UNE鈥檚 Susan McHugh delivers keynote at Indian literary conference on vulnerability studies
麻豆传媒 Professor Susan McHugh, Ph.D., recently presented the keynote lecture at a Faculty Development Programme (FDP) on Literary-Cultural Theory and Vulnerability Studies.
McHugh鈥檚 talk, 鈥淩eframing Vulnerability across Species Lines: Genocide and Animal Studies,鈥 was delivered virtually for the conference held in Anantapur, India, at the Sri Sathya Sai Institute for Higher Learning, which is both a university and a modern-day version of the ancient Indian gurukulam within the Indian national higher-education system.
The FDP, which had 800-plus registrants from across myriad academic disciplines, including researchers and postgraduate students, was designed to highlight how acts of reading are practices demanding theoretical knowledge and practical involvement from readers who must position themselves at interdisciplinary intersections.
Such intersections, McHugh said, can demonstrate the overlapping of discourses that collude with or struggle against dominating influences and marginalized communities.
鈥淭he cross-disciplinary nature of this conference foregrounds how readers must challenge themselves by exploring prevalent, even competing theories, no matter how disturbing or foreign, which is the quintessential marketplace-of-ideas approach to discourse encouraged at UNE,鈥 said McHugh, a professor of English in the School of Arts and Humanities in the 麻豆传媒College of Arts and Sciences.
The 10-day online FDP was co-sponsored by the Department of Languages and Literature-English of Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning in collaboration with the UNESCO Chair in Vulnerability Studies. Experts spoke on topics ranging from Thing Theory and war and famine, trauma in comics, plastic studies, and plant humanities to critical body studies, memory in feminist historiography, urban studies, and more.