Rahman Bhuiyan, Ph.D., a Fulbright Scholar currently in residence at Keystone College, will speak on “Narratives and Images of the People of Bangladesh” on Saturday, Nov. 4, 2017 at 11 a.m. at the Dietrich Theater in Tunkhannock. The event is open to the public and admission is free.
Keystone’s first-ever Fulbright Scholar, Dr. Bhuiyan is teaching several English literature classes at the college during the 2017-18 academic year. He is an associate professor and chair of the Department of English and Modern Languages at North South University in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
About Dr. Bhuiyan
Dr. Bhuiyan attended high school in Tokyo, Japan, and subsequently received an international baccalaureate degree in Geneva, Switzerland. He completed his bachelor and master’s degrees in English Literature from the University of Delhi, New Delhi, India, and his master of philosophy and doctorate in English Literature from Jawaharlal Nehru University, also in New Delhi. His writing has been published in a wide variety of journals and books. He has served as a reviewer and has attended and chaired sessions at many international conferences. He speaks and reads Bangla, English, Japanese, and Hindi and can read Arabic.
During his presentation at the Dietrich, Dr. Bhuiyan will discuss the people of Bangladesh by sharing their own stories and narratives.
“How does one even begin to talk about the people of one’s country, especially when you have to deal with 160 million people?” Dr. Bhuiyan asked. “That is a population roughly half the size of the United States, living in a landmass the size of Wisconsin.
“But there are always some things which are common among the people of a country. It is not the food they eat, or the clothes they wear, or even the language they speak. All of these things can be seen to differ throughout modern Bangladesh, making it quite diverse in its own way. The commonalities, however, lay in the narratives that one hears and the images that are shared in the community,” he said.