Wednesday, October 07, 2009

New and Forthcoming Publications

I was happy to see that an essay I wrote for the journal Symploke recently became available via Project Muse:

“Anonymity, Authorship, and Blogger Ethics.”


[If anyone who doesn't have access to Project Muse would like me to send you a copy, please let me know by email; I would be happy to send it to you.]

This was something I actually wrote more than two years ago, not long after a series of panels at MLA related to blogging and public intellectual activity. The paper actually began as an MLA presentation, for a panel with Michael Berube and Rita Felski, in December 2006. In the essay, I bring together literary theory relating to authorship (Barthes, Foucault, and critiques of French theory by scholars like Sean Burke), with context from literary history (the 18th century broadsheet as a predecssor to blogging as a genre), in order think about how the possibility of universal, instantaneous publishability is changing ideas of authorship (not destroying it, but changing it).

I was happy to see that it appears that a student at West Virginia University is already using the article in a paper she's writing: here. (It's part of this course)

I have some other publications coming out soon as well:

"Veiled Strangers: Rabindranath Tagore’s America, in Letters and Lectures." Forthcoming from Journeys: The International Journal of Travel & Travel Writing, 10:1, 2009.

"Animating a Postmodern Ramayana: Nina Paley's Sita Sings the Blues" Forthcoming from South Asian Review, 2010.

"More than 'Priestly Mumbo-Jumbo': Religion and Authorship in All About H. Hatterr." Forthcoming from Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 2009.


Of those, the Desani article was the most difficult to write; it actually had its start as a blog post I wrote all the way back in 2005. I had submitted it for publication in 2007, only to receive a "revise and resubmit" that seemed very challenging at the time. For various reasons, between 2007 and summer 2009 the paper was simply in limbo. I attacked it again this summer, and sent it off, this time successfully. The version that will be published is much shorter than the original version. Some of the materials I referred to, such as Desani's columns for The Illustrated Weekly in the 1960s, are not easily accessible, and I'm toying with the idea of having them scanned and OCRed for the web.

The Tagore essay goes back even further. It had its seeds in the very first blog post I wrote for Sepia Mutiny, back in 2005. I had given versions of it (in a more scholarly vein, of course) as a talk a couple of times. When the invitation came to send it to "Journeys," I was happy to finally finish it.

Finally, the essay on Nina Paley and the Ramayana was written quickly this past summer, almost on a lark. It brings together scholarship on the diversity of the Ramayana tradition (especially in the two important Paula Richman anthologies) with Nina Paley's animated, postmodern appropriation of the narrative.

In other news, the project I have been doing on Mira Nair is approaching completion; I'm hoping to send off the manuscript this fall. I'm also presenting a paper on the Hindi writer Nirmal Verma at the upcoming Modernist Studies Association Conference in Montreal (early November). Finally, I'm presenting at the MLA Convention in Philadelphia at the end of December (a paper on the "open letter" as a literary genre in the era of globalization -- from Sa'adat Hasan Manto to Mohsin Hamid and Aravind Adiga).

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8 Comments:

OpenID filmkaravan said...

Good news! Sita Sings the Blues is now available on DVD! Get it from Amazon or Netflix starting July 28!

[New York, NY – July 20, 2009] – This July, FilmKaravan, in partnership with Vista India Digital Media, proudly presents its first DVD release — the beautifully animated and wittily narrated debut feature film from Nina Paley, SITA SINGS THE BLUES — through Amazon, Netflix and a vast network of South Asian wholesale stores nationwide. Brimming with charm, humor and a soundtrack comprised entirely of haunting vocals from 1920s jazz legend, Annette Hanshaw, whose old jazz and blues recordings give voice to Sita, this adult-friendly cartoon offers a personal and thoroughly modern adaptation of the great Indian epic, The Ramayana.

For more information, visit http://www.filmkaravan.com

3:09 PM  
Blogger Rohan Maitzen said...

It's interesting to see how your recent publications have their origins in blog posts.

6:45 AM  
Blogger Hamlet2007 said...

Congrats Deep! Just checking in. If you never saw the Leno video clip, check it out. Now I can talk abut reality tv from the pov of having done it.

http://www.jaylenosgarage.com/video/clips/big-sids-vincati/1154346/

thanks again

M

8:58 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks for the Sepia Mutiny link on Rabindranath. As a Bengali, trying to read Bengali literature in Bengali, Rabindranath forms such a looming presence on literature in the 20s and 30s of Buddhadev Bose, Jibanananda Das, etc., that I have kept him at a distance - trying other lesser (different(?)) lights first, slowly, deferring my assault on the great one. I hope you would write something about the controversies around the poet's visit(s) to Italy under Mussolini.

7:16 PM  
Blogger Bat Mite! said...

Ha. That's fantastic. I just finished my MA in lit from WVU last year and I was working under Sandy for a while and its amazing how much the two of you (judging by your posts) would be in sync.

I'm not in the states right now so no MUSE for me :-(, but I would love a copy of the paper. Could you email it to vgopal2 at buffalo dot edu?

And great news about Sita Sings the Blues, my vhs festival copy can finally retire!

3:33 AM  
Anonymous liz said...

Amardeep,

Your "email me" link doesn't work. Is that intentional? Do you NOT want people to email you? My email btw is beautifullydrawn@gmail.com

6:50 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Last year I took a paper in Political Thought where we "informally" discussed Barthes & Foucault...Death of the Author...I had exact same questions. How do we read Barthes & Foucault in today's context of blogging where the author is far from being "dead". Similarly, I found Susan Sontag's critique of photography quite intriguing. I wonder how she would have reacted with this sudden spurt of "clicked for Facebook" sort of photography. I have been following your blog on and off for almost three years now. Some of the posts have helped me understanding a lot of texts in class. Though I feel inadept to comment.

Needless to say; I too would like to receive the article.

my email id is: ritambharamehta@gmail.com

12:55 PM  
Anonymous sharleen said...

Looking forward to reading the piece on Tagore - thanks for the info!

11:04 AM  

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