VIT International Virtual Conference Contagion Narratives: Society, Culture and Ecology of The Global South

About the Conference

The ‘outbreak narratives’ (Wald) emerging from across the globe afflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic have once again accentuated human vulnerability and have turned the spotlight back on the nonhuman (microbes, animals,climate and so on) and its ‘confederation of agencies’ (Iovino and Oppermann). The Corona pestilence, like its antecedents such as the Great Plague of London (1665- 66), Spanish Flu (1918-1920), SARS (2002-2004) and Ebola (2013-2016), narrates ‘biological catastrophe[s]’ (Caduff) of varying degrees as it puts forward embodied discourses of pain, fear, fatigue, exhaustion and suffering. The permeability of bodies (Alaimo) that COVID-19 foregrounds has sharp parallels with the human survival struggles in the otherwise toxified locations like those near nuclear dumps, landfills and factories.

Sub-themes include, but are not limited to

Contagion and literature
Contagion and language
Contagion and climate change
Contagion and environment
Contagion and the Global South
Contagion and social challenges
Contagion and culture
Contagion and philosophy
Contagion and films
Contagion narratives and technology
Contagion and gender

Submission

Abstracts of about 700-900 words on the abovementioned themes should be emailed to contagion.narratives@gmail.com on or before July 24. The abstracts, typed in MS Word (Times New Roman, 12, double space) should contain the title, name and affiliation of the author, and email address. Publication Selected papers from the conference will be published in conference proceedings with ISBN. Further information will be shared in due course of tim