1st Edition
From Canon to Covid Transforming English Literary Studies in India. Essays in Honour of GJV Prasad
This multi-genre collection of chapters presents the dramatic transformation of English Studies in India since the early 1990s. It showcases the shift from the study of mainly British literature and language to a more versatile terrain of multilingualism, culture, performance, theory, and the literary Global South. Tracing this transition, the volume discusses themes like Indian literary history, postcolonial theory, post-pandemic challenges to literary studies, the state of Indian English drama, vernacular literature in English Studies and pedagogy, translations of feminist writers from South Asia, caste, and othering in literature, among other key themes. The volume, with contributions from eminent English Studies scholars, not only reflects the altered terrain of English Language and Literature in India but also invites readers to think about the transformative potential of the present juncture for both literary imagination and literary studies.
This timely book, in honour of Professor GJV Prasad, will be of interest to scholars and researchers of English Studies, cultural studies, literature, comparative literature, translation studies, postcolonial studies, and critical theory.
Foreword by Suman Gupta
Introduction
SUB-THEME I: LITERARY STUDIES IN INDIA
1 Rethinking and Resituating Histories of Indian Literature(s)
M. Asaduddin
2 Coronavirus Spacesuits: Or, Hard Times as Launching Pads for Literary Travel
Rukmini Bhaya Nair
3 The Pandemic and the Postcolonial
Meena T. Pillai
4 From ‘Commonwealth’ to ‘Global South’: Engaging with African Literature in Indian Literary Studies
Mala Pandurang
SUB-THEME II: DRAMA
5 The State of the Stage: An Interview with Mahesh Dattani
Angelie Multani
6 Performing the Dalit: A Reading of Dalit Plays
B. Mangalam
7 Interpreting Euripides’s Medea in the Contemporary Indian Context
Anuradha Marwah
SUB-THEME III: POETRY
8 Poetry, Plague and Locusts: About Writing Sonnets on the Black Death
Keki N. Daruwalla
9 Translation and Variation: Literary Studies, Reading Practices, and the Vernacular
Udaya Kumar
10 Of Dreamtime and Dream-tracks: Revisiting Australian Indigenous Identity Construction with Reference to Select Poems by Oodgeroo Noonuccal and Kevin Gilbert
Santosh K. Sareen
SUB-THEME IV: TRANSLATION AND TRANSCREATION
11 An Equal Music
C.S. Lakshmi
12 Translation, Interpretation, and Transcreation: Texts and Contexts in the Indian Scenario
Somdatta Mandal
13 Translating South Asia: Women and Radical Textuality
Radha Chakravarty
SUB-THEME V: FICTION, LANGUAGE, AND CONTEXT
14 Are the Ghosts in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw Real?
Tabish Khair
15 Marginalization and Dispossession in the Kashmiri Novel: A Look at Mirza Waheed’s The Collaborator
Meenakshi Bharat
16 Calling Local/Talking Global: The Cosmopolitics of the Call-Centre Industry
Jisha Menon
17 An Emerging Literary Tradition: An Overview of Writings in English from the Northeast
K.B. Veio Pou and Achingliu Kamei
Biography
Angelie Multani is Professor of Literature in the Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, India.
Swati Pal is the Principal of Janki Devi Memorial College, University of Delhi, India, where she is also Professor in the Department of English.
Nandini Saha is Professor in the Department of English, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India.
Albeena Shakil is Professor of English at the O.P. Jindal Global University, India.
Arjun Ghosh is Professor in the Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, IIT Delhi, India.
"I celebrate this collection of incisive and animated essays by some of the sharpest scholars of literary studies in India; but even more, I salute the man who has inspired it.
GJV Prasad—longtime friend and colleague, sharer of laughter and bon mots at so many locations over the years and finally at JNU offices two doors apart—has worn both his erudition and his popularity with a rare, and equal, lightness. It may be said with certainty that an overwhelming number of English teachers and students across India know him slightly or well: and not merely for his translations, his academic writing, his courses and his talks, but for the generosity of his time, humour, advice and affection. All of these—with the exception of his hugely anticipated classes each semester over an eventful forty-one years at Jawaharlal Nehru University, whose Centre for English Studies he grew synonymous with—should remain unaffected by his retirement from teaching.
Yet, the retirement of a stalwart teacher and mentor such as GJV Prasad is a moment of pleasant pause for all the minds he touched and shaped over decades. This volume of essays in honour of him is timely, thoughtful and fitting. It traverses the wide reach of his scholarly interests in the collated work of his friends, students and colleagues; they pay tribute to his place in their intellectual lives through this gesture that will speak the most eloquently to him, as well as to all those who occupy the field of English literary studies in contemporary India. It is a public encomium that carries with it a scent of friendship: there could hardly be a better gift."
Brinda Bose, Jawaharlal Nehru University
"An extraordinary tribute to teacher, translator and creative writer Prof. GJV Prasad, the book From Canon to Covid: Transforming English Literary Studies in India tracks every significant signpost in the evolution of the most ‘aspirational’ subject in the country. From questioning the canon to offering insightful readings of Indian writing, from analysing syllabus change to noting corresponding developments in translation and publishing, from creative writing to theorisations, the essays constitute a comprehensive understanding of literary studies in the context of national dynamics. Scholars of renown, associated with the long and illustrious career of GJV, have come together in a remarkable expression of solidarity to create a book of outstanding quality and significance."
Malashri Lal, Department of English, and former Dean of Colleges, University of Delhi
