Seminars

• Podcast on pedagogy of South Asian philosophy in Oxford University:  http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/episode-3-approaches-south-asian-philosophies

• “Liberally Illiberal: The Nature of Proscription in British India”, distinguished lecture delivered at the online international conference on “Proscribed Hindi Urdu Print and Colonial Historiography” by Department of Hindi, Hyderabad Central University and Centre for Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi: November 15, 2021.

•  “Control and Creative Freedom in India”, invited lecture as part of the lecture series marking 75 years of independence organized by the Department of English and Cultural Studies, Panjab University: September 24, 2021.

• “Riti, Guna and Anumana”, as part of the one week workshop on “Soundarya and the Sahridaya: Aesthetic Discourses in India & the West” jointly organized by the Research and Development Cell of Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kalady, Kerala and Sahapedia: November 27, 2020.

• “The Vernacular Cosmopolitan and the Making of a Literary ‘Commons’”, at the Centenary Commemoration Seminar on the establishment of the Department of Modern Indian Languages, organized by University of Calcutta in collaboration with Central Institute of Indian Languages: March 2019.

• “English as Bhasha: The Bilingual World of Kamala Das”, at the symposium on Kamala Das and the Bilingual Tradition organized by the Sahitya Akademi and Institute of English, University of Kerala: March 2015.

• “Beyond Borders and Differences: Transnational Literary Spaces”, keynote address at the UGC sponsored national seminar on Receding Boundaries: Transnational Spaces, Representation and Nationhood in South Asian Diaspora at Mar Ivanios College, Trivandrum: December 2015.

• “Out of Home and Hearth: The Santhals of India”, ATINER International conference held in Athens, Greece: May 2018.

• “A Bird Tells a Story: Sreemahabharatam kilippattu in Malayalam”, IACLSC International Seminar on Epic Tradition in World Literature, Gandhinagar, Gujarat: April 2018.

• “Appropriated and Mainstreamed: Indigenous Narratives from Kerala”, National conference organized by IACLALS and IIT Guwahati, Guwahati: February 2017.

• Sangam Poetry: Song of the Common Man, International Seminar on “Poetry as Counter-culture”, organized by the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla: May 16-18, 2016.

• A Centre at the Periphery? Indira Goswami’s The Bronze Sword of Thengphakri Tahsildar, National conference organized by IACLALS and Panjab University, Chandigarh: February 2014

• The Past and Future are Present: Epic Narratives of India, paper presented as part of panel presentation on “In Sickness and in Health:  Individual/Community Dynamics in Indian Cultural Narratives” at the 4th Global Conference on Storytelling: Global Reflections on Narrative organized by Inter-disciplinary.Net at Prague, Czech Republic: May 2013. 

• Invited paper, Local Worlds in a Glocal Language, at “The Indian Worlds of Indian English Literature” organized by Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi: March 2013

• His Master’s Voice: Colonial Subjectivity and Mimicry in Zachariah’s Bhaskara Pattelarum ente Jeevithavum, at The Postcolonial and/in the Indian Languages, organized by IACLALS and  University of Lucknow: Lucknow, February 2013

• Ideological Mediations of Utopia: Retellings of the Ramayana, at “Media and Utopia: Imagination, History, Technology”, the XV International Conference of the Forum on Contemporary Theory held in Allahabad: December 2012

• Red Star over Kerala: Translations and the Moulding of a Literature in Kerala, at “Translation and the Postcolonial: Multiple Geographies, Multi-lingual Contexts”, an international conference organized by the Leverhulme Network on “Postcolonial Translation: The Case of South Asia” at Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: June 8-9, 2011

• Reading as Resistance: The Spiritual and Political Power of Reading, National Conference on “Comparative Cultural Studies: Towards New Postcolonial Paradigms” organized by IACLALS (Indian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies) and Centre for Comparative Literature, Institute of English, University of Kerala at Thiruvananthapuram: January 2011  

• Reading Across Cultures: How the Daffodils fill an Indian Heart with Pleasure, “Strokes Across Cultures”, 15thTriennial International Conference of the Association for Commonwealth Language and Literature Studies held at Nicosia, Cyprus: June 2010

• The Recognition of the Fisherman: Literary Representations of the Unnamed, XII International Conference of the Forum on Contemporary Theory in Thiruvananthapuram: December 2009

• One Text, Many Discourses: The Strange Case of Anandamath, International Conference on “Translation and Postcolonialities” organized by IACLALS (Indian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies) and Department of English, Karnataka University at Dharwad: February 2009. 

·      Not Lost in Translation: Chemmeen on Alien Shores, National Seminar on “Nation and Translation” organized by Department of English, Pondicherry University and Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore at Pondicherry University: February 2008.

• Of Centres and Peripheries: Cultural Subversion in VKN’s Short Stories, National Conference on “Postcolonial Discourse in Bhasha Literatures” organized by Faculty of Arts, Benares Hindu University in Varanasi: September 2007.

• The Democratization of Censorship: Books and the Indian Public, International Conference on “A World Elsewhere: Orality, Manuscript and Print in Colonial and Postcolonial Cultures” jointly organized by Rhodes University and Centre for the Book in Cape Town, South Africa: April 2 - 4, 2007.

• “What’s the Use of Stories that aren’t even True?”: Politics and the Book, paper on the controversy surrounding The DaVinci Code at New Word Order, the SHARP Asia-Pacific Regional Conference held at Jadavpur University, January 2006.

• Locating the White Writer in post-apartheid South Africa, at “Teaching Postcolonial Texts: Theory and Strategy”, the Annual Conference of the Indian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies held at Madras, February 2005.

• Imagi(nation) in Amitav Ghosh's The Shadowlines paper on Amitav Ghosh at the 13th Triennial International Conference of the Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies held at Hyderabad in August 2004.