As a conceptual category, ‘popular culture’ continues to remain contested, controversial, and contentious. Besides the preliminary questions – ‘What is popular?’ and ‘What is culture’ – several other questions immediately present themselves; questions such as what is a cultural product? Whose culture can be deemed popular or otherwise? Who can make such pronouncements? Who legitimises and who hegemonises ‘culture’?

Questions such as these are decidedly political in nature, a politics that pulls is all directions and permeates through every aspect of our everyday lives. Why else would Roland Barthes propound on toys, milk, wine, striptease, etc. and Marshall McLuhan on the telegraph, typewriter, telephone, movies, raido, etc., and what else could make Pierre Bourdieu tell us “How can one be a sports fan?” on the one hand, and make Adorno and Horkheimer think of Enlightenment as mass deception, on the other? It is to engage with such political questions, pedestrian and profound, that we invite scholars to present their research at our two day national conference.

Popular Indian culture has been negotiated through three dominant paradigms thus far: the ‘little’ tradition (as opposed to the ‘great’) (Redfield and Singer 1954), the ‘culture industry’ (Adorno) and the ‘pirate modernity’ model (Sundaram 2010). What, then, may be some other possible models that might be fashioned to understand this moment? Further, given the new sensate cultures that appeared post-globalisation, what are the methodological tools beyond the textual that we may use to refract these popular cultures. Taking post-globalization India as the point of departure, this conference hopes to generate a dialogue on the middle-class’ relationship with this moment. If working class engagements found register in the ‘globalization from below’ (Vasudevan 2010), how may one consider the cultures of conspicuous consumption, new sensibilities and altered languages of literary and cultural artefacts and forms that came into being at this moment. For instance, is the category of the popular inflected by class? Can there be an ‘upper class’ or a ‘middle class’ popular or is that just ‘mass culture’? Or must the popular always be through the prism of the subaltern? Is there a North Indian popular, which may be different from or similar to South Indian popular, if any? Can the popular be inflected by caste? By social capital? By cultural capital? How do technological changes inflect the popular and the signs that mediate it?

We are interested to hear from scholars who engage with any or all aspects of these social phenomena. We invite theoretical and analytical papers on these concerns wherein scholars may critique texts hitherto untouched or theorise anew to challenge the received wisdom. The cultural products/commodities may range from anything to everything: Gulshan Nanda’s and Surendra Mohan Pathak’s thrillers to Chetan Bhagat’s and Ravinder Singh’s ‘aspirational literature’; from Bollywood masala films to Ekta Kapoor’s interminable tear jerkers; from street art to political posters; from classical music to folk and filmy; from comic books to graphic novels; and so on.

To that end, we invite 300 word abstracts no later than 25 January 2016 by scholars, teachers and researchers within the national boundary to be sent to zhceengconference at gmail.com. Please include name, institutional affiliation and a short (100 word) bio-note along with the abstract. We will respond to the abstract by 31 January 2016. Themes for the conference include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Defining the ‘Indian popular’
• Technologies and infrastrtuctures of the ‘popular’
• New popular forms in the ‘global moment’
• The ‘Dalit popular’
• Queering the popular/ the queer popular
• The rise of the machinic-popular/ Cybernetic possibilities
• Querying the regional-popular through film, television, music, and comics
• Food Cultures

 We request participants to please take note of the following.

The registration deadline for accepted papers will be 15 February 2016. We expect participants to send the conference delegation fee (Rs 1000 (for Delhi-based participants) and Rs 2000 (for outstation participants)) by cheque/DD addressed to the Principal, Zakir Husain Delhi College (Evening). The registration form will be available on the college website. The conference delegation fee entitles you to a conference kit, writing pad with pen, a copy of the conference proceedings, conference programme and two days’ refreshments and lunch.

All accepted abstracts will be published in a volume of conference proceedings with an ISBN number by a reputed publisher. We also aim to bring out an edited volume of selected and peer-reviewed complete papers with an ISBN number. The completed papers should not exceed 3000 words in length and be in 12 point size font, Times New Roman with 1.5 line spacing.

The college will provide limited accommodation for the duration of the conference (two days). If participants wish to avail of the accommodation offered by the college, they are requested to indicate the same at the time of sending in the abstract. Accommodation includes breakfast, lunch and dinner at the conference venue for two days. In case there is any person accompanying the delegate, a separate fee shall be charged.