OEFL conducts workshops and guest lecture

Inside JGU

October 2023

OEFL conducts workshops and guest lecture

The Office of English & Foreign Languages (OEFL) along with the various centres affiliated with the office organised a university-wide workshop, special lecture, panel discussion and a reading workshop in October.

University-wide workshop:

Professor Nupur Samuel conducted a university-wide workshop, ‘Freewheeling Towards that Essay’ on October 19. This workshop discussed how to play and work with ideas, learning to engage with emerging ideas and developing mind-muscle endurance. The workshop aimed at helping students who were struggling with beginning an essay or assignment or stuck with some ideas but nowhere close to the completing that essay. The workshop was attended by 23 students who discussed their anxieties with the writing process.

Special Lecture

Professor Nupur Samuel organised a special lecture ‘Between the Motion and the Act: Spaces of Laughter in Chaplin’s Modern Times’ by Dr. Sayandeb Chowdhury, School of Interwoven Arts and Sciences (SIAS), Krea University, on October 12. The lecture was attended by 38 people. Through a close look at Charlie Chaplin’s almost silent Modern Times (1936), the talk discussed how the cinematic form encountered the technologised spaces of ‘modernity’, through repetitive, Kafkaesque mobility and how it intervened by showing the human form juxtaposed against the machines designed to present the worker alienated from their body. The lecture was followed by an enthusiastic discussion.

Panel Discussion:

Professor Madhura Lohokare (CWS, OEFL), Prof. Shivani Kapoor (CWS, OEFL) and Prof. Jadumani Mahanand (JGLS) organised a panel discussion, ‘Caste in the Classroom’ with Prof. Ishaan Mukherjee (JSJC) and Prof. Sagnik Dutta (JGLS) as speakers on October 20. The speakers discussed how faculty and students negotiate caste discrimination and caste privileges in the classroom through pedagogical practices and experiences. The discussion was attended by 30 people and led to discussion amongst the participants and the speakers.

Workshop:

Professor Madhura Lohokare (CWS, OEFL), the Centre for Women’s Rights and the Centre for Justice Law & Society at Jindal Global Law School jointly organised a Reading Workshop conducted by TARSHI (Talking About Reproductive and Sexual Health Issues), a non-profit organisation working on the issues of sexuality and wellbeing from an affirmative and rights-based perspective, on October 3. The objective of conducting this reading workshop was to provide a space for young people to explore questions of sexuality, well-being and relationships in a safe and non-judgmental manner, a space not easily available for young people in their familial or educational contexts. This workshop, aimed at first year students in JGU who might be negotiating with pressures of the new university space and its culture, academics and dynamics of new relationships.