Nagendra Kumar | Indian Institute Of Technology, Roorkee (original) (raw)

Papers by Nagendra Kumar

Contemporary time necessitated the use of advanced, scientific and digital technologies to take f... more Contemporary time necessitated the use of advanced, scientific and digital technologies to take forward the teaching-learning process uninterrupted, making teaching online effective, cheap, convenient, and an alternative to traditional classes. It has been a drastic change that revolutionised English Language classes. Unprecedented levels of digitalisation in the field of education cropped up many logistical and pedagogical problems. This research paper attempts to look into these problems through a survey, analysing the different perspectives and approaches of individual teachers in developing and evaluating language skills, developing primers and ICT tools, and using them for effective, pleasurable online language teaching-learning, making classes student-centred. It also analysed the scope of making online and traditional classrooms supplementary and complementary to each other. Certainly, there is a need for better infrastructure, training, connectivity, integration of Augmented and Virtual Reality to provide experiential learning and to cope up with emerging challenges

Proceedings of the 5th Arts & Humanities Conference, Copenhagen, 2019

The birth of two independent nations India and Pakistan from Hindustan in 1947 was not an easy pr... more The birth of two independent nations India and Pakistan from Hindustan in 1947 was not an easy process. The partition which was conceived for peace, harmony and order brought only violence and hostility on both parts of the country at that point in time. The repercussion of the partition can be seen in the present day also as durable peace since then has never been achieved between the two countries. The poignant partition inspired literature, which has collected the partition experiences of common folk. The partition literature which emerged as a separate genre of literature is a medium of cultural memory which helps in shaping the sensibility of contemporary readers. The present article seeks to examine the role of partition in degenerating the relationship between India and Pakistan and the collective memory shared by the contemporary people by a reading of Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan, a masterpiece of partition literature.

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities

The history of sexual violence taken into consideration for the present study goes back to the pe... more The history of sexual violence taken into consideration for the present study goes back to the period of Second World War, where hundreds of thousands of young girls, euphemistically called the ‘comfort women’ from different Japanese colonies of the time like Korea, China, Philippines, Indonesia, and Taiwan, were abducted and rounded up by Japanese Imperial Army to provide sexual services to the Japanese soldiers at the military camps before and during the war. The most heinous acts of sexual violence, multiple gang rape, vaginal mutilation, venereal diseases and suicides are manifested in the testimonies and autobiographies of many former comfort women who after fifty years of silence finally found their voices to talk about their ordeal and the trauma they suffered. For the present work, Nora Okja Keller’s Comfort Woman (1997) is studied with a psychoanalytic lens to explore the traumatic history of the real comfort women or the victims of sexual violence. Further, the essay is di...

Humanities & Social Sciences Reviews

Purpose of the Study: This research paper intends to unravel and examine the postmodern elements ... more Purpose of the Study: This research paper intends to unravel and examine the postmodern elements in Katsuhiro Ōtomo’s anime film Akira (1988). This paper aims to analyze and critically study the postmodern elements as evident in the film and add more knowledge to the existing critical studies available on the film. Methodology: The primary text for this research is Katsuhiro Ōtomo’s anime film Akira (1988). Close textual analysis has been applied to analyze the text in view of the characteristics of postmodernism. The text is read in terms of postmodernism’s traits. Main Findings: Akira symbolically summarizes thoughts, ideas, and movements in post-WWII Japan. The film references many disaster texts from the repertoire of Japanese literature, cinema, and popular culture. The film exemplifies many postmodern traits such as discontinuity, pastiche, schizophrenia, hyperreality, cyberpunk, posthumanism, the cyborg et cetera. Application of the Study: This study will be beneficial to tho...

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2017

The present article argues that the representation of the animals in the colonial texts try to re... more The present article argues that the representation of the animals in the colonial texts try to reassert and reconfigure the colonial rule on the colonised subjects. Likely, the handling of the non-human animals by the colonials in sporting or non-sporting ways erects an invisible and persistent hegemonic control over the native land. As far as the processing of the big cat animals, particularly a man-eater is concerned; it emerges with convoluting the sound factors of race, gender and supremacy. The shooting of the man-eater animal by a white is purely a forefront which designs an imperial masculinity. Through a critical analysis of Jim Corbett's text Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag, the study aims exclusively at: first, to explore the role of an animal (Leopard): a vital object in contouring masculinity. Secondly, to foreground the animal stance, questioning the human authorised version of a man-eater and the enduring human rule over the nonhuman animals. The discussion implants the leopard, a subject of explication, as an essential character; liable to his 'natural' proviso.

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities

The Singapore Grip (1978) is the third instalment of the Empire trilogy by Booker Prize-winning n... more The Singapore Grip (1978) is the third instalment of the Empire trilogy by Booker Prize-winning novelist James Gordon Farrell. It inscribes colonial Singapore’s socio-economic situation through the story of a British tycoon who is engaged in multi-commercial enterprises, mainly rubber business, in the colony of Singapore. The present paper examines the titular phrase “Singapore Grip” in the novel. It argues that Farrell explores many aspects of British colonialism in Singapore through this phrase. By decoding the multiple connotations of the phrase, through reading instances from the novel, the paper will foreground the social, political, and economic issues critical in understanding colonialism in colonial Singapore.

Scrutiny2, Mar 30, 2022

Kurt Vonnegut’s Galápagos is his most studied novel after Slaughterhouse-Five. A considerable num... more Kurt Vonnegut’s Galápagos is his most studied novel after Slaughterhouse-Five. A considerable number of the studies produced on the novel investigate it using a posthumanist theoretical framework, for its unprecedented narrative spans a million years, employs a ghost for its omniscient narrator, and depicts human extinction and the evolution of a post-Homo sapiens species. This article questions scholarly claims that Galápagos is a truly posthumanist text. It begins with an account of the anthropocentric and humanist thought originating in the Western tradition and then touches upon the many strands of posthumanism that strive towards decentring the human and promoting inter-species equality and justice. Next, it dissects in detail the flaws of Vonnegut’s posthumanism and his incorrigible humanist bent in Galápagos, and goes on to identify the novel’s plot as echoing the archetypal trope of the creation myth—a humanist construct. The article thereby concludes that Galápagos, despite its depiction of the post-human in the form of an evolved post-Homo sapiens species, suffers from Vonnegut’s ever unstable humanist and posthumanist impulses and thus manages to remain a humanist–posthumanist concoction at best.

In this paper, we are examining the sponsored advertisement posts/regular post on Facebook of a f... more In this paper, we are examining the sponsored advertisement posts/regular post on Facebook of a few business enterprises based in India to promote their products during first two phases of COVID-19 lockdown period. As a marketing and product promotion strategy, many business companies use social media platforms like Facebook and others to advertise their product through quick sponsored posts from time to time. As the use of social media has increased during the lockdown period when people are spending their whole time at home for a more extended period, these sponsored posts are more likely to be hit by the viewers. The present paper studies the contents of select sponsored posts/regular posts on Facebook to show how the “lockdown” period created atmospherics for E-commerce businesses. It also argues that by using topical words and phrases like “quarantine” and “work from home” respectively, as a tempting marketing strategy, the capitalist enterprises are using this time of distress...

Handbook of Aging, Health and Public Policy, 2021

Literature has potentially highlighted the different aspects of human society since ages. Its rea... more Literature has potentially highlighted the different aspects of human society since ages. Its realistic portrayal of the societal nuances and ability to evoke the emotions of its readers establishes its importance. It not only serves an aesthetic purpose but also sensitizes its readers by delineating the harsh realities of oppression, abuse, exploitation, etc. The present chapter critically examines two short stories of two different periods to study the literary representation of elder abuse that has existed since long and continues in modern times. The chapter investigates the day-today social reality of maltreatment of the elderly that manifests itself in the literary arena. This chapter also focuses on the empathizing nature of literature, which is capable of rectifying the perception and responses of people towards the elderly.

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2021

INTRODUCTION The history of colonization of Ireland can be traced back to the middle of the twelf... more INTRODUCTION The history of colonization of Ireland can be traced back to the middle of the twelfth century when Henry II invaded County Wexford. This first attempt of colonization was later followed by the expansionist motives of several monarchs, that resulted in the complete subjection of Ireland under the English Crown. The introduction of the settlers, serving British interest, on the ABSTRACT The present article examines the longstanding strife between the Irish Catholics and AngloIrish Protestants through James Gordon Farrell’s historical novel, Troubles (1970). By focusing on the character of Edward; a representative of Anglo-Irish Ascendancy in the novel, this study argues that the representation of the native Irish Catholics suffers from “othering”. The study relies on the concepts formulated and explicated by postcolonial critics like Fanon, Said and Spivak in their critical works as its theoretical premise. The article first traces the epistemological creation of the nat...

Neohelicon, 2021

This article is about the Indian man-eater tiger, through Jim Corbett’s narratives, as an anthrop... more This article is about the Indian man-eater tiger, through Jim Corbett’s narratives, as an anthropocentric construct of animality in British India at the beginning of the twentieth century. During this transformative phase, the masculine idea of unrestricted sportsmanship against tigers struggles for its validity in the surge of game preservation. The paper argues, forthwith it is the hunting of a man-eater tiger that reinforces the British Crown’s hegemony in the subcontinent by studying Corbett as a sort of metonym for imperial legitimacy that protected Indian populations from predation. The analysis sheds light on the politicisation of an animal’s animality by highlighting a rare view of colonialism when the imperial power targets man–animal conflict via sharpening the biopolitical congeniality between the coloniser (the state) and the colonised human population. The paper advances on how the colonial and post-colonial state power unevenly exert the notion of conservation by infringing a tiger’s identity from biopolitical to necropolitical subject when species (human and animal) share antagonistic spaces.

The present paper examines the use and description of colonial medicine for cholera and its pract... more The present paper examines the use and description of colonial medicine for cholera and its practices in J.G. Farrell’s historical novel, The Siege of Krishnapur (1973). The paper shows that by engaging the two doctors stationed at the British residency in Krishnapur in a debate, Farrell contextualises an episode in British medical history to foreground popular medical beliefs on the aetiology of cholera and its treatment prevalent in nineteenth century Britain. The paper then argues that Farrell’s critique of an outdated medicinal theory and welcoming of the scientific future of colonial medicine simultaneously is an attempt to reinstate the position of “civilised medicine” in colonial India. It further establishes a vital link between Farrell and cholera by bringing in contemporary contexts, and discusses how cholera served as a dual tool to not only satisfy his compulsive interest in disease and doctors but also his aspirations for historical creativeness.

Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 2020

ABSTRACT Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) has remained the most widely discussed of his... more ABSTRACT Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) has remained the most widely discussed of his novels in the five decades since its publication. However, the volume of critical work produced on it far outweighs the unique lines of thought investigated. The critiques have mostly been limited to – diagnoses of Billy Pilgrim’s mental disorder, locating the sources of the diagnosed ailments, examinations of Vonnegut’s intended philosophy, comparisons of the novel to other anti-war works, and investigations of the elements of humor and science fiction in the novel. This article attempts a close reading of the novel along the lines of the hero quest, or monomyth, as chronicled in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) by Joseph Campbell. The article disentangles the novel to release the inherent quest narrative from its non-linear structure and reinterprets it in terms of Campbell’s quest stages to reveal an uncanny resemblance to the mythical hero’s journey. The nature of the journey and the hero’s traits, and the departures observed in Vonnegut’s monomyth from Campbell’s determine the relevance and implications of Billy’s quest and warrant the need to coin his quest anew, namely the anti-monomyth.

Media Watch, 2021

The interaction between disability studies and ecocriticism has attracted effective responses fro... more The interaction between disability studies and ecocriticism has attracted effective responses from academia. This paper investigates how toxicity deteriorates environmental health and also engenders chronic illnesses and disability in the backdrop of the Bhopal gas tragedy. Animal’s People (2007) by Indra Sinha portrays the life of a disabled boy who takes the readers to a post-apocalyptic fictional city, Khaufpur, where he introduces the readers to his disability and the shame and stigma attached to it. The novel vividly discusses the gas leak, the plight of the exposed people, and the medical response team’s failure, who stood clueless in assisting the victims. The novel dramatizes ‘that night’ when the chemicals were spewed into the air, affecting the exposed, killing fetuses, and later disabling the survived. The paper also proposes to scrutinize how slow violence affects the marginalized people and how it distorts a person’s identity by attributing him an ill body that is continuously under the siege of the ableist and normative society. It further looks into how the diseased and disabled bodies navigate a world that only privileges the non-disabled in the novel’s backdrop. The article explores how the injustice inflicted by both the government and the multinational corporations permanently disables the environment, thereby depriving the people of their right to a healthy life.

South Asian Popular Culture, 2020

ABSTRACT Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi is a recently released Indian historical biopic of Rani... more ABSTRACT Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi is a recently released Indian historical biopic of Rani Lakshmi Bai. Through historical re-imagining, the film renders several potential social and political issues, which are topical and timely in contemporary India. The present article attempts to examine the topicality of the film. First, it discusses how it rekindles the female heroic tradition of India, which has been overshadowed due to the patriarchal mindset and historiography. Secondly, it explores how, through cinematic liberties, issues like gauraksha, Hindutva, and patriotism have been propagated. Thirdly, it argues how by foregrounding Dalits and Muslims, the film attempts to neutralise extremist Hindu prejudices, dominant in the hyper-nationalist climate of India. The article concludes that by recreating a crucial historical epoch and a legend, the film attempts to reinstate a secular heritage of India’s heroic tradition to rekindle nationalistic and patriotic sensibility among the contemporary masses.

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2020

South Asian Review, 2020

Abstract Urban modernity, since its conceptualization, has been founded on the discourses of what... more Abstract Urban modernity, since its conceptualization, has been founded on the discourses of what Guy Debord calls “spectacles” or the grand, majestic, decorated expressions of the Imperial/Capitalist progress that signify a modern metropolis. These spectacles, both physically and metaphysically, represent the vast accumulation of commercial, cultural and intellectual wealth, meant for sensualizing an audience. In many cases, on contrary, they produce a psychopathology, what George Simmel calls a blasé attitude, marked by indifference, irritation and superficiality. A flâneur is a significant example of this urban type, whose gaze is symptomatic of the spirit of an ascetic roaming in the jungle of concrete. This very often incisively dissects the progressive dicta of an “advanced” metropolis to lay bare its dark and hidden crevices, hitherto unknown or unnoticed. S/he thus creates a new esthetic of urban writing by exploring the non-spectacular and banal spatio-temporality of the city (the “trash of history”) and catching the inevitable ambiguities as if in flashes of what Benjamin calls the “dialectical images.” This paper proposes to look at this alternative dialectical vision of urban modernity through Amit Chaudhuri’s celebrated fiction A Strange and Sublime Address (1991). The arguments made in the paper move chiefly around three topics: theoretical exploration of the dialectical character of spectacle and phantasmagoria in context of modern urban space, and the treatment of these theories in analyzing the fiction with the help of the concepts like the “dialectical image” and the simultaneous “now-time” or “Jetztzeit”; situating the novel in the cultural-historical and socio-political milieu during and after the liberalization of Indian economy in 1991, especially from the author’s perspective; and analyzing alternative narrative strategies employed in the novel by means of cloze reading.

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2019

Proceedings of the 5th Arts & Humanities Conference, Copenhagen, 2019

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities

Humanities & Social Sciences Reviews

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2017

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities

Scrutiny2, Mar 30, 2022

Handbook of Aging, Health and Public Policy, 2021

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2021

Neohelicon, 2021

Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 2020

Media Watch, 2021

South Asian Popular Culture, 2020

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2020

South Asian Review, 2020

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2019

National Conference on Contemporary Perspectives in English Language, Literature & Cultural Studies, Chandigarh University, 2021

The Singapore Grip (1978) is the third instalment of the Empire trilogy by Booker Prizewinning no... more The Singapore Grip (1978) is the third instalment of the Empire trilogy by Booker Prizewinning novelist James Gordon Farrell. It inscribes colonial Singapore's socioeconomic situation through the story of a British tycoon who is engaged in multi-commercial enterprises, mainly rubber business, in the colony of Singapore. The present paper examines the titular phrase 'Singapore Grip' of the novel. It argues that Farrell explores many aspects of British colonialism in Singapore through this phrase. By decoding the multiple connotations of the phrase, through a reading of instances from the novel, the paper will foreground the social, political, and economic issues critical in understanding colonialism in colonial Singapore.

62nd All India English Teachers Conference, Osmania University, Hyderabad, 2018

The conditions of women have been widely discussed and debated in literature through ages. Women ... more The conditions of women have been widely discussed and debated in literature through ages. Women in modern societies are comparatively free to live on their own terms, unlike the traditional women, who were submissive, dependent and considered to be weak. The social changes have provided equal opportunities to women in education, employment and recognition. There are well known Indian Women Writers like Arundhati Roy, Anita Desai, Nayantara Sahgal and many others who are writing about women concerns, problems and their confined domestic space. However, there have been some new writers also who are writing about concerns and issues besetting women, but due to certain limitations, they are not as widely discussed as many of their other counterparts. Anita Agnihotri, a senior I.A.S officer, is one such writer. She is a new voice in the world of Indian Women Writings, interested in writing pieces of literature about the cosmopolitan 'new' India, sharing her experience of life as a woman and as a civil servant. The purpose of this paper is to explore the psychological self of Kusumjit, the protagonist of her short story "Encirclement". She is an urban educated young civil servant facing conflicts and tensions unleashed in her professional as well as personal life by the very process of development and modernisation. Further, this paper also analyses the process of human engagement and disengagement and the hollowness of human relationships in today's modern world, which has also been indirectly criticised in this story.

SAGE Advance Preprint, 2020

In this paper, we are examining the sponsored advertisement posts/regular post on Facebook of a f... more In this paper, we are examining the sponsored advertisement posts/regular post on Facebook of a few business enterprises based in India to promote their products during first two phases of COVID-19 lockdown period. As a marketing and product promotion strategy, many business companies use social media platforms like Facebook and others to advertise their product through quick sponsored posts from time to time. As the use of social media has increased during the lockdown period when people are spending their whole time at home for a more extended period, these sponsored posts are more likely to be hit by the viewers. The present paper studies the contents of select sponsored posts/regular posts on Facebook to show how the "lockdown" period created atmospherics for E-commerce businesses. It also argues that by using topical words and phrases like "quarantine" and "work from home" respectively, as a tempting marketing strategy, the capitalist enterprises are using this time of distress, global misery and tribulation, for promoting their business.

The Explicator (Routledge), 2021

Kurt Vonnegut claims in Slaughterhouse-Five that his stories have never featured a villain. The c... more Kurt Vonnegut claims in Slaughterhouse-Five that his stories have never featured a villain. The claim is contentious as we find more than one of his creations indulging in treachery and deceit, often with malicious intent, reminiscent of the archetypal trickster figure from American Indian myths. This article attempts a study of the characters in Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr Rosewater and Slapstick that resemble the archetypal trickster. It traces the origins of the trickster, the features he displays, and ways, if any, to cure the trait. Commentaries by Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette have been incorporated to substantiate the study. By identifying antagonists in Vonnegut’s oeuvre and reading them as tricksters, the article espouses an alternate understanding of the author’s anthropological assertion.

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2022

Handbook of Aging, Health and Public Policy, 2022