Peer Seminar: Chapter IV

The Department of English, The Bhawanipur Education Society College organized Peer Seminar: Chapter IV on 17^th October, 2023 at 3 pm. The speaker was Mr. Soumyajit Chandra; his paper was entitled Wild Basil and Dancing Lights: Ecofeminist Reconceptualisations of the Bengal Landscape in Select Short Stories by Narayan Gangyopadhyay. The seminar was attended by the faculty members and PG students of the Department of English.

In his paper, the speaker subjected two Bengali short stories composed by Narayan Gangyopadhyay, namely Bana-Tulsi (Wild Basil) and Aleyar Raat (The Night of Aleya) to an ecofeminist critique through a study of the author’s representation of the Bengal landscape.

Traditionally, the Bengal landscape has been represented as fertile, prosperous and maternal in nationalistic and early modern Bengali poetry alike. Gangyopadhyay displaces “Mother Nature” from her nurturing, maternal role, constructing a radically alterantive femininity which undermines patriarchal and essentialist understandings of nature as feminine. Gangopadhyay plays off male protagonists (harbouring varying degrees of patriarchal affiliation) with nature in some of its insidious manifestations, observed in the wild basil wilderness and the dancing lights on a rain-drenched field at night. With respect to critical works of Madelon Sprengnether and Donna J. Haraway, the paper attempted to reclaim Mother Earth imagery and utilize essentialist positions to assign autonomous, self-determining roles to Nature.

The session was conducted by Dr. Gargi Talapatra, Head of UG English. Peer Seminar has served to foster research interests and facilitate academic dialogue at all levels of the academic space at the Department of English, The BES College.