Postgraduate Students’ Seminar (Department of English) and Thoughtspell Vol. 2 Launch

The Department of English, The Bhawanipur Education Society College, organized an inter-college Students’ Seminar for the postgraduate students, on 21st November 2022 (Monday), in the sixth-floor auditorium, from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The topic for the seminar was, ‘Visible Centre: Blurred Peripheries’. Papers by students from institutions across India including the University of Delhi, English and Foreign Language, University of Calcutta, West Bengal State University, Amity University and St. Xavier’s College (Kolkata) were presented, in both offline and hybrid mode. Prof. Shinjini Bandyopadhyay of the University of Calcutta was invited to judge the students’ seminar, along with Dr. Gargi Talapatra, Head of the Department, Department of English.

The event aimed to encourage the postgraduate students to engage themselves in research work and give them the experience of an academic seminar. The topic and seminar allowed the students to explore the voices of those at the periphery, the ‘othered’, those rendered voiceless due to the centre-margin dichotomy. It provided fresh perspectives on our understanding of gender, sexuality, class, disability, intersectionality and so on. After the paper presentation sessions, selected titles were awarded, as prizes, to the winning participants.The entire event gave the postgraduate students of the Department of English, a platform to showcase their academic caliber and talents.

Mr. Sayan Chatterjee, Mr. Pema Gyalchen Tamang and Dr. Souraja Tagore of the Department of English coordinated the event with significant support from the student volunteers.
The Department of English also launched the second volume of the students’ magazine Thoughtspell during the event, before the paper presentations. Mr. Soumyajit Chandra, of the Department of English and a member of the Thoughtspell editorial sub-committee, elaborated on the intricacies through a presentation of the magazine. The magazine, with a board of teachers and student representatives (UG and PG) from the Department of English in the editorial committee, has four sections: “Afflatus”, “Sapienza”, “Kaleidoscope” and “Camera Lucida”, which are section names for creative writing, research papers, artwork and photographs respectively. The magazine provides the students an opportunity to showcase their creativity, talent and aesthetic endeavours.