Department of English

The Department of English, one of the Oldest Departments of the University, was established on 1st December, 1986, and since inception the Department has been the hub of teaching and research activity, attracting a cross-section of students and research scholars from all over the country. It has established itself as a stronghold of Comparative Literature, teaching Comparative Literary Theory and fostering Comparative Literary studies between Indian Languages and English. In recent years, Cultural and Translation Studies too have come to be a thrust area, inspiring inter-disciplinary and intra-disciplinary insights among faculty and students alike. An ecologically sensitive critical thinking and teaching has also emerged and the Department is one of the earliest in the country to proffer multicultural studies in this area---and with the founding and establishment of the Association for the study of Literature and Environment-ASLE India (the Indian counterpart of the International forum of that name) in 2006, this has fostered a renewed direction to academics and Scholars alike.

At the Postgraduate level , the Department of English offers courses in poetry, drama, prose and fiction of canonical British literature and American literature, thus offering good training for UGC-NET aspirants, and all those keen to acquaint themselves with these classics. A strong theoretical foundation is laid with two literary Theory courses spread over two semesters. The Department offers courses in ELT and Research Methodology which are application-oriented. A basic course devised as Language through literature offers students an orientation to the formal study of English language and literary appreciation. A high-point of our M.A. Programme is the research project that encourages individual initiative and self-study on the part of the students. Emerging areas of study such as, Media Studies Postcolonial literatures and Ecocritical Studies along with an array of specialized electives make for an M.A. programme that is a mix of the conventional and the new.

The M.Phil. programme is marked by rigorous course-work in theory and criticism and in emergent literatures cutting across various genres like poetry and fiction, and a semester-long work on a dissertation. The Department encourages research at the M.Phil. and Ph.D. levels in a number of areas, such as Poetry and Poetics, Diaspora Studies, Subaltern Literatures, Nature-oriented literatures, Interdisciplinary and Cultural Studies.