Syllabus for
Master of Arts (English and Cultural Studies)
Academic Year  (2023)

The Master of Arts programme in English and Cultural Studies aims to provide an interdisciplinary grounding in Cultural Studies and allied disciplines, including literature and linguistics. The courses offered provide a range of perspectives for understanding ‘culture’ and ‘cultural practices’ by addressing cross-cutting issues such as gender, professional ethics, human values, environment and sustainability through relevant theoretical frameworks as well as practice-based engagements including field-work. In addition, internships, public outputs and other forms of engaging with contexts beyond ‘texts’ help in development of academic and professional skills and enhance employability prospects. The programme includes areas pertinent to Publishing, Digital Humanities, Applied Linguistics, Practice Teaching, Popular Culture and Urban Mapping. The curriculum aims to create discursive spaces within as well as outside the classroom, encouraging learners to actively engage with local, regional, national and global needs. The programme places an emphasis on rigorous scholarly work as well as with more creative forms of shaping research outputs. In keeping with Christ University’s emphasis on academic excellence, the programme is up-to-date with contemporary pedagogies as well as curricular content. 

Programme Outcome/Programme Learning Goals/Programme Learning Outcome:

PO2: Develop an understanding of discourses related to contemporary social life and technologies such as ethics, privacy, surveillance, policy and citizenship through critical debates and discussions, simulations, peer engagements and activities.

PO3: Synthesize interdisciplinary approaches and perspectives for addressing issues of local, regional, national and global importance through critical and creative solution-oriented thinking in research-based assignments and community-based engagements. (GA: Academic excellence, Professional Excellence and Societal)

PO4: Generate research outputs that reflect a comprehensive understanding of research methodologies, approaches, and skills relevant to the discipline through participating and organizing seminars, conferences, workshops and Capstone Project. (GA: Academic and Professional Excellence)

PO5: Generate research outputs that reflect a comprehensive understanding of research methodologies, approaches, and skills relevant to the discipline through participating and organizing seminars, conferences, workshops and Capstone Project. (GA: Academic and Professional Excellence)

PO6: Acquire and create awareness on sustainable practices related to environment and ecologies, diversity and inclusivity, through research and outreach endeavours. (GA: Societal)

PO7: Cultivate skills for life-long learning, entrepreneurship and employability through professionally oriented courses, experiential and participatory learning, field-based projects and internships. (GA: Professional Excellence)

The MA English and Cultural Studies Programme has a blend of assessments, which are a mix of examinatons and creative submissions with a Viva Voce.

This advanced level course is designed to provide a comprehensive introduction to cultural studies, focusing on the British, American, Indian, and Asian contexts. The course will cover various theories and approaches to the study of culture, including Marxism, postmodernism, feminism, and postcolonialism. The course will also explore how cultural practices and identities are shaped by historical, social, economic, and political forces. This course will give a solid ground for students to pursue advanced studies and research in the field of Literary and Cultural Studies and allied disciplines.

Course Outcome/s mapped to Unit III: CO1     

This unit provides an introduction to the basic concepts in Cultural Studies with reference to specific historical and cultural contexts, discourses and terminologies. The unit will give an insight into the global context of cultural studies.

Key Topics

culture, society, ideology

production, consumption

high culture, popular culture

subculture, counterculture, everyday

Course Outcome/s mapped to Unit III: CO1, CO2    

This unit covers some of the seminal texts that acted as milestones in the development of cultural studies and contemporary conceptual frameworks from British academia and context. The unit will give an insight into the context of cultural studies at a global and national level.

Key Topics

Marxism and neo-Marxism

Cultural Studies and the CS Schools

Cultural Materialism

New Historicism

Mass culture and popular culture

ideology and state

subject and discourse

Politics of identity.

Course Outcome/s mapped to Unit III: CO3, CO4       

This unit covers some of the seminal texts that acted as milestones in the development of cultural studies and contemporary conceptual frameworks from the American academia and context. The unit will give an insight into the context of cultural studies at a global and national level.Texts can be interchanged between the two reading lists given if found more effective in the class context.

Key Topics:

media and culture

popular culture

Identity and fluidity

spatial politics and meanings.

Course Outcome/s mapped to Unit IV: CO3, CO4

This unit covers some of the seminal texts that acted as milestones in the development of cultural studies and contemporary conceptual frameworks from the Indian academia and context. The unit also touches upon the emerging domain of Inter-Asia Cultural Studies. The unit will give an insight into the context of cultural studies at a local, regional, national and global level with emphasis on cross-cutting issues of ethics, environment and sustainability.

Key Topics:

Indian context of culture

caste and identity politics

new and critical aesthetics

cultural production and practice

concept of the inter-Asian studies

modernity and postcoloniality

mobility

migration and new formations.

Grossberg, L., Nelson, C., & Treichler, P. A. (Eds.). (1992). Interrogating Cultural Studies: Theory, Politics and Practice. Routledge.

Williams, R. (1976). Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Oxford University Press.

Spivak, G. C. (1991). Scattered Speculations on the Question of Culture Studies. In Cary Nelson & Lawrence Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (pp. 357-375). University of Illinois Press.

Horkheimer M. & Adorno T. W. (1982). Dialectic of Enlightenment. Continuum.Hall, S. (1973). Encoding/Decoding. In S. Hall, D. Hobson, Williams, R. (1958). Culture and Society: 1780-1950. Penguin Books.

Hall, S. (1990). “Cultural Identity and Diaspora”. In J. Rutherford (Ed.), Identity: Community, Culture, Difference (pp. 222-237). Lawrence & Wishart.

Gilroy, P. (1993). The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Harvard University Press.

Agamben, G. (1995). Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press.

Zizek, S. (2009). The Sublime Object of Ideology. Verso Books.

Jameson, F. (1981). The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Cornell University Press.

Hooks, Bell. Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics, Boston, MA: South End Press, 1990, p23-31

Kellner, D. (1995). Media Culture and the Triumph of the Spectacle. Columbia University Press.

Grossberg, Lawrence, (1989) “The Circulation of Cultural Studies,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication

Appadurai, A. (1990). Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy. Theory, Culture & Society, 7(2–3), 295–310. https://doi.org/10.1177/026327690007002017

Herman, E. S., & Chomsky, N. (2002). Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. Pantheon Books.

Niranjana T. Sudhir P. & Dhareshwar V. (1993). Interrogating Modernity: Culture and Colonialism in India. Seagull.

Prasad, M. M. (1999). “Cultural Studies in India - Reasons and a History”. In C. Mukherjee (Ed.), Understanding Cultural Aspects of India (pp. 219-234). Springer.

Guru, G., & Sarukkai, S. (2012). The Cracked Mirror: An Indian Debate on Experience and Theory. Oxford University Press.

Ho, E. (2017). Inter-Asian Concepts for Mobile Societies. The Journal of Asian Studies, 76(4), 907-928. doi:10.1017/S0021911817000900

Huat, C. B., & Iwabuchi, K. (Eds.). (2008). East Asian Pop Culture: Analysing the Korean Wave. Hong Kong University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1xwb6n

Silvio, T. (2009). Puppets, Gods, and Brands: Theorizing the Age of Animation from Taiwan. University of Hawai'i Press.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (2005) Scattered speculations on the subaltern and the popular, Postcolonial Studies, 8:4, 475-486, DOI: 10.1080/13688790500375132

Chakrabarty, D. (1992). Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for "Indian" Pasts? Representations, (37), 1-26.

Limbale, S. (1993). Towards an Aesthetic of Dalit Literature. Economic and Political Weekly, 28(17), 843-847.

Chatterjee, P., Ghosh, A., & Prasad, M. M.(n.d.). The Republic of Babel: Language and Political Subjectivity in Free India. Scribd

Limbale, S. (2003). The Outcaste: Akkarmashi. Oxford University Press.

Chatterjee, P. (1991). Whose imagined community? Dissent, (4), 11-24.

Rajadhyaksha, A. (2001). The 'Bollywoodization' of the Indian Cinema: Cultural Nationalism in a Global Arena. In D. Dwyer & R. Patel (Eds.), Cinema and the Indian nation (pp. 80-91). British Film Institute.

Appadurai, A. (1990). Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy. Theory, culture & society, 7(2-3), 295-310.

Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The Postcolonial and the Postmodern: The Question of Agency. In The Location of Culture (pp. 171-197). Routledge.

(CIA 70%+ ESE 30%)

This course will provide an overview of the key concepts in critical cultural theory by introducing them to some of the key concepts, approaches, and research methods. Students will gain an understanding of specific conceptual paradigms, historical contexts, and theoretical debates within critical theory, and develop practical skills for applying these critical frameworks to social and cultural phenomena. The course is designed to induct the first semester students of MA programme to the more advanced courses that will come in the ensuing semesters of the programme. Through readings, classroom discussions, and participatory engagements, students will develop a critical understanding about their socio-political contexts, discourses and cultural practices, power relations, and the role of research in challenging dominant discourses and promoting social justice. The course will help the students develop a capacity to look at the world from an informed critical perspective which will help them not only in performing their roles in relevant vocational spaces such as those of media productions, publication industry, creative writing, teaching and research, policy making, NGO works etc. but also in being responsible and contributing citizens and social agents.

Unit I: Introduction: Structuralism, Poststructuralism and Postmodernism                                             Hours: 15

Unit details: 

Description: This unit provides an introduction to the basic concepts in critical theory with reference to specific historical and cultural contexts building an insight into the local regional national and global affairs. Structuralism, poststructuralism and postmodernism will be given focus.

Key Topics:

Structuralism, Modernism, Formalism

Narrative and structure

Marxism, history and structuralist approach

Psychoanalysis school, unconscious, Freud and Lacan

Poststructuralism, postmodernism

Text, reader and author

Subjectivity, centre, and truth

Course Outcome/s mapped to Unit II: CO1, CO2

Unit II:Neo-Marxism, Cultural Materialism, New Historicism, and latest developments                                Hours: 15

Unit details:

Description:  This unit covers some of the seminal texts related to Neo-Marxism, Cultural Materialism, New Historicism and some of the latest theoretical developments which are functioning like broader critical frameworks in the contemporary time. The unit will emphasize some of the intersectional issues pertaining to the socio-political and cultural contexts in the contemporary era. Students are expected to develop a coherent logical connection among different critical frameworks in use today with a good understanding about the foundational ideas.

Key Topics:

Marxism and neo-Marxism

Cultural Studies and the CS Schools

Cultural Materialism

New Historicism

Mass culture, popular culture, cultural capital, and the everyday

Subject, discourse and space/spatiality

Ideology, subjectivity, governmentality, state, and the biopolitical turn

Course Outcome/s mapped to Unit III: CO3, CO4

Unit III: Gender, Identity and Marginality Discourses                                                                                         15 Hours

Unit details:

Description:  This unit introduces some of the approaches and conceptual frameworks that effectuated certain paradigm shifts with respect to discourses on gender, identity and marginality. The unit will focus on how certain conceptual categories such as self, social, life, identity, normal etc are constituted to determine one’s lived-experience. It also considers the contemporary digital/cyber/technological sites of life.

Key Topics:

Gender and identity

Humanism and Posthumanism

Cyborg and Anthropocene

Identity and fluidity

Marginality narratives and critical aesthetics

Course Outcome/s mapped to Unit IV: CO3, CO4

Unit IV: Critical Methods                                                                                                                                  Hours: 15

Unit details:

Description: This unit focuses on certain critical methods of research that can be informed by the critical frameworks and theories discussed so far. This unit shall effectively link them to the Writing Research course in the next semester. This unit will give a foundational understanding of certain critical methods of research that can be considered in the contemporary time.

Key Topics:

Mapping and GIS

Digital Humanities and methods

Ethnography and Netnography

Affective mapping and phenomenological research

Discourse Analysis

Archival research

Mixed Digital Methods

Ethics and privacy

Lacan, J. (1957). The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason Since Freud. In Écrits: A Selection, 146-178.

Barthes, R. (1967). The Death of the Author. Aspen, 5-6.

Derrida, J. (1978). Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences. In Alan Bass (Trans.), Writing and Difference (pp. 351–370). essay, Routledge.

Jean-François Lyotard (1993).“Defining the Postmodern”. In Simon During (Ed.) The Cultural Studies Reader. 2nd ed. Routledge. pp. 142-145

Foucault M. (1997). “Subjectivity and Truth”. In Paul Rabinow (Ed.) Ethics : Subjectivity and Truth. New Press.

Althusser L., (2001), Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus. In Leitch, V. B. (Ed.). The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, . W.W. Norton & Company. [originally in 1970].

Greenblatt, S. (1982). Introduction. In The power of forms in the English Renaissance. University of California Press.

Jameson, F. (1984). The Politics of Theory: Ideological Positions in the Postmodernism Debate. New German Critique, 33, 53–65. https://doi.org/10.2307/488353

Dollimore, J., & Sinfield, A. (Eds.). (1985). Introduction: Shakespeare, Cultural Materialism and New Historicism. In Political Shakespeare: New essays in cultural materialism. Manchester University Press.

Soja, Edward W. (1989). History Geography Modernity. Postmodern Geographies: the Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory. Verso,

Campbell, Timothy, and Adam Sitze, (2013). “Introduction: Biopolitics: An Encounter”. In Biopolitics: A Reader. Duke University Press.

Butler, J. (1990), Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge.

Sedgwick, E. K. (1990). Introduction: Axiomatic. Epistemology of the Closet. (pp. 1-42) University of California Press.  

Haraway, D. (1990). A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s”. In L. J. Nicholson (Ed.) Feminism/Postmodernism, (pp. 190-233). Routledge.

Bell Hooks, (1990). Postmodern Blackness. Yearning, Race, Gender and Cultural Politics. South End Press.

Guru, G., & Sarukkai, S. (2019). Introduction. Experience, Caste, and the Everyday Social. Oxford University Press

 Drucker, J. (2012). Mapping and GIS. In D. M. Berry (Ed.), The Digital Humanities Coursebook: An Introduction to Digital Methods for Research and Scholarship (pp. 191-204). Routledge.

Pickering, M. (Ed.). (2008). Research Methods for Cultural Studies. Edinburgh University Press.

Kozinets, R. V. (2015). Netnography: Redefined. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Drozdzewski, Danielle and Carolyn Birdsall. (2019). Doing Memory Research: New Methods and Approaches. Palgrave Macmillan

Hoskins, A., Reading, A., & Metykova, M. (Eds.). (2017). Digital Memory Studies: Media Pasts in Transition. Routledge.

Propp, V. (1928). Morphology of the folktale. University of Texas Press.

Lévi-Strauss, C. (1958). Structural anthropology.

Baudrillard, J. (1994). Simulacra and simulations. University of Michigan Press.

Culler, J. (1997). Language, meaning, and interpretation. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction, 1-24.

Lyotard, J.-F. (1984). The postmodern condition. Manchester University Press.

Agamben, G. (2007). The author as Gesture. In Profanations (pp. 39-62). Zone Books.

Nayar, P. K. (2017). Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory: From Structuralism to Ecocriticism. Routledge.

Greenblatt, S. (1990). Resonance and Wonder. Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 43(4), pp. 11–34. 

Bourdieu, P., (1986). The Forms of Capital. In Richardson, J., Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, Greenwood Press, pp. 241–58

Appadurai, A. (1990). Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy. Theory, Culture & Society, 7(2-3), pp. 295-310. https://doi.org/10.1177/026327690007002017

Williams, R. (1977). Marxism and Literature. Oxford University Press.

Jameson, F. (1983). Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture. Social Text, 2, 130-148. https://doi.org/10.2307/466493

Giorgio Agamben, 

Agamben, G., (2005). The State of Exception as a Paradigm of Government. In Kevin Attell (Trans.) The State of Exception. University of Chicago Press.

Agamben, G. (2009). What is an apparatus? In What is an Apparatus? and Other Essays (pp. 1-24). Stanford University Press.

Chakrabarty, D. (1992). Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for "Indian" Pasts? Representations, 37, 1-26. https://doi.org/10.1525/rep.1992.37.1.99p00981

Chakravarthi, U. (2003). Gendering Caste through Feminist Lens. Stree.

Fanon, F. (1952). The Fact of Blackness. In S. Harman (Ed.), Postcolonial Studies: An Anthology (pp. 15-32). Edinburgh University Press.

Freedman, E. B. (Ed.). (2007). The Essential Feminist Reader. Modern Library.

Limbale, S. (2004). Towards an Aesthetic of Dalit Literature: History, Controversies, and Considerations. Orient Blackswan.

Linton, S. (1998). Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity. New York University Press.

Nicholson, L. J. (Ed.). (1990). Feminism/postmodernism. Routledge.

Rubin, G. (1975). The Traffic in Women: Notes on the “Political Economy” of Sex. In R. Reiter (Ed.), Toward an Anthropology of Women (pp. 157-210). Monthly Review Press.

Sedgwick, E. K. (1993). Tendencies. Duke University Press.

 Hoskins, A. (2017). Save As... Digital Memories. Palgrave Macmillan.

Whitla, William. (2010). The English Handbook: A Guide to Literary Studies. Blackwell

Woolf, Judith. (2005). Writing About Literature. Routledge

Griffin, G. (Ed.). (2013). Research Methods for English Studies. Edinburgh University Press.

Hagen, T., & Wilschut, A. (Eds.). (2017). Palgrave Handbook of Research in Historical Culture and Education. Palgrave Macmillan.

(CIA 70%+ ESE 30%)

This course has been conceptualized in order to introduce students to the area of language studies within academia. This course will give students an overview of the field of linguistics and will expose them to research enterprises that seek to unfold the intricacies of various socio-cultural practices relevant to the use of language, by enabling them with the basic tools, theoretical frameworks and methodologies to do so. It will trace the trajectories and concerns that determine this area and also the field of study in general. During the duration of the course, students will gain an appreciation for the significance of linguistics as a globally recognized area of study that encompasses some fundamental aspects of human values with reference to human interaction, as well as provides them with professional abilities. The course is directed towards development of interpretive, critical, analytical and research abilities in students pertaining to contemporary linguistic environment and touch upon the five core branches of linguistics along with socio-cultural and pragmatic aspects of language use.

Course Outcome/s mapped to Unit I: CO1

Unit I: Understanding Language Through Linguistics                                                                                                                      Hours: 15

Unit details: 

Description: This unit provides an understanding of the fundamental concepts of linguistics and the globally utilised tools for linguistic analysis which will acquaint the students with professional aptitude related to the field. Students will be introduced to the various core and applied branches of the field.

1. Language and communication

2. How Language works

3. What is Linguistics? 

4. Structure of Language: levels and hierarchy- Phonetic, Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Semantics and their interrelation.

Course Outcome/s mapped to Unit III: CO1, CO3, CO4

Unit II: The Socio-cultural-pragmatic Interface                                                                                                       Hours: 15

Unit details: 

Description: Language is a complex and multifaceted human-centric phenomenon that has been studied from various perspectives in linguistics across the globe. This unit explores the interface between Sociolinguistics, Cultural Linguistics and Pragmatics. It examines how meaning is created through the interaction between language, context, and culture. It discusses various theoretical frameworks and methods for analyzing the interplay between socio-cultural and pragmatic factors in communication. The unit also considers the implications of this interface for cross-cultural communication and intercultural competence. Students will learn about the ways in which semantic structures interact with pragmatic, cultural and social factors, such as speech acts, politeness, and social identity, to produce a rich and varied landscape of linguistic expression. By the end of the unit, students will be able to acquire theoretical skills relevant in the discipline of Language studies, thereby increasing their chances of employability in the Linguist community.

1. Language, culture and context

2. Linguistic Relativity

3. cultural conceptualisations and language

4. Intercultural communication

5. cross-cultural Pragmatics

6. Theories at hand: Speech act theory, Grice's Cooperative Principle, Politeness Theory, Social Network Theory, Accommodation Theory, Cultural models theory and Ethnography of communication 

Course Outcome/s mapped to Unit II: CO1, CO2

Unit III:Methodologies in Practice                                                                                                                                           Hours: 15

Unit details: 

Description: The unit will allow students to understand what collection, organisation, analysis and interpretation of linguistic data means, and how it can help in contributing to an existing stock of knowledge. As part of the process students will be introduced to the broad field of linguistic research, differentiating between Primary and secondary linguistic data and the paradigms of quantitative and qualitative research in Linguistics. The unit also introduces specific globally accepted methodologies including observation, questionnaire, interview, focus group, ethnographic study, conversational analysis, text analysis and discourse analysis, all of which are currently used within the professional settings of Linguistics.

1. Documenting linguistic data: International Phonetic Alphabet

2. Quantitative and Qualitative research in linguistics

3. Observational method

4. Questionnaire method

5.  Interview method

6. Ethnographic study

Course Outcome/s mapped to Unit IV: CO1, CO2, CO3, CO4

Unit IV: Case Studies: Practice and Application                                                                                                                     Hours: 15                                                                                                            

Unit details: 

Description: 

This is a practice-based unit where students are motivated to uncover various socio-cultural and pragmatic aspects of language use, including linguistic patterns, language attitudes and linguistic behaviour etc, with reference to a variety of languages spoken in and outside of India through group engagements, classroom activities, presentations, etc. The unit is divided into two parts; case studies and application through monitored self and peer learning aimed at exploring language in various settings, groups and contexts. The unit focuses on developing the analytical abilities of students through practice sessions based on case studies revolving around linguistic codification, transmission of contextual knowledge and linguistic behaviour with reference to language use in a variety of settings as represented through multimodality. The practice-oriented approach to the unit aims towards imparting research skills among the students. They will learn how to apply their knowledge of linguistic theories acquired in the previous unit in unraveling the complexities of linguistic behaviour through practice. The unit aims towards encouraging students to brainstorm and familiarise themselves with a diverse range of linguistic practices for critical evaluation and analysis of case studies and research. 

Case studies

1.  A Socio-cultural Study of Linguistic Patterns Thai and Hindi Kinship Terms

http://linguistics.uok.edu.in/Files/f6ec3740-422d-4ac1-9f52-ddfe2cffcb28/Journal/184655ba-b637-45cd-ad7c-d84f11e2fca4.pdf

2. The socialisation of interactional rituals: A case study of ritual cursing as a form of teasing in Romani. 

           https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/jbp/prag/2020/00000030/00000001/art00002?crawler=true&mimetype=application/pdf

3. Benczes, Réka, et al. "Cultural Linguistics and ageing: What naming practices in Australian English can reveal about underlying cultural conceptualisations." Advances in cultural linguistics. Springer, Singapore, 2017, pp. 607-624. 

Crystal, D. (2017). How Language Works: How Babies Babble, Words Change Meaning, and Languages Live or Die. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press.

Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., & Hyams, N. (2017). An introduction to language (11th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.

Fromkin, V. (2018). Linguistics: An Introduction to Linguistic Theory. New York, NY: Wiley-Blackwell.

Bauman, R. & Sherzer, J. (1989). Explorations in the ethnography of speaking. Cambridge University Press.

Blum-Kulka, S., House, J., & Kasper, G. (Eds.). (1989). Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies. Ablex Publishing Corporation.

Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge University Press.

Giles, H., Coupland, N., & Coupland, J. (1991). “Accommodation theory: Communication, context, and consequence”. In H. Giles, J. Coupland, & N. Coupland (Eds.), Contexts of accommodation: Developments in applied sociolinguistics (pp. 1-68). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511663673.002

Giles, H., & Coupland, N. (1991). Language: Contexts and consequences. Open University Press.

Gumperz, J. J. (1992). “Contextualization and understanding”. In A. Duranti & C. Goodwin (Eds.), Rethinking context: Language as an interactive phenomenon (pp. 229-252). Cambridge University Press.

Sharifian, F. (2011). Cultural conceptualisations and language: Theoretical framework and applications. John Benjamins Publishing.

Zima, E. V. (1994). “Cultural models: Genesis, methods, and experiences”. In E. V. Zima (Ed.), Cultural models in language and thought (pp. 1-28). Reidel.

 Biber, D. (2018). “Quantitative research in linguistics”. In The Oxford handbook of corpus linguistics (pp. 69-84). Oxford University Press.

Club, English Language. (2014, July 12). Phonetic Chart Explained [Video]. YouTube. 

           https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfwVXfl0EnI

Creswell, J. W. (2013). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches. Sage publications.

McLeod, S. (2019). “Interviews and questionnaires as research methods”. In Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/interviews.html

Pew Research Center. (n.d.). Questionnaire design and survey sampling. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/methods/u-s-survey-research/questionnaire-design/

Trochim, W. M. K. (n.d.). “Observational research methods”. In Research Methods Knowledge Base. Cornell University.

            http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/observ.php

Schensul, J. J., & LeCompte, M. D. (2017). “Ethnographic research”. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 397-416). SAGE Publications. https://methods.sagepub.com/reference/the-sage-handbook-of-qualitative-research-3e/i308.xml

Benczes, Réka, et al. "Cultural Linguistics and ageing: What naming practices in Australian English can reveal about underlying cultural conceptualisations." Advances in cultural linguistics. Springer, Singapore, 2017, pp. 607-624. 

Kádár, D. Z., & Szalai, A. (2014). The socialisation of interactional rituals: A case study of ritual cursing as a form of teasing in Romani. Journal of Pragmatics, 61, 71-89.

Narang, V., & Misra, D. (2014). Thai and Hindi Kinship Terms: A Socio Cultural Study of Linguistic Patterns. Interdisciplinary Journal of Linguistics, 7, 21-30.

Pinker, S. (2007). The language instinct: How the mind creates language. New York, NY: Harper Perennial.

Chen, G. M., & Starosta, W. J. (Eds.). (1998). Communication and culture: An Asian perspective. Ablex Publishing Corporation.

Holland, D., & Quinn, N. (1987). Cultural models in language and thought. Cambridge University Press.

Kecskes, I. (2014). Intercultural pragmatics. Oxford University Press.

Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. University of Chicago Press.

Silverman, D. (2016). Interpreting qualitative data. Sage publications.

Spradley, J. P. (1980). Participant observation. Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

 Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge University Press.

Milroy, L., & Milroy, J. (2012). Authority in language: Investigating language prescription and standardisation (3rd ed.). London, UK: Routledge.

This course is to introduce students to methodologies that are required for understanding identity and history as a multiple, layered, and often a contested set of representations. The course is built as an in-depth series of case studies, with the aim of bringing together three distinct areas of analytical questions that are implied by its title’s key terms – ‘history’, ‘memory’ and ‘identity’. Questions like – what are main approaches to social and cultural memory? What, and whose history is being remembered and narrated? And in this quagmire, how should identity be understood? – would be the prime focus of the course.

This course will give a thorough grounding in the classical works on memory from Durkheimean, psychoanalytic and Marxist perspectives, including Maurice Halbwachs and Pierre Nora, and contrasting it with the studies that draw on post-structuralist and cognitive approaches, as well as theories of affect and subjectivity. Then it will proceed to asking what can be learned about societies from ways in which they are concerned with history. What are some of the types of historical consciousness and cultural notions of history, of lack thereof? How one can productively compare imperial and universalist notions of history as progress with ideas about historical and cultural uniqueness and exceptionalism, including nationalism, as well as with conceptualizations of history as justice, as trauma, and as objects of consumption. What are practices of production, exchange and consumption of historical narratives in education, tourism and politics? And finally, where does Identity – one of the key categories in historical and social analysis, fit in? One of the goals of the course is to ask what identity is, and what approaches to identity are useful for understanding historical memory.

At the end of the course, students will be:

• Introduced to basic ideas in historical research.
• Able to undertake independent research.
• Analyse historical narratives through examples from their own immediate contexts.
• Explore the construction of varying identities and approaches useful for understanding historical memory.

CO2. Demonstrate critical engagement with representations of the past in the present and use the evidence in interrogating historical accounts and memory through assignments, class debates and presentations.

CO3. Develop independent and collaborative learning skills through participation in research projects and group activities.

CO4. Analyse how historical memory and identity are shaped by states, organizations, and individuals. 

a)  Performance of the Past: Theories of History, Memory and Identity, and Cultural Histories

b)  Framing and Reframing Identity: Mapping the Terrain of Memory – Individual to Collective

c)  Unstuck in Time: The Sudden Presence of the Past – The Politics of Submersion

a) The Contested Place of Memory: The Chairman Mao Memorial Hall, Sabarmati Ashram, Lincoln Memorial, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk Mausoleum.

b) The Ubiquitous Past-Present and Lost: Politics of Display within and without; Marine Corps War Memorial, Jewish Museum in Berlin, Hiroshima Peace Memorial, Taj Mahal.

 c)  Making History: Narratives and Counter-narratives; Opium Wars, The Ayodhya Debate and the Ram Janmabhoomi Issue, Genghis Khan and the Mongol Horde.

a) Tracing the Ghost and the Geographies of Violence: The Kashmir Issue, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, China-Japan rivalry.

b) Irrevocable Futures: The Dynamics of Conflict – the Aryan Debate, Hindutva Ideology and Neo-Nazis.

c) Suppressing the Text: State Secrets and Declassification – Wikileaks and the Netaji Files.

a)  Memory and Incongruous Images: Political Lives of Dead Bodies; Burials, Mass Graves, Exhumations, Bodies of Great People.

b) Identity and the Politics of Remembrance: Engendered Memories; Culinary Discourses and Politics of Food; Folktales and Folklore.

c)  The Economy of Memory: Consumption of/and Heritage, Heritage Tourism, Cultural Property and Identity.

d) Ethics and Limits of Representation: Can Culture Belong to any One Group? Can Culture be Copyrighted?

McGrattan, Cillian. (2012). Memory, Politics and Identity: Haunted by History, London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Sen, Amartya. (2005). The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity, New Delhi: Penguin Books Ltd.

Thapar, Romila. (2000). History and Beyond, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Thapar, Romila. (2013). The Past Before Us: Historical Traditions of Early North India, New Delhi: Permanent Black.

Thapar, Romila. (2019). Time as a Metaphor of History: Early India, The Krishna Bharadwaj Memorial Lecture. New Delhi: Oxford.

Tilmans, Karin, Frank van Vree, Jay Winter (eds). (2010). Performing the Past: Memory, History, and Identity in Modern Europe, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Venner, Dominique. (2015). The Shock of History: Religion, Memory, Identity, Arktos Media Ltd.

Ballinger, Pamela. (2002). History in Exile: Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Banerjee, Sumanta. (2003). Ayodhya: A Future Bound by the Past, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 38, No. 27, pp. 2795-2796.

Chassot, Joanne. (2018). Ghosts of the African Diaspora: Re-Visioning History, Memory, and Identity, Re-Mapping the Transnational – A Dartmouth Series in American Studies Dartmouth: Dartmouth College Press.

Chatterjee, Partha. (1993). The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Chatterjee, Partha. (2012). The Black Hole of Empire: History of a Global Practice of Power, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

Counihan, Carole, and Steven L. Kaplan. (1998). Food and Gender: Identity and Power, Food and Nutrition in History and Culture Series, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.

Dorn, Sherman, Barbara J. Shircliffe, Deirdre Cobb-Roberts (eds). (2006). Schools as Imagined Communities: The Creation of Identity, Meaning, and Conflict in U.S. History, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Finney, Patrick. (2010). Remembering the Road to World War Two: International History, National Identity, Collective Memory, New York: Routledge.

Friedman, Kajsa Ekholm. (1994). Consumption and Identity, Studies in Anthropology & History Series, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.

Genova, Ann, and Toyin Falola. (2006). Yoruba Identity and Power Politics, Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora, Rochester: University of Rochester Press.

Kumar, Ravinder. (1989). The Past and the Present: An Indian Dialogue, Daedalus, Vol. 118, No.4, pp. 27-49.

Leiden Series in Modern East Asian Politics and History, London and New York: Routledge.

Liulevicius, Vejas Gabriel. (2004). War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity, and German Occupation, Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare (English Edition), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Matten, Marc Andre. (2011). Places of Memory in Modern China: History, Politics, and Identity, Leiden Series in Comparative Historiography, Leiden and Boston: BRILL.

Shrimali, K.M. (1998). A Future for the Past? Social Scientist, Vol. 26, No. 9, pp. 26-51.

Sikes, Alan. (2007). Representation and Identity from Versailles to the Present: The Performing Subject, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History Series, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Stevens, Maurice E. (2003). Troubling Beginnings: Trans(per)forming African American History and Identity, Studies in African American History and Culture Series.  London: Routledge.

Thapar, Romila, Harbans Mukhia, Bipan Chandra. (1969). Communalism and the Writing of Indian History, New Delhi: People's Publishing House.

Thapar, Romila. (1979). Dissent in the Early Indian Tradition, Volume 7 of M.N. Roy memorial lecture, New Delhi: Indian Renaissance Institute.

Wangler, Alexandra. (2012). Rethinking History, Reframing Identity: Memory, Generations, and the Dynamics of National Identity in Poland, Bremen: Springer.

Webster, Wendy. (1998). Imagining Home: Gender, Race and National Identity, 1945-1964, Women's History Series, London: University College London Press.

White, Geoffrey M., (1991). Identity through History: Living Stories in a Solomon Islands Society, Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology Series, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Zachmann, Urs Matthias. (2009). China and Japan in the Late Meiji Period: China Policy and the Japanese Discourse on National Identity, 1895-1904, Routledge.

The End Semester Exam will either be a research paper or portfolio presentation.

This course engages with performativity and performance-based texts to examine notions of how language constructs ontological categories. Focusing on the aesthetic and the political dimensions of performance, it introduces learners to theoretical frameworks in terms of culture as performance and enables them to locate their readings and viewings of performance-based texts within the broader context of language in cultural studies. The course will enable students to acquaint themselves with key dramatic texts from different sub-genres and understand the role that language plays in acts of performativity. It will establish a basic foundation for further research for students interested in theatre, as well as ever-day performativity.

On completion of the course, the learner will be able to:

• Read and understand works of performance in terms of verbal as well as nonverbal communication.
• Describe and engage with the notion of culture as performance.
• Examine the broader contexts within which performance and performativity are driving forces of human experiences.

CO1. Read and understand works of performance in terms of verbal as well as nonverbal communication through class presentations and discussions.

CO2. Describe and engage with the notion of culture as performance through written assignments.

CO3. Examine the broader contexts within which performance and performativity are driving forces of human experiences through written assignments.

Course Outcome/s mapped to Unit I: CO1, CO2, CO3, and CO4

This unit examines key areas in which language is an intrinsic aspect of cultural performativity:

Indicative readings include:

Erika Fichte, “Culture and Performance”

Fortier, Chapter on Theatre and Semiotics

Rustom Bharucha, Terror and Performance

Pertinent examples from literary, visual, and cultural texts to be selected by the course facilitator.

Rosaldo, Michelle. The Things We Do with Words: Ilongot Speech Acts and Speech Act Theory in Philosophy.

Martin Esslin, “The Theatre of the Absurd”

Tambiah, Stanley. “Form and Meaning of Magical Acts”.

Bharath Divakar, “Expecto Patronum” and other poems

Hindustan Times article: “Kabir Kala Manch: A cultural outfit ever in the cross hairs of law and order”

Fortier, Chapters on Race and Post-structuralism

Amanda Montell, Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language

Klausen, Jytte. The Cartoons that Shook the World. Publisher’s Statement (p. vi), Introduction (pp. 1-12), Chronology (pp. 185- 199), “Muslim Iconoclasm and Christian Blasphemy” (pp. 131-146)

Fortier, Chapter on Gender

Butler, Judith. Excitable Speech.

Mahesh Dattani, Dance Like a Man

Kiesling, Scott. Playing the Straight Man: Displaying and Maintaining Male Heterosexuality in Discourse.

Rosaldo, Michelle. (1982). The Things We Do with Words: Ilongot Speech Acts and Speech Act Theory in Philosophy. Language in Society 11(2):203-237.

Esslin, M. (1960). The Theatre of the Absurd. The Tulane Drama Review, 4(4), 3–15. https://doi.org/10.2307/1124873

Tambiah, S.J. (2017). Form and meaning of magical acts: A point of View. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 7(3), pp.451–473.

Correspondent, P. (2020, September 9). Kabir Kala Manch: A cultural outfit ever in the cross hairs of law and order. Hindustan Times. Retrieved April 8, 2022, from https://www.hindustantimes.com/pune-news/kabir-kala-manch-a-cultural-outfit-ever-in-the-cross-hairs-of-law-and-order/story-Ikx2ufyyFDNnbPTst1cTKP.html

Montell, A. (2019). Wordslut: A feminist guide to taking back the English language. Harper Wave.

Klausen, J. (2009). The cartoons that shook the world. Yale University Press.

Kiesling, Scott F. (2006). Playing the Straight Man: Displaying and Maintaining Male Heterosexuality in Discourse. In The Language and Sexuality Reader. Routledge.

Artaud, A. (1992). The Theater of Cruelty. In S. Sontag (Ed.), Antonin Artaud: Selected Writings (pp. 242–251). essay, ‎ University of California Press.

Balme, Christopher B. (2010). Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Studies. Cambridge University Press.

Bloom, Harold. (1998). Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. Riverhead Books.

Brandt, George W. (1998). Modern Theories of Drama: A Selection of Writings on Drama and Theatre 1850-1990. Oxford University Press.

Chambers, Colin. (2002). The Continuum Companion to Twentieth Century Theatre. Continuum.

Esslin, Martin. (1960). The Theatre of the Absurd. The Tulane Drama Review 4.4 (1960): 3-15.

Fortier, Mark. (1997). Theory/Theatre: An Introduction. Routledge.

Kott, Jan. (1964). Shakespeare Our Contemporary. Trans. Boleslaw Taborski. Methuen.

Montell, A. (2019). Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language. Harper Wave.

Williams, A., Coupland, N., & Garrett, P. (2003). Investigating Language Attitudes: Social Meanings of Dialect, Ethnicity and Performance. University of Wales Press.

Butler, J. (1988). Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory. Theatre Journal, 40(4), 519–531. Retrieved March 21, 2022, from http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0192-2882%28198812%2940%3A4%3C519%3APAAGCA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-C.

Bigger, S. (2009). Victor Turner, liminality, and cultural performance. Journal of Beliefs & Values, 30(2), 209–212. https://doi.org/10.1080/13617670903175238.

This course introduces students to foundational concepts in Narratology, extending them to a variety of narrative forms across literature, photography, cinema, visual arts, and video games. The course aims to familiarize students with methods and approaches to reading, understanding and experiencing aspects of narrative and narratology in a wide range of mediums, in order to emphasise the inter-dependencies as well as the distinctiveness of narrative construction across mediums and cultural contexts.

The course will introduce learners to:

•  The fundamentals of Narratology.
•  The rise of the novel in Europe and India and impingent socio-cultural transformations.
• The commonalities and distinctiveness of narrative forms across literature, cinema and video games/interactive media.
• Apply the basic frameworks of narrative analysis across mediums/forms/genres.

This unit will introduce students to the fundamentals of Narratives focusing on elements that remain consistent across mediums, cultural regions and historical periods. These will include rudimentary aspects of Narratology, while drawing attention to the limitations of this theory in the context of new and emerging interactive mediums such as video games.

Indicative Readings:

M, Bal. Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative.

Laure Ryan et. al. Story Worlds Across Media

Verstraten and Van der Lecq. Film Narratology.

This unit will focus on the novel as a form of modern narrative, exploring the social and technological contexts that give rise to this literary form. The texts and contexts explored will include writings on the novel by novelists as well as texts engaging with the rise of modern societies and ‘reading publics. The explorations will consider the novel in Europe as well as its rise in various South Asian languages.

Indicative Readings:

Borges, J. L. Funes the Memorious.

Kundera, M. The Deprecated Legacy of Cervantes

Watt, I. Realism and the Novel

Watt, I. The Reading Public

Mukherjee, M. Early Novels in India

This unit will look into a variety of visual forms including cinema, visual arts and new media to understand how narratives get constructed through a combination of sound, image, movement, and interactivity. The unit will introduce students to elementary frameworks to analyse visual narratives. A rudimentary engagement with the history of specific mediums will be facilitated. By the end of this unit, students should be equipped to explain the distinct ways in which narratives work across textual/literary and visual mediums.

Indicative Readings:

Kapur, G. “Representational Dilemmas of a Nineteenth-Century Painter: Raja Ravi Varma” in When Was Modernism?

Berger, J. Ways of Seeing

Bordwell, D. “Three Dimensions of Film Narrative” in Poetics of Cinema.

Mulvey, L. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

Nandy, A. An Ambiguous Journey to the City

Mazumdar, R. Bombay Cinema

Gallaway, A. Introduction from Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture.

Lowood & Nitsche (Ed.). The Machinima Reader (selected chapters)

This unit will be primarily based on student-led seminars, in-class discussions, and independent research and will involve an active analysis of narratives across various mediums. Questions around identity and aesthetics and form will be introduced to explore how various ‘identity communities’ have developed new narrative techniques to represent their lived experiences and politics. Examples will be drawn from across the world, and from different historical periods. The objective of this unit is to enable students to sharpen their textual analysis skills.

Indicative Readings/Screenings:

Fire (dir. Deepa Mehta, 1996) - the many controversies: Sohini Ghosh; Geeta Patel; Rustom Bharucha

Tendulkar, V. Ghashiram Kotwal – the play and the film

Excerpts from William Mazarella’s Censorium

The Battle of Algiers (dir. Gillo Pontecarvo, 1966)

The Third Cinema Manifesto

John Akomfrah interview with Anand Patwardhan - http://patwardhan.com/?page_id=1915

Ram ke Naam/In the Name of God (dir. Anand Patwardhan, 1992, doc)

Berger, J. (1972). Ways of seeing, based on the Bbc television series with John Berger: A book. BBC.

Bordwell, D. (2007). Three Dimensions of Film Narrative. In D. Bordwell (Ed.), Poetics of Cinema. essay, Routledge.

Borges, J. L. (1954). Funes the Memorious. (A. Kerrigan, Trans.). Alphascript Publishing.

Kapur, G. (Ed.). (2000). When was Modernism? Essays in Contemporary Cultural Practice in India. New Delhi: Tulika Books.

Gallaway, A.: Introduction from Gaming : Essays on Algorithmic Culture.

Kundera, M. (2003). The Art of the Novel. Harper Perennial Modern Classics. {Excerpts from the novel & interviews of Kundera}

Laure Ryan and Noel Thon (Eds.) (2014) Storyworlds across Media: Towards a media-conscious narratology. Gutenberg University Press.

Lowood, H., & Nitsche, M. (2011). The machinima reader. MIT Press.

Mazumdar, R. (2007). Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the City (NED-New edition). University of Minnesota Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctttt34b

Mukherjee, M. (1985). Selected Chapters. In Realism and Reality: The Novel and Society in India. Oxford University Press.

Mulvey, L. (1989). Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. In: Visual and Other Pleasures. Language, Discourse, Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19798-9_3.

Nandy, A. (2007). An ambiguous journey to the city the village and other odd ruins of the self in the indian imagination. Oxford University Press.

Verstraten and Van der Lecq (2009) Film Narratology. University of Toronto Press.

Watt, Ian. (1957). The Rise of the Novel. Penguin.

Baudelaire, C. (1964). The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays. Phaidon.

Cobley, Paul. (2001). Narrative. Routledge.

Crary, J. (1990). Techniques of the Observer. MIT Press.

Derrida, J. (1995). Archive Fever. (E. Prenowitz, Trans.). Chicago University Press.

Flaubert, G. (1869). Sentimental Education. Penguin Classics. {Introduction}

Fludernik, M.. (2009). An Introduction to Narratology. Routledge.

Lukács, G. (1974). The Theory of the Novel. (A. Bostock, Trans.). MIT Press.

Phelan, J. (2005). Shards of a History of Performance Art: Pollock and Namuth, Through a Glass, Darkly. In J. Phelan & P. J. Rabinowitz (Eds.), A Companion to Narrative Theory (pp. 499–512). essay, Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Sawhney, R. (2018). Shadowing the Image Archive: Inside Nalini Malani’s Shadow Plays. MIRAJ, 7(2), 324–334.

Sheikh, G. M. (1993). Viewer’s View: Looking at Pictures. In T. Niranjana, P. Sudhir, & V. Dhareshwar (Eds.), Interrogating Modernity: Culture and Colonialism in India (pp. 143–154). essay, Springer.

Simmel, G. (1903). The Metropolis and Mental Life. BlackWell Publishing.

Srivatsan (1993). Imaging Truth and Desire: Photography and the Visual Field in India. In T. Niranjana, P. Sudhir, & V. Dhareshwar (Eds.), Interrogating Modernity: Culture and Colonialism in India (pp. 155–198). essay, Springer.

30% of the marks will be a 3000-word research paper on a topic decided in consultation with faculty OR a portfolio submission.

This course has been conceptualized in order to introduce the learners to multiple curriculum frameworks, associated range of pedagogies involved in the process of teaching and learning, and several assessment tools pertaining to teaching English in particular, and Humanities in general. The course is designed to promote an in-depth understanding of the components leading to successful pedagogic practices and to foster an understanding of the construction of pedagogic spaces. This course is a mixture of theoretical and practical approaches, incorporating a theoretical understanding of multiple curriculum frameworks and pedagogic practices along with providing hands-on training for developing content for teaching, framing course plans, and identifying teaching and learning strategies that can be applied to specific classroom contexts.

The course has been designed with the following objectives:

• To create awareness of multiple curriculum frameworks, pedagogic practices, and, assessment techniques.
• To equip the learners with practical knowledge of various teaching methods.
• To develop an understanding of various socio-political factors that affect the construction of curriculum.
• To provide the learners with knowledge in the domain of teaching and curriculum development which will lead towards content creation as well as better teaching approaches.
• To foster innovation, professionalism, collegiality, and ethical and equitable practice in all students

This unit critically examines the main issues and concerns in India in the field of education in general and English education in particular. Besides trying to understand the gaps and challenges in the field of higher education in India, this unit also engages with innovations in the field of education, which can mitigate the gaps thereby paving way for more inclusive teaching practices. Topics covered include:

• The Structure of Indian Education: Both longitudinal and cross-sectional analysis of the structure of Indian Education should be conducted in order to promote a better understanding of the same.
• The Innovations in the field of Education: ICT, AV aids, Google Classrooms, Gamification, etc. to be discussed in detail.
• Reflective and Inclusive Teaching Practices: The concepts of learner-centred pedagogy, heutagogy, mixed-ability learning groups etc. should be discussed.

This unit focuses on understanding the prominent theories in the field of language education and tries to situate the popular methods of language teaching through the ages across the various paradigms. Topics covered include:

• The Grammar Translation Method
• Behaviourism and Audio-visual Teaching Method · Input Hypothesis and the Natural Method
• Cognitivism and Communicative Teaching Method · Skill Based Instruction
• The Post Method Approach

The main objective of this unit is to develop a clear understanding of the various theories of curriculum and analyse the technical aspects involved in construction of curriculum. This unit will not only lead to a theoretical understanding of various aspects of curriculum but application of these theories to generate content for teaching. Topics covered include:

• Understanding curriculum: Various Curriculum Theories can be discussed to understand the process of development of curriculum. The politics behind construction of curriculum will also be addressed.
• Writing Course Plans: The main emphasis is not only to learn how to write a course plan but how to incorporate knowledge, skills, and attitudes in the course outcomes. Bloom’s Taxonomy should be discussed in great detail in this context.
• Accountability, assessment policy, international assessment and vocational assessment to be discussed in detail.

The main objective of this unit is to apply the theoretical knowledge gained over the previous units and develop skill-specific (e)content/ courses for target learners. The learners may actively seek the help of their respective mentors to identify the area in which content has to be developed and co-create the teaching modules. Topics covered include:

• Register Analysis, Error Analysis, and Need Analysis: Basic overview of these fields is to be developed in order to create a learner centric module.
• Learning Styles oriented teaching modules: Comprehensive understanding of learning styles to develop to construct effective teaching modules catering to all types of learners.
• Content Creation: Hands-on exercises to develop the respective teaching modules to be conducted. The creation of the modules will follow the following steps:

           A. Analysing important situational Factors 

           B. Identification of Learning Outcomes

           C. Formulating Feedback and Assessment

           D. Selecting Teaching and Learning Activities

           E. Selecting effective teaching and learning strategies 

           F. Developing an effective grading system

           G. Developing effective rubrics for grading

Brown, J. D. (1995). The Elements of Language Curriculum: A Systematic Approach to Program Development. Heinle & Heinle Publishers.

Canagarajah, A. S. (2002). Globalization, methods, and practice in periphery classrooms. Globalization and language teaching. 134-150.

Chauhan, C. P. S. (2004). Modern Indian Education. Aligarh Muslim University.

Chomsky, N. (1959). Review of Verbal Behaviour by B. Skinner. Language 35: P. 26-58.

Krashen, S. D. (1987). Principles and practice in second language acquisition. Second language pedagogy, 20. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Richards, J. C.,Theodore S. R. (2014). Approaches and methods in language teaching. Cambridge University press.

Bhatia, V. K. (2008). Genre analysis, ESP and professional practice. English for specific purposes 27(2), 161-174.

Corder, S. P. (1974). Error analysis. The Edinburgh course in applied linguistics 3. 122-131.

Farrell, T. (2015). International perspectives on English language teacher education: innovations from the field. Springer Nature.

Fulcher, G., Fred D. (2007). Language testing and assessment. Routledge.

Richards, J. C. (2001). Curriculum development in language teaching. Ernst Klett Sprachen.

Slattery, P. (2012). Curriculum development in the postmodern era: Teaching and learning in an age of accountability. Routledge.

CIA 2: Individual Micro-teaching assignment

CIA 3: Submission of proposal for a new course

End Semester Submission: Submission of New Course designed in the field

This course provides a foundational introduction to film studies, with a focus on popular Indian cinema.  It traces the development of cinemas in India in terms of form as well as industry.  It particularly emphasises the representation of diverse identities (religion, gender, caste, language etc) and looks at the aesthetic frameworks through which these are constructed.

This course aims to enable students to:

• Understand constructions of nations and nationhood as represented in cinema;
• Understand key theories in cinema studies and their critical applications.
• Develop a vocabulary to read and write critically about cinema.
•  Gain familiarity with diverse genres, historical periods and movements in film history.
• Understand the cultural and infrastructural contexts peculiar to India and Indian cinema.                                                                                           

This unit will introduce key concepts and theories related to nation and cinema. It will open out discussions on cinema and the nation through multiple frameworks, including the idea of national cinema, citizens as spectators, mode of production, the cinema-effect, film and psychoanalysis, new media and post-cinema, trans-national, and diasporic film cultures. The unit will introduce students to the discussions on national identity and global cinema movements. 

• What is National Cinema?

• National identity and Cinema 

• The Sociological Scope of National Cinema

Course Outcome/s mapped to Unit II: CO 2, CO3 

Unit II:  Developing Nation through Cinema:                                                                                                                                   Hours: 15

Unit details:

Description: This unit will introduce students to the role cinema plays as a cultural industry in the reinvention of national identities in global cinema. The unit will enable students to discuss cinematic reinventions of the national, revival of cultural nationalism through cinema, the formation of national cinema audience, seeing the ‘national ‘self and the ‘antinational’ other through cinema and the representation of border politics, and war etc. This unit is designed to enhance the critical viewing skills of the students. 

• Cinema as a Cultural industry

• Developing Nation through Cinema 

• Cultural Nationalism and Cinema

Course Outcome/s mapped to Unit III: CO1, CO2, CO3

Unit III: Cinema as the Voice of the People                                                                                                                                      Hours: 15

Unit details:

Description: This unit is an attempt to understand cinema’s role as the voice of the people who resist colonialism, monarchy, dictatorship and other oppressive political systems. The aesthetic and political cinema movements across the globe is touched upon in this unit. The political significance of cinema as the voice of the oppressed and the marginalized will provide new insights to the anticolonial and anticapitalistic positions cinema has taken in different parts of the world.  

1. Third cinema

2. Cinema as the Voice of Resistance: Iranian Cinema

3. Cinema as the voice of the oppressed: Senegalese Cinema

Course Outcome/s mapped to Unit IV: CO1, CO4

Unit: Filming the Indian Nation                                                                                                                                                     Hours: 15

Unit details:

Description: This unit will enable students to understand the identity of nation and nationhood in the context of Indian cinema over the last seventy years. The unit attempts to explore the mainstream, as well as parallel cinema movements across Indian subcontinent to know more about the construction as well as contestations of nation and national identity. The representation of rural, urban, patriarchal, traditional, secular, and modern Indian identities is discussed in the unit. This unit also focuses on the evolving relationship between rural, urban, semi-urban and sub-urban India as depicted through film culture from the early 20th C up to the present.

• Rural and Urban India

• Secular and religious India

• Beyond Bollywood 

• Gender and caste in Indian Cinema

Schlesinger, Philip. (2000)The Sociological Scope of National Cinema. In Mette Hjort, Scott Mackenzie (Eds)Cinema and Nation. Routledge. 

Walsh, M. (1996). National Cinema, National Imaginary. Film History, 8(1), 5–17. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3815213

Feldestein, Ariel L. (2015) Signs of a Beginning, Cinema and Zionism: Developing a Nation through Film. Penn State University Press. 

Berry, C., & Farquhar, M. (2006). “Operatic Modes: Opera Film, Martial Arts, and Cultural Nationalism”. China on Screen: Cinema and Nation. Columbia University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/berr13706

NORONHA, I., ANNAS, M., & GUNKEL, H. (2015). ‘CINEMA OF RESISTANCE.’ In J. MISTRY & A. SCHUHMANN (Eds.), Gaze Regimes: Film and feminisms in Africa (pp. 148–160). Wits University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.18772/22015068561.16

Solanas, F., & Getino, O. (1970). TOWARD A THIRD CINEMA. Cinéaste, 4(3), 1–10. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41685716

Zeydabadi-Nejad, Saeed.  Transnational circulation and national perceptions Art films in the Iranian context. The Politics of Iranian

 Cinema: Film and society in the Islamic Rep.  

Bharucha, R. On the Border of Fascism: Manufacture of Consent in Roja.

Dickey, S. (2007). Cinema and the Urban Poor in South India. India: Cambridge University Press.

Mazumdar, R. Dialectic of Public and Private: Representation of Women in Bhoomika and Mirch Masala.

Nandy, A. An Ambiguous Journey to the City the Village and Other Odd Ruins of the Self in the Indian Imagination.

Velayutham, Selvaraj. Tamil Cinema: The Cultural Politics of India's Other Film Industry. (2008). (n.p.): Taylor & Francis.

Dissanayake, Wimal. (1994). Colonialism and Nationalism in Asian Cinema.  United States: Indiana University Press.

Harvey, James. (2018) Nationalism in Contemporary Western European Cinema. Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.

Hayward, S. (2006). French National Cinema. (n.p.): Taylor & Francis.

Williams, Alan L (2002) Film and Nationalism.  United Kingdom: Rutgers University Press.

CZACH, L. (2004). FILM FESTIVALS, PROGRAMMING, AND THE BUILDING OF A NATIONAL CINEMA. The Moving Image: The Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists, 4(1), 76–88. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41167149

Hake, S. (2008). German national cinema. United Kingdom: Routledge.

Wileman, Paul, Theorising National Cinema. (2019). United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Bhaskar, I. (1998). ALLEGORY, NATIONALISM AND CULTURAL CHANGE IN INDIAN CINEMA: “SANT TUKARAM.” Literature and Theology, 12(1), 50–69. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23926922

del Sarto, A. (2005). Cinema Novo and New/Third Cinema Revisited: Aesthetics, Culture and Politics. Chasqui, 34, 78–89. https://doi.org/10.2307/29742031

Frieden, S. (1990). Women’s Cinema in West Germany. Monatshefte, 82(3), 276–285. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30155282

Hayes, G., & O’Shaughnessy, M. (2005). [Introduction]: French Cinema: Globalization, Representation, and Resistance. French Politics, Culture & Society, 23(3), 1–13. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42843408

Johnson, R. (1984). Brazilian Cinema Novo. Bulletin of Latin American Research, 3(2), 95–106. https://doi.org/10.2307/3338256.

 Zhang, Y. (2004). Chinese National Cinema. United Kingdom: Routledge.

Bharat, M. (2020). Shooting Terror: Terrorism in Hindi Films. India: Taylor & Francis.

Bharucha, R. (1998). In the Name of the Secular: Contemporary Cultural Activism in India. India: Oxford University Press.

Chakravarty, Sumita. (1993). Woman and the Burden of Post coloniality: The Courtesan Film Genre. In National identity in Indian popular cinema, pp. 269-305. University of Texas Press.

Chakravarty, Sumita. (1993). “The National-Heroic Image: Masculinity and Masquerade”. In National Identity in Indian popular cinema, pp. 199-234. University of Texas Press.

Chaterji, Soma. (2013). The evolution of female sexuality in Hindi Cinema Gokulsing. In TheRoutledge Handbook of Indian Cinemas. K. Moti Gokulsing, Wimal Dissanayake (eds). Routledge.

Dass, M. (2016). Outside the Lettered City: Cinema, Modernity, and the Public Sphere in Late Colonial India. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. 

Niranjana, T. (1994). Integrating Whose Nation? Tourists and Terrorists in “Roja.” Economic and Political Weekly, 29(3), 79–82. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4400654

Shivkumar, N., Mahalingam, R. (2015). Unforgettable: The Iconic Women of South Indian Cinema. India: Rupa Publications India Pvt. Limited.

Our lived experiences are shaped by the ways in which varying systems of privileges and oppression 

work. Every individual act in the world based on the influences of identities that they adopt or are 

imposed by the social systems. Each identity – whether it’s class, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, 

religion, or caste - exists along a hierarchy that determines how visible and valued that person’s 

experiences are in their particular social context. These identities and hierarchies intersect with each 

other in ways that shape how a person is able to move and advance within their society.

The course aims to:

● Provide a critical understanding of the concepts and theories in Gender Studies by contextualising them within the framework of intersectionality.

● Acquire a basic knowledge of the various socio-political and historical factors that informed multiple theoretical frameworks within the field of Gender Studies

● Familiarise learners with various narratives that highlight the experience of oppression and privilege as informed by the intersections with different focal points like class, caste, religions, nationality, virtuality, migration etc.,

● Promote non-binary engagement with gender by highlighting the problematics of a normative understanding of gender.

● Enable learners to engage and negotiate with their own identities and reflect on the socially constructed ness of identities.

The unit engages in a discussion on the ideas of intersectionality and explores the way in which gender intersects with 

various identities like class, caste, nation etc. to inform the experiences of oppression and privileges. 

1. Subject of Sex/ Gender/ Desire” in Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble.

2. Kimberle, Crenshaw. On Intersectionality; Taylor, Tate. The Help (2011); Friedan, Betty. Feminine Mystique.

3. Faqir, Fadia. In the House of Silence (excerpts).

4. Anzaldua, Gloria. Selections from Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (excerpts)

The unit brings into discussion the various modes in which normativity is constructed by various institutional structures 

like class, caste, religion, and, in the process validates and normalizes few identities and exert power on the identities that exist in 

margins. 

1. Connell, R W. History of Masculinity

2. Guadagnino, Luca. Call Me by Your Name (2017).

3. Sedgwick, Eve Kosovsky. The Beast in the Closet: James and The Writing of Homosexual Panic.

4. Case Study on Caste-Based Murders in India.

5. Lorde, Audre. Cancer Journal.

The unit engages with how various power structures operate in society and how intersectional experiences the access to 

human rights, legal rights and visibility of lived experiences of people from various identity position. An engagement with local and 

regional normative practices would also be part of this unit through field engagements. 

1. Newell, Stephanie. Postcolonial Masculinity and the Politics of Visibility.

2. Harvard, Sarah A. Beauty Parlour and Women.

3. Kikon, Dolly and Milan Kang. Migrant Labourers in Metropolitan City.

4. Kapur, Shekhar. Bandit Queen.

 The unit brings into discussion the impact of technological innovations on the construction of identities and gender roles in 

the world. It also deals with the questions of ethics and sustainability while engaging with the modes of negotiation of identities in the 

virtual world. 

1. Haraway, D. A Cyborg Manifesto.

2. Avatar, Warcraft and Virtual Identities - Gaming 

3. Excerpts from Hayles, Katherine. How we Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics.

Crenshaw, WK (2013)Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of colour. The Public Nature 

of Private Violence, 107–132. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203060902-12

Faqir, F., & Eber, S. (1999). In the House of Silence: Autobiographical Essays by arab women writers. Garnet. 

Anzaldúa, G. (2012). Borderlands: La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Aunt Lute Books. 

Essential readings:

R. W Connell. “History of Masculinity”. Masculinities. California: the University of California Press, 1995. 

Lorde, A. (2020). The cancer journals. Penguin books. 

Newell, S. (2009). Postcolonial masculinities and the politics of Visibility. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 45(3), 243–250. 

https://doi.org/10.1080/17449850903064641

Karlsson, B. G., & Kikon, D. (2017). Wayfinding: Indigenous migrants in the service sector of Metropolitan India. South Asia: Journal of 

South Asian Studies, 40(3), 447–462. https://doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2017.1319145

Paik, P. C.-ho, & Shi, C.-K. (2013). Playful gender swapping: User attitudes toward gender in MMORPG avatar customisation. Digital 

Creativity, 24(4), 310–326. https://doi.org/10.1080/14626268.2013.767275

Haraway, D. J. (2018). Cyborg manifesto. Camas Books.

Hayles, N. K. (1999). How we became posthuman. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226321394.001.0001

Teltumbde, A. (2010). The persistence of caste: India's hidden apartheid and the Khairlanji murders. Zed Books. 

Wildman, S. M., Armstrong, M., Davis, A. D., & Grillo, T. (2021). Privilege revealed how Invisible preference undermines america. 

New York University Press.

Ferrando, F. (2014). Is the post-human a post-woman? cyborgs, robots, Artificial Intelligence and the Futures of Gender: A Case Study. 

European Journal of Futures Research, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40309-014-0043-8

CIA II/MSE (50 Marks)

CIA-III (20 Marks)

ESE (50 Marks)

Attendance (5 

Marks)

This course is designed to provide the students with an overview of research methods and tools relevant to the fields of English and Cultural Studies. Students will explore different research methods, including quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods approaches, and will gain practical experience in designing and executing research projects. They will also be introduced to some of the basic research tools and resources available in the public domain. Additionally, students will critically examine the ethical implications of research undertakings.

This unit provides an introduction to various research methods and approaches that we use in the field of English and Cultural Studies research. The students will choose a topic and start working on it along the progression of the course. They are expected to start working towards their final research paper which will be counted for the ESE along with a viva.

Introduces students to quantitative and qualitative research methods as per global standards.

Introduces students to an array of methods/approaches that are used specific to different domains of research.

Introduces students to ethical practices and sustainable goals in research.

American Psychological Association. (2019). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.).

Bryman, A. (2016). Social research methods. Oxford University Press.

Jupp, V. (Ed.). (2006). The Sage dictionary of social research methods. Sage Publications. Neuman, W. L. (2013). Social research methods: Qualitative and quantitative approaches. Pearson. Oppenheim, A. N. (2016). Questionnaire design, interviewing and attitude measurement (3rd ed.). Boyd, E. A. (2018). Writing the qualitative dissertation: Understanding by doing. Routledge.

Creswell, J. W. (2015). A concise introduction to mixed methods research. Hine, C. (2015). Ethnography for the internet: Embedded, embodied and everyday. Bloomsbury Publishing. Salganik, M. J. (2018). Bit by bit: Social research in the digital age. Princeton University Press. Pink, S. (2013). Doing visual ethnography: Images, media and representation in research. Sage Publications. Pickering, M. (2008). Research methods in cultural studies. Edinburgh University Press. Perks, R., & Thomson, A. (Eds.). (2016). The oral history reader. Routledge. Rose, G. (2016). Visual methodologies: An introduction to researching with visual materials. Sage Publications. Gee, J. P. (2014). An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method (4th ed.). Routledge. Prior, P., Hengst, J. A., & Kirschenbaum, M. (Eds.). (2013). Understanding digital humanities. Palgrave Macmillan. Walsh, M. (2017). Archival research and education: Selected papers from the 2014 AERI conference. Litwin Books. Gambier, Y. (Ed.). (2010). Handbook of Translation Studies (Vol. 1-4). John Benjamins Publishing.

Oliver, P. (2014). The Student's Guide to Research Ethics. Open University Press.

Eden, L., Lund Dean, K., & Vaaler, P. M. (2018). The ethical professor: A practical guide to research, teaching and professional life. Routledge.

Fahy, F., & Rau, H. (2013). Methods of Sustainability Research in the Social Sciences. SAGE Publications, Ltd.

Israel, M., & Hay, I. (2006). Research ethics for social scientists: Between ethical conduct and regulatory compliance.

Denscombe, M. (2014). The good research guide: For small-scale social research projects (5th ed.).

Babbie, E. (2016). The basics of social research (7th ed.). Cengage Learning.

Dillman, D. A., Smyth, J. D., & Christian, L. M. (2014). Internet, phone, mail, and mixed-mode surveys: The tailored design method (4th ed.). John Wiley & Sons. Creswell, J. W. (2013). Research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (4th ed.). Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2018). The SAGE handbook of qualitative research (5th ed.). Charmaz, K. (2014). Constructing grounded theory: A practical guide through qualitative analysis (2nd ed.). Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2018). The SAGE handbook of qualitative research (5th ed.).

Creswell, J. W. (2015). A concise introduction to mixed methods research. Hine, C. (2015). Ethnography for the internet: Embedded, embodied and everyday. Bloomsbury Publishing. Salganik, M. J. (2018). Bit by bit: Social research in the digital age. Princeton University Press. Pink, S. (2013). Doing visual ethnography: Images, media and representation in research. Sage Publications. Pickering, M. (2008). Research methods in cultural studies. Edinburgh University Press. Perks, R., & Thomson, A. (Eds.). (2016). The oral history reader. Routledge. Rose, G. (2016). Visual methodologies: An introduction to researching with visual materials. Sage Publications. Gee, J. P. (2014). An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method (4th ed.). Routledge. Prior, P., Hengst, J. A., & Kirschenbaum, M. (Eds.). (2013). Understanding digital humanities. Palgrave Macmillan. Walsh, M. (2017). Archival research and education: Selected papers from the 2014 AERI conference. Litwin Books. Gambier, Y. (Ed.). (2010). Handbook of Translation Studies (Vol. 1-4). John Benjamins Publishing.

Morse, J. M., Barrett, M., Mayan, M., Olson, K., & Spiers, J. (2002). Verification Strategies for Establishing Reliability and Validity in Qualitative Research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 1(2), 13–22. https://doi.org/10.1177/160940690200100202

Hosseini, M., Wieczorek, M., & Gordijn, B. (2022). Ethical Issues in Social

CIA COMPONENT 2- 25

ESE COMPONENT 1-20

ESE COMPONENT 2-30

ATTENDANCE - 5

This course is built around the premise of negotiating power through spatiality in the context of postcoloniality. While studies in postcolonialism often foreground the temporal vectors, increasingly, postcolonial studies is being reconfigured in new and emerging contemporary contexts through a critical reading of spaces. Illustrative texts and readings would be undertaken for discussion in the course in an attempt to create new directions in engaging with the postcolonial geographies. The course will provide better conceptual understandings to deal with the questions of spatial justice in the contemporary socio cultural milieu of globalisation wherein the traditional notions and space and time have undergone several paradigms shifts.

The course is conceptualized with the following objectives:

● To make the students understand the significance of space in socio-cultural discourses

● To equip students with concepts and theoretical clarity to critically examine the social and 

material constitution of spaces

● To help students to critically evaluate the fictional and cinematic imagination of spaces.

 This unit introduces selected conceptual frameworks that are central to understanding of what has come to be described as 

the ‘spatial turn’ in the study of literature, culture and society.

1. City

2. Space and politics

3. Historicism 

4. Postmodern Spatiality

5. Heterotopia 

: The concept of space and time has changed with the borderless flow of culture and capital and time-space compression has 

become a reality. The unit aims at providing an understanding of this new reality in the socio-cultural spaces.

1. Globalisation and space

2. Modernity

3. Transregionalism and Mobilities

4. Time-space factors

5. concept of border

6. Other, insider/outsider

The unit deals with the questions of the historical and contemporary evolution of city space with specific cases of 

Bangalore and Delhi. The development of the city space through the colonial, post-independent and globalisation eras are mapped in the 

selected texts to give the students a proper understanding of the development of city spaces during different historical phases.

1. urban turn

2. spatial turn

3. city studies and spatial politics

4. every day and the city

5. micro narratives and postmodernism

6. spatial realities

: The unit looks for the representations of cinematic and fictional spaces. The unit aims to make the student understand how 

far the imagined space represented in films and fiction reflects the realities of the place in a distinct socio-cultural and historical milieu. 

1. Film and literature

2. space in film

3. fictional space

4. representation of spaces

The Politics of Space and the Shift from Historicism to Spatiality- Soja, Edward. Postmodern Geographies.

The Question of Spatial Justice- Lefebvre, Henri. State, Space, World.

The Spatial Turn in Sociological Discourses: Heterotopia and Evolving Questions of Divisions of Space- Foucault, Michael. “Of Other 

Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias.”

Forest and Natural Environment as Space in the Colonial Context- Mackay, David. Agents of the Empire. 

Globalisation and evolving concepts of space- Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization.

Upadhya, C., Rutten, M., & Koskimaki, L. Provincial Globalization in India: Transregional Mobilities and Development Politics.

Bhagat, C. Transnational space within national boundaries: One Night @ the Call Center. 

Warf, Barney. (2008). Time-Space Compression: Historical Geographies. Routledge.

Globalisation and Indian Cities- Shaw, Annapurna. Indian Cities in Transition.

How we are becoming borderless- Friedman, Thomas L. The World is Flat: The Globalized World in the Twenty-First Century.

Transition of Bangalore from Precolonial to the era of globalisation- Nair, Janaki. (2005). The Promise of the Metropolis: Bangalore’s 

Twentieth Century. OUP.

Social Conflicts of Globalisation and Urban Life- Sarai Reader 02: The Cities of Everyday Life

Technology and Urban Space- Sundaram, Ravi. (2010) Pirate Modernity: Delhi’s Media Urbanism. Routledge.

Media Space from the Colonial Era to the Age of Globalization- Sundaram, Ravi. (2013) No Limits: Media Studies from India. OUP.

New Platforms to Discuss Transformation of Urban space and Contemporary Realities- Sarai Reader 01: The Public Domain

The Space of Refugees- Bala, Sharon. The Boat People.

A Fictional Journey through Unique Geographical Terrains- Swaroop, Shubhangi. Latitudes of Longing.

The Question of Transnational Space in Contemporary Literature- Ghosh, Amitav. Gun Island.

Colonisation and Spatial Interventions- Kipling, Rudyard. “The Bridge-Builders”.

Corruption and the Crisis of Postcolonial Space- Kincaid, Jamaica. A Small Place.

Understanding Cinematic Space- Jaikumar, Priya. Where Histories Reside: India as a Filmed Space

Warf, Barney. (2008). Time-Space Compression: Historical Geographies. Routledge.

Tally, Robert. Spatiality. Routledge, 2012

Anssi Paasi “Bounded spaces in a ‘borderless world’: border studies, power and the anatomy of territory,” Journal of Power, 2:2, 213-234, 

2009. DOI: 10.1080/17540290903064275

Warf, Barney. (2008). Time-Space Compression: Historical Geographies. Routledge.

Tally, Robert. Spatiality. Routledge, 2012

Anssi Paasi “Bounded spaces in a ‘borderless world’: border studies, power and the anatomy of territory,” Journal of Power, 2:2, 213-234, 

2009. DOI: 10.1080/17540290903064275

Warf, Barney. (2008). Time-Space Compression: Historical Geographies. Routledge

Tally, Robert. Spatiality. Routledge, 2012

Anssi Paasi “Bounded spaces in a ‘borderless world’: border studies, power and the anatomy of territory,” Journal of Power, 2:2, 213-234, 

2009. DOI: 10.1080/17540290903064275

Warf, Barney. (2008). Time-Space Compression: Historical Geographies. Routledge

CIA II/MSE (50 Marks)

CIA-III (20 Marks)

ESE (50 Marks)

Attendance (5)

This course explores how mythology shape human identity, power, and ethics. Students will examine several myths from diverse cultures and eras through lectures, readings, conversations, and assignments, developing a deeper knowledge of how myths contribute to our understanding of the world and our place in it as global citizens. The course examines myth’s critical and modern use in popular culture, advertising, and technology and the universal themes and issues addressed in myths, such as heroism, meaning, and good versus evil.

This unit explores mythology's basic concepts and principles and its cultural significance. Students will examine the role of mythology in shaping cultural identity, values, and beliefs, both in individual societies and across the globe. Through the unit, students will develop critical thinking, analytical, and research skills, which they will use to evaluate and analyse the role of myths in cultural contexts. The unit also encourages reflection on human values and ethics issues, as students examine how myths shape our understanding of the world and our place in it.

This unit explores how myths shape personal and collective identities. Students study how myths construct social categories like race, gender, sexuality, and nationality. The unit addresses how myths build national, ethnic, and cultural identities, and how these constructions cause conflicts and inequalities. Students gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between mythology and identity and learn skills to engage with myths critically and creatively.

This unit explores the relationship between mythology and power, examining how myths have been used to exert control and promote social and political structures. The unit addresses issues of national and global significance by examining how myths have been used to promote or resist different forms of domination, thereby establishing the role of myths in formulating human values. By the end of the unit, students will have a deeper understanding of the complex relationship between mythology and power and will be equipped with the skills necessary to analyse and engage with myths in various contexts critically.

The unit examines how myths construct cultural identities and values, affecting broader social and political issues at national and global levels. Students analyse how myths promote or resist social change and how contemporary culture challenges traditional mythologies. Students develop analytical, critical, and creative skills to interpret cultural products in relation to mythology.

Csapo, E. (2005). Comparative Approaches. In Theories of Mythology. Wiley.

Hamilton, E. (2017). Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes. Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers.

Ramen, F. (2008). Indian Mythology. Rosen Publishing Group.

Barthes, R. (1972). The Romans in Films. In Mythologies (pp. 26-29). Hill and Wang.

Campbell, J., & Moyers, B. (2011). The First Story Tellers. In The Power of Myth. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Eliade, M. (1959). Archetypes and Repetition. In Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return (pp. 1-48). Harper & Brothers.

Sophocles. (2011). Oedipus Rex (D. Mulroy, Trans.). University of Wisconsin Press.

Atwood, M. (2016). The Handmaid's Tale. Random House.

Bodrov, S. (Director). (2007). Mongol [Motion picture]. Kazakhstan: Eurasia Film Production.

Campbell, J., & Moyers, B. (2011). The Hero’s Adventure. In The Power of Myth. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Camus, A. (1991). The Myth of Sisyphus. In J. O'Brien (Ed.), The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (1st Vintage international ed.). Vintage Books.

Plato. (2021). Book 2 (B. Jowett, Trans.). In The Republic. Atlantic Publishers.

Duffy, C. A. (2000). The World's Wife: Poems. Pan Macmillan.

Haynes, N. (2020). Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths. Picador.

Kané, K. (2015). Menaka's Choice. Rupa.

Ratnam, M. (1991). Thalapthi. GV Films.

Leeming, David Adams. Creation Myths of the World: An Encyclopedia. Abc-clio, 2010.

Barthes, R. (1972). Mythologies. Hill and Wang.

Campbell, J., & Moyers, B. (2011). The Power of Myth. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Eliade, M. (1959). Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return. Harper & Brothers.

Campbell, J., & Moyers, B. (2011). The Power of Myth. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Camus, A. (1991). The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (1st Vintage international ed.). Vintage Books.

Plato. (2021). The Republic (B. Jowett, Trans.). Atlantic Publishers.

Dickerson, M., Dickerson, M. T., & O’Hara, D. (2006). From Homer to Harry Potter: A Handbook on Myth and Fantasy. Brazos Press.

Winkler, M. M. (2001). Classical Myth & Culture in the Cinema. Oxford University Press on Demand.

CIA II/MSE (50 Marks)

CIA-III (20 Marks)

ESE (50 Marks)

Attendance (5 Marks)

Cultural Anthropology is the study of human social life in the broadest possible way. Traditionally, Anthropologists have studied "tribes" to understand how contemporary humans create what is known as "culture" to give meaning to and make sense of the world they live in. Anthropologists are interested in all types of local, regional, national and global societies and the whole range of human experiences and values. We study social norms, human values, and practices to understand diversity, sustainability and unity - the uniqueness that sets us apart and the commonality that binds us together as global citizens.

This course provides an active introduction to anthropological practice with a “hands-on” ethnographic exercise based on the students own cultural background. By learning about the ethnographic methods, students will acquire the critical tools, professional ethics and develop skills necessary for researching the social and cultural aspects of their society in an anthropological way.

The course aims to help students:

● Read and critique seminal ethnographic works by prominent anthropologists

● Compare and contrast basic theoretical orientations among the various schools of thought in Anthropology.

● Describe how anthropology differs from and is similar to other social sciences, and give examples of these differences.

● Narrate the historical/cultural context in which theories were developed.

● Define culture in its own terms, while describing its role in building human societies.

This unit introduces the learners to the seminal texts and concepts of Cultural Anthropology and focuses on the core anthropological questions. The major objectives of this unit are to study how anthropologists view other cultures, familiarize with anthropological terms and concepts, and try to analyse the learner’s livid environment using these concepts. It also looks at individual, local, regional, national and global understandings of human values and cultures from the lens of anthropology in the current times. The modern-day tribe can be an online group of bike enthusiasts, gourmet food chefs, a saree group, or cat lovers who dress their cats.

1. What is Anthropology?

2. What are the subfields and perspectives of Anthropology?

3. The Historical Evolution of Anthropology and the Schools of Thought by scholars like Jean Rousseau, and Franz Boas.

4. Definitions of Culture by Anthropologists

5. Culture Concept as a complex of Cognitive Processes, Behaviors and Material Creations

6. Subcultures and Countercultures

7. Ideal and Real Cultures

8. Anthropology, Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism

This unit will focus on central concepts of local, regional, national and global rites and rituals, including and in the context of religious practices. It will explore how all societies of the world engage with their spiritual and supernatural beliefs and practices. The unit will help the learners to understand rites and rituals, liminality, religion, symbols, sacred narratives, magic, divination, shamanism and identify cross-cutting issues of gender, environment and sustainability. They will be able to conceptualise and conduct their mini ethnographic project by the end of this unit that will also sharpen their critical skills.

1. Introduction to the anthropological study of religion and belief systems.

2. What role does religion play in human society?

3. Characteristics of Religion (Historical Origins, Origin Myth and Sacred Narratives, Symbolism and Symbols, The Supernatural)

4. Types of Belief Systems (sacred and profane, magic, totem, taboo, practices and practitioners)

5. Fundamentalism and Religion

6. Commercialization of religion.

7. What are rituals?

8. Why do rituals become such an essential part of everyday human life, especially during times of change or transition?

9. Rites of passage and Rites of Intensification

10. Liminality and Revitalization

This unit deals with the family structures and marriage which forms the basis of anthropology. Marriage extends our circle of kin; the institution of family plays a pivotal role in sustaining these extended networks of kin. The major questions asked in this unit are: What kind of cultural and human values and norms honour kinship in that society? How do the institutions of kinship, marriage and family fulfil the particular society’s needs at the local, regional, national and global level? The unit will help the learner in defining kinship, descent systems, marriage and family, their classification and functions, kinship terms and behaviours, and so on. The unit will throw light into cross cultural practices along with taboos and will help learners to move away from anthropocentric behaviours. Students will be able to trace the structures and behaviours of kinship systems prevailing in their immediate individual, local and regional atmosphere and critically compare it to national and global systems after this unit.

1. Forms of descent and residence. Lineage, clan, phratry, moiety and kindred

2. Kinship terminology

3. Kinship behaviour.

4. Recent developments in kinship studies

5. Definition, types and rules of marriage, marriage payment.

6. Definition and functions of family, types of family.

7. Recent changes in marriage and family- impact of urbanization, industrialization and feminist movement, same sex marriage

and live-in relationships.

The unit introduces students to ethnography, provides the background for doing ethnographic work and describes methods employed by fieldworkers in local, regional, national and global settings. The unit helps in understanding challenges related to gender, caste, sustainability and human values when they are in the field. The field working skills development in this unit also foster employability.

1. What is ethnography? How to be an ethnographer in one’s own society?

2. Ethnographic Research Methods

3. Process and Methods of Fieldwork

4. Positioning the Self; Negotiating Ethics of Entry

5. Participant Observation, Interviewing

6. Taking Field notes; Reflexivity.

7. Fieldworking in Rural India and Urban India

8. Fieldworking in terms of researching space, researching language and researching people

9. FieldWriting

10. Anthropology of Deviance (What are norms? How does deviance help in clarifying the collective cultural values and cultural morality of a society? Does deviance unify society? The structuralist (Durkheim) and functionalist (Merton) perspectives on deviance)

Nanda, W. R. S. L. (2023). Cultural Anthropology By Nanda & Warms (9th, Ninth Edition) (9th ed.). Wadsworth Publishing.

Rapport, N., & Overing, J. (2000). Social and Cultural Anthropology: The Key Concepts. Routledge.

Walton, D. (2012). Doing Cultural Theory (1st ed.). SAGE Publications Ltd.

Bowie, F. (2021). “Anthropology of religion.” In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion, 1-24.

Lenkeit, R. E. (2004). Introducing Cultural Anthropology. McGraw-Hill Education.

Nanda, W. R. S. L. (2023). Cultural Anthropology (9th ed.). Wadsworth Publishing.

Rapport, N., & Overing, J. (2000). Social and Cultural Anthropology: The Key Concepts. Routledge.

Rosaldo, R. (1988). Ideology, place, and people without culture. Cultural Anthropology, 3(1), 77-87.

Lenkeit, R. E. (2004). Introducing Cultural Anthropology. McGraw-Hill Education.

Nanda, W. R. S. L. (2023). Cultural Anthropology (9th ed.). Wadsworth Publishing.

Fox, R. (1983). Kinship and marriage: An Anthropological Perspective (Vol. 50). Cambridge University Press

Fife, W. (2005). Doing fieldwork: Ethnographic Methods for Research in Developing Countries and Beyond. Springer..

Crang, M., & Cook, I. (2007). Doing Ethnographies. Sage.

Rosaldo, R. (1988). Ideology, Place, and People without Culture. Cultural Anthropology, 3(1), 77-87. Springer.

Srinivas, M. N., Ramaswamy, E. A., & Shah, A. M. (2004). The Fieldworker and the Field: Problems and Challenges in Sociological Investigation. Oxford University Press.

Srivastava, V. K. (2005). Methodology and Fieldwork (Oxford in India Readings in Sociology and Social Anthropology) (1st ed.). Oxford University Press.

Sunstein, B. S., & Chiseri-Strater, E. (2011). FieldWorking: Reading and Writing Research. Bedford St. Martin’s.

Barnard, A. (2016). Social Anthropology Investigating Human Social Life. United Kingdom: Studymates Limited.

Clifford, J., & Marcus, G. E. (Eds.). (1986). Writing culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Univ of California Press.

Fabian, J. (2014). Time and the other: How Anthropology makes its Object. Columbia University Press.

Friedman, J. (2002). From Roots to Routes: Tropes for trippers. Anthropological Theory, 2(1), 21-36.

Boyer, P. (2002). Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought. Adfo Books.

Clifford Geertz (2002) Religion Explained, New York: Basic Books.

Clifford, J. (1994). Diasporas. Cultural anthropology, 9(3), 302-338.

Lenkeit, R. E. (2004). Introducing Cultural Anthropology. McGraw-Hill Education.

Bernard, H. R. (1988). Research Methods in Cultural Anthropology (p. 117). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Bernard, H. R., & Gravlee, C. C. (Eds.). (2014). Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology. Rowman & Littlefield.

Freilich, M., Raybeck, D., & Savishinsky, J. S. (Eds.). (1991). Deviance: Anthropological Perspectives. Bergin & Garvey.

Gupta, A., & Ferguson, J. (1992). Beyond “Culture”: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference. Cultural Anthropology, 7(1), 6-23.

Ingold, T. (2018). Anthropology: Why It Matters. Wiley.

Marcus, G. E. (2008). The End (s) of Ethnography: Social/Cultural Anthropology's Signature Form of Producing Knowledge in Transition. Cultural Anthropology, 23(1), 1-14.

Spiro, M. E. (1986). Cultural relativism and the future of anthropology. Cultural Anthropology, 1(3), 259-286.

Turner, T. (1993). Anthropology and multiculturalism: What is Anthropology that Multiculturalists should be Mindful of It?. Cultural anthropology, 8(4), 411-429.

MSE 25

ESE (Viva + Submission) 50

This course introduces students to a range of theoretical apparatus to understand visuality and visual culture. The approaches draw upon a mix of cultural studies, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, film studies and popular culture. It provides a broad overview of visual culture and problematizes ways of seeing and being seen. It engages with the visual as a site of power, politics and resistance, for example, as in the case of surveillance in the hyper- technological societies we inhabit. The larger objective of the course is to enable students to grapple with complex ideas on their own, and to tussle with concepts, to produce primary research that is insightful. This research will take the form of student-managed and designed field trips, exhibitions, presentations, and publications. The course also provides the opportunity for students to explore visual culture in the local and regional context by opening up Bangalore city as a point of discussion.

The course aims to help students to:

● Understand how visuals operate in contemporary society and identify and assess through different theoretical lenses relevant visual elements from one’s surroundings and the way these elements are influencing the experience of life.

● Critically evaluate the domain of visual culture in their everyday life in terms of both production and consumption, and recognize its influence on making and maintaining certain

positions, experiences, practices, privileges, assumptions, aesthetics, and power relations in one’s local, national and global contexts.

● Develop deeper and critical insight into the functioning of various visual elements in life and question the ways of seeing and being seen and thereby problematizing the various intersectional elements like gender, caste, class and identity.

● Identify the problems involved in the politics and practice of visual culture linked to race, class, gender, nationality, ethnicity, and individuality

This unit will introduce students to the domain of visual culture. Introducing differing theoretical approaches to visuals and visual analysis, the unit opens up to the question of how people live and move in their visual environments. The unit also introduces texts and discussions which are relevant in national to Global contexts and provides insights into the question of politics of visuality in relation to gender, ethnicity, violence, and human values. The texts selected focus mainly on semiotics of visuals and relevance of it in the cultural studies context. The unit also entails methodological analysis of visual texts like films, photographs, You Tube videos, video blogs etc from across the world. The unit will enable students to develop their interpretive and critical skills and will enable them to understand the role and significance of visual culture in conversing and contesting the existing power structures in the society.

1. The politics of visuals

2. Identity, Power and Visual Culture

3. Polycentric perspectives and Visual Culture

This unit intends to look deeply into the role visuals play in understanding society and human interactions. This unit will enable students to evaluate the politics of visual texts and the sense of agency working within. It also looks at visuality in the context of culture, history, power and knowledge. This unit will help students to understand the role visual plays in disseminating and contesting agency in global as well as national contexts. The unit also addresses issues related to human values, gender, and ecology through the lens of power, knowledge and visuality. These discussions will enable them to develop their critical reading skills.

1. Visuality and the power of representation

2. Visuality and resistance

3. Graffiti and Graphic Narratives

This unit attempts to provide a theoretical empirical framework to explore visual communication and implications of mediated images. The unit also aims to enable students to understand the theory and practice across digital media and technology in the visual arts and in the new media. The topics and texts in this unit will help students to situate technology and digital media cultures in the context of visual culture studies. Topics like, digital imaging techniques, new media, digital entertainment, image-making and virtual and non-virtual spatiality etc are examined through the lens of cultural studies in this unit. It will also address issues like, gender, identities, human values etc in relation to digital media cultures.

1. Media and Visual Culture

2. Screen Cultures and Digital Visual Culture

3. Visuality and Spatiality

This unit is designed to help students to understand and situate visual culture studies in the local, regional and national contexts of their everyday realities. The texts and concepts discussed in this unit will enable students to explore the significance of visuals in the media cultures, and digital landscapes of contemporary India. Questions of nation, religion, caste, race, gender, language and other identities will be interrogated through the lens of digital visual culture, visual media studies, film studies and popular culture.

1. Visual Culture in India

2. Nationalism and Visuals

3. Popular Visual Culture in India

Mirzeoff, Nicholas. (2002). What is Visual Culture? The Visual Culture Reader. United Kingdom: Routledge.

Sturken, M., Cartwright, L. (2018). Images, Power

Debord, G. (2012). Society of the Spectacle. United Kingdom: Bread and Circuses.

Mirzoeff, N. (2011). The Right to Look. Critical Inquiry, 37(3), 473–496. https://doi.org/10.1086/659354

Spiegelman, A. (1997). The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale. United Kingdom: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Zelizer, B. (2000). Remembering to Forget: Holocaust Memory Through the Camera's Eye. United States: University of Chicago Press.

Aiello, G., Parry, K. (2019). Visual Communication: Understanding Images in Media Culture. United Kingdom: SAGE Publications.

Butler, J. G. (2018). Television: Visual Storytelling and Screen Culture. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis.

Mitchell, W. J. T. (2018). Image Science: Iconology, Visual Culture, and Media Aesthetics. United Kingdom: University of Chicago Press.

Neumüller, Moritz. (2018). The Routledge Companion to Photography and Visual Culture. (n.p.): Taylor & Francis.

Sturken, M., Cartwright, L. (2018). ‘Media in Everyday Life.’ Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.

Bogart, M. H. (2006). The politics of urban beauty: New York & its Art Commission. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Citron, B. (2012). Bhupen Khakhar’s “Pop” in India, 1970-72. Art Journal, 71(2), 44–61. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43188541

Favero, P. S. H. (2020). Image-Making-India: Visual Culture, Technology, Politics. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis.

Junik-Luniewska, K. (2019). Towards the Visual: New Genres and Forms of Storytelling in India. Politeja, 59, 149–160. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26916359

Shin, R. (2010). Why Does the Buddha Laugh? Exploring Ethnic Visual Culture. Art Education, 63(3), 33–39. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20694834

Jain, Jyotindra. India's Popular Culture: Iconic Spaces and Fluid Images. (2007). India: Marg Publications.

Berger, J. (2008). Ways of Seeing. United Kingdom: Penguin Books Limited.

Easley, A., Gill, C., & Rodgers, B. (Eds.). (2019). Women and Visual Culture: Introduction. In Women, Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1830s-1900s: The Victorian Period (pp. 199–201). Edinburgh University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctvggx3wf.20

Levi, N., & Rothberg, M. (Eds.). (2003). ‘Rethinking Visual Culture: Introduction’ In The Holocaust: Theoretical Readings (pp. 371–374). Edinburgh University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctvxcrd5m.62

Mirzoeff, N. (2009). An Introduction to Visual Culture. Routledge.

Berger, S. (2017). The Art of Philosophy. Princeton University Press.

Crary, Jonathan (2001). Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle and Modern Culture. mit Press.

Darts, D. (2004). Visual Culture Jam: Art, Pedagogy, and Creative Resistance. Studies in Art Education, 45(4), 313–327. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1321067

Frank, D. A., Picart, C. J. (2006). Frames of Evil: The Holocaust as Horror in American Film. United States: Southern Illinois University Press.

Schacter, R. (2013). The World Atlas of Street Art and Graffiti. United Kingdom: Yale University Press.

Albertazzi, Liliana. Visual Thought: The Depictive Space of Perception. (2006). Netherlands: John Benjamins Pub..

Balducci, Temma. Women, Femininity and Public Space in European Visual Culture, 1789-1914. (2014). United Kingdom: Ashgate.

Darley, A. (2002). Visual Digital Culture: Surface Play and Spectacle in New Media Genres. (n.p.): Taylor & Francis.

Fiske, John. (2002) Videotech. Mirzeoff, Nicholas. (Ed.) The Visual Culture Reader. United Kingdom: Routledge.

Friedberg, Anne. The Mobilized and Virtual Gaze. Mirzeoff, Nicholas. (Ed.) The Visual Culture Reader. United Kingdom: Routledge.

Koten, Hamid Van. The Digital Image and the Pleasure Principle: The Consumption of Realism in The Age of Simulation.

Mahoney, Cat. Et all. The Past in Visual Culture: Essays on Memory, Nostalgia and the Media. (2017). United States: McFarland, Incorporated, Publishers.

Papastergiadis et al. (2016). Screen Cultures and Public Spaces. Ambient Screens and Transnational Public Spaces. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

Punathambekar & Mohan. (2019) Global Digital Cultures: Perspectives from South Asia. United States: University of Michigan Press.

Ward, T. J., Lay, W. D. (2019). Park Statue Politics: World War II Comfort Women Memorials in the United States. United Kingdom: E-International Relations Publishing.

Sajdl, D. (2005). Visual Culture - the Representation of Women in Contemporary Media. Germany: GRIN Verlag.

Bhattacharjya, N. (2009). Popular Hindi Film Song Sequences Set in the Indian Diaspora and the Negotiating of Indian Identity. Asian Music, 40(1), 53–82. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25501601

Jain, K. (2021). Gods in the Time of Democracy. United States: Duke University Press.

Lutgendorf, P. (1994). My Hanuman Is Bigger Than Yours. History of Religions, 33(3), 211–245. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1062737

Parthasarathy, D., & Singh, B. (2018). Introduction: Culture, Place and Ecology. Indian Anthropologist, 48(2), 1–6. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26757761

Rajagopal, A. (2015). Postcolonial Visual Culture: Arguments from India. In C.-C. LEE (Ed.), Internationalizing “International Communication” (pp. 302–318). University of Michigan Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv65sxh2.17

CIA-I (20 Marks)

CIA II/MSE (50 Marks)

CIA-III (20 Marks)

ESE (50 Marks)

Attendance (5 Marks)

This course has been conceptualized in order to provide learners with hands-on experience in teaching and writing. Each student is assigned a mentor from the faculty of English and Cultural Studies, with whom the student will receive training in teaching selected undergraduate classes as well as guidance on conducting research and publishing academic papers (whenever applicable). The learners are expected to deliver the teaching modules created as a part of the course titled Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Assessment (whenever applicable) in the respective classes that would be assigned to them as a part of this course. Besides enabling skill development and employment opportunities in the field of teaching and learning, the learners will also develop a critical understanding of the need to develop and design course content based on regional, local, and national needs. The programme is aimed at enabling postgraduate students to: ● Engage in practice teaching for skill-based as well as discipline-specific undergraduate courses. ● Work with a faculty member on closely conducting and administering a course.  

The learners will be instructed by their respective mentors to develop lesson plans for the skill-based teaching modules they plan to deliver in the classes assigned to them. The unit will enable skill development and employability among learners in the domain of teaching in higher educational contexts. Under the guidance of their mentors, the learners will develop the lesson plan which will elaborately the following as stated. 1. Module details. 2. Module objectives and outcomes. 3. Time of delivery. 4. Methodology of delivery. 5. Assessment patterns. 6. Assessment objectives and outcomes, assessment rubrics etc

The learners will be given hands-on teaching practices under this unit. They will take the skill-specific teaching modules to the classes assigned to them and will be accompanied by their mentors who will not only support them but also provide them feedback based on their performance. The unit will enable skill development and employability among learners in the domain of teaching in higher educational contexts. As a part of this unit, the student-teachers would be required to do the following as stated. 1. Assess the needs of the learners in the class they are going to. 2. Design need-specific content. 3. Incorporate class engagement activities in the content. 4. Engage in direct teaching activities. 5. Engage in assessment and feedback activities.

The learners will be expected to reflect on the designing, teaching, and implementing practices. The learners would engage in peer group discussions and share their individual learning experiences emerging from their teaching endeavours. The unit will enable skill development and employability among learners in the domain of teaching in higher educational contexts and will also lead towards the development of the idea of support and professional ethics among the learners. As a part of this unit, the student-teachers would be expected to do the following as stated. 1. Individual reflections 2. Peer discussions 3. Group activities 4. Peer mentoring and support

The learners will be provided feedback by their respective mentors on their teaching styles and classroom management strategies. The constructive feedback sessions will be a reflective exercise where the learners will contemplate on and analyse their classroom interactions with the help of their respective mentors. The unit will enable skill development and employability among learners in the domain of teaching in higher educational contexts and will also lead towards the development of the ideao of support and professional ethics among the learners.As a part of this unit, the student-teachers would be expected to do the following as stated. 1. Maintain a journal/portfolio of their teaching experiences. 2. Gain feedback from their mentors. 3. Reflect on key areas of classroom interaction with the mentors. 

Coe, R., Aloisi, C., Higgins, S., & Major, L. E. (2014). What Makes Great Teaching? Review of the Underpinning Research.

 McAlpine, L., Weston, C., Berthiaume, D., Fairbank-Roch, G., & Owen, M. (2004). Reflection on teaching: Types and goals of reflection. Educational Research and Evaluation, 10(4-6), 337-363. Beauchamp, C. (2015). Reflection in teacher education: Issues emerging from a review of current literature. Reflective practice, 16(1), 123-141.

Engin, M. (2013). Questioning to scaffold: an exploration of questions in pre-service teacher training feedback sessions. European Journal of Teacher Education, 36(1), 39-54.

Grossman, P., Compton, C., Igra, D., Ronfeldt, M., Shahan, E., & Williamson, P. (2009). Teaching practice: A Cross-Professional Perspective.Teachers College Record, 111(9), 2055-2100. Willingham, D. (2009). Why Don’t Students Like School? A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means or the Classroom. Jossey-Bass

Grossman, P., Compton, C., Igra, D., Ronfeldt, M., Shahan, E., & Williamson, P. (2009). Teaching practice: A Cross-Professional Perspective. Teachers College Record, 111(9), 2055-2100. Farenga, S. J., & Ness, D. (2015). Encyclopedia of education and human development. Routledge

Farenga, S. J., & Ness, D. (2015). Encyclopedia of education and human development. Routledge. 

MSE Component 1 (25)

MSE Component 2 (20)

ESE Component 1 (30)

ESE Viva (20) 

Both Fantasy and Science Fiction (SF) developed as a genre of popular culture and literature and became a part of academic engagements post the critical and cultural change. It brings to the fore within academia marginal and decentred narratives. Both fantasy and science fiction operate on the cusp of the intersections of the human, the environment, and technology and create discursive spaces that deal with aspects of ethics, every day, culture and nature. The course evaluates the relevance of providing spaces for dystopian and utopian heterotopic realities and how the populace engages and decodes the embedded meanings within the texts in regional, national and global contexts and provides students with skill sets to examine their own lived realities and spaces. The course engages with literary, visual and spatial texts and contexts to enable students to do so. The course aims to: ● Engage with the characteristics of the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres ● provide a critical understanding of key thematic concepts prominently featured in Science Fiction and Fantasy texts. ● Enable discussions on popular representations and engagements within the two genres ● Create discussions in and around the politics of the popular within which these genres operate 

This unit will deal with the key developments in science fiction and fantasy as a discipline and examine the relevance of the genres in academia. It will enable students to analyse and evaluate the general thematics and politics that operate within the genres in a global context. It will examine the history of the genre in terms of its evolution and the politics of sustainability that underpin these genres. 1. What is Science Fiction? 2. What goes as a Fantasy Narrative? 3. Intersections of science fiction and fantasy 4. Science Fiction Studies and Studies in Fantasy Narratives.

 This unit will equip the student to evaluate the nature ad politics of the real within the domains of fantasy and science fiction. It will examine the manner in which the real and reality are constituted within the interstices of imagination and rationality and problematics of the human mind to constantly recreate the horrifying ‘other’. Texts within unit will deal with class, gender and environment within larger national and global contexts

1. The politics of the real in science fiction and fantasy 2. Utopias and Dystopias 3. Race, Gender, Environment in Science Fiction and Fantasy 4. Horror in science fiction and fantasy: Encountering the real/other

The unit will enable students to engage in global contemporary discourses and concerns of humans with technology and develop critical reading skills through the lens of gender, environment, disabilities and other human values. 1. Understanding the Posthuman 2. Concerns around AI and Technology in everyday lives 3. Ethics and Technology

This unit will introduce students to the politics of fandom and the close ties of popular culture and consumption of narratives of science fiction and fantasy across the world. The unit will enable developing skills to identify the aesthetics and stylistics of the genres- through writing techniques, and animation and CGI-enabled visualising of the grand spaces and technologies imagined often in the genre. The influence of fan culture on the genres and vice versa and the recreation of these narratives through Cosplay across the globe also enables a better understanding of the developments in human interest and ways of consumption. 1. Fandom and Fan fiction and its influence 2. Aesthetics of the genres 3. Cosplay and Performing in Popular Culture

Hughes, R., & Wheeler, P. (2013). Introduction Eco-dystopias: Nature and the Dystopian Imagination. Critical Survey, 25(2), 1–6. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42751030

Dickinson, D. (2020). Science Fiction: ‘Anything believed gains a measure of reality.’ In Make-Believe: God in 21st Century Novels (pp. 44–60). The Lutterworth Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv10vm0xz.6

Ekman, S. (2016). Urban Fantasy: A Literature of the Unseen. Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, 27(3 (97)), 452–469. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26321148

Coppula, D. (1998). Artificial Intelligence: Where Science Fiction Meets Reality. ASEE Prism, 7(6), 18–23. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24156831

 Select Episodes from Levy. S., & Cohen, D., producers. (2016-2024). Stranger Things. Monkey Massacre Productions and 21 Laps Entertainment, US.

Gibson, W. (2019). Neuromancer (1984). In Crime and Media (pp. 86-94). Routledge.

Clayton, J. (2013). The Ridicule of Time: Science Fiction, Bioethics, and the Posthuman. American Literary History, 25(2), 317–343. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43817572

Frelik, P. (2017). “On Not Calling a Spade a Spade”: Climate Fiction as Science Fiction. Amerikastudien / American Studies, 62(1), 125–129. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44982311

De Witt Douglas Kilgore. (2010). Difference Engine: Aliens, Robots, and Other Racial Matters in the History of Science Fiction. Science Fiction Studies, 37(1), 16–22. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40649582

Russ, J. (1975). Towards an Aesthetic of Science Fiction. Science Fiction Studies, 2(2), 112–119. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4238932

Southard, B. (1982). The Language of Science-Fiction Fan Magazines. American Speech, 57(1), 19–31. https://doi.org/10.2307/455177

Re, V. (2017). The Monster at the End of This Book: Metalepsis, Fandom, and World Making in Contemporary TV Series. In M. Boni (Ed.), World Building (pp. 321–342). Amsterdam University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1zkjz0m.21

WOOLEY, C. A. (2001). Visible Fandom: Reading the X-files Through X-Philes. Journal of Film and Video, 53(4), 29–53. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20688369 

Kustritz, A. (2016). “They All Lived Happily Ever After. Obviously.”: Realism and Utopia in Game of Thrones-Based Alternate Universe Fairy Tale Fan Fiction. Humanities, 5(2), 43. MDPI AG. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/h5020043

Peirson-Smith, A. (2013). Fashioning the fantastical self: An examination of the cosplay dress-up phenomenon in Southeast Asia. Fashion Theory, 17(1), 77-111

Hughes, R. (2013). The Ends of the Earth: Nature, Narrative, and Identity in Dystopian Film. Critical Survey, 25(2), 22–39. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42751032

Aaron Santesso. (2014). Fascism and Science Fiction. Science Fiction Studies, 41(1), 136–162. https://doi.org/10.5621/sciefictstud.41.1.0136

Baker, D. (2012). Why We Need Dragons: The Progressive Potential of Fantasy. Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, 23(3 (86)), 437– 459. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24353086

Walter, M. (2019). Landscapes of loss: the semantics of empty spaces in contemporary post-apocalyptic fiction. In C. J. Campbell, A. Giovine, & J. Keating (Eds.), Empty Spaces: Perspectives on emptiness in modern history (pp. 133–150). University of London Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvp2n2r8.13

Connor Pitetti. (2017). Uses of the End of the World: Apocalypse and Postapocalypse as Narrative Modes. Science Fiction Studies, 44(3), 437–454. https://doi.org/10.5621/sciefictstud.44.3.0437

Cornils, I. (2020). Utopian/Dystopian Writers and Utopian/Dystopian Fiction. In Beyond Tomorrow: German Science Fiction and Utopian Thought in the 20th and 21st Centuries (NED-New edition, pp. 46–60). Boydell & Brewer. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv105bc2g.

Schmeink, L. (2016). The Anthropocene, the Posthuman, and the Animal. In Biopunk Dystopias: Genetic Engineering, Society and Science Fiction (pp. 71–118). Liverpool University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1ps33cv.6 Symposium on Science Fiction and Globalization. (2012). Science Fiction Studies, 39(3), 374–384. https://doi.org/10.5621/sciefictstud.39.3.0374

Black, R. W. (2009). Online fan fiction, global identities, and imagination. Research in the Teaching of English, 397-425.

Katyal, S. K. (2006). Performance, property, and the slashing of gender in fan fiction. Am. UJ Gender Soc. Pol'y & L., 14, 461.

Jamison, A. (2013). Fic: Why fanfiction is taking over the world. BenBella Books, Inc..

Wood, J. (2006). Filming fairies: popular film, audience response and meaning in contemporary fairy lore. Folklore, 117(3), 279-296.

Rahman, O., Wing-Sun, L., & Cheung, B. H. M. (2012). “Cosplay”: Imaginative self and performing identity. Fashion Theory, 16(3), 317- 341. 

CIA II/MSE (50 Marks)

CIA-III (20 Marks)

ESE (50 Marks)

Attendance (5 Marks)

This course will allow students to explore the connection between language, culture, and ecology. This connection can be evident through the shared interest between the three. With its various units, this course will acquaint students with an understanding of the connection between indigenous knowledge and language, the ecology of language evolution, biocultural and linguistic diversity, linguistic landscape, ethnobiology and the Connection Between Language Ecology and Identity. This course aims towards providing insights on how language shapes our understanding of the natural world, how cultural beliefs and linguistic practices impact ecological systems, and how together these influence the status of any language in a culture’s linguistic ecosystem. Through readings, discussions, and assignments, students will gain a deeper understanding of the complex relationships between language, culture, and ecology. They will understand how ecological and cultural concepts and contexts are expressed and negotiated through language. The course also allows students to understand how language shapes our understanding of the world around us and vice-versa through the debates around language rights, multilingualism, regionalism, globalisation, language threats, language endangerment and death. The course is designed towards fulfilment of the national need for language sustainability which serves towards accommodating human ecocentric values, through its focus on acquainting students with an understanding of the role played by ecological validity, language planning, language policy, language documentation and revitalization in curbing language threat and loss to ensure maintenance of language ecology.

This unit informs students about what constitutes indigenous knowledge and how language shapes our perception and understanding of the natural world. It provides an understanding of linguistic terminologies used to understand the intersection between language, Knowledge and ecosystem. The unit focuses on cross-cutting issues related to biocultural diversity and ecosystem, and the ways in which language can influence our relationship with these and vice versa. The unit also focuses on the historical and social context of linguistic diversity in India, including the diverse language families and linguistic regions. overall, it sets a foundation for the course, introducing students to the broader area of global importance i.e. language ecology. It allows students to understand the ecological context of language evolution. Towards the end, the unit focuses on establishing connections between language, culture and ecology to understand how different ecological systems influence the development of languages and cultures and how language reflects cultural beliefs and practices related to the environment. 1. The Ecology of Language evolution 2. Indigenous Knowledge and Language 3. Biocultural Diversity 4. Linguistic Diversity in India 5. Biosphere, Noosphere, Semiosphere and Logosphere 6. Linking Language, Culture and Ecology 

: This unit focuses upon highlighting the importance of Language ecology. Language ecology as an area of study explores 

the ways in which language can be used to promote environmental awareness, conservation, and sustainable practices. It recognizes that 

language is not only a means of communication, but also a reflection of culture, history, and identity, and that it plays a critical role in 

shaping our attitudes and behaviors towards the environment. This unit tries to acquaint students with an understanding of linguistic 

landscape and ethnobiology and its importance in understanding language ecology. The linguistic landscape refers to the visible and 

tangible aspects of language use in public spaces, including signs, billboards, and graffiti. Ethnobiology, on the other hand, is the study 

of the relationship between people and the natural environment, including the knowledge and practices that different cultures have 

developed to interact with their surroundings. This unit also explores the relationship between language and identity through the lenses 

of human ecocentric values, focusing on how language practices are connected to the construction and negotiation of identities. As a first 

step towards sustainability, this unit also allows students to understand the importance of ecological validity in maintenance of Language 

ecology.

1. Understanding the Connection Between Language Ecology and Identity

2. What is a Linguistic Landscape?

3. What is Ethnobiology?

4. Importance of Ecological Validity in maintenance of Language ecology

This unit provides an overview of what counts as sustainability efforts with reference to language preservation and 

planning at a national level. Language sustainability refers to the capacity of a language to adapt and evolve to meet the changing needs 

of its speakers, while also preserving its cultural and linguistic heritage. It is important because languages are not only a means of 

communication but also carry cultural, social, and historical significance in understanding human values. In many cases, languages are 

endangered due to a variety of factors such as globalization, economic pressures, and cultural assimilation. Ensuring linguistic 

sustainability involves promoting language use and literacy, developing skills related to utilising language resources and tools, and 

encouraging language learning and education. It also involves recognizing and respecting linguistic diversity and promoting language 

rights, such as the right to use one's own language in education, government, and other public contexts. The unit is designed with an aim 

to acquaint students with a deeper understanding of the phenomena of language shift and maintenance, language endangerment and 

death, and the role of language planning in maintaining linguistic diversity. 

1. Language Rights: Understanding the Debate in India

2. Language Threat: Multilingualism, Regionalism, Globalisation and Other Factors

3. Minority language, Language Endangerment and Death

This unit focuses on case studies of language documentation and revitalization efforts in India, with an emphasis on 

understanding the complex issues and challenges involved in maintaining linguistic diversity. Students will understand the different 

factors that contribute to language loss, such as globalization, urbanization, and cultural assimilation, as well as the various strategies 

that are being used to revitalize endangered languages. Through a combination of theoretical readings and case studies, students will 

gain a deeper understanding of the importance of language diversity and the role of language documentation and revitalization in 

preserving cultural heritage.

Gladwin, T., & Sarason, S. B. (1994). “Linguistics and Culture”. In The Handbook of Linguistics (pp. 325-339).

John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Maffi, L. (2001). On Biocultural Diversity: Linking Language, Knowledge, and the Environment. Smithsonian Institution Press.

Mody, P. (2008). “India as a linguistic area”. In Annual Review of Anthropology, 37(1), 169-184. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.37.081407.085211 

Gopalakrishnan, R. (2019). “The Linguistic Landscape of Indian Cities”. In Journal of Linguistic Geography, 7(1), 1-19.

Joseph, J. E. (2004). Language and identity: National, ethnic, religious. Palgrave Macmillan.

Khare, R. S. (2018). “Ethnobiology in India: A review”. In Current Science, 115(12), 2230-2239.

Kramsch, C. (2011). Why Language Ecology Matters. Modern Language Journal, 95(2), 190-193.

Thompson, S. (Director). (2006). Why save a language [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7BLBUS1IXc

UNESCO. (2003). Safeguarding linguistic diversity: An urgent challenge for sustainable development. UNESCO

Berkes, F., & Folke, C. (eds.). (1998). Linking Social and Ecological Systems: Management Practices and Social Mechanisms for 

Building Resilience. Cambridge University Press.

Dasgupta, P. (2006). Language policies and lesser-known languages in India. In R. Singh, K. Bhaskar Rao, & L. U. Joshi (Eds.), The 

yearbook of South Asian languages and linguistics 2006 (pp. 1-26). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

https://www.academia.edu/37423294/Language_policies_and_lesser_known_languages_in_India

Fishman, J. A. (1991). “Reversing language shift: Theoretical and empirical foundations of assistance to threatened languages”. In 

Multilingual Matters.

Hinton, L. (2014). “Environmental sustainability and language sustainability”.In Language Documentation & Conservation, 8, 35-47.

Mohanty, A. K. (2006). Multilingualism, language policy, and education in India. Springer.

May, S. (2014). Language Rights: Moving the Debate Forward. Multilingua, 33(1-2), 161-172.

Link: https://www.multilingual-matters.com/page/detail/Reversing-Language-Shift/?k=9781853591194

Zograf, G., & Pandey, A. K. (2019). “Language diversity and planning in India”. In Current Issues in Language Planning, 20(1), 1-5.

Anderson, G. D. S., & Horo, L. (2022, March 5). "Linguistic Issues in Speech Processing Research of Under-Resourced Languages". In 

LISPRUL 2022 [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyB-bcwpNx0

Chelliah, S. (2021). “Reflections on language documentation in India”. In B. McDonnell, A. L. Berez-Kroeker, & G. Holton (Eds.) 

Reflections on Language Documentation 20 Years after Himmelmann 1998 (pp. 248–255). University of Hawaii Press. 

https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/53fea1fc-a28d-450c-8bba-fdc296379670/content

Mishra, S. (2016). Language endangerment and language documentation with special reference to Maithili. International Journal of Applied 

Linguistics and English Literature, 5(3), 1-10. 

https://www.academia.edu/18482331/Language_Endangerment_and_Language_Documentation_with_special_reference_to_Maithili

Guiney Yallop, J. J. (2015). Language and ecology: Developing a new metaphor. Routledge.

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press.

Eckert, P., & McConnell-Ginet, S. (2013). Language and gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hill, J. H. (2008). “Language, race, and white public space”. In American Anthropologist, 100(3), 680–689

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge University Press

Grenoble, L. A., & Whaley, L. J. (2006). Saving languages: An introduction to language revitalization. Cambridge: Cambridge 

University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/saving-languages/0F27D61E670E520EB37C4367C28309D6

Jayaraman, K., & Srinivasan, R. (2018). “Linguistic landscape and language policy in India”. In Current Issues in Language Planning, 

19(2), 207-221.

Grierson, G. A. (2012). Linguistic survey of India. Read Books Ltd.

Moseley, C. (2010). Atlas of the world's languages in danger. UNESCO Publishing.

Pennycook, A. (2018). The cultural politics of English as an international language. Abingdon: Routledge. 

Grenoble, L. A., & Whaley, L. J. (2017). Endangered languages: An introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Pages 1-

30) https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/endangered-languages/08CB7FC5C5D5E5EBD97B7561860E6D61

Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (2000). Linguistic genocide in education or worldwide diversity and human rights? Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence 

Erlbaum Associates. (Pages 1-30) https://www.routledge.com/Linguistic-Genocide-in-Education--or-Worldwide-Diversity-andHuman-Rights/Skutnabb-Kangas/p/book/9780805837751

Hale, A., & Hyslop, G. (2021). “Language documentation in South Asia”. In E. Hume & N. Evans (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of 

Southeast Asian Linguistics (pp. 228-245). Routledge.

Panda, B. K. (2019). “Language documentation and revitalization in India: Perspectives and challenges”. In S. Roy & S. S. Ray (Eds.), The 

Routledge Handbook of Contemporary India (pp. 315-327). Routledge.

CIA II/MSE (50 Marks)

CIA-III (20 Marks)

ESE (50 Marks)

Attendance (5 

Marks)

This course has been conceptualized in order to introduce students to the area of popular culture studies within academia. It will trace the trajectories and concerns that determine this area and also the field of study in general. It will specifically acquaint the students and help them engage with forms of popular culture in India and help them read these popular culture forms as ‘texts’ – signifying systems that produce meanings in specific ways. It will look at the politics of the production, dissemination and consumption of these texts. This course will engage the students in the politics of production,  distribution and dissemination of ideologies within and without popular cultures in the Indian subcontinent and other parts of Asia. It will trace the development and politics of popular cultural forms within these spaces. It will help students recognize the politics involved in creating content for mass consumption and understand the theoretical and academic debates that surround popular culture studies. The course aims to locate the development of local, regional and national texts within the larger Asian spaces and the globe at large. The course aims to develop critical and analytical thinking in students pertaining to the everyday, touch upon socio-cultural models of sustainability and human engagements within the personal and the public by tracing the operations of the ‘popular’ and the politics of it. Decoding popular culture artefacts will help students understand the way in which questions of gender, race, class, sustainability can be examined and evaluated through popular discourses. The course through textual engagements, class discussions, individual and group assignments aim to develop analytical skills, critical thinking, creativity and initiative among students. This course will enable students to develop keen insights on the way in which popular culture impacts and informs our daily lives. With a focus on the theoretical and practical aspects of popular culture, the course will equip the students with critical thinking analytical skills along with communication skills that can be professionally used in media management, academic research and a variety of other areas.

The unit aims to introduce students to the politics of the popular and the development of popular culture studies within academia. Contextualising the development of the discipline within western academia and Euro-centric models, the unit will attempt to construct a context for Asian academic engagements with popular culture. It will also critically examine the sustainable practices and human creativity that determine popular culture across the globe and the popular’s engagement with the social and the collective.

1. Discourses on the notion of the ‘popular’ 2. Populism / Popular 3. Intersectionalities that determine the ‘popular’ 4. The politics of canon formation vis-à-vis the ‘truly’ popular. 5. Popular culture in India 6. Popular culture in Asia Teaching learning strategies: The course coordinator may engage the students in discussions, experience sharing, theoretical lectures, and a practicum where they examine an artefact in terms of historicity and politics through participating in the ‘popular’ events.

Essential readings:

Fiske, J. (2009). “Understanding the popular”. In Reading the popular. Routledge, London, pp. 1-16. Haselstein, U., Ostendorf, B., & Schneck, P. (2001). Popular Culture: Introduction. Amerikastudien / American Studies, 46(3), 331–338. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41157662 Freccero, C. (1999). Excerpts from Popular culture: An introduction. In Popular culture: An introduction. New York UP,New York, pp. 1-30. Sherman, M. R., & Rollin, R. B. (1983). Opportunities for Research and Publication in Popular Culture. Studies in Popular Culture, 6, 35–46. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45018103 During, S. (1997). Popular Culture on a Global Scale: A Challenge for Cultural Studies? Critical Inquiry, 23(4), 808–833. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1344050 

This unit will locate the ‘popular’ as part of our everyday lives, nuanced and imbricating us within its whorl. The section will examine theoretical engagements on the everyday and aspects that constitute it from leisure, politics and entertainment and how they operate within various spaces in Asia like India, Pakistan, China, Srilanka, Malaysia, South Korea, North Korea, Japan, Thailand and Phillipines among others covering aspects like shopping, reality tv, television serials, walking, leisure, street food, shopping physical and e-sports. This unit will enable students to examine and critique the everyday from perspectives of gender, ethics and sustainability.

1. Introducing the ‘everyday 

2. Street food and fashion

3. Television and viewership

4. Sports and e-sports

5. Leisure as a commodity

6. Comics culture – Graphic narratives, graphics journalism, manga, cartoons. 

**Essential readings:

Deslile, G. (2004). Pyongyang. Drawn and Quarterly, Montreal. de Certeau, M. (2011). Excerpts from The practice of everyday life, trans. by Steven Rendall, University of California Press, California. Fickle, T., Patterson, C., Han-Tani, M., Kim, S. Y., Kittaka, M., & Ung, E. (2021). Asian/American Gaming. Verge: Studies in Global Asias, 7(2), 19–55. https://doi.org/10.5749/vergstudglobasia.7.2.0019 Voyce, M. (2007). Shopping Malls in India: New Social “Dividing Practices.” Economic and Political Weekly, 42(22), 2055–2062. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4419658 Aoyama, T. (2012). BL (Boys’ Love) Literacy: Subversion, Resuscitation, and Transformation of the (Father’s) Text. U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal, 43, 63–84. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42771885

This unit will engage the student in examining concepts of folk and folk culture within the larger Asian context and will enable them to situate the intersections of caste, race, religion, gender and other in their day-to-day operations. The section will problematize and enable analysis and critique of aspects of folkloristics within academic spaces, the politics of its popularity and the problematics of heritage and cultural tourism as it exists within the commodity circuit at present while signalling the importance of folk and indigenous cultures.

 1. Folk and folk cultures

2. Food Cultures

3. Music and Folk Music

4. Folklore and Folk narratives

5. Reconfiguring festivals and nationalism

6. Indigenous cultures and appropriation

7. Handicrafts, culture and museumization

8. Commodifying ‘folk’ and Folk Tourism 

**Essential readings:

Foley, K. (2014). No More Masterpieces: Tangible Impacts and Intangible Cultural Heritage in Bordered Worlds. Asian Theatre Journal, 31(2), 369–398. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43187432 Islam, M. (2006). Postmodernized Cultural Globalisation: Threatening Folk Culture(s) in India. Social Scientist, 34(9/10), 48–71. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27644170 Levin, G. (2003). Between Two Worlds: Folk Culture, Identity, and the American Art of Yasuo Kuniyoshi. Archives of American Art Journal, 43(3/4), 2–17. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1557800 Shay, A. (1999). Parallel Traditions: State Folk Dance Ensembles and Folk Dance in “The Field.” Dance Research Journal, 31(1), 29– 56. https://doi.org/10.2307/1478309 Vyas, D. (2018). Sultana’s dream. Rokhayya Sakhawat Hossain. Tara Books, Chennai. 

This section will help students situate the ubiquitous and inescapable social media landscape we operate within. It will engage with ideas of space and place as reconstituted by these public-private and surveilled spaces and what it does to create our sense of selves and identities within the social media or virtual worlds we occupy. The section will look at the way in which Asian cultures, popular culture and art forms have become glocalised and commodified for consumption within the digital. It will analyse and critically examine the intersections of gender, class, race etc that operate within these domains and locate the problematics and possibilities of these spaces through self-created and disseminated artefacts to understand and critique the politics and nature of the production, dissemination and consumption of popular culture.

1. YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion

2. Digital Fandoms and Celebrity Cultures

3. Open Source, Torrents and Digital Archives

4. Art and Aesthetics in the Age of Digitization

5. Cyberspace, Surveillance and Security

6. Online Shopping

Essential Readings'

Habulan, A., Taufiqurrohman, M., Jani, M. H. B., Bashar, I., Zhi’An, F., & Yasin, N. A. M. (2018). Southeast Asia: Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, Singapore, Online Extremism. Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses, 10(1), 7–30. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26349853 Murray, P. R. (2018). Bringing Up the Bodies: The Visceral, the Virtual, and the Visible. In E. Losh & J. Wernimont (Eds.), Bodies of Information: Intersectional Feminism and the Digital Humanities (pp. 185–200). University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctv9hj9r9.15 Ragas, J. (2017). THE SILENT REVOLUTION: HOW ID CARDS ARE CHANGING THE WORLD. Harvard International Review, 38(2), 24–27. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26445639 Khalil, L. (2020). Digital Authoritarianism, China and C0VID. Lowy Institute for International Policy. http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep27665

Hayashi, K., & Lee, E.-J. (2007). The Potential of Fandom and the Limits of Soft Power: Media Representations on the Popularity of a Korean Melodrama in Japan. Social Science Japan Journal, 10(2), 197–216. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30209570 Chaturvedi, S. (2016). I am troll: Inside the secret world of the BJP’s digital army. Juggernaut, Delhi.

 Bates, S., & Ferri, A. J. (2010). What’s Entertainment? Notes Toward a Definition. Studies in Popular Culture, 33(1), 1–20. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23416316 Roh, D.S., Huang, B., Niu, G.A., Roh, D.S., Huang, B., & Niu, G.A. (2015). Reimagining Asian women in feminist post-cyberpunk Science Fiction. Techno-Orientalism: Imagining Asia in Speculative Fiction, History, and Media. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Nandy, A & Lal V. (2006). Introduction from Fingerprinting popular culture. Oxford University Press, Delhi. Punathambekar, A. & S. Mohan, eds. (2019). Global digital cultures: Perspectives from South Asia. U of Michigan Press, Michigan. Rajagopal, A. (2001). Excerpts from Politics after television, Cambridge University Press, London. Louie, K. (2012). Popular culture and masculinity ideals in East Asia, with special reference to China. The Journal of Asian Studies, 71(4), 929–943. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23357427 Matsue, J. M. (2008). Introduction: Popular Music in Changing Asia. Asian Music, 39(1), 1–4. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25501571

Otmazgin, N. K. (2014). The Political Economy of Popular Culture. In Regionalizing Culture: The Political Economy of Japanese Popular Culture in Asia (pp. 1–17). University of Hawai’i Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt6wqw63.5 Assmann, S. (2017). Global Engagement for Local and Indigenous Tastes: Culinary Globalization in East Asia. Gastronomica, 17(3), 1– 3. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26362455 Yang Jonghoe. (2007). Globalization, Nationalism, and Regionalization: The Case of Korean Popular Culture. Development and Society, 36(2), 177–199. http://www.jstor.org/stable/deveandsoci.36.2.177 Jonghoe Yang. (2012). The Korean Wave (Hallyu) in East Asia: A Comparison of Chinese, Japanese, and Taiwanese Audiences Who Watch Korean TV Dramas. Development and Society, 41(1), 103–147. http://www.jstor.org/stable/deveandsoci.41.1.103 Marian Aguiar. (2013). Arranged Marriage: Cultural regeneration in transnational South Asian popular culture. Cultural Critique, 84, 181–214. https://doi.org/10.5749/culturalcritique.84.2013.0181. Hidalgo, D. A., & Royce, T. (2016). “Tonight, You Are a Man!”: Negotiating Embodied Resistance in Local Thai Nightclubs. In T. Zheng (Ed.), Cultural Politics of Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Asia (pp. 57–73). University of Hawai’i Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvvn5tw.7 Zhao, S. M. (2015). Conveying New Material Realities: Transnational Popular Culture in Asian American Comics. In M. Chiu (Ed.), Drawing New Color Lines: Transnational Asian American Graphic Narratives (1st ed., pp. 299–320). Hong Kong University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt13x0mh1.22 Oh, Y. (2018). Image Producers: The (Re)Production of K-Pop Idols. In Pop City: Korean Popular Culture and the Selling of Place (pp. 105–135). Cornell University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt21h4vpd.9

Matsue, J. M. (2013). Stars to the State and Beyond: Globalization, Identity, and Asian Popular Music. The Journal of Asian Studies, 72(1), 5–20. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23357504 Kanji, L. (2016). Illustrations and Influence: Soft Diplomacy and Nation Branding through Popular Culture. Harvard International Review, 37(2), 40–45. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26445579 Sharmila Rege. (2002). Conceptualising Popular Culture: “Lavani” and “Powada” in Maharashtra. Economic and Political Weekly, 37(11), 1038–1047. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4411876 Hashimoto, H., & Ambaras, D. (1998). Re-Creating and Re-Imagining Folk Performing Arts in Contemporary Japan. Journal of Folklore Research, 35(1), 35–46. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3814784 Sayce, R. U. (1956). Folk-Lore, Folk-Life, Ethnology. Folklore, 67(2), 66–83. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1258516

Simoons, F. J., Simoons, F. I., & Lodrick, D. O. (1981). Background to Understanding the Cattle Situation of India: The Sacred Cow Concept in Hindu Religion and Folk Culture. Zeitschrift Für Ethnologie, 106(1/2), 121–137. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25841764 Blackburn, S. H. (1985). Death and Deification: Folk Cults in Hinduism. History of Religions, 24(3), 255–274. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1062256 Asch, M. (1956). Folk Music. Notes, 14(1), 29–32. https://doi.org/10.2307/891896 Newell, W. W. (1895). Folk-Lore Study and Folk-Lore Societies. The Journal of American Folklore, 8(30), 231–242. http://www.jstor.org/stable/534099 Newell, C. E. (2003). Folk Culture in Women’s Narratives: Literary Strategies for Diversity in Nationalist Climates. The Mississippi Quarterly, 57(1), 123–134. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26466950 Qureshi, R. B. (1999). His Master’s Voice? Exploring Qawwali and “Gramophone Culture” in South Asia. Popular Music, 18(1), 63– 98. http://www.jstor.org/stable/853569 Rees, H. (2016). Environmental Crisis, Culture Loss, and a New Musical Aesthetic: China’s “Original Ecology Folksongs” In Theory and Practice. Ethnomusicology, 60(1), 53–88. https://doi.org/10.5406/ethnomusicology.60.1.0053 Svensson, M., & Maags, C. (2018). Mapping the Chinese heritage regime: Ruptures, governmentality, and agency. In M. Svensson & C. Maags (Eds.), Chinese Heritage in the Making: Experiences, Negotiations and Contestations (pp. 11–38). Amsterdam University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt2204rz8.4 Tuchman-Rosta, C. (2014). From Ritual Form to Tourist Attraction: Negotiating the Transformation of Classical Cambodian Dance in a Changing World. Asian Theatre Journal, 31(2), 524–544. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43187439 Huibin, X., Marzuki, A., & Razak, A. A. (2013). Conceptualizing a sustainable development model for cultural heritage tourism in Asia. Theoretical and Empirical Researches in Urban Management, 8(1), 51–66. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24873341 Demgenski, P. (2020). Culinary Tensions: Chinese Cuisine’s Rocky Road toward International Intangible Cultural Heritage Status. Asian Ethnology, 79(1), 115–135. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26929487 Laukkanen, S. (2018). Holy Heritage: Identity and Authenticity in a Tibetan Village. In C. Maags & M. Svensson (Eds.), Chinese Heritage in the Making: Experiences, Negotiations and Contestations (pp. 195–220). Amsterdam University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt2204rz8.11 Stanley, N., & Chung, S. K. (1995). Representing the past as the future: the shenzhen chinese folk culture villages and the marketing of Chinese identity. Journal of Museum Ethnography, 7, 25–40. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40793563 Orr, I. C. (1974). Puppet Theatre in Asia. Asian Folklore Studies, 33(1), 69–84. https://doi.org/10.2307/1177504

Punathambekar, A. & S. Mohan, eds. (2019). Global digital cultures: Perspectives from South Asia. U of Michigan Press, Michigan. Lim, K. H., Leung, K., Sia, C. L., & Matthew K. O. Lee. (2004). Is eCommerce Boundary-Less? Effects of Individualism-Collectivism and Uncertainty Avoidance on Internet Shopping. Journal of International Business Studies, 35(6), 545–559. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3875238 Wallach, B. (2015). Shopping. In A World Made for Money: Economy, Geography, and the Way We Live Today (pp. 1–36). University of Nebraska Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1d98bxx.4 Sacks, S. (2018). Disrupters, Micro-innovators, and Thieves. In Disruptors, Innovators, and Thieves: Assessing Innovation in China’s Digital Economy (pp. 9–19). Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep22410.7 Lulu, F., & Luethje, B. (2019). Taobao Villages: Rural E-Commerce and Low-End Manufacturing in China. East-West Center. http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep25001 Deo, A. (2022). Oral traditions in the aural public sphere: digital archiving of vernacular musics in North India. In G. Born (Ed.), Music and Digital Media: A planetary anthropology (pp. 135–176). UCL Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv2pzbkcg.9 Booth, G. (2015). Copyright Law and the Changing Economic Value of Popular Music in India. Ethnomusicology, 59(2), 262–287. https://doi.org/10.5406/ethnomusicology.59.2.0262 Caswell, M., Cifor, M., & Ramirez, M. H. (2016). “To Suddenly Discover Yourself Existing”: Uncovering the Impact of Community Archives. The American Archivist, 79(1), 56–81. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26356700 Gaur, R. C. (2011). Development of the Digital Repository of Indian Cultural Heritage Initiatives at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts. Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, 30(2), 56–62. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41244066 Tipton, F. B. (2002). Bridging the Digital Divide in Southeast Asia: Pilot Agencies and Policy Implementation in Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines. ASEAN Economic Bulletin, 19(1), 83–99. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25773710 Müller, K. (2021). Using Digital Archives: Online Encounters, Stories of Impact and Postcolonial Agendas. In Digital Archives and Collections: Creating Online Access to Cultural Heritage (Vol. 11, pp. 163–197). Berghahn Books. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv29sfzfx.11 Caswell, M. (2014). Seeing Yourself in History: Community Archives and the Fight Against Symbolic Annihilation. The Public Historian, 36(4), 26–37. https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2014.36.4.26

Mahapatra, S. (2021). Digital Surveillance and the Threat to Civil Liberties in India. German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA). http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep31794 Jacobsen, E. K. U. (2012). Unique Identification: Inclusion and surveillance in the Indian biometric assemblage. Security Dialogue, 43(5), 457–474. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26301931 Santos, K. M. L. (2019). Disrupting Centers of Transcultural Materialities: The Transnationalization of Japan Cool through Philippine Fan Works. Mechademia: Second Arc, 12(1), 96–117. https://doi.org/10.5749/mech.12.1.0096 Morimoto, L. (2019). (Trans)Cultural Legibility and Online Yuri!!! on Ice Fandom. Mechademia: Second Arc, 12(1), 136–159. https://doi.org/10.5749/mech.12.1.0136 Gerritsen, R. (2019). Keeping in control: The figure of the fan in the tamil film industry. In Intimate Visualities and the Politics of Fandom in India (pp. 55–84). Amsterdam University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvr0qr1v.6 Zhou, E. L. (2017). Dongfang Bubai, Online Fandom, and the Gender Politics of a Legendary Queer Icon in Post-Mao China. In M. Lavin, L. Yang, & J. J. Zhao (Eds.), Boys’ Love, Cosplay, and Androgynous Idols: Queer Fan Cultures in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (1st ed., pp. 111–128). Hong Kong University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1rfzz65.11 Jacobs, A. S. (2016). Celebrity. In Epiphanius of Cyprus: A Cultural Biography of Late Antiquity (1st ed., pp. 31–64). University of California Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt1c6v9h7.6 Louie, K. (2012). Popular Culture and Masculinity Ideals in East Asia, with Special Reference to China. The Journal of Asian Studies, 71(4), 929–943. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23357427 Nayar, P.K. (2009). Seeing stars: Spectacle, society and Celebrity Culture. Sage Publications, New Delhi. Pal, J. (2019). The Making of a Technocrat: Social Media and Narendra Modi. In A. PUNATHAMBEKAR & S. MOHAN (Eds.), Global Digital Cultures: Perspectives from South Asia (pp. 163–183). University of Michigan Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvndv9rb.11 Abbott, J. (2012). Social media. In N. Kersting, M. Stein, & J. Trent (Eds.), Electronic Democracy (1st ed., pp. 77–102). Verlag Barbara Budrich. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvddzwcg.7 Willems, W. (2014). Beyond Normative Dewesternization: Examining Media Culture from the Vantage Point of the Global South. The Global South, 8(1), 7–23. https://doi.org/10.2979/globalsouth.8.1.7 Goodnow, T. (2016). The Selfie Moment: The Rhetorical Implications of Digital Self Portraiture for Culture. In A. Benedek & Á. Veszelszki (Eds.), In the Beginning was the Image: The Omnipresence of Pictures: Time, Truth, Tradition (pp. 123–130). Peter Lang AG. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv2t4cns.14

Identity as a complex entity must be understood as a ‘sign’ in a typical sense of semiotics. An entity that is an amalgamation of socio-psychological factors that are not immediately visible or discoverable in any solid manner. The overt and covert expression/identification of identity is both a political and a social phenomenon and is enacted through various kinds of signs. Language, being a complex socio-cognitive phenomenon, works as the most prominent sign in order to express or identify identity. A systematic and close observation tells us its role in the formation, enaction and sustenance of power; its role in various kinds of marginalization like inaccessibility of resources both material and immaterial; its role in the identity shift/convergence, etc. It is not only a tool but the process itself, therefore, a systematic study of the language in terms of its structure and discourse reveals the socio-psychological complexities of society. In the course, we’ll try to see the interaction of language with the issues that are most pertinent in the formation and deliberation of identity like education, colonization, politics, caste and class, multilingualism, modernity, etc. The course presumes that various kinds of identity (national, global, gender, caste, class) and their application rests and is maintained majorly by signs, the carrier and markers of boundaries. It aims to develop skills like writing, research, and analytical skills as well as social and multicultural skill.

The unit aims to introduce the concept of ‘linguistic identity’, and the various aspects which can be studied as components of Identity. The unit explores some of the theoretical and interdisciplinary approaches towards the concept. It takes instances of regional and national identities to talk about the conflict and co-operations between linguistic identities.

1. Pattanayak, D. P. (1991). Linguistic and Religious Identity in India. India International Centre Quarterly, 18(4), 101-106.

2. Aneesh, A. (2010, March). Bloody Language: Clashes and Constructions of Linguistic Nationalism in India 1. In Sociological Forum (Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 86-109). Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

3. Coupland, N. (2007). Style: Language variation and identity. Cambridge University Press. (Chapter 1)

4. Sandhu, P., & Higgins, C. (2016). Identity in post-colonial contexts. In The Routledge handbook of language and identity(pp. 179-194). Routledge.

The unit explores language education policies in post-colonial India and the socio-political position of different languages to understand their roles in the formation of identity. Through different articles, the politics of production, transmission and dissemination of knowledge is traced and analysed.

1. Colonial Linguistic and Educational Policies

2. Grant, Charles. Wood’s Despatch; Roy’s letter to Lord Amherst

3. Spivak, G. C. (2013). An aesthetic education in the era of globalization. Harvard University Press.

4. Vaish, V. (2005). A peripherist view of English as a language of decolonization in post-colonial India. Language policy, 4, 187-206.

5. Mohanty, A. K. (2006). Multilingualism of the unequals and predicaments of education in India: Mother tongue or other tongue. Imagining multilingual schools, 262-283.

The unit explores the interaction between components like cultural landscape and psychodynamics informed by the ascribed identity. The unit identifies various linguistic and cultural signs and builds on the methodology of how to study these signs in order to evaluate the fluid aspect of identity.

1. Kothari, R. (2013). Caste in a Casteless Language? English as a Language of'Dalit'Expression. Economic and Political Weekly, 60-68.

2. Edwards, J. (2009). Language and identity: An introduction. Cambridge University Press. 53-72.

3. Gumperz, J. J. (1958). Dialect differences and social stratification in a North Indian Village 1. American anthropologist, 60(4), 668-682.

4. Prasad, C. B. (2006). Hail English, the Dalit goddess. Sat, 9, 50pm.

5. Keim, I. (2007). Socio-cultural identity, communicative style, and their change over time: A case study of a group of German-Turkish girls in Mannheim/Germany. LANGUAGE POWER AND SOCIAL PROCESS, 18, 155.

The unit locates the position of the English language along with the accessibility of capital and symbolic resources in the formation and sustenance of identity in the Indian context. How globalization as a factor permeates the overall understanding of hybrid or multi-lingual/cultural identity. The unit explores the usage of some of the glocal signs in millennials in order to analyse hybrid identity.

1. Sharma, S. K. (2018). Indo-Anglian: Connotations and Denotations. East European Journal of Psycholinguistics, 5(1), 45-69.

2. Janssens, M., & Steyaert, C. (2014). Re-considering language within a cosmopolitan understanding: Toward a multilingual franca approach in international business studies. Journal of International Business Studies, 45, 623-639.

3. Kaul, V. (2012). Globalisation and crisis of cultural identity. Journal of Research in International Business and Management, 2(13), 341-349.

4. Lo Bianco, J. (2010). The importance of language policies and multilingualism for cultural diversity. International Social Science Journal, 61(199), 37-67.

Coupland, N. (2007). Style: Language variation and identity. Cambridge University Press.

Jones, L. (2016). Language and gender identities. In The Routledge handbook of language and identity (pp. 236-250). Routledge.

Viswanathan, G. (2014). Masks of conquest: Literary study and British rule in India. Columbia University Press.

Tollefson, J. W. (Ed.). (2012). Language policies in education. London and New York: Routledge.

Viswanathan, G. (2014). Masks of conquest: Literary study and British rule in India. Columbia University Press.

Kumar, A. (2010). Understanding Lohia's Political Sociology: Intersectionality of Caste, Class, Gender and Language. Economic and Political Weekly, 64-70.

Fought, C. (2006). Language and ethnicity. Cambridge University Press.

Nortier, J., & Svendsen, B. A. (Eds.). (2015). Language, youth and identity in the 21st century: Linguistic practices across urban spaces. Cambridge University Press.

Greene, R. L. (2011). You are what you speak: Grammar grouches, language laws, and the politics of identity. Random House Digital, Inc.

The nation-state controls as well as directs cultural production through mechanisms of law, governance, and censorship. Historically, as well as in contemporary times, nation-states have leveraged ‘culture’, to control, influence, silence, as well as enable its citizens and subjects. This course looks at a range of examples across cultural practices and historical periods to attempt to understand the relationship between state and culture. The objective of the course is to alert us to the power of the state, while at the same time, point towards possibilities that can be pressed open to not only establish an alternative discourse or ideology, but also to hack into the very infrastructure of the state, in the manner of a politics of the commons.

This unit will explore the various mechanisms and procedures instituted by the colonial government to regulate cultural practices. The topic covers the national politics of cultural practices and signifies the importance of human values of the population who were subjected to colonial domination.

1. Theatre – crowds and Police Acts

2. Visual Arts –the export of design, and fine arts academies.

3. Cinema – Indian Cinematography Committee’s reports; moral panic; WW-II and the regulation of film stock; the Information Films of India; taxes and import restrictions; cinema halls and concerns over hygiene.

4. Literature – Macaulay’s Minutes on Education and their policy implications.

5. Dance and Performance – courtesan culture.

Teaching learning strategies: Lectures, classroom engagements, presentations, discussions.

Essential readings:

Dharwadker, A. (2011). India’s theatrical modernity: Re-theorizing colonial, postcolonial, and diasporic formations. Theatre Journal, 63(3), 425–437. doi:10.1353/tj.2011.0093

Mathur, S. (2007). India by Design: Colonial History and Cultural Display. University of California Press.

Oldenburg, V. T. (2016). The making of colonial Lucknow, 1856-1877. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Vishwanathan, G. (2019). Currying Favour: The Politics of British Educational and Cultural Policy in India, 1813-1854. Social Text, 1813–1854.

This unit will look at the renewed investment by the independent Indian state into channelling and regulating cultural production to satisfy the state’s agendas at a regional as well as national level.

1. Radio – the banning of film music

2. Films Division and documentary history

3. Cinema – film & politics; the regulation of intimacy

4. SITE and early television

5. IPTA and PWA

6. Censorship – Sheher aur Sapna, KA Abbas

Teaching learning strategies: Lectures, classroom engagements, presentations, discussions.

Essential readings:

The indicative topics include:

1. The Prevention of Publication of Objectionable Matter Act, 1976; the Parliamentary Proceedings (Protection of Publication) Repeal Act, 1976; and the Press Council (Repeal) Act, 1976.

2. The rise of documentary films in social justice and activism – Anand Patwardhan, Deepa Dhanraj, various film collectives. (Screening of Waves of Revoluation (1975), Something Like a War (1991

3. Media liberalisation and consequent legal jurisdictions in cable & satellite TV

4. Advertising the Offensive

Teaching learning strategies: Lectures, classroom engagements, presentations, discussions.

Essential readings:

Ananth, V. Krishna. (2020). India's Free Press Is Still Tormented by the Laws Brought by the Emergency, The Wire. https://thewire.in/history/emergency-free-press.

Anjitha, KA; Ganjoo, Anshika, Harnoor Kaur, and Prachi Talesara. (2021). Contrabanned Offensive, at Offensieve https://sites.google.com/view/offensieve/contrabanned-advertising-the-offensive.

Chatterjee, S. (2007). Cartooning Democracy: The Images of R. K. Laxman. PS: Political Science & Politics, 40(2), 303-306. doi:10.1017/S1049096507070485.

This unit will look at the renewed investment by the post-emergency state into channeling and regulating cultural production to satisfy the state’s agenda at a regional as well as national level. The understanding developed through the topics help the students to question the injustice done to minority and marginalised sections of the society and uphold their citizenship and human values. 

The indicative topics include:

1. The Prevention of Publication of Objectionable Matter Act, 1976; the Parliamentary Proceedings (Protection of Publication) Repeal Act, 1976; and the Press Council (Repeal) Act, 1976.

2. The rise of documentary films in social justice and activism – Anand Patwardhan, Deepa Dhanraj, various film collectives. (Screening of Waves of Revoluation (1975), Something Like a War (1991

3. Media liberalisation and consequent legal jurisdictions in cable & satellite TV

4. Advertising the Offensive

Teaching learning strategies: Lectures, classroom engagements, presentations, discussions.

Essential readings:

Ananth, V. Krishna. (2020). India's Free Press Is Still Tormented by the Laws Brought by the Emergency, The Wire. https://thewire.in/history/emergency-free-press.

Anjitha, KA; Ganjoo, Anshika, Harnoor Kaur, and Prachi Talesara. (2021). Contrabanned Offensive, at Offensieve https://sites.google.com/view/offensieve/contrabanned-advertising-the-offensive.

Chatterjee, S. (2007). Cartooning Democracy: The Images of R. K. Laxman. PS: Political Science & Politics, 40(2), 303-306. doi:10.1017/S1049096507070485.

This unit will explore more contemporary state interventions in the regulation of cultural practices in national and regional context. The liberalisation of the media and entertainment industry in the early 1990s in particular had a far-reaching impact on media and cultural production. An unprecedented range of media platforms became available to consumers, further accentuated by the development of digital technology. This seeming proliferation of choice and technological possibilities, also marked a shift in aesthetics, transforming practices of representation along with representational politics. This unit enhances the understanding of citizenship in new emerging fields of science and technology and cultural practices around them. The understanding leads to make students employable in the field of media and culture as an activist and advocate of just society.

1. C&S, OTT and DTH

2. Video Forensics

3. Spy Cams and Sting Operations

4. MMS and virality

5. Memes

6. Biopolitics

7. Amendments to the IT Act

Teaching learning strategies: Guided discussion and participatory lecture

Essential readings:

Abraham, Itty. (2018) Prehistory of Aadhaar: Body, Law, and Technology as Postcolonial Assemblage, East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal, 12:4, 377-392, DOI: 10.1215/18752160-7218326.

Abraham, Itty & Ashish Rajadhyaksha. (2015). State Power and Technological Citizenship in India: From the Postcolonial to the Digital Age, East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal, 9:1, 65-85, DOI: 10.1215/18752160-2863200.

Kishore, S. (2017). The Promise of Portability: CENDIT and the Infrastructure, Politics, and Practice of Video as Little Media in India 1972–1990. BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies, 8(1), 124–145. https://doi.org/10.1177/0974927617699646.

Sen, S. (n.d.). Decoding the big indian sting. s a r a i. Retrieved April 8, 2022, from https://sarai.net/decoding-the-big-indian-sting/

Sundaram, Ravi. (2010). Pirate Modernity: Delhi’s Media Urbanism. New York: Routledge.

Council of Europe. (2016, November 3). How does culture impact democracy? Culture and Cultural Heritage. Retrieved April 8, 2022, https://www.coe.int/en/web/culture-and-heritage/-/how-does-culture-impact-democracy-launch-event-for-the-council-of-europe-s-indicator-framework-on-culture-and-democracy-ifcd-

KA Abbas Vs. Union of India (Justice Hidayatullah’s Judgement).

Prasad. M. Madhava. (2014). Cine-Politics: Film Stars and Political Existence in South India. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan.

Singh, S., Pai, A., & Menon, A. K. (2019, February 15). Political cinema: Box office politics. India Today. Retrieved April 8, 2022, from https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/special-report/story/20190225-political-cinema-box-office-politics-1455813-2019-02-15.

Srinivas SV. (1994). “Roja in ‘Law and Order’ State” Economic and Political Weekly, 29(20).

Ohm, Britta. Televising Gujarat 2002.

Paul, P. (n.d.). Can speak? will speak: Interpreting digital forensics. s a r a i. Retrieved April 8, 2022, from https://sarai.net/can-speak-will-speak-interpreting-digital-forensics/

Rajadhyaksha, A. (2011). The last Cultural Mile: an inquiry into technology and governance in India Bangalore: CIS-RAW.

Mazzarella, W. (2013). Censorium: Cinema and the Open Edge of Mass Publicity, Duke University Press.

Sengupta, Shuddhabrata. (2013). ‘The ‘Terrorist’ and the Screen: After Images of the Batla House ‘Encounter’.’ In No limits: Media Studies from India, edited by Sundaram, Ravi, 300–26. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

This course serves as an introduction to the form of life writing and will provide students with navigating new and emerging narrative directions that this form of writing has begun to take. The fundamental objective of the course is to foreground the contexts in which the speaking human subject forges writing. It includes a variety of autobiographies, self-narratives, and memoirs that provide new ways of engaging with the narrativization of the human question in literary works. The course includes a range of works, and the instructor can choose to do specific texts from each unit in the course. This course comprises a practice-based component that is conceptualised to familiarise students with content production and publication in the field and would enable employability and create entrepreneurship opportunities for the students.

● Recognise the determining role of the self in narrative production,

● Analyse life writing as a genre and engage with various mechanics of writing

● Evaluate the cultural contexts of the production and reception of life writings

● Expose students to content production and publishing practices in the field

This unit introduces some of the discourses related to authorship, selfhood, representation and the division between fact and fiction. It provides an overview of how the genre evolved over a period of time and introduces various frames through which the narratives of the self can be engaged. The unit comprises practice-based components and, therefore, would be taken simultaneously with other units across the semester by conducting guest lectures and hands-on workshops on the creative project the students would be taking as part of the course. The unit also aims to familiarise students with content production and publication in the field that would enable employability and create entrepreneurship opportunities.

1. Autobiography by Linda Anderson

2. Hands-on workshops and Guest Lectures.

Teaching learning strategies: Task-based activities for Creative projects and Hand-on Workshop sessions, Peer discussion and seminar presentation.

Essential readings:

Anderson, L. (2010). Autobiography. Routledge

The unit engages with the notions of normative body and pathological body and how questions of sustainability, capitalism, medical ethics and ecology informs the discourse related to the narratives on health and diseases. Through a series of readings, the unit provides an insight into various modes in which the construction of self is informed by the notion of the presence and absence of a normal healthy body. The writing style and approaches adopted in various readings in the unit would also serve as frames that can be adopted while practising writing about the body, health and diseases.

1. Stitches by David Small

2. If I had to tell it Again by Gayathri Prabhu

3. Tangles: The Story of Alzheimer’s, My Mother, and Me

4. Atul Gawande Being Mortal

Teaching learning strategies: Task-based activities for Creative projects and Hand-on Workshop sessions, Peer discussion and seminar presentations.

Essential readings:

Anderson, L. (2010). Autobiography. Routledge.

Gawande, A. (2014). Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. Metropolitan Books.

Leavitt, S. (2012). Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer's, My Mother, and Me. Skyhorse.

Small, D. (2010). Stitches: A Memoir. W. W. Norton & Company.

Gawande, A. (2014). Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. Metropolitan Books.

The unit explores how the various structures of society like class, caste, religion and gender intersect to inform the construction of self. The unit focuses on how community identity plays a significant role in shaping the notion of the self in these select narratives. The writing style and approaches adopted in various readings in the unit would also serve as frames that can be adopted while practising writing about the notion of the self-informed by various social structures and community identities.

1. I want to Destroy Myself by Mallika Amar Sheikh

2. Coming out as Dalit by Yashica Dutt

3. Antharjanam: Memoirs of a Namboodiri Woman by Devaki Nilayamgode

Teaching learning strategies: Task-based activities for Creative projects and Hand-on Workshop sessions, Peer discussion and seminar presentations.

Essential readings:

Anderson, L. (2010). Autobiography. Routledge.

Dutt, Y. (2019). Coming Out as Dalit. Aleph Book Company.

Nilayamgode, D. (2011). Antharjanam: Memoirs of A Namboodiri Woman: Memoirs of A Namboodiri Woman. Oxford University Press.

Shaikh, M. A. (2016). I Want to Destroy Myself: A Memoir. (J. Pinto, Trans.). Speaking Tiger.

The unit explores how the experience of living and being part of the city, a region, nation, and ecology can inform the construction of the self. Through a series of readings, the unit provides an insight into various modes in which various spaces play an instrumental role in the development and shaping of the self. The writing style and approaches adopted in various readings in the unit would also serve as frames that can be adopted while practising writing about the experiences of the spaces and their role in informing individual and collective notions of the self.

1. Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk

2. Unbowed by Wangari Maathai

3. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

Teaching learning strategies: Task-based activities for Creative projects and Hand-on Workshop sessions, Peer discussion and seminar presentations.

Essential readings:

Anderson, L. (2010). Autobiography. Routledge.

Maathai, W. (2007). Unbowed: A Memoir. Anchor.

Pamuk, O. (2006). Istanbul. Faber & Faber.

Satrapi, M. (2008). Persepolis. RHUK.

Wagner-Eglehaaf, Martina. Ed. (2019). Handbook of Autobiography/Auto-Fiction. DE.

Mintz, Susannah B. (2007). Unruly Bodies: Life Writing by Women with Disabilities. University of North Carolina Press.

Brockmeier, Jens and Donald A. Carbaugh. (2001). Narrative and Identity: Studies in Autobiography, Self and Culture. John Benjamin’s Publishing Company.

Huddart, David. (2008). Postcolonial Theory and Autobiography. Routledge.

Cities have emerged as one of the most vibrant as well as challenging sites in the modern world, and India is no exception to this. Mobility, travel and migration, have been the defining characteristics of the modern world, often witnessed in catastrophic ways, as seen recently in the large-scale forced migration of Syrian refugees into Europe or the Rohingya ‘crisis’ in Myanmar. This course will introduce students to city narratives across a range of mediums, including literature, cinema, visual arts, and architecture. It will enable students to engage with cities as a product of the imagination, as well as real sites that urban planners, residents and travellers negotiate in various ways.

This multidisciplinary course aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of cities and urban spaces at different scales, from the local to the global. Through the lens of cultural studies, students will explore how urban studies intersect with issues at the local, regional, national, and global levels. The course will highlight the ways in which travel, migration, displacement, and exile shape narratives and identities at each of these scales. By engaging with representations of city life across multiple mediums and forms, students will gain insight into how various factors shape the urban environment and construct the identities of those who inhabit it. Furthermore, the course will also examine how human values, environmental concerns, and issues of sustainability intersect with the urban landscape. Ultimately, the course aims to equip students with the knowledge and skills to critically analyse and understand the complexities of urban life at different levels.

This unit introduces the concept of a city and explores different approaches towards studying cities from a global perspective, with a focus on sustainability. Students will develop critical thinking, research, and analytical skills as they examine the social, economic, and environmental factors that shape cities and their sustainability. The instructor may choose any four texts for detailed discussion, and the other three can be assigned as asynchronous tasks.

1. Certeau, M. Walking in the City

2. Mumford, L. What is a city?

3. Foucault, M. Space, Power, and Knowledge

4. Wirth, L. Urbanism as a Way of Life.

5. Nandy, A. Time Travel to a Possible Self: Searching for the Alternative Cosmopolitanism of Cochin.

6. Mazumdar, R. Introduction: Urban Allegories.

7. Prakash, G. The Urban Turn. 

Essential readings:

Certeau, M. d. (1984). “Walking in the City “(S. Rendall, Trans.). In The Practice of Everyday Life. University of California. Foucault, M. (2000). “Space, Power, and Knowledge” (R. Hurley, Trans.). In J. D. Faubion & P. Rabinow (Eds.), Power: Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984 (pp. 349-364). New Press. Mazumdar, R. (2007). “Introduction: Urban Allegories”. In Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the City (pp. xvii-xxxvii). University of Minnesota Press. Mumford, L. (1937). What is a city? Architectural Record, 82(5), 59-62. Nandy, A. (2000). “Time Travel to a Possible Self: Searching for the Alternative Cosmopolitanism of Cochin”. In Japanese Journal of Political Science, 1(2), 295-327. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1468109900002061 Prakash, G. (2002). “The Urban Turn”. In G. Lovink & S. Sengupta (Eds.), Sarai Reader 2002: Cities of Everyday Life (pp. 2-7). Wirth, L. (1969). “Urbanism as a Way of Life”. In R. Sennett (Ed.), Classic Essays on the Culture of Cities (pp. 143-164). Prentice-Hall

The Modernity & Cosmopolitanism unit explores the tension between national and global identities, and the role of sustainability in shaping a cosmopolitan worldview. Students develop critical thinking and communication skills as they examine the interconnectedness of diverse cultures and engage with complex global issues. By the end of the unit, students will be able to articulate the value of a sustainable and inclusive approach to global citizenship. The instructor may choose select chapters from Robert Fine and one of the novels from Zac O’Yeah. The rest are mandatory.

1. Fine, R. Cosmopolitanism.

2. Srinivasaraju, S. Pickles from Home: The Worlds of a Bilingual.

3. Kaikini, J. No Presents Please: Mumbai Stories.

4. O'Yeah, Z. Hari - A Hero for Hire.

5. O'Yeah, Z. Mr Majestic - The Tout of Bengaluru.

6. Niranjana, T. Musicophilia in Mumbai: Performing subjects and the metropolitan unconscious.

Essential Readings

Fine, R. (2007). Cosmopolitanism. Routledge. Kaikini, J. (2020). No Presents Please: Mumbai Stories (T. Niranjana, Trans.). Catapult. {Selections} Niranjana, T. (2020). Musicophilia in Mumbai: Performing Subjects and the Metropolitan Unconscious. Duke University Press. {Selections} O'Yeah, Z. (2016). Hari - A Hero for Hire. Pan Macmillan. O'Yeah, Z. (2015). Mr Majestic - The Tout of Bengaluru. Pan Macmillan. Srinivasaraju, S. (2012). Pickles from Home: The Worlds of a Bilingual. Navakarnataka Publications Private Limited. {Selections}

This unit explores the relationship between gender and urban spaces, examining how national and global discourses pertaining to culture and social norms influence the experiences of men and women in cities. Through this unit, students will develop skills in critical thinking, analysis of gender dynamics, and understanding the intersections of gender and place.

 1. Vanita, R. Women in the City.

2. Phadke, S., Khan, S., & Ranade, S. Why Loiter?: Women and risk on Mumbai streets.

3. Rashmi, V. UnCivil Lines: Engendering Citizenship in the Postcolonial City.

4. Antony, I. Cecilia'ed.

5. Niranjana, T. Musicophilia in Mumbai: Performing Subjects and the Metropolitan Unconscious.

Antony, I. Cecilia'ed | indu. https://www.induantony.com/cecicia-ed Niranjana, T. (2020). Musicophilia in Mumbai: Performing Subjects and the Metropolitan Unconscious. Duke University Press. {Selections} Phadke, S., Khan, S., & Ranade, S. (2011). Why loiter?: Women and risk on Mumbai streets. Penguin Books India. Vanita, R. (2012). Gender, sex, and the city: Urdu Rekhti poetry in India, 1780-1870 (p. 1). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Varma, R. (1998). “UnCivil lines: Engendering citizenship in the postcolonial city”. In NWSA Journal, 32-55. 

This unit sheds light on the often-ignored aspects of a city, both at the regional and national levels, with a focus on sustainability and the environment. Through a narrative perspective, students will develop skills to critically examine issues such as urban sprawl, gentrification, and unequal access to resources, among others.

1. Cities of Sleep with Shaunak Sen - YouTube

2. Dass, M. Outside the lettered city: cinema, modernity, and the public sphere in late colonial India.

3. Sundaram, R. Pirate modernity: Delhi's media urbanism.

4. Vasudevan., R. S. The Exhilaration of Dread: Genre, Narrative Form and Film Style in Contemporary Urban Action Films.

5. Nigam, A. Theatre of the Urban: The Strange Case of the Monkey Man.

6. Rao, U., & Sonti, G. Our Metropolis

Essential Reading

Cities of Sleep with Shaunak Sen - YouTube. (n.d.). Retrieved March 2, 2023, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xyij-Sykc28 Dass, M. (2016). Outside the Lettered City: Cinema, Modernity, and the Public Sphere in Late Colonial India. Oxford University Press, USA. Nigam, A. (2002). “Theatre of the Urban: The Strange Case of the Monkey Man”. In G. Lovink & S. Sengupta (Eds.), Sarai Reader 2002: Cities of Everyday Life (pp. 22-30). Rao, U., & Sonti, G. (2013). Our Metropolis. https://www.ourmetropolis.in/ Sundaram, R. (2009). Pirate Modernity: Delhi's Media Urbanism. Routledge. Vasudevan, R. S. (2014). “The Exhilaration of Dread: Genre, narrative form and film style in contemporary urban action films”. In Occasional Paper, (22), 175-184.

Redfield, R., & Singer, M. (1969). “The Cultural Role of Cities”. In R. Sennett (Ed.), Classic Essays on the Culture of Cities (pp. 206- 233). Prentice-Hall. Weber, M. (1969).

“The Nature of the City”. In R. Sennett (Ed.), Classic Essays on the Culture of Cities (pp. 23-46). Prentice-Hall.

Anjaria, J. S., & McFarlane, C. (2011). Urban Navigations: Politics, Space and the City in South Asia. Routledge.

Redfield, R., & Singer, M. (1969). “The Cultural Role of Cities”. In R. Sennett (Ed.), Classic Essays on the Culture of Cities (pp. 206- 233). Prentice-Hall. 

Weber, M. (1969). “The Nature of the City”. In R. Sennett (Ed.), Classic Essays on the Culture of Cities (pp. 23-46). Prentice-Hall.

This course offers an introduction to a few dimensions of Publishing, literary and academic and provides a foundation for students who might be interested in pursuing a career in the publishing industry. It is a hands-on course, where students will be expected to develop and execute individual or group publishing projects. In addition to the practical dimensions, it also offers a conceptual understanding of the history of the book, reading publics and politics, censorship that operates in the industry, the politics of language, identities, gender and nationalism and the history of publishing in various Indian languages and the role of indie-publishing in the country with a view towards sustainable practices and engagements. The course will include a seminar organised by students with the guidance of the course coordinator to organise a seminar/conference cum workshop by industry professionals, to garner an inside understanding of how the industry works within the country in terms of local, regional, national and also global trends. It also includes field trips (if/when possible) to publishing houses, book shops, printing presses and literary festivals. Students are also encouraged to find internships in publishing houses to gain hands-on knowledge of the same.

The course is conceptualized with the following objectives:

● To provide an overview of the publishing industry and its various elements.

● To give students a hands-on experience of the different components of publishing through class exercises, field visits, assignments and self-sought internships.

● To provide a fundamental understanding of the different skills and competencies required for a publishing career.

This unit provides an introduction to publishing as an international industry, as well as independent publishing in India. It looks at international industry reports to help gain familiarity with major publishing houses in English and the branches and units/brands through which they operate internationally. This will enable students to develop an overview of publishing in India – local, regional and national and also the larger global publishing industry. It will examine the nature of a profession in publishing and the relevance of publishing in a world that is overwhelmingly digitised.

1. The publishing industry in general

2. International publishing and its subsidiaries in Asia and India

3. Publishing in India – Local, regional and national contexts

4. Digital Publishing and its reach

5. Publishing post-Covid

6. Sustainable practices in Publishing: Implications for the traditional and the Digital contemporary

Teaching learning strategies: The course coordinator may engage the students in discussions, experience sharing, theoretical lectures, and a practicum where the students could take up a short survey of the international publishing houses’ presence in India and the indigenous publishing houses in India and do a comparison in terms of presence, ratio and survival rates of both.

Essential readings:

WIPO. (2022). The global publishing industry in 2020. World Intellectual Property Organisation, Geneva. https://www.wipo.int/edocs/pubdocs/en/wipo-pub-1064-2022-en-the-global-publishing-industry-in-2020.pdf

Association of Publishers of India and EY-Parthenon. (May 2021). Value proposition of the Indian publishing: Trends, challenges, and future of the industry. EY-Parthenon, Ernst and Young.

Dean, J., et. al. (2013) “Materialities of independent publishing,” New Formations, 78: pp. 157-78.

Vaughan, S. S. (1983). The Community of the Book. Daedalus, 112(1), 85–115. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20024837

Santana-Acuna, Á. (2020). The publishing industry modernizes. In Ascent to Glory: How One Hundred Years of Solitude Was Written and Became a Global Classic (pp. 40–72). Columbia University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/sant18432.6

Students will be introduced to various genres of publications like magazines, journals, newspapers, books and also categories of publishing like that of books for children, young adult and adult. It will look into types of publishing meant for leisure, literary and academic. The section will address the diversity in publishing and the dominant thematic and politics involved in the publication processes; the politics of critics’ awards and other nuances of international, national and regional prizes instituted for writing and publications. It will also delve into the nature of publishing by examining the dominant issues around which publishing revolves like that of gender, caste, race, environment and sustainability.

1. Genres of Publications

2. Publishing for children and young adults and adults

3. Literary publishing

4. Academic Publishing

5. Publishing/publication awards

6. The nature and politics of publishing

Teaching learning strategies: The course coordinator may engage the students in discussions, experience sharing, theoretical lectures, and a practicum where the students will determine, in continuation of their work in Unit 1, the thematics that revolve within the publishing history of various publishing houses to determine the ideological underpinning of their enterprise and the sustainability of such models.

Essential readings:

Gupta, S. (2012). Indian “Commercial Fiction” in English, the Publishing Industry and Youth Culture. Economic and Political Weekly, 47(5), 46–53. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41419848

Taxel, J. (2002). Children’s Literature at the Turn of the Century: “Toward a Political Economy of the Publishing Industry.” Research in the Teaching of English, 37(2), 145–197. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40171621

Gilley, J. (2016). Feminist Publishing/Publishing Feminism: Experimentation in Second-Wave Book Publishing. In J. Harker & C. K. Farr (Eds.), This Book Is an Action: Feminist Print Culture and Activist Aesthetics (pp. 23–45). University of Illinois Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/j.ctt17t75xc.5

Hutton, R. (2015). A Mouse in the Bookstore: “Maus” and the Publishing Industry. South Central Review, 32(3), 30–44. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44016904

Barnett, C., & Low, M. (1996). Speculating on Theory: Towards a Political Economy of Academic Publishing. Area, 28(1), 13–24. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20003623

Malik, R. (2008). Horizons of the Publishable: Publishing in/as Literary Studies. ELH, 75(3), 707–735. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27654631

This unit will equip students with an understanding of the various units within a publishing house. It will also introduce the students to basic editing and copy-editing skills and style sheets used in publishing aligned with international publishing standards and ethical practices in the industry. It will enable students through ‘industry’ visits to familiarise themselves, whenever and wherever possible, to the axes of production, dissemination and consumption of publications and their specific interventions with respect to professional and human values. Students will be encouraged to organise/visit literature festivals and visit a local, regional or national publishing house to consolidate their familiarity and thereby experience the processes in the journey of a book/ article / journal etc.

1. Departments in a publishing house and functions of each unit

2. Editing and Copy-editing

3. Distribution, Exhibition and Marketing

4. Case studies around literary festivals

5. Case studies around ‘celebrity authors

6. Printing, book design, graphic design

Teaching learning strategies: The course coordinator may engage the students in discussions, experience sharing, theoretical lectures, and a practicum where the students will organise visits to a publishing house and a literature festival for themselves.

Essential readings:

Butcher, J. (2007). Butcher’s copy editing: The Cambridge handbook for editors, copy-editors and proofreaders. 4th edn. Cambridge University Press, London.

Vassallo, P. (2001). Protect your r.e.p.! Revise, edit, proofread. Etc: A review of general semantics, 58(1), 100–105. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42578079

This unit will introduce students to copyright laws in India and abroad, censorship and bans on books across different regional, national, global and historical contexts. It will focus on publishing rights for translations, adaptations, transformative work, images, out of copyright manuscripts, and revenue-sharing models between various stake-holders. It will also examine wider social issues around censorship, freedom of expression, and publishing ethics. This unit will also address possibilities within digital publishing, different revenue models and possibilities of collaborative publication. The notion of publishing will be extended from text-based books to include podcasts, audio-books, as well as publishing in the video format.

1. Copyright Laws

2. Censorship and Bans

3. Collaborative publishing: Nature and skills

4. Piracy, Copyleft and Creative Commons

5. Online publishing and online publishing platforms

Hall, G. (2008) Digitise this Book: The Politics of New Media, or why we need open access now, University of Minnesota Press, Minnesota.

Luey, B. (2009). The Organization of the Book Publishing Industry. In D. P. Nord, J. S. Rubin, & M. Schudson (Eds.), A History of the Book in America: Volume 5: The Enduring Book: Print Culture in Postwar America (pp. 29–54). University of North Carolina Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469625836_nord.7

Sakanishi, S. (1936). The Publishing Industry of Japan. Books Abroad, 10(1), 14–16. https://doi.org/10.2307/40028128

Rudman, H. C. (1990). Corporate Mergers in the Publishing Industry: Helpful or Intrusive? Educational Researcher, 19(1), 14–20. https://doi.org/10.2307/1176530

Sutherland, J. (1988). Publishing History: A Hole at the Centre of Literary Sociology. Critical Inquiry, 14(3), 574–589. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1343705

Johnston, C., & Wilson, C. R. (2008). Publishing. In M. T. Inge (Ed.), The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 9: Literature (pp. 131–137). University of North Carolina Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469616643_inge.30

McDermott, I., & Dunigan, E. C. (2013). Art Book Publishing: Past, Present, Future. Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, 32(2), 239–252. https://doi.org/10.1086/673515

Bode, K. (2012). Beyond the book: Publishing in the nineteenth century. In Reading by Numbers: Recalibrating the Literary Field (pp. 27–56). Anthem Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1gxp79r.7

Feather, J. P. (1986). The Book in History and the History of the Book. The Journal of Library History (1974-1987), 21(1), 12–26. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25541677

Davis, C. (2005). The Politics of Postcolonial Publishing: Oxford University Press’s Three Crowns Series 1962-1976. Book History, 8, 227–244. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30227377

Graham, J. (2017). The Cultural Economy of Auteurship in Independent Publishing: The Symbolic Success of the Photobook Ponte City. In J. Graham & A. Gandini (Eds.), Collaborative Production in the Creative Industries (pp. 69–86). University of Westminster Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv6zd9th.8

Harris, J. (1987). Proofreading: A Reading/Writing Skill. College Composition and Communication, 38(4), 464–466. https://doi.org/10.2307/357642

Einsohn, A., & Schwartz, M. (2019). What Copyeditors Do. In The Copyeditor’s Handbook: A Guide for Book Publishing and Corporate Communications (4th ed., pp. 3–38). University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvh1dnmz.6

Putnam, C. E., & Stephan, P. M. (1985). Myths About Editing. Technical Communication, 32(2), 17–20. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43095639

Garofalo, R. (1999). From Music Publishing to MP3: Music and Industry in the Twentieth Century. American Music, 17(3), 318–354. https://doi.org/10.2307/3052666

Grobelny, J. D. (2015). Self-Publishing: A Bibliographic Essay. In R. P. Holley (Ed.), Self-Publishing and Collection Development: Opportunities and Challenges for Libraries (pp. 171–178). Purdue University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1wf4dpf.18

Jiang, Y. (2012). Chinese Anger at the Label of Censorship. In Cyber-Nationalism in China: Challenging Western media portrayals of internet censorship in China (pp. 63–76). University of Adelaide Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.20851/j.ctt1sq5x62.9

Altbach, P. G. (1986). Knowledge Enigma: Copyright in the Third World. Economic and Political Weekly, 21(37), 1643–1650. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4376122

Reimers, I. (2019). Copyright and Generic Entry in Book Publishing. American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 11(3), 257–284. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26754090

Jensen, C. (2003). The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same: Copyright, Digital Technology, and Social Norms. Stanford Law Review, 56(2), 531–570. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1229614

McGill, M. L. (2013). Copyright and Intellectual Property: The State of the Discipline. Book History, 16, 387–427. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42705793

Ncube, C. B. (2017). Calibrating copyright for creators and consumers: Promoting distributive justice and Ubuntu. In R. Giblin & K. Weatherall (Eds.), What if we could reimagine copyright? (pp. 253–280). ANU Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1q1crjg.11

Towse, R. (2008). Why has cultural economics ignored copyright? Journal of Cultural Economics, 32(4), 243–259. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41811000

Sinnreich, A. (2019). Copyleft and Copyfight. In The Essential Guide to Intellectual Property (pp. 198–224). Yale University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvgc628g.13

Müller, K. (2021). Digital Archives’ Objects: Law and Tangibility. In Digital Archives and Collections: Creating Online Access to Cultural Heritage (Vol. 11, pp. 199–225). Berghahn Books. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv29sfzfx.12

The students are expected to have a foundational knowledge of disciplines such as linguistics, literary criticism and philosophy. They should be aware of the key theoretical developments and research methodologies in these fields.The course is designed to provide students with both theoretical and practical exposure in the field of transanslation studies. While tracing the evolution of translation studies, the course explores some of the major questions, concepts, theories, debates, and paradigm shifts in the discipline. An introduction to some of the major translations in India and the world is brought into the discussion to provide insights on how translation as a field informs and negotiates with the socio-political context of the space in the discussion. Further, a workshop model is adopted in the course to provide students the opportunity to interact with various translators and acquire some hands-on skills while engaging in the process of translation.

The objectives of this course are to:

● Equip the students to analyse the nature of problems encountered in the process of translation

● Enable the students to understand the major theoretical approaches to the study of translation

● Equip the students to apply the theoretical knowledge to the translation of various texts.

● Engage with translation studies as both an academic field and a possible professional arena for students in future.

The unit explores the formation of translation studies as discipline and introduces some of the major concepts, strategies and debates in translation studies from across the globe. In doing so the unit will also explore some of the major turns in translation studies and discuss how it impacts current understanding of the discipline.

1. Evolution of translation

2. Understanding the nature of translation/translator and concept

3. Concepts of equivalence, shifts and function

Teaching learning strategies: The concepts and ideas given in the syllabus will be engaged in class discussion. Reading is for learners to get a larger insight into the discourses emerging. The facilitator can choose to engage with selected readings from each section in the respective units in the class and refer from other readings for discussion purposes. It will also involve translation exercises.

Essential readings:

Bassnett S. (2002). Translation studies (3rd ed.). Routledge. Retrieved March 8 2023 from http://site.ebrary.com/id/10098713.

Benjamin, W. (2016). “The task of the translator: an introduction to the translation of Baudelaire's Tableaux Parisiens”. In Readings in the Theory of Religion (pp. 131-139). Routledge.

Catford, J. C. (2000). “Translation shifts”. The translation studies reader, 141-147.

Holmes, J. S. (2000). “The Name and Nature of Translation Studies”. In The translation studies reader, 172.

Jakobson, R. (2013). “On linguistic aspects of translation”. In On translation (pp. 232-239). Harvard University

The unit will specifically focus on some of the major debates from India and how the cultural, socio-political and multilingual factors of India have informed translation studies. It looks at aspects such as gender, caste and race from the perspective of translation. It will also attempt to engage with some of the famous regional and local translations and its impact, translators and their strategies, and theories on translation specifically from Indian context.

1. Translation in India

2. Feminism and translation

3. The politics of translation

Teaching learning strategies: The concepts and ideas given in the syllabus will be engaged in class discussion. Reading is for learners to get a larger insight into the discourses emerging. The facilitator can choose to engage with selected essential readings from each section in the respective units in the class and refer from other readings for discussion purposes. It will also involve translation exercises.

Ramakrishna, S. (2000). “Cultural transmission through translation: An Indian perspective”. In S. Simon and P. St-Pierre (eds), 87-100.

Ramanujan, A. K. (1991). “Three hundred Ramayanas: Five examples and three thoughts on translation”. In Many Ramayanas: The diversity of a narrative tradition in South Asia, 22-49.

Sarkar, T. (2006). “Birth of a Goddess:'Vande Mataram'," Anandamath", and Hindu Nationhood”. In Economic and Political Weekly, 3959-3969.

Satchidanandan, K. (2001). “Reflections: Rethinking Translation”. In Indian Literature, 5-8.

Spivak, G. C. (2021). “The Politics of Translation”. In The translation studies reader (pp. 320-338). Routledge.

Nayar, P. K. (2011). “Subalternity and translation: The cultural apparatus of human rights”. In Economic and Political Weekly, 23-26.

Pandit, M. (2019). “Translating Dalit literature: Redrawing the map of cultural politics”. In Dalit Text (pp. 166-180). Routledge India.

Niranjana, T. (1998). “Feminism and translation in India: contexts, politics, futures”. In Cultural Dynamics, 10(2), 133-146.

Sarukkai, S. (2013). “Translation as method: Implications for history of science”. In The circulation of knowledge between Britain, India and China (pp. 309-329). Brill.

The unit is designed to provide students hands-on experience in translation to impart employability skills in the field of translation. A workshop model is designed so that students get an opportunity to interact with translators and understand their practices and professional ethics of translation. It will also explore translation as a possible professional field for the students. The workshop model planned for this unit will be closely connected with the internal assessments which students would be doing for the paper.

1. Reading translated work from India and the world and translation exercises.

2. Translation and subtitling

3. External expert to introduce tolls related to subtitling and other media related translation and translation workshop

Teaching learning strategies: The concepts and ideas given in the syllabus will be engaged in class discussion. Reading is for learners to get a larger insight into the discourses emerging. The unit requires a workshop organised by students and facilitator to enable hands-on practices in translation.

Essential readings:

Hatim, B., & Mason, I. (2000). Politeness in screen translating. The translation studies reader, 430-445.

Ramanujan, A. K. (1991). Folktales from India. Penguin India Pvt. Ltd.

The unit will attempt to understand some of the contemporary practices in translation studies, especially considering how the field is also informed by various technological innovations. This unit will specifically engage with the possibilities, challenges and professional ethics related to human- machine interactions in the field of translation. The students will be working towards their final assessment through mini projects and surveys which will enhance their translation skills.

1. Contemporary practices in translation studies

2. Machine translation

3. Mini project

Teaching learning strategies: The concepts and ideas given in the syllabus will be engaged in class discussion. Reading is for learners to get a larger insight into the discourses emerging. The unit requires a mini project by the students to enable hands on practices in translation

Essential readings:

Lennon, B. (2014). Machine translation: A tale of two cultures. A companion to translation studies, 133-146.

Cronin, M. (2006). Translation and the New Cosmopolitan. Translation and identity. Routledge.

Gentzler, E. (2001). Contemporary translation theories (Vol. 21). Multilingual Matters.

Wakabayashi, J., & Kothari, R. (Eds.). (2009). Decentring translation studies: India and beyond (Vol. 86). John Benjamins Publishing.

Chandran, M., & Mathur, S. (2015). Textual Travels: Theory and Practice of Translation in India. Routledge.

Gambier, Y., & Gottlieb, H. (Eds.). (2001). (Multi) media translation: concepts, practices, and research (Vol. 34). John Benjamins Publishing.

Kenny, D. (2019). Machine translation. In Routledge encyclopedia of translation studies (pp. 305-310). Routledge.

Tymoczko, M. (2005). Trajectories of research in translation studies. Meta, 50(4), 1082-1097.

This course introduces the cultural and political discourses around disability, by examining disability as a historical, social, and cultural construction, in order to understand the relationship between power and symbolic meaning. It encourages students to view disability as a phenomenon of embodied difference. Fundamental cultural concepts of ‘putting things into order’, for instance normality and deviance, health and illness, physical integrity and subjective identity, will be discussed from a critical point of view. This course will introduce students to the key critical concepts, debates, and questions of practice in the emerging academic field of disability studies. Drawing on scholarship in public policy, sociology, history, psychology, anthropology, cultural studies, literature, biomedical ethics, and other fields, students will be introduced to the moral, medical, social, minority, and ecological models of disability. In addition, the course will explore the histories of particular communities of disabled persons; debate ethical questions concerning genetic testing, selective abortion, and disability therapies; study how social inequalities of class, race, nationality, sexuality, and gender are related to the lived experiences of the disabled; and learn from the literature and political discourse of disabled artists and activists. This course aims to contribute to the study of central themes of the Modern age: reason, human rights, equality, autonomy and solidarity in relation to social and cultural developments in global and local context.

This unit aims to introduce Cultural Disability Studies, its perspectives and scope through the seminal texts from the interdisciplinary field of Critical Disability Studies. The unit introduces the students to the foundational texts from global context to develop conceptual understanding of disability. This will prepare the students to understand the human values of people with disabilities. The foundational unit will help the students to get employment in academics and research. The selected texts provide an understanding of global and regional perspective on conceptual understanding of disability.

1. Davis, Lennard. Introduction: Disability, Normality and Power.

2. Linton, Simi. What is Disability Studies?

3. Waldschmidt, Anne. Disability Goes Cultural: The Cultural Model of Disability as an Analytical Tool.

4. Berressem, Hanjo. The Sound of Disability: A Cultural Studies Perspective

5. Anand, Shilpa. Historicising Disability in India: Questions of Subject and Method

Teaching learning strategies: The course coordinator may engage the students in discussions, experience sharing, and theoretical lectures where the students could take up a short survey of the literature available in Indian context. This course requires objective and reflective readings of the prescribed texts. Students are expected to share their anecdotes or the belief about disability, disease, illness, etc. to connect with the texts.

Essential readings: As prescribed in the unit

Wilson, James and Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson. Embodied Rhetorics: Disability in Language and Culture. Southern Illinois University Press. 2001.

This unit introduces some of the theoretical models of Cultural and Literary Disability Studies to help the students to situate their research questions in relevant theoretical paradigms. Understanding the theoretical perspective from global and national level helps the student to recognise the human values of persons with disabilities. Understanding the perspective of disabilities can lead to working with disabled community to get disability justice. 

1. Quayson, Ato. Aesthetic Nervousness.

2. Mitchell, David and Sharon Snyder. Narrative Prosthesis.

3. Ghai, Anita. Disability in the Indian context: post-colonial perspectives.

4. Campbell, Fiona Kumari. The Project of Ableism.

5. Kusters, Annelies. When Transport Becomes a Destination: Deaf Spaces and Networks on the Mumbai Suburban Trains

OR

6. Kusters, Annelies. Boarding Mumbai Trains: The Mutual Shaping of Intersectionality and Mobility.

Teaching learning strategies: The course coordinator may engage the students in discussions, experience sharing, and theoretical lectures where the students could take up a short survey of the literature available in Indian context.

Essential readings:

Ghai, Anita., (ed). Disability in South Asia: Knowledge and Experience. Sage India, 2018

Mitchell, D., & Snyder, S. “Narrative Prosthesis and the Materiality of Metaphor.” In Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies Discourse (pp.7-64). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 2000.

Quayson, Ato, (ed.) Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability and the Crisis of Representation. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.

This unit deals with how normative culture perceives disability through the texts that question normativity and ableism. Understanding of disability culture helps the student to get employed with NGOs working with people with disabilities.

1. Barounis, Cynthia. Cripping Heterosexuality, Queering Able-Bodiedness: Murderball,

2. Brokeback Mountain and the Contested Masculine Body.

3. Millett-Gallant, Ann. Sculpting Body Ideals: Alison Lapper Pregnant and the Public Display of Disability.

4. Kleege, Georgina. Blindness and Visual Culture: An Eyewitness Account

This unit is introduced to understand the representations of disability in popular culture. The unit offers an introduction of prose and poetry written about and written by persons with disabilities that help them understand the human values of persons with disabilities. Understanding the prose and poetry written by persons with disabilities from global and national level help the student to recognise the human values of persons with disabilities. This unit also offers understanding of disability as a new angle to understand the vernacular literature from the Indian context. Understanding this unit will help the student to establish the human value of disability in Indian literature. This will help them to employ their learning in unearthing representation of disabilities in Indian literature. Understanding the perspective of disabilities can lead to working with disabled community to publish and promote their work.

1. Davis, Lennard. The Ghettoization of Disability: Paradoxes of Visibility and Invisibility in Cinema.

2. Thomson, Rosemarie Garland. Building a World with Disability in It.

3. Ellis, Katie. Our Moment in Time: The Transitory and Concrete Values of Disability Toys.

4. Anand, Shilpa. Translating rhetoricity and everyday experiences of disablement: the case of Rashid Jahan’s ‘Woh’

5. Dubey, Shubhra. Disability, Translation and Curriculum: A Case Study of Rangeya Raghav’s‘Goongey’.

6. Ferris, Jim. The Hospital Poems

7. Mukhopadhyay, Tito. Selected Poems

Essential readings:

Sati and Prasad (ed.). Disability in Translation: The Indian Experience. Taylor and Francis. 2020.

Mitchell, D., & Snyder, S. “Narrative Prosthesis and the Materiality of Metaphor.” In Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies Discourse (pp.7-64). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 2000

Quayson, Ato, (ed.). Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability and the Crisis of Representation. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.

Davis, L.J. The Disability Studies Reader, Routledge, 2013.

Davis, L.J. The Disability Studies Reader, Routledge, 2013.

Foucault, M. Madness and Civilization: A History Of Insanity In The Age Of Reason. Vintage Books 1988, c1965. Print.

James Wilson and Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson, (eds.) Embodied Rhetorics: Disability in Language and Culture. Southern Illinois University Press, 2001.

Davis, L.J. The Disability Studies Reader, Routledge, 2013.

Foucault, M. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity In The Age Of Reason. Vintage Books 1988, c1965. Print.

James Wilson and Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson, (eds.) Embodied Rhetorics: Disability in Language and Culture. Southern Illinois University Press, 2001.

Sharon L. Snyder, Brenda Jo Brueggemann, and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, (eds.). Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities. Modern Language Association, 2002

Shakespeare, Tom. Disability Rights and Wrongs. Routledge. 2006

Allan, Kathryn. (2013) Disability in Science Fiction: Representations of Technology as Cure. Palgrave Macmillan.

Urban Studies as an emerging field of interdisciplinary study has led to the investigation of urbanity from different angles of academic inquiry, with a focus on both local and regional aspects. Bangalore, an important IT metropolis in India, provides a significant case study for examining the economic agglomeration and governance of cities. This project seeks to go beyond the macro-narratives of the city's growth and explore the embodied experiences of everyday Bangalore through personal histories and everyday materiality. By foregrounding individual stories, this project aims to create a multiplicity of narratives that reflect the diverse perspectives and experiences of the people of Bangalore, both at the local and regional levels.

Furthermore, this project recognizes the importance of human values and sustainability in urban development and seeks to explore the ways in which they intersect with research ethics. By critically examining the impact of urban development on the environment and social equity, students will develop a greater appreciation for sustainable practices and human-centred design. Through ethical research practices, students will also develop critical thinking and communication skills, as well as a greater understanding of the ethical implications of the research. Overall, this course will equip students with the skills needed to engage in interdisciplinary research that is grounded in ethical principles and addresses the complex challenges facing cities today.

This unit provides an overview of the global practice of cultural mapping and its relevance in studying the cultural landscape of Bangalore. Students will develop skills in qualitative research methods, including ethnography and participatory mapping, and explore the sustainability of cultural practices and knowledge in the context of globalisation.

1. Definition of cultural mapping and its importance in studying cities

2. Brief history of cultural mapping in urban studies.

3. Techniques and methods for cultural mapping, including ethnography, participatory mapping, and archival research

4. Overview of the cultural landscape of Bangalore