The Department of English

University of Delhi
organizes a two-day
National Conference
on

Culture and Aesthetics in Indian Folklore

February 28-29, 2020

The word, ‘folk’ has wide range of connotations — ranging from ‘traditional’ to ‘rural’ to
‘popular’, and many more. A body of popular myths or beliefs relating to a particular place,
activity, or group of people gradually takes the form of Folklore. Every part of India has its
own folklore that is largely transmitted through oral tradition. Folk traditions acquaint us with
local heritage, local history, deepen contemporary life-patterns, and also help us study the
collective psyche of the past generations. Changing socio-economic situations marginalise,
complicate, and re-shape folk traditions. Often silenced in mainstream discourse, folk-
traditions need to be supported by serious academic inquiry. Fortunately in the recent years
the domain of English studies has extended to include the above areas as part of cultural
studies. In order to give impetus to it a two-day conference is being organized to explore the
cultural and aesthetic structures of existing folklore. The conference hopes to bring together
scholars, educationist, social scientists and artists to sustain a continuing dialogue.

Proposals are invited on the areas given below, but are not limited to these.

• Exploring mechanisms to document and preserve a cultural heritage of the

subcontinent as living forms and texts
• Folklore and/as popular culture
• Folklore and Literatures from Margins
• Folklore and Oral Tradition
• Folklore and Indian Classical Epics and Folk Performative Arts
• Folklore and the question of aesthetics
• The semantics and semiotics of folklore
• Indian Thought and Folk Arts and Crafts in Regional Languages
• Folklore and collective memory / amnesia
• Urban folklore
• Folklore and fakelore
• Folklore and Globalization
• Folklore and Contemporary Education
• Folklore and the question of livelihood

Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be submitted as Word documents/PDF to

folkconfdu@gmail.com by 10 January 2020.

Organizing Committee:
Prof. Raj Kumar (Head)
Dr Yogesh Kumar Dubey (Convenor)
Dr. Nidhi Vats
Dr. Vinod Kumar Singh