Voices Against Violence at EMK Center
On 7th December 2024, Dr. Sabiha Huq, Professor ENH, and Dr. Sabreena Ahmed, Associate Professor ENH were invited to participate in the programme titled “Voices Against Violence” organised by The Reading Circle and Gantha-a women writers’ organisation in collaboration with the EMK Center, Gulshan, Dhaka.
Dr. Huq read out an excerpt from her translation of অরাতির রাত্রি by Purabi Basu titled “The Malicious Night anthologised in Bangladesh: A Literary Journey through 50 Short Stories, edited by Rifat Munim, published by Bee Books in India. Dr. Ahmed read out from the translation of Ami Birangona Bolchi by Neelima Ibrahim titled A War Heroine: I Speak by Fayeza Hasanat.
Professor Huq is reading out at the event
Dr. Ahmed is reading out at the event
International Conference on Revisiting the Canon: Reading British and American Literatures from Contemporary Perspectives
Professor Firdous Azim, Chairperson, ENH, presented her Keynote speech on “Death by Water or Expanding the Canon” at the International Conference on Revisiting the Canon: Reading British and American Literatures from Contemporary Perspectives. The conference was jointly organised by Association of Teachers of Literatures in English, Bangladesh (ATLEB) and English Department, Rajshahi University (EDRU) on 20-21 December 2024. In her paper Professor Azim basically focused on the aspect of death of children in the riverine Bangladesh and how literatures from the margins can be incorporated in our reading of English literature. The English literary canon that has a long legacy, for example T.S. Eliot’s long poem The Waste Land has a section titled Death by Water, can be expanded by including English literatures from Bangladesh.
Professor Sabiha Huq of ENH also presented her plenary speech on “Teaching Gender and Ecology vis-à-vis the Canon: Revisiting English Department Curricula in Bangladesh” at the same conference. Her research on the existing curricula of English departments of public and private universities was presented in her talk and she proposed the expansion of our curricula and a paradigm shift in our teaching of English literatures to cope with post-pandemic contexts. Among other speakers, were Professor Kellie Holzer of Virginia Wesleyan University, USA, Dr Gillian Dooley of Flinders University. Australia, Professor Saugata Bhaduri of Jawaharlal Nehru University, India, Professor Fakrul Alam, Professor Zerin Alam, Professor Nevin Farida of, Department of English, University of Dhaka, Professor Umme Al-Wazedi of Augustana College, USA and Professor Mashrur Shahid Hossain of Department of English, Jahangirnagar University.
Professor Azim is delivering her lecture
Professor Huq is delivering her lecture
Events organised by ENH
On December 12, Thursday 2024, Ms. Tasneem Tayeb, a Bangladeshi journalist, communications and development professional spoke to the students of Eng 401: Editing about effective content editing strategies in order to reach out to a wider audience in these fast-changing times. After this there was also a discussion about the different types of newspaper headlines. This was followed by a Q/A session with the students.
Ms. Tasneem Tayeb is sitting with the students
Ms. Tasneem Tayeb is delivering her lecture
On 18th December 2024, during the ENH Seminar Series talk titled "Developing Religious Publics in (Long) Twentieth Century Dacca" Syed Alif Shahed, a doctoral candidate in the Department for the Study of Religion of the University of Toronto offered a history of history of the concept of ‘sarvajanin’ by way of an examination of its literary and political history, examining in the process literary writings, political slogans, newspaper clippings, and posters which take the metaphor of the religious public and tie it to nationalism. Shahed also turned to archive and ethnography to uncover how 'universal' spaces were and are produced for particular religious festivals, offering ultimately an alternate reading of ‘religion’ in Bangladesh that connects the aesthetic to the economic. His historically-minded research investigates religion at the intersection of urban development, governance, and the anthropology of neoliberalism.
Mr. Shahed is delivering his lecture
Mr. Shahed is sharing his views with the audience
Q and A session at the talk
ENH Faculty Presents at the BDI International Conference 2024
Mohammad Zaki Rezwan, Senior Lecturer ENH presented a paper titled “Racial or Post-racial Imagination?: The Limit of Transcultural Adaptation in Bangladeshi Martial Arts Film Bojromusthi (1989)” at the BDI International Conference: Bangladesh Reimagined: The Next Half-Century, held at University of California, Berkeley from November 8 to 10, 2023. His paper explores the practice of transcultural adaptation in Bangladeshi martial arts films. It examines how the films of this subgenre adapt not only the fighting techniques incorporated in several East Asian films, especially the ones that came out of the Hong Kong film industry but also the cultural and ethnic characteristics contextualized in those East Asian films.
Poster of BDI International Conference 2024
ENH Faculty Invited as a Speaker at UConn Hartford
Mohammad Zaki Rezwan, Senior Lecturer, ENH has delivered a talk at the Hartford campus of the University of Connecticut on November 12, 2024. The talk was organised by UConn Hartford’s Transformation, Equity, Access, and Sense of Belonging (TEAS) project. Mr. Rezwan has discussed the Rohingya art and artisan practices in the refugee camp of Bangladesh. He talked about how the encounter between Bangladeshi and Rohingya identities allows these refugees to seek resilience in the state of displacement through the reorientation of their Rohingya knowledge and skills.
ENH Faculty Invited as a Panelist at Small File Media Festival 2024
Mohammad Zaki Rezwan, Senior Lecturer, ENH was invited as a panelist at the Small File Media Festival 2024’s online panel on “Tactical Media: Small File Media in States of Siege and Infrastructural Precarity” on October 21, 2024. Using the July 2024 revolution in Bangladesh as a case study, he dissed the possibilities of small-file media during the time of precarity. He discussed how small-file could be a viable intervention during times of conflicts where communications platforms are unreliable.