Inaugural Day hosted by

SIDDHI Webinar Series, IIT Madras

Dec 13, 2020 The Write Thoughts

6.00 - 7.00 pm A talk by Prof. Arunn Narasimhan

IST Dept of Mechanical Engineering

Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India

Dec 13, 2020 Inauguration

7.30 - 8.30 pm

IST Prof. Wendy Singer

Roy T. Wortman, Distinguished Professor of History

Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, USA

Introducing Kenyon – IITM Writing Workshop (5 minutes)

Prof. Sean Decatur

President

Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio (5 minutes)

Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthi

Director, Indian Institute of Technology Madras

Chennai, India (5 minutes)

Prof. David Lynn

Special Assistant to the President, Editor Emeritus of the Kenyon

Review Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, USA (5 minutes)

Prof. Raghunathan Rengaswamy

Dean Global Engagement, Indian Institute of Technology Madras

Chennai, India (5 minutes)

https://hss.iitm.ac.in/kenyon-iitm https://siddhi.iitm.ac.in

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Readings by Kenyon - IITM Writing Workshop Faculty:

Prof. Nancy Zafris Former Fiction Editor, Kenyon Review Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, USA It Came In (5 minutes)

Prof. Geeta Kothari Non-fiction Editor, Kenyon Review & Senior Lecturer University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA Crossing Black Water (5 minutes)

Prof. Chris Gillen Professor of Biology Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, USA Novel electrogenic cation-chloride cotransporters in mosquitoes and fruit flies (5 minutes)

Ms. Geetha Iyer Mellon Science and Nature Writing Fellow Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, USA Scarce Resources, and other poems (5 minutes)

Prof. Robert Mauck Professor of Biology Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, USA Climate and a long-lived seabird: what can 50 years of data tell us? (5 minutes)

Prof. Yutan Getzler Associate Professor of Chemistry Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, USA On Polymers (5 minutes)

Vote of Thanks:

Dr. Sudarsan Padmanabhan Associate Professor, Dept of Humanities and Social Sciences IIT Madras, Chennai, India (2 minutes)

Kenyon – IITM Writing Workshop (December 14 – 18, 2020) Schedule Group I - Fiction Group II - Non-fiction Group III - Science Writing

Group I Group II Faculty

Prof. Nancy Zafris Email: zafris@hotmail.com & Mr. Sam Zafris Writer Columbus, Ohio, USA Email: szafris@gmail.com

Prof. Geeta Kothari Email: gnkothari@gmail.com

Prof. Chris Gillen Email: gillenc@kenyon.edu & Ms. Geetha Iyer Email: iyer1@kenyon.edu

Prof. Robert Mauck Email: mauckr@kenyon.edu & Prof. Yutan Getzler Email: getzlery@kenyon.edu

2.00 - 4.30 pm Preparation Session with Teaching Fellows

2.00 - 4.30 pm Preparation Session with Teaching Fellows

2.00 - 4.30 pm Preparation Session with Teaching Fellows

2.00 - 4.30 pm Preparation Session with Teaching Fellows

Dr. Kaamya Sharma Assistant Professor Dept. of HSS IIT Jodhpur Rajasthan, India Email: kaamyasharma@gmail.com Contact No.: 8270324294

Ms. Smruthi Bala Kannan Research Scholar Department of Childhood Studies Rutgers University New Jersey, USA Email: sk1804@scarletmail.rutgers.edu Ms. Shweta Venkatesh Alumnus, Integrated Masters in Humanities and Social Sciences IIT Madras, Chennai Tamil Nadu, India Email: shweta.venkatesh09@gmail.com Contact No: 9686213963

Mr. Ragavendra H V Research Scholar Department of Physics, IIT Madras Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India Email: ragavendra@physics.iitm.ac.in Contact No: 9444025629

Ms. Malayaja Chutani Research Scholar Department of Physics IIT Madras, Chennai Tamil Nadu, India Email: malayajac@physics.iitm.ac.in Contact No: 8056103954

5.00 – 7.00 pm Study Break 7.30 – 9.15 pm Session with Faculty Prof. Nancy Zafris

7.30 – 9.15 pm Session with Faculty Prof. Geeta Kothari

7.30 – 9.15 pm Session with Faculty Prof. Chris Gillen & Ms. Geetha Iyer

7.30 – 9.15 pm Session with Faculty Prof. Robert Mauck & Prof. Yutan Getzler

Ms. P V Suguna Organising Committee – Logistics & Tech Dept. of HSS, IIT Madras Email: sugu@iitm.ac.in Contact No: 9841476141

Mr. D Sasikumar Organising Committee - Tech Team Dept. of HSS, IIT Madras Email: sasi@iitm.ac.in Contact No: 9444047944

Dr. Sudarsan Padmanabhan Organising Committee – Coordinator Dept. of HSS, IIT Madras Email: sudarsanp@iitm.ac.in Contact No: 9444782884

Ms. Ujwala Kotti Coordinator, SIDDHI Webinar Series, Office of Global Engagement IIT Madras Email: conferences@ge.iitm.ac.in

mailto:zafris@hotmail.commailto:gnkothari@gmail.commailto:gillenc@kenyon.edumailto:iyer1@kenyon.edumailto:mauckr@kenyon.edumailto:getzlery@kenyon.edumailto:kaamyasharma@gmail.commailto:sk1804@scarletmail.rutgers.edumailto:shweta.venkatesh09@gmail.commailto:ragavendra@physics.iitm.ac.inmailto:malayajac@physics.iitm.ac.inmailto:sugu@iitm.ac.inmailto:sasi@iitm.ac.inmailto:sudarsanp@iitm.ac.in

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Kenyon - IITM Writing Workshop

Indian Institute of Technology Madras

(December 14 - 18, 2020)

A collaborative endeavour between Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, USA & IIT Madras, Chennai, India

A five day Writing Workshop offered by scholars who teach writing at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, USA and faculty from IIT Madras, Chennai, India who are creative writers but specialize in variegated fields such as engineering, biotechnology, humanities and social sciences. Date: December 14 – 18, 2020 (Inaugural Lecture and Inauguration on Dec 13, 2020) Genre: Fiction – 15 seats Non-fiction – 15 seats Science Writing (Group I) – 15 seats Science Writing (Group II) – 15 seats Who can apply - young faculty, aspiring writers, college students, other interested individuals Application: Click here for application Deadlines: 1. Submission of application - November 20, 2020 2. Intimation of acceptance – November 27, 2020 Coordinators from Kenyon College: Prof. Wendy Singer Roy T Wortman Professor of History and South Asian Studies Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, USA Email: singerw@kenyon.edu Prof. David H. Lynn Special Assistant to the President Professor of English Editor Emeritus of the Kenyon Review Kenyon College, Treleaven House 201 Gambier, Ohio, USA Email: lynnd@kenyon.edu

https://www.kenyon.edu/http://www.iitm.ac.in/https://kenyonreview.org/https://kenyonreview.org/https://forms.gle/f937b4momLz46XrK9mailto:lynnd@kenyon.edu

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Organising Committee:

Prof. Wendy Singer (Coordinator) Roy T Wortman Professor of History and South Asian Studies Kenyon College Gambier, Ohio, USA Email: singerw@kenyon.edu Prof. David H. Lynn (Coordinator) Special Assistant to the President Professor of English Editor Emeritus of the Kenyon Review Kenyon College, Treleaven House 201 Gambier, Ohio, USA Dr. Sudarsan Padmanabhan (Coordinator) Associate Professor Department of Humanities and Social Sciences IIT Madras, Chennai, India Email: sudarsanp@iitm.ac.in Prof. Sriramkumar L (Coordinator) Professor Department of Physics IIT Madras, Chennai, India Email: sriram@physics.iitm.ac.in Dr. Kaamya Sharma Assistant Professor Department of Humanities and Social Sciences IIT Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India Email: kaamyasharma@gmail.com Ms. Suguna P V Technical Team Web designer, Documentations, Outreach Dept. of HSS, IIT Madras, Chennai, India Email: sugu@iitm.ac.in Mr. Sasikumar D Technical Team Designer, Documentations, Outreach Dept. of HSS, IIT Madras, Chennai, India Email: sasi@iitm.ac.in

mailto:kaamyasharma@gmail.commailto:sugu@iitm.ac.inmailto:sasi@iitm.ac.in

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Teaching Fellows:

Mr. Sam Zafris Writer Columbus, Ohio, USA Dr. Kaamya Sharma Assistant Professor Department of Humanities and Social Sciences IIT Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India Email: kaamyasharma@gmail.com Ms. Smruthi Bala Kannan Research Scholar Department of Childhood Studies Rutgers University New Jersey, USA Email: sk1804@scarletmail.rutgers.edu

Teaching Assistants:

Ms. Shweta Venkatesh Alumnus Department of Humanities and Social Sciences IIT Madras, Chennai, India Email: shweta.venkatesh09@gmail.com Ms. Malayaja Chutani Research Scholar Department of Physics, IIT Madras, Chennai, India Email: malayajac@physics.iitm.ac.in Mr. Ragavendra H V Research Scholar Department of Physics, IIT Madras, Chennai, India Email: ragavendra@physics.iitm.ac.in

Course Fee: ₹ 1000/- for B. Tech., M. A., M. S., & M. Tech., (IIT Madras Students) ₹ 2000/- for Ph.D., (IIT Madras Students) ₹ 2000/- for Students from other IITs and other Colleges ₹ 3000/- faculty, professionals and other interested people (Course fee covers Registration, Study Materials and Faculty Lectures for all five days.) Supported by: Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, USA Kenyon Review, Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, USA Office of Dean Students, IIT Madras, Chennai, India Office of Alumni & Corporate Relations, IIT Madras, Chennai, India Office of Global Engagement, IIT Madras, Chennai, India Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras, Chennai, India Department of Physics, IIT Madras, Chennai, India

mailto:kaamyasharma@gmail.commailto:sk1804@scarletmail.rutgers.edumailto:shweta.venkatesh09@gmail.commailto:malayajac@physics.iitm.ac.inmailto:ragavendra@physics.iitm.ac.in

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Coordinators from Kenyon College: Wendy Singer is an historian of South Asia, whose

research focuses, primarily, on the period after 1947. Her current

projects connect the history of the anti-colonial movement to the

development of the post-independence state. At the moment she

is finishing an essay, “Women in the State: Elected women and

the Challenge of Politics in the 1950s,” which is part of a

collaborative project on Feminism and Nationalism in India. A highlight of this

collaboration was a conference in September of 2018 at Cambridge University. In

addition, she is co-editing a volume on India’s multi-language policies and

particularly the variation in language politics across states. Finally, and

connectedly, she is writing a monograph on the history of "Reservations," India

policy, somewhat like affirmative action, that provides designated seats in

Parliament, state legislatures and other institutions for under-represented groups.

The research for this book was sponsored by a Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research

Grant. All three projects point to the organic and changing nature of Indian

democracy, which was designed to emphasize its inclusiveness of various

constituents and stake-holders within Indian society and, in so doing, provide

potential lessons for the rest of the world.

David Lynn is Editor Emeritus of the Kenyon Review, an

international journal of literature, culture, and the arts, which he

edited from 1994-2020. He is also professor of English and

Special Assistant to the President of Kenyon College. In 1990, he

founded the KR Young Writers Program and, in 1997, the KR

Writers Workshop. His collection, Children of God: New and Selected Stories,

appeared in 2019. One of its stories, "Divergence," won an O. Henry Award. David

Lynn is also the author of Wrestling with Gabriel, a novel, and two earlier collections

of stories, Year of Fire and Fortune Telling, as well as a critical study, The Hero's

Tale: Narrators in the Early Modern Novel. His stories and essays have appeared in

magazines and journals in America, England, India, and Australia. David Lynn

lives in Gambier, Ohio with his wife, Wendy Singer, a distinguished historian of

India.

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About the Faculty conducting the Writing Workshop:

In addition to many short stories, Nancy Zafris has published four books of fiction: The People I Know (U of Georgia Press), winner of the Flannery O’Connor award for short fiction and the Ohioana Library Association award for best book of fiction; The Metal Shredders (Blue Hen/Penguin Putnam), a NY Times Notable book, Lucky Strike (Unbridled Books), and Home Jar (U of Northern

Illinois), a collection of short stories named one of the year’s ten best books by Minneapolis Star Tribune. She has been awarded two National Endowment for the Arts grants (their maximum) and also served as a panelist for them. She was the fiction editor of the Kenyon Review for nine years, followed by eight years as series editor of the Flannery O’Connor award for short fiction. She has recently completed a new book as well as a young adult novel.

Chris Gillen is Professor of Biology at Kenyon College. His research group has received funding from the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health to study salt and water balance in insect model systems using molecular and physiological approaches. He is the author of two books: Reading

Primary Literature (Pearson, 2007) and Hidden Mechanics of Exercise: Molecules that Move Us (Harvard University Press, 2014). Gillen directs the Science and Nature Writing program at Kenyon. He has developed and taught writing workshops for a variety of audiences, including the Kenyon Review Young Science Writers workshop for high school students. He is a winner of Kenyon's Trustee Teaching Excellence Award and the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology’s M. Patricia Morse Award for Excellence and Innovation in Science Education.

Geeta Kothari is the nonfiction editor of The Kenyon Review. She is a two-time recipient of the fellowship in literature from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the editor of ‘Did My Mama Like to Dance?’ and Other Stories about Mothers and Daughters. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in various journals and

anthologies, including the Kenyon Review, the Massachusetts Review, Fourth Genre, and Best American Essays. In 2004, she received the David and Tina Bellet Award for Teaching Excellence. In addition to teaching in the undergraduate curriculum, Geeta Kothari also directs the Writing Center.

http://www.kenyonreview.org/http://www.kenyonreview.org/http://www.kenyonreview.org/http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=1-9780380771011-0http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=1-9780380771011-0http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=1-9780380771011-0http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=1-9780380771011-0http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=1-9780380771011-0http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=1-9780380771011-0http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=1-9780380771011-0http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=1-9780380771011-0http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=1-9780380771011-0http://www.writingcenter.pitt.edu/http://www.writingcenter.pitt.edu/http://www.writingcenter.pitt.edu/

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Robert Mauck is a Professor of Biology at Kenyon College and former Director of the Bowdoin College Scientific Station at Kent Island. His research pursues questions of life-history evolution, physiological ecology, climate change, and behavior in a long-lived seabird, Leach's storm-petrel, a species he has studied for nearly

30 years. Author of numerous scientific papers, he has taught Science Writing at Kenyon College and is a past winner of Kenyon's Trustee Teaching Excellence Award. He had a full life before joining academia, during which his writing appeared in National Wildlife Magazine, the Anchorage Daily News.

Yutan Getzler earned a doctorate from Cornell University in 2004. Since that time, his scholarship at Kenyon College has focused on homogeneous catalysis and sustainable polymer chemistry. His work at Kenyon has been supported by the ACS-PRF, published in Nature Reviews Materials, Macromolecules, and

Acta Crystallographica, and presented at ACS meetings and the Polymers Gordon Research Conference.

Geetha Iyer received an MFA in Creative Writing & Environment from Iowa State University in 2014. Her publications include work in Orion, Gulf Coast, The Account, The Massachusetts Review, Electric Literature, and National Geographic. Her writing has received the O. Henry Award, the

James Wright Poetry Award, the Calvino Prize, and the Gulf Coast Fiction Prize. She is the 2020-2022 Mellon Science and Nature Writing Fellow at Kenyon College, where she writes and teaches about intersections between the sciences and the arts through ecocritical and postcolonial lenses.

Arunn Narasimhan received his Ph.D. in Heat Transfer with minors in Manufacturing and Biology in 2002 from the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the Southern Methodist University, USA. Before joining IIT Madras, he was a staff engineer in the Micro-lithography division of FSI International, Allen, TX, USA.

Arunn Narasimhan has written and published two social novels in Tamil language. America Desi (2015), his first novel, recounts the coming of age experience for a boy from the deeply conservative South Indian small town travelling to the USA for the first time pursuing higher studies. His second novel Achchuvai Perinum (2016) ruminates on and marshals the theme of past lovers now in separate relationships

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kindling their old flame. He has also written popular science books in Tamil language. The book Nano introduces Nano-technology in a themed essay collection format while the book Do Aliens Exist expounds the scientific search for extra-terrestrial intelligence elaborating on technical themes like Fermi’s paradox, Kardashov scale and SETI in simple language. Two other essay collections What is the Shape of the Earth and Why do Toucans have Large Beaks traverse the terrain of science in all its glory and candour.

He has also written elaborate expository essays for online magazine on Carnatic and classical music and has contributed essays to newspapers like The Hindu. He has been a music critic of the December Madras Music Season for newspapers including The Hindu and Dinamalar for the past few years. He was a Carnatic music guitarist of the fusion band Srishti.

He has also given several invited bi-lingual talks popularising science at various universities and schools and has appeared on TV shows. His other hobbies include reading, world movies and western classical music.

Email: arunn@iitm.ac.in Web: https://home.iitm.ac.in/arunn Personal (Tamil): https://arunn.me

mailto:arunn@iitm.ac.inmailto:arunn@iitm.ac.inhttps://home.iitm.ac.in/arunnhttps://arunn.me/https://arunn.me/