Crossroads VIII: Alterity and the Comparative Imagination

The Organization of Graduate Students of Comparative Literature is organizing Crossroads 2026, a graduate conference. This year’s theme is ‘Alterity and the Comparative Imagination’.

 We are especially pleased to announce that our keynote speaker will be Professor Leela Gandhi (Brown University), who will deliver a talk titled: “Nonviolent Action in a Comparative Framework”. The poster for this event is also attached below.

 Abstract:

In the aftermath of the Russian Revolutions of 1917-1923, socialist thinkers across the world—including Walter Benjamin, Simone Weil, Albert Camus, Bart de Ligt, and various Russian formalists—drew on sources from Indic antiquity to deliver new visions of nonviolent revolution based on presuppositions of actionless-action: independent of specific agents or predetermined outcomes; and consisting solely of unimpeded interactions among revolutionary subjects. This talk animates these Indic materials through a formal methodology I’m calling speculative entanglement that brings together all participants in the inquiry, including historical figures, scenes from antiquity, various modes of reception, critical discourses, and the critic as well. I repurpose familiar episodes from the epic poem Rāmāyaṇa, focusing on its heroine, Sītā of Mithilā, at a moment in contemporary India when this story-cycle is manipulated to justify acts of violence against marginalized groups, including Muslims, Dalits, and women. 

Keynote will take place on:
 

Friday, April 10, 2026
4:30–5:30 PM
Herter 301, UMass Amherst

The conference brings together graduate student work across a range of comparative and theoretical approaches, with panels on phenomenology, memory, folklore, and formal comparison.