Faculty Seminar | Presentations by NLS faculty Kunal Ambasta, Diya Deviah and Ammel Sharon

This week’s faculty seminar will include two presentations by three of our faculty members on August 28, 2024 from 3:00 – 4:30 pm.  The first presentation will be by Kunal Ambasta, followed by a joint paper by Diya Deviah and Ammel Sharon.

• Paper 1 | Kunal Ambasta – “Burdens of Proof and Standards of Conviction: The Mechanics of the Presumption of Innocence through Indian Evidence Law”
• Paper 2 | Diya Deviah and Ammel Sharon – “Continuity without Cultivation? The Student, Writing Pedagogy, and the University in India”

Abstract of the second paper: 

The student in India has been cast as a political figure whose interests are tied in with social justice or the state. This paper rethinks the history of the student through archives of writing pedagogy in India.  We examine syllabi, answer scripts, composition manuals and reports on legal education reform to construct a history of writing and meaning making in English since the nineteenth century. Based on debates in the field of Writing and Composition Studies, we discuss contract grading and the role of silence in the classroom as avenues to develop student voice, and decentre classroom authority. Addressing challenges of the large and diverse university classroom, this paper resists the prefiguration of the student in socio-political terms, and argues for the classroom as a conceptual site in higher education in India.