Date: 18th & 19th March 2023
Time: 9 a.m. CDT/ 7.30 p.m. IST
Location: Zoom, with YouTube livestream
Registration link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/play-and-playthings-in-south-asian-childrens-literature-a-2-day-symposium-tickets-556673303837
Last Date for Registration: 15th March 2023
Event Description:
This 2 day symposium will bring together papers on the the iterations, manifestations, evocations of play in South Asian children’s literature. Children’s literature and material cultures of childhood have always enjoyed a long-standing relationship. In Anglocentric contexts, it is well studied how toymakers and children’s book editors worked hand-in-hand during the “Golden age of children’s literature” to construct a joint children’s market for books and toys (Masaki 2016; Field 2019). However, even though playing, with its various aesthetic, pedagogic, material and cultural meanings, constitutes an important element of South Asian children’s book cultures as well, this phenomenon has remained rather understudied in the academy. To begin with, Lockean ideas of playful education reached nineteenth-century India as a part of colonial experiments with education. This led to the inclusion of play in the formal curriculum and textbook content during the colonial period in India. Moreover, Indian children’s journals in the 19th and 20th centuries not only extensively advertised toys (of foreign and indigenous make), but also regularly included mental puzzles, analytical games, math problems and visual riddles, thus making ‘playing’ a part of the reading process. Beyond the intended pedagogical objectives focussed on developing particular skill sets, play and playthings are significant instruments through which children are subtly conditioned into their social worlds. Usha Mudiganti’s recent work Toying with Childhood (2022) studies literary references of toys which were used to establish an ideal image of innocent childhood in British and American contexts. This ideal image was of course gendered, and conformed to imperialist notions. However, children, as agential beings, are hardly passive recipients of dolls and other playthings, and the social meanings they carry. It would be curious to see what social scripts (to borrow from Robin Bernstein) tend to emerge from the literary depictions of dolls, toys and games in South Asian children’s texts. Finally, playing, with its emphasis on performance and creativity, could definitely also be a tool by which children resist adult-imposed social and cultural structures. Thus, grounding itself in the geographic area of modern South Asia, this symposium asks the following questions: How does the book as a plaything interact with the pedagogical discourse of colonialism? How do postcolonial children’s books view folk games versus imperial games/sports? How do games and sports in indigenous children’s books negotiate with existing and changing patterns of gender, caste and class? What types of linguistic play and innovations emerge in children’s books as a part of processes of decolonization? What does play mean for marginalized bodies in South Asia, and how does it embody violence?
Itinerary:
All times given are in Central Daylight Time with a time-zone converter provided below:
https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html?iso=20220505T080000&p1=136
Day 1 (18th March)
9 am : Introductory Speech
9.15 am : Roundable–Depiction of Play and Playthings in Indian Children’s Literature
Speakers:
Subhayan Basu— Depiction of the child’s play in Rabindranath Tagore’s children’s literature
Apoorva Dimri –Mechanical Marvels and the MCC: Colonialism and Children’s Games in R.K. Narayan’s Swami and Friends
Athira Mohan — Toys in Malayalam Children’s Literature: The Case of Caste and Imperialism
11 am : Break
11.15 am : Conversation–Children’s Periodicals and Playfulness
Speakers:
Titas Bose — Manoranjana in Reading: Twentieth-Century Hindi Children’s Periodicals and New Reading Practices
Sudarshana Banerjee –Colonial Childhood and Cultures of Literary Consumption: Reading Juvenile Periodicals from Colonial Bengal
Day 2 (19th March)
9 am: Conversation– Linguistic Play in Children’s Literature
Speakers:
Stella Chitralekha Biswas– ‘Where the Mind is Without Fear’: Laughter and Play in Sukumar Ray’s Abol Tabol
Anurima Chanda— Nanasense in a Runcible Hat: Study of Contemporary Indian English Literary Nonsense
10.15 am: Break
10.30 am: Roundtable: Play, Violence and Marginalized Bodies
Speakers:
Sheenam Batra–(Dis)abling Play through the Monstrous Bodies
Debalina Mondal– Guns, Bullets, and Wood Carvings: Deconstructing the Images of Violence, Suffering and Healing in Malik Sajad’s Graphic Novel
Samarth Singhal— Playing the Picturebook: Bhajju Shyam’s Creation
12 pm: Vote of Thanks
