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10 | Cultural Ecology in the Literary Cultures of South Asia

Supposing that environment is decisive in the process of developing cultural phenomena of a given region, this panel focuses on the role of interdependence of nature and culture in production of literary texts and other products of culture from the perspective of cultural ecology methods.

Convenors:

· Marzenna Czerniak-Drożdżowicz Jagiellonian University (Cracow, Poland)
· Ewa Dębicka-Borek Jagiellonian University (Cracow, Poland)
· Ilona Kędzia Jagiellonian University (Cracow, Poland)

Timeslots:

· 07/29 | 09:00-10:30 UTC+2/CEST
· 07/29 | 11:00-12:30 UTC+2/CEST

Long Abstract

The environment is one of the factors decisive for cultural choices and development of the particular cultural phenomena and traditions. This panel gathers researchers working on mutual relations between culture and nature in given regions of South Asia, in multidisciplinary perspective of cultural ecology. Assuming that a region encompasses differentiated local cultures with the vast production of literature and art , the proposed topics can be approached from a perspective of cultural ecology of literature (e.g. Zapf 2016), but also, in a broad sense, in view of cultural ecology methods that underline the interdependence of nature and culture; emphasize the role of local substratum in development of science (e.g. Siddha medicine); explore fictionalizing the physical space (encompassing all kind of natural phenomena) by the means of transforming real-world landscapes into the settings in fiction (e.g. māhātmya genre), etc. In particular (but not restricted), we encourage scholars to view the region as a space (1) of the mutual relations between nature and culture that (2) gave rise to literary texts and other products of culture seen as ecological phenomena, i.e. as grounded in two axioms of ecological thought: interconnectedness and diversity, or, in other words, in terms of a specific cultural ecosystem mirrored in the net of its textual traditions, where the literature and other artistic forms ‘developed in coevolution and competition with other forms of cultural production” (Zapf 2016).

Presentations