Department of English of Faculty of Languages and Literature (FLL) arranged a lecture by Dr. Claire Chambers from the University of York at Faisal Masjid campus.
In the start,. Dr. Ayaz Afsar, the chairperson Department of English, welcomed everyone and introduced Dr. Chambers (the speaker) to the audience.
Dr. Chambers’ talk dealt with Pakistani Anglophone Literature and its development since the partition. She discussed, how Pakistani Anglophone Literature began with the writings of an English speaking Indian Elite before the partition of the sub-continent and how these writers had subsequently become writers of the two countries. Most prominent in the works of these writers is the issue of the partition and its effects.
The second generation of Pakistani writers, she explained, was of the people who were born after or during the 1971 war. This second partition, the era of General Zia, and then the Afghan war brought a different set of issues into the works of these writers. They deal with minority issues, class divisions, and the issue of 1971 that led to creation of Bangladesh and the inner breakdown the nation had experienced.
Finally, Dr. Chambers discussed the latest generation of Pakistani writers, whose works deal with many popular themes and enters the zone of Genre fiction (also called “pulp” fiction by its detractors). These writers wrote crime fiction, romance, and chic lit., blending together common place popular themes with a Pakistani background and bringing Pakistani fiction into the zone of contemporary popular writings. Thus, she showed that Pakistani fiction shows a wide variety of forms and themes and cannot be limited to one or two areas. She concluded by saying that Pakistan English Literature is showing a developing maturity and will probably have a major place in the contemporary reading world.
Prof. Dr. Munawar Iqbal Ahmad, dean Faculty of Languages & Literature, in his concluding remarks, said that Pakistani diasporic writers often represent only a particular section of Pakistani society and their portrayals may not be inclusive. He congratulated the organizers of the lecture and thanked Dr. Chambers for her erudite talk.