Final Report of the International Seminar, 15-23 May 2020

The Dept of English, Shoolini University, Solan, successfully concluded a 9-day online International Literature Seminar in which 40 delegates from five different countries presented their papers. The main theme was “A Century in Retrospect: Literary Signposts and Watersheds of the Last Hundred Years.” Spread across six sessions, including an Inaugural and a Valedictory session, the seminar focused on different aspects of twentieth-century poetry, drama, fiction and theory.

The sessions were chaired by senior academicians like Profs Mukesh Williams from Soka University in Tokyo, Japan, Nasser Dasht Peyma from Azad University in Tabriz, Iran, Roshanlal Sharma from CUHP, Manpreet Kang from GGS Indraprastha University Delhi, Neelima Kanwar from HPU, and Dipankar Purkayastha from Assam University, Silchar. Begining with traditional texts and authors like WB Yeats and TS Eliot, the discussions cut across a vast literary spectrum to conclude with the contribution of Edward Said and Simone de Beauvoir. Overall, the discussions were animated and thought-provoking.

Welcoming the delegates at the Inauguration were MS Avnee Khosla, Vice-President of Shoolini, and Ms Nishtha Shukla Anand, a Trustee of the university. In the Valedictory session Prof Atul Khosla, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, interacted with the delegates and invited them to visit the campus in real time.

Talking about the outcomes of the seminar, Manju Jaidka, Professor of English at Shoolini, announced that as an offshoot of this literary event there were several workable ideas in the pipeline. The present event may be taken as the first in a series of similar events that would “Bring back Our Basics” (abbreviated to BOB) and help us re-vision the literary landscape that has been somewhat obfuscated by theoretical jargon over the past decades. Soon, perhaps, the department will hold another seminar on “Popular Forms of Literature” which would again focus more on texts than theory. Secondly, living in these difficult Covid 19 times, there is a plan to bring together stories of the Covid experience, the hardships, struggles, and also heroism that people have displayed in the these pandemic times. These stories would be compiled under the heading “Covid’s Metamorphosis” (reminiscent of Ovid’s Metamorphosis), implying that the Corona experience has brough about a radical change in human nature, in the way we look at life and the manner in which we will proceed from this point. Finally, there is a plan to host a major International conference in Shoolini before the year end, in collaboration with MELOW, an academic association that has been holding such conferences since 1998.

Approving of these ideas, Prof Atul Khosla assured the delegates that Shoolini would extend all possible help. He further invited the delegates to the campus whenever the lockdown is eased and interstate movement becomes possible again.

The seminar concluded successfully with all the delegates expressing their satisfaction with the literary roller-coaster ride experienced by them over the past nine days.