In the eighth episode of The Zanaan Wanaan Podcast, we discuss English Literature as an academic discipline in the context of Kashmir. This episode discusses the need to build a collective memory through literature, the scope and opportunities in this discipline, interdisciplinary research methodologies, the concepts of deconstruction of language, trauma theory and emerging online spaces as witness libraries. For this episode we were joined by three brilliant researchers:
Juvaria Syed is currently a research scholar at the Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Hyderabad. She did her Bachelors and Masters degree in English Literature from St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi. For her current research, she is exploring the politics of formation and imagination of community in conflict zones, with a special focus on Kashmir.
Seema Bashir is a Senior Research Fellow at the Department of English, University of Kashmir. Her area of research is Cyberpunk Literature where she focuses on the existential dilemma in an increasingly technological age. Her poems on the themes of loss, pain, oppression and the subsequent resistance to the same have appeared in Cafe Dissensus, SetuMag USA and Bosphorous review.
Gulbahar Shah is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia. Her research focuses on the problematization of the representation of trauma through the medium of graphic narratives by analysing select works by Joe Sacco, Art Spiegelman and emerging graphic artists from Kashmir like Malik Sajad. Her research thesis addresses the question of articulation of trauma in conjunction with trauma theory.
