National Identities and Environments

July 11, 2022 from 16:00 to 17:15

Room Number: TRS 1-077

Join the Meeting: https://ryerson.zoom.us/j/98101962796?pwd=b0g5eGZScGZMNi9pRllKeWJwaThZQT09

Chair: John Ball (U New Brunswick)

Speakers:

Amitendu Bhattacharya (Birla Institute of Technology and Science), “To Fish or Cut Bait, That is the Question”

Elizabeth Jackson (U West Indies St. Augustine), “Borders and Boundaries in Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines and Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient

Rakibul Hasan Khan (U Otago), “Globalization, Development, and Anthropogenic Violence: Examining the Ruptured Commons in Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Paper Summaries:

Amitendu Bhattacharya (Birla Institute of Technology and Science), “To Fish or Cut Bait, That is the Question”

The paper focuses on the influence of British colonialism in the shaping of modern Bengali identity and sensibility, and studies the elite bhadralok’s fetishization of hilsa fish. It reads selected Bengali texts as allegories of the Anthropocene for their depiction of hilsa fishing and consumption as causing social inequity and ecological damage in deltaic Bengal.

Elizabeth Jackson (U West Indies St. Augustine), “Borders and Boundaries in Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines and Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient

“Borders and Boundaries in Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines and Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient” compares the ways in which both novels emphasize the artificial and divisive nature of national borders and national identities.

Rakibul Hasan Khan (U Otago), “Globalization, Development, and Anthropogenic Violence: Examining the Ruptured Commons in Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

I examine the effects of the ruptured commons in Arundhati Roy’s novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. I argue that the people at the margins are the immediate victims of the ruptured commons in present India as a result of the anthropogenic violence of developmental activities influenced by neoliberal globalization.