iterature, memory and gender take centre stage at IIT Bhilai conference

 

 

 

THE Department of Liberal Arts, Indian Institute of Technology, Bhilai organised a two-day national conference titled ‘Gendered Modalities of Remembering in South Asian Literatures’ at the Nalanda Lecture Hall IIT Bhilai. It brought together faculty members and research scholars from universities across India to share their research on exploring memory as a gendered and embodied practice in South Asian cultural and literary contexts. The conference opened with a keynote lecture by Prof. Simi Malhotra, from Jamia Millia Islamia, titled ‘Remembering Two Centuries of Women’s Movements in India: Memory and the Rethinking of Feminist Historiography’.

 

The lecture examined feminist historiography through the lens of memory, exploring women’s movements across two centuries and foregrounding remembering as an important practice in narrating gendered histories in South Asia. The second day of the conference commenced with a keynote by Dr. SnoberSataravala, Vice Principal of St Mira’s College for Girls, Pune, titled “Remembering the Margins: Gender, Minority Memory, and the Politics of Representation in South Asian Literatures”.

 

She drew on extensive cinematic, textual, and oral narratives to explore how minority communities are remembered or erased, underscoring the role of literature in recovering marginalised histories and different ways of remembering. Academic discussions unfolded across five thematic panels throughout the conference. The opening panel focused on gendered voice and indigenous aesthetics, examining folk and tribal art practices as embodied and living archives of memory.

 

This was followed by a panel on gendered counter-narratives of violence, which examined how literary and cultural texts articulate survival, resistance, and affective memory in ways that move beyond official historiographies. Subsequent discussions turned to questions of vulnerability, caste, and identity, with the third panel highlighting the intersections of caste and gender in literary testimonies and narrative memory. The fourth panel brought kinship, domesticity, and national memory into focus, analysing maternal legacies, everyday spaces, and gendered notions of duty as major sites of remembrance.

 

The conference concluded with a panel on diegetic and vernacular expressions of memory, which explored alternative mnemonic repositories that challenge dominant, text-centric forms of remembering. Collectively, these panels highlighted how gendered memory functions as an active practice shaped by factors such as embodiment, affect, socio-cultural hierarchies, and narrative form. The conference highlighted the role of literature and cultural texts in amplifying marginalised voices and creating counter-narratives that challenge dominant modes of remembrance in South Asia.