Contents: 1. On poetry, places and inspiration/Susan Bassnett. 2. Reading, response and what theory demands/S. Viswanathan. 3. Prolixity and playfulness in the time of late postmodernism/Tutun Mukherjee. 4. Towards a post-diasporic literary history/Paul Sharrad. 5. The 'English' teacher in India: rethinking the 'discipline' in a globalised world/Mahasweta Sengupta. 6. Postcolonialism and the problem of translation/S. Shankar. 7. English/Kerala: the question of the archive (on Vidyasamgraham: The Cottayam College Quarterly Magazine, July 1864-April 1866)/K. Narayana Chandran. 8. Imperialism's redeeming 'Idea': efficiency in Locke's Second treatise and Conrad's heart of darkness/Nigel Leo Joseph. 9. Imperialism, identity, Lunacy and death in Rider Haggard's short story 'Long Odds'/Michel Naumann. 10. India through Australian eyes, 1850-1950/Bruce Bennett. 11. From Ned Kelly to Don Bradman: India, Australia and the incongruities of globalisation/Andrew Hassam. 12. The craft of making and breaking: responses to tradition/s in A.D. Hope and Agha Shahid Ali/Santosh K. Sareen and Ipsita Sengupta. 13. Cosmopolitanism and the theory of transnationalism: Canada and India in Vassanji's stories/Jameela Begum A. 14. Dramatic Pedagogy and pedagogic drama/Sudhakar Marathe. 15. Counterposing exotica and stereotype: finding a new context for Sarojini Naidu/Anisur Rahman. 16. Clowning wisely the Rabelaisian way: Bakhtinian Carnival in Midnight's children/P. Balaswamy. 17. Text(h)eorizing the region: the story of Musalamma/M. Sridhar. 18. Genealogy of ownership: social capital and colonial modernity in Fakir Mohan Senapati's Six Acres and a Third/Sachidananda Mohanty. 19. Caste, Christianity, Karukku/G.J.V. Prasad. 20. Why teach these texts?/Alladi Uma. Note on contributors and editors.
"This festschrift for Professor C.T. Indra offers rich and varied fare. It begins naturally with a series of tributes to and reminiscences of Indra by several of her students, colleagues and admirers and modulates into the scholarly world of literary and cultural criticism which Indra has been practising with such distinction for decades now. The tone of these essays ranges from the deeply felt and personal to the most irrepressibly postmodern. The subjects handled are as diverse as the sense of place and how poetry is inspired by it, the question of reading and response and their relation to theory, the playfulness of postmodernism, post-diasporic literary history, the discipline of English and the English teacher in India, globalization and cosmopolitanism, transnationalism, making and breaking traditions, dramatic pedagogy, translation, the archive, imperialism, India and Australia, India and Canada, Bakhtinian discourse, the region, caste and so on.
The authors constitute an international cast and are from India, Britain, France, Australia, the United States and Canada. This is truly a magnificent celebration of the scholar-adventurer that C.T. Indra is."
