Thu, 28 March 2024
The Daily Ittefaq

Indo-Bangla prose collection published

Update : 11 Aug 2022, 14:23

The Myriad of Meanings in Literary Culture Studies is an Indo-Bangla prose collection of Literary and Cultural studies contributed by 19 authors from India and Bangladesh, published by Lulu Press Inc., USA and Blank Voices, Bangladesh in March 2022, partnered with Barnes and Noble (USA) and Amazon Books. However, since August 2022 distribution in Bangladeshi bookstores is about to begin, says a press release.

One of the editors Avik Gangopadhyay, who is an Indian author, academic, and critic, shares, “Literary and Cultural Studies gives one access to historical and emergent traditions of literature, culture, and thought. The Myriad of Meanings in Literary Culture Studies is interdisciplinary and sometimes anti-disciplinary approach to studying culture, particularly in its broadly-conceived and complex array of signifying practices.”

He also added that the minds of the two neighboring countries, India and Bangladesh met to explore a complex relationship, rather erase the conflict between literary and cultural studies. Literary studies is not
committed to a conception of the literary object that cultural studies must repudiate.

“Cultural studies arose as the application of techniques of literary analysis to other cultural materials,” concludes Avik.

Assistant Professor Dr. Koel Mitra of English at The Neotia University, Kolkata, India, expresses, “The Myriad of Meanings experiences a great international resonance. This innovative academic approach penetrates various social and political layers, addressing numerous challenges of realities from both times—past and present.”

Moreover, she asserted that the authors of this collection are concerned with questions of power and often
strived to engage in analysis or theory that would contribute to the counter-hegemonic struggle.

“Through critical interpretation, dialogue and conjecture, readers could easily trace the language mediated
through texts, arranging and allowing different ways of knowing and living,” believes Dr. Koel.

Ahmed Tahsin Shams, Assistant Professor of English, Notre Dame University Bangladesh and a Visiting Scholar at University of Notre Dame, USA, shares, “Since culture is now considered as the source of art and literature, cultural criticism has gained ground.”

Therefore, Raymond Williams’ term “cultural  materialism”, Stephen Greenblatt’s “cultural poetics” and Bakhtin’s term “cultural prosaic” have found significant reverberation in this book on cultural criticism,
reveals Shams.

Swadesh Shoilee, its Bangladeshi book distribution partner, confirms the book’s availability in Bangladesh from August 2022 in Rokomari, Pathak Shamabesh, Batighar, and many other bookstores and libraries.

About the book

The book involves an array of shimmering images of thoughts and discourses: be they in the dualism of nature and civilization by Jarin Tasneem Shoilee, in the philosophical approach of finding the inextricable bond between culture and civilization by Jaideep Mookherjee, in seeking happiness through philosophical religiosity by Samayita Bhattacharjee, in tracing psycho-social isolation through marginalisation by Soma Dutta, in approaching Nature as a social player by Odrija Das, in interpreting beauty, sublimity and aesthetics from a stream-of-consciousness perspective by Nabhoneel Gangopadhyay, in deconstructing socio-cultural order by Kamalika Majumder, in finding the reassuring roots of feminism by Rishakhi Chakraborty, in interweaving
environmental imageries with socio-political set up by Aishow Rozario, in capturing elements of ethnography and psychoanalysis through dissociation of society from culture by Aaloy Gangopadhyay, or in the fact-finding revelations of the tribal community by Lalti Dutta, in associating subaltern within the shifting spectrum of Historiography by Simool Sen, in viewing linguistic fluidity as a cultural component by Rabita Rahman, in elucidating the Renaissance of Bengal from an etymological frame of reference by Sarbartha Mukhopadhyay and in explicating the cultural impact of the Bhakti and Sufi movement by Kunal Roy.

The collection also includes Avik Gangopadhyay’s ingressing standpoint on the crisis of consciousness within the transcreative psyche, Ahmed Tahsin Shams’ culturally responsive pedagogical approach, and Dr. Koel Mitra’s historiographical attitude towards writing in the digital age and the effect of copyright on digital content.

More on this topic

More on this topic