Shyam Babu, EFL University-Lucknow, “Dalit Discourse and Questions of Epistemology”

Panel 3: South Asia and Its Others: Towards Solidarities, Decolonizing Modernity and Its Imperial Imaginations

Chair: Amrita Ghosh, University of Central Florida

1. Amrita Ghosh, University of Central Florida, “India and Imperial Cinematic Imaginary: Race and Bollywood”
2. Arnab Dutta Roy, Florida Gulf University, “The Search for the Indian Bildungsroman: Traditions and Modernity in M. Anantanarayanan’s The Silver Pilgrimage”
3. Robin E. Field, King’s College, “Passing into Appropriation: The Limits of Transculturalism in Gautam Malkani’s Londonstani”

Panel 4: Emerging Decolonial Practices in Literature and Popular Culture

Chair: Priya Jha, University of Redlands

1. Priya Jha, University of Redlands, “Sonic Solidarities: Transcultural Lives of ‘We Shall Overcome’ in My Name is Khan”
2. Tina Borah, University of Georgia, “Creating Counter-Memory through Counter-Narratives of Speculative Fiction”
3. Sayan Mukherjee, Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, “Similar Differences: Visualizing Commonalities Between Indian and Pakistani Communities in Ms. Marvel”
4. Shazia Hafiz Ramji, University of Calgary, “The Romance of Recovery: Lost Notebooks in Desertion by Abdulrazak Gurnah and The Book of Secrets by M.G. Vassanji”

Panel 5A: Recasting Race and Caste 2

Chair: Clara A. B. Joseph, University of Calgary

1. Clara A. B. Joseph, University of Calgary, “Decolonizing the Narrative: Exploring the Freedom Struggle of the Thomas Christians and Its Implications for Black and South Asian Solidarity”
2. Akashneel Ghatak, University of Texas – Austin, “In Search of a Framework: Reading Through Race and Caste Debates and Solidarities”
3. Srikanth Mallavarapu, Roanoke College, “On Measuring Human Worth in Yudhanjaya Wijeratne’s Numbercaste”

Panel 5B: Gender, Sexuality, and Resistance

Chair: Mariam Khan, North Carolina State University

1. Swati Baruah, Georgia State University, “Queering and the Postcolonial Resistance: A Study of Literature from Northeast India”
2. Muhammad Manzur Alam, University of the Incarnate Word, “Material Extraction as Gendered Violence in Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy”
3. Mariam Khan, North Carolina State University, “The Nation and its Mother: The Construction of Motherhood in Postcolonial Narratives from Africa and South Asia” 
4.  Mayookh Barua, North Carolina State University, “Shame and Debasement of Black and Brown Queer Bodies”

Panel 6: Worlding Solidarities between Black and Dalit Cultures

Chair: Aatika Singh, Jawaharlal Nehru University

1. Anirban Bhattacharya, Santipur College, University of Kalyani, “Dalit Autobiographies and the Politics of Self-worlding”
2. Aatika Singh, Jawaharlal Nehru University, “The Elephant may be a Renegade: The Similarity and Solidarity between Dalit and Black Aesthetic Thought”
3. Gagana Bihari Purohit, RNHSS Dura Berhampur Odisha, and Padala Seshgiri, Science Degree College, “Subversion of Caste Hegemony: Region, Religion and Language in Akhil Naik’s Bheda”
4. Reena Kapoor, S.S.N.C., University of Delhi, “Voices of Distress: Comparative study of Dr. B.R.Ambedkar and Martin Luther King Jr”

Panel 7A: Roundtable on Fawzia Afzal-Khan’s Siren Song: Understanding Pakistan through Its Women Singers

Chair, Shreerekha Pillai Subramanian, University of Houston-Clear Lake

1. Waseem Anwar, Kinnaird College
2. Alka Kurian, University of Washington-Bothell
3. Shoba Sharad Rajgopal, Westfield State University
4. Naila Sahar, University at Buffalo
5. Pramila Venkateswaran, SUNY-Nassau

Panel 7B: Intersectional Feminisms at the Margins

Chair: Priya Jha, University of Redlands

1. Rimpa Pal, Tarakeswar Degree College, “Exploring Lives Lived on the Margins of Caste and Gender in Meena Kandasamy’s The Gypsy Goddess”
2. Alankrita Bhattacharya, Vellore Institute of Technology, “Problematizing Trauma: A Study of the Life Narratives of Dalit Women Diasporas”
3. Runa, Patna Women’s College, “Dalit Feminism and the intersection of Class, Caste and Gender in The Prisons We Broke by Baby Kamble: A Clarion Call to Dalit Female Solidarity in South Asia”

Panel 7C: Historical Interventions and the Making of Collective Memories

Chair: Smriti Srivastava, Government College Daman

1. Ritika Verma, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) – Kharagpur, “Partition, Trauma and UP Muslims: A Reading of Masoom Reza’s Novels”
2. Smriti Srivastava, Government College Daman, “Reclaiming Contemporaneity and Relevance: Devkinandan Khatri’s Chandrakanta”
3. Hasnul Insani Djohar, Universitas Islam Negeri Syarif Hidayatullah – Jakarta, “Sites of Memory in Shaila Abdullah’s Beyond the Cayenne Wall”
4. Sudeep Ghosh, The Aga Khan Academy Hyderabad, “Curating a Prototype of Egalitarian Humanism in the Poetry of Roger Reeves and Jibanananda Das”

Panel 8A: History, Memory, Aesthetics

Chair, Payel C Mukherjee, Indian Institute of Technology—Delhi

1. Naila Anjum, Bharati College, University of Delhi, “Going Back to One’s Roots, Tracing the Nucleus of Identity: Qurratulain Hyder’s Kaar-e-Jahan Daraaz Hai”
2. Payel C Mukherjee, IIT-Delhi and Abhishek Goyal, IIT-Delhi, “Contrapuntal Histories and Collective Anxieties of Partition: India through her Political Cartoons”
3. Sayan Bhattacharyya, Yale University, C.L.R James and Rabindranath Tagore: Network Aesthetics from the Margins,
4. Natasa Thoudam, Indian Institute of Technology—Jodhpur, “Alternative Imaginations of Space and Time in Maharaj Kumari Binodini Devi’s Boro Sahib Ongbi Sanatombi (The Princess and the Political Agent), Devala Mutum’s Thaningla, and Kshetrimayum Subadani Devi’s The Illustrated Folk Tales of Manipur”

Panel 8B: Knowing Me, Knowing You: Framing Solidarities 2

Chair: Waseem Anwar, Kinnaird College

1. Waseem Anwar, Kinnaird College, “‘Black Idiom’ – ‘Pakistani Idiom’: A Call for Collective Progressive Action”
2. Ananya Sinha, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, “‘Speaking’ Subalterns: A Reading of Contemporary Tamil Films”
3. Vineet Kumar, Kurukshetra University, “Depiction of Religious Confrontations between Islamic Values and Christian Faith in Multicultural Society of Britain in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane”

Panel 9A: Gender and Nation: Africa and South Asia

Chair: Richa Dawar, University of Delhi

1. Goutam Karmakar, University of the Western Cape, “Epistemologies of Black Motherhood: Subaltern Pedagogy and Reading Sindiwe Magona’s Mother to Mother for Social Justice”
2. Richa Dawar, University of Delhi, “Impossible Longings of Return in Hafsa Zayyan’s We Are All Birds of Uganda”
3. Akshaya K. Rath, Indian Institute of Technology—Bhubaneswar, “Towards a Transgender Religion in India”
4. Payel Pal, The LNM Institute of Information Technology, “Of Segregation and Blackness: Experiencing Exclusionary Politics in Farida Karodia’s Daughters of the Twilight”

Panel 9B: Theorizing Resistance

Chair: Pennie Ticen, Virginia Military Institute

1. Zachary Bordas, Louisiana State University, “The Dead and the Destroyed: Solidarity in the Process of Dying and in Destroying the Environment”
2. Pennie Ticen, Virginia Military Institute, “Theorizing Global Caste: Possibilities and Cautions in Suraj Yengde’s Writings”
3. Katherine D. Harris, San Jose State University, “Modes of Resistance: The Bengal Annual as a Source of Transaction, Consumption & Revision in 1830 Calcutta”
4. Samadrita Chowdhuri, University of Alberta, “Similarity in Dissimilarity: Comparing Oppression and Identity Construction of the ‘peripheral’”

Panel 11A: Fated to Be Free: Defying Destiny Across Caste, Class, Gender, and Race

Chair: Pranav Jani, The Ohio State University

1. Blessy Samjose, The Ohio State University, “Everyone deserves freedom: Agency and Resistance in South Asian girlhoods”
2. Sowmya Srikrishna, The Ohio State University, “Women and Agency in Nathacha Appanha’s Les Rochers de Poudre d’Or”
3. Irma J. Zamora Fuerte, The Ohio State University, “What’s Class Got to Do With It?: Elites, the Working Class, State Violence, and Solidarity in Black and Dalit Experiences.”
4. Julianna Crame, The Ohio State University, “The Lies They Tell: Freeing Debt-Bound Daughters Through Interracial Solidarity”

Panel 11B: Politics and Poetics

Chair: Mafruha Ferdous, University of Notre Dame

1. Taylor Roberts and Pooja Shah, University of North Carolina-Greensboro, “Combating the (In)Human: An Examination of Incarceration and Prison Poetics in Poems from Guantánamo”
2. Mafruha Ferdous, University of Notre Dame, “Homelessness of Displaced Communities: A Critical Study of Abdulrazak Gurnahs’ Novels”
3. Subrata Chandra Mozumder, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, “Voice against Religiocultural Determinants in the Poetry of Taslima Nasrin: A South Asian Feminist Study”
4. Haider Shahbaz, University of California – Los Angeles, “Translating Towards a Dark Commons: Toni Morrison’s Beloved in Urdu”