Around the 4th century CE, Buddhism was introduced to the Korean Peninsula. In the second year of King Sosurim’s reign in Goguryeo (corresponding to the second year of Emperor Xiaowu’s reign during the Eastern Jin, Hsien-an period), in the sixth month of summer, the Former Qin ruler Fu Jian sent envoys along with the monk Shundao, delivering Buddhist statues and scriptures. The king dispatched envoys in return to express gratitude and offer tribute. In the spring of the fifth year, the Xiao Men Temple was established to accommodate Shundao. Additionally, the Yifolan Temple was founded to house the monk Adao. These events are considered the earliest recorded evidence of Buddhism’s introduction to Haedong (ancient Korea). Subsequently, activities centered on revering the Buddha and seeking blessings gradually flourished.

The importation of Buddhist scriptures and treatises from Central China to Korea began as early as the Northern and Southern Dynasties period. According to the Samguk Sagi (Historical Records of the Three Kingdoms), Volume 4, Annals of Silla, under King Jinheung’s reign, in the 26th year and ninth month, the Chen dynasty sent the envoy Liu Si and the monk Mingguan to establish diplomatic relations and presented more than 1,700 volumes of Buddhist scriptures and treatises. During the Tang dynasty, the pursuit of Buddhist learning in Tang China became a prevailing trend, accompanied by the large-scale transmission of newly translated Buddhist texts eastward. Alongside these developments, significant transformations occurred in the religious landscape of the Korean Peninsula.

The thesis "A Comparative study of ecological thoughts in children's literature between East and West -- taking China and Germany as examples" mainly explores the heterogeneity and homogeneity of ecological thoughts in children's literature between China and Germany. The thesis is carried out from five aspects: first, it is about the history of Sino-German children's literature exchange and mutual learning; second, it is about the origin, generation and development of Sino-German children's literature ecological thoughts; then, it is about the isomorphism of Sino-German children's literature; and then it is about the heterogeneity and mutual learning elements of Sino-German children's literature ecological thoughts. Finally, it discusses the feasible ways for the future writing of ecological works of Chinese and German children's literature and the cultivation of children's ecological consciousness.

Abstract: The Minnan term cuò (厝), signifying dwelling, home, and homeland, transcends mere physical shelter. This ethnographic study, grounded in fieldwork within Minnan villages, reveals the “cuò” as a vital socio-ritual apparatus for managing the continuum of life and death. Etymologically rooted in Classical Chinese, “cuò” historically encompassed meanings of "placement" and "temporary interment." Villagers conceptualize an ideal “cuò” – termed "hó-sè ê cuò"(好勢的厝, a well-situated/favourable dwelling) – as requiring a specific spatial configuration: a front courtyard (chêⁿ, 埕) for productive activities (farming, animal husbandry) integrated with the residential structure (chhù, 宅), forming a cohesive chhù-chu (厝宅) unit. Within this space, complex thanatological practices unfold. Households enact "chng-pu̍t" (裝佛), enshrining effigies for kin who died unnaturally and thus lack ancestral hall veneration; these deities are affectionately called "a-pu̍t" (阿佛). Rituals for those dying naturally occur in the lineage ancestral hall (chó͘-chhù, 祖厝). Post-mourning, marked by the "ōaⁿ-âng"(換紅, changing to red) ceremony, involves affixing red couplets to the new cuò’s entrance and conducting "sóeⁿ-tûn" (筅塵), a thorough cleansing to expel impurity and welcome renewal. The liminal dead, known as "lâng-kheh"(人客, guest people), are appeased annually during the Pó͘-tō͘ (普渡) festival. Elaborate paper houses ("lâng-kheh-chhù", 人客厝), paper clothing ("lâng-kheh-saⁿ", 人客衫), and feasts are offered to them on the "gō͘-kha-ki"(五腳基), the covered arcade outside the main door. Through these intricate rituals enacted within and around the cuò, villagers negotiate mortality, placate the deceased, and seek blessings for household prosperity and wellbeing. Thus, the cuò emerges as a profoundly "hó-sè" space – a meticulously curated locale for the placement and relational intertwining of life and death.

Dubbed the “Black Venus” of the “Roaring Twenties” and the Jazz Age, American-born black female performer Josephine Baker made her fame as an icon of black cultural production in Paris via the bold presentation of her racialized and sexualized bodily performances such as the banana dance. Although she never gained the equivalent reputation in the United States, Baker’s Parisian career allowed her to subvert Western ideals and stereotypes of Black womanhood by simultaneously embracing, exaggerating, and satirizing the exoticized tropes projected onto her as a Black woman performer. Her self-styled “raced femininity” utilized body, movement, and theatricality to challenge exoticizing narratives, performing the desired “exotic” and “erotic” on the variety stage under the colonial “othering” gaze while showcasing Black female creative autonomy and ingenuity in the context of black transnationalism. Through an analysis of her sensational performances in 1920s and 1930s Paris, this paper explores how Baker deployed her body and stagecraft to challenge racial and gender norms, using her transatlantic celebrity as a platform to critique and redefine conceptions of Black femininity. Positioning Baker’s transnational performances parallel to her peers, vaudeville blueswomen active in 1920s America, where she was denied, this paper contends that Baker’s embodied performance of race and gender in a European setting exemplifies how Black women in the early 20th century used transnational stages to carve out new spaces for agency and self-expression that transcended geographic and social boundaries. Through the strategical use of performance as a means to craft self-determined narratives, Josephine Baker’s transnational performances resonate as dynamic expressions of Black artistic agency, racial identity, and gendered self-fashioning.

This study explores comparative moments between the Japanese and the recent English translations of two of Tezuka Osamu’s manga Faust adaptations: /One Hundred Tales/ and /Neo Faust/. It focuses on the Mephistopheles figure, who is female and feminized in these works. Neither Mephisto nor Sudama are outright villainous and both compete for the romantic interest of the arguably anti-heroic Faust figure.

Here, I investigate not only how they are graphically represented as female, as devil, and as their respective narrative's central (anti-)heroine, but also how their narrativization as active agents that “help the good by doing evil” or as “spirits of negation” play into their relationships with both the Faust figure and Gretchen figure of each adaptation. This is most significant in the equivalent of the Dungeon scene at end of /Faust, Part One/, where Mephistopheles declares that the girl has been judged by heaven. In both works, the Mephistopheles figure declares that the Margarete figure is lost or has given up, suggesting that the Faust figure should let her go. There is no clear counter-declaration that this heavenly judgment pronounces her salvation instead of damnation: that she has been redeemed and not—as the devil would like Faust to believe—lost. Furthermore, the new English translation of /One Hundred Tales/ (Ablaze, Dec 2023), for example, translates Sudama’s line as “She’s ready to move on.” (panel 1, p. 62); the original reads “ano musumesan mo akirametadesho yo”, where “akirameta” can be translated to Masago having given up. While not incorrect, the former translation does not share the finality of Mephistopheles’ “Sie ist gerichtet!” often translated to English as “She is judged”. For comparison, Ōgai translation reads: “are ga shioki da” [あれが処刑だ]. It is thus that the Faust figure’s abandonment of the young girl appears final in both /One Hundred Tales/ and /Neo Faust/, but the adaptations and their translations also, and arguably inevitably, lend to nuance the scene in unprecedented ways.

As Ablaze’s /Neo Faust/ is still pending release as of this writing (initially slated for November 2024, it is now planned for March 2025), the preliminary version of this study may consider the French and Italian editions for comparison, but hopes to extend that study to the newest English rendition once available.

This paper examines how traditional comic book heroes have been revitalized through webtoons, with a specific focus on Indonesian webtoons targeted at young female audiences. By analyzing selected works, I explore their distinctive characteristics and the impact these narratives have on the superhero genre and local girl culture in Indonesia.

Superheroes have held a significant place in Indonesian comics since their early development. One of the earliest examples is Sri Asih, introduced in 1953 by R.A. Kosasih, which was inspired by Wonder Woman and integrated Western superhero motifs with Indonesian traditions (Kurnia 2020; Idrus 2024). Meanwhile, webtoons—originating in South Korea in 2003—gained traction in Indonesia with the launch of LINE Webtoon in 2014, and by 2015, Indonesian became one of its language options (Putri 2024). By 2021, Indonesia had emerged as the largest webtoon market in Southeast Asia.

Among the notable Indonesian webtoon adaptations is Virgo and the Sparklings, serialized on LINE Webtoon Indonesia from August 2017. The protagonist, Virgo, was originally created in 1973 by Jan Mintaraga as part of the Ghorghon series within the Captain Halilintar comics. The character was revived through a collaboration between Annisa Nisfihani and Ellie Goh under PT Bumilangit Entertainment Corpora (Bumilangit), a company established in 2003 with the goal of revitalizing Indonesian comic superheroes across various media platforms. Nisfihani, who has been publishing shōjo-style comics since 2011 and was a prominent artist for re:ON magazine (founded in 2013), played a key role in reimagining Virgo as a superhero tailored to young female readers. The series' emotional depth and manga-influenced style contributed to its widespread popularity, leading to three serialized seasons and a live-action film adaptation in 2023.

Through an analysis of Virgo and the Sparklings, this paper aims to elucidate the characteristics of new superhero representations emerging in webtoons and their significance within contemporary Indonesian media culture.

This presentation outlines how the presence or absence of an identifiably human enemy in the role of the “villain” in Japanese cartoon animation movies (_anime_) on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki influences the respective films’ positioning towards the domestically applied narratives of “Hiroshima of Anger” (怒りの広島) and “Nagasaki of Prayers” (祈りの長崎).

Following the atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War 2, both cities have been placed in starkly contrasting narrative discourses, outlining Hiroshima and its citizens as angered over what was lost, and Nagasaki and its citizens as forgiving and oriented on rebuilding. Within these discourses, products of popular culture, such as comics and films, play an important role in supporting the respective images. Most prominently, the works of the late cartoonist (漫画家) Nakazawa Keiji, led by his most successful and repeatedly re-adapted work _Barefoot Gen_ (1973-1987), can generally be understood to underline the anger of Hiroshima, as do most of the animated adaptations of Hiroshima-centered stories. On the other hand, such works that show Nagasaki do so with a strong emphasis on forgiveness rooting in a religious context that stems from Nagasaki’s longstanding position as center of Catholicism in Japan.

However, in this presentation I argue that the religious context that defines Nagasaki also coincides with a greater presence of presumed ‘enemies’ in the city, as Catholicism is not a native Japanese concept and was actively promoted in Japan by foreign missionaries, both prior and following World War 2. This is to say that Japanese people in Nagasaki had a greater exposure to those people presumed enemies by the Japanese government than did the people of Hiroshima. This circumstance is reflected in anime on the atomic bombings.

Since the dehumanization of the ‘enemy’ is a common tool used in propaganda, withholding human appearances of said enemy in film can be used as an emotional catalyst that enhances either anger or feelings of victimization.(1) In the concrete example of anime on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings it then stands out that those films depicting Nagasaki also stress the human character of the ‘enemy,’ whereas those films focusing on Hiroshima mostly avoid such representations.

Accordingly, I introduce various sample films, discuss their respective properties, and locate them within a wider body of anime painting the Japanese experience and memory of World War 2.

(1) For example, as explained in: Dower, John W. (2012) _Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering: Japan in the Modern World_. New York: The New Press, p. 34.

While western science fiction works are looking up to the future and displaying themes such as cyborgs, artificial intelligence, and exploration of the universe, some Chinese science fiction works are also looking at the present, and have revived the traditional literary form of fable by taking all kinds of animals as their objects, which not only extends the science fiction works to the future, but also has a deep and solid metaphor of the reality as the foundation, and thus also reflects the inheritance of Chinese science fiction to the tradition of ‘trusting objects to speak of their will’ in classical literature, and thus makes a unique contribution to the global future imaginations. ‘This also reflects the inheritance of Chinese science fiction from the allegorical writing of classical literature, and thus makes a unique contribution to the global future imagination. Therefore, this paper will discuss animal symbols, man and animals, and man and nature at three levels, and summarise the national characteristics and literary styles of animal fables in Chinese science fiction works in comparison with Western science fiction literature.

This seminar problematizes the continual domination of Eurocentrism over the canonized idea of world literature and the resultant exclusivist approach of conducting literary studies. As we engage with this problematic and attempt to decolonize world literature from the methodological premise of Comparative Literature, we must first acknowledge that the emergence of the decolonial method with regards to literary studies is only possible through the adoption of a framework of “interconnectedness”. The domain of literature and culture in South Asia has been accommodative of this framework from its initiation. We have seen how the mode of “telling” has not been divorced from the scribal culture in South Asia. This framework of inclusivity leads us to the development of a renewed approach towards perceiving literatures of the world which is bereft of the Eurocentric exclusivist reading of cultural articulations. I would elucidate on the development of this method by concentrating on the domain of Indian theatre in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Through a reading of Kalakshetra Manipur's theatre production Pebet (1975), I would locate how theatre in the Indian “bhashas” receives oral traditions like the phūṅgā wārī and contests the hierarchized division between aesthetic traditions. By citing instances of embodying “restored behaviour” in Pebet, I would show how the production of modern performance spaces in post-independence India is interrupted with the agential presence of the human and the non-human residue of the pre-modern/ritual performances. By reading the gestures of Kanhailal’s theatre as the “unverifiable” , I would move towards the assertion of “untranslatability” as a method of decolonizing South Asian space of cultural articulations. Moreover, by contextualizing the paradigmatic shifts within the imagination of the “rangamancha” with reference to liminality both in the context of the stage in India and Indian modernity, I would argue how twentieth century Indian theatre has engendered a practice of decolonization informed by the contemporary politics of the Global South.

Comparative Literature, as a method of studying literature in comparison across national and cultural boundaries, has evolved in the 19th century. In India, Scholars like Brojendranath Seal (1864-1938) and Sasankamohan Sen (1872-1928) initially contributed to this field. In 1907, after the Swadeshi Movement, Rabindranath Tagore delivered a lecture on comparative literature that was later published as ‘Vishyasahitya’ in his essay collection ‘Sahitya’. Tagore proposed a vision of Comparative Literature that transcends national boundaries on literature and cultural identities, promoting a universal expression of humanity by making temple of aesthetic. However, traditional interpretations have limited his concept to ‘world literature’ framework, neglecting the potentials to challenge with stereotypical comparative literary practices and also the history of disciplinary practices in India. This paper revisits the historical development of Comparative Literature in India, situating Tagore's Vishyasahitya within the broader contexts of transnationalism and decolonization. It examines the contemporary relevance of Tagore’s ideas, particularly in relation to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s concept of ‘Planetarity,’ which echoes Tagore’s vision of a unified literary spaces that transcends political and cultural borders. By comparing contemporary pedagogical approaches in Comparative Literature of the sub-continent with Tagore’s insights, this study highlights the potential of his approach to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of world literature. The research employs qualitative textual analysis to critically engage with primary texts and secondary literature, underscoring the lasting impact of Tagore’s ideas on comparative literature.

Comparative Literature emerged as an academic discipline in India in 1956 with the establishment of the Department of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University, shortly after Independence. This paper explores how the adoption of comparison as a literary method was not a mere European import but was instead rooted in an ideological effort to challenge colonial educational frameworks. It becomes crucial to understand the creation of the first department of comparative literature within a broader historical and intellectual context. This includes the contemporary trends in literary discourse, the national education movement, and the history of the National Council of Education, Bengal, which sought to construct a decolonial educational structure. These developments collectively influenced the establishment of comparative literature as an academic discipline in post-Independence India.

The paper draws on archival materials related to the National Council of Education, Bengal, as well as contemporary writings on nationalism and its impact on intellectual spheres, particularly literature, as found in periodicals and journals. It also investigates the evolving discourses surrounding the notion of ‘Indian literature’ and how comparative literature in India, with its inherent decolonizing tendencies, emerged in the twentieth century. In addition, the study examines how the search for alternative, pluralistic understandings of ‘Indian literature’ shaped the trajectory of the discipline. By tracing these intellectual currents, the paper seeks to demonstrate how comparative literature in India became a key site for questioning colonial legacies and developing new frameworks for literary scholarship.

After Goethe’s coinage of the term Weltliteratur, the idea has had much iteration. Meltzl, Brandes, Durisin, Guillen, Casanova, Moretti, Apter and several others have explained ‘World Literature’ from respective contexts. In an Indian context, Rabindranath Tagore's idea of Vishwa Sahitya seems to have the most currency. Such a concept cannot be thought of as simply a Bangla equivalent for an idea of World Literature.

Tagores's idea of Visva is conceptualized through his own beliefs of liberal humanism and an understanding of desh/swadesh. More recently, a discussion of World Literature has come to focus on categories such as ‘major-minor’, ‘center-periphery’, and methodologies such as “distant reading” or “literature as system”. However, upon closer examination most practices of World Literature are grounded in explorations of cross cultural and inter-literary relationships. Such practices pose unique methodological challenges in the context of Indian literatures. Any history of modern Indian language literatures demonstrates an interplay between heterogeneity and interconnectedness across such a plurilingual landscape.

In this paper, I will use literary texts by women authors such as Ashapurna Devi, Mahasweta Devi, Nabaneeta Dev Sen, Rashid Jahan and Ismat Chughtai to illustrate how their writing foregrounds the complexity of categories such as gender, caste, class and language in India. More importantly, my analysis of their works problematises categories such as ‘major-minor’ or ‘center-periphery’ through contrasting views of their locations within a canon on "World Literature" and their contextualizations with modern Indian language literatures.

The partition of 1947 as it was experienced in the then princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, India, often remains overlooked. Poonch, a principality in the princely state of J&K was attacked by the Kabalis (Pashtun tribal invaders) in October 1947 in the aftermath of the partition of the Indian subcontinent, which led to mass scale displacement and rehabilitation of Poonchies. This paper analyses three obscure Poonchi life-writings Khooni Itihas 1947, Kashmir: Ek Unkahi Dastaan, and Of Duty, Intrepidity and Treachery: Story of the Hero of Poonch and their confluence with oral narratives collected from the displaced refugees residing in the demographic regions of Jammu and Rajasthan, India. Relying on Roberto Esposito’s idea of ‘community,’ it is contended that there is a conflux of the written and the oral which enables the reconstruction of partition through the lens of re-consolidation. Reaching beyond the anecdotes of violence, yet being informed by them, this paper infers that these life-writings when supplemented by the oral narratives emerge as a mechanism of re-grouping among the displaced Poonchies.

The paper tries to analyse “disability” and “religion” among the minorities in India through life writing narratives of Naseema Hazruk’s The Incredible Story (2005) and Preeti Monga’s The Other Senses (2012). The Indian Prime Minister coined a new term ‘Divyang’ which means person of extraordinary talent but still they are regarded as liability. Disabled women specially in India and in South Asia are triply marginalised, i.e. first as a female, religion and followed by infirmity. Naseema was a Muslim woman who was demeaned in her day to day life yet she became a disabled activist. The book narrates her struggle with rehabilitation, accessibility, education etc.The text also documents how Naseema, being a Muslim woman, encountered hurdles and challenges posed by the upper caste Hindus in her ceaseless struggle for the empowerment of disabled. Her autobiography is one of the pioneering texts of the disabled in India. It is considered to be the first women disabled life narrative published in the subcontinent. A founding text of disability life narratives in India. Similarly, Preeti Monga who was born in upper middle class Sikh family and was subjected to domestic and financial issues. Her story reveals continuous threat of domestic violence and fighting to save her children in an abusive marriage while asserting her right as an individual. Her only demand from a patriarchal society is dignity and respect. Both the novels analyse socioeconomic difficulties faced by the disabled and while doing so these life writings describe social realism in public discourse.

This article attempts to restore the subjectivity of Indian educated middle-class women during the Partition period through three Partition novels: Anita Desai’s Clear Light of Day (1980), Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines (1988) and Manju Kapur’s Difficult Daughters (1998). Despite extensive research on women in Partition, there is little focus on the group of educated middle-class women. In mainstream historical and political discourse, these women have consistently been constructed within the official discourse dominated by males. They are either ‘Mother India’, or the ‘new woman’ to meet the requirements of India’s changing political atmosphere. However, by delving into the particular historical context and personal experience of the educated middle-class women in three novels, the article argues that they continuously subvert the essentialized identities imposed upon them by different versions of official discourse. As the embodiment of Shakti, they are distinct from the archetypes of ‘Mother India’ and the ‘new woman’. Instead, they create their ideal family spaces based on their personal cognition, and transcend the homogeneous gender discourse to reflect the fluid and complex nature of female identity.

Diaspora Studies has always found an important position within South Asian Studies , but India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have consistently been in the limelight. It is only recently that readers and scholars have started acknowledging the contributions of writers from Nepal. In this respect, the Kathmandu born author Manjushree Thapa has been largely instrumental in attracting the attention of critical scholars, thereby creating some space for such literature with both her fictional and non-fictional writings. Nepal, nestled in the lap of the Himalayas, has her own sense of homeland and nationhood. Political and socio-cultural changes and challenges have prompted widespread migration. The writings about these diasporic people invariably provide the readers with an objective overview about the homeland, a view that is often tempered with a strong element of nostalgia. Expectedly the people of the Himalayan nation states have a perspective of life that is quite different from that of the people from the plains. Nepalese people have been known to migrate widely to the neighbouring country India, mainly prompted by economic crisis and consistent socio-political instability. Manjushree Thapa is an author who, even while she lives far away in Canada, still considers Nepal as her “home” and is in fact, deeply engaged in social work in Nepal. Her writings portray a very deep sense of concern and responsibility for her homeland. This paper would be looking at her short story collection "Tilled Earth" and a few other writings and critically comment on Thapa’s contribution to South Asian Diasporic Studies. Her writings show a unique blend of her Nepalese identity and her diasporic consciousness.

Muna Madan, a Nepali epic, tells the story of Muna and Madan, two young lovers from a poor family in a rural Nepalese village. It depicts the struggles, sacrifices, and hardships of life for those who are forced to make difficult choices in order to survive. In addition to its emotional impact, I employ the use of pathos in Muna Madan serves a larger social commentary. Pathos involves the aesthetics of emotions and excavates how audience-focused discourse is persuasive. Through the use of pathos, Devkota is able to convey a sense of empathy and understanding towards these people and to draw attention to their plights. Emotions are not just personal experiences but are shaped by social and cultural contexts, and they can reveal important insights into power dynamics and social structures. By employing the key ideas expressed by Eve Kosofsky Sedwick, bell hooks, and Sara Ahmed, I flesh out the emotional appeal of the epic and finally explore how Devkota creates an aesthetic effect, draws attention to social discourse, and advocates for change in the epic.

South Asia is a space where political borders are at odds with cross-border cultural convergences. Given this context, we see a substantial amount of cross-border traffic in literary themes, traditions and texts.

This paper examines the dynamics of these cross-border travels of texts in modern times. It will seek to analyse the politics of adaptation as texts travel across the heavily militarised borders between countries like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. We shall look at a selection of texts including collaborative 'intermedial' translation. How do these texts change as they travel? Is there a pattern to what kinds of texts get picked up for such adaptations? How do local and international political equations impact the dynamics of adaptation and collaboration in such cases? These are some of the questions I shall seek to investigate different kinds of texts including short stories and graphic narratives.

In contemporary times, globalization has rendered physical distances less significant, blurring national borders and connecting us into a shared, albeit ambiguous, community. The nursery rhyme refrain, “It is a small world after all,” encapsulates this interconnectedness, emphasizing how compact and interwoven the world has become. In such a context, setting regional parameters for ‘comparison’ might seem futile. However, meaningful comparisons can emerge by identifying differences through frameworks that respect local particularities while fostering global dialogue.

Since the late 1970s, postcolonial theory has catalyzed shifts in how Asia is conceptualized within cultural discourse. Critiques of exoticism, primitivism, and essentialist frameworks for understanding Asia spurred the rejection of Orientalist perspectives. By the 1980s, these critiques inspired Asia-centered scholars to propose alternatives emphasizing the unique historical and cultural contexts of Asian societies. This methodological shift, described as regional studies, offered a nuanced lens to counter earlier reductive paradigms.

Nevertheless, region-based art history presents limitations. Emphasizing Asia’s intrinsic value risks excessive isolation and marginalization, inadvertently perpetuating the peripheralization it seeks to dismantle. This research advocates for a more reflexive perspective, focusing on South Asian art practices that reject ethnographic and sociological frameworks in favor of self-defined approaches to cultural identity. These practices offer new ways of understanding cultural identity and comparison, transcending the constraints of regional studies.

This study highlights the work of Raqs Media Collective, an Indian artist group established in 1991 in New Delhi, as an exemplar of these alternative approaches. Operating as artists, philosophical agents, and provocateurs, they embody a concept of resonance that embraces both dispersion and unity—a paradoxical idea reflecting the complexities of contemporary times. Their notion of ensemble articulates distinct identities without overemphasizing national boundaries, serving as a key term in contemporary comparative literary studies. For example, their multi-disciplinary projects juxtapose historical narratives with speculative futures, creating spaces for dialogue that transcend traditional solidarities.

This approach opens endless possibilities for rethinking cultural comparison beyond reductive binaries. The dichotomous framework dividing East and West may no longer hold relevance in an interconnected world. However, reflecting on such frameworks inspires meaningful directions for comparative analysis. By examining ensemble as a conceptual tool, this study seeks to foster a universal understanding that the ultimate purpose of comparing literature and culture—whether through regional distinctions or other frameworks—is to promote harmonious coexistence and mutual enrichment among diverse cultural landscapes.

Amitav Ghosh's Gun Island (2019) decolonizes dominant, often Eurocentric, climate narratives by foregrounding South Asian oratures as vital epistemological frameworks for understanding and responding to environmental precarity. This study argues that Ghosh’s novel reimagines climate change through the Bengali legend of Bon Bibi, the goddess of the Sundarbans, thereby challenging techno-scientific rationalism prevalent in Western climate discourse. Instead, Gun Island emphasizes indigenous knowledge systems, spiritual beliefs, and localized narratives as crucial for comprehending the multifaceted dimensions of environmental catastrophe. These oratures, deeply rooted in local ecological wisdom and spiritual traditions, offer potent counter-narratives to technologically deterministic and globally homogenized understandings of environmental change.

Furthermore, the novel exposes the environmental injustices exacerbated by climate change, particularly its disproportionate impact on marginalized communities in the Global South and the South Asian diaspora, manifested in climate-induced displacement. By centering the Bon Bibi orature, Gun Island not only critiques the epistemic dominance of Western climate narratives but also amplifies marginalized voices and alternative knowledge systems. With decolonial and environmental humanities frameworks, this study reveals how Ghosh’s work contributes to a decolonized understanding of climate narratives. Ultimately, Gun Island reimagines global narratives of environmental crisis from the Global South, fostering a more ecologically just and culturally diverse vision of our shared planetary future within ‘World Literature’.

Translation of oral literature has often been criticized for its limitations in its ethical representation of the ethnic identity and geo-cultural spaces of indigenous people. Since English has become the lingua franca dominating the literary culture in the post-colonial global cultural configuration, translator, majorly translating from indigenous languages into English, struggle with the “acceptable” narrative style and techniques that the English language allows. As English has become the language of worldwide communication and portability of regional literature, what suits in the English language compromises the native narrative styles, musicality inherent in indigenous taletelling, let alone culture specificities in translation. The present paper will question the dominance of western discourse of translation theory and practice in the translation of Indian indigenous oral literature which becomes antagonistic through its emphasis on binaries, exclusivist politics and othering. This paper would propose collaborative translation as an alternate method of translating indigenous literature based on an experimental project at Sikkim University, India where indigenous storytellers of oral narratives belonging to the Lepcha, Limbu and Bhutia community, were brought together with translators who had no access to the native language. Translation here was moved from the domain of “close reading” to “telling and listening” thereby creating an environment of trust that moves the act of translation from the level of individual to that of a collective responsibility. This paper will question whether such collaboration involving native participants help in avoiding/managing issues of asymmetrical power positions of languages involved in the translation? How can the participation of local agents affect/eradicate epistemological violence and misrepresentation in translation of indigenous texts? Can this method of translation become inclusivist enough to provide a space to oral literature within the literature of the world without compromising the style, narrative technique and cultural specificities that mark the identities of their people?

Academic studies of Science Fiction as a genre go back at least 45 years, to Suvin (1979). Yet Suvin, Jameson (2005) or Bould and Mieville (2009) all focus mostly on English language SF from primarily the Anglo-American world. Even when horizons have extended, it has happened through English language, predictably following the Damrosch model of world Literature whereby the English translation is privileged. African SF has seen the English texts foregrounded, and in Indian SF, it is the Indian English SF, whether Samit Basu’s Gameworld Trilogy or Rimi Barnali Chatterjee’s Antisense Universe Climate Fiction which are easily found. This paper argues that extending the literary historiography of science fiction, reading science fiction as literature of the world rather than an expansion of an Anglo-American original, calls for a study of multiple literary systems, and offers a case study of Bangla SF. Going back to 19th century tales, it is possible to trace a trajectory via Hemendra Kumar Roy, Premendra Mitra, Satyajit Ray, Adrish Bardhan, Anish Deb and Muhammad Zafar Iqbal. The reception of Science Fiction in Bangla would show that tropes common to Western SF and other Western genres might often be subverted by the Bengali authors, whose earlier generations had themselves lived under colonial rule and who had deep distrust of the facile equation between technological advancement and social progress, so common to much “Golden Age” SF in the US. Using novels and short stories, it will also be the contention that unlike the Suvin definition, which puts SF at odds with realist fiction, Bangla SF could develop within the main currents of Bangla literature, especially in its earlier stages. Indeed it might be argued that Ray’s Professor Shonku presents a break in that trajectory, creating a variant that consciously looked for young readers, that delinked SF from broader streams, and that also handled science in an impoverished manner.

A literary text has to be read for the event of literature to take place, but while reading is a singular event, reception is not and cannot be. How a literary text is received by the literary system as a part of which it occurs provides a means to determine its aesthetic value in only that particular literary system, its further reception in different literary systems is independent of its original reception in its own literary system. If one chooses to formulate literary history based on reception, the “horizon of expectations” of a literary system could be seen as an appropriate tool. This paper aims to illustrate a history of literary systems using the "horizon of expectations” as a tool through Fakir Mohan Senapati’s Six Acres and a Third (1896) and O. Chandumenon’s Indulekha (1889), and thereby trace the origin of the novel in colonial India to interrogate if a geographical marker could be used to categorise literature which is supposed to be supra-national, if the literary category of the novel could possibly become Indian in its scope, or could encompass the “plurality” that characterises India. Since the two texts occur in two different literary systems, in two different geographical contexts within India, the extra-literary process of colonisation comes to impact the reception of both these novels distinctly. So, it is “imperative to locate them in the context of the histories of two differing yet related repertoires of colonial practice.” (Chanda 128).

Call for Papers (Open) by the

Standing Research Committee for the Study of Literatures and Cultures of South Asia, ICLA

‘Decolonising ‘World Literature’: Perspectives of Oratures and Literatures from South Asia’

If we look back on the evolution of the idea of ‘World Literature’ we will discover that the idealistic pronouncements by Goethe in 1823 and Rabindranath Tagore in 1908 on ‘WL’ have not been realized. The idea of ‘WL’ originated in Europe, when large parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America were being colonised by the imperial forces of European powers. The twentieth century has witnessed the emergence of these colonies into independent nations with greater awareness of their political and cultural identities. The works of those authors from Latin American, African and Asian countries who have won the Nobel prize or such prestigious awards in literature, figure in the list of canonical authors of the West. This only confirms that the idea of ‘World literature’ continues to be dominated by the ideology of Euro-centrism and its exclusivist approach to literary studies.

We find the world being increasingly standardised through the spread of technology, trade and migrations of people. Transnational net-works which ensure the dissemination of Western works of literatures have inbuilt filters that prevent the reception of texts and cultural goods from the global south. A noted comparatist from America, Gerald Gillespie wrote in 2017: “Now, after the year 2000, we are witnessing … the attempt to erect a new style WL movement in the present century via the hegemony of English as a world lingua franca.”

This seminar would like to address this complex situation. We need to shift our attention from ‘World Literature’ to ‘the Literatures of the World’. Papers which analyse the oral traditions of South Asia, colonial encounter and its aftermath, the contradictions and conflicts that accompany the process of decolonisation are particularly welcome. We need to study the Indian diaspora’s perceptions of the globalised world through their authors. Our larger objective is to examine how a new idea of ‘WL’ can emerge from the specific contexts of South Asian literatures and cultures.

Sub-themes: ‘World Literature’ and the South Asian Traditions of Translations,

Orality and Literacy in South Asia,Globalisation and South Asian Cultures,

Literatures of the Diaspora, Gender and Literatures in South Asia, Representation of Caste and Race in Literature

Please note that abstracts for the seminar are to be received by the date: January 10, 2025.

Abstracts should be sent to both:

E.V. Ramakrishnan: evrama51@gmail.com

Sayantan Dasgupta: sayantan.dasgupta@jadavpuruniversity.in

Muhyidhin Mala and the Imagination of ummah (community) in early 17th century Kerala.

Abstract: This paper attempts to read the 17th century text, Muhyidhin Mala and explores how identities were imagined through a hagiography. The collective imagination of ‘people’ brought forth through this text, at the centre of which faith organises the Islamic moral order, sheds light on Islam in South India in the context of a multicultural society. The language of faith, as narrated through the miracles (Karamat) of Abdul Qadir Jilani (1077-1166) may be situated within the historical context of Bhakthi in 17th century Kerala. But it also gives valuable hints about the ummah-the Islamic followers from the region, the kind of self-fashioning and disciplining aspired to be a follower of the religion. The reimagining and retelling of the saint’s life, distanced from the locus of its origin in Persia, also freeze temporalities, making the text important both as a site of memory and also as a contemporary experience in the socio-religious landscape. Qazi Muhammad, the author, inserts himself in the text urging the followers to listen and follow. However, the reception of the text also reveals the interconnected nature of the material in the text, since the Abdul Qadir Jilani had many textual representations in multiple performative practices of Muslim communities in South India. Muslims all over Kerala and other regions in the South continuously practised performances that praised the life of this sufi saint and the founder of the Qadiriyya order through Maulids and Ratheebs. Reading this text through aspirations that shaped the community, I argue that linguistic identity is pushed to the background as a negotiable medium, whereas the politics of faith/ piety functions as the intermediary to bring people together.

History is a dialogue between the present and the past. The present paper deals with Can You Hear the Nightbird Call by Anita Rau Badami, a writer of Indian origin based in Montreal, Canada and Five Queen's Road by Sorayya Khan, a writer of Pakistani origin settled in Ithaca, U.S. who root their works in their experiences and their memories of socio-political upheavals in India and Pakistan and the way their in-between position influence their views of their homeland and its history. Khan weaves together the post-partition history of the Indian subcontinent by amalgamating oral testimonies and research as well as official histories to portray the different ways in which the past is remembered by the people. Badami, on the other hand, believes that she couldn't have written a novel if she had not left India and she read a collection of testimonies given by victims and read interviews published in India by people involved in extremist activities in the Punjab. The history of all countries show that violence is a universal phenomenon and it is writ large on the pages of human history. In Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?, Badami begins the narrative with the Partition, ropes in the Indo-Pak wars, Mrs. Gandhi taking up the reins of the country, massacre of the Sikhs etc. whereas Five Queen's Road epitomizes Undivided India and later deals with the cataclysmic Partition in 1947 which brought in its wake humongous violence. The engagement with the homeland, the process of rehabilitation and the values that hold human beings rooted in the past are some dominant concerns in the fiction of Anita Rau Badami and Sorayya Khan.

This research explores class division, social discrimination, struggle for power, economic disparities and focuses on the interaction between the individuals and their society in Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies and Boori Maa through aspects of marxism. By applying theory of Louis Althusser, this research analyzes class struggle and economic segregation which influence social perceptions and social relations, in light with Marxist criticism of objectification, control of ideologies and dissociation with Capitalism. Analyzing stories such as Interpreter of Maladies and Boori Maa Lahiri uses social spaces and setting of home that significantly highlights emotions of socially isolated individuals. This research also investigates hierarchies of social classes highlighting how social and economic inequalities persist in our social structures. Furthermore, this research delves into intricacies of socio-economic and psychological impacts of these hierarchies, signifying Lahiri's criticism of capitalism which determine values of human beings through their economic conditions and classes. Ultimately this research focuses on themes of class struggle and socio-economic disparities to show continuous struggle of communities which have been marginalized in the society.

Dr, Urwashi Kumari

Post Doctoral

Research Scholar

Dept. Of English

Magadh University, Bodh-Gaya, India

Social oppressions and resistance movements are dynamic processes which constantly modify and engender themselves repeatedly from their immediate pasts, while attempting to forge agency through controlling the narrative of one's own story, one's history. That "one" here can be just one person, a community or one or more villages. In Bengali writer Mahasweta Devi's novellas such as Chotti Munda and his Arrow and Rudali, and short stories such as "Shishu", "Water" and "The Hunt", we see how lived experiences are transmuted into songs and tribal narratives which foreground the triumph against the defeat, creating the ground for future resistance movements; how the oppressed provide counter-narratives to dominant social history, to attempt to provide the linkages and reasons for ownership of land and river; and curiously, at times, situate the whole definition of a social strata such as that of the prostitutes as a creation of the oppressors. These are just some of the ways in which history is re- written to create a landscape, a cultural hold which not only provides an effective counter-argument but also works as the storehouse from where communities draw legitimacy and power. Here, we see dynamic connections forged between history, myth and resistance, as a continuous process of reality. All of these provide interesting points for re-evaluating 'history', 'literature' and 'culture', which is what the paper will explore in detail.

Flesh is the threshold in which consciousness meets the world, it is the vinculum between self and things (Merleau-Ponty 16). In describing the world Husserl has found a way to bridge the rationale of Descartes and Lockean sensory world through his transcendental phenomenology but it lacked the “situatedness in the world.” And here is where Merleau Ponty’s flesh as the incarnate consciousness gains significance. His flesh is the carnival of spectacle. The sensible object and sensing subject synergise through flesh. Norona’s Thottappan is a melting pot of different lived experiences. The flesh of the world is in constant revolt with the Cartesian Cogito. The characters in the stories are in revolt with the ideal world religion has created. They engage and indulge in the sensory experiences the world offers and thus creates their reality. The traditional dichotomies of pleasure and pain are forsaken for a multiplicity of bodily emotions. Fear, angst, passion and numerous sense experiences find their synthesis in the body of the characters. And as the Kunjaadu (Lamb) in the title story implies the readers are welcome to the feast of the Body.

This paper aims to explore the intersection of literature, technology, and media through a theoretical reflection on the concept of “augmented literature.” Within the progressive integration of narrative practices and immersive technologies, such as augmented reality and locative media, the traditional literary text expands, transcending its material and symbolic boundaries. Accordingly, this study focuses on the intersection of transmediality, transmateriality, and locative media, analyzing how these dynamics redefine the concepts of narrative, reception, and narrative space.

At the center of this analysis is the case study of the transmedial adaptation of Die Nächte der Tino von Baghdad, an experimental literary text by Else Lasker-Schüler from 1907, reimagined by the artistic duo ConiglioViola. Their project does not merely adapt the text for other media but employs technologies such as augmented reality and geolocation to create a layered narrative experience. Through a combination of physical and digital spaces, ConiglioViola’s project becomes an emblematic example of augmented literature, where the original text is fragmented and reconfigured into a multiplicity of forms and languages.

A crucial role is played by locative media, which integrate the literary narrative with physical territories and the reader's movement through space. Geolocation thus becomes a technique that enhances the text, transforming ordinary places into narrative settings and creating a tension between the real and the virtual.

In this perspective, the concept of transmediality becomes central: the narrative fragments and recomposes itself across different media platforms, enabling the reader/user to enrich the text with a network of media experiences that transcend the traditional boundaries of the literary text. As this process suggests, such fragmentation is not merely mediated but also material.

The second part of this paper will address the category of transmateriality, considering both the transition of the text into different material regimes (from the ephemeral to the tangible) and the active role of technologies in transforming literature. This transformation enhances the traditional capacities of literature, redefining it as a space for experimentation, dialogue, and the integration of diverse languages.

The narrative that colonizers are revered as deities by their colonized subjects due to their scientific advancements and military power was first introduced to Japan in the mid-19th century. Influential historical texts, such as Peter Parley’s Universal History and Jules Verne’s or Rider Haggard’s novels, played critical roles in constructing myths that justified and bolstered Japanese imperialism. After Japan invaded Dutch Indonesia in 1942, interest grew in the ancient Javanese legend of the rightful king. The Japanese forces appropriated this legend, establishing the myth that the peoples of Southeast Asia were eagerly awaiting Japanese soldiers as liberators from Western oppression. The propaganda film Momotaro: Sacred Sailors (1945) adeptly incorporates these legends, depicting Japanese soldiers as metaphorical knights on white horses, entrusted with the mission of delivering occupied peoples from their subjugation. In the film, these soldiers are portrayed as morally and historically justified in their actions, positioning them as heroic liberators. Conversely, Western colonists are depicted as “goblins,” ultimately vanquished by the Japanese soldiers, who parachute in to overpower them. This cinematic representation serves to invert the earlier deification of colonizers in Japanese mythology, reframing European colonialists--once revered as gods--as malevolent goblins. In this way, the film attempts to perpetuate the narrative of a Japanese “Deus Ex Machina” at a moment when, in reality, Japanese imperialism was on the brink of collapse. This presentation will analyse the techniques and motivations behind how this film medium effectively conveys such myths.

This project proposes the development of an interactive hypertext platform to explore the contrasting experiences of Erfahrung (cumulative life experience) and Erlebnis (immediate, emotional experience) in Western classical novels, with Don Quixote as the central text, as he moves between these two modes of experience. He begins deeply entrenched in Erlebnis, driven by grand illusions of chivalry and a distorted perception of reality. However, through failure, disillusionment, and reflection, he ultimately attains Erfahrung in his final moments. By engaging with Don Quixote’s evolving perspective, readers can reflect on the consequences of each approach to life, applying these insights to their own understanding of personal growth and decision-making.

To further illustrate this contrast, additional characters exemplifying Erfahrung and Erlebnis will be analyzed, providing a comparative framework for understanding how different approaches to life shape moral and psychological development. Typical fictional heroes such as Kitty from Anna Karenina and Daniel d’Arthez from Lost Illusions exemplify Erfahrung, as they gradually adapt to hardships and transform them into wisdom and self-sufficiency. They follow paths of patience, resilience, and moral growth, gradually making informed decisions. In contrast, characters like Anna Karenina and Lucien Chardon (Lost Illusions) are defined by Erlebnis. They live by extemporaneousness and react instinctively to opportunities or crises without considering broader consequences. Their impulsive choices and fleeting experiences lead to instability, self-destruction, or tragedy.

As readers follow each character’s story, they will encounter two distinct choices per key passage, each presenting a different perspective—one for Erfahrung and the other for Erlebnis. Visual markers such as color-coded headings, distinct borders, or numbering systems will guide the readers through related passages within a structured, non-linear format. By engaging actively with the text, readers can make choices and explore different narrative paths, transforming reading into a participatory experience. Ultimately, this project reimagines classical literature as an active, immersive engagement, demonstrating how interactive storytelling enhances literary analysis and deepens engagement with the text

The paper aims to investigate the role of AI in literary writing and to challenge the dichotomy between viewing it as a tool and as an author. While the lack of agency and consciousness makes it impossible to consider AI on the same level as a human writer – even when a system achieves high performance in writing – AI nonetheless exerts a transformative power on literature, preventing us from dismissing it as a mere tool. When used in the writing process, AI demonstrates its capacity to challenge our understanding of what constitutes a literary text, reshaping our perception of authorial intention and the creation of meaning, and prompting a reconsideration of the definition of creativity. This transformative power manifests in two key aspects that will be analyzed: the generation process and the AI gaze.

The use of AI in writing alters the generation process. Until now, regardless of the medium (manuscript, print, digital), a text has typically undergone various stages of human revision before reaching its final published form. The introduction of AI, however, disrupts this process by introducing a fundamentally different mode of human-machine interaction. This shift has formal implications and necessitates new approaches to the genetic study of AI-generated texts. The paper proposes and examines three key aspects to consider when analyzing AI-assisted writing: the specific phases of the writing process where AI is involved (e.g., research, text generation, or editing); the type of AI system used and its technical generation process; and the degree of automation and mode of interaction. Understanding these aspects is essential both for writers employing AI in their creative process and for scholars analyzing AI-generated literature.

The second transformative aspect is what can be defined as the "AI gaze," referring to AI’s distinctive way of representing the world. Notably, recent AI systems are capable of using language to describe concepts and facts without any prior semantic understanding. Beyond its philosophical and cognitive implications, this ability holds creative significance, offering a possible new perspective on the world. Scholars have identified several characteristics of the AI gaze, including an innocent eye, a different or deficient perception of historicity, the capacity to explore data unconscious, quintessence representation, and counterfactual imagination. These characteristics, along with AI textual generation techniques, will be analyzed through case studies such as 1 the Road by Ross Goodwin and Non siamo mai stati sulla terra by Rocco Tanica. Through this analysis, the paper seeks to stimulate debate on the status of AI-generated literature within the broader artistic landscape.

The career of British director Peter Greenaway, now more than four decades long, has been strongly animated by a profound intermedial research, from various movies on architecture and paintings to multimedia exhibitions till the recent design of an extremely creative subway station in Naples. His movie Prospero’s Books (1991) adapts Shakespeare’s The Tempest, giving to the object book a central role, especially as a magical tool and as a catalyst of a neo-baroque intermedial creation. Theatre, dance, opera, computer graphics and animation are continuously intermingled, and create a complex parallelism between page, screen and frame. The result is a strange masterpiece that can be considered the culminating point of Greenaway’s baroque and melodramatic poetics of the excess.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has revolutionized literary studies by enabling both the analysis and creation of texts that engage with various stylistic traditions. It has demonstrated remarkable efficiency in helping individuals find specific quotes or verses that align with their current emotions. Looking ahead, AI assistants may not only recite passages from Shakespeare or Donne but also generate original narratives or poetry on contemporary topics while maintaining their distinctive literary, linguistic, and thematic styles. This prospect is undeniably intriguing. Just as Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris (2011) transported a modern protagonist into direct encounters with renowned literary and artistic figures of the 19th century, a similar sense of excitement was conveyed through the cinematic experience.

This paper primarily comprises case studies that investigate AI's ability to rewrite and summarize literary works in the styles of different authors, offering fresh perspectives on comparative literature, authorship, and literary transformation. By utilizing AI and machine learning models trained on extensive literary corpora, this study explores the extent to which AI can replicate the style of a Hemingway novel rewritten in Jane Austen’s elaborate prose or reinterpret a Gothic narrative through the minimalist framework of modernist fiction.

Additionally, this study examines AI’s role in literary adaptation, genre transformation, and stylistic emulation by evaluating its ability to capture the linguistic, thematic, and rhetorical characteristics of diverse canonical authors, from Shakespeare and William Carlos Williams to Emily Brontë and Toni Morrison. By juxtaposing these writers' corpora, the research critically assesses the capabilities and limitations of computational models in preserving literary depth and nuance within large-scale textual datasets. Finally, it explores the broader implications of AI-driven literary emulation, offering critical insights into its impact on fanfiction (e.g., "Pride and Programming"—Jane Austen meets Sci-Fi AI), pastiche (e.g., "Hemingway’s Middle-earth"—Hemingway rewriting The Lord of the Rings), and the ethical considerations surrounding digital authorship.

Thus by situating AI-generated literary comparisons within the frameworks of comparative literature and digital humanities, this research highlights the intersections of technology, creativity, and literary tradition. It underscores AI’s potential to reframe discussions on authorship, intertextuality, and the evolution of literary style across historical and cultural contexts.

The pages of The Nine Cloud Dream (Guunmong) are imbued with scents, verses, and melodies, with music—particularly the sounds of the geomungo and tungso—playing a pivotal role in shaping relationships and driving the narrative forward. This study explores the function of music within the novel, aiming to translate its essence into digital music. While the story unfolds linearly, the interactions between characters are multilinear. At its center is Yang Shao-yu, whose encounters with the eight fairies follow a rhythmic pattern of meetings, separations, and reunions, culminating in their collective return to their original lives as nine. This cyclical journey mirrors harmonic progressions in music: a chord begins at the tonic, moves through various scales, and ultimately resolves back to its origin—much like the recurring themes of human relationships, desire, and dreams within the novel. The number eight in The Nine Cloud Dream is not merely indicative of the number of wives but serves as a symbolic device both thematically and musically. When turned sideways, the shape of 8 resembles the infinity symbol (∞), signifying circulation and perpetuity, which aligns with the structure of the novel where dreams and reality, life and death, the secular and the transcendental cycle. Similarly, in music, many compositions rely on eight-measure phrases for symmetry and balance while traditional Korean music (gugak) incorporates eight foundational rhythms (jangdan), and categorizes instruments into eight groups depending on the materials used. Yang Shao-yu's life in the dream world is dazzling, yet upon awakening he loses everything only to gain enlightenment. His journey reveals that although human desires are infinitely cyclical, true realization lies in breaking free from the cycle. Using digital music technology and sound synthesis, the ethereal soundscape will embody the themes and numerical patterns shown in the book. Through this approach, The Nine Cloud Dream is elevated into a richly vibrant and poetic experience, much like a dreamy music itself.

The Swiss author Johanna Spyri (1827-1901) wrote two “Heidi”-novels in her lifetime. The first one, Heidi’s Years of Learning and Wandering, was published in 1880 and became immediately an international bestseller. This novel tells the story of the orphan girl Heidi, who lives happily in the Swiss Alps alone with her grandfather. At the age of eight, she must leave her homeland and go to Frankfurt, a big city in Germany. But she feels unhappy in this urban environment. At last, she becomes mentally ill because of her homesickness and has to be brought back to her home. In the second novel, Heidi can use what she has learned (1881), Heidi’s friend Clara, who is physically ill and cannot walk, always sitting on a wheelchair, comes from Frankfurt to Switzerland. Thanks to the healthy mountain air and fresh organic food in the Alps, she recovers miraculously and can now walk on her own feet.

These novels were made into a movie for the first time in 1920. Since then, numerous Heidi-movies and TV series have been produced in various countries. The most popular one among them is the Japanese animated version, Arupusu no Shōjo Haiji or Heidi, The Girl of the Alps, which went on the air for the first time in 1974. This series with 52 episodes was produced by Isao Takahata (1935-2018) and Hayao Miyazaki, young artists then, who would later establish the animation Studio Ghibli. The kawaii Heidi in this animation, designed by Yoichi Kotabe (also known as the designer of video games such as “Super Mario” and “Pokémon”), made a great success not only in Japan but also in European countries, most notably in Spain and then in Spanish-speaking areas in south America.

In my presentation, I am going to compare this animation series with the original novels. The most important change introduced by the director Takahata is about the role of Christianity. In her original novel, Spyri combined the story of Heidi’s homecoming with that of the reconciliation of her grandfather with God. This storyline which identifies the grandfather with the “Prodigal Son” in the Bible does not exist in the animated version. As Takahata himself admits, he deliberately “reduced” Christian elements for the Japanese audience who apparently do not have much knowledge about the Bible. Some scholars even believe that Takahata excluded every single Christian element from his animation. But it is a misconception which derives from the German synchronized version of the series (1977/78) which tells often a totally different story from that of Takahata’s. Actually, we can find a surprising scene in this animation where Takahata loyally follows Spyri and depicts how Heidi reads a hymn by the German poet Paul Gerhardt (1607-1676), a deeply religious song, for Peter’s blind grandmother and brings her into tears of joy.

“Heidi, Girl of the Alps” (Arupusu no shojo Haiji) is a television animation series directed by Isao Takahata, which was aired in Japan in 1974. It was based on the children’s novel, Heidi written by the Swiss-born author Johanna Spyri, which was originally published in two parts under the German title: Heidis Lehr- und Wanderjahre (Heidi’s learning and wandering years) and Heidi kann brauchen, was es gelernt hat (Heidi can use what she learned) in 1881. The original novel was translated in many countries including Japan and the Middle East and became a canon of children’s literature. The earliest Japanese translation dates from 1920 by Yaeko Nogami, and there is a Turkish translation published by Sabiha and Zekeriya Sertel in 1927. Numerous film, television and theatrical adaptations were made as well. In the various adaptations, the strong Christian message of the original novel is toned-down or filtered out, but the animation series by Takahata is faithful to the original in this regard.

The Japanese animation version was dubbed in many languages and it also aired in Iran on the official state television, Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. In this paper we will introduce a case of how Iranian students coming to Germany for the first time processed and embraced their new cultural experience by recalling scenes from “Heidi” that they have seen as a child in Iran. The fact that their previously harboured images of Germany and Europe were actually formed through the Japanese animation adaptation of a Swiss novel presents an interesting example of the role of Japanese pop culture in the global flow of cultural knowledge.

This paper examines the adaptation of literary works into visual media and the interpretation process, using the example of the popular 1985 Japanese television animation “Little Princess Sara”.

‘Little Princess Sara’ （Shokojo Sera） is the tenth in a series of animated television series, World Masterpiece Theater, based on foreign children's literature since “Heidi, Girl of the Alps” was first broadcast in 1974. The original novel, A Little Princess, was published by Frances Hodgson Burnett in 1888 (reprinted with additions in 1905) and tells the story of Sara, the only daughter of a wealthy man who sends her from India to London to be enrolled in a boarding school. Following her father's death, Sara is reduced to the position of a servant and endures days of hardship. The narrative is a type of Cinderella story in which Sara eventually overcomes adversity and regains her high status.

In the original work, Sara is a proud and indomitable girl who bravely faces difficulties, but in the animation, Sara is portrayed as a kind-hearted, tearful, beautiful girl who silently endures bullying. Furthermore, while in the original story, Sara resolutely leaves Miss Minchin School for Girls , but in the anime she stays on and even donates a great deal of money to the seminary. This ending, where evil is requited with good, is a notable deviation from the original work.

At the time of the anime's production, Japan was experiencing the bubble economy, and bullying in schools had become a prominent social issue. The TV drama “Oshin” (1983–1984), which aired a year before “A Little Princess Sara”, depicting a girl enduring and overcoming poverty, bullying, and servitude, had already become a cultural phenomenon throughout Japan. The anime adaptation of “Little Princess” must be seen in light of such economic and social background.

Children are inherently in a vulnerable position within society. In literature and animation, how children are portrayed and treated is of primary concern to the young readers and viewers themselves. Little Princess has been repeatedly made into plays and films for more than 100 years since its original publication, and in the portrayals of Sara one can see the reflections of the situation of children of the times. By comparing British society at the time of the original novel with Japanese society at the time of the anime's production, this study aims to examine what elements of the original resonated with the viewers of Japan in the mid-1980s and what were the modifications that were introduced to meet their particular expectations and needs.

Sans famille (1878), one of the most well-known French children’s books written by Hector Malot, has been popular in Japan since it was first translated. More than 180 translations, including five manga versions, were published, and two animated television series were produced and broadcast in 1977 and 1996. The first two translations in Japan were published in the form of a serialized novel, in 1902 and 1911, both in sequential installments in major daily newspapers. This presentation will focus on these first two translations published in the Meiji era, “Mada minu oya” (1902–1903) translated by Sosen Gorai and “Ie naki ko” (1911–1912), by Yuho Kikuchi, and consider the source of their popularity in Japan.

Both Gorai and Kikuchi categorized the original as a “Katei shosetsu (home novel)”. Gorai observed moralities concerning parent-child relationships in the original and carefully translated the parent-child scenes. The depiction of the affection between the parent and child and the education aimed at building the child’s character in the original work were highly appreciated, while the translation also added the idea of gratitude of the child for the parent, which Gorai regarded as the basis of Japanese family morality. Similarly, Kikuchi, a best-selling author of “home novels” for female readers, appreciated that most of the female characters in the original sacrificed themselves and cared for their children, husbands, and parents. Kikuchi's translation emphasizes the virtues of the female characters’ devotion to their families. Therefore, both Gorai and Kikuchi adapted their translations to include moral values that were appropriate and acceptable to the Japanese ideal of “home” of the time.

This presentation will focus on “Kitaro,” the hero of Shigeru Mizuki's manga “Gegege no Kitaro” (1967-), known worldwide for its manga and animation. With “Kitaro” as the central character, this presentation traces how a character inspired by folklore became established as a hero for children in Japan and abroad, from picture story shows in the 1930s, to manga, to animation.

Kitaro, the character from the now widely known animation Gegege no Kitaro, is a young boy born from a graveyard, who, in cooperation with his fellow yokai (monsters), including his father, Father with the Eyeball, Cat Girl, Rat Man, and Nurikabe, acts as a hero who helps the weak. The character was inspired by a folklore in various parts of Japan called “Kosodate Ghost” (Child-rearing Ghost Folklore), in which a ghost woman who had given birth to a child in a tomb after her death bought candy to feed the orphaned child. Eventually, Shigeru Mizuki, who earned his living as a picture-story show illustrator after the war, wrote the original, picture-story show “Graveyard Kitaro” with the permission of the original author, and later became a rental book cartoonist and wrote the manga “Graveyard Kitaro” and “Kitaro Night Story”, adding such major characters as the eyeball father, mouse man, and cat girl. Mizuki's works were serialized in shōnen manga in the 1960s, stabilizing their popularity, and were made into an animated TV series in 1968. Around the same time, a book-length manga of Shigeru Mizuki's Gegege no Kitaro was also published in 1967. Meanwhile, in conjunction with the animated series, a series of reading materials for younger audiences was also published, and the image of Kitaro as a hero of justice became firmly established in the series. The animated series will be in its sixth season by 2020, and there are 11 animated films and two live-action films in theaters. The series has been developed in a variety of media, from radio dramas, novels, and stage productions to pachinko games.

In fact, the 100-year history of “Kitaro” is a model case in which a pre-modern voice story was reorganized into a modern written and optical story while the story was passed on. The story of the “ghost raising a child,” which had been handed down in various regions in the pre-modern age through the medium of voice, was reorganized with the addition of modern written, graphic (printed), and optical media, and spread to various regions through picture-story shows and rental manga. Over the course of 100 years, the same characters and their stories have been reorganized in different media, and the methods of transmission and reception have been transformed as the stories have been passed down through the generations. It also becomes clear that behind this model is a network of people connected by “inevitable coincidences,” as in the case of Shigeru Mizuki.

MIYAZAKI Hayao's “Spirited Away,” released in 2001, is an internationally acclaimed animated film that won the 75th Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film in 2003. A Japanese fantasy novel was influential in the process of creating this animation: KASHIWABA Sachiko's debut novel, The Marvelous Village Veiled in Mist published in 1975. In 1998, the possibility of adapting Kashiwaba's work into a film was discussed, but ultimately abandoned. However, the framework of Kashiwaba's story about “a girl who ends up working in a mysterious world” was incorporated into the production process of “Spirited Away”. Kashiwaba's work is a full-length fantasy in which the main character, a young girl named Rina, arrives in a mysterious town veiled in mist in the mountains during her summer vacation, and undergoes an inner transformation through working at stores in the town during her stay there. In this presentation, I will explore how Kashiwaba portrays the main character who transforms through her work experiences in the alternate world. Additionally, I will examine the potential of the children's literature genre in the written form by highlighting the differences with “Spirited Away”.

I would like to write a paper on the A-bomb literature written in Indian Languages. The mournful incident of Hiroshima and Nagasaki left a deep impact on the Indian authors. Indian citizens were not directly affected by the nuclear weapons or by the nuke-war threats but the Indian authors, from a humanitarian viewpoint, expressed their concern over the nuke-power demonstration during the Cold War and raised their voices against all types of nuclear weapons. The trauma of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was often portrayed in several short stories, poems and plays written by the Indian authors.

Badal Sircar, the pioneer of the Third Theatre and a famous playwright, wrote a play named ‘Tringsha Shatabdi (30th century)’. In this play all the real-life characters associated with the atomic bomb-dropping incident stood in front of the 30th century human beings to be judged for their action. He presented contemporary nuke-politics also in other plays as a minor theme. Famous Indian poets like Sahir Ludhianvi, Amulya Baruah, Agyea and others wrote poems reacting to the destructive mushroom cloud. In a short story written by Deependranath Bandyopadhyay, a mother was deeply worried for her child’s future in a nuke-threatened society. After the experimental nuke-bomb test done by India in 1998, a renowned poet Joy Goswami composed a long poem criticizing the anti-humanist celebrations and jingoism of the state machinery. The traumatic events of the atomic bomb explosion were mentioned in many other Indian literary texts.

In last three decades Indian Govt. tried to build several nuclear power plants and imported nuke-technology from other countries. Such decisions gave birth to protests and agitations from the common mass. Not only in Bengali but in other Indian languages such reactions have been narrated. Tamil writer and playwright Sankaran Gnani staged plays written by the Indian playwrights during anti-nuclear movement in Kudankulam. Trauma of Bhopal gas tragedy and Chernobyl triggered fear in Indian citizens’ minds. Also, the degradation of bio-diversity in the neighborhood areas of those nuke plants instigated eco-political movements. several Indian authors expressed solidarity with such movements. On the other hand, a nationalistic propaganda associated with nuke-bomb emerged through the ideological propaganda of the state as well through a few literary texts.

How did the writers in Indian languages present the nuke-power reality in literary texts? How did the anti-nuclear war consciousness of Indian citizens merge with the worldwide socio-literary scenario? How did the trauma and fear of the atomic bomb turn into nationalist pride?

I would like to analyze the above-mentioned texts to trace the answers to these questions.

Japanese literary works depicting the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were actively translated and introduced in the Soviet Union. Such works had a political significance amid the Cold War since they served to criticize the inhumane violence conducted by the United States army. Soviet poets such as Rasul Gamzatov and Mikhail Matusovsky composed pieces of poetry concerning the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, conveying messages of peace. Moreover, science fiction writers, who were particularly aware of the potential futures that the development of nuclear technology might bring, showed great interest in Japan’s experience of the atomic bombings and explored this theme in various ways in their works.

This presentation analyzes the image of the atomic bomb in Soviet science fiction from three perspectives. The works primarily discussed are The Inhabited Island by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, The Ice Is Returning by Alexander Kazantsev, and The Last Pastoral by Ales Adamovich.

Firstly, many works deliberately emphasize the history of “evil nuclear power,” from the development of atomic energy to the dropping of the atomic bombs by the United States. At the same time, however, the existence of Soviet nuclear weapons is rarely mentioned, while the use of nuclear power for transforming nature is presented as an example of “good nuclear power” in Soviet science fiction.

Secondly, although the theme of human extinction due to total nuclear war in the near future was common in science fiction around the world during the Cold War period, it was hardly mentioned by Soviet writers. The reason was that the topic of human annihilation would place Soviet and American nuclear weapons on equal footing and would not allow for the demonstration of the superiority of the socialist bloc. A nuclear war could be depicted only by setting the story in the distant reaches of cosmic space, away from the context of real international affairs.

Thirdly, this paper examines the theme of the “human shadow etched in stone,” where the silhouettes of people burned by the atomic bomb were imprinted onto surfaces. This image, which became widely known in the Soviet Union through the work of journalist Vsevolod Ovchinnikov and poet Matusovsky, also inspired science fiction writers. The phenomenon of the “human stone” reminds of the process of optical exposure in photography, however, differently from many atomic bomb photographs, it lacks the subjective gaze of a photographer. Furthermore, the victims burned by the atomic bomb also vanish, leaving only their shadows as traces. Our aim is to explore how this absence (both of those photographing and photographed) is represented in literary works.

* I am the discussant of this panel, so I will not be making an actual presentations. Instead, I will comment on the presentations given by my colleagues.

In post-war German literature, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki began to be depicted in the 1950s. This was triggered by the impact of the Castle Bravo nuclear test at Bikini Atoll in March 1954. This shock was reinforced by the fact that the Japanese fishing boat Daigo Fukuryū Maru was contaminated by nuclear fallout from the test. The spread of information about the extensive damage to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which had previously been restricted, also encouraged writers to take up the subject of atomic bomb in literature. Germany, divided into East and West, was at the forefront of the Cold War in Europe. As a result, the fear of nuclear weapons was both a familiar and a very realistic theme at that time. There were many genres of works written, but in this presentation, I will focus on poetry and analyze what kind of nuclear representations are created and how are they formed, paying attention to the following three aspects.

1) I will discuss how the destabilized image of the world caused by modern nuclear physics is linked to the fragmentation of the language of poetry, focusing on poems by Gottfried Benn and Wolfgang Weyrauch.

2) For many poets, nuclear tests and atomic bombings are events they had not experienced in person, but only through the media. Against this background, I would like to discuss how media representations of the damage caused by nuclear tests and atomic bombs are incorporated into the poetic images, concentrating on symbolic motifs spread through the media, such as "mushroom clouds" and the "human shadow etched in stone.” In this context, I will also touch on poems in which the media experience itself is problematized, such as those by Günter Eich, Ingeborg Bachmann, Paul Celan, Marie Luise Kaschnitz and others.

3) In relation to the second perspective, I would like to focus on the theme of memory and “Erinnerung” to discuss how memories of past events, such as atomic bombs and nuclear tests, can be recounted in literary texts. Günter Kunert, Peter Huchel and other contemporary poets are taken as examples here.

World War II had been over for several months on the European continent when Czechoslovak media came with the almost unbelievable news of the destruction of Hiroshima, and a few days later, Nagasaki, by a newly and secretly developed weapon of mass destruction, the atomic bomb. The scale of devastation was beyond comprehension. Photographic evidence of the bombings and their aftermath was unavailable, and words could scarcely convey the immensity of the destruction.

At the time, there were no survivors or eyewitnesses with first-hand accounts to communicate the tragedy to the people of Czechoslovakia. Geographical distance, language barriers, and censorship — the “outer” censorship imposed by the Allied Forces and later, after 1948, the “inner” censorship imposed by the communist regime — delayed and distorted the dissemination of nuclear-related information. Nevertheless, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the nuclear experiments of the 1950s and the looming threat of nuclear war, became significant themes in Czech and Slovak poetry.

This presentation examines two distinct waves of atomic-themed poetry in postwar Czech and Slovak literature. The first wave, emerging in the years immediately following the bombings, includes works such as František Hrubín’s Hiroshima (1948) and Karel Kapoun’s Night Ride (1948). The second wave, beginning in the mid-1950s and engaging a broader range of poets, features works such as Vítězslav Nezval’s The Sun Sets Over Atlantis Again Tonight (1956) and poems by Ivan Diviš, Milan Lajčiak, and Rudolf Skukálek.

This presentation examines the distinctive characteristics of the two waves of atomic-themed Czech and Slovak poetry within the context of the shifting political and ideological landscape of postwar Central Europe. It also explores how contemporary ideological perspectives, including the communist World Peace Council's campaigns and the rise anti-nuclear movement in the mid-1950s, shaped the literary narrative surrounding the atomic bombings.

This study examines an aspect of Feminist science fiction through the issues of pregnancy in Sayaka Murata's works. First, we will discuss the Japanese FSF that emerged under gender and queer studies, and then read Murata's “The Vanishing World”.

This paper conducts a comparative analysis of the representation of urban margins in contemporary SF, focusing on the socio-political dynamics of exclusion, resistance, and mobility within the cities of The City of Ember (Jeanne DuPrau), The City and the Stars (Arthur C. Clark), Folding Beijing (Hao Jingfang), Artemis (Andy Weir) and Waste Tide (Chen Qiufan). Each of these novels presents a speculative city that mirrors present-day concerns of social stratification, technological governance, and environmental decay, yet they do so through distinct narrative structures and cultural perspectives. By comparing the subterranean dystopia of The City of Ember and the everlasting Diaspar of The City and the Stars, the sharply divided zones of Folding Beijing and Artemis, and the techno-waste landscapes of Waste Tide, this study reveals the diverse ways in which SF critiques urban planning and governance. The analysis further highlights how these speculative spaces challenge or reinforce the notion of the commons as a site for either control or emancipation. The comparative framework not only underscores the varied interpretations of urban mobility and spatial justice but also sheds light on the potential of SF to interrogate and reshape our understanding of contemporary and future urban life.

This article compares the universe perspectives presented in Liu Cixin's "The Three-Body Problem" and Isaac Asimov's "Foundation." Both works explore aspects of cosmic space and universal laws from different angles. "The Three-Body Problem" extrapolates a series of high-dimensional technologies based on reality, while "Foundation" focuses on societal, political wisdom, and historical evolution, showcasing predictions and control over the future. Through comparative analysis, it reveals the unique understandings these two authors have of the universe, their far-reaching impact on human existence, technological advancement, and other related issues. This expands the multi-dimensional comprehension of cosmology, sparking profound philosophical and societal discussions.