CHOTRO Indigenous Peoples in the “Post”-Colonial World Language – Literature – Culture – History

Bhasha Resarch and Publications Centre, Vadodara, India in association with the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts, the National Manuscript Mission of India, and the European and Indian Associations for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies, announces a conference to be held January 2nd – January 5th 2008 at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts, Delhi, India.

This conference aims to bring together writers and scholars interested in the languages and literatures, the cultures and histories of the indigenous peoples of the “post”-colonial world. Bhasha, established by Ganesh Devy to work with the Adivasi tribal communiites of India and to document their linguistic, literary and artistic heritage, now seeks to explore the experience of indigenous peoples on a global scale, for there are many parallels between the Aborigines of Australia, the First Nations of Canada and the Adivasi of India. It is hoped that the conference will provide new orientation and inspiration for post-colonial studies. Contributions are sought on the following topics:

orature; stories of origin / creation myths; cosmology / knowledge systems;
life histories; storytelling / folk tales; poetry; drama and performance;
aesthetics / interculturality; threatened languages / language death;
language development / scripts; subaltern history; cultural and human rights;
publishing in aboriginal / tribal languages; translation from aboriginal / tribal languages; marginalization of aboriginal / tribal cultural expression

Abstracts of approx. 100 words should be sent by email before the 31st August 2007 to Professor Geoffrey V. Davis Email address: davis@anglistik.rwth-aachen.de Registration forms can be downloaded from http://www.bhasharesearch.org.in or http://www.eaclals.org and should be returned by email to Sonal Baxi at: sonal.bhasha@gmail.com.
There will be a conference fee of EUR 50 / US $ 60. Accommodation, food and local transport will be provided free of charge.