CfPs: Reflections on Writing: A Two-day Conference | 27-28 April, Ashoka U., Sonepat

Reflections on Writing: A Two-day Conference 

27-28 April 2018

Organized by ​Centre for Writing and Communication, Ashoka University, Sonepat

"Interdisciplinarity is not the calm of an easy security; it begins effectively (as opposed to the mere expression of a pious wish) when the solidarity of the old disciplines breaks down -- perhaps even violently, via the jolts of fashion -- in the interests of a new object and a new language neither of which has a place in the field of the sciences that were to be brought peacefully together..." Roland Barthes,  Work to Text 

Call for Papers

The work that we do in universities, has been, and will remain a central question. In this conference organized by the Centre for Writing and Communication at Ashoka University, we seek to make this question more definite by foregrounding writing as the work that is done in universities.

The answer to this question takes many different forms, and in each instance, they are imbued with political destinies as varied as the disciplines, pedagogies and methods that populate a university. However, as the Centre for Writing and Communication, we understand writing to be both the background and centre of the work across the Arts, the Sciences and the Social Sciences.  From the writing of papers, thesis, books articles, commentaries supplemented at all times by notes made for our readings and lectures, mails, suggestions and ideas jotted onto the written works of colleagues and students; university life is framed by writing. This activity conditions the possibility of inculcating, producing and disseminate knowledge. Though this direction of thought has already received much scholarly attention, the contemporary state of affairs has brought about many transformations to this problem. New concerns, new medias and new claims have transformed the tenor and terrain of the questions we've dealt with, namely – why we write, what we write and how we write.  

For the conference Reflections on Writing, CWC requests graduate students and researchers (M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D) across the disciplines belonging to the Arts, the Sciences and the Social Sciences for papers that focus on their activity of writing, irrespective of their research objects and disciplines. The papers can take any form be they analysis, meditations, commentaries, glosses or critiques. The papers should be 2500 words long.

These papers could utilize concepts such as, but not limited to, a) Text; b) Speech; c) Image; d) Gesture; e) Practice to present their thoughts.

These concepts above contain the matter about which we write and also through which we write. They can be taken in isolation or in any aggregation to reflect on how the world that we write about becomes present to us and others. The humanities and their relationship to texts, the social sciences and their relationship to the field and the archive, and even the sciences that with or without a technological apparatus observe, note, register and record – are derivations of writing that allow us to recognize, constitute and disseminate the knowledges that are the charge of these disciplines.

Of critical interest are:

• The ways in which writing places a sanction (permission and prohibition) on what we may understand, speak or say. (Inculcation)
  
• The ways in which we write our objects of research and how we put them into words. (Production)
  
• The ways in which writing determines the possibility for the recognition of knowledge as truth. (Dissemination)
  

Submission Guidelines

Send your abstracts to cwc@ashoka.edu.in no later than midnight, 8th March, 2018. Please keep in mind the following:

• The abstract should be no more than 300 words.
  
• Please mention Reflections on Writing in the subject line of your email.
  
• Please make sure that the abstract is attached with the email in a word document, and is not in the body of the email.
  
• Please mention your name, contact information, and institutional affiliation (if any) clearly in the attached file.
  
• The deadline for the submission of the final paper is 18th April, 2018. The paper should not exceed a 2500-3000 word limit.
  

Further Details