IACLALS

Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies in India

Annual Conference 2025

Trauma, Resilience and Healing: Representations in South Asian Literature and Culture

hosted at

Department of Humanities and Social Sciences BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus

20-22 February 2025

Globally, all cataclysmic events have resulted in corresponding archives of expressive resources, including oral narratives, writings, and performing and visual arts, which memorialize responses of those who have experienced, or, are experiencing ordeals laterally, or at first-hand. The South Asian region, owing to its history of commonwealth belonging and decolonization, and its global south categorization, has witnessed, over the years, historical and political crises, economic and ecological disruptions, cultural and sociological disturbances, that present grand patterns of trauma. These have shaped or reshaped histories of belonging, hybridized, or recreated identities or brought them under contestation, and led to conditions wherein people find themselves in perpetual flux. Significantly, this region has also witnessed instances of peoples’ resilience, the coming into play of forces of healing, at times in most unexpected ways, from unanticipated quarters. The history of the South-Asian region, in other words, constitutes histories of peoples’ struggles, and their dealing with crises, whether as resistance or protest, as forgetting and moving on, as continually learning and resiliently adapting to them, or as coping and healing, in spite of them.

Trauma, a key term in psychoanalytic approaches to literary study, has garnered significant interest, with broad applicability to individuals, cultures, and nations. All aspects of traumatic experiences, in their individual and collective dimensions, emphasize the role of peoples’ resilience, overcoming crises, and moving on. Furthermore, memory plays a significant role in both falling into trauma and overcoming it. Both trauma and memory are, by nature, in their multifarious manifestations, psychological, social, historical, cultural, philosophical, religious, economic, and political. Artistic representations and memorialisation of trauma constitute acts of resistance, that despite recalling the scarring memories of violence and hurt, highlight the need for healing and rejuvenate the collective consciousness of a community, thereby emphasizing efforts toward resilience. Memory also acts as a safeguard against attempts to silence voices of transgression, and dissidence and is, in turn, often implicated in that silencing.

It is important to locate and understand the manifold ways in which traumatic memories of violence and resistance have led to resilience; how their narrativization and depiction in literature, film, theatre, art, and other cultural forms transforms the experiences into aestheticized expressions, thereby accruing layers of meaning and significance. Examining the intricate interplay that exists between these realms and/or in the interstices between them, reveals how literary and cultural media not only preserve and reshape personal and collective memory but also serve as powerful acts of resistance and the silencing of traumatic histories and/or experiences.

What do these multimodal representations tell us about peoples’ experiences and struggles? How does artistic self-expression relate to trauma, survival, resilience, and healing? How do they affect audiences? How do minor artistic expressions of trauma and resilience compare with dominant narratives? This conference seeks to address the above and related issues through readings of oral narratives, literature, performance, art, and sculpture. It seeks to highlight ways in which archives may reflect or resist personal and/or collective memory and identity and the larger politics of preservation and documentation. It seeks to contribute to the fields of trauma, culture, and memory studies by fostering a rich, interdisciplinary dialogue that will challenge and expand perceptions of the past, present, and future.

Original, unpublished papers centring South Asia are invited for presentation on the following sub-themes:

  • Theorizing narratives, methodologies and representations: sources, sites, retelling, censorship, and contestation
  • Representations/ways of healing, therapeutics, caregiving and/or catharsis
  • Pandemic and post-pandemic illness and everyday trauma
  • Memorializing trauma: Individual and collective memories; Counter-memories and counter-narratives
  • Representations of resistance, agitation, and collaboration
  • Bearing witness: perpetrators, collaborators, spies, survivors and bystanders
  • Aphasia, amnesia, and trauma: memories of territorial occupation
  • War, atrocities, genocide, ethnic cleansing
  • Digitizing trauma, resilience, and memory
  • Trauma and its relation to precarity
  • Navigating legacies of colonialism, displacement, cultural erasure, and resistance
  • Memory activism and politics of remembrance and forgetting
  • Resilience, neuro-plasticity, and coping
  • Trans-cultural/ trans-national/ trans-generational expressions of casteist, sexist, racist and ableist trauma
  • Archives and narratives of migrant trauma
  • Ecological disasters and trauma
  • Role of language and translation in expressing and memorializing trauma, resilience, memory and healing

Submission Guidelines

  • Abstracts of 250-300 words with a bio-note of no more than 50 words may be submitted using the submission link at the latest by 15 October 2024. Acceptances will be conveyed by 31 October 2024.
  • Abstracts submission link: https://shorturl.at/T0NLQ
CDN Prize 2025: If you wish to participate in the “C. D. Narasimhaiah Prize” for the Best Paper Presented at an Annual Conference, kindly type “Submission for CDN Prize” in the subject line of the email, when you send in the full paper to [email protected]
The last date for the submission of complete papers: 15 November 2024. For details of the CDN Prize, visit: https://www.iaclals.com/cdn-prize.html
MMM Prize 2025: IACLALS also announces the next edition of the “Meenakshi Mukherjee Memorial Prize” for the Best Academic Paper published by a member during the previous block of two years (2023 & 2024). IACLALS Members can submit their published paper for consideration using the Google Form https://shorturl.at/bSPLX.
The last date for submission: 15 October 2024.
The author(s) should have been a member of IACLALS at the time of publication of the paper. For MMM Prize submission guidelines, visit: https://www.iaclals.com/mmm-prize.html

The conference is open only to members of IACLALS. Participants are encouraged to become members before sending abstracts for the conference. Membership at the time of participating in the conference is essential.

IACLALS Membership options:

  • 3-year Membership: Rs 1500
    • Life Membership: Rs 5000
    • Students/Research Scholars may also avail of an Annual Membership for Rs 1000.
Mode of Payment (for Membership of IACLALS)
Name: IACLALS
Bank: State Bank of India SB A/C: 10851525016
JNU New Campus Branch Branch Code: 10441
IFSC CODE: SBIN0010441 MICR: 11000242

Please send a copy of the transfer document/receipt along with your details, including name, affiliation, address, email ID, and contact number to the IACLALS Treasurer only on the official id: <[email protected]>

Registration Fee for the Conference
(Includes Lunch, Dinner, Refreshments on conference days, and Conference Kit)
Faculty (with twin-sharing, non-AC accommodation)* Rs. 4500 + 18% GST = Rs 5310
Faculty (without accommodation): Rs 3000 + 18% GST = Rs 3540
Research Scholars (with twin-sharing, non-AC accommodation)* Rs 2500 + 18% GST = Rs 2950
Research Scholars (without accommodation): Rs 1500 + 18% GST = Rs 1770
Foreign delegates: USD 250 (without accommodation)
 
Mode of Payment (for payment of Conference Registration Fee): To be announced

Weather in Hyderabad during February is generally pleasant with the average day temperature around 28°C and the average night temperature around 17°C. For those who wish to stay on their own, accommodation near the campus is available at

About Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani

The Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani (est. 1964) is a deemed university recognized by the government of India as an Institution of Eminence. It offers First Degree, Higher Degree, and Doctoral Degree programmes in Engineering, Science, Management, and Humanities across its five campuses in Pilani, Dubai, Goa, Hyderabad, and Mumbai.

The Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus (BPHC; est. 2008), has faculty members specialising in a range of research areas from various disciplines. The department is committed to promoting value-oriented learning, respect for diversity, critical thinking, development of social-political values and cognitive capacities required for examining the world around, and cultural and aesthetic appreciation of various art forms and literary genres.

How to reach BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus:

  • From Rajiv Gandhi International Airport: The fastest route is via the Nehru Outer Ring Road. (BITS is at Exit 7, Shamirpet). Distance: 75 kms (approx.), Travel time: 90 mins (approx.), Cab fare: Rs 1500-1800 (approx.)
  • From Secunderabad Railway Station: Distance: 25 kms (approx.), Travel time: 45-60 mins (approx.), Cab fare: Rs 600-800 (approx.)
Important Dates and Deadlines for the Conference:
Submission of Abstracts: 15 Oct 2024
Submission of entries for the MMM Prize 2025: 15 Oct 2024
Submission of entries for the CDN Prize 2025: 15 Nov 2024
Confirmation and Acceptance of Abstracts: 31 Oct 2024
Receipt of Complete Papers: 31 Dec 2024 Registration: Open from 15 Nov to 15 Dec 2024