Read The Introductory Note:We stand today at the threshold of a crisis and a reimagination of ourselves. We find ourselves in the thick of a global climate crisis that scrambles and disrupts our geological foundations, unleashing frequent mass-scale life-threatening events...Read more
Detailed Schedule of the Symposium: Please click the date below to see the respective schedule:
June 4, 2021, 7:30-10:30 pm (Click here for Bios and Abstracts)
7.30PM – Inaugural Introductions
8.00-8.30PM -1st Keynote Address : Pankaj Sekhsaria, Associate Professor, Centre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas (CTARA) & Associate Faculty, Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), IIT-Bombay.
“At the tri-junction of fragility and vulnerability: The Andaman and Nicobar story”
(Chair – Md. Monirul Islam, Assistant Professor of English, Presidency University, Kolkata)
8.30-9.00PM – Discussions on the first Keynote
9.00-10.00PM – 1st Panel – Post-Anthropocentrism (Chair – Pankaj Sekhsaria)
10.00-10.30PM – Discussions on the Papers of 1st Panel
Details of the Panel:
| Name of the Presenter | Title of the Paper |
| Soumili Das | The influence of Gandhi’s stand on the Harijan Question in Gandhi’s environmental doctrines: a Posthumanist reading |
| Ishtiaque Ahmed Levin | Decolonizing the Anthropocene: Perspectives from South Asia |
| Chitrangada Deb | Indra’s Web and the Return to the Posthuman |
| Trishala Dutta | The Things We Leave Behind: Thinking Through The Body and Its Discards |
June 5, 2021, 10 am – 12:30 pm (Click here for Bios and Abstracts)
10.00-10.30AM – 2st Keynote Address : Arka Chattopadhyay, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT, Gandhinagar.
“Can the State be Posthuman?”
(Chair – Samrat Sengupta, Assistant Professor of English, Sammilani Mahavidyalaya)
10.30-11.00AM – Discussions on the second Keynote
11.00AM-12.00PM – 2nd Panel – Nation-State and Neoliberalism (Chair – Arka Chattopadhyay)
12.00-12.30PM – Discussions on the Papers of 2nd Panel
Details of the Panel:
| Name of the Presenter | Title of the Paper |
| Sukanya Maity | Posthumanist Interpretations of Surveillance through the Introduction of Multiple Choice Questions and the Need to Fit in |
| Debarshi Arathdar and Amit Mandal | Tracing the ontic of Singularity: from Brahman to Big Brother |
| Subhadeep Paul | Bio-Denials and the Billboard Religious Imaginary: Posthuman Defeatism in Present-day India |
| Nisarga Bhattacharjee and Ananya Chatterjee | Cyber-Community Formation through Pokémon Go and the Question of Posthuman Private Spaces in India |
June 5, 2021, 7.30PM-10.00PM
7.30-8.00PM – 3rd Keynote Address: Anirban Das, Associate Professor, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Title – Posthumanism and the Many Ways of ‘Thinking’ the ‘Non-Human’
(Chair – Debashish Banerji, Haridas Chaudhuri Professor of Indian Philosophies and Cultures, California Institute of Integral Studiess)
8.00-8.30PM – Discussions on the second Keynote
8.30-9.30PM – 3rd Panel – Alternative Humans (Chair –Sucharita Sarkar, Associate Professor of English, D.T.S.S College of Commerce, Mumbai)
9.30-10.00PM – Discussions on the Papers of 3rd Panel
Details of the Panel:
| Name of the Presenter | Title of the Paper |
| Nabanita Karanjai | Posthumanist Strategies of Storytelling: “Metaphoric Connections” in A.K. Ramanujan’s A Flowering Tree |
| Mahasweta Sikdar | Almost Humans: A posthuman study of the creatures in the short stories of Satyajit Ray |
| Malgorzata Kowalcze | Posthuman Magical Corporeality in Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children” |
| Souvik Kar | The Sacrilegious Goddess: Giti Chandra’s “The Goddess Project” and the intersection of Postcolonial and Feminist Posthumanism |
June 11, 2021, 7.00 – 10.00 pm (Click here for Bios and Abstracts)
7.00-7.30PM – 4th Keynote Address : Anindya Sinha, Professor and Head, Academics, National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS)
“Being Macaque: Nonhuman Ethnographies of Urban India”
(Chair – Anirban Das, Associate Professor, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta)
7.30-8.00PM – Discussions on the Keynote.
8.00-8.45PM – 4th Panel – Animal Studies (Chair – Anindya Sinha)
8.45-9.10PM – Discussions on the Papers of 4th Panel
Details of the Panel:
| Name of the Presenter | Title of the Paper |
| S. Vignesh | Facing the Animal: Transcendent Pain and Immanent Grace |
| Susan Haris | The Posthumanist Cow: Decolonizing the ideological and the radical |
| Sriram Natarajan | Sacred Cows: The Fleshy Materiality of Religious Symbolism |
9.10-9.15 – Interval with instrumental interlude by Jonathan Kay
9.15-10PM – “Posthumanism as a way of existing”
A Dialogue between Francesca Ferrando, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Liberal Studies, New York University and Debashish Banerji, Haridas Chaudhuri Professor of Indian Philosophies and Cultures, California Institute of Integral Studies on “Posthumanism as a Way of Existing.”
Moderator: Jonathan Kay
June 13, 2021, 9.30 am – 12.00 pm (Click here for Bios and Abstracts)
9.30-10.00AM –5th Keynote Address : Christopher Key Chapple, Doshi Professor of Indic and Comparative Theology, Loyola Marymount University.
“Yoga in a Post-humanist Era”
(Chair – Debashish Banerji, Haridas Chaudhuri Professor of Indian Philosophies and Cultures, California Institute of Integral Studies.)
10.00-10.30AM – Discussions on the Keynote
10.30-11.30AM – 5th Panel – Yoga and Tantra (Chair – Christopher Key Chapple )
11.30-12.00AM – Discussions on the Papers of 5th Panel
Details of the Panel:
| Name of the Presenter | Title of the Paper |
| Shubham Dutta | The Abject Body and the Eternal Consciousness: the Human and the Non-Human Interface in Sri Aurobindo’s Karakahini |
| Alicia K. Gonzales | The New Nature: Perfecting Ecology Through the Integral Yoga of the Posthuman |
| Asijit Datta | The Posthuman in the Burial Ground: Unraveling the Headless and the Crematorial Kali |
| Jonathan Kay | Becoming-Raga: North Indian Raga Music as a Technology of Integral Posthuman Becoming |
June 13, 2021, 7.30PM-10.00PM
7.30-8.00PM –6th Keynote Address : Ritu Sen Chaudhuri, Professor and Head, Department of Sociology, West Bengal State University
“Some Observations on Feminist Post-Humanism”.
(Chair – Francesca Ferrando, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Liberal Studies, New York University)
8.00-8.30PM – Discussions on the Keynote
8.30-9.00PM – 6th Panel – Queer Subjects (Chair –Ritu Sen Chaudhuri)
9.00-9.15PM– Discussions on the Papers of 6th Panel
Details of the Panel:
| Name of the Presenter | Title of the Paper |
| Abhishek Vikas Lakkad | Queer Terror! Techno-science and the Heteronormative Nation in Iru Mugan |
| Jaya Sarkar | Indian Supercrip Cyborg: Deconstructing Normativity through Feminist Posthumanism |
9.15-10PM – Roundtable on “Envisioning Posthumanist Futures” (Participants – Debashish Banerji, Francesca Ferrando, Md. Monirul Islam and Samrat Sengupta)
10.00-10.15PM – Concluding Remarks and Vote of Thanks.