Syllabus for

Academic Year  (2024)

Postcolonialism may be defined, following Robert Young, as the perspective provided by theories that analyze the material and epistemological conditions of postcoloniality and seek to combat the continuing, often covert operation of an imperialist system of economic, political and cultural domination. This course will examine major literary and filmic texts through the lens of postcolonial theories. It will enable readers to, as John McLeod puts it, read local, regional, national and global literatures that have been produced by people from countries with a history of colonialism. The course especially focusses on aspects of human values and gender in connection with the workings and legacy of colonialism, and resistance to it, in either the past or the present. The course will develop critical skills that will enable students to use postcolonial theories to discuss the ways in which the literary forms of fiction, film and autobiography both depict and question postcolonial realities in nations ranging from India to Nigeria.

The course instructor may choose three theoretical texts (or chosen excerpts), one novel, 2-3 prose pieces, and 2-3 poems across all four units while preparing the course plan.

The course aims to help students

•To familiarize with the function and value of literature from a postcolonial perspective. 

•To develop the student’s capacity to think critically about postcolonial literatures in a comparative framework.

•To understand the construction of nation and national culture, the role of education and language, and hybridity, gender, and the disenfranchised in the formation of colonial and postcolonial identities.

•To understand how the genres or forms in which writers treat postcolonial issues shape their representation of postcolonial

The purpose of this compulsory course is to introduce the concepts of language teaching and learning within classroom spaces and beyond and help students understand how pedagogic spaces are constructed and what their social implications are. The course also intends to explore issues related to assessment in formal as well as semi-formal academic settings. Through the development of a nuanced understanding about the language teaching and learning scenario in the national and global contexts, the learners would be able to hone skills and professional ethics in the domain of teaching and learning, thereby enhancing their opportunities for employability and entrepreneurship in the field.

The course has been conceptualized with the following objectives:

• Introduce the learners to the theories, debates, and dominant discourses in the domain of language teaching and learning.

• Familiarize the learners with the dominant methods and practices of language teaching and learning as well as the policies in the field.

• Create an awareness of the linguistic competencies of the learners and thereby enhance their understanding of the critical approach to pedagogy through an experiential approach

This course aims to address the ecological crisis which has become a defining feature of the current epoch. Conceived from an English Studies perspective, the course maps the ecological crisis and various associated movements through narratives. Through such a conceptualization, the course proposes to expose students to a wide variety of debates and discussions on ecological crisis and awareness drawing texts from different literary cultures and perspectives. The course also attempts to understand ecological crises as stemming from various socio-cultural and political entanglements with ecology. The texts in the course will give the students an overview of the global, national and regional discourses and debates pertaining to ecology and sustainability, thus helping them decode the global and local issues related to ecological violence and their interconnections. To give a multidimensional comprehension of various issues dealt through narratives, field visits are also included in the course structure. By focusing on practical application, the course facilitates awareness of employability skills and opportunities. The course includes pedagogical approaches such as lectures, classroom discussions, and use of ICT tools such as Google Classroom.

This paper introduces students to key themes and concerns in Indian Literatures, primarily at national and regional levels. This is a survey course that serves as an introduction to main issues and concepts in Indian Literatures around cross cutting issues such as gender, caste, class, nation etc. Categories and nomenclatures are debated and challenged in and through the selections. The course is a mix of traditional as well as contemporary literatures written both in English as well as other regional languages translated into English and will develop theoretical, analytical and critical reading skills in students.

• To understand the complexities of cultural, economic, political and social forces and their impact on the production of literatures in India of different classes and backgrounds.

• To understand the religious, caste, gender, colonial, national and regional constructs in India through its literatures and thereby develop sensitivity and add to the core value of love for fellow beings.

• To become aware of methods of interpreting literary texts in the contemporary context

Each language is a repository of history and knowledge as well as the culture of a group of speakers. This course surveys the social and cultural contexts of languages in the world. It examines the ways in which a human language reflects the ways of life and beliefs of its speakers, contrasted with the extent of language's influence on culture. A wide variety of cultures and languages are examined. The course will focus on topics such as identity, social factors of language use, language vitality, language structures and issues of globalization.

This course has been conceptualized to introduce students to the genre of graphic narratives in the form of comics, novels, cartoon strips, graffiti etc. The course aims to equip students with skills to engage with graphic narratives as ‘texts’ or ‘signifying systems’ and will provide them with tools to read graphic narratives from global as well as national perspectives and critically engage with them as informed readers of graphic narratives. It will enable them to treat and study graphic narratives as ‘serious art’ and to understand the academic implications of studying such texts. 

The course has been designed keeping in mind the latest trends and practices in the discipline and a larger extent in the educational system. The course will introduce students to some of the established areas like content writing and publishing, translations, etc. as well as emerging areas like digital humanities, citizen journalism, etc.. The focus here is to help students acquire and nurture skills that are integral for their personal and professional growth.

Course Objectives

The course is designed to:

1. Introduce students to emerging trends in the discipline

2. Familiarize them with some of the industries associated with the discipline

3. Enhance skills that could translate academic learning to professional excellence

Gender Studies is an academic area of study that critically examines how gender shapes our identities, social interactions and experiences of everyday living. Through exposure to interdisciplinary perspectives, students develop a framework for thinking about power relations and the ways in which those relations are shaped and challenged by intersecting constructions of gender, sexuality, sexual orientation and their configurations in various power structures. Interrogating everyday experiences, social and political institutions, literary and philosophical contributions, past and present ideas and world events, the course seeks to provide students with tools to engage with and critically analyse these areas. Further, the course seeks to give a major political spin by interpellating Western theory with gender sensitive experiences curated across India so that students learn to reflect on these more immediate narratives against the dynamic possibilities of theory.

Introduce key concepts and movements in the field of gender studies. • Familiarise learners with the gender dynamics operating within various structures of society. • Equip learners to competently understand and apply concepts and terminology relating to gender and sexuality. • Enable learners to critically examine how normative power structures situate them in various societies in their academic and public discussions.  

This paper introduces students to an emerging and significant field of study in understanding the problems and perspectives of Dalits as a significant cross-cutting issue in today’s world and its interaction with human values. The course aims to help students familiarise themselves with the politics of caste with reference to cultures, literature, and thought in diverse local, regional, and national contexts.

The centrality of narratives in engaging with trauma and suffering is very significant to note. Withthe understanding that one of the ways through which people, across the world and cultures, dealwithtraumaticexperiencesisbynarrativizingit,thecourseintroducesvariousframeworksthroughwhich trauma narratives, from across the globe, can be engaged. This course will provide studentswith narrative approaches to engagement with trauma that will enable them to be more sensitive intheir engagements and interactions, imbibing humane values like empathy and consideration, topeople from across cultures. The focus on storytelling as a mode to negotiate with illness andtrauma, thus leading to intersections between the body and narrative representation of the body, isintroducedin thecourse and develops skills ofcreativity and narrativizing.

Theobjectivesof thiscourseareto:

•  introducelearnerstoNarrativesofTraumaandtheareaofTrauma Studies.

•  familiarizelearnerswithanalyticalframestoengagewiththenarrativerepresentationsoftrauma.

enablelearnerstoidentifythecross-Disciplinary andinterdisciplinaryapproachesto engagingwithtrauma

All human beings experience a significant illness or disability at some point in life; yet economic,political, social, and cultural factors complicate the medical frameworks through which societiesnormally address disabled bodies. The introduction to the course will bring new voices intoexisting conversations and allow students to initiate new lines of inquiry into how "disability"shapes and is shaped by literary texts. Critical engagement with the course reveals the formationand hegemony of normalcy in literary works. It traces the meanings of disability that are notconstant but vary from work to work, just as in reality they vary with bodily condition, time, andplace. Probing representations of such characters reveals hidden patterns and expands the waycanonicalnarrativesareread.Thiscourseisconceivedtoexploreliterature andliterarytopicsfroma disability studies perspective which strives to understand the human values of vulnerable bodiesand disabled bodies. This course aims to provide a general introduction to Disability Studies astheyapplytothestudyofliterature,particularlyfictionalnarratives,butwithsomeemphasisalso

onautobiographyandpoetry.

Thiscoursecomprehensivelyenhancestheunderstandingofhumanvaluesirrespectiveofdis/abilities.The aim of the course is to equip students with sensitivity and inclusive approach to getemployabilityskillstoworkwithNGOsandbepart oftheinclusivityanddiversity cellsof

organisationandcorporatehouses.

Whetherit is thelatestvideo gamethat everyoneisravingabout orthenewestretelling ofasuperhero

flickthathassetanewbenchmarkinpopularity,popularculturepervadesoureverydaylives.Itis

criticallyimportanttostudypopularcultureinordertoassessitssocial,political,culturalandeconomic

impactonsociety.Thiscoursewilldemonstratetostudentstheoverallimportanceofpopularculturein

theirlives.Takingtextualandvisualmaterialsfromthelocal,regional,nationalandinternationalcontexts, the course will explore the way in which popular culture is defined, interpreted anddisseminatedat

various levels. How it operates within axes of intersectionalities like gender, class, race, caste,ecology,thehuman,technology andtheposthuman. Thisacademicinquiryintothenuancesofpopularculture, will

equipthestudentswithcriticalthoughtandanalysisrequiredtodecodeanddissecttheethics,valuesand

codesingrainedinthe culturalproductions.Suchadecodingwillhelpthemunderstandthewayinwhich

questionsofgender,race,class,andsustainabilitycanbe examinedandevaluatedthroughpopulardiscourses.

The course through textual engagements, class discussions, individual and group assignments aimto

developanalyticalskills,criticalthinking,creativityandinitiativeamongstudents.Thiscoursewillenable

studentstodevelopkeeninsightsonthewayinwhichpopularcultureimpactsandinformsourdailylives.

Withafocusonthetheoreticalandpracticalaspectsofpopularculture,thecoursewillequipthestudents

withcriticalthinkinganalyticalskillsalongwithcommunicationskillsthatcanbeprofessionallyused in

mediamanagement,academicresearch andavarietyofotherareas.

Horror narratives are a seminal part of popular culture, and they have socio-cultural impacts acrosstimeandspace.Thecourseaimstostudythe genrehorrorasoneamongthemanyforms of culturalproduction, here primarily in the global and national levels. The course aims to study the genrehorrorasoneamong

the many forms of cultural production. The course will introduce students to the genre and equipstudents to develop skills of critical engagement with Horror narratives and their contexts and howitshapeshuman values.Theprimaryfocusof the coursewillbe horrorfictionand films.

This course introduces the notion of multilingualism and how it is perceived and represented indifferent ways in the global and Indian context. Moreover, it explores why multilingualism shouldmatter to us. Multilingualism can best be studied from an interdisciplinary perspective. The effortistofamiliarisestudentsonhowmultilingualismisinterdisciplinaryinnature,andthus,has avery

importantroletoplayinvarioussocial,political,andeducationalmattersasaspectscrucialto

human value. The course explores various dimensions of Multilingualism from how peoplebecome multilingual, what are the processes involved, what are the benefits and challenges ofmultilingualism to the contemporary concerns and issues in the field. The course is designed insuchamannerthateachunitwill havefourtofivearticles/chaptersfromdifferentbooksona

dedicatedtheme.

The Dissertation in English Literature offers a unique opportunity for a deep dive into independentresearch, culminating in substantial academic writing. This journey through English literary studiesallows for a wide range of topics, fostering the development of research, analytical, and criticalthinking skills. It also opens avenues to explore sensitive cross-cutting issues like gender,sustainability, human values, and professional ethics, which are increasingly vital in today's globaldiscourse.

Studentsmaychooseto undertakeoneof thefollowingdissertationformats:

Literary or Cultural Studies Dissertation: This format requires a focused dissertation of 30-40pages alongside a comprehensive bibliography. The dissertation should reflect a deep engagementwith relevant creative and critical perspectives and strive to contribute original insights into thechosen topic. This format encourages students to critically engage with their topic's social andpolitical contexts, including its local, national, or global implications, enhancing their ability toconduct nuanced research and analysis.

Electronic or Multimedia Work: For those inclined towards a more innovative approach, thisformat allows the creation of projects like hypertexts, websites, or multimedia documentaries. Theproject's intrinsic need for electronic or multimedia expression is essential to this choice and isdirectly linked to its thematic core. Accompanied by a 15–20-page written overview and anannotatedbibliography,thisformat demandsmastery ofthesubjectandinvitesacriticaldialogue

withcontemporarytheoreticalandcreativeworks.

The course has been designed keeping in mind the latest trends and practices in the discipline and a larger extent in the educational system. The course will introduce students to some of the established areas like content writing and publishing, translations, etc. as well as emerging areas like digital humanities, citizen journalism, etc.. The focus here is to help students acquire and nurture skills that are integral for their personal and professional growth.

Course Objectives

The course is designed to:

1. Introduce students to emerging trends in the discipline

2. Familiarize them with some of the industries associated with the discipline

3. Enhance skills that could translate academic learning to professional excellence