My recent articles

In around ten months duration, my research articles have appeared in the following journals. I will upload the abstract and the web address. Please read, I expect comments.

Article 1

Collaging a Text: Sources and Techniques

Abstract:
Collage, a technique which gained prominence in painting with the works of Picasso and Braque, has proliferated in other domains including photography and writing. However, theorizing collage in writing despite the achievement of prominent figures like Ezra Pound and some others has suffered not only from perpetual allegations such as lack of originality, a set of combinatory practices and practice of plagiarism, but also from abnormal absence of discursive continuity. Discourse on collage has been limited mostly within the analysis of collage in certain text. Based on the definition of collage as writing that operates with three fundamental operations namely segmentation, composition and suture, the article expounds on the process of segmentation and composition. Collagist, based on two constrains – interest and availability – can choose sources ranging from oral literature to existing texts to their situatedness. Once the materials are wrenched, treatments like allusion, parody, or pastiche can be given. When they are pasted on the canvas of writing, the possibility of suture becomes visible.
Modern Journal Of Art , Vol. 1 , No. 2/3 , October/November 2011

Article 2

Manjushree Thapa's Tilled Earth: A Study of Women Consciousness

and Agency

Abstract: 
The paper examines the issue of agency, more specifically the discourse on women agency with reference to Manjushree Thapa's Tilled Earth (2007). The data of female characters are accessed using a close reading of the text and analyzed through content analysis method drawing insight from hermeneutical approach. The observation made from hermeneutical decode is set against the theoretical formulations on agency forwarded by Ketu Katrak. The rationale behind Katrak as theoretical framework lies in proximity phenomena i.e., applying Katrak‟s theory due to its ontological base on third-world sounds more logical than borrowing any of the west-centric models to examine the nature of writing from non-western location. In other words, as Katrak's writing stands on the experience of third-world writers, it proves to be the most appropriate perspective when any alternative based on Nepali location is not formulated. Setting the reading of female agency against Katrak's postulation, the paper concludes that Thapa, through the production of three categories of female characters, presents dynamic nature of female agency instead of instantiating writer function as advocacy job as popularly argued in feminist discourse.


Article 3 (Accepted for publication)

Thinking Through Media Theories:

Understanding and Furthering Trauma Studies

 Abstract:
Trauma studies, a field of cultural enquiry that boomed in a brief span of around a decade at the turn of 21st century, according to Marder, “has something of a privileged and paradoxical relationship to interdisciplinary studies” (2006, p. 1). One of such areas with which trauma maintains such frontier, which however has yet not been examined in any magnitude, is communication studies. To examine the nature of interdisciplinary connection, the article: 1) revisits selected trauma theories setting them against major postulations in media and explores the nature of communication circuit assumed by trauma theories, and 2) spotlights on the applicability of the latter in understanding and opening up potential further theorization in the former. The paper begins with a brief outline of some major theoretical developments in trauma as well as in media based on the principle of reciprocal relevance. Then, it brings to light the insight of media that runs prominently but in distorted version in trauma theories to reveal how media theories paradoxically underlie in the postulations of literary trauma. Finally, the paper purposes possibility of interdisciplinary borrowing i.e., using George Gerbner’s communication model to apprehend issues in trauma studies in general and trauma narration in particular.

Continental J. Arts and Humanities