The first quarter of the twenty-first century witnessed the rapid growth of digital technologies, yet their psychological impact on students and teachers is not fully understood. This research paper examines the prevalence of digital stress among students and presents the results of a pilot study using a multidimensional Likert Scale. Developed by Hall et al. (2021), the Digital Stress Scale consists of five components: Availability Stress, Approval Anxiety, Fear of Missing Out, Connection Overload, and Online Vigilance. Using purposive sampling, a mixed group of students, teachers, and working professionals (N=106) reported on the 24-item scale. The study also evaluated the feasibility and appropriateness of the scale in the Indian classroom context. Across the five subscales, 42-47% of all respondents reported typical experiences of digital stress, and approximately 15-20% experienced elevated levels of digital stress. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient demonstrated reliability and internal consistency of the subscales (?=0.83). The factor analysis (Principal Component Analysis) indicated digital stress as a common underlying construct and the Pearson correlation coefficient demonstrated the correlation between the five subscales. The findings suggest that DSS can function as an early, reliable psychometric tool that can inform and strengthen teacher observation of digital stress..
The term ‘Adivasi’ embodies a long history of colonial oppression, dispossession, and political struggle. Recognised as “Scheduled tribes” by the Indian Constitution, Adivasis continue to experience a disconnect between their identity that was shaped by colonial powers and their precolonial identities that they want to be identified with. The erosion of collective Adivasi consciousness during colonisation led to the loss of Dhumkudiya, or youth dormitory. Community members, Adivasi poets and intellectuals came together to mourn its loss, produce alternative knowledges, and disrupt the much-reified canon. These writers, unified by a movement resolved to return to their pre-colonial fold, which was trustworthy and superior. Drawing on Frantz Fanon’s concept of decolonisation, understood as a continuous process of overcoming colonial alienation, followed by cultural reclamation, this paper examines the contemporary revival of Dhumkudiya as a site of resistance and revival. Using Poka Laenui’s five-phase model of decolonisation, the study also analyses the artistic expressions of Adivasi intellectuals and interviews with members of the Oraon community to envision the renaissance of a lost institution.
This research aims to compare the perceived loneliness levels and experiences of elderly women living in urban and rural areas of Samsun province in T & uuml;rkiye. Methods: The study was conducted using a mixed research method, incorporating both qualitative and quantitative analyses. It is grounded in the theory of intersectionality, focusing on femininity and the intersecting experiences of elderly individuals living alone. Quantitative data were collected from 174 elderly women, while qualitative data were obtained from 16 of those women. The findings showed no statistically significant differences in any sub-scales of loneliness across different age groups of women. Additionally, interviews with participants indicated that social isolation and loneliness, limited access to social services for the elderly, and daily living challenges along with the need for physical assistance are common issues faced by lonely elderly women in both settings. Nevertheless, when analyzing the rural and urban groups separately, contextspecific themes emerged, indicating that women from these groups also face unique challenges. This point relates to intersectionality theory, demonstrating that aging and gender do not act in isolation; instead, they interact with structural and contextual inequalities, leading to diverse experiences of loneliness.
Migration threatens the continuity of a region’s indigenous literature by altering its demographic structures. Where individuals of productive age become disconnected from their native land and community, concerns emerge about the survival of local folk traditions. However, drawing on the definitions of folklorists such as Ben-Amos, Alan Dundes, and Richard Dorson, folklore is not a relic of the past but a dynamic expression of shared cultural and experiential knowledge. This paper argues that Garhwali folklore has adapted itself across generations and media, shifting from oral traditions to cassette recordings, music videos, and digital folk expressions like memes, proving that Indigenous literature remains dynamic through cultural hybridity and technological change. These transformations also reflect the evolving identities and hybrid cultural experiences of second and third-generation migrant Garhwalis. Although vastly different in medium, these modern expressions carry the same essence of collective experience, reinforcing the adaptability of folklore. This paper argues that instead of erasing cultural traditions, migration reshapes and transforms the forms of folklore in ways that find relevance in the times of globalization. By examining the visual and digital evolution of Garhwali folk expressions, this paper redefines Indigenous literature not as a vanishing tradition but as a continually evolving cultural experience, one that transcends geography, embraces hybridity, and asserts its relevance in the digital age.
Obiajunwa Wali predicted in the early 1960s that African literature could only emerge in African languages. However, in the late 1980s, African literature in English emerged as a new canon. Even the debate between Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Chinua Achebe over the use of the English language tilted in favour of Achebe. In this context, Simon Gikandi (2014) has argued how English has been ‘provincialised’ in Africa. In India’s Northeast too, there is a similar dichotomy of positions regarding the status of English. The paper examines the position of the English language in the Northeast, where it is not just a means of communication but is essentially a major social and literary capital, spawning what is mostly referred to as the ‘Northeast discourse’. It also looks at how and why the Anglophone literature of the region has evolved into a distinctive legacy and even a canon. Taking both literary and critical texts, the paper attempts to understand the role of Anglophone literature in shaping the distinctive identity and the literary landscape of the multi-ethnic and pluralistic literature of Northeast India.
An Anglophone African writer and polemical ideologue whose work has become a model for neocolonial contexts, Ngugi wa Thiong’o is revisited by Amitayu Chakraborty in the context of his homeland’s shifting political landscape. This book highlights Ngugi’s fictional work as a key contribution to postcolonial studies. According to the author, Ngugi’s work employs ethnosymbolic elements to challenge the institutionalized histories by highlighting the politics of ethnicity, nationalism, and elitist discourses. The book focuses on key works by Ngugi that bridge historical, anthropological, and literary studies in the context of Kenyan nationhood.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly shaping social, economic, and cultural life, raising important questions about the intersections of gender, language, and power. Although scholarship on gender and technology has expanded, feminist and Global South analyses of AI discourse remain limited, particularly in the Indian context. This study investigates how AI discourse in India constructs, legitimizes, and contests gendered ideologies through language and representation. Drawing on feminist literary criticism, critical discourse analysis, and postcolonial digital humanities, it examines a range of publicly available texts, including policy documents, corporate communications, educational and marketing materials, and AI interface design. A qualitative discourse analysis of metaphors, narratives, and intertextual patterns reveals that AI discourse frequently reproduces patriarchal assumptions by associating innovation, authority, and technological expertise with masculinized language while feminizing virtual assistants as compliant, caring, and service-oriented. These discursive patterns normalize gendered power relations within emerging digital technologies. The study demonstrates the value of integrating feminist literary and discourse analysis into AI studies and argues for more inclusive, ethically grounded, and culturally responsive approaches to AI design, governance, and communication, particularly within the Global South.Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly shaping social, economic, and cultural life, raising important questions about the intersections of gender, language, and power. Although scholarship on gender and technology has expanded, feminist and Global South analyses of AI discourse remain limited, particularly in the Indian context. This study investigates how AI discourse in India constructs, legitimizes, and contests gendered ideologies through language and representation. Drawing on feminist literary criticism, critical discourse analysis, and postcolonial digital humanities, it examines a range of publicly available texts, including policy documents, corporate communications, educational and marketing materials, and AI interface design. A qualitative discourse analysis of metaphors, narratives, and intertextual patterns reveals that AI discourse frequently reproduces patriarchal assumptions by associating innovation, authority, and technological expertise with masculinized language while feminizing virtual assistants as compliant, caring, and service-oriented. These discursive patterns normalize gendered power relations within emerging digital technologies. The study demonstrates the value of integrating feminist literary and discourse analysis into AI studies and argues for more inclusive, ethically grounded, and culturally responsive approaches to AI design, governance, and communication, particularly within the Global South.
This paper examines how Sudha Murthy reimagines the relationship between the centre and the margin through the lived experiences of women in her fiction. While marked by stylistic simplicity, Murthy’s novels expose entrenched patriarchal and cultural hegemonies through narratives of resilience and ethical selfhood. Drawing on feminist theory, intersectionality, trauma studies, and resilience theory, the study offers a comparative textual analysis of Gently Falls the Bakula, Mahashweta, Dollar Bahu, and House of Cards. It argues that the protagonists like Shrimati, Anupama, Vinuta, and Mridula challenge patriarchal structures not through overt rebellion but through moral agency, emotional resilience, and self-realisation. The paper further employs the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs 4, 5, 10, and 17) as a critical framework to show the contemporary relevance of Murthy’s feminist vision. It concludes that Murthy redefines marginality as a site of ethical strength by advocating empathy, gender justice, and inclusive social transformation while foregrounding the transformative agency of women in everyday life.
Inherently anti-colonial Indian feminist movements were hijacked by neo-colonial capitalist globalisation during the 1990s and later. Ironically, the same circumstances birthed a generation of Telugu feminist writers in southern India, who motivated and reflected the transformation of women from victims to anti-imperialist changemakers. Accordingly, this study employs feminist postcolonial theory to critique path-breaking translated short stories from twenty-nine Telugu women writers in the anthology ‘Beyond the Backyard’ (2019). These stories capture the clash of neo-colonial globalisation-induced socio-political and economic degeneration with the anti-imperialist feminist ideals of liberty, equality and sustainable development, in 21st century India. The study examines how such regional feminist projects play a crucial role in challenging neo-colonialist hierarchies of language, gender, knowledge and power. Regional feminist literature emerges as a kind of decolonial praxis, a political and epistemic act resisting neo-colonial domination disguised as globalisation. By connecting local feminisms with transnational feminist networks, it offers crucial visibility to regional feminist movements that strike at the roots of neo-colonialism. Regional feminisms thus serve as a subaltern archive, not only foregrounding marginalised feminist voices but also fostering crucial anti-colonial, transnational feminist solidarities.
The language of artificial intelligence (AI), the ability of AI systems to generate speech sounding natural due to technologies that partially generate speech, including text-to-speech (TTS) and voice synthesis, has become a revolutionary part of human-computer interaction in the modern, rapidly changing digital environment. In addition to technical possibilities, AI voice recognition is becoming more influential in the development of how people interact with information, power, and the decision-making process. The neo-political approach is an interesting avenue to critically evaluate such developments. Such a view transcends the orthodox ideological demarcations and is rather about the convergences of digital media, globalization, identity politics, and networked power politics. It is more than a neutral interface, and according to a neo-political perspective, AI is engaged in the creation of political and cultural meaning. Voice-enabled AI systems are made with assumptions of gender, class, and authority, which are often based on the interests of the institutions and corporations that create them. In that regard, AI vocalization helps subtly reconfigure a power structure, affecting citizen-citizen and citizen-system interactions, as well as the digital systems mediating the lives of the population. With the growing prevalence of these technologies, human and machine communication is becoming unclear, raising significant ethical and political concerns. The political implications of AI voice technology are not a mere theoretical issue because they serve as the key to the promotion of transparent, inclusive, and democratic governance in the digitally mediated world. One of the ways to unveil these concealed concepts is the application of neo-political analysis, which indicates the immediate necessity of critical participation and control.
The futuristic setting of the dystopian novel The Island of Lost Girls (2015) explores the techno-patriarchal society and how they shape female agency when these characters lack access to truth and knowledge. Manjula Padmanabhan’s Meiji is a teenager, the only girl in a country where there has beena systematic eradication of the female gender. The novel presents her journey from this “Wasteland” to“Vane Island”, a place away from her family, where knowledge is restricted and monitored, which furtherraises the question of autonomy and fragmented identity. This research paper uses Donna Haraway’s“situated knowledge” to explore the complexities of power dynamics that underlie knowledgeproduction and female subjectivity. Haraway’s idea of “cyborg” has been used to discuss the blurredboundaries of identity, which facilitates fluidity, liberation and empowerment of the female. JudyWjcman’s “AI feminism” takes this idea forward and reveals the scope of transformation in the role of AI from a tool of control to that of liberation and survival. By using these theoretical frameworks, the paper aims to examine the dual role of AI as a mechanism of oppression as well as a site of resistance.This opens ways for facilitating agency and empowerment among female characters.
As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to reshape epistemic and institutional frameworks, the humanities stand at a pivotal juncture, confronted by technological disruption yet simultaneously revitalised by the critical opportunities it presents. We humanities scholars are living in an important moment in which technology, with its Artificial Intelligence (AI) conditioning, is challenging our epistemologies and structures while also reinvigorating them with new critical opportunities. In this paper, the authors explore the possibility of evolving and thriving in an age of AI without sacrificing the values and purpose of humanities education, but rather with their values and purpose reimagined. AI may be quick, pattern-recognizing, and predictive, but it lacks the innate human qualities of empathy, ethical discernment, and cultural interpretation. In this study, drawing on educational frameworks, theories, and approaches from philosophy of education, digital humanities, and critical data studies, the authors reflect on a few ways the core values of humanistic inquiry are being remediated in new contexts. It also looks at how teachers are using AI tools to enhance instead of replacing human effort, creativity, and critical thinking. This paper reflects a belief that an updated pedagogy for the humanities is necessary to teach human values and to raise citizens who are able to function in an unforeseeable future that is dominated by machines. The paper argues that the humanities become essential ambassadors to a more human and wise technological future through the development of a hybrid curriculum model for the 21st Century, by the use of dialogic and interdisciplinary pedagogies, and through the adoption of Epistemic Pluralism.
This paper examines the relationship between Bertrand Russell’s philosophy of education and behaviorist learning theories in order to reassess classroom discipline and English language teaching in the contemporary educational context. Although debates concerning freedom and control in education and their implications for language pedagogy have been longstanding, the potential compatibility between Russell’s educational ideals and behaviorist principles remains underexplored. The study juxtaposes the ideas of Thorndike, Pavlov, and Skinner, particularly conditioning, reinforcement, and habit formation with Russell’s emphasis on autonomy, rational inquiry, ethical responsibility, and self-discipline. The analysis demonstrates that, despite their differing assumptions regarding learner agency and the purposes of education, both traditions recognize the importance of structured learning environments that foster intellectual and behavioral development. The paper argues that behaviorist techniques can be employed to support Russellian educational goals such as critical thinking, learner autonomy, and democratic citizenship. Consequently, the study proposes a model of “disciplined freedom” that integrates structured guidance with independent inquiry, offering a balanced framework for classroom management and English language teaching in the modern educational landscape.
To understand the evolving dynamics of English Language Education (ELE) today, it is imperative to delve into the historical development of the language. The numerous specialized areas of Applied Linguistics, prevailing today, such as English Language Teaching (ELT), English for Specific Purposes (ESP), Computational Linguistics (CL), and Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI), reflect multifaceted and specific language-function needs and require humans to be accurate, intuitive, and scientifically focused to perform specific language tasks. Our assertion in this paper is that integrating historical research may give us a clear picture of the vibrant shifts in English language education in India and present-day trends. It also helps us grasp how the various aspects worked in the past and how they came to be the way they are now. The study focuses on: (a) what historical research is in the context of English language education, and (b) how it could enhance our understanding of the present-day changes in the English language. The insights may be helpful for research scholars, reviewers, English language educators, historians of education, experts in educational technologies and policymakers in furthering and empowering historical research. This article argues for the value of historical research in ELE for its multidimensional impacts and its capacity to construct arguments for the future, highlighting how today’s research in English education will continue to bear its historical significance in the years to come.
To perceive the human world in coexistence with nature and to nurture freedom and constructive processes, we need to rethink the transformative literature of Rabindranath Tagore, who inspires a deep ecological sense of identification with the immediate environment. Tagore, as an eco-literary artist, had voiced the endowments of his formative years to nature’s opulence, espousing a symbiotic coexistence between man and his environment. This paper explores Tagore’s My Reminiscences and My Boyhood Days to highlight the profound interconnection between nature and the realm of Baruch Spinoza’s notion of natura naturata (“nature natured”). Tagore’s picturesque portrayal of the green world in both these autobiographies imply an active, reaching-out aspect of the environment to preserve its well-being, attributed to all physical entities—animate and inanimate, individual and collective. The ecologies of Tagorean freedom, interpreted from the Spinozan concept of conatus, augment the expansion of his environmental sensibilities to challenge the conventional nature–culture dichotomy. This dichotomy becomes the central narrative technique to symbolize nature as freedom, fluidity, and authenticity, and culture as control, confinement, and artificiality. Drawing towards the end, the paper aptly justifies the repositioning of Tagore’s ecological vision, interweaving the cultural, spiritual, and agrarian rhythms of ancient Indian environmental philosophy.
“Technoexistentialism” may be defined as the most well-known West-centric existentialist definition of technology. We assume that the industrial project of defining technology and of coming to terms with it was first broached by Heidegger. We can indeed claim that there is a dialectical spiritualization of the forms of existential life in the writings of 19th century philosophers, starting with Hegel and evolving with Heidegger’s writings on existential ontology as well as his very important essay concerning technology (1954). Dialectical materialism also informs Heidegger’s dialectical vision of the evolution of materially created objects. Our critique of Heidegger exposes the dialectical core of technology as the “Standing Reserve” of human creative life and as an expression of the drive – of what Hegel calls Geist – that enables humans to create, objectify and endow qualitative character to the technological conception. As such technology also provides a subjective anchor for human consciousness and then an opportunity to it to physically evolve in conjunction with technological advancements. One of the most potent examples of this process is the evolution of AI. But AI precipitates through a faultline or a lacuna in the extension of the subjective spirit of technological form. We also ask if there is a certain lacuna in the consciousness of the moment of obsession with technology and its objective reality.
This study analyses the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a scaffolding for language impairment. Drawing on psycholinguistic theories by Levelt and Dell, a comparative study of AI-generated prompts and the language of the impaired is conducted. Following a corpus-based approach, this study employs comparative and qualitative methods to analyse language components, including mean length of utterance (MLU), type-token ratio (TTR), lexical diversity, and syntactic structure. Data on the language-impaired are collected from corpora in AphasiaBank. The research examines how AI serves as support for impaired language. It also highlights the significance of AI as an auxiliary resource for experts in education, psychology, and impairment.
The study aims to examine the prospects and challenges for emerging and established writers and readersof born-digital literature. Many digital platforms, such as mobile apps Joyread, Webnovel, Wattpad, andNovelcat; blogs, e.g., somewhereinblog; Over-The-Top (OTT) platforms, such as Netflix, HoiChoi, andAmazon Prime, Jio Hotstar, etc., Facebook, and websites, such as Webtoons, have become platforms fornew authors. Readers use E-books, PDFs, and Amazon Kindles widely today. However, some readers stilleagerly await hard copies of books by their favourite writers. They prefer hard copies rather than e-books.Hence, the researchers distributed a questionnaire among 200 university students from India andBangladesh. As a result, the researchers could find comparable data for the study. This survey shows thepriority of e-books and printed books among the readers. An excellent example of electronic literature is E.L. James’s Fifty Shades Trilogy. The writer posted these books online first, then printed them, and thengranted permission for motion pictures. These prove that in the capital world, besides e-books, printedbooks are also published to earn royalties. Hence, electronic literature is important in the 21st century.
This paper examines Meredith Westgate’s The Shimmering State (2021) to explore the reconfiguration of memory and cognitive autonomy in the digital age. As memory constitutes a fundamental basis of human consciousness, identity, and selfhood, its increasing mediation through technological systems raises critical questions for posthumanist inquiry. The study analyses Memoroxin, a speculative memory-enhancing pharmaceutical, as an analogue of agentic artificial intelligence that operates through neurotechnological intervention. Drawing on N. Katherine Hayles’s concept of cognitive assemblages, Bernard Stiegler’s theory of pharmacology, and Andrew Hoskins’s notion of grey memory, the paper investigates how memory becomes externalized, technologically regulated, and subject to capitalist appropriation. The novel problematizes the boundaries between human cognition and technological agency. The paper argues that Memoroxin functions simultaneously as a cognitive aid and a mechanism of control, transforming memory from an internal repository of experience into a consumable, networked, and compulsive phenomenon. In doing so, The Shimmering State offers a critical reflection on the ontological, ethical, and affective consequences of AI-mediated cognition and the growing entanglement of human memory with technological systems.
This paper examines the memoir When Breath Becomes Air (2016) by Paul Kalanithi, an Indo-American neurosurgeon, as a unique posthuman autopathographical narrative. Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air, an illness memoir, can be read in multiple ways as Kalanithi’s approach to his memoir is unconventional in many ways. It portrays Kalanithi’s confrontation with terminal cancer as a patient and as a neurosurgeon who treats it. It deals with Kalanithi’s encounter with cancer, his ways to navigate his existential crisis, and his search for the meaning of life in the face of an inevitable end. The title itself, When Breath Becomes Air, connotes meaning related to Indian and Western religious-philosophical traditions. Previous researchers examined this text through the frameworks of trauma studies, illness narratives, the medical humanities, existentialism, and posthumanism. This study addresses the gap and approaches Kalanithi’s memoir as a Post-human autopathography, drawing on the concepts of David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder and on the theories of illness narrative discussed in The Wounded Storyteller by Arthur W. Frank. It also explores how Kalanithi redefines his perspectives about embodiment, identity, agency, and life after the psychic rupture caused by his diagnosis.
