Program Schedule
In the present day academic world, and especially in the developing countries like Bangladesh, our focuses are shifting fast from liberal humanist education to professional degrees and technology-based skill developments. Even many people like to think that humanities are dying and what is still persisting in the name of education in the humanities is either useless or insufficient to address the needs of present day problems and crises. But this very tendency to declare the study in the humanities obsolete or futile is the malady the people in the humanities identify as a major crisis in a world that is suffering from problems like local and global disparities, unequal distributions of power and wealth, the lack of fundamental rights for the majority of the world population, the rise of ethnic and religious extremism and becoming more and more segregated, intolerant and violent. It is true that we have limitations and we have failed time and again. But our failings and our shortcomings need careful scrutiny and remorseless examinations and reexaminations to find out the ways of going beyond and coming up with ideas, approaches, measures and suggestions that will help us be ready to face the crises, show our commitments and devote our energy, time and life to create and develop a world more beneficial for humans and more sustainable for peaceful and meaningful human existence and, in short, a better future.
Keeping these issues in mind, the Faculty of Arts, Rajshahi University, is going to arrange its first ever International Conference on Literature, History, Culture on 20-21 December 2019. This two day event seeks to provide a platform for those interested in interdisciplinary and/or cross-cultural approaches to push humanities studies into new domains to meet, discuss, and to explore contemporary debates, and to revisit the ‘classic’ issues to interrogate them. Topics to be addressed by the papers and sessions at the conference will cover a broad spectrum of research questions, but with a specific emphasis on contemporary and future challenges for studies in philosophy, literature, language, history and culture.
We invite proposals for individual papers from academics in the humanities and social sciences to reassess contemporary perspectives on/in above mentioned areas. Possible topics may include, but are NOT limited to:
- Bioethics, Ecology, Ecocriticism, Health, and Wellness
- History, Stories and New Historicism
- Issues of Subjectivity
- Language, Literature and the World View
- Migration, Borders and Refugees
- Race, Racism, Class, Gender, Sexuality, and Ethnicity
- Region, Religion, Politics, and Culture
- Rethinking the Family, Sex, and Gender
- Utopia, Dystopia and the Imagined Future
- War, Violence and Terror
- Partition, History, Trauma
- Literature, Performing Arts and Performativity
Help Line : farook@ru.ac.bd
