The Department of English, Sazolie College, organised an Online Lecture Series on the theme “North East Writings and Cultural Discourses” on 22nd November, 2021. The speaker for this inaugural lecture was Prof. Prasanta Kumar Das, Professor of English and Dean, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Tezpur University, Assam. He spoke on the topic “Indian English Writing from the Northeast: A Second Look”. Discussing the writings of the North East, he stated that there is often a tendency to meet the expectations of the mainlanders and as such one will often find stereotypical works in the writings of the North East. He said, “Discourse of North East raises expectation: you must always write about terrorism, you must always write about tribal life”. He stated that there is nothing wrong with these themes but he questioned if these themes are unchangeable. He spoke on the need for North East writers to consider exploring new and unconventional themes. Despite this problem, he said that there have been new genres in North East writings such as detective novels, graphic novels and travelogues. He mentioned writers such as Nicholas Kharbonger’s “Axone” a comedy drama, Parismita Singh’s “The Hotel at the East End of the World” a graphic novel, Siddhartha Sharma’s “East of the Sun” a travelogue.
