Siliguri, Feb 23, 2019: Three year old Post Graduate Department of English at Salesian College Siliguri Campus hosted its first PG Students’ Conference on the theme ‘Voices from the Margins’ on 22 February 2019.
“The conference aimed at providing PG students and young research scholars an academic platform for enunciating their views, sharing their research and encouraging their endeavours to help them become confident academicians of the future,” says PG Coordinator English Dr Gunjeet Aurora.
HoD English Department Assistant Professor Mr. Peter Lepcha further explained the conference theme saying, “The post-colonial formulations and binaries of centre-periphery/margin while furthering a discourse on the complex aspects of these two, have also become subjects of debate as the margin can’t simply be a derivative of the centre.”
“This conference is the defining moment of taking off of the PG Department in the college,” said Principal Dr. (Fr.) George Thadathil inaugurating the conference and complimenting English department.
HoD, Department of English, North Bengal University Prof. Ashis Sengupta, was the keynote speaker and senior faculty member Professor G.N. Roy gave the valedictory speech.
Participants and paper presenters included students from Jadavpur University Kolkata, University of North Bengal Siliguri, and Salesian College Siliguri.
Themes of 7 papers presented at the conference ranged from literature, cinema, music and other contemporary social issues with a strong relevance to the theme of marginality that evoked an awareness amongst the student population.
Some of the authors whose works were presented included Jhumpa Lahiri, Mahasweta Devi, Bessie Head, Jairaj, Shonali Bose, and Tupac Shakur.
The Valiaveettil Best Paper award of certificate and cash prize went to MA student of Jadavpur University Ms Hena Sarkar for her presentation entitled ‘Beyond the Periphery-Centre Binary: Interrogating the (‘Norm)al’ in Shonali Bose’s Margarita With a Straw.
Salesian Fr Vincent Valiaveettil who died on Easter Sunday April 4, 2010 in Kolkata was Principal of Salesian College Sonada from 1983 to 1993 and Head of English department for several years.