Sep 17
By Santosh Bakaya
Now, I realize that it is no use making haste. A manuscript should go to the publisher only when it is honed, polished, and scintillating. Bad proofreading and editing can kill a book. I have seen many an excellent book suffering dismally at the hands of self-publishing agencies that take exorbitant amounts from the writers, but do an extremely poor job.
By Namrata
The Indian literary industry is yet to warm to literary agents and, hence, most of the publishing houses are open to direct submissions and their requirements are very simple. Three sample chapters, author’s bio, and a synopsis about the story that you want to narrate. Sounds simple, right? Well, that is where the twist is.
Contents: Diasbility Arts and Culture (Issue 17)
By Shilpaa Anand & Nandini Ghosh
The aim of this issue was to present disabled artists’ conceptions of their art. This endeavour was undertaken keeping in mind that a disabled artist or a disabled writer’s work is received/ perceived in certain normative ways: in a paternalistic manner, the art may be attributed only to their disability; the Super Crip attitude that considers that the disabled artist has a talent using which he or she overcomes their disability; the artist’s disability may be hidden from the world under the assumption that they may not consider their disability as part of their individual identity.
By Partho Bhowmick
Photography by the blind is a social equaliser: it challenges perception and inspires social change. Many of the participants in the Blind with Camera project have expressed delight in the fact that they are doing something many people would not have thought possible. Blind with Camera is an ongoing project of creation, expression, and communication that helps address feelings of isolation and provides a means to engage with society and create a forum for dialogue between the seeing and non-seeing world.
By Prateeksha Sharma
Recovery from mental illness is a difficult process for anyone. One of the key engagements that I have thereafter got into is to first consolidate my recovery, and second, to conduct an analysis of recovery, via research. Having ‘lost’ two decades of life, it has taken time to put the train back on track, and then to be certain what the track could be.
By Ankur Advocacy Group
This video narrative, made by the Ankur Advocacy Group is one of the first endeavours of the Indian Institute of Cerebral Palsy’s (IICP) media lab team. We started the media lab as a space for creative expression through experimentation with language, visuals and sounds. This video is totally an in-house production.
By Shefalee Jain
Much of my work is about the diseased body and how we look at it. I am intrigued by the discomfort, the horror, the disgust, and simultaneously the invasive curiosity that the sight of a diseased (especially a diseased skin) or disabled body, creates in us. Why do we react to it in such terror and with such violence? Why is it that despite advances in modern medicine, there has been no positive change in our ways of seeing and accepting the fact of disease?
By Jyothsna Phanija
Intentionally or unintentionally, as artists with disabilities, we become part of promotion of such stereotypical disability aesthetics, although we do our best to minimize their intensity. In this context, certain ideas can promote a better view of art and disability and this may include negating the idea that a disabled artist’s art is a “gift”or a “blessing” and instead promoting the idea that the art is a form of expression of the voice of the disabled person.
Jul 17
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Contents: Muslim Women on Hijab/Veil (Issue 16)
By Jenny Rowena
Soon, I realized that feminism was not just excluding many women but it was also oppressing them. It was trying to wrench them out of their own sense of the world and their social locations that are closely tied to their communities and literally forcing them to convert into a liberal worldview in the name of ‘freedom’ and ‘choice.’
By Mohammed Shah
Post 9/11, as we know, is significant for the resolute attempts made by Muslim women on their assertion of identity that actually clashes with the secular liberal discourse on religion. In opposition to the images propagated by the dominant narratives, Muslim women, as part of their assertion, started to shape their own ways to be imagined, photographed and visualized.
By Rajdeep Guha
In recent years, we have seen how in India, students who score as high as 90% in their school leaving exams do not get a seat in their college of choice. There is an unnecessary burden of clearing various entrance exams to get an admission into engineering and medical colleges. Thanks to this immense competition, Indian students, who can afford to live abroad and study, migrate to the developed world. A foreign degree often becomes the passport to success for students from the developing and underdeveloped nations.
By Adrián Gutiérrez and Alejandra Garcia Fuertes
Infrastructure wise, Spain is second to none. World class libraries, lab facilities, housing and accommodation, recreational clubs for students and facilities for the differently abled can be found in every Spanish institute of higher learning. For non-Spanish speaking countries such as India, there are English taught Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes. Normally, each university specifies on their webpage the total or partially offered degrees in a foreign language.
Café Dissensus 