JMI holds lecture on multilingualism in literature and society; over 100 participants attend

NEW DELHI: The Department of English Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) held the 33rd lecture of the Distinguished Lecture Series. The lecture on “Multilingualism in Literature and Society: Rethinking Theory and Method in Indian and Global Contexts” was organised by Vinay Dharwadker, Professor of English, World Literature, and South Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Affiliate Faculty: Center for South Asia; Center for Visual Cultures.

The lecture was held over Zoom and it was organized as part of the ongoing Distinguished Lecture Series and promises to be one in a line of successively pertinent lectures.

The talk was conducted by Zahra Rizvi, Suman Bhagchandani and Aparna Pathak PhD scholars, Department of English, JMI.

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Delivering the welcome address, Simi Malhotra, HoD, Department of English, JMI, Indian PI, spoke about the discussion as a part of the ongoing lecture series by the Department of English, JMI. The discussion, she added, aims to facilitate academic and research collaboration between higher education institutes in India and abroad.

Vinay Dharwadker’s lecture deliberated on the conceptual frameworks available to think about the phenomenon of multilingualism through a range of interdisciplinary and comparative contexts.

The lecture highlighted, amongst other things, the inherent monolingual bias that underlies the notion of lingua franca, and subsequently challenged the same through a detailed exploration of the different spheres in which societal multilingualism exists. Through many examples including the works of Fernando Pessoa, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, and Amrita Pritam, Prof Darwadker emphasized the complex dynamism within our own conceptualization of multilingualism.