The Context is a peer-reviewed, international, and indexed online Journal of English Studies. It is currently published every other month, in February, April, June, August, October, and December, by Magnus Publishing Pune. It was approved by UGC and included in the “List of Journals” previously. The journal is published in open access on the World Wide Web, allowing readers and research scholars free access to the published articles, with permissions to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full text of these articles.
Problematizing Indian Literature: The Quest for a Literary Identity of India
If we ask the question “What is Indian Literature?” the answer is very difficult to obtain. This is because India is a land of many languages and differing literary heritages, all joined together by an unseen thread. It is a matter of wonder how the idea of nationhood holds together this multilingual society. Is it possible to find a solid literary identity for India? Just as we feel the idea of “world literature” overwhelming, we must feel the same for the idea of “Indian Literature”. The issue of colonialism makes matters worse because there is a new thing called Indian English Literature which may or may not find a place in the Indian Literary paradigm. Whether the models of the comparative literature paradigm can offer any solution is a question yet to be explored.
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Defining the Subaltern: A Spivakian Assessment of the Transgender Persons Amendment Act, 2026 and Darling Diana
Who am I? This is a rudimentary question about the self, which we decipher with individualistic confidence and freedom of thought. Upholding this individualistic vein, the Supreme Court of India in NALSA v/s Union of India (2014) decided that the right to self-identification of gender is a fundamental right. However, the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, 2026 contradicts this judicial precedent. Is the right to self-identification limited to individuals who conform to the norms of the dominant class? How does the amendment marginalise the transgender community in India? The paper attempts to answer these questions through an analysis of the amendment of 2026, the connected parliamentary debates, and Darling Diana by Sanika Dhakephalkar to comprehend the subaltern from a Spivakian perspective. The paper employs a multidisciplinary approach, focusing on law and literature through close reading of the above-mentioned texts and the application of post-colonial theory.
Stories that a Tree would Tell: Folktales as Phyto-Narratives
The intricate tapestry of human interactions with the natural world has long been woven into the fabric of folk tales, literature, and art, coalescing in the critical theories of Environmental Humanities. With plants as the subject of study, narratives that represent phyto-life in art and literature fall within the ambit of Critical Plant Studies in the Humanities today. This exploration highlights the evolution of such narratives from a geocentric perspective to understand the cultural roots of symbiosis with nature. In examining select folk tales from Earth Care: World Folktales to Talk About by Margaret Read MacDonald, this paper seeks to illuminate the phyto-stories that trees tell, advocating for a deeper ecological awareness. Ultimately, this study contributes to a growing discourse that challenges anthropocentric perspectives and honours the vital interdependencies between animal/human beings and the ecosystems that cradle their stories.
Echoes of the Forgotten: Expressions of Historical Trauma and Intergenerational Transmission in Caryl Phillips’s Higher Ground
This research article explores the devastating psychological and sociological impacts of systemic oppression as depicted in Caryl Phillips’s novel Higher Ground. By synthesising contemporary research on historical trauma, intergenerational transmission, Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS), and Holocaust survivor psychopathology, this paper analyses how Phillips’s characters embody the legacy of mass trauma. The novel connects three distinct narratives: an African collaborator during the slave trade, a Black prisoner in solitary confinement in the United States, and a Jewish woman haunted by the Polish ghettos, to illustrate the universal and enduring nature of trauma. Through the lens of theorists such as Michelle M. Sotero, Joy DeGruy, and Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, the researcher demonstrates that historical trauma is not merely a past event but an ongoing cycle of subjugation that strips individuals of their humanity and requires profound truth-telling and culturally sensitive interventions for healing.
Cyberfeminism and Digital Resistance: A Case Study of Gamergate
The rapid expansion of digital technologies has transformed communication, participation, and activism while simultaneously intensifying gender-based discrimination and online harassment. This paper examines cyberfeminism as a critical theoretical framework for understanding the intersection of gender, technology, and digital culture through a case study of the 2014 Gamergate controversy. Adopting a qualitative case study approach, the research draws upon the works of Donna Haraway, Sadie Plant, VNS Matrix, and contemporary cyberfeminist scholars to analyse how online platforms both reinforce patriarchal power structures and enable feminist resistance. The study explores the coordinated harassment directed at women in the gaming industry, including Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian, and Brianna Wu, demonstrating how digital spaces reproduce gendered inequalities while simultaneously fostering networks of solidarity and activism. It further highlights the significance of digital literacy, platform accountability, privacy practices, and collective feminist action in creating safer and more inclusive online environments. The paper argues that cyberfeminism remains an essential analytical and political framework for addressing the evolving challenges of online misogyny, digital exclusion, and algorithmic bias. By integrating theoretical perspectives with a contemporary case study, the study contributes to ongoing debates on gender, technology, and digital justice, emphasising the need for equitable and inclusive digital futures.
Education, A Defiance Against Oppression Represented in The Select Works of Jean Sasson
The world has progressed technologically, and we are now dreaming of a life on Mars. But is this progress being reflected in all spheres of life or in all strata of society? The answer would be negative. Especially when we speak about the condition of women. Education and good jobs have placed women in a safe position; still, in many parts of the world, she faces tremendous, shell-shocking calamities. Whether it’s in a democratic republic like India, a military-ruled Pakistan or a religion-controlled Saudi Arabia. Writers throughout the globe have tried to voice the voiceless, to portray the deplorable condition of women in every aspect of life. The last two decades have witnessed the portrayal of the lives of women behind the veil by writers like Taslima Nasrin, Latifa, Jean Sasson, etc. Jean Sasson’s work centres on the women in the Middle East. She focuses on the lives of Saudi Women and their sufferings living in a patriarchal society. Her Princess Trilogy narrates the pathetic conditions of women in a religion-centred, male-oriented society. The paper tries to analyse how far education helped women to question the patriarchal structures and narratives and how the women in Saudi Arabia used education as a tool against patriarchy.
Climate Fiction and Scientific Authority: Governance and Crisis in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Science in the Capital Trilogy
Kim Stanley Robinson’s Science in the Capital trilogy enunciates the relationship between scientific practice and climate governance during a period of rapid, disruptive climate change. This research paper analyses how Robinson places the United States National Science Foundation at the centre of the story, a site where empirical climate research and government decision-making converge, challenging the assumption that climate science stands apart from public and civic life. Through the professional and personal change endured by protagonist Frank Vanderwal, the trilogy marks a movement from detached observation to engaged responsibility for the warming world around him. Engaging Greg Garrard’s ecocriticism and Dipesh Chakrabarty’s account of planetary history, this research paper argues that Robinson’s climate fiction proposes practical, effective steps toward ecological restoration rather than apocalyptic misery. The paper further considers the trilogy’s witty resolution, its Buddhist and Transcendentalist resonances, its critique of economic short-sightedness and its treatment of extreme weather as a marker of climate disruption. In due course, the trilogy offers a hopeful, climate-response account of how a government might act on unanticipated climate change.
Remembering Nature: Ecological Memory and Environmental Ethics in Bond's Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra
Ruskin Bond's Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra is frequently discussed as nostalgic nature writing, yet its ethical engagement with everyday ecological relationships remains insufficiently explored. This article addresses that gap by examining how ordinary landscapes, memories, and human–nonhuman encounters cultivate ecological responsibility beyond romantic appreciation of nature. Adopting an ecocritical approach informed by environmental humanities, the study employs close textual analysis to investigate the interconnected themes of ecological memory, place attachment, and everyday environmental ethics. It argues that Bond transforms familiar Himalayan spaces into sites of ethical reflection, where environmental care emerges through lived experience rather than ideological discourse. The study contributes a fresh perspective to Indian English ecocritical scholarship and contemporary sustainability debates.
Bordered Belonging: Gender, Diaspora, and Identity in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake and Unaccustomed Earth
Jhumpa Lahiri, through her writing, offers a powerful exploration of identity, culture and belonging, offering insights into the experiences of immigrant communities and the challenges they face. This study examines how Lahiri’s female protagonists navigate the shifting emotional and cultural boundaries that define diasporic existence. The title reflects the central idea that belonging for diasporic women is never fixed but constantly shaped by gender expectations, cultural displacement, and the pressures of adapting to new social environments. The primary objective of this paper is to explore how identity crises emerge for women situated between inherited traditions and the demands of a different cultural landscape, and to understand how these tensions influence their sense of autonomy, selfhood, and familial roles. Through close reading of the two works, the study uncovers the emotional negotiations that accompany diaspora, particularly the struggle to reconcile personal aspirations with cultural expectations. Although they confront alienation, cultural fragmentation, and the burden of patriarchal norms, they also discover moments of empowerment and cultivate redefined forms of belonging that challenge traditional boundaries. Lahiri’s female characters—spanning first- and second-generation immigrants—negotiate a complex terrain shaped by cultural displacement, familial expectations, and the conflicting demands of tradition and modernity. It offers a nuanced understanding of the characters’ experience, highlighting the complexities of identity, culture and belonging. Ultimately, the paper argues that Lahiri’s female protagonists embody a multifaceted identity crisis that reflects the broader condition of the diaspora—an ongoing negotiation between memory and mobility, heritage and self-determination.
Negotiating the Crisis of Trauma and Pain as Transformational: Exploring Cancer Narratives in Contemporary Culture
Life writing has captured pleasant experiences and human sorrows, including pain and recovery from disasters and traumatic challenges. Adversities are a reality of life and shape human existence; from them arise perspectives on survival and transformation. Illness and disease have accompanied humans throughout life, both individually and within communities. Writers of all ages have found a unique place in literature through physical and psychological struggles with illness. The present generation of life experiences continues to reflect survival through innumerable patterns of struggle, from pandemics to individual illnesses like cancer. Cancer has found a platform for discussion in literature, medical texts, medical testimonies, and representations of doctors’ experiences. However, literature has also produced a new form of writing called cancer narratives. This paper studies the different interpretations and truths of cancer as a transformational illness in the context of Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor(1979), and also with the understandings seen through impacted individuals and the social unit over time.
Language Skills through Literature for ESL Learners – A Contextual Approach
There is a conviction that grammar lessons and writing exercises in modern pedagogy should teach the English language. English language teaching (ELT) is not just confined to grammar and exercises. It involves various techniques and methodologies to nurture learners to acquire language skills, especially for English as a second language (ESL) learners. Though practical grammar provides application of the concept, contextual and cultural inputs will be missing. The teacher needs to involve the learner in a contextual way to learn the language. For this, lessons from literature make the best option. Short stories, poems, essays, articles, and excerpts from one-act plays can provide a strong literary base for language learning. The learner will understand the language’s beauty and application in the contextual setting. However, the teacher needs to match the language and literature to make the learner apply the skills. The present paper makes an analytical study of the key teaching – learning aspects of language learning through select literature-based topics with suitable references and examples.
A Study of Postcolonial Ecologies and Energy Colonialism in Amish Tripathi’s Sita: Warrior of Mithila
Amish Tripathi’s novel Sita: Warrior of Mithila reinvigorates the legend of Sita through a new narrative style that takes an ecological, ethical, and postcolonial perspective. This paper discusses how Tripathi depicts Sita as a decolonial resistance and an environmental harmony. Through the prism of postcolonial ecocriticism, energy humanities, and ecofeminism, the paper examines modernity, energy colonialism, and patriarchal power. As revealed in the analysis, Sita's leadership in Mithila is a locally based form of sustainable leadership grounded in energy ethics and governance. The study situates Tripathi's work in a wider ecocritical sense, in which he attempts to bring power and responsibility into balance through his mythmaking of today.
Women’s Marginalisation in Literature: Patriarchy, Identity, Intersectionality, and Resistance
Women’s marginalisation remains a central concern in feminist literary studies because gender inequality is sustained through social, domestic, economic, cultural, and representational structures. This article offers a critical qualitative synthesis of selected scholarship published between 1984 and 2025, tracing major shifts in the study of female oppression, identity, and resistance. The analysis identifies patriarchy, domestic confinement, marital control, bodily violence, economic dependency, educational exclusion, and silencing as recurrent forms of marginalisation. It also demonstrates a movement from generalised accounts of women’s oppression towards intersectional approaches attentive to caste, class, race, religion, colonialism, and economic inequality. Recent studies increasingly represent women not only as victims but as subjects who negotiate oppressive structures through education, mobility, economic independence, solidarity, refusal, storytelling, and literary expression. The article argues that women’s writing functions as a counter-discourse that makes marginalised experience visible and reclaims female agency. It concludes by identifying the need for comparative, interdisciplinary literary research connecting domestic space, identity, narrative form, and changing strategies of resistance.
Trauma and Memory in Divakaruni: The Forest of Enchantments, viewed through the lens of Dominic La Capra
Indian mythology, mainly Indian epics, has viewed women’s suffering as acts of love, morality and divinity. These epics are viewed as cultural heritage which is maintained and inherited and normalises women’s trauma. Such pain and suffering are romanticised and aestheticised, which leads to further promotion. This article examines how Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni reconstructs the mythic suffering of women through trauma-based narratives in one of her most famous works: The Forest of Enchantments by engaging Dominic La Capra’s theory of trauma. The story lays out the suffering of Sita in the form of trauma. Dominic’s concept of trauma shows us that it is an experience which returns to us through memory and narration. He further conceptualises trauma as an act of compulsive repetition, which is acting out on it and working through trauma. This paper focuses on how Divakaruni re-vocalises mythic pain from the perspectives of women. This form of revoicing provokes patriarchy in mythology and turns cultural memory into a healing space, completely changing the context of feminist historiography.
Extractivism, Epistemicide: Reconfiguring Adivasi Lifeworlds in Sheela Tomy’s Valli
This research paper investigates Sheela Tomy’s Valli (2019), which depicts five decades of ecological destruction and social injustice in Wayanad, Kerala. The novel portrays how the bonded labor of the Paniya, an indigenous Adivasi community under the Vallippani system, the relentless clearing of forests for timber extraction, plantation, agriculture, and tourism, and the gradual disappearance of the scriptless Paniya gothrabhasha are interconnected forms of violence rather than separate historical events. This paper examines Valli through the theoretical perspective of extractivism and epistemicide. Extractivism explains how forests, labor, and indigenous cultures are transformed into economic resources, while Boaventura de Sousa Santos's concept of epistemicide reveals the systematic erasure of indigenous knowledge embedded in language, oral traditions, and ecological practices. The study also analyses Wayanad's natural loss and resists indigenous cultural erasure. It represents Adivasi communities not as victims but as resilient agents whose cultural memory, indigenous ecological knowledge, and collective resistance.
Beyond Algorithms: Reconstructing Intelligence—From STEM to STEAM
In a world that is increasingly becoming dominated by artificial intelligence, algorithmic governance and data-based rationality, modern definitions of intelligence have been reduced to narrowness in its understanding of computation, efficiency and techno-economic utility. The paper will critically look at the ethical and epistemological implications of prioritizing artificial or instrumental intelligence over emotional intelligence, and it will be argued that these reductionist paradigms lead to social alienation, moral disengagement, and unsustainable types of progress. Placing the discussion in the context of an interdisciplinary approach that builds on literary criticism, philosophy of technology, and cultural history, the paper prefigures two canonical works of Victorian literature, Frankenstein and Hard Times, as arguments against intelligence deprived of empathy, imagination, and moral accountability. In an in-depth examination of the text, the paper traces a historical lineage from the mechanistic rationality of the nineteenth century to the algorithmic systems of the twenty-first century, showing how both dehumanize people by denying them the power of emotion and moral accountability. The investigation contributes to the development of the STEAM paradigm as an ethical and epistemological remedy to STEM-oriented models, and the necessity of the humanities to the development of empathy, moral imagination, and relational accountability. Finally, the paper reprimands intelligence as a living, relational, and ethical ability. It claims that, in the absence of emotional intelligence, technological progress is unsustainable for the existence and democratic culture of the human species.
Kazi Nazrul Islam and the Science of Life: An Interdisciplinary Reading of Bidrohi (The Rebel) and Shristi Sukher Ullasey (The Joy of Creation)
This article seeks to imagine a link between the poetry of Kazi Nazrul Islam and the ideas of scientists Paul Nurse, Venki Ramakrishnan, and Carlo Rovelli. By comparing Nazrul’s famous poems Bidrohi (The Rebel) and Shristi Sukher Ullasey (The Joy of Creation)with modern biology and quantum physics, it suggests that literature and science often describe similar realities from different angles. Paul Nurse’s notions on the cell and Venki Ramakrishnan’s research on ageing provide a structural as well as material framework to the knowledge of life and death. At the same time, Carlo Rovelli’s theories speak of a fluid and relational view of the universe. The article argues that Nazrul’s poetic images in these two poems are not merely metaphors but instinctual maps of those biological and physical processes. It also speculates that rebellion is a fundamental necessity for life to evolve and overcome the immobility of entropy. By placing these thinkers in dialogue, the article tries to present a unified notion where the act of creation and the spirit of defiance are seen as indispensable forces that drive both the human spirit and the cosmos itself.
Prompting as Practice: Reimagining Creative Writing and Authorial Identity After Generative AI
The blistering growth of generative AI has caused devastating existential fears to erupt in creative writing classrooms and threatened to upend centuries-old notions of authorial agency, originality, and text ownership. This study argues that while generative LLMs may seem like a creative erasure, there is a need to shift the paradigm and regard prompt engineering as a legitimate, reflective, and iterative form of literature. Using an empirical pre-post mixed-methods research design, we followed the creative writing students at a university for one semester to examine the impact of using AI platforms on their writing practices and sense of authorship. The quantitative measures for creative self-efficacy and creative ownership were filled out using forced 4-point Likert scales. They were mapped alongside the qualitative prompt diary and structural revision log. Longitudinal dependent t-tests and advanced correspondence analysis biplots showed that a cognitive shift was detected, where initial interactions involving automated text generation resulted in feelings of alienation and creative detachment, while extended iterative prompting practice was associated with a high level of recovery of authorial agency. The statistical outputs visually illustrate this: the writer's identity isn't erased, but rather the writer is repositioned, from mechanical assembly of words to curation of algorithmic outputs, from architectural directing to stylistic refinement. The findings confront higher education with a question to consider beyond the rhetoric of academic honesty versus dishonesty: the idea that fostering academic honesty is a means of shrinking the scope of human authorship is an insidious and dangerous proposition.
Integrating Knowledge for Sustainable and Inclusive Global Development Through Indian Diasporic Literature
Migration and the impact of the changes it is bringing about in identities, culture, and social relationships have become one of the most salient features of the 21st century; this change is captured in the Indian migrant literature through the images of emotional immigrant 'cultural' reports of people moving between the place of origin and host society. Despite nostalgia and transnational identity, however, this paper asserts that the field of cultural dislocation is a whole story, rather than the know-how that migrants ingest. Further, it discusses how the displacement represented in such accounts could be read into the literary comments of Indian diaspora literature, and how it could be related to other theoretical debates on global sustainable and inclusive development via Stuart Hall, Homi K. Bhabha, Avtar Brah, Robin Cohen, and Paul Gilroy's own works. Rather than the migration narrative and its complete association with a sense of loss, Indian diasporic literature demonstrates the emergence of alternative ways of belonging through cultural discourses of mutual recognition and shared humanity. Consequently, these stories are regarded as a strong network that encourages the development and integration of competences, empathy, and knowledge of cultural and international citizenship. Such literature can ignite discussion across cultures, help foster coexistence in and beyond more diverse societies, and contribute significantly to sustainable, inclusive worldwide improvement. However, it is not best at explaining social realities.
Reading the Compounded Vulnerability of Domestic Workers in COVID-19 Pandemic Narratives
The COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the whole world and disturbed all facets of human life. In India, things were not so different, but the experiences of the pandemic had not been the same for all. While some passed through it by staying at home, for others it was a seemingly endless nightmare. Domestic workers are a group whose subject position makes them more vulnerable to the pandemic. The study scrutinizes the experiences of the pandemic among domestic workers in India, as they are in good numbers and contribute economically while being employed at urban households, yet have been unrecognized and, hence, unrepresented. Drawing on three texts, namely, Namita Gokhale’s The Blind Matriarch, Shobha Dé’s “Doctor Doctor”, and Udayan Mukherjee’s “Holidays”, this article explores the inherent and increased vulnerability of Indian domestic workers in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, it also lays bare the lack of representation and invisible presence in the socio-economic and political sphere of Indian urban settings. The article employs the theoretical framework of vulnerability developed by Judith Butler and others to conduct the study.
A Silent Monologue of the Narrator’s Psyche: An Archetypal Reading of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" has been widely analysed through feminist, Gothic, and Freudian psychoanalytic lenses, primarily framing the protagonist's descent as repression, madness, or protest against patriarchal medicine. This project departs from these readings by employing a Jungian framework that combines archetypal theory with feminist psychoanalysis to reinterpret the protagonist's breakdown as a process of individuation. Focusing on the Shadow archetype and the collective unconscious, the study argues that her merging with the wallpaper signifies not psychological collapse but self-discovery and awakening. By reading Gilman's own rest-cure experience alongside the text, this research reframes the protagonist's journey as one of authentic identity formation rather than mere silencing.
Forced Migration Memory and Its Repercussions: A Cultural Analysis of the Tamil Film Parasakthi
The Burma migration in Indian history was marked by displacement, loss, and extreme precarity, as migrants faced bombardments, forced evacuation, poverty, and social marginalization during their return across the Bay of Bengal. It remains a powerful cultural memory reflected in literature and film. This study examines how Parasakthi (1952) represents migration from Burma through the frameworks of cultural memory and media narratives, situated within colonial and postcolonial cultural theory. It argues that the film reveals a key problem: the transformation of lived migrant suffering into ideologically mediated narratives shaped by colonial histories and postcolonial concerns. Parasakthi portrays the wartime dislocation of a Tamil family from Burma (Rangoon) and reflects the plight of Burmese Indians during World War II. The film narrates social collapse and survival while functioning as a repository of migration memory in Tamil cinema. Its Burma returnee character becomes a proxy for exile, fractured belonging, poverty, and social injustice in a postcolonial context. Adopting a cultural studies perspective, this paper shows how melodrama, courtroom rhetoric, and emotionally charged dialogues operate as media constructs that reinterpret and circulate migration memories across generations. Thus, Parasakthi functions as a cinematic text and a site of memory that documents diasporic Burma migration while rearticulating it within the ideological discourse of postcolonial Tamil modernity, social reform, and identity construction.
Allegory as Philosophy: Moral and Existential Inquiry in The Little Prince
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince transcends its apparent simplicity to function as a deeply philosophical text that interrogates fundamental moral and existential concerns. This article examines the novella as an allegorical narrative that conveys complex philosophical ideas through symbolic characters, minimalist language, and imaginative planetary encounters. Drawing upon an integrated framework of existentialism, moral philosophy, and reader-response theory, the study explores how themes such as responsibility, love, meaning, alienation, and ethical awareness are articulated through the experiences of the Little Prince and the narrator. The analysis demonstrates that the text critiques materialism, authority, and utilitarian rationality while affirming relational ethics and existential responsibility. The study highlights the reader’s active role in transforming simple narrative episodes into reflective philosophical experiences. By positioning The Little Prince as a sustained moral and existential inquiry, the article underscores its enduring relevance as a literary work that invites readers to reconsider human values and the essence of meaningful existence.
Mnemonic Narratives: Orhan Pamuk and the Pedagogical Function of Memory
This paper explores the purpose and evolving nature of historical representation, emphasizing the necessity for accurate depictions of the past consistent with factual integrity. Despite the increasing popularity of historical novels in contemporary society, the genre remains complex, blending factualism and imagination, and reflecting ongoing debates surrounding veracity, prejudice, and the construction of historical truth. Originating in 17th- and 18th-century Europe as Gothic novels, the genre has continually adapted through various literary movements such as realism, modernism, and postmodernism, addressing themes including war, social reform, and political upheaval. The study examines the role of historical fiction in shaping societal understanding of the past and its capacity to provoke critical reflection on representational issues, especially for authors like Orhan Pamuk. Analyzing the literary components of historical narratives and their connection to historical context, the research critically engages with questions of historiography, truth, and narrative construction. This investigation underscores the literariness inherent in historical storytelling and its significance for reconstructing both individual and collective memories.
Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner: A Study through Lawrence Buell's Theory of Ecocriticism
Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner (2003) is often explored in terms of friendship, betrayal, guilt, and the search for redemption set against the reality of Afghanistan. The previous research articles focus on trauma, identity, ethnicity, and what it means to be Afghan after invasion and war. This paper examines how nature acts as an external factor depicting human emotions rather than just being the backdrop in the story. This study attempts to fill this research gap by applying Lawrence Buell’s four criteria to analyze literature and environment. Buell’s theory helps to understand how humans, nature, and fates are interconnected. He talks about how stories represent humans’ shared responsibility in the world and the need for ethical balance between humans and all other living beings. This study focuses on the natural setting, which includes gardens, trees, seasons, and even the weather, to portray the psychological change that happens in the characters’ lives. It shows how nature helps to shape people’s memory, history, and the possible ways to discover strength and offer forgiveness. This article concludes that ecological spaces play an active role in shaping humans’ lives and offers various possibilities to change and improve life’s circumstances amidst uncertain moments.
Reflection of Urban Sensibility in Ramu Ramanathan’s Select Plays
Theatre has, since antiquity, occupied a central position in the growth of Indian institutions, culture, creativity, and originality. The origins of Indian theatre are commonly traced to the religious ritualism of the Vedic period, and across the medieval era it matured into a sophisticated vehicle for representing the realities of life through dance, music, and poise. Contemporary Indian theatre, in turn, has adopted a distinctly modern idiom, one that foregrounds the transformation of the nation’s political landscape and addresses the pressing concerns of urban society. This paper undertakes a critical analysis of urban space in selected plays of Ramakrishnan Ramanathan — popularly known as Ramu Ramanathan — a leading figure among the present generation of writer-directors composing plays in English.
A Study of Gender Stereotypes in Mahesh Dattani’s Play Tara
This article is an attempt to look at the fortune of women in general and the destiny of a girl baby in a male chauvinist society in exacting detail. In short, it dramatizes the women of history and the position of women in the current society and shows the women of the future. This is relevant because it sheds light on the circumstances in which women are forced to proceed. They have a particular responsibility forced on them and silently accepted by them to remain silent. This play is an attempt to reach the minds of women today and reinforce them. Tara is not only a fictional character but powerfully emerges as an epitome and a symbol of the Indian girl child who is required to be compressed and remains meek in a male-ruled and powerful world.
AI Teaching and 3D Envisaging of Narasimha: An Innovative Pedagogical Approach to Language and Mythology in AI Avatars
This paper examines a pedagogical framework that combines AI and 3D visualization for the pedagogy of language and mythology, utilizing the semiotic form of Narasimha. Located at the nexus of digital humanities and cultural pedagogy, the study explores how AI avatars and virtual atmospheres might be used to enable vocabulary learning, syntactic competence, pronunciation, and ethical discernment in the pedagogy of English Language Teaching (ELT). Informed by constructivism and multimodal learning theories, the investigation situates mythology not simply as content but as a fluid pedagogical resource that promotes cultural literacy and critical thinking. The 3D envisioning of Narasimha functions both as a mythic image and a virtual avatar, allowing learners to experience linguistic structure and moral tales in embodied, experiential terms. Through a synthesis of myth pedagogy, semiotic analysis, and AI-facilitated learning, the paper outlines a framework for digital humanism especially relevant for the Indian pedagogic context. Ethical questions of AI implementation, together with posthumanist questions of identity and agency, also inform the theoretical and practical scope of this examination. Finally, the paper highlights the transformative capacity of retelling mythology, technological innovation, and language pedagogy for the digital era.
A Comparative Study of Narrative Voice as Power in The White Tiger and Half of a Yellow Sun
This paper argues that narrative voice, and not theme alone, is where Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger (2008) and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) stage their arguments about poverty and power. Existing scholarship on both novels has documented their treatment of class division, corruption, and historical trauma in rich detail, but has largely treated narration as a transparent window onto these themes rather than as a mechanism of power. Reading Balram Halwai's unbroken confessional monologue alongside Adichie’s three-way focalization through Ugwu, Olanna, and Richard, this study shows that Adiga's single rising voice formally reproduces the exclusionary logic of the Rooster Coop it condemns. At the same time, Adichie's plural narration distributes authority more widely, even granting authorship to a former servant, without fully equalizing that authority across gender. Bringing narratological readings of each novel into direct comparison, the paper contends that both texts use the architecture of who speaks to decide questions of poverty and power well before their plots resolve them.
Translating Innocence: A Critical Reading of the Delta Dalit Juvenile Fiction: oh priest, give me the seeded banana!
This research paper examines the complex interaction between source and target cultures in translation, using Priest’s work, "oh priest, give me the seeded banana!", as a case study. It explores Bengal's tidal landscape and its literature in English translation, focusing on Niranjan Mondal’s novel from the Tide Country, which narrates the life of a Sundarbans delta community through the perspective of a young protagonist, Naran. The story highlights socio-cultural realities, including rituals, village fairs, and intergenerational traditions, shaped by the region’s tides—reflecting emotional and social currents within the community. The English translation offers insight into how language mediates the complex social, religious, and geographical nexus of Bengal’s tidal space. It reveals cultural values transmitted through oral and written traditions, illustrating the intertwining of childhood, social structures such as caste and family, and the natural environment. The novel contributes to Dalit literature, ecological writing, folk narratives, and translation studies, emphasizing the role of language and cultural negotiation in shaping identity within this unique setting.
A Study of Slow Violence, Corporate Eco-crime and Politics of Contamination in Irada
Aparnaa Singh’s dark political thriller Irada (2017) deals with how industrial poisoning has led to an ecological disaster in Punjab, India. The film is set against a backdrop of corruption and greed. The film shows how reverse boring and toxic waste dumping is taking place illegally in the region and how it slowly but surely affects violence in the landscape. This article analyzes the film as an eco-thriller that unveils the cancerous relationship between the environment and the health of the people of the region. It also examines how the deaths of two young people, Riya and Aniruddh, are being used to uncover the ongoing conspiracy in the area. Through ecocriticism, environmental justice, and green criminology, the article will also explain how Irada makes environmental pollution a human rights issue. The article will conclude with an observation regarding how the film makes the spectator a witness to the corporate eco-crime going on in Punjab and the implications of such an act of violence at the local level and global level in the era of Anthropocene.
Laughing in the Dark: Blind Female Sexuality, Desire and Resistance in Joginder Paul’s Blind
The Indian English novel Blind by Joginder Paul presents one of the most intricate portrayals of sexuality in blind women in Indian literature. It is through the character of Roni that the novel subverts the established cultural stereotype of asexuality, helplessness, and vulnerability of blind women. This paper will show that Roni’s narrative creates an empowering counter-narrative of desire experienced by the blind woman that is characterized by laughter, physicality, sexuality, trauma, motherhood, and ultimate reclamation of herself. Using Feminist Disability Studies theory with a focus on the scholarship of Kim Q. Hall and Alison Kafer, Indian feminist theory, and body politics, the paper explores how Roni’s body becomes the locus of exploitation and pleasure, as well as how laughter becomes a form of resistance against attempts to silence her desire. Thus, the paper illustrates that while Blind features a blind female character, it prioritizes her eroticism and political agency, which is a rather unusual phenomenon in mainstream Indian literature and disability stories.
Literature beyond the Human: Posthuman Narratives and Artificial Intelligence
The emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has transformed contemporary understandings of humanity, creativity, and literary representation. Traditional literary studies have largely focused on human experiences, emotions, and identities; however, the rapid development of intelligent technologies has expanded the scope of literature beyond exclusively human perspectives. This article examines the intersection of posthuman theory and AI narratives in contemporary literature. It explores how literary texts challenge anthropocentric assumptions by presenting intelligent machines, cyborgs, digital consciousness, and hybrid identities as significant narrative agents. Drawing upon the theoretical insights of posthumanism, the study analyses the ethical, philosophical, and cultural implications of AI in literature. The article argues that posthuman narratives redefine concepts of authorship, identity, agency, memory, and consciousness while questioning the boundaries separating humans and machines. Ultimately, literature becomes a dynamic space where technological innovation and human imagination negotiate new possibilities for understanding existence in the age of Artificial Intelligence.
Representation of Women’s Voice in We Should All Be Feminists
This research paper examines the representation of women in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s We Should All Be Feminists, focusing on how female voices are silenced, marginalized, and reclaimed through feminist discourse. Adichie redefines feminism as a universal human phenomenon rather than a Western ideology, challenging the patriarchal systems that shape women’s social identities. The present research study follows feminist theorists like Simone de Beauvoir, Mary Wollstonecraft, Kate Millett, Margaret Fuller, and African womanist thought to examine the intersection of gender, culture, and power. With the help of Adichie's text We Should All Be Feminists, the research study argues that Adichie’s work tries to depict the silenced voices of women based on gender discrimination. It is prevalent in our Indian society that discrimination starts from our home. At the time of a child's birth, people in our society place more emphasis on the boy child than on the girl child. Gender discrimination begins before the birth of children. This paper explores how Adichie examines the silencing of women's voices in both public and private places. It reclaims female subjectivity through storytelling, language, and personal experience. This research article critically examines the representation of women as marginalized yet resilient agents within postcolonial Nigerian society. It is a textual and thematic analysis; the research paper highlights how Adichie constructs feminism as an inclusive, humanistic project aimed at equality and dignity for all. The main objective of this research study is to explore women’s voices in We Should All Be Feminists.
From Capitalist Crisis to Nomadic Selfhood: Existential Triumph and Nomadism in Jessica Bruder’s Nomadland
The research paper titled ‘From capitalist crisis to Nomadic Selfhood: Existential Triumph and Nomadism in Jessica Bruder’s Nomadland ’, analyses the real-life experience of the people who resist the failing capitalism of the 21st century. Bruder’s Nomadland portrays the tough realities faced by working-class people and their resistance against the consequences of unemployment and homelessness as nomads. The never-ending economic crisis and modern slavery of capitalism push them to the edge of nomadic existence. It further advocates that the increasing subculture of urban nomadism has become a lifestyle by choice for some, while the only way of surviving for others. The paper argues that the realities portrayed in Nomadland are not something that exists only in America, but have become a global phenomenon. Therefore, the research paper examines the ability of the proletariat to navigate the effects of capitalist exploitation, pandemic, socio- economic consequences, and forced displacements through the lens of existentialist theory. Furthermore, the study advocates how nomadism decentres the conventional notions of homelessness and emerges as a means of self-discovery, resilience and chosen identity for individuals confronting the persistent socio-economic crisis as nomads.
Reproductive Violence Across Time: Trans-Temporal Boundaries in Kindred and Corregidora
This paper examines reproductive violence as a trans-temporal structure of oppression in Kindred by Octavia Butler and Corregidora by Gayl Jones. Drawing on Loretta J. Ross’s theory of reproductive violence and Hortense Spillers’s concept of “ungendered flesh”, the study explores how slavery transformed Black women’s bodies into sites of sexual coercion, forced reproduction, economic exploitation, and kinship rupture. In Kindred, Butler portrays reproductive violence through Dana’s time travel, revealing how Alice Greenwood’s body and reproductive capacity are controlled to sustain lineage under slavery. In Corregidora, Jones presents reproductive violence as an inherited trauma transmitted across generations through memory, bodily violation, and reproductive obligation. The paper argues that reproductive violence extends beyond physical abuse into psychological, historical, and social dimensions, linking past and present through embodied trauma. Ultimately, the study demonstrates how both novels expose the enduring legacy of slavery in shaping Black women’s sexuality, identity, memory, and reproductive autonomy.
Psychoanalytic Exploration of Maya's Mental Disintegration in Anita Desai's Cry, the Peacock
Anita Desai's Cry, the Peacock (1963) is an unprecedented psychological novel in Indian English literature that explores the emotional and mental disruption of Maya, a sensitive woman trapped in a mismatched marriage. Against the background of patriarchal social norms, the novel presents the distressing effects of loneliness, emotional neglect, superstition, and psychological conflict. The present study aims to look at the psychological causes of Maya's phobia and insanity through a psychoanalytic interpretation of the novel. The research adopts a qualitative, descriptive methodology based on close textual analysis, supported by Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory and relevant critical studies on Anita Desai's fiction. The findings disclose that Maya's obsessive fear of an astrologer's prophecy, emotional isolation from her husband Gautama, father fixation (Electra complex), sexual annoyance, and inability to establish meaningful communication gradually led to hallucinations, schizophrenia-like symptoms, and ultimately the murder of Gautama. The study further demonstrates that Maya's psychological collapse is not merely an individual tragedy but a reflection of the oppressive social and marital structures that deny women emotional fulfillment and identity. It concludes that Cry, the Peacock is a profound psychological and feminist critique of patriarchal society, illustrating how emotional isolation, repression, and superstition can terminate in irreparable mental disintegration.