Faculty Publications
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Item Feminism and the Gendered Body in Sarah Aboobackar’s “Sahana”: A Saga of Mute Agony(Bloomsbury Publishing Plc., 2014) Mallya, A.G.; Koudur, S.[No abstract available]Item D?sa s?hitya: Some notes on early publications(Equinox Publishing Ltd journals@equinoxpub.com Office 415, The Workstation15 Paternoster Row Sheffield S1 2BX, 2016) Koudur, S.D?sa S?hitya is a literary genre in Kannada, first seen in the latefifteenth century. Making its mark both in literature and in Indian classical music, D?sa S?hitya attracted the attention of missionaries and other colonial functionaries, and was one of the first genres to be edited and published in Kannada in the mid-nineteenth century. Very soon, native editors and publishers started working on the genre. Usually classified under bhakti literature in the literary historiography of Kannada literature, D?sa S?hitya was published by individuals of varying interests. This article makes a survey of some of the early publications of the genre, and notes varying concerns and interests with which they were produced. We refrain from classifying these works as either ‘colonial’ or ‘nationalist’, while noting that the genre and the associated works were inextricably linked to the brahmin community from the days of the early publications, even as this community projected it as part of ‘Kannada’ culture. We also note evidence of cultural opposition to the change from manuscript to print. © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2017.Item To go, or not to go: The palestinian realities of exile in the works of Sahar Khalifeh(Universiti Putra Malaysia son@upm.edu.my, 2018) Priyanka, A.; Koudur, S.Palestinian exile under the Israeli occupation is one of the core themes in Palestinian narratives. Exiles encounter multiple issues like dislocation, fragmentation of identity, separation from the family and psychological anguish in their day-to-day life. Palestinian writers have been engaged in writing extensively on the harrowing experiences of exile. Simultaneously, they have written on the emerging challenges faced by the Palestinians on return to their homeland. This article explores the theme of exile in the narratives of Sahar Khalifeh through an interpretive lens of settler colonial theory. Exile, however is experienced differently by both men and women. Indeed, women's experience of exile and impact of male exile on women has been marginalised in male narratives. The paper brings out how the Palestinian writer Sahar Khalifeh broaches the impact of Palestinian exile on both men and women as a negative and demoralising experience. The paper specifically focuses on women who are the victims of exile and their suffering - from subtle to the more conspicuous. © Universiti Putra Malaysia Press.Item Languages, Castes and Hierarchy: Basel Mission in Nineteenth-Century Coastal Karnataka(Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd F 35-55, Triveni Commercial Complex.Sheikh Sarai,Phase I New Dehli 110 017, 2020) Koudur, S.In the former South Kanara or south coastal Karnataka region, the presence of overlapping languages, mainly Tulu and Kannada, posed prolonged dilemmas in the nineteenth century for the Basel Mission. The choice of language was important for their evangelical work, supported by important language-related activities such as dictionary making, grammar writing and translations. Since language use was intertwined with caste hierarchy, this raised issues over the position of lower castes, mainly Billavas, for the native elites and upper castes. This article argues that the prioritisation of Kannada, and relegation of Tulu to a secondary position, was an outcome not only of missionary perceptions of the larger Kannada context, but also more importantly can be traced back to elite representations regarding the subaltern Tulu culture and lifeworld. As missionary intervention in education and native language use challenged the status quo of social hierarchy among local communities, this sparked efforts by the native elites to reclaim and restore the earlier hierarchy. In the process, the native elite representations of Tulu language and culture became at the same time an effort at dismissal and appropriation. © 2020 SAGE Publications.Item Of dictionaries and dialectics: Locating the vernacular and the making of modern malayalam(Aesthetics Media Services, 2021) Koiloth Ramath, A.K.; Koudur, S.This paper looks at Hermann Gundert's Malayalam-English dictionary at the juncture of the modernisation of the Malayalam language in the 19th century. Gundert, the then inspector of schools in the Malabar district, saw the dictionary as the first step towards the cause of a universal education through the standardisation of Malayalam language. But what did a dictionary for all and by implication a language for all mean to the Kerala society? For centuries, much of the literary output in Kerala was in Sanskrit language, even as Malayalam continued its sway. The diversity of the language system in Kerala navigated its way through the hierarchies of caste and class tensions, springing up new genres from time to time within these dichotomies. Like many other vernacular languages in India, the Malayalam language system remained as the society it was in, decentralised and plural. This fell into sharp relief against the language systems of modern post-renaissance Europe with its standardised languages and uniform education. The colonial project in India aimed at reconstructing the existing language hierarchies by standardising the vernaculars and replacing Sanskrit as the language of cosmopolitan reach and cultural hegemony with English. Bilingualism and translation was key to this process as it seemed to provide a point of direct cultural linkage between the vernacular Indian cultures and Europe. This paper argues that Gundert's bilingual dictionary features itself in this attempt at the modernisation of Malayalam by reconstructing the existing hierarchies of Kerala culture through the standardisation of Malayalam and the replacement of Sanskrit with a new cosmopolitan language and cultural values. © AesthetixMS 2021.Item The Missionary Housemother and Her ‘Daughters’: Voice and agency in female subaltern spaces in 19th Century Malabar(Routledge, 2023) Koiloth Ramath, A.; Koudur, S.The paper attempts to explore notions of public-private dichotomy with reference to collective agency and inclusion. It looks at a women’s shelter run by a missionary wife Julie Gundert of the Basel Mission in nineteenth-century Malabar. The missionaries played a key role in the introduction of printing and the development of a modern public sphere in the region: a space, nevertheless, restricted to men from the educated elite classes. Julie’s shelter, meanwhile, provides an alternate cultural space where women, especially those from the excluded communities, the disabled, the abandoned and the lowest classes and castes could come together. The shelter is seen as a location of intimate and privatised cultural contact radically different from that practised in the formal, restrictive sites of the emerging public sphere; a space where subaltern cultures challenged the status of the visible public sphere as the key platform for social-cultural inclusion and agency. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.Item Development vis-à-vis Degrowth: Stories of Resistance, Struggle, and Survival from the Postcolonial Western Ghats(Karadeniz Technical University, 2023) Joseph, S.R.; Koudur, S.One of the eight “hottest hotspots” of biodiversity according to UNESCO, the Western Ghats have much to be credited for the historical prosperity of western peninsular India. The colonial era marked the beginning of the ecological diversity of the forests of the Ghats, spawning new rules and policies in the state. The consequent land allocations posed a challenge to the community identity of the indigenous tribes of the region. Even after India’s independence, the native successors in governance and land ownership inherited the capitalist and imperialist policies claiming to reduce poverty through development. The rampant growth strategies and the unpredictable climatic variations with a cycle of drought and torrential rain further threatened the ecological stability and also pushed the native tribes into destitution and displacement. This paper attempts to analyze literary works chronicling the tribal lives of the Western Ghats alongside social narratives on the recent harsh adverse effects of unsustainable growth in southwest India. The acclaimed novel Kocharethi the Araya Woman brings to the fore powerful statements of race and land rights of the Arayar community against the backdrop of the Western Ghats. The woes of the Badaga population of the Nilgiris amidst development interventions are core to the novel When the Kurinji Blooms. The paper attempts to read how the poignant narratives from the Western Ghats are a clarion call to redefine development through a broader cultural process of decolonizing the growth paradigms. © 2023 Karadeniz Technical University. All rights reserved.Item Decolonial Myths and Demi-gods of the Tropics: The More-than-Human Worlds of Manasa and Olokun(James Cook University, 2023) Joseph, S.R.; Koudur, S.In response to the current age of the Anthropocene, Posthumanist studies explore multispecies' entanglements and encounters in order to move away from the colonial binaries that separate humans from the environment. Adding to these studies, this paper explores the role of mythology in decolonising the Westerncentric strategies of narration. Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island and Rita Indiana’s Tentacle, envision the relationship of the human with other species against the deepening climate crisis, bringing to the fore the often-discounted discourses of cultural myths. In Gun Island, Manasa, the quintessential nagini is a folk deity of fear-based Nature worship from the Bay of Bengal, and an outsider to the established pantheon of Hindu gods. The Yoruba deity, Olokun, and his/her incarnations, move across the three time periods in Tentacle emerging as the saviour of the Caribbean islands. The novels reinterpret and re-evaluate the tropical Indigenous myths to implement alternate approaches of knowing and being in the world. This article seeks to explore how posthumanist and decolonial perspectives in these mythologies create new alliances that stretch across space, time, and species, symbolising the relationality of all life. The paper delves into the power of the mythical deities to highlight the existence of an interconnected network of human and more-than-human realms. © 2023, eTropic. All Rights Reserved.Item Recasting Gender Roles: The New Woman and the New Man in Women-Centred Contemporary Malayalam Films(Bridgewater State College, 2025) Karimpaniyil, R.B.; Koudur, S.This article examines the representation of gender roles in select women-centred contemporary Malayalam films. It attempts to expand on the idea of the “new Indian woman” and develop a concept of the “new Indian man.” The new Indian woman is a byproduct of the cultural metamorphosis caused by liberalisation, while the new Indian man could be understood as the product of modern culture’s attempt to undermine traditional masculinity. By analysing the movies Biriyaani (2020), The Great Indian Kitchen (2021), Aanum Pennum (2021), and Sara’s (2021), as well as the short films Memories of a Machine (2016), Freedom @ Midnight (2021), Periods vs Men (2021), and Love Sex Periods (2022), this paper illustrates how this concept of the “new Indian woman” has been redefined by media. These films also foreground how the new Indian man negotiates more subtle and sensitive gender issues. This study contributes to the existing literature on contemporary femininities and masculinities by discussing issues central to feminist discourses, including gender equality, marriage, reproductive autonomy, and menstruation. © 2025 Bridgewater State College. All rights reserved.Item Reimagining the Lagosian Landscape in Lagoon: Extraterrestrials, Geoengineering, and a More-than-Human Ecology(Routledge, 2025) Joseph, S.R.; Koudur, S.Navigating an oil-ravaged ecosystem, the novel Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor elevates the landscape of Lagos to a fantastical and otherworldly space of posthuman constellations adapted for the critical exigencies of the Anthropocene crisis. By achieving new vistas, the narrative backdrop of the place conjoins actors and perspectives from a radical otherworld and the earthly realm, knitting together all planetary elements—terrestrial, aquatic, and extraterrestrial. In this article, Lagos is imagined as a site subjected to cutting-edge geoengineering technology, prefigured as a saviour landscaping technique in the Anthropocene, through the intent and interference of the extraterrestrials. With the aliens as the agents of this environmental alchemy, the landscape of Lagos has to be thought of anew, both as an agent of salvation and of rejuvenation, decentring the anthropocentric ideals that uphold the values of neocolonialism. The aliens, who call themselves the “change,” emerge as a significant placeholder, as their bodies can alter shapes and they possess the power to manipulate the physicality of other creatures. They herald “change” in their sheer presence, wherein human consciousness relents and cognition falters. The study explores a re-negotiation of human–nonhuman worlds and the events whose narrativisation destabilises human control over the landscape. Typified initially as a locale of anthropogenic activities, Lagos, later on, is cast as a ground of posthuman activity, resisting exploitation and challenging preconceived notions about the passivity of physical environments. The geoengineered Lagosian landscape effectively spans the divide between Earth’s abstract planetary space and the real, embodied environment where humans are experiencing the repercussions of the Anthropocene. © 2025 Unisa Press.