The Department of English and Cultural Studies is planning a workshop titled 'Writing Place: Narrative, Landscape, and Mediation in Lavasa' on 28th January 2026. This workshop will examine place-based narrative writing in Lavasa through literary practice, critical reading, and the careful use of artificial intelligence tools. Designed for students in English, Cultural Studies, and Digital Humanities, the workshop approaches Lavasa as a constructed and contested space rather than a neutral setting.
The resource person for this event is Dr Pallavi Narayan. Dr Narayan is an author, editor, and educator with over sixteen years of experience in trade and academic publishing. Her work in publishing spans Routledge, Pan Macmillan, Penguin Random House, NUS Press, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, and Singapore Management University and others. She has held academic leadership roles as Associate Professor of Literary Studies at O.P. Jindal Global University and Director of Ahmedabad University's creative writing programme, and continues to work closely with writers and editors.
Participants will engage with short literary and nonfiction readings that demonstrate how attention to landscape, infrastructure, and lived experience shapes narrative voice and ethical stance. Guided field-writing exercises will invite students to observe Lavasa’s designed environments, ecological traces, and moments of absence, producing short narratives grounded in sensory detail and specificity.
Artificial intelligence tools will be introduced as critical readers rather than creative substitutes. Students will use language models and basic text-analysis tools to reflect on patterns, assumptions, and generic language in their own drafts. This process foregrounds revision and highlights how dominant narratives about place and progress circulate through digital systems. Clear constraints will ensure that AI supports critical reflection without displacing human authorship.
By combining literary reading, situated writing, and ethical AI use, the workshop offers a grounded approach to creative practice within a Digital Humanities framework.