Amorette Lyngwa, "Across Worlds: Transculturality, resistance and the making of Khasi identity in the 19th and 20th century"
For the Indigenous/tribal people of the Khasi Hills in Northeast India, the world did not end when colonialism and mass conversions to Christianity took over the community during the 19th century; it transformed. It was a period when new worlds, and new identities were built – some that were aligned with the new Christian religion and others that leaned more towards rebuilding native cultures and traditions. The ‘Khasi Renaissance’, as scholars have termed this period, was a watershed in this history that created the identity of the Modern Khasi. It involved the establishment of the Seng Khasi, a cultural and later religious organization that revived and strengthened Khasi heritage to resist colonial cultural destruction. It also kickstarted written literature for the previously unlettered tribe, creating new possibilities for the community.
My presentation explores this period of transformation through a closer look at the transcultural social life of Jeebon Roy, one of the founders of the Seng Khasi and the foremost leaders of the Khasi Renaissance of the 19th and 20th centuries. Through a close reading of a selection of early Khasi writing by Roy and his associates, published by his printing press, I argue that Khasi ‘worldmaking’ in the 19th and 20th century is an amalgamation of past heritage and the many transcultural experiences that leaders and ‘worldmakers’ of the century were exposed to during this time period. Further, this transculturality and transformation became a form of resistance that allowed the Khasi community to transition into the modern world. At a time when the tribe’s cultural heritage was at stake, I ask, what does it mean for a community to survive crisis and their world’s transformation through embracing new worlds and transcultural identities? What are the implications when this transcultural worldmaking becomes a core feature of Khasi identity in the century that followed?
Benvolio Nichols, "“Like Dying and Like Being Born”: The Portal, the Door, and the Closet in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West"
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid is a novel of global, community, and interior crisis. The scholarship surrounding Exit West—concerningly little of which has emerged since its publication in 2017—has focused on the novel's fabulist conventions and speculative content as a commentary on xenophobia and colonialism. Using noted texts in queer theory including Sedgwick's Epistemology of the Closet, this paper draws further connections between Hamid's portal plot and the experience of coming out. Hamid’s central worldbuilding conceit—magical “doors” which allow passage all over the world, regardless of borders—compellingly troubles cultural narratives about refugees, while serving also as a concrete extension of the metaphorical closet door with which queer people must live. I center the intersectionality of migration and coming out to demonstrate that for characters like Nadia, a refugee and a bisexual woman, these experiences must overlap. Through close reading, I propose that the novel’s short and spare conclusion engages with global crisis on two levels: by showing us a city after violent upheaval, and by showing us the aftermath of a relationship shaped by displacement. In this last scene, set decades after their romantic relationship has ended, the novel’s dual perspective characters Nadia and Saeed finally come to an understanding of each other’s worldviews—particularly, Nadia’s view of intimacy as a queer woman. The conversation around the novel remains incomplete without an analysis of queer experience. Exit West reveals a multilayered perspective of the ways in which queer people and migrants—identities which Western media and culture assume, too often, must exist in opposition to each other—survive and rebuild through crisis.
Madeleine Stone, "Queer Temporalities and Crisis: Reimagining Survival Beyond Normative Time"
This paper explores how queer and trans theories of temporality offer alternative understandings of crisis and survival. By rejecting linear, normative conceptions of time, queer temporalities reframe the experience of crisis as non-catastrophic and open possibilities for non-normative survival strategies. Through the lens of queer studies, the paper examines how crises—environmental, political, and interpersonal—are often framed through dominant, future-oriented narratives that prioritize continuity and progress. Instead, this paper investigates how queer resistance and existence in the present challenge these frameworks, proposing radical reimaginings of living, thriving, and surviving in crisis-laden worlds. The study also considers how embracing queer temporalities allows us to cultivate new care practices and collaborative modes of being in community.
Speakers BN
MFA, Cleveland State University
Benvolio Nichols is a first-year graduate student in the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts creative writing program through Cleveland State University. He is a fiction writer with research interests in media studies and bisexual literature. He holds a B.A. in English and Gender Studies...
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Sunday March 23, 2025 10:30am - 11:45am EDT
Room 144
Stata Center, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA 02167
