Call for Proposals

Special Issue of The Global South: “No Longer in the ‘Waiting Room of Literary History’: Accounting for Early Indian Fiction“

This special issue of The Global South invites critical interventions on early Indian fiction: a rich body of literature that remains in the shadow of Indian literary and cultural studies, as well as South Asian, Victorian, postcolonial, and novel studies more broadly. Such fiction—demarcated here as published between 1835-1920 and composed in multiple languages—shared many features with other works that bridged linguistic and cultural divides not only within India but also outside its borders (e.g., similar stories of origination, novelty in prose, formal complexity, thoughtful treatment of topics of the day). Though often dismissed as derivative and inferior, these texts rather showcase colonial-era Indian authors strategically innovating upon more familiar, indigenous storytelling traditions in a fraught sociopolitical milieu and for multiple audiences. The continuing scholarly neglect of this literature, in turn, represents an especially remarkable critical omission and holdover from the colonial past. In recent years, Victorian Studies has argued for the importance of “widening” its purview with attention to global literature of the same era, endowing both space and legitimacy to the examination of colonial-era Indian fiction. While this particular field has become more aware of its peculiar limitations and lacunae, far more work remains to be done in terms of the deliberative analysis of early Indian fiction and its significance both within and beyond the study of the nineteenth century.

Responding to this call, this special issue invites scholars to consider how early Indian fiction instantiates a prime archive that can help scrutinize received categories and narratives across a range of fields and discern rich connections between them. Purposefully broad, we welcome papers on early Indian prose fictions, short stories, and novels published in any language during the long nineteenth century. In so doing, we do not aim merely to be reparative or restorative with respect to Indian literary and cultural studies. Rather, we hope to engage this overlooked literature more fully in ongoing conversations within Victorian, South Asian, postcolonial, and novel studies: fields that may find themselves transformed through deeper engagement with early Indian fiction.

Papers may also address the following related topics:

● The historic and ongoing obstacles that stymie the study of early Indian prose fiction
● Formal innovations (or compromises) that Indian authors made in crafting their works
● How censorship concerns may have affected authors and whether these manifested
differently in works written in English than those composed in vernacular languages
● Alternate/disparate theories of the novel instantiated by Indian authors’ use of realism
(including “fringe realisms” or “peripheral realisms”), melodrama, sensation fiction,
romance, science fiction/fantasy, etc.
● The particularly fraught nature of English literature penned by Indian writers, as observed
in unwieldy categories like “Anglo-Indian” and “Indo-Anglian” and how this conception
transforms over the twentieth century
● How mainstream canons and conceptions of nineteenth-century, postcolonial, and world
literatures change as this understudied corpus comes into view

Please email paper proposals of approximately 300-400 words as well as a short bio to Monika Bhagat-Kennedy (bhagatke@usna.edu) and Jesse Cordes Selbin (jcordess@gettysburg.edu). The deadline for proposals is January 30, 2026. Invited paper submissions should range from approximately 6,000-8,000 words and will be due June 30, 2026. Please also note the related panel that has been proposed for the 2026 ACLA Conference; paper proposals for this panel are due October 2, 2025.

The Global South concentrates on the literature and cultures of those parts of the world that have experienced the most political, social, and economic upheaval and have suffered the brunt of the greatest challenges facing the world under globalization: poverty, displacement and diaspora, environmental degradation, human and civil rights abuses, war, hunger, and disease. Please see the journal’s homepage for more information.

Guest editors: Monika Bhagat-Kennedy, Assistant Professor, Department of English, U.S. Naval Academy and Jesse Cordes Selbin, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Gettysburg College