Sunday, February 21, 2010

LitFest Feb 2010

TENTH MELUS-MELOW INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE / FIRST CHANDIGARH LITFEST FEB 25-27, 2010

CONFERENCE UPDATE:

The International Conference on “CONTEMPORARY ISSUES: Literature and Culture Since 1980” is being held from Feb 25 to 27, 2010. The Conference will dove-tail into the First Chandigarh LitFest for which there will be several well-known literary figures visiting Chandigarh. The event has been announced over the Internet through different mailing listservs and the expected participation from Chandigarh, India and abroad will be around 250 delegates.

The event is being co-hosted by the Chandigarh Sahitya Akademi (www.chandigarhsahityaakademi.blogspot.com) which is governed by the Chandigarh Arts Council (UT) and organizes Literary events from time to time. In collaboration with the Panjab University and MELOW, the Akademi is, for the first time in the history of Chandigarh, organizing a Literary Festival.

MELOW (website www.melus-melow.org and blog www.melusmelow.blogspot.com) is an independent, registered, non-profit organization committed to the study World Literatures. A team of senior Professors from different universities in India and abroad manages the affairs of the Society. It has an International advisory board and to date it has held nine conferences. The February 2010 conference will be its tenth international conference.

About 200 delegates are expected to participate in this conference, including 20 from abroad. Well known names of academics are Profs Harish Trivedi, P.C. Kar, Tejnath Dhar, Sushila Singh, Malashri Lal. Mukesh Williams, Brajesh Sawhney, Mita Biswas, Dipankar Purukayastha, Nishi Pandey, Gulshan Kataria and KB Razdan. Creative writers particpating in the event include Shashi Deshpande, Mamta and Ravinder Kalia, Namita Gokhale and Manjula Padmanabhan. They will interact with local writers and scholars like Dr KL Zakir, V. Mehndirata, Indu Bali, Chander Trikha, Atulvir Arora, Nirupama Dutt and university teachers including Profs Manju Jaidka and Anil Raina, the main organizers of the conference and LitFest. Dr DS Gupt and Madhav Kaushik, Vice-President and Secretary, respectively, of the Chandigarh Sahitya Akademi, are also involved in the organization.

The 3-day Event will be inaugurated on 25th Feb by Prof RC Sobti, Vice-Chancellor, Panjab Universtiy, Chandigarh. The Special Guest on this occasion will be Shri Pradip Mehra, IAS, Adviser to the Administrator, UT, Chandigarh.

There will be a special Isaac Sequeira Memorial Lecture delivered by Prof PC Kar on 27th February.

The ISM Award for the best paper presented at the last (Shantiniketan) Conference will be given to Dr Dipankar Roy.

An anthology comprising selected papers of the Shantiniketan Conference will be released at the Inauguration.


25TH FEBRUARY 2010

9.30 AM REGISTRATION

9.45 AM INAUGURAL SESSION Venue: English Auditorium

10:00 am

Introduction

Manju Jaidka

10:15 am

Presidential Welcome

Gulshan Kataria

10:30 am

Inauguration

R.C Sobti (VC)

10:45 am

Special Guest

Pradip Mehra, IAS

11:00 am Announcement of Isaac Sequeira Prize and Book Launch

11.15 AM TEA BREAK

11.30 am to 12 noon: First Keynote. Prof. Harish Trivedi: India, America and World Literature”

Venues for all Parallel Sessions:

Session A: English Auditorium

Session B: Lecture Hall I, GF, Arts Block I

Session C: Lecture Hall II, GF, Arts Block I

Session D: Language Lab, 1st Floor, Arts Block I

12 NOON – 1.30 PARALLEL SESSIONS A - D

[Brajesh Sawhney]

[Vijay Sharma]

[Mita Biswas]

[Sushila Singh]

Anu Celly

Mahesh Bharatkumar Bhatt

Sushi Datta-Sandhu

Meenu Gupta

Manpreet Kaur Kang

Rajyashree Khushu-Lahiri

Sandhya Devesan Nambiar

Pankti Desai

Purnendu Chatterjee

Vinita Jha

Rohini Tukdeo

Rachna Rastogi

Sunita Sinha

Garima Williams

Shuchismita Mitra

Mary Mohanty

1.30 TO 2.30 PHOTO SESSION & LUNCH

2.30 TO 4.00 PM PARALLEL SESSIONS A - D

[Harish Trivedi]

[Sudhir Kumar]

[Anu Celly]

[Lovelina P. Singh]

Stella Hockenhull

Anil Raina

Anurag Kumar & Nagendra Kumar

Nilakshi Roy

Somdatta

Razdan, K B

V.Lakshmanan

Maghsood Esmaieli

Mohanmeet Khosla

Mukul Sengupta

Roshan Lal Sharma

Amrit Kaur

Sachin Ketkar

Santosh P. Rajguru

Niyatee Ayyar

Navjot Kaur

4.00 TO 4.15 TEA BREAK

4.15 TO 5.15 PM PARALLEL SESSIONS A - C

(Himadri Lahiri)

[V. Lakshmanan]

[Mukul Sengupta]

Azad+Esmael

NDR Chandra

R.G.Kulkarni

Jyoti Mishra

Ravichandran T.

Hossein Sabouri

Navreet Sahi

Melissa Helen

Ramanpreet Grewal

5.15 TO 6.00: BREAK

6.00 PM PLENARY PPT presentations (Eng Audi)

On Michael Jackson; on Chandigarh by S.S. Bhatti,

8.00 PM DINNER

7.00 PM: Play Performance by Dept of Indian Theatre, Panjab University, Chandigarh

“The Trojan Women” in Hindustani – Venue – Open Air Theatre

26TH FEB 2010

9.30 AM TO 11.00 - PARALLEL SESSIONS A TO D

[Kuldip Kaur Kuwahara]

[Razdan, K B]

[Nishi Pandey]

[Meera Malik]

Carolyn Kraus

Yatri Dilipbhai Dave

Rashmi Mathur

Sukla Basu (Sen)

Raphael Joseph

Mahesh M. Nivargi

Vandana Datta

Reza Yavarian

Anjali Chauhan

Harneet Sandhu

Anupam Nahar

Vicky Sylvester

Neeti Mahajan

Jayanta Kar Sharma

Kaliknar Pattanayak

Debashish Lahiri

11.00 TO 11.30 TEA BREAK

11.30 AM TO 12 NOON

PLENARY SESSION

Mukesh Williams

Second Keynote Address: “Culture of Capitalism and Consumerism: The American Gulliver and World Systems —Cooperation and Consensus”

12 NOON TO 1.00 PM - PARALLEL SESSIONS A TO C

[Somdatta Mandal]

[Mina S. Singh]

[Suneeta Patnayak]

Carlos Gohn

Kuldip Kaur Kuwahara

Anshu Shekhawat

Vivek Sachdeva

Nandini Bhadra

Vandana Sukheeja

Himadri Roy

Alka Saxena

Ranjita Barik

1.00 TO 2.00 PM LUNCH

2.00 PM TO 3.30 PARALLEL SESSIONS A TO C

[Mukesh Williams]

[Carolyn Kraus]

[Anil Raina]

Kaoru Kinoshita

Dipankar Purkayastha

Himadri Lahiri

Ui Teramoto

Roya Yaghoubi

Seema Malik+Vaibhav

Kun Jong Lee

Ashu Vashisht

Namrata Nistandra

Akiko Ogihara

Seema Bhupendra

Smita Jha

3.30 : TEA BREAK

3.45 to 4.15 PM MELOW GBM

6.00 TO 7.30 TWO PARALLEL POETRY SESSIONS (Hindi and English)

(A) Venue: Gandhi Bhavan

[Mamta Kalia / DS Gupt]

T N Raaz

Yojana Rawat

Roshan

B D Kalia

Rupa Saba

Taaran Gujral

Santosh Dhiman

Atul Vir

(B) Venue: English Audi

[Sushila Singh / Manju Jaidka]

Nirupama Dutt

Kailash Ahluwalia

Balpreet Kaur

Lalita Jagmohan

Aradhana Sharma

Sourabh Gupta

Debashish Lahiri

7.30 PM: DINNER

27th Feb 2010 Venue: English Auditorium

9.45 am to 10.30 am

Shashi Deshpande (Pratibha Nagpal & Sudhir Kumar)

10.30 am to 11.15 am

Mamta Kalia (Mina Singh)

11.15am to 11.30 am

TEA BREAK

11.30 noon to 12.15 pm

Chander Trikha (Madhav Kaushik)

12.15 to 1.00 pm

Namita Gokhale and Malashri Lal (Manju Jaidka)

1.00 pm to 2.00

LUNCH

2.00 to 3.30 pm TWO PARALLEL STORY SESSIONS


(A) Venue: Gandhi Bhavan

(B) Venue: English Auditorium

[Dr. Zakir]

[Manjula Padmanabhan]

V. Mehndiratta

T N Dhar

Indu Bali

Carolyn Kraus

Ravindra Kalia

Jaideep

3.30 to 3.45 pm TEA BREAK

3. 45 to 4.15 pm

P.C. Kar (Gulshan Kataria) ISM Lecture

“Aesthetics of Modernism”

4.15-4.30 pm

Summing up & Vote of Thanks