Nelson Mandela: Reading The UNESCO Courier on Robben Island

Nelson Mandela: reading The Courier on Robben Island

Thirty years ago, on March 31 1982, prisoner number 466/64 of Robben Island was transferred to Pollsmoor maximum security prison (Cape Town), thus ending two decades of banishment to the worst outpost of the South African penal system. During these years, The UNESCO Courier brought regularly news and ideas from the five continents to Nelson Mandela.  In November 1983, The Courier published an issue on “Racism” with a portrait of Nelson Mandela on the cover and the slogan “Free Nelson Mandela, brave advocate of the rights of man”. Click here to read the article

Read our articles on Racism, Apartheid, South Africa

 

21 March, World Poetry Day, 21 March - Poetry in The UNESCO Courier

To celebrate the World Poetry Day (21 March), The UNESCO Courier invites its readers to discover more than 100 articles on the world poetry, published over the last sixty years.

 

The articles are available on : http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco-courier/in-focus/poetry-in-the-unesco-courier/

 

 

Hunger-free India Essay Competition 2012 for College and University Students

Hunger-free India Essay Competition 2012 for College and University Students

on
"How Do You Think the Problem of Hunger Can be Solved"

Essay of 2000 words in Hindi or English to be sent to ZeroHungerEssay@gmail.com

Deadline: April 30, 2012

Further Details: http://www.genecampaign.org/ZeroHungerIndia/

Workshop Travel writing with meaning by Janet Thomas at BIR, Kangra 23-25 March

March 23-25,2012

Travel writing with meaning

by

Janet Thomas

Wherever we go, we takes ourselves with us. Travel writing is about the inner journey, the outer landscape, the politics of place and people, and the ways in which we navigate through the mundane, the sublime and the terrifying. It is also an opportunity to wake up to the "other" in ways that can help heal the world. How do we write and travel at the same time? What's the difference between a travel blog and a travel book? How do we transform our personal journey into a universal experience?
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness." (Mark Twain) Good travel writing is too.

Faculty:
Janet Thomas was born in Wales and lived in Canada before she started writing poems and protesting the Vietnam War on the streets of Seattle in 1969. Throughout the 1970s she meditated and walked for peace with the Japanese Buddhist monks who moved to her neighborhood to protest the Bangor Nuclear Submarine Base. Her plays, written and produced throughout the 80s, explore the moral, spiritual & ethical complexities of abortion, sexual abuse, nuclear war, the war against the environment and between the sexes. She's written books about cheap travel throughout the west and been the editor of a magazine about spas around the world. Her book, "The Battle in Seattle" was inspired by the farmers from around the world who showed up on the streets of WTO Seattle. Her most recent book, "Day Breaks Over Dharamsala--A Memoir of Life Lost and Found," is an exploration of spiritual healing. She lives and teaches on San Juan Island in the far northwest corner of Washington State in the U.S.

Organizer & Registration:

Deer Park Institute
Bir, District Kangra,
Himachal Pradesh 176 077 India
Phone No: +91 - 1894 - 268 508

Office Hours:  Mon-Sat (9am - 12pm & 2pm - 6pm)

Email: info@deerpark.in

In Your Shoes: an Indo-Norwegian Writing Competition 2012

In Your Shoes: an Indo-Norwegian Writing Competition

 

Fictional Writing Competition - Write yourself to Norway!

Write a text that takes place in Norway and win a trip to experience it your self!

Have you been thinking about how a life in another place can look like? How a day, a year, an hour in another context can appear? Now you got the chance to write yourself into another situation, empathise with the everyday life of another!

 

In Your Shoes is a fictional writing competition that takes place in India and in Norway.

 

Guidelines:

The competition is open for everyone, and aims at collecting good texts that tell something about how ordinary and extraordinary people imagine Norway and the people that live there. The genre is free; you can write a story, an essay, a poem or other literary formats. The only criterion is that the text takes place in Norway. You can write about yourself, from inside someone else's head, about fictitious people and events, about nature, animals, sentiments. Write from inside or outside; you can choose to have a distance or to take a close approach. Write short or long – maximum five pages (approx. 10 000 signs, including spaces).

 

Use of the texts:

A selection of the texts will be chosen for publishing. In addition to this the texts will be used in relation to a research project at the University of Oslo. The theme of the project is our perceptions of the Other.

 

Prize

The first prize is a trip to Norway for 12 days, with food and lodging covered. The best ones among the other entries (12-15) will be published in a book where all texts will be translated and presented in Norwegian, Hindi and English. A corresponding writing competition is also announced in Norway, where the context of the texts is India. The winning entries will also be printed in Bokvennen Literary Magazine and Pratilipi Bilingual Literary Journal.

 

Jury

The entries will be read and judged by a  jury consisting of:

Jai Arjun Singh, Arundhati Subramaniam, Ashley Tellis, Alok Rai, Arshia Sattar, Ashok Vaipeyi, Palash Krishna Mehrotra

 

Organizers

University of Oslo/ Bokvennen Literary Magazine/ Pratilipi Bilingual Literary Journal/ Sahitya Akademi/ The Caravan/ Norwegian Association for Literary Translation/ Norwegian Organization for Literature Abroad (NORLA)/ NyTid weekly newsmagazine/ Sangam House

 

Deadline

Last submission date is Monday 18th of June 2012. 24.00.

Please send in electronically to: indonorway@gmail.com

 

Further Details:  http://indianorway.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/hello-world/

CfP: Between global aspirations and local realities - India’s cities in interdisciplinary perspective; at SAA, JNU; 26-28 Mar

Between global aspirations and local realities - India's cities in interdisciplinary perspective

26-28 March 2012

Venue: Auditorium, School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU, New Delhi

50 years jubilee conference of the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University

With the rapid expansion of India's urban population, the environmental effects of India's largely unplanned cities are increasing, along with their cultural and political importance, and heir economic costs and potentials. Much urban research is concentrated on contemporary problems relating to infrastructure, planning, resource utilization and the like, in a rather compartmentalized fashion. However, to fully understand contemporary phenomena (and even more so suggestions toward their solution), historical depth and an understanding of the cultural dimensions of urbanization processes are equally important to the analysis of material challenges. This interdisciplinary conference aims at new, integrated approaches to urban research.

Panel Sessions
The conference is organised into six panel sessions:
Day 1
 Session 1: A Series of Historical Studies of two Megacities: Kolkata and Mumbai
 Session 2: Urban Environments
Day 2
 Session 3: Finance and Politics (covers the process of urbanisation in the context of the larger paradigms of 'development' and 'modernisation' and their impact on urban planning as well as (attempted) solutions to contemporary challenges).
 Session 4: Cities and their Hinterlands: The following session is dedicated to the (sometimes artificial) rural-urban dichotomy which these discourses have created, by looking at the connections between cities and 'hinterlands', and the way rural lifestyles and practices permeate and integrate into urban spaces and lifestyles.
Day 3
 Session 5: Imagining Urbanity (impact of globalizing urban cultures on contemporary Indian cities)
 Session 6: Imagining Urbanity (contd.)

Entry Open for Public after online registration at www.sai.uni-heidelberg.de/en/50years/registration-delhi

Further Details

JNU ASC Lecture on Freedom of Media by Shri Kuldip Nayar, Today, 4:00pm at Convention Centre, JNU

Academic Staff College

 

is organising Prof. Amrik Singh Memorial Lecture

 

on

 

Freedom of Media

 

by

 

Shri Kuldip Nayar
(Eminent Journalist and Former Indian High Commissioner to U.K.)

 

on Moday March 19, 2012 at 4:00pm in the Convention Centre, JNU

 

Prof. Ashis Nandy (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies) will be the Chief Guest

 

Prof. Mridula Mukherjee (Centre for Historical Studies, JNU) shall preside