Journal of Research in Humanities https://jrh.pu.edu.pk/index.php/Journal <p><strong><u>Summary</u></strong></p> <p>Journal of Research in Humanities welcomes contributions on critical issues of contemporary and historical significance in the areas of civilization, history, geography, language, literature, philosophy, religion, and related fields in the humanities. Journal of Research in Humanities is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes articles and book reviews.</p> <p><strong><u>Focus and Scope</u></strong></p> <p>The <em>Journal of Research in Humanities (JRH)</em> is a bi-annual peer-reviewed journal that commenced its journey as a generic publication in the domain of humanities and continues to cater to all sub-disciplines within the field. However, owing to a dearth of literary research journals in Pakistan, the JRH editorial team has decided to dedicate maximum space to scholarly contributions in literary studies. Honoring the tradition of inclusivity, the journal also publishes a designated percentage of articles from the broader humanities and encourages interdisciplinary research. Additionally, JRH would prefer research conducted in a non-Eurocentric manner, particularly studies that approach topics from indigenous and decolonial perspectives.</p> <p><strong><u>Aims and Objectives:</u></strong></p> <p>The aims and objectives of the <em>Journal of Research in Humanities</em> (JRH) are:</p> <ol> <li>To provide a platform for scholars and researchers in the humanities to publish their original and innovative research.</li> <li>To encourage interdisciplinary research in the humanities and promote collaboration among scholars from different sub-disciplines.</li> <li>To promote literary research in Pakistan and provide a space for the publication of high-quality articles in the field of literary studies.</li> <li>To foster critical thinking and intellectual engagement by publishing articles that challenge existing assumptions and offer new perspectives on issues in the humanities by dissemination of research findings and exchange of ideas and information among scholars in the domain of humanities. </li> </ol> <p><strong><u>Ethical Statement: </u></strong></p> <p>The Journal of Research in Humanities is committed to upholding the highest ethical standards in all aspects of its operations. As a platform for disseminating scholarly research in the humanities, we are dedicated to fostering a culture of integrity, transparency, and respect for all stakeholders involved in the publication process.</p> <p><strong> Authorship and Originality:</strong></p> <p>Authors submitting manuscripts to the Journal of Research in Humanities affirm that their work is original and that any sources or ideas from others are appropriately cited. Submitted manuscripts should not be under consideration for publication elsewhere simultaneously. All authors listed in the manuscript have made significant contributions to the research and are in agreement with its submission.</p> <p><strong>Plagiarism and Attribution:</strong></p> <p>Plagiarism in any form is considered a serious breach of academic integrity. Authors are responsible for ensuring that their work is free from plagiarism and that proper attribution is given to the sources. The journal employs plagiarism detection tools to identify potential instances of plagiarism.</p> <p><strong>Conflicts of Interest:</strong></p> <p>Authors, reviewers, and editors are expected to disclose any potential conflicts of interest that could influence their objectivity. This includes financial, personal, or institutional relationships that may affect their judgment or decision-making during the publication process.</p> <p><strong> Peer Review Process:</strong></p> <p>The peer review process of the Journal of Research in Humanities is designed to be fair, unbiased, and constructive. Reviewers are selected based on their expertise and are expected to provide thoughtful and objective feedback to help authors improve their work. Reviewers must maintain the confidentiality of the manuscripts they review.</p> <p><strong>Editorial Decisions:</strong></p> <p>Editorial decisions are based on the scholarly merit of the submitted manuscripts, their alignment with the journal's scope, and the recommendations of peer reviewers. The editor's decision will be communicated clearly to the authors.</p> <p><strong>Transparency and Corrections:</strong></p> <p>The journal is committed to transparency in its processes. If errors are identified in published works, the journal will promptly publish corrections, clarifications, or retractions as needed. Authors are encouraged to cooperate in addressing any concerns related to published content.</p> <p><strong> Data Integrity and Research Ethics:</strong></p> <p>Authors must adhere to recognized standards of research ethics and data integrity. Research involving human subjects must have received appropriate ethical approval, and any potential risks to participants should be appropriately addressed.</p> <p><strong>Open Access and Licensing:</strong></p> <p>The Journal of Research in Humanities follows open-access principles, aiming to make research freely accessible to the global community. Authors retain the copyright of their work and agree to publish under a Creative Commons license that allows others to share and adapt the work with proper attribution.</p> en-US chief.editor.jrh@pu.edu.pk (Journal of Research in Humanities JRH) editor@jrh.com.pk (Amna Talat) Tue, 09 Jul 2024 11:25:33 +0000 OJS 3.3.0.13 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 60 A Vernacular Historiography of the Punjabi Poetic Genre of the Kāfī: A Review of Shah Hussain, Bulleh Shah and Piro Preman’s Works https://jrh.pu.edu.pk/index.php/Journal/article/view/302 <p>This paper critically examines the formation of the Punjabi poetic tradition known as the kafi in the works of Shah Hussain, Bulleh Shah and Piro Preman, and presents an analysis of the genre as a vernacular medium. By situating the poems in the pre-modern Indian historical context, the article is an attempt to analyze the origin and the evolution of the poetic form known as the kafi. Drawing from scholars who propose a diverse and multifaceted outlook on the formation of Punjabi literary traditions, I review the genre from a framework known as a critical aesthetics of assimilation. In addition, this paper points out the structural and thematic changes introduced by the nineteenth-century poetess Piro Preman in the work called Āik Sau Sath Kāfīaṅ. I argue that the evolution of the kafi from Shah Hussain to Piro Preman’s compositions attests to the resilience and dynamism of the Punjabi poetic form.</p> Ayesha Latif , Rizwan Akhtar Copyright (c) 2024 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 https://jrh.pu.edu.pk/index.php/Journal/article/view/302 Mon, 08 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Decolonization and Contemporary Art of Pakistan https://jrh.pu.edu.pk/index.php/Journal/article/view/304 <p>Decolonization as a topic of scholarly investigation and as a conceptual framework is of top priority for focused research and meaningful scholarship in the global-modern world. This study while establishing art as a medium of investigation and a manifestation of socio-political and cultural convictions of a decolonizing Pakistani society aims at exploring the contemporary visual culture and matters of image production to develop an understanding of the processes entangled with issues of sovereignty, self-determination, and territory. The creative legacies, state, and status of art institutions, academic and commercial, as well as the role of artists who helped art maintain its relevant countenance in Pakistan, are also probed. This contextual, theoretical analysis of visual arts finds ‘multiple modernities’ of the ‘global world’ as the most important integer of a ‘decolonizing’ Pakistan. The diversifying effects of global-modern; transformative, differentiated, individualizing, worldwide, and increasingly market-oriented character of Pakistani art is traced through contemporary examples that are well received in the global art market. The main discussion revolves around the often-contested narratives about art in contemporary Pakistan which are illustrative of an ever-evolving society. The periphery of investigation ultimately expands to the subject of decolonization; to claim sovereignty of mind, thoughts, and attitude in order to apprehend the colonial past to make sense of the present, and to explicit the future as per the inclinations of contemporary times. With an acknowledgment that Pakistan has earned a very respectable place in the global art world and our artists have created a niche in the most powerful and effective industry that administers the world, the paper presents the case of contemporary art in Pakistan as it affects and gets affected by society. Along with established approaches to historiography – collecting, documenting, digitizing, and analyzing the information, research methods are borrowed from sister fields of social sciences only to be tested against the established theoretical frameworks adopted as part of the global discourse on art.</p> Sadia Pasha Kamran Copyright (c) 2024 Journal of Research in Humanities https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 https://jrh.pu.edu.pk/index.php/Journal/article/view/304 Tue, 30 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000 A Discourse on Muslim Women’s Rights in 19th century India: Translated Excerpt from Maulavī Sayyid Mumtāz ‘Alī’s Huqūq un-Nisvāñ (1898) https://jrh.pu.edu.pk/index.php/Journal/article/view/305 <p>The nineteenth century was a time of vigorous social reform in public and private spheres for Indian Muslims. The Muslim household, and especially its female inhabitants became the key ground of contestation in this regard with both assimilative and acculturative movements taking up the issue of women's rights with great zeal. Many texts, including prescriptional novels like <em>Mirat ul-‘Arus</em> and religious treatises like <em>Bahishtī Zewar</em>, were written on women’s duties and responsibilities and soon attained cult status. However, some texts like Maulavī Mumtāz ‘Alī's <em>Huqūq un-Nisvāñ</em> that openly challenged all assumptions regarding women's rights, duties and even traditional exegesis, were precluded from the mainstream narrative. This article includes an extract from a translation of <em>Huqūq un-Nisvāñ</em> that we are presently undertaking. Through this translation, we aim to recover the voice of subversive Muslim reformers like Mumtāz ‘Alī whose discourse has been missing from contemporary understanding of the history of women’s rights in South Asia.</p> Sarah Abdullah, Amina Wasif Copyright (c) 2024 Journal of Research in Humanities https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 https://jrh.pu.edu.pk/index.php/Journal/article/view/305 Tue, 30 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Alienated Amusements: The Pleasures of Objective Enjoyment and Popular Narratives https://jrh.pu.edu.pk/index.php/Journal/article/view/307 <p>The current paper seeks to critically analyze the contemporary notion of enjoyment and its ideological hegemonic functioning within contemporary popular culture. The present critique will employ and elaborate upon Todd McGowan’s idea of a cultural turn in terms of a commandment to enjoy in association with Robert Pfaller and Zizek’s notion of ‘interpassivity’. All three of the theorists mentioned above are highly influenced by the thought of Jacques Lacan and his reworking of Freudian analysis of the human self and culture. I will argue that the capitalist commandment to enjoy is the direct cause of the condition of interpassivity underlying the operative function of popular culture. This is a state beyond passivity where even passive enjoyment is fetishistically relegated to the objects of desire. The more we move towards interactive and popular modes of narrative and symbolic mediation the more we become unaware of our passivity of response. My argument does not criticize the digital media alone but also the function of popular works of Literature and how they engender this particular form of enjoyment by presenting and propagating clichéd and watered-down images of cultural types which attempt at not moral standardization but rather the dissipation of socio-political anxiety for the sake of the smooth functioning of the capitalistic apparatus.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> Babur Khan Suri Copyright (c) 2024 Journal of Research in Humanities https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 https://jrh.pu.edu.pk/index.php/Journal/article/view/307 Tue, 30 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Site of Memory and Mourning: Metaphor of War in Atiq Rahimi’s Selected Novels https://jrh.pu.edu.pk/index.php/Journal/article/view/308 <p>The study undertaken analyzes three novels named as Earth and Ashes, A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear, and The Patience Stone, written by Atiq Rahimi. These novels tell the stories of families affected by the 1979 war. There is no direct reference to war and violence however, war keeps popping up in the textured background during the narration of the normal experiences of characters in the novels.&nbsp; These novels are enriched with the metaphors embedded in texts that complement the voice which is absent and yet it makes its presence felt throughout the text. The objective of the paper is to bring forth the role of metaphors in war literature. It concludes that metaphors are significant as on the one hand, they create a site for memory for both the part of reader and writer, yet on the other hand, they evoke pathos which invites the reader to mourn the loss of the war-torn community. This study is qualitative in nature and is conducted through the close textual analysis of all the mentioned texts under the lens of theories related to metaphors, war, memory and mourning۔</p> Zahida Younas Copyright (c) 2024 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 https://jrh.pu.edu.pk/index.php/Journal/article/view/308 Tue, 30 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000