National Seminar organised by the Department of Philosophy 29-30 March, 2019
A Two Day National Seminar was organized by the Department of Philosophy during 29-30, March,2019 on the theme Circle's of Gender Liberation and Rethinking of Cultural Traditions: With reference to South-East Asia. The Chief Guest on the Inaugural function was the then Director, IIM,Shillong , Prof.Keya Sengupta . During the inaugural address, she acknowledged as a fact that all women face challenges, different as they may be. Culture is something so imbibed in us that we can't think of a man or a woman accepting some other different role. She insisted that values and norms of society crop up from religion and religious traditions are difficult to break. Moreover, women have little say over what the roles of women must be. She opined that any substantial change in the society requires a change in our attitudes toward gender issues. The Keynote address was presented by Prof. John Clammer, O.P.Jindal Global University, and New Delhi. He started with a placid observation that we live in an extremely visual culture where information and knowledge are transmitted through a visual platform. It is through this platform that we view perspective of gender issues as well. He highlighted some key issues surrounding the gender debate like inequality in work, violence, social structure patriarchy, myths and culture. According to him certain gendered images are produced, reproduced and shown to us and people who are in presented with those images constantly before them is quite naturally going to absorb many of those images as being the way in which the world is seen. He stressed on the importance of visual representations and the need to not be just receivers or consumers of images but also play a role in transforming the narratives that come along with them. He argued that self-representations by female artists encode a new visual vocabulary and create new symbolic languages signalling new images of the body, of agency, power, relationships to nature and to myth. Prof. Clammer immersed the audience into an enchanting and insightful journey of pictorial stories of female artists from India and Pakistan including those of Nalini Malani, Arpita Singh, Amrita Sher-Gil, Anju Dodiya, Usha Ramachandran, Mrinalini Mukherjee, Shilpa Gupta, Anna Molka Ahmed, Fatima Baig. He strongly believe that through changes in the visual vocabulary, changes in the visual images which dominate our world we can begin to change reality because those images are the reality that we are interacting with constantly. Prof. Clammer put forth the contention that through the analysis of art, in particular art coming from female artists we see a kind of imagination, which changes our reality. It is important to tap into that perspective and acknowledge that there are alternatives ways of looking at the world. There were 7 resource persons from reputed universities/institutions across the country. In all there were 17 papers presented in 7 Technical Sessions. The paper presenters included scholars from the reputed institutions of the different states of the region besides teachers from colleges and Research Scholars and teachers from the universities. In the valedictory session on 30th March, Prof.B.K Agarwala, former Professor of North Eastern Hill University, Shillong was the Chief Guest. In his address he lauded the efforts of the Department of Philosophy, Lady Keane College for organising such academic seminars regularly. He also wished the faculty of the college all success for their future academic endeavours. Dr. S. Varghese , the co-ordinator of the seminar proposed the vote of thanks.
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