Disability studies, rejecting the medical model which advocates "fixing" a body, views disability as socially constructed. Whatever does not fit into the hegemonized notion of the "norm" is precluded from society. Disability studies is, however, extremely important in understanding the interrelatedness of various forms of oppression, as Davis (1995) identifies disability as "the missing term in the race, class and gender triad." "Oppression" is a concept that is often found in sociological, historical, and literary texts, which is simply defined in terms of a dominant group subjugating a minor group. The acclaimed Brazilian theorist on oppression, Paulo Friere, in The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, discusses many themes of oppression that include all forms of "-isms", which are based on race, ethnicity, gender, class, caste, religion, and disability. Toni Morrison's novels almost always feature disabled characters who have some form of disability or impairment or are distinguished by a different feature. Morrison deploys disability in a unique but traditional way, which not only critiques the attitude of society towards disabled people but also analyzes the intersection between race, gender, and disability. Drawing a link between disability, race, and oppression is not new, but people have seldom acknowledged this link in literature. This paper attempts to find how the disabled characters of color are portrayed in Morrison's novels and how these characters are oppressed on the basis of their deviance from the politicized concept of the "norm".

The paper deals with the fractal structure issues of a literary text. The property of self-similarity, or scaling, is one of the central features of fractal structures. Besides, fractals are also characterized by irregularity, fractal dimension, scalar relativity and formal consistency. All the basic properties of a fractal are manifested in the language, which allows us to consider the language as a fractal structure. In this paper, the fractal form of Francis Scott Fitzgerald's novel Tender Is the Night is analyzed. The authors make an attempt to prove that this literary work is compositionally a kind of a fractal, both at the level of the plot development and lexical organization. The fractal form of the novel resembles a heterogeneous and discontinuous structure, which contains a dominant idea capable of developing and adopting any configuration. This idea is represented by the main characters of the novel and by linguistic means representing the concept of "money". Semantic elements adjacent to the dominant idea of the fractal organization are expressed by verbs and nominal phrases which form a self-similar structure of the whole novel.

With the 'greening' of postcolonial studies in the 1990s, theoretical and literary efforts of the Global South have aimed to understand the politics of biopower contestation as managed by imperialism. Towards this end, the concept of 'environmentalism of the poor' emerged, which gained global applicability for understanding the geopolitical ecology. As an approach, it merged social, political, ethical and ecological concerns of the Global South as it dealt with issues like ecological imperialism, resource colonialism, global capitalism, high modernism, indigenous territorial rights, resistance, forced migration, etc. Acknowledging these ideas as pressing concerns in the Anthropocenean period, Arundhati Roy, in her work Walking with the Comrades (2011), has elaborately addressed them with the motive to investigate the critical understanding of cultural and environmental imperialism in the contemporary neocolonial and postnatural period. Towards this end, the paper attempts to not only expose the power structures and asymmetric resource flows in the neocolonial period but also locate dispossessed and marginalized presences, interactions and interpretations in the human-nature discourses that have environmentalism racism as its hallmark. In addition to this, an attempt is also made to situate indigenous experiences and narratives into mainstream critical approaches with the intention to initiate the process of reterritorialization and reinhabitation of the natives through pluralist dialogism of the Global South.

In India, English occupies the position of a foreign language and is taught in many schools as a second/third language. However, a lot of importance is attached to the mastery of English, and it is necessary to determine the status of mastery of Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing (LSRW) skills and the lacunae, if any. Of all the skills, writing is the most used skill by students pursuing higher education. This paper aims to find out the status of the overall writing ability and its elements in students studying English as a Foreign/Third Language. It also aims to diagnose the lacunae in the writing ability of the students studying English as a Foreign Language (EFL). The variables selected were gender, type of school (government/private) and medium of instruction. The results showed that there was no difference in students' writing ability based on gender. The writing ability of private school students was better than that of government school students, and the writing ability of English medium students was better than that of Urdu and Telugu medium students. There was no significant difference in the writing ability of Urdu and Telugu medium students.

Ecocriticism, as a literary theory, has gained prominence since the last decade of the twentieth century. It is a direct offspring of the movements that started to protect the environment from pollution and indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources. Ecocriticism mainly focuses on exploring human-nature relationship and its portrayal in literature. Glotfelty (1996) defines ecocriticism as "the study of relationship between literature and physical environment." Initially, the term ecocritical study was applied to the works of British Romantics and American nature writers. Later, it has become a multidisciplinary approach. In this paper, ecocritical analysis is used to evaluate Ernest Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises, published in 1926. The novel mainly deals with the sterile life of American expatriates in France, who had lost faith in all values of life due to the World War I. The protagonist of the novel, Jake Barnes is wounded in the war and is unable to consummate his love. So, he proceeds to the lap of nature in Spain for rejuvenating himself. Through the novel, Hemingway contrasts life in France and Spain to bring out the role of nature in making his protagonist recuperate physically, psychologically and emotionally, which are the main attributes of ecocriticism.

The epics Ramayana and Mahabharata are focal points for Indian cultural ethos, which are imbibed in the nation's collective consciousness. Myth being fluid and venerated invites probing-the renderings of which have become a new genre and a new literature of refashioning and fresh perspectives. Retellings exist in variations in the narrative and also in the shift of the center. Ramkatha (story of Rama) culture, developed by Valmiki Ramayana, is an integral part of us. The earlier renditions were based on the distinct regional and cultural beliefs where the center (Rama) stays intact but the narrative changes. However, in contemporary renderings, due to emerging movements with space and time, the tellings like Sita's Sister, Shanta, Asura, and Ahalya's Awakening decipher peripheral characters' perspectives and give them a voice. The paper analyzes the hermeneutics of the renditions of Ahalya's episode in Ramayana, presenting the reason for the changed interpretations by contemporary authors.

Translation studies has recently been elevated to a prestigious and noteworthy position in literary scholarship. We can understand the place of translation in literary scholarship from a perspective that stresses the necessity of avoiding the interpretation of specific literature and language in the Arab world. Various publishers in the Arab world have taken different positions on the question of literary translation. This paper sheds light on the condition and place of translated Italian literature in the Arab world by analyzing a database of Italian literature published in Arabic and the policies of two key Arab publishing firms. It examines (a) how foreign language learning is associated with spectacle in the Arab world, and (b) how the mechanisms by which publishing firms operate impact the position of Italian literature in the Arab world. It critically gauges the translation of the Italian language and literature in Arabic higher education. This study contributes to the literature by placing emphasis on the issue that is experienced by most publishing firms besides attaining a concept associated with the intermediate translation to be regarded as a savior.

Mahasweta Devi's narratives epitomize 'subaltern resistance', a term which has received less attention and much notoriety in postcolonial studies. Devi's narratives negotiate subaltern lived experiences and subaltern resistance in the language of human rights. It is through these acts and responses that the term 'human' and its various significations are realized in her stories. The present paper deals with Devi's deconstruction of social hegemonic constructs, which helps to engage the problematics and ambiguities associated with subaltern resistance. Her stories become a commentary on the unmaking of subaltern lives vis-a-vis human rights and politics of domination. The paper draws its inferences from Devi's Imaginary Maps (2001), Breast Stories (2010), as well as from human rights discourse, so as to highlight the 'wrongs' the dispossessed tribals 'right' for themselves and the way they achieve it. These narratives describe subaltern resistance as an active dialectic process, through which the subjected forces are motivated to attain rights and sociopolitical positioning. Moreover, these narratives are significant texts not only as resistance and human rights discourse but also for their role in obliterating the spaces that perpetuate subalternity.