Diti Vyas is an Associate Professor in the Writing and Communications Department at Anant National University. Grounded in Literature, Management, and Fine Arts, Dr. Diti Vyas has a rich experience of academic teaching, research, and consulting spanning close to two decades. Her doctoral research from the Indian Institute of Technology focusing on Indian children’s literature in English and regional languages has received national and international accolades by bodies such as the International Research Society for Children’s Literature (IRSCL) and The Irish Society for the Study of Children’s Literature (ISSCL). She has widely lectured and presented at international and national forums such as Maastricht University (The Netherlands), University of Worcester (United Kingdom), York University (Canada), Marino Institute of Education (Ireland), National Institute of Design (NID), Indian Institute of Management (Bangalore), Indian Institute of Management (Udaipur), Bharathiar University (Tamil Nadu) and Calicut University (Kerala). She has mentored mid-career executives of Apollo Hospitals, Adani Group, Sterling Hospital, State Bank of India, British Council, and more through various Management Development Programmes (MDPs) in the areas such as leadership communication and interpersonal skills.
Her research, in the areas of gender studies, communication studies, and sustainability communication, has appeared in publications of repute such as IRCL and Routledge Taylor and Francis. She represents Gujarat in the collection of folk tales, legends, and modern lore of India, “The Owl Delivered the Good News All Night Long” by Aleph Book House of Rupa Publication. She holds a diploma in Painting and is trained in Kathak and Hindustani music.
Abstracts of the lectures
Between Impossibility and Possibility: Pre-colonial Children’s Literature in Indian Languages
The accepted evolution pattern of children’s literature in India is movement from missionaries to textbooks, then diversifying into magazines and later into ‘stories for children,’ focusing on enjoyment rather than education. By delving into the variety and plurality of literature that Indian children ‘read’ in the pre-colonial era, this lecture seeks to explicate a body of writing that is usually termed as an evolutionary phase in the temporal progression of children’s literature as it exists today. Using exemplars from Indian languages, it seeks to raise concerns about the definitions, permissions, omissions, and categorizations. By chronicling the forms and formats of pre-colonial children’s literature, it attempts to contest the prevalent theories of the origin of Indian children’s literature. The lecture may serve as a reminder to evaluate and celebrate children’s literatures produced at different times for different purposes by different people using different formats.
Female Voices in Children’s Literature in Gujarati
Citing reasons such as the impress of the feminist movements of the west, the critics attribute modernity in gender terms to Indian children’s literature in English, whereas regional language literatures are marked out for invisibility of girls/women or adherence to passive girlhood/womanhood. Particularly children’s literature in Gujarati is charged apathy for gender issues as its criticism, too, appears to participate in this stereotyping through its silence. The lecture attempts to render this gender-centric categorization of literature for children problematic by delving into the ideological constructions of girlhood/womanhood in children’s literature in the Gujarati language. Focusing on the oral folk lullabies in the Gujarati language as a female utterance, it argues that in their content and performance, these cradle-songs densely pack female cathartic and subversive strategies. The lecture also documents how the textured mother’s voice becomes a monotone with the passage of lullabies from the ear to the page, thereby grounding labels and categorizations in the market forces which govern the availability and accessibility.
Readings
1. Jafa, Manorama. “The Indian sub-continent,” International Companion Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature, Ed. Peter Hunt. Vol 2. London and New York: Routledge, 2004.
2. Chatterjee, Rimi and Nilanjana Gupta. “Introduction,” Reading Children: Essays on Children’s Literature. Orient Blackswan, 2009.