School of Humanities -Golden Jubilee Alumni Lecture Series

The School of Humanities organised its Golden Jubilee Alumni Lecture Series on the 8th of November, 2024. The Humanities Auditorium came alive with faces old and new as the sessions for the day unfolded. The seven sessions spanned the disciplines that are taught and researched in the school– each bringing forth an array of questions of contemporary relevance specific to these disciplines and to the field of Humanities as a whole.

The programme was inaugurated by Prof. M T Ansari, Dean of the School of Humanities, and Prof. Debashis Acharya, Chairman of the Alumni Cell. Prof. Ansari spoke briefly about the journey of the University from its first campus at The Golden Threshold to the campus as we know it today, noting the value of reflecting upon and recording this history. Prof. Debashis introduced the audience to the activities of the Alumni Cell and its plans to collaborate with alumni for future events for which this programme could be an insightful model.

The first session, chaired by Prof. Arulmozhi S. from the Centre for Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies, was delivered by Prof. Tanmoy Bhattacharya, an alumnus of the Centre. The session, titled “Uncovering the Promiscuity of Our Linguistic Pasts”, was concerned with the question of ‘How do we understand a nation linguistically?’

Prof. Tanmoy explored the surprising similarities between the Dravidian and Tibeto-Burman group of languages with the exclusion of the Indo-Aryan languages at the typological, morphological, and syntactic levels, noting it as indicative of cultural commonalities. He demonstrated through several examples and evidence that the eastern corridor has been a major axis of Indian civilization, where all three older language families came into contact.

In the second session, titled “What is to be Read, What is to be Printed?”, Dr. Sayantan Mondal presented his thesis on the mediality and the material conditions that shape reading cultures with reference to the discourses around nineteenth century Bangla print. The session was chaired by Prof. J. Bheemaiah, Head of the Centre for Comparative Literature.

This was followed by Dr. Oudhesh Rani’s session, titled “Relation of Deccan Literature to Literature of Other Languages of India,” which was chaired by Prof. Arshia Jabeen of the Department of Urdu. Dr. Oudhesh, an alumna of the Department, engaged the audience in a discussion replete with Urdu poetry as she traced the historical development of Deccani language and literature, and its influence on and by various languages such as Urdu, Hindi, Marathi, Kannada, and Telugu. She posited that the poetic traditions of Deccan literature reflect a close relationship with Hindi, Urdu, and Persian literature as well as other literatures of India. This is not only indicative of the cultural exchanges across the speakers, readers and writers of these languages but also a marker of how these languages themselves developed in relation to each other. The conversations that the session started were carried forward during the lunch break.

The post-lunch presentation was delivered by Dr. Kandharaja, alumnus of the Centre for English Language Studies, where he presented his ongoing research on “Designing Translanguaging Language Learning Materials for Multilingual Indian ESL Classrooms”. Dr. Kandharaja discussed the necessity of developing a conscious translanguaging pedagogy and made a case for it through teacher action research. Examining the application of translanguaging in Tamil-medium classrooms to foster greater awareness of children in both Tamil and English, he discussed the design of bilingual pedagogical materials and the mentorship processes as well as challenges for teachers involved in implementing translanguaging strategies.

The session was chaired by Prof. Sunita Mishra of CELS. In the next session chaired by Prof. L. Lenka, Prof. Balaganapathy, alumnus of the Department of Philosophy, spoke about the practice of philosophical counselling as an approach to engage with existential unease. Titled “Dialects of Disquiet: Philosophical Counseling as Remedy or Rhetoric?”, his presentation took the audience through some of the key ideas that govern the philosophical method and the public nature of the emergence of philosophy, which Prof. Balaganapathy suggested as the basis for making a case for philosophical counselling. This was followed by

Dr. Sivasenani’s session, “Is Mimamsa Atheistic?”, which offered a detailed examination of Mīmāṁsa philosophy and its views on God. Focusing on the system’s emphasis on ritual and sacrifice, he explored the charges of atheism leveled against it and analyzed its position in relation to other Vedic texts like Kalpa and Dharmaśāstra. An alumnus of the Department of Sanskrit Studies, his talk situated the various interpretations of Mīmāṁsa’s stance on divinity, offering new perspectives. The session was chaired by Prof. Amba Kulkarni of the Department of Sanskrit.

The final talk of the Series was delivered by Dr. Kaseem, alumnus of the Department of Telugu, and was chaired by Prof. Ramulu of the same department. Dr. Kaseem discussed “Current Trends in Telugu Literature”. Prof. Kaseem mapped various literatures of the present that have characterized themselves based on particular ideologies, especially from the peripheries of society – spaces that was of little/no concern to mainstream literature until recently.

The Golden Jubilee Alumni Lecture Series created a fertile ground for interacting, questioning and engaging with researchers and the critical questions that they are posing in the fields of linguistics, literatures across languages, and philosophy, while bringing these concerns together and letting them inform each other’s disciplines. It cemented the relationality between the various disciplines of the Humanities and the ties between old and new students who would participate in and take these discourses further. The Alumni Cell extends its sincere appreciation to Professor Sowmya Dechamma, Centre for Comparative Literature, for her vision and dedicated coordination in organizing this one-day event, which successfully brought together our esteemed alumni from a wide range of fields.