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About the Contributors (Vol 1, No 2)

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Amit Shankar Saha is a PhD researcher in English Literature at Calcutta University. He has previously published at Muse India, Humanicus, Cerebration, Families and various other journals.
E-mail: saha.amitshankar@gmail.com

 Anita Singh is Professor, Department of English, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India. She received her doctorate in English on the doomed heroes in Arthur Miller’s plays from Banaras Hindu University in 1988. Vastly experienced as a teacher with 23 years of experience her areas of interests are American drama, Indian English fiction, Indian feminist theatre and feminist theories. She is widely published both as a critical and creative writer with a number of articles, translations, book reviews, and short stories in various journals, anthologies, and magazines. Her published works include: Arthur Miller: A Study of the Doomed Heroes in his Plays (1993), Indian English Novel in the Nineties and After: A Study of the Text and its Context (2004), And the Story Begins: My Ten Short Stories, (2007). She has actively participated and presented papers in many national and international seminar and conferences. Prof. Singh’s short story ‘The Wait’ won the ‘Special Commendation Award’ in ‘Muse India Fiction Contest’ for the year 2008.
Email: anita_bhu@ymail.com, anitasinghh@gmail.com.

 Fakrul Alam is Professor of English at the University of Dhaka and also Honorary Adviser, Department of English, East West University. He did PhD on “Daniel Defoe and Colonial Propaganda”, University of British Columbia, Canada, in 1984, and M.A in English from Simon Fraser University, Canada, 1980 and M.A in English from  the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh in 1975.  His current research and teaching interests include Tagore in Translation, South Asian Writing in English, English Writing on India, Melville and the American Literary Renaissance, American Literary History, Colonialism/Postcolonialism. He was a Fulbright Scholar and a Visiting Associate Professor at Clemson University, USA, and Visiting Professor at Jadavpur University, India. Prof. Alam was Director of the Advanced Studies in Humanities of the University and Adviser, Dhaka University Central Library. He is currently a member of the Education Policy Implementation Committee constituted recently by the Government of Bangladesh to formulate a new education policy for the country. He is the author of the books: Imperial Entanglements and Literature in English, South Asian Writers in English, Jibananda Das: Selected Poems, Bharati Mukherjee, and Daniel Defoe: Colonial Propagandist. He has been editor of Dhaka University Studies and the Asiatic Society Journal. He was in the jury of the Eurasia region of the Commonwealth Writers Prize for 2003.  He is currently co-editing The New Tagore Reader (with Radha Chakravarty) for Visva-Bharati and working on his translations of Tagore’s verse.
E-mail:  falam123@bangla.net, falam1951@yahoo.com

 Indranil Acharya is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English, Vidyasagar University. He obtained his Ph.D. on the poetry of W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot in 2004. He completed one UGC Research Project on Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Fiction in 2008. Prof. Acharya is at present the Deputy Coordinator of DRS-SAP project in the Department of English on the recuperation, documentation and translation of Oral and Folk literary materials of the South Bengal districts. He has widely published in diverse areas like Modern British Poetry, Translation Studies, Indian English Literature and Subaltern Literature. He is currently on the editorial board of the Journal of the department of English, Vidyasagar University.
E-mail: Indra_acharya33@yahoo.co.in

 Jaydeep Rishi is presently Assistant Professor in the Department of English, at Sarojini Naidu College for Women, Kolkata, affiliated to West Bengal State University. Formerly, he served as the Head of the department of English at Sudhiranjan Lahiri Mahavidyalaya, affiliated to University of Kalyani. He completed his MA from University of Burdwan in 1997. He was awarded PhD in English Literature from the same university in 2006. He is a recipient of University Gold Medal, Sadananda Chakraborty Gold Medal and Junior Research Fellowship. His area of interest is Indian English Literature. He has published quite a few papers in reputed journals and has presented several papers in national and international conferences. He is also an amateur wild life photographer.
E-mail: drjrishi@gmail.com.

 Jonathan Highfield is Professor and Head of the Department of English at Rhode Island School of Design, USA. He did PhD on “Imagined Topographies of Liberation.” with a focus in 20th century multi-ethnic literatures, postcolonial literatures and the narratives of topography from the University of Iowa in 1995. He teaches a variety of courses on literature and culture in formerly colonized regions. He received Fulbright Award in 2001-2002 for his research on the effects of ecotourism on village economies in Ghana, where he taught at the University of Cape Coast. In 2009, he travelled to India to teach a short course titled “Narrative Flows: Waters of Faith, Identity, and Sustenance in Bengal”. He has been widely published in journals like The Jonestown Report, Kunapipi, The International Journal of Environmental, Cultural, Economic and Social Sustainability, and Antipodes. He co-edited with Kwadwo Opoku-Agyemang and Dora Edu Buandoh The State of the Art(s): African Studies and American Studies in Comparative Perspective.
E-mail jhighfie@risd.edu.

 Sajalkumar Bhattacharya is Selection Grade Lecturer in Ramakrishna Mission Residential College, Narendrapur (an autonomous college with a Postgraduate Department in English), Kolkata, West Bengal, India.  As a guest faculty, he teaches the Postgraduate students in MUC Women’s College (University of Burdwan), Bardhaman, West Bengal. His areas of interest include 19th century British Fiction, Post-Independence Indian Fiction in English and Bhasa Literature. He did his M.Phil on Thomas Hardy’s Fiction. He is pursuing PhD in the University of Burdwan, and he has been awarded a fellowship by the UGC for the research. He has published quite a few articles in reputed journals. In April 2004, he presented a paper ‘The Inspired Guru, the Mesmerised Leader and the Problems in Perception on Teaching Literature in Indian Classrooms’ in the 19th Oxford Conference on the Teaching of Literature, at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, UK.
E-mail: sajalbh@gmail.com

 Somdev Banik is Assistant Professor in English in Govt. Degree College, Kamalpur, Tripura. His field of specialisation is Postcolonial Literature. He did PhD from Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India. He has published some papers and interviewed authors like Amitav Ghosh and participated in a few national and international seminars and conferences.
E-mail: somdevbanik12@yahoo.co.in

Soumitra Mandal is a young artist who loves  painting landscapes and drawing illustrations. He is studying English literature in the Vidyasagar University.  He has participated and won prizes in many cultural competitions.

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, Volume I, Number 2, Autumn 2009

Editorial, Vol 1, No 1

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The inaugural issue of the Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities (Summer Issue, Number 1, 2009) is being published with contributions from scholars from different parts of the world. The aim has been to publish critical writings on regional or local literature, written in English. The section ‘Critical Articles’ includes four articles on literature written in countries as varied as India, Arab Emirates, and South Africa. All of them focus on the cultural and political consequences of a delayed imperialism. The section called ‘Perspective’ consists of two articles dealing with the sociology of literature in our age. In the section ‘Creative Works’, we have included one essay on abstract photography along with a brief file of representative photographs taken by the author. In the ‘Book Review’ section of this issue we have reviewed Mani Bhawmik’s book Code Name God.

We would like to thank the contributors, reviewers and enthusiasts who have made the publication of this issue possible. There are some errors of typography and grammar which we shall try to obviate in due time. So much for a nascent effort.

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, Summer Issue, Volume I, Number 1, 2009, URL: www.rupkatha.com/issue0109.php , © www.rupkatha.com

Modernist Arabic Literature and the Clash of Civilizations Discourse

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Saddik M. Gouhar, United Arab Emirates University

Abstract

The paper explores the incorporation of western and Christian traditions, assimilated from western culture and literature in contemporary texts, written by Muslim/Arab poets and addressed to predominantly Muslim communities, in order to disrupt the clash of civilizations narrative and underline the attempt of post WWII Arab poets, led by Badr Shaker Al-Sayyab, to be engaged into trans-cultural dialogues with western masters particularly T.S Eliot.  The paper argues that Arab poets, from ex-colonized countries, attempted to build bridges with the West   by construction of a poetics that takes as its core the cultural/religious traditions of the European colonizers.  Unlike writers from the ex-colonies, in Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and the West Indies who reconstruct western texts in order to subvert them, post WWII Arab poets integrated the religious heritage of what is traditionally categorized as an alien/hostile civilization into the Arab-Islamic literary canon. Keep Reading

Giving the Lie: Ingenuity in Subaltern Resistance in Premchand’s short story ‘The Shroud’

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Somdev Banik, Government Degree College, Tripura, India

Abstract

It is not always that the subaltern cannot speak, though their authentic representation is often more pronounced in the regional literatures, rather than in Indian Writings in English. The subaltern in Premchand’s story ‘The Shroud’ not only resists the forces of exploitation, but subverts dominant social mores and traditions to gain an advantage over the master class, forcing them to shell out money which they wouldn’t have otherwise in ordinary circumstances. This glory of victory is attenuated by the realization that the subaltern in turn is also an exploiter of the woman in the family, who in life and death is used for sustaining self-interests of the males of the family.  Keep Reading

Book Review: Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai edited Same-Sex Love in India: A Literary History

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New Delhi, Penguin Books India, 2008. ISBN 9780143102069. xxxvi + 479 pp.

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Review by Jaydeep Rishi, Sarojini Naidu College for Women, West Bengal, India Keep Reading

Book Review: Mani Bhawmik’s Code Name God

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First published in the U.S.A by The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2005,

ISBN-13: 9780824522810

First published in India by Penguin Books India, 2006

ISBN-13: 9780144001033, 978-0144001033

Review by

Biswaranjan Chattapadhyay, Serampore College Keep Reading

The Essentials of Indianness: Tolerance and Sacrifice in Indian Partition Fiction in English and in English Translation

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Basudeb Chakraborti, University of Kalyani

Abstract

Indian Partition fiction, on the one hand, records man’s bestiality and savagery and on the other, attests to the fact that man is essentially sincere, committed to upholding humanity to survive and sustain itself.  The paper contends to examine the fundamental goodness of some characters, which the Indian tradition underlines. By analyzing certain characters from Chaman Nahal’s Azadi, Khuswant Singh’s Train to Pakistan, Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice-Candy-Man, Bhisham Sahni’s Tamas, Saadat Hasan Manto’s short stories and two Indian films, Mr. and Mrs. Iyar, directed by Aparna Sen and Meghe Dhaka Tara by Ritwik Ghatak, the writer tries to bring home the truth that frenzy of insanity is not final and amidst the pall of darkness and threats of insanity, there is a ray of hope. Keep Reading

Hedonism in Abstract Art: Minimalist Digital Abstract Photography

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 Srdjan Jovanovi?, Palacky University


Abstract

In this piece of writing the writer/artist puts forward the view that art can be understood and taken in as sometimes purely hedonistic. By drawing upon the theories pertaining to hedonism, he applies this view to minimalist digital abstract photography and tries to justify his point of view with the help of three abstract photographs. Keep Reading

The Utopian Quest in Bessie Head’s When Rain Clouds Gather and Maru

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Adamu Pangmeshi, University of Maroua

Abstract

Prior to Nelson Mandela’s ascension to power in South Africa, literature of the country had been essentially a protest against the dehumanizing treatment that was meted on the Blacks by the minority Whites who were at the helm of power through the policy of apartheid. This somehow created socio-political upheavals and a pervasive atmosphere. Consequently, some writers while unfolding this social enigma, did so with a vision of proposing an ideal society for humanity. One of them is Bessie Head. This paper seeks to examine Head’s When Rain Clouds Gather and Maru in a bid to demonstrate that her quest for a perfect society has been provoked by her experiences in life and the dystopian South African. Informed by new historicism, it is argued that an ideal or a perfect society is a figment of the imagination. Keep Reading

Teaching Literature in the Age of E-Literacy

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Anne Mabry, New Jersey City University Abstract

In this piece of writing the writer deals with the issue of teaching literature and with the use of technology for the purpose of human resource development in the age of internet.

Students in urban high schools across the United States have been struggling to accomplish one milestone that most other students in suburban U.S. high schools take as a rite of passage—graduating from high school.  In the recent report titled “Closing the Graduation Gap,” commissioned by the American’s Promise Alliance, a non-profit group that works to reduce America’s high school dropout rates, the average high school graduation rate in the U.S.’s 50 largest cities was 53 percent, compared with 71 percent in the suburbs.  And the magnitude of the problem doesn’t stop there.  As reported by Sara Rimer of the New York Times just a few months ago, of the 68 percent of high school students nationwide who go to college each year, about one-third begin their freshmen year with skills deficient in writing, reading, and basic computational skills. Keep Reading