TheSite

By Staff Reporter The Site

As part of the ongoing centenary celebrations of the Jamia Millia Islamia(JMI), English Literary Association Department of English, held its annual literary festival – Lexicon in an online mode, with the theme, ‘Disease in Literature and Cinema.’ The two-day grand event was organized on 30th and 31st of October, according to an official press statement.

The Inaugural session was held on October 30th with the welcome address by Prof. Nishat Zaidi, Head, Department of English, JMI. She congratulated the students for organizing the fest and spoke on the relevance of the theme of the webinar. She expressed her gratitude to the Vice Chancellor, Prof Najma Akhtar for her encouragement and consistent interest in the ELA activities of the department. Prof Bhalla chaired the inaugural session, and Dr. Jayjit Sarkar delivered the keynote address titled “Illness as Philosophy”. The Inaugural was followed by four paper presentation sessions chaired by the Professors of the department, Prof. Baran Farooqi, Prof Anuradha Ghosh, Prof Nishat Haider, and Dr. Saroj Kumar Mahananda.

The second day of Lexicon 2020 began with a book discussion on Albert Camus’ The Plague. It was chaired by Dr. Shuby Abidi and hosted by Vanshika Chawla. The Book Discussion was moderated by Mr. Siddhartha Gigoo, author of The Garden of Solitude and Mehr: A Love Story.

Apart from the ongoing programs, few events like Creative Writing Competition, Photography Competition, and Book Design Competition were organized online and judged by Prof Ghazanfar Zaidi, Head, Department of Applied Art, Faculty of Fine Arts, Jamia Millia Islamia.

An online Photography Competition was too organized, assessed by Dr. Sohail Akbar from Mass Communication Research Center, Jamia Millia Islamia. The Creative Writing Competition on the topic ‘Writing (in) a New Normal. Finding Hope in a seemingly hopeless society’ was judged by Dr. Saba Bashir.

The Two-Day Literary grandiose ended on Oct. 31 with a star-studded Valedictory session, which witnessed the brilliant oration of Ranjit Hoskote, the renowned poet and translator.

The event came to an end with the Award Ceremony for the best research papers, which were given to Ananya Punyatoya(M.A student, JNU), Amitrajeet Mukherjee(M Phil. scholar, DU), Jaya Sarkar(Ph.D. scholar, BITS Pilani, Hyderabad), Aman Jaiswal(B.A student, The Heritage College, Calcutta University), Shivesh Singh ( B.A student, Aryabhatta College, DU) became the winner for the book discussion held on Oct 31.

For the open mic event held on the same day, Laaiba( Faculty of Social Sciences, JMI) stood first, Tajalli Fatma( M.A student, JMI) stood second, and Hasim Ahmad( MCRC, JMI) stood third.