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Country’s first online int’l lit fest begins at JU


Published : 13 Mar 2021 09:43 PM | Updated : 16 Mar 2021 12:56 PM

A three-day-long nation’s first-ever online literary festival titled ‘English Jubilee Lit fest 2021’ aiming to provide a platform for the students to interconnect across the globe began at Jahangirnagar University (JU) on Friday evening. 

The department of English of the university organized the festival through Zoom in order to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of English department, of JU and of the Emergence of Bangladesh.

JU vice-chancellor Professor Dr. Farzana Islam inaugurated the program as the chief guest around 6.15 pm on Friday.

Prof Dr Laizu Nasrin, Chairman of JU English Department presided over the inaugural ceremony while dean of Arts and humanities faculty Professor Md Mozammel Hoque addressed the programme as a special guest.

Addressing the programme,  JU VC Prof. Farzana Islam acknowledged the significance of March, the speech of 7th March in the history of the emergence of Bangladesh and paid her tribute to the father of the nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

The VC also welcomed and praised the initiative of the nation’s first-ever international literary festival by the English department amid the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Alluding the theme of the event, ‘The Worst of Times! The Best of Times!’, she wished may the best come out of this worst time.

The first day’s six sessions have shown South Asian cartographic and postcolonial consciousness where the critics and scholars from the Bangladeshi neighborhood are assembled.

The first session of the festival engaged two prominent South Asian scholars, Professor Fakrul Alam and Professor Harish Trivedi, in a much-anticipated conversation on 'English Studies in the World and the Global South, 1971-2021'.

Following this, poets, critics, scholars, translators, writers, artists, and performers from within and without Bangladesh assembled in four more sessions.

Sumon Sajjad, Masum Reza, and Altaf Shahnewaz talked about two literary stalwarts of Jahangirnagar University, Selim Al Deen and Mohammad Rafiq.

Meanwhile critic and activist Ganesh N Devy and Mahmudul H Sumon joined in a critical conversation on ‘Indigenous Studies’

Later, a spatiotemporal study of the poetry of Bangladesh was given by Raihan Sharif, Sumon Sajjad, Shamim Azad, Iraz Ahmed, Sohel Hasan Galib, and Jahanara Perveen in the fifth session.

These intellectual sessions ended with a first of its kind online drama ‘Natoker Mooto’ of Samipendra Banerjee presented by the Drama Club of Gour Banga University, Malda, India.

The first day of this three-day-long lit fest ended around 11.30 PM. Former and current students, teachers, officers and employees of the department attend the ceremony.