Past Events
Past Events
Lecture by Lance Strate: THE FUTURE OF KNOWLEDGE, AND THE FATE OF WISDOM,IN THE AGE OF INFORMATION
- 2024-11-09
- HSS SEMINAR ROOM
The BALVANT PAREKH CENTRE FOR GENERAL SEMANTICS, in collaboration with the
HSS DEPT., IIT BOMBAY is
organizing a talk on
THE FUTURE OF KNOWLEDGE, AND THE FATE OF WISDOM, to be delivered by Prof. Lance Strate
Tenth Balvant Parekh Memorial Lecture by Prof. Lance Strate: The Message, the Meaning, and the Medium
- 2024-11-11
- Balvant Parekh Centre
The Centre is pleased to announce the upcoming Tenth Balvant Parekh Memorial Lecture, as a part of the celebrations in the Balvant Parekh Centenary Year, which will be delivered by Lance Strate, Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University, and
President of the Institute of General Semantics, New York. 11th November, 4 pm
A Tribute to Fred Dallmayr
- 2024-06-26
- Balvant Parekh Centre
We are deeply saddened by the loss of the renowned philosopher, political theorist and a lifelong friend of our centre, Fred Dallmayr. Please join us for a memorial gathering on 26th June, 2024, 2 pm onwards. This is conducted in hybrid mode: those in Baroda please join us at the centre and the rest can use the link to join online : https://meet.google.com/gmo-pyvv-uoe
Academic Event: Library Visit, Film Screening, Book Talk & Discussions, 27th,28th, 29th May, 2024
- 2024-05-27
- Balvant Parekh Centre
Programme Schedule:
27th May, 2024:
3pm-5pm: Film screening of Arrival (2016)
5pm-5.30pm: Discussion by Dr.Gita Vishwanath, Academic Fellow, Forum on Contemporary Theory, Baroda
5.30 pm: Tea and Snacks
28th May, 2024:
11am-1.30pm: Library Visit
1.30pm-2.30pm: Lunch
2.30pm- 3.30pm: Short Presentations on General Semantics by Dr.Asmita Kundu, Academic Fellow, BPC and Dr.Sonal Nimbkar, Research Fellow, BPC
3.30pm-5.00 pm: Book Talk: “Re-mapping Huck Finn: A Book Talk Using General Semantics Concepts” by Prof. Sanjay Mukherjee, Dept. of English & CLS, Saurashtra University, 2011US SUSI and 2023 EU Erasmus Plus Fellow. The talk will be on Percival Everett’s 2024 novel James, which is a postmodern take on Mark Twain’s classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
5.00-5.30pm: Tea and Snacks
29th May,2024:
11.00 am-12.30 pm: Library Visit
12.30pm-1.30 pm: Interactive session with Prof. P C Kar and closing remarks.
Public Lecture: A Brief Evolution of Dance Writings in India
- 2024-04-24
- Balvant Parekh Centre
Call For Papers: National Seminar on “Mapping Experience and Consciousness : General Semantics, Philosophy and Human Sciences.”
- 2024-07-23
- Sardar Patel University, Vallabh Vidyanagar, Anand, Gujarat
Our upcoming event is a National Seminar in collaboration with Department of English, Sardar Patel University, Anand.
Concept Note
Experience is a priori to human understanding and knowledge. How do we abstract, absorb, assimilate and
perform depends on the (kind of)experience we have in our human life. Plato, Locke, Kant, Dewey, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, Searle etc., inspired by this phenomenon, had engaged with what experience
entails and what is the nature of truth. The founder of the system of General Semantics, Alfred Korzybski (1879-1956), distressed by the poignant experience in the aftermath of World War I, felt the need to understand what is
human, and which experiences make one a human being and influence the world to be better through ones’
actions. Hence Korzybsky, in his General Semantics thought, classified the humans as ‘time-binders’ where they
can create the symbols of experience and pass them on to the next generation humans. For Korzybski, it is called
the ‘theory of values’ and for J. Samuel Bois (1966), ‘the world of self-awareness and self-management’. On the
other hand, Phenomenology as a philosophical thought and method of inquiry engages with the structures of consciousness. These structures of consciousness are the result of the subjective experience of the everyday,
objective world. Thus, phenomenologists are known for understanding the ‘phenomena’ in daily life, and the
events and actions from various fields like art practices, socio-political issues, etc. According to the philosopher Eldar Sarajlic, the denial of reality/truth is the ominous feature of the present lived
world. The perception of reality has become hard and our touch with reality is lost and consequently, we are unable to perceive the truth of sings like global warming or economic inequality. The recent events and changes in society, culture and politics have emphasized, more than before, the urgent need to re-evaluate lived experiences as a valid subject of enquiry in various domains of humanities and social sciences. The need to understand the
multifaceted reality of our existence is celebrated today as an important critical thinking. Therefore it makes for a justified academic cause to fathom the multivalent nuances of lived reality, experience and consciousness, and to
explore inter-corporeality from diverse entry points. General Semantics and Phenomenology both similarly focus on humans and their subjective experiences, which Bois defines as happenings-meanings and, what Husserl would call to return to things themselves. Experiences are pursued philosophically to return to the ‘truth’ and to understand things as they are in themselves. The purpose of the present seminar is to seek different approaches to
experience in wide range of areas like philosophy, psychology, art, literature, tradition, history, politics, religion, health science, cognitive sciences and social sciences and seek answers to the subjective experience of lived reality.
We welcome original abstracts (not more than 300 words) with interdisciplinary approaches, from philosophers, researchers, postgraduate students, performers and artists with different perspectives related (but not limited) to the following topics
Sub-themes:
a) Consciousness and Experience
b) Lived Experience
c) Embodiment and Experience
d)Experience in History, Traditions, Rituals
e)Experience in Indian and Western Philosophical Thought
f) Representations of Identity
g) Art, Culture and Performance
h) Inter-subjectivity
i) Inter-corporeality
j) General Semantics
k) Corporeal linguistic/aesthetics
l) Social and Health Sciences
m) Cognitive Sciences
n) Media Studies
Contact Persons:
Sonal Nimbkar: bpcbarodaofficial@gmail.com
Piyush Raval:piyushspu@gmail.com
Registration Fees:
Faculty: 2500 INR (with accommodation)
For Students: 1000 INR (without accommodation)
Public Lecture : The Love and Cultural Adoption of Bollywood in the Arab World
- 2024-04-05
- Balvant Parekh Centre
Public Lecture by Manju Ramanan, Cross Content and Media Expert, Author and Former Editor in Chief of Filmfare Middle East and Femina Middle East on “The Love and Cultural Adoption of Bollywood in the Arab World”. See you all there. BPC Baroda, 5th April, 3.30 pm!
Plenary Session in the Annual International Conference, “Global Capitalisms”, of Forum on Contemporary Theory
- 2024-03-15
- Alleppey
Balvant Parekh Centre will have a dedicated plenary session discussing the issues of global capitalisms through the lens of general semantics in the upcoming conference in Alleppey, March, 2024. The session will include presentations from our academic and research fellows and will be chaired by Prof. Sanjay S. Mukherjee of English and CLS, Saurashtra University.