Disrupted Communities

July 14, 2022 from 16:15 to 17:30

Room Number: TRS 1-075

Join the Meeting: https://ryerson.zoom.us/j/93286016421?pwd=ZWg1MUd6U2RpS3Q3em56Z3o5ZnY4dz09

Chair: Megan Fourquerean (U Leeds)

Speakers:

Veronica Austen (St. Jerome’s U), “‘You Can’t Beat Ructions and Eruptions’: Living with ‘This Presence’ of La Soufriére”

Anavisha Banerjee (U Delhi), “Contested Borders of Northeast India: Indira Goswami’s The Moth Eaten Howdah of the Tusker and the Identity Politics of Women”

Kristine Kelly (Case Western Reserve U), “A Work, or a Walk, in Process: Associative Practice in Ivan Vladislavi’s Portrait with Keys: The City of Johannesburg Unlocked”

Paper Summaries:

Veronica Austen (St. Jerome’s U), “‘You Can’t Beat Ructions and Eruptions’: Living with ‘This Presence’ of La Soufriére”

Exploring literary responses to the 1979 and 2021 eruptions of St. Vincent’s La Soufrière, this paper discusses the figuration of the volcano as body/human and asks what humanizing the volcano and volcano-izing humans say about the experience of living with a volcano and its perpetual promise of rupture.

Anavisha Banerjee (U Delhi), “Contested Borders of Northeast India: Indira Goswami’s The Moth Eaten Howdah of the Tusker and the Identity Politics of Women”

My paper will focus on Indira Goswami’s novel, The Moth Eaten Howdah of the Tusker (2004) and look at the position of women, especially Assamese women. Their identity and status will be analysed with reference to their caste and gender politics.

Kristine Kelly (Case Western Reserve U), “A Work, or a Walk, in Process: Associative Practice in Ivan Vladislavi’s Portrait with Keys: The City of Johannesburg Unlocked”

This paper suggests that Vladislavic’s Portrait with Keys, through its assembled form and emphasis on itinerant ways of reading the city of Johannesburg, exemplifies the creative, connective, and unruly work of associative reading and writing practices that resist exerting power or engaging in practices of oversight.