Crossing the Boundaries of Genre and Challenging Form in Dalit Literature - Montpellier (Part 2)
Channel: Dalit Voice and Vision
Date: 2016-06-06

Crossing the Boundaries of Genre and Challenging Form in Dalit Literature
An international conference at University Paul-Valery Montpellier, France
17-18 October 2014
Convenors: Judith Misrahi-Barak and Nicole Thiara
Local organiser: Judith Misrahi-Barak

This conference was the 3rd event organised within the AHRC-funded Research Network Series ‘Writing, Analysing, Translating Dalit Literature’.  It was hosted by the Research Centre EMMA at University Paul-Valery Montpellier. The focus of this conference was the analysis of the innovative and experimental features of Dalit literature. Aspects that were analysed were the revisiting of features of the novel through other genres, the use of multiple narrators and non-linear, complex narrative structures. Dalit literature can be seen as embracing autobiography. However, the novel, the biography, the testimonio, the short story, poetry and drama are to be emphasized too. We aimed to examine how genres merge or clash with each other and to what effect and purpose. How do these interactions translate from the vernacular Indian languages into European languages, or to what extent do they not translate?
Speakers also explore the ways in which literature draws on other artistic modes of expression such as performance or visual arts. Are Dalit literatures transgressing conventional genre boundaries, or are they evoking marginalised Dalit cultural forms of expression and tradition? How closely do the visual, the literary and the political dimensions intertwine and combine? What narrative is being built through these interconnections between the visual and the literary? 

1 min - 33 min ; Devika Mehra : From "Gulamgiri to a Gardener in the wasteland": A study of appropriating and reworking Dalit Literature in twenty-first century. 
34 min - 1h05min ; Anupama Rao : The literature of emancipation.