CfPs: Cultural Studies Workshop 2013, at Santiniketan, 25-29 Jan 2013

Cultural Studies Workshop 2013: 17th Annual Cultural Studies Workshop

Venue: Santiniketan, West Bengal

Dates: 25-29 January 2013

Organized by Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC)

Broad theme: Cultures of Everyday Life

Drawing on a tradition of scholarship of thinkers like Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau and Pierre Bourdieu, recent decades have witnessed remarkable advances in understanding the ordinary, repetitive life of the everyday. This is largely due to the coming closer of different disciplines of the Humanities and the Social Sciences, and the parallel rise of Cultural Studies as a new mode of producing and organizing knowledge.

The forthcoming Cultural Studies Workshop proposes to participate in these explorations of the intellectual, cultural and political aspects of the everyday and broaden their scope by throwing light on different features of contemporary Indian life. It will discuss the specificities of the everyday as a temporal and spatial category; the myriad strategies of contestation, governmentality and claims to citizenship as they work out at an everyday, micrological level; the dispersal of power and the texture of affect; the gendered realities of the everyday; the effects of commodification upon cultural practices; everyday objects and technologies, and the discursive and semiotic registers of the everyday in literary and aesthetic activities.

The Workshop is intended to give young researchers an opportunity to share their work with some of the faculty of the CSSSC and other senior scholars in the field. Over the years, the Workshop has played a key institutional role in the emergence of Cultural Studies as a discipline and concerns itself with the broader issues of social sciences and humanities today as viewed from a cultural studies perspective. It is aimed at doctoral and postdoctoral students and young lecturers (below the age of 35) whose ongoing or recently completed work focuses on one or more of the issues listed above. They are required to present a paper based on their research at the workshop.
The morning session of each day will be devoted to faculty presentations based on a select number of readings. Under the anchorage of this year's theme, each session will address a specific topic.

The possible topics of this year are:

• Theorizing the Everyday (Day 1);
• Quotidian Histories (Day 2);
• The Everyday State (Day 3); and
• Regimes of Representation (Day 4).

Between Day 2 and Day 3 is a break-day. The afternoon sessions are for students' presentations.

CSSSC will bear the expenses of rail travel (AC two tier) and accommodation at Santiniketan for all selected candidates. Priority will be given to students currently affiliated to Indian educational institutions.

Those wishing to participate in the workshop may apply with their current C.V. clearly indicating date of birth, educational qualifications, current academic affiliation and mailing address and email IDs. Applications must include a brief description (between 500 and 750 words in typed pages) of the paper they intend to present which draws on their current research. E-mail application must reach the Registrar, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta latest by October 5, 2012 [email: csw.cssscal@gmail.com].

Further Details