THE ENGLISH LITERARY SOCIETY

To write, and consequently to read stories, is to engage in an act of exposure. It is not without reason that civilizations rush to lay their literature as their foundation. It is through their writers that they seek to represent themselves, and give themselves a name. When a story is told it combines the seemingly irrelevant habits of a singular person with the sweeping culture of a people. This is why people see themselves more easily in R. K. Narayan’s Swami than in the vague “we” of a history book. Their deeply personal and emotional nature grants stories the ability to exist as mirrors – we are what we write, we are what we read.

This is the duty that the English Literary Society takes on: to use stories and expose man; to find ourselves in the written word, and to expand the ways in which we define ourselves.

Executive Council of 2023-24

Third Year Council

President — Keerthana Haridas (III B.A. English)
E-mail: keerthanaharidas2003@gmail.com
Vice President — Vidhi Gupta (III B.A. Programme)
E-mail: vidhi.e.22680@gmail.com
Academic Coordinator — Moulishree Jha (III B.A. English)
E-mail: moulishreejha@gmail.com
General Secretary — Muthara Khan (III B.A. Programme)
Email- mutharakhan@gmail.com
Logos Convenor — Himanshu Dutta (III B.A. English)
Email: himanshudutta003@gmail.com

Second Year Council

Treasurer
Joan Steffi (II B.A. English)
Email: joansteffis@gmail.com

Postscript Editors
Ashwin Thomas (II B.A. English)
Email: ashwinthomas179@gmail.com
Pratuksha Kolhe (II B.A. English)
Email: pratukshakolhe@gmail.com

Publicity Heads
Celestia Sangma (II B.A. English)
Email: celestiadawa09@gmail.com
Hridya Lenin (II B.A. English)
Email: hridyalenin04@gmail.com

Outreach and Logistics
Samra Iqbal (II B.A. English)
Email : samraiqbal288@gmail.com

Lecture on “Investigating Episteme : Knowledge Dissemination beyond State Hegemony”

Date : 27th September 2023
Resource persons : Meena Kotwal and Raja Pandey
No. of Participants : 28

The panel discussion was held in collaboration with the Gandhi Ambedkar Study Circle. It took place in the NPLT at 4pm and concluded at 5:45 pm. The one hour discussion was followed by a 45 minute question and answer session between the attendees and the speakers, moderated by Prof.Sneha Sara Felix. After the event, the speakers were hosted by the councils of both the societies at the science dhaba, where they were provided with refreshments.

The speakers, Meena Kotwal and Raja Pandey, discussed the need to locate alternative bodies of knowledge dissemination and resist the wrath of state terror, while also challenging state hegemony on knowledge production and dissemination.

Lecture on “Peddlers of the Book: Missionary Print Colportage in 19th Century Rural India”

Date: 5th October
Resource person(s) : Prof. Ulrike Stark
No. of participants : 44

The lecture was held in collaboration with Bazm-e-adab and Hindi Sahitya Sabha. It took place in the seminar room at 3 pm and concluded at 4:30 pm. The 45 minute lecture was followed by a 45 minute question answer session between the attendees and the speaker. Refreshments were available at the library lawns for the participants following the lecture.

Professor Stark talked about the dissemination of missionary tracts in 19th century rural India. Her research focuses on modern Hindi literature, North Indian intellectual history, and South Asian book history.

Walk to the Partition Museum

Date: 14th October
Resource person(s) :
No. of participants : 26

On the 14th of October, the English Literary Society in collaboration with the History Society organised an education walk to the Partition Museum at Dara Shikoh Library. The participants met at the Vishwavidyalaya Metro Station at 2 p.m. from where they took the Yellow Line to Kashmere Gate. They were accompanied by Prof. Dias Antony. The walk was led by Ashwin Thomas (II English Honours) and Angela Matthew (II History Honours). It attempted to locate the Partition in a history of transnational migration at the fag end of Empire, and explored the politics of history, historiography, and collective memory by looking at marginalised narratives.

Reading Club session on Kanafani’s “The Land of Sad Oranges”

Date: 19th October
Resource person(s) :
No. of participants : 11

The session was held at 4 p.m. at the Library Lawns. The reading for the session was the short story “The Land of Sad Oranges” by Ghassan Kanafani. Sections of the story were read out by the participants and discussed in the session.

Oranges are especially significant to Palestinians because they are their national fruit. Oranges for them, denote a time of economic and social fecundity; a time of peace and serenity. In the story however, as the narrator-protagonist leaves for Ras Naquora he is also leaving behind the land of oranges. The next time his family encounters the oranges, their eyes would be brimming over as they feel the intensity of the loss that they are about to experience. Migration is a continuous process; there is no point at which a migrant can confidently say “I am a refugee” — they are in a constant state of becoming.

Dramatised Reading Session and Discussion

Date: 25 October 2023
No. of participants: 16

On the 25th of October, the English Literary Society organised a dramatised reading session and discussion moderated by Dr. N P Ashley on various literary texts that included works like by Reflections On Exile by Edward Said, The Earth Is Closing On Us by Mahmoud Darwish, We Swallowed An Air Like Earth by Marianna Kiyanovska, On Evil by Hannah Arendt and so on. The event was held in collaboration with the IQAC in order to commemorate Disarmament Week.

The participants sat in a circle and read sections of the poems out loud while being mindful of the the context of the Russia-Ukraine war and Israel-Palestine genocide in the world of Kiyanovska and Darwish respectively. The participants recited certain verses of each of the two poems simultaneously which created the illusion that the two were in fact the same work of art. Despite being rooted in two entirely different spatio-temporal contexts, the two poets seemed to be in dialogue with one another.

Much of the discussion was centred around the politics of war, why it happens and who profits from it. And while Palestine-Israel and Russia-Ukraine are locked in violent conflict, it becomes even more important for us to remember why the idea of disarmament is so significant. As citizens of India, we cannot simply wash our hands off of the conflict by claiming to be neutral onlookers. In times of such suffering and turmoil, it becomes our responsibility as human beings to be cognizant of war, violence and its politics. Literature is an excellent window through which such conversations can be initiated.

Lecture on ‘Machines Reading Culture’

Date: 5th April, 2023
Resource person(s): Dr. Arjun Ghosh
No. of participants: 30

Brief description of the event:

The English Literary Society held a talk with Professor Arjun Ghosh on the topic “Machines Reading Culture”. Professor Ghosh teaches in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Delhi. Dr. Ghosh specialises in Performance Studies, Culture Studies, and Digital Humanities, the last of which was the main focus of the lecture. Professor Ghosh elaborated on the implications of mixing AI technology with literary studies, navigating the differences in the humanities of the pen, the print, and the digital. After some initial remarks about the nature of digital humanities in the West and India, Professor Ghosh demonstrated the use of tools such as Voyant which can survey any given corpus. He focused on computational humanities for this presentation, citing examples of various studies undertaken at Yale and Harvard using digital means, inaugurating new methodologies in historiography and media research. Professor Ghosh concluded with some thoughts on analog and digital technologies, and the work of the scholar and the coder in developing innovative modes of close and distant readings.