Celebrating Tagore: A Collection of Essays

This volume should be considered—as its title announces—A Celebration of Rabindranath Tagore. It can also be thought of as our homage to Tagore an anjali or offering if you will for a puja. The collection of articles found here evolved out of two events a seminar and a conference both organized by my co-editor Rama Datta. The first of these the Asiatic Society-Fayetteville State University Collaborative Summer Seminar on Tagore took place in 2000 in Kolkata under the sponsorship of the University Grants Commission and directed by Dr. Pratap Chandra Chunder. Twelve Tagore scholars assembled for that seminar and a number of them have contributed to the present collection. The second event the “Celebrating Tagore: Fayetteville State University” conference was held in 2004 at Fayetteville State University in Fayetteville North Carolina where Professor Datta has taught for a number of years. She was the indefatigable force behind the conference putting out the general call for papers inviting specific speakers and making all the necessary arrangements at her own institution for accommodating participants. Many of those presenting papers at that conference have likewise contributed to this volume. It was her summer seminar and her subsequent conference and this is her volume.