Thomas Stephens Konknni Kendr (TSKK), Porvorim recently organised a national symposium, in collaboration with St. Aloysius (Deemed to be University), Mangalore on the topic ‘Rediscovering Sixteenth Century Local Language Literature in Goa: Texts, Traditions, and Historical Narratives.’
The objective of this symposium was to re-examine the emergence of local language literary traditions in the 16th century Goa in the light of recent linguistic and historical research. The national symposium was inaugurated at the hands of the chief guest the Dean, Shenoi Goembab School of Language and literature, Goa University, Anuradha Wagle. The former Dean, Faculty of Language and Literature, Goa University Kiran Budkuley presented the keynote address. Also present on the occasion were director of TSKK Pandurang Phaldesai, Fr. Kelwin Monteiro, SJ, the convenor of the symposium and the administrator of TSKK.
The symposium comprised of two sessions, each having three paper presenters from the field of research in language, history and linguistics. The sessions were chaired by Prakash Vazrikar and Bhushan Bhave.
In the first session, Delio Mendonca, SJ (Goa), Milind Mhamal (Goa) and Jason Pinto, SDB (Karnataka) presented papers. The second session, Annie Rachel Royson (Gujarat), Gokuldas Prabhu (Kerala) and Manoj Subhash Kamat (Goa) presented their papers.
The sessions dealt with the local language texts, traditions and narratives in general, and the genre of Epics in the local languages.
The symposium was attended by the college students, lecturers and independent researchers from Goa. In addition, St. Aloysius, (Deemed to be University) was represented by the director of the Konkani Institution, St. Aloysius, Mangalore, Fr. Prashant Madtha, SJ together with the HOD of the Konkani Dept, Flora Castellino. There were in total 60 participants. The papers presented at the symposium will be published on SOD, the TSKK’s Annual Research Journal.
