The Department of English and Humanities, BRAC University has organized a two-day conference on May 18-19, 2017 to deliberate on these and related issues.
Opening Ceremony:
Time: 9:00am – 10:30am
Date: Thursday (May 18, 2017)
Venue: BRACU Mohakhali campus auditorium
Special guest: Eminent writer Selina Hossain
Afterwards, Professor Ruth Evans and Professor Niaz Zaman will present the keynote speeches. The day’s program will end with a reading session by Gantha.
The day next, the Centre for Bangladesh Studies will conduct a special discussion session.
Concluding Session:
Talk by Professor Susie Tharu
Time: 5:30pm – 7:00pm
Date: Friday (May 19, 2017)
Venue: Auditorium in BRACU’s Mohakhali campus
In the meantime, over 60 presenters will read out their papers on different topics under 10 categories.
Profile of the speakers:
First up is medieval literature specialist Ruth Evans, a professor of English at Saint Louis University, Missouri, and executive director of the New Chaucer Society.
She received her BA and MA in English from the University of Manchester, and PhD from the University of Leeds. After twelve years in the English department at the University of Cardiff in Wales, she moved to the University of Stirling in Scotland where she chaired the Department of English Studies for three years before moving to St. Louis University where she is Dorothy McBride Orthwein Professor of English.
Professor Ruth Evans was a Trustee of the New Chaucer Society from 2008 until 2012, and was Chair of the Executive Program Committee for the 16th Biennial Congress of the New Chaucer Society in 2008. She is a Fellow of the UK English Association. She is on the editorial boards of the Manchester University Press Medieval Literature Series, and punctum books: http://punctumbooks.wordpress.com/. She co-edits, with Helen Fulton, the University of Wales Press New Century Chaucer series.
Her major research interests are in Middle English literature of the period 1300-1580, with focuses on gender, sexuality, and memory. She also has strong interests in feminist theory and criticism, lollardy, translation theory and practice, the history of the book, and editing. She is working on a monograph, provisionally entitled Chaucerian Fictions of Memory. She continues to work on a long-term research project on the politics of the textual transmission of versions of a Middle English Ten Commandments commentary. She welcomes the opportunity to serve on the MA and PhD committees of graduates in all areas of later medieval English studies.
Her most recent book is a coedited collection “Roadworks: Medieval Roads, Medieval Britain” (with Valerie Allen; Manchester University Press, 2016), and she is currently working on a monograph, Chaucerian Fictions of Memory.
The second speaker is eminent scholar, activist and writer Susie Tharu who is now serving as an Eminent Professor at the Department of Cultural Studies which took the initiative to form at The English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU).
She is also a founder member of Stree Shakti Sanghatana and Anveshi, Research Centre for Women’s Studies, Hyderabad and a member of the erstwhile Subaltern Studies Collective.
She has taught in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi and IIT Kanpur, and since 1973 in the departments of literature and cultural studies in EFLU.
Professor Susie Tharu’s teaching and research interests are in feminism and other issues of minority, social medicine and the literary and visual arts. She has given talks at and taught in universities across India and other parts of the world, and published six books including, in the early 1990s, the well-known two-volume anthology, Women Writing in India.
Her most recent publications are Towards a Critical Medical Practice: Dilemmas of Medical Culture Today (with Anand Zacaraiah and R Srivatsan) 2009; No Alphabet in Sight, 2011, a dossier of new dalit writing from Kerala and Tamil Nadu (with K Satyanarayana); Steel Nibs are Sprouting: New Dalit Writing from South India Dossier 2 (Telugu and Kannada) (with K Satyanarayana); and The Exercise of Freedom: An Introduction to Dalit Writing (with K Satyanarayana).
The last two are renowned Bangladeshi scholar, writer, publisher and translator Prof Niaz Zaman who is a supernumerary professor at the University of Dhaka winning the Bangla Academy Literary Award in the translation category in 2017, and litterateur Selina Hossain, who received the SAARC Literary Award in 2015 for her contribution to South Asian literature and who is currently the chairman of Bangladesh Shishu Academy.
We welcome scholarly and innovative engagement with all kinds of literary (both oral and written) traditions and genres to debate afresh and anew the nature of women’s writing and readings. Papers, panels, and poster presentations are invited on women’s writing, writing about women, and the fluidity of gendered positions, their inter-sectionality, the interface between history and literature, memory and narrative, of real and imagined lives, sexual desires and fears. Later, we hope to publish a book with selected papers from the conference.
[ Important Dates and Registration details ]
The Department of English and Humanities
BRAC University