Syllabus for
Master of Arts (English and Cultural Studies)
Academic Year  (2019)

The program follows a 70:30 ratio of internal assessments:end-of-semester examination. Examinations include both written exams as well as submissions for various courses.

Course Description:

This course will introduce students to the methods and frames of reference of doing cultural history. As an introductory course, this course specifically helps the students develop the necessary skills to work with various instances of engaging with cultural history. The focus would be to engage with various spatial and temporal zones to understand the making and unpacking of cultural history. The course provides domains of engagement in cultural history.

Course objectives:

1. Introduce students to the field of cultural history
2. Enable students to recognize various modes of doing cultural history
3. Create frames of reference that will help students build knowledge in their own practices of engaging with cultural history

• Acquire the frameworks to interpret and evaluate various materials of cultural history

• Develop critical skills in order to contextualize and critique materials of history

• Identify and inquire into issues and questions pertinent to our immediate socio-cultural contexts

• Generate insights and inferences and share these in the wider public domain

Methods of doing Cultural history (10 hrs): This unit introduces students to the various methods involved in the practice of cultural history and its critique and evaluation. The objective of this unit would be to help students develop the necessary frames of reference to work with cultural history.

·         What is Cultural History?

·         How does one engage with cultural history?

·         What are the methods of working with cultural history?

This unit introduces students to understanding food as a category of cultural history that determines and counters histories. The unit should be able to help students locate food as a material of investigation that lends itself to varied significations in the process of meaning-making for cultures and histories. Instructors can choose various instances/illustrations of food in art, literature and culture to work with this unit. (10 hrs)

·         Culinary discourses and food politics: questions of caste, class and gender

·         Food and identity

·         Recipes and cultural memory

·         Food Waste

·         Food and spaces

This unit introduces students to the modes of creating and disseminating history through the categories and discourses of ‘heritage’. It also introduces students to the competing discourses of developing and conserving various art and literary forms that determine the cultural history of the period.

·             How central are stories to cultures? Mapping storytelling traditions of India

·             How do we think and speak about ‘heritage’? Politics, Memory and ‘Cultural Heritage’

·             ‘Indian Literatures’: Engaging with the category

·             Aesthetics in and through Indian art forms: Poetics and Politics

·             Where are the organic storytelling traditions? Folktales, Folklore as cultural history

·             Sartorial art and artisan communities

·             Photography and history: Works of Ravi Agarwal

Here, students would be introduced to the creation and institutionalisation of knowledge that determine the cultural histories of people, place and communities. Aspects of public and popular history would also be engaged with in this module.

·         How does one engage with historiography? Public History memorials; Rituals of remembering and Forgetting

·         Pluralistic traditions of historiography

·         Critical and cultural geography: case study of the Indian Ocean region

·         Street Art as archive

·         City walks and living history

This unit will introduce students to aspects of language that play a crucial role in the creation and construction of certain dimensions of cultural history. Policies as well as practical classroom situations could work as instances to engage with here. (10 hrs)

·         Politics of English as a discipline

·         Social life of English in India

·         Where are the bhashas?

The unit will also understand how spaces and time have negotiated with aspects of ecology. (10 hrs)

·         Ecology and climate change: how important are they to understand cultural history?

·         Land and water bodies: engaging with the materiality of ecology; River Studies – Case study of Brahmaputra

Required Reading/ Viewing:

Ahmad, Aijaz. “Indian Literatures: Notes Towards Definition of a Category”. In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures. London: Verso, 1994.

Amrith, Sunil. Unruly Waters: How Mountains Rivers and Monsoons Have Shaped South Asia’s History, Allan Lane, 2018.

Agarwal, Ravi. https://www.raviagarwal.com/text/.

Bhat, Sunanda. Have You Seen the Arana? Songline Films, 2012.

Burke, Peter. What is Cultural History? Polity, UK, 2008.

Civitello, Linda. Cuisine and Culture: A History of Food and People. New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, 2008.

Devy, G.N. The Being of Bhasha: A General Introduction, People’s Linguistic Survey of India. Vol. 1, Orient Blackswan 2014.

Ghosh, Amitav. The Great Derangement. Harper Perenniel, 2017.

Groot, Jerome de. Consuming History: Historians and Heritage in Contemporary Popular Culture. Routledge, 2009.

Kumar, Ashutosh. Coolies of the Empire: Indentured Indians in the Sugar Colonies,  1830-1920, Harper Collins, 2017.

'Nirala', Narendra Narayan Sinha. “Madhubani: A Contemporary History (1971-2011).” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, vol. 71, 2010, pp. 1243–1250., www.jstor.org/stable/44147593.

Periferry. http://www.periferry.in/index.html

Ramanujan, A K. Folktales from India. Penguin, 1994.

Rappaport, Erica. How Tea Shaped the Modern World. Princeton UP, 2017.

Rekha, Neel. "Doing Fieldwork and Discovering Harijan Art in Madhubani." Fieldwork in South Asia: Memories, Moments, and Experiences. Eds. Sarit K. Chaudhuri and Sucheta S. Chaudhuri. New Delhi: SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd, 2014. 276-294. SAGE Knowledge. Web. 10 Jan. 2019, doi: 10.4135/9789351507802.n15.

Tharu, Susie. Ed. Subject to Change. SahityaAkademi, 1994.

von Wyss-Giacosa, Paola (2018) "Myth and Cloth from India: The Kalamkari Collection in the Ethnographic Museum of the University of Zurich," Narrative Culture: Vol. 5 : Iss. 1 , Article 4. https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/narrative/vol5/iss1/4

30% - End Semester Exam

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, psychoanalytical 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.

Course Objectives:

·       The course’s focal point would be emphasizing discourses on communities, uniqueness and exceptionality, including the myths of origin and of cultural exclusivity, narratives of national history and even pantheons of national heroes, in the creation of memory and identity.

·       It will then move on to empire and post-coloniality, (post)socialism and (neo)liberalism as equally distinct forms of historical memory organization, with their own repertoires of referential imagery and understandings of boundaries.

·       It will also explore the issues of memory of war, including civil war and ethnic conflict. Archive, film, body and material objects, including buildings, are approached as culturally-specific memory devices and contested sites for historical memory, in turn leading to the construction of identity.

·       Genres of historical narratives, including historiography, ethnology and anthropology, and museum will also be discussed as theatres of memory-making and contestations of identity.

·       Students will further identify social and cultural factors that help shape our identities by analyzing firsthand reflections and creating their own personal identity charts.

·       To help the students ask and evaluate questions like – What factors shape our identities? What dilemmas arise when others view us differently than we view ourselves? How do our identities influence our choices?

·       To make students understand that identity is not only valuable for their own social, moral, and intellectual development, it also serves as a foundation for examining the choices made by individuals and groups in the past as well as in the present.

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

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; Civil War Narratives, Colonial Memories

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

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

·    Baum, Bruce. 2006. The Rise and Fall of the Caucasian Race: A Political History of Racial Identity, New York: New York University Press.*

·    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.

·       Alam, Muzaffar. 2014. The Languages of Political Islam in India c. 1200-1800. Ranikhet: Permanent Black.*

·       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.*

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

·       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.

·       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.

·      Webster, Wendy. 1998. Imagining Home: Gender, Race and National Identity, 1945-1964, Women's History Series, London: University College London 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 Leiden Series in Modern East Asian Politics and History, London and New York:Routledge

CIA - Evaluation Pattern

Mid Semester Examination

End Semester Examination

Course Description:

This course introduces students to narrative forms across a range of creative mediums such as literature, photography, cinema, visual arts, video games and so on. 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 forms, in order to introduce students to the inter-dependencies as well as distinctiveness of narrative construction across these mediums.

Course Objectives:

• Introduce students to a range of narrative styles across media formats
• Foreground the cultural specificities within which narrative styles develop
• Engage with questions of ephemerality and impermanence in performance art

A General introduction to the course drawing upon foundational debates in the field of Narratology.

Readings:

M. Bal (1997) Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, 2^nd Ed. University of Toronto Press.

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

This unit explores the modes of the most popular modern literary form -- the novel -- and the social contexts within which it developed in India as well as in Europe.

Readings:

I. Watt (2015[1957]) The Rise of the Novel. London: Penguin.

M. Kundera: The Art of the Novel

M. Mukherjee (1985) Realism and Reality: the Novel and Society in India. Delhi: OUP

This unit looks at a number of visual forms such as photography, cinema, video art, and folk art to understand how narrative theory works in these mediums.

Readings:

Utpal Kumar Banerjee (2008) “The Subtle Art of Story-telling,” Indian Literature, 52 (4): 147-152

R. Sawhney (2018) “Shadowing the Image Archive: Inside Nalini Malani’s Shadow Plays,” MIRAJ 7(2): 324-34.

G. M. Sheikh (1995) “Viewer’s View: Looking at Pictures” in Niranjana et al. eds. Interrogating Modernity, pp. 143-154.

R. Srivatsan (1993) “Imaging Truth and Desire: Photography and the Visual Field in India” in Niranjana et. al. eds. Interrogating Modernity. Pp 155-198.

D. Bordwell ( 2007) “Three Dimensions of Film Narrative” in Poetics of Cinema.

http://www.davidbordwell.net/books/poetics.php

This unit engages with transitory or ephemeral narratives as constructed through performing art, examining how the body as the canvas/text transforms our understanding of narratives.

Readings

P. Phelan (2005) “Shards of a History of Performance Art: Pollock and Namuth, Through a Glass, Darkly”  in Phelan and Rabonowitz Eds. A Companion to Narrative Theory. Blackwell Publishing. Pp 499-512.     

Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present (Matthew Akers, 2012)

Spaces Between (Roohi Dixit & Ziba Bhagwagar, 2016)

This unit looks at fluid, shifting, and re-organising narratives and narrative structures such as in in the context of archives, new media and video games. It carries forward the question of stability, permanence and knowledge production encountered in the previous unit.

Readings:

J. Derrida (1996) Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, Trans. Eric Prenowitz.

Indiancine.ma

Google cultural institute

L. Manovich (2002) The Language of New Media + Manovich’s blog

Introduction from A. Gallaway (2006) Gaming : Essays on Algorithmic Culture. Univ of Minnesotta Press.

Selected chapters from Lowood & Nitsche (Ed.) The Machinima Reader. MIT Press.

M. Bal (1997) Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, 2^nd Ed. University of Toronto Press.

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

I. Watt (2015[1957]) The Rise of the Novel. London: Penguin.

M. Kundera: The Art of the Novel

M. Mukherjee (1985) Realism and Reality: the Novel and Society in India. Delhi: OUP

Utpal Kumar Banerjee (2008) “The Subtle Art of Story-telling,” Indian Literature, 52 (4): 147-152

R. Sawhney (2018) “Shadowing the Image Archive: Inside Nalini Malani’s Shadow Plays,” MIRAJ 7(2): 324-34.

G. M. Sheikh (1995) “Viewer’s View: Looking at Pictures” in Niranjana et al. eds. Interrogating Modernity, pp. 143-154.

R. Srivatsan (1993) “Imaging Truth and Desire: Photography and the Visual Field in India” in Niranjana et. al. eds. Interrogating Modernity. Pp 155-198.

D. Bordwell ( 2007) “Three Dimensions of Film Narrative” in Poetics of Cinema.

http://www.davidbordwell.net/books/poetics.php

 P. Phelan (2005) “Shards of a History of Performance Art: Pollock and Namuth, Through a Glass, Darkly”  in Phelan and Rabonowitz Eds. A Companion to Narrative Theory. Blackwell Publishing. Pp 499-512.     

Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present (Matthew Akers, 2012)

Spaces Between (Roohi Dixit & Ziba Bhagwagar, 2016)                                                                                   

J. Derrida (1996) Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, Trans. Eric Prenowitz.

Indiancine.ma

Google cultural institute

L. Manovich (2002) The Language of New Media + Manovich’s blog

Introduction from A. Gallaway (2006) Gaming : Essays on Algorithmic Culture. Univ of Minnesotta Press.

Selected chapters from Lowood & Nitsche (Ed.) The Machinima Reader. MIT Press.

Abbot, H. Porter (2002) The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. CUP.

Cobley, Paul (2001) Narrative. Routledge.

Freeman, M. (1998) 'Mythical time , historical time, and the narrative fabric of the Self’ Narrative Inquiry 8 (1): 27-50.

Genette, G. (1982) Narrative discourse Basil Blackwell.

Jenkins, H. (1992) Textual Poachers: Television and Participatory Culture, Routledge,.

Lothe ,J. (2000) Narrative in fiction and film : An Introduction Oxford University Press.

Murray. (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in  Cyberspace,MIT Press.

Ong,W.J (1982) Orality and Literacy : The Technologies of the word, Methuen.

Ricoeur, P.  (1981) 'Narrative time' in W.J.T.Mitchell (ed.) On Narrative University of Chicago Press.

Snyder, I. (1998) 'Beyond the hype: reassessing hypertext' in Page to Screen: Taking Literacy in the electronic era, Routledge.

End Semester Exam: 30% (50 marks)

Course Description:

This course aims to introduce postgraduate learners to advanced approaches to reading poetry, with the integration of literary readings and interdisciplinary perspectives, particularly with reference to the role of poetry in cultural studies.It is hoped that the reading of poetry through different media—inclusive of emerging media in the digital era – will underscore the significance of critical thinking and autonomous engagement with texts, both of which are skills crucial to our time.

Course Objectives: Learners will be able to:

·      Understand the different cultural and socio-political factors responsible for the creation of suchworks of art

·      Examine poetry from a variety of contexts and approaches and

·      Develop critical insights into engaging with poetry and its relevance to real-world contexts.

·      Naomi Shihab Nye, “Kindness”

·      Academy of American Poets: Why Poetry Matters Now

·      Wislawa Szymborska - Nobel Lecture: The Poet and the World

·      Bean and Chasar, Poetry After Cultural Studies (2011) – Extracts

·      Amitava Kumar, “Poetry for the People” (from Poetry and Cultural Studies: A Reader)

·      Auden, “Musée des Beaux Arts” + Eagleton Chapter 1: Poetry and Criticism

·      Shakespeare, Iambic Pentameter, and the Hendecasyllable: Sonnet 20 (“A woman’s face with nature’s own hand”)

·      Emily Dickinson—Inventing the Uncanny

·      Whitman—“The verse that is free” (Chapter from Mary Oliver, The Poetry Handbook)

·      Eliot, “The Wasteland”

·      Wallace Stevens, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”

·      Walcott, “The Sea is History”

·      Tricia Rose, “Black Texts/Black Contexts”

·      Ana Castillo, Watercolour Women, Opaque Men: A Novel in Verse (Extracts)

·      Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”/“Christabel”

·      Keats, “The Eve of St Agnes”

·      The dramatic monologue: Browning

·      Faiz Ahmed Faiz, “Don’t Ask Me for That Love Again” and “City of Lights”

·      Neruda or Borges—Selected poems

·      Amrita Pritam, “I Call upon Varis Shah Today”

·      Lal Ded, selected vaakhs from I, Lalla

·      Czeslaw Milosz, “City without a Name”

·      MalakaBadr, “Alexandria”

·      Audre lorde, “Poetry is Not a Luxury” (from Poetry and Cultural Studies: A Reader)

·      Maya Angelou, “And Still I Rise”

·      Carol Ann Duffy, Selected poems

·      Kamala Das, Selected poems

·      Sylvia Plath, “Daddy”

·      Allen Ginsberg, “Sunflower Sutra”

·      Agha Shahid Ali, “The Country without a Post Office”

·      Hoskote, “Ghalib at the Winter of the Last Revolt”

·      Pandaemonium and Bright Star: Visual texts

·      Bob Dylan—music and poetry

·      NayyirahWaheed, “Salt”

·      JeetThayil, “Not remembering”

·      Sarah Kay and Bharat Divakar, performance poetry

Damon, Maria and Livingston, Ira.Poetry and Cultural Studies: A Reader. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009.

Arana, R. Victoria. W.H. Auden's Poetry: Mythos, Theory, and Practice. Cambria Press, 2009.

Bean, Heidi R. And Chaser, Mike. Poetry After Cultural Studies. University of Iowa Press, 2011.

Croft, Barbara L. Stylistic Arrangements: A Study of William Butler Yeats' A Vision, Bucknell University Press, 1987.

Eagleton, Terry. How to Read a Poem. Blackwell Publishers, 2007.

Firchow, Peter Edgerly. W.H. Auden: Contexts for Poetry. University of Delaware Press, 2002.

Fisher, William J. The American Literature of the Nineteenth Century: An Anthology. Eurasia Publishing House Pvt Ltd, 1970.

King, Bruce. Modern Indian Poetry in English. Oxford University Press, 1987.

McDiarmid, Lucy. Saving Civilization: Yeats, Eliot, and Auden Between the Wars. CUP, 1984.

Oliver, Mary. The Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide to Writing and Understanding Poetry. Harcourt Brace & Company, 1994.

Parthasarathy, R. ed., Ten Twentieth Century Indian Poets. Oxford UP, 1976.

CIAs: Tasks based on research, application, and audio-visual components.

MSE: Submission for 50 marks; ESE: Submission for 50 marks

In modern political history the state has assumed the function of arbitrator in artistic matters.Culture for the modern totalitarian state is a matter of political control. Treating the artistic works has become complex in authoritarian states. In this regard, this course examines major political Ideologies relating to the concept of State and its influence on culture. The political dimension is introduced into the discussions on Culture as an expression of transcending the society. Therefore, this Course covers the relationship and conflict between state and culture in the contemporary society. It offers the role of political ideologies play in understanding culture in the context of politics. The course includes classical ideologies: liberalism, conservatism and socialism, and new political ideologies: Multiculturalism, Cosmopolitanism, Feminism with special reference to contemporary Indian Culture.

Course Objectives

To introduce the students on:

• Important political ideologies and their relevance to understand the politics of culture
  
• Contemporary political debates on the roles of the state in dealing with the arguments on culture
  

·         Students will be able to make a distinction between classical and new political ideologies, structure of the state 

·         Students can apply the ideologies in the present political scenario to understand the state of affairs of culture, clashes among the varied culture and with the State.

State: Meaning, Nature and Elements of State and Nation-state.

Political Ideology: Meaning, Importance and Perspectives (Marxist, Lenin, Thomas Manheim and Gramsci). Functions of Ideology.

Liberalism: Meaning, types and characteristics. Neo-Liberalism and Culture

Conservatism: Meaning, types and characteristics (Authoritarian, Paternalistic and Libertarian and New Right Conservatism).

Socialism: Meaning, types and Elements. (Marxism, Neo-Marxism, Democratic Socialism).

Contemporary Political Ideologies: Nationalism. Fascism.  Multiculturalism. Cosmopolitanism. Feminism. New Social Realism. “Blood and Soil.

State ‘Versus’ Culture or State ‘and’ Culture. Democracy and Culture. Culture as Individual or Collective  

·         Johari, J.C. (2015). Contemporary Political Theory. New Delhi: Sterling.

·         Vinod, M.J. and Deshpande, M. (2013). Contemporary Political Theory. New Delhi: PHI Learning.

·         Paul Thomas and DavidLloyd (1997). Culture and the State, Routledge.

• Satish Chandra (2012).State, Society and Culture in Indian History, Oxford University Press.
• George Steinmetz (1999), State/Culture.State-Formation after the Cultural Turn, Cornell University Press.
• Heywood, A. (2014). Politics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Evaluation Pattern

CIA - Evaluation Pattern

Mid Semester Examination

End Semester Examination

Course Description

This course intends to introduce the students 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 in such a way that it would not only promote an in-depth understanding of the components that leads to successful pedagogic practices but will also enable the learners to foster an understanding of how pedagogic spaces are constructed. This course is a mixture of theoretical and practical approaches for it incorporates not only theoretical understanding of multiple curriculum frameworks and pedagogic practices but also aims at providing hands-on training to the learners for developing content for teaching, framing course plans, and identifying teaching and learning strategies that can be applied to specific classroom contexts.

Course Objectives: The course has been designed with the following objectives:

1. To make the learners aware of multiple curriculum frameworks, pedagogic practices, and, assessment techniques.
2. To equip the learners with practical knowledge of various teaching methods.
3. To develop an understanding of various socio-political factors the affect the construction of curriculum.
4. 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.
5. The broader objective of this course is to foster innovation, professionalism, collegiality, and ethical and equitable practice in all students.

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

1. 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.
2. The Indian Education Policy: Special focus to be given on the language policy in Education.
3. The Innovations in the field of Education: ICT, AV aids, Google Classrooms, Gamification etc. to be discussed in detail.
4. Reflective and Inclusive Teaching Practices: The concepts of learner-centered 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.

1. The Grammar Translation Method
2. Behaviorism and Audio-visual Teaching Method
3. Input Hypothesis and the Natural Method
4. Cognitivism and Communicative Teaching Method
5. Skill Based Instruction
6. 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.

1. Understanding curriculum : Various Curriculum Theories can be discussed to understand the process of development of curriculum. The politics behind construction of curriculum can be also looked at.
2. 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.
3. Outcome Based Approach: The focus of this approach will be to discuss how to align learning outcomes, teaching Strategies, and, assessment tasks.

This unit will introduce the learners to various methods of assessment and evaluation and discuss the practical applicability of these methods. This unit will discuss how certain assessment methods can be applied to test the learning outcomes of the course.

1. Summative and Formative assessment methods: Brief introduction to be provided.
2. Summative assessment: Key issues of validity, reliability, bias, and fairness to be discussed in detail.
3. Formative assessment: Key issues of learning intentions, feedback, peer and self-assessment to be discussed in detail.
4. 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 for target learners. The learners will 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.

1. Register Analysis, Error Analysis, Need Analysis: Basic overview of these fields are to be developed in order to create a learner centric module.
2. Learning Styles oriented teaching modules: Comprehensive understanding of learning styles to develop to construct effective teaching modules catering to all types of learners.

1. 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.     Analyzing 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

Developing effective rubrics for grading

https://www.ugc.ac.in/oldpdf/xiplanpdf/EContentxiplan.pdf (Ugc document of e-content creation)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiTsduRreug&t=387s (Lecture by Stephen Krashen)

Bates, T. Teaching in a digital age: Guidelines for designing teaching and learning for a digital age. 2015. Retrieved from https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/

Bhatia, Vijay K. "Genre analysis, ESP and professional practice." English for specific purposes 27.2 (2008): 161-174.

Brookfield, Stephen D. Becoming a critically reflective teacher. John Wiley & Sons, 2017.

Brown, James Dean. The elements of language curriculum: A systematic approach to program development. Heinle & Heinle Publishers, 20 Park Plaza, Boston, MA 02116., 1995.

Canagarajah, A. Suresh. "Globalization, methods, and practice in periphery classrooms."

Globalization and language teaching (2002): 134-150.

Chauhan, Chandra Pal Singh, and C. P. S. Chauhan. Modern Indian Education. Aligarh Muslim University, 2004.

Chomsky, Noam. "Verbal behavior." (1959): 26-58.

Corder, Stephen Pit. "Error analysis." The Edinburgh course in applied linguistics 3 (1974): 122-131.

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

Fulcher, Glenn, and Fred Davidson. Language testing and assessment. London, England: Routledge, 2007.

Krashen, Stephen D. "Principles and practice in second language acquisition." (1982).

Prabhu, Neiman Stern. Second language pedagogy. Vol. 20. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Richards, Jack C., and Theodore S. Rodgers. Approaches and methods in language teaching. Cambridge university press, 2014.

Richards, Jack C. Curriculum development in language teaching. Ernst Klett Sprachen, 2001.

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

30% End Semester Exam (50 marks)

The Skill Development course is a booster course to help students plug gaps in their knowledge and skills. It will consist of masterclasses, writing labs, discussions, seminars and guest lectures. The course is designed to enable students to equip themselves with skills over and above their knowledge-domain skills. 

2. Create a portfolio of written work

3. Apply skills in their academic and professional contexts through their Industry exposure and through masterclasses and field visits

Students will be introduced to diffeent conceptual ideas related to the discipline, as well as parctical activities to improve their reading, writing and presentation skills. A lot of emphasis will be placed on individual written work, with regular sharing of texts in progress along with peer feedback. The sessions include:

Skill Development/ Masterclass (not in order of sequence)

1.     Introduction to Cultural Studies 

2.     Culture and Economy

3.     Culture and Law

4.     Gender and Caste – Roots of the struggle

5.     Gender & Caste – discourse and representation

6.     Disability Studies

7.     Reading Violence

8.     Reading Disease

9.     Postfeminism&Postgenderism –

10.  Feminism & Postcolonial theory

11.  Queer Theory

12.  Ecocriticism

* Units are subject to being changed based on the availability of resource persons.

Our lived experiences are shaped by the ways in which varying systems of privileges and oppressions work.  Every individual acts 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, 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.

Course Objectives: This course would enable students to:

1. Interpret and apply the concept of intersectionality in relation to varied focal points of gender, caste, race and sexual, social and cultural politics.
2. Understandthe politics behind the social construction of Identities.
3. To understand constructions of femininity, masculinity, and non-binary notions of gender
4.  Problematise singular understanding of gender and recognise the necessity to engage with gender at the intersection of other kinds of identities.
5. Understand the mode in which power and privilege works in a societal structure. 
6. Acquire a basic understanding of gender studies as a discipline.
7. Understand the impact of technological innovation and virtuality on constructed identities.

The unit engages in a discussion on the ideas of intersectionality and asserts that there is a necessity to understand gender in intersection with various other identities to understand the mode in which power structures and oppression works.

1. Understanding complexities of identification “Subject of Sex/ Gender/ Desire” in Judith Butler’s Gender  Trouble
2. Crenshaw Kimberle’s idea of Intersectionality in On Intersectionality.
3. The Help (2011, Tate Taylor) to bring in the contradictory idea between black feminists and white feminists regarding the mode in which oppression works. (could refer to bell hook’s critique on Betty Feminine Mystique. )
4. Exploring the ideas of freedom and its abstractness through Leila Aboulela’s: Minaret ( Novel) and bring it in the context of religion and religious practices.
5. Mahashweta Devi’s “ Behind the Bodice” in the collection of short stories Breast Giver to discuss on class, caste, gender intersections.
6. Gloria Anzaldua: Selections from Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza to discuss on identities in the borders and bring in ideas on intersex. This could be done also by bringing in references from literatures where intersex and monstrosity is equated.

The unit brings into discussion the various modes in which normativity is constructed by various institutions and in the process validates and normalizes few identities that exert power on identities that exist in margins.

1. Priscilla Franks’ photo series on “The fragile Complexities of  Masculinitiy” to discuss on social construction of masculinity - Hyper masculinity - toxic Masculinity  and Gaptooth:Documentary Series on Masculinity

https://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/dreamy-photo-series-explores-the-fragile-complexity-of-masculinity_us_56e849e1e4b0860f99da8b45?ec_carp=2784016983102329861

(Discuss in relation to “History of Masculinity”by R. W Connell)

2. Caste Study on Article 377 to bring in the notion of Unnatural Sex and the construction of normative
3. Call me by Your Name ( 2017, Luca Guadagnino) and Discussion of Eve Kosovsky Sedgwick’s, “The Beast in the Closet: James and The Writing of Homosexual Panic” to understand the idea of Homosexual panic and construction of Homophobia.
4. Foucault’s introduction to Herculine Barbin (Memoir) followed by the movie Boys Don’t Cry to discuss on assertion of  heteronormativity and Gender Roles. 
5. Kobena Mercer’s “Skin Head Sex Thing: Racial Difference and the Homoerotic Imaginary” to discuss the construction of racial stereotypes.
6. Case Study on Caste Based Murders in India to deliberate on Honour Killing or Caste Based Murders - (Discuss in relation to Kancha Ilaiah, Uma Chakravorty and Vasanth Kannabiran and Kalpana Kannabiran. )
7. Audre Lorde’s Cancer Journal excerptsto discuss on ability/ disability and construction of normative idea of body

The unit considers how the various identities helps in asserting and occupying different power position  in the society that largely impacts the mode in which one asserts basic human rights, the access to legal rights and visibility of the lived experiences.

1. Stephaine Newell “Postcolonial Masculinity and the Politics of Visibility” on Franz Fanon and visibility of oppression of black males.
2. Discussion on the intersection of race, class and migrants and ethnicity in the context of beauty parlour as a women’s space in relation to the picture and article by  Sarah A. Harvard.  The discussion should be brought in connection to India and Migrant Labourers in Metropolitan city refer to Kikon, Dolly amd Milan Kang.

https://mic.com/articles/177195/these-three-pictures-make-a-powerful-statement-about-race-and-power-among-women#.DQDAhevhR.

3. Bandit Queen (1994, Shekhar Kapur)  to discuss on the way intersection of dalit women’s position and the access to legal rights.
4. A Revathi’s  Life in Trans Activism ( Discussion on activism and experiences)
5. Case Study on Shabarimalaand the notion of purity and women
6. Movie on refugees Human Flow

The unit brings into discussion the impact of technological innovations on constructed identities, gender role in the world. It also deals with the mode in which these identities in the human world are negotiated in the virtual world.

1. Excerpts from Cyborg Manifesto
2. Claudia Castanida’s “Robotic Skin: The future of Touch?”in Thinking Through the  Skin 
3. Virtual Identities and Gender - discussion on Avatar, Warcraft and Virtual identities.  Refer to (http://feminartsy.com/virtual-reality-gender-identity-in-video-games)
4. Excerpts from Hayles, Katherine “How we Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics.”
5. Resident Evil 2012, Paul W. S. Anderson  / Orphan Black TV Series to discuss on the ideas on identities in the world of technological creation of powerful, higher order human clones.

1. Judith Butler’s Gender  Trouble
2. Crenshaw Kimberle’s  On Intersectionality.
3. The Help (2011, Tate Taylor)
   
4.  Leila Aboulela’s: Minaret
   
5. Mahashweta Devi’s “ Behind the Bodice” in the collection of short stories Breast Giver
6. Gloria Anzaldua: Selections from Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza

Ahmed, Leila. "Women and Gender in Islam Historical Roots of a Modern Debate." London : Yale University Press ,1992.

Crenshaw, Kimberle.“Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, Identity politics, and violence against women of colour”. Stanford Law Review. Vol 43, No 6. 1991. JSTOR.

Christina, Barbara. “Race for Theory” Feminist Studies. Vol. 14 No. 1 ,Feminist Studies Inc. Spring 1998, P 67-79.

Friedman,Susan Stanford.“Locational Feminism: Gender, Cultural Geographies and Geopolitical Literacy”. Mapping, Feminism and Cultural Geographies of Encounter. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998.

Gayathri Spivak “Three women’s Text and A critique of Imperialism” Race, Writing And Difference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.  JSTOR .

Halberstam, Judith and David L Hang. “What is Queer About Queer Studies Now”. Social Text Vol 23 .No 83-4.  California : Duke University Press. 2005.

Hayles, Katherine.  How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1999.

Halberstam, Judith. The Queer Art of Failure. California: Duke University Press, 2011.

Kannabiran, Vasanth and Kalpana Kannabiran.“Caste and gender: Understanding dynamics of power and violence. ” Economic and Political Weekly. Vol 26, No 37, 1991.

Kikon, D Waynding. “Indigenous Migrants in the Service Sector of Metropolitan India, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies”, 2017  P. 1 - 16. 

Kang, Milan . “Manicuring Race, Gender and Class: Service Intersection in New York City Korean Owned Nail Salons” Race, Gender and Class Journal. Vol 4 , No 3, 1996, JSTOR.143 to 154.

Kumar, Anant  “ Menstruation, Purity and Right to Worship” Economic and Political Weekly. Vol 41, No 9, 2016.

Lorde, Audre. Age, “Race and Sex : Women Redefining Difference” Sister Outsiders: Essays and Speech. Freedom CA: Crossing Press, 1984, 114-123.

Paul, Chul-ho Paik & Chung-Kon Shi “Playful gender swapping: user attitudes toward gender in MMORPG, avatar customisation, Digital Creativity,” 24:4, 2013 P,310-326. DOI: 10.1080/14626268.2013.767275.

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

Uma Chakravorty “Conceptualizing Brahmanical Patriarchy in Early India: Gender, Caste, Class and State.” Caste, Class, Gender. SAGE Publishing.

Evaluation

70% of the marks will be collected throughout the semester through oral quizzes, presentations, written tests, group assignments, and a 2hr written exam. The end semester exam will be for 30%.

Course Description

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. 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. Anthropologists are interested in all types of societies, and the whole range of human experiences. We study social norms, values, practices to understand the diversity and the unity - the unique that sets us apart and the commonality that binds us together.

This course provides an active introduction to the anthropological practice with a “hands-on” ethnographic exercise where students will be creating their account of a specific topic. By learning about the ethnographic methods, students will acquire the critical tools necessary for researching the social and cultural aspects of their society the anthropological way.

Course objectives

This course intends to provide its students with a sophisticated, hands-on perspective of the incredible cultural and social diversity in the world around us. The course will train students to view this diversity through an anthropological lens – its theories and methods. It will encourage students to systematically learn about contemporary societies and apply that knowledge to have an in-depth study of one aspect that matters to them.

1. Understand culture as a process of sense-making;

2. Learn about the historical development of Anthropology and the various schools of thought;

3. Recognise prominent anthropologists and their contribution to the subject;

4. Reflect on the key concepts and methods in anthropology, and its place in understanding our world;

5. Develop an in-depth understanding of one aspect of their contemporary culture through an ethnographic exercise.

Is studying other humans a valuable endeavour? What is Anthropology? What is Culture? The Historical Evolution of Anthropology and the Schools of Thought.

What is a "rite of passage"? Why do rituals become such an essential part of everyday human life, especially during times of change or transition? What role does religion play in human society? Exploring if Atheism, Veganism, or Minimalism can be considered a religion?

Marriage extends our circle of kin; the institution of family plays a pivotal role in sustaining these extended networks of kin. What kind of cultural values and norms honour kinship in that society? How do the institutions of kinship, marriage and family fulfil the particular society’s cultural needs?

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

What is ethnography? How to be an ethnographer in one’s own society? Exploring the process and methods of fieldwork; Cultural-relativism and other guiding ethical principles of anthropology; Taking Fieldnotes; Reflexivity.

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

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.

Bowie, F. (2006). The anthropology of religion. The Blackwell companion to the study of religion, 3-24.

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

Clifford, J., & Marcus, G. E. (Eds.). (1986). Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography. Univ of California Press.

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

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

Fife, W. (2005). Doing Fieldwork: Ethnographic methods for research in developing countries and beyond. Springer.

Fox, R. (1983). Kinship and marriage: An anthropological perspective (Vol. 50). cambridge university press.

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

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

Gupta, A., & Ferguson, J. (1992). Beyond “culture”: Space, identity, and the politics of difference. Cultural anthropology, 7(1), 6-23.

Hall, S. (2017). Cultural Studies 1983: A Theoretical History. Noida: Orient Blackswan Private Limited.

Jha, M. (1995). An Introduction to Anthropological Thought. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd.

Rapport, N. (2014). Social and cultural anthropology: The key concepts. Routledge.

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

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.

Walton, D. (2012). Doing Cultural Theory. Sage Publication.

Mid-Semester Examination (50 marks)

The students are expected to engage with the research on various aspects of urbanisation. For this, they will submit a 1500 words research proposal on one area that they intend to work on later for their end semester submission. The discussion paper will elaborate on their chosen area of research, the rationale for studying that, the theoretical framework they intend to use, brief methodology, and the expected timeframe. Students may incorporate this submission can be incorporated into their final ESE submission.

End-Semester Examination (50 marks)

For their end-semester, the students will develop a detailed report (3000 words) based on their in-depth understanding of one aspect of their contemporary culture through an ethnographic exercise.

Course Description

The aim of this course is to introduce students to the range of qualitative research methods associated with English and Cultural studies. As such, the course covers a spectrum of methodological tools, including discourse analysis, narrative inquiry, interviewing, ethnography, participant observation and oral history.

Objectives: On the completion of course, students will be able to:

·       Develop the ability for critical reading, annotation and analysis of theoretical texts

·       Articulate a feasible research inquiry including a set of central research questions

·       Map out the scholarly field(s) of relevance through a review of literature

·       Develop suitable methodological strategies specific to the project

·       Execute the research project, in a reflective manner, which makes the research process visible

·       Write a well-structured research paper following due academic conventions of citing etc.

·       Develop the ability to question, critique and give feedback to peers’ research projects.

·      Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the principles and the thinking behind the different research paradigms relevant to English and Cultural Studies

·      Demonstrate the ability to describe and discuss different methods and their areas of application, their strengths and weaknesses and their epistemological roots

·      Demonstrate the ability to formulate research questions, design a scientific study and choose relevant methods based on  specific research questions

·      Demonstrate the ability to reflect over methodological aspects that are related to different research paradigms, and to able see the relationship between the theoretical basis and the choice of research method

·      Demonstrate the ability to critically reflect over one’s own role and position as a researcher

·      Demonstrate the ability to execute a research project, including writing a well-structured paper following due academic conventions.

Introduction: Research Methods                                                 (20 hrs)

·      Research Methods in Literary Studies

·      Research Methods in Cultural Studies

Prescribed Texts: Gabrielle Griffith. Research Methods in English Studies. Edinburgh UP, 2005.

                              Michael Pickering. Research Methods for Cultural Studies. Edinburgh UP, 2008.

Unit II: Beginning Research                                                                    

·      Research Design; Research papers/articles; Dissertation and Thesis; Elements of a Research Paper; Primary and Secondary Sources; How to Use the Library and Online sources

·      How to write Abstracts ; Literature Review; Bibliographies: Annotated, Working and others ; How to prepare Works Cited and Bibliographies and in-text citations

·      Research Topic

·      Research Questions and Objectives

·      Research Problem /Thesis Statements / Hypothesis

·      Constructing Arguments

·      Using Validations

·      Using and engaging with theories/frameworks/methodologies

·      Constructing the Proposal / Introduction

·      Constructing the Chapters or Anlayses

·      Constructing Conclusions

·      Revising your paper

Prescribed Resource for Unit III and IV: Purdue OWL

Gabrielle Griffith. Research Methods in English Studies. Edinburgh UP, 2005.

Michael Pickering. Research Methods for Cultural Studies. Edinburgh UP, 2008.

Wayne C. Booth, Joseph M. Williams, and Gregory G. Colombedited The Craft of Research, 3rd Edition. University of Chicago Press, 2008.

Bailey, Stephen. Academic Writing: A Handbook for International Students. Routledge, 2006.

Bain, Carl. E, Jerome Beaty and J. Paul Hunter. The Norton Introduction to Literature. 6^th ed. W.W. Norton Company,  1995.

Griffith, Kelley. Writing Essays about Literature: A Guide and Style Sheet. 6^th ed. Harcourt College Publishers,  2002.

Harvey, Michael. The Nuts & Bolts of College Writing. Hackett Publishing, 2003.

Montgomery, Martin, et al. Ways of Reading: Advanced Reading Skills for Students of English Literature. Routledge,  2007.

Pirie, David B. How to Write Critical Essays: A Guide for Students of Literature. Routledge,  1985.

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

Woolf, Judith. Writing about Literature. Routledge,  2005.

30% End semester submission paper

Course Description: This course will be a mix of cultural studies, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, art and aesthetics focussing on the visual. It will provide a broad view of visual culture and problematize ways of seeing and being seen and introduce students to some key concepts and theories in visual culture and visual arts. It will engage with the visual as a site of power politics and resistance and with the politics of surveillance in the technologically visual societies we negotiate in.

Objectives:

The course aims to equip students to

●      Understand how visuals operate in contemporary society

●      Read visuals in everyday life

●      Engage and problematize ways of seeing and being seen

●      Critically analyze theories of visual culture and visual arts

●      Critically examine issues of race, ethnicity, gender, class, in visual culture 

This unit will help students understand the field of visual culture studies and the politics and operational dynamics of a ‘visual’ culture.

John Berger: Ways of Seeing

Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright: “Images, Power and Politics” from Practices of Looking

W J T Mitchell: “There are No Visual Media”

Jeanette Winterson: “Art Objects”

Nicholas Mirzoeff:  “The Right to Look”

Claire Pajaczkowaska: “Issues in Feminist Visual Culture”

This unit will equip students with the basic tools and theories on images, their constitution, production, dissemination and consumption. It will also enable the student to read images pertaining to various fields.

Daniel Chandler: Excerpts from Semiotics

Roland Barthes: “Rhetoric of the Image” from Image, Music, Text

Stuart Hall: Excerpts from Representations

Marita Sturken: “The Wall, the Screen and the Image”

Patricia Kubala: “‘You Will (Not) Be Able to Take Your Eyes Off It!’: Mass-Mediated Images and Politico-Ethical Reform in the Egyptian Islamic Revival”

This unit broadly recognises that we inhabit a visual technocracy and attempts to read the visual as mediated and enhanced by technology. It attempts to understand the politics of visual technocracy, both together and by themselves. This unit will make use of the methodologies of Unit I and II to understand the ‘everyday’ we inhabit.

Walter Benjamin: “The Work of Art in the Age of Technological Reproducibility”

Excerpts from Jean Baudrillard’s The Conspiracy of Art

Anne Friedberg, “The Mobilized and Virtual Gaze”

Ariella Azoulay, “The (In)Human Spatial Condition: A Visual Essay”

Sean Rintel: “Crisis Memes”

Tapati Guha Thakurta: A chapter from In the Name of the Goddess: The Durga Pujas of Contemporary Kolkata.

Field Visit: Three Malls in the City

This unit is crafted keeping in mind aspects of the cultural industries and how culture and art forms are appropriated and recuperated in existing societies. It recognises the visuality of the world and also that visual arts construct and constitute multiple and paradoxical realities and the overwhelmingly political nature of art.     

Leonard Diepeveen: “Art Museums as Organizers of Culture”

James Clifford: “On Collecting Art and Culture”

Sameena Siddiqui: “Civic Archives: Beedi Product Labels”

Jyotindra Jain: “Ganga Devi: Tradition and Expression in Madhubani Painting”

Christopher Pinney:”The Doubled History of Photography and Anthropology”

Kajri Jain: “Reconfiguring India's Nationalism, One Grand Statue at a Time”

Field Visit: NGMA and Chitrakala Parishad

Leonard Diepeveen: “Art Museums as Organizers of Culture”

James Clifford: “On Collecting Art and Culture”

Sameena Siddiqui: “Civic Archives: Beedi Product Labels”

Jyotindra Jain: “Ganga Devi: Tradition and Expression in Madhubani Painting”

Christopher Pinney:”The Doubled History of Photography and Anthropology”

Kajri Jain: “Reconfiguring India's Nationalism, One Grand Statue at a Time”

Walter Benjamin: “The Work of Art in the Age of Technological Reproducibility”

Excerpts from Jean Baudrillard’s The Conspiracy of Art

Anne Friedberg, “The Mobilized and Virtual Gaze”

Ariella Azoulay, “The (In)Human Spatial Condition: A Visual Essay”

Sean Rintel: “Crisis Memes”

Tapati Guha Thakurta: A chapter from In the Name of the Goddess: The Durga Pujas of Contemporary Kolkata.

Daniel Chandler: Excerpts from Semiotics

Roland Barthes: “Rhetoric of the Image” from Image, Music, Text

Stuart Hall: Excerpts from Representations

Marita Sturken: “The Wall, the Screen and the Image”

Patricia Kubala: “‘You Will (Not) Be Able to Take Your Eyes Off It!’: Mass-Mediated Images and Politico-Ethical Reform in the Egyptian Islamic Revival”

John Berger: Ways of Seeing

Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright: “Images, Power and Politics” from Practices of Looking

W J T Mitchell: “There are No Visual Media”

Jeanette Winterson: “Art Objects”

Nicholas Mirzoeff:  “The Right to Look”

Claire Pajaczkowaska: “Issues in Feminist Visual Culture”

Barker, Chris.Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice 3rd ed. Sage, 2008.

Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Vintage, 1993.

Carson, Fiona and Claire Pajaczkowska, editors. Feminist Visual Culture. Edinburg UP, 2000.

During, Simon. The Cultural Studies Reader. Routledge, 2007.

Fuery, Patrick and Kelli Fuery. Visual Cultures and Critical Theory. Arnold, 2003.

Gruber, Christiane and Sune Haugbole, editors. Visual Culture in the Modern Middle East : Rhetoric of the Image. Indiana UP, 2013.

Martin, Fran, ed. Interpreting Everyday Culture. Arnold Publishers, 2003.

Mirzoeff, Nicholas. Introduction to Visual Culture. Routledge, 2009.

---. The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality. Duke University, Press, 2011.

Pinney, Christopher. Photography and Anthropology. Reaktion Books, 2011.

---. ‘Photos of the Gods’: The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India. Reaktion Books, 2004.

Pinney, Christopher and Nicholas Thomas, editors. Beyond Aesthetics: Art and the Technologies of Enchantment. Berg, 2001.

Rampley, Matthew, ed. Exploring Visual Culture: Definitions, Concepts, Contexts. Edinburgh UP, 2005.

Smith, Marquard. Visual Culture Studies. Sage Publications, 2008.

Thakurta, Tapati Guha,  In the Name of the Goddess: The Durga Pujas of Contemporary Kolkata. Primus Books, 2015.

70% of the marks will be collected throughout the semester through oral quizzes, presentations, written tests, group assignments, and a 2hr written exam. The end semester exam will be for 30%.

CIA - Evaluation Pattern

Mid Semester Examination (Submission)

End Semester Examination

This course engages students with dramatic traditions and texts. Focusing on the aesthetic and the political dimensions of the art form, 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 cultural studies.

Objectives: The objective of this paper is to attempt to help students:

·       Read and understand works of drama over the ages

·       Engage with the notion of culture as performance

·       Examine the broader contexts within which drama is written and performed

Ability to gain basic familiarity with the elements of theatre other than the script

Acquire a basic understanding of selected theatre histories, movements and forms

1.     Erika Fichte, “Culture and Performance”

2.     Fortier, Chapter on Theatre and Semiotics

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

Martin Esslin, “The Theatre of the Absurd”

Harold Pinter, The Birthday Party

1.     Fortier, Chapters on Gender, Race, and Post-structuralism

Lorraine Hansberry, What Use Are Flowers/ A Raisin in the Sun

1.     Mahesh Dattani, Dance Like a Man

Erika Fichte, “Culture and Performance”

 Fortier, Chapter on Theatre and Semiotics

Martin Esslin, “The Theatre of the Absurd”

Harold Pinter, The Birthday Party

Fortier, Chapters on Gender, Race, and Post-structuralism

 Lorraine Hansberry, What Use Are Flowers/ A Raisin in the Sun

Mahesh Dattani, Dance Like a Man

Artaud, Antonin. “The Theater of Cruelty.” Selected Writings: Antonin Artaud. Ed. Susan Sontag. Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1976. 242-251.

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

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

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

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

Dillon, Janette. Cambridge Introduction to Early English Theatre.  Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Else, Gerard. (Trans.) Aristotle: ThePoetics.University of Michigan, 1967.

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

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

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

70% of the marks will be collected throughout the semester through oral quizzes, presentations, written tests, group assignments, and a 2hr written exam. The end semester exam will be for 30%.

Course Description:

The influence and presence of the past is felt everywhere and every day in our lives. Movies, newspapers or the internet bombard us and expose us to the past – both familiar and unfamiliar. However, the barrage of information and the forces of globalization have led to increasing questions on the relevance and the value of the past – indeed a denial even. And what these vestiges of the past, if not material culture? Material Culture is less a subject of study and more a way of encountering the world. We are social beings, but our social relations are mediatedand activatedby and through things. We use objects to build our identities, our relationships and our means of survival and pleasure. This course will engage the students with the myriad ways in which the past, though no longer present – is a presence in our lives today – through Material Culture. If we have to investigate human past and understand history – we cannot hope to even try without grasping material culture. 

It will introduce the students to think materially, relate to their memories of their own past and make them aware of the multiple perspectives which will enable them to read, write and reflect on the past; or in other words, make history. Hence, we will examine anthropological approaches to material culture and consumption: the practices, relations, and rituals through which things -- from food and clothing to shell valuables or money – become meaningful. Readings will include classic works of anthropology and social theory as well as recent ethnographies of western capitalist, colonial/postcolonial and postsocialist settings. Some questions we will explore include: how is the value or significance of objects created in different social contexts, from ritualized gift exchange to shopping malls? Should we understand commodities and other items of material culture as fulfillments of human needs, or perhaps as symbols that ‘say’ something about their users (and if so, what)? What kind of light can they shed on matters of social structure and inequality, national or class identity, values and morality, or processes of change at particular historical moments?

Course Objectives:

·      To familiarize the students with the idea that they must be aware that objects themselves are information-bearing entities. As such, they pose many parallel, yet some unique, qualities with respect to the text and data usually addressed by information science.

·      To address non-textual objects (images, artifacts, etc.) as information-bearing entities subject to many of the same classification and retrieval practices applied to textual information--with a number of specific caveats.

·      To evaluate how the choices of tags, labels, and classification criteria affect both information practices and user experiences.

·      To understand how a study of objects/material culture and their arrangement/description is more ‘physical’ than that of texts, as their presentation creates a very spatially-based constructed environment.

·      To analyze how descriptive and classification strategies affect both viewers’ interpretations and professionals’ information practices.

·      How myriad different professionals and academics – from museologists and art historians to librarians and social scientists – have addressed questions of interpreting material objects.

·      To address the emerging tension between traditional museological professionals associated with ‘hard’ artifacts and advocates of virtual museums – and evaluate how issues of representation and description shift in the context of ‘going virtual’ in museums.

·      To familiarize the students with the origins of traditional institutions that build and maintain collections of objects (libraries, archives, and museums) and how they are adapting to fundamental social and technological change at the beginning of the 21st century

·       To gain skills required for humanities and social sciences research at the standard of a postgraduate degree, particularly skills to conduct research using qualitative approaches.

·       To understand what material culture is, and its origin as an area of study in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

·       To develop skills in interdisciplinary thinking and the ability to apply relevant theoretical ideas to examine material culture.

·       Discernment of the importance of materiality and making in the production and shaping of culture.

·       Understanding of the complex and multiple ways that objects and people relate in both the past and in the present using trans-disciplinary perspectives.

·       To develop the ability to interpret and otherwise make meaning from objects using methods and theories from multiple disciplines including but not limited to art history, archaeology, anthropology, design, folklore/folklife studies, geography, history, literary studies, landscape history, and science studies.

Students will learn to critically engage with representations of the past in the present through material remains, which will enable them to analyze and use evidence in interrogating historical accounts, and be able to critically reflect and engage with the interface between the past and the present, fostering a healthy appreciation for history and its imprint on our present world.

a)    Mind in Matter – Theories of Things, History from Things

b)   Why We Need Things: Interrogating Evidence and Material Culture Studies

c)    Why Collect Things: Archaeology, Anthropology and Material Culture Studies

a)    Voice and the Subject: Consumerism in a Material World – Commodifying Things and the Politics of Display.

b)   Narratives and Counter-narratives: Material Empires and the Other’s Object.

c)    Colonizing Knowledges: Racializing the ‘Other’; Latent and Manifest Orientalism.

a)    Engendering Things: Sexism, Patriarchy, and the codification of material cultural practice

b)   Contemptible Collectibles:Materialism; Museums and Collections

c)    The Public Life of Things: Politicization of Material Culture.

a)    Memory and the Production of Self – Bodily Adornment, Theorizing Taste and the Class Experience

b)   Comedy of Values: Advertising and Consumer Society – Objects Recontextualized; The Dialectics of Shopping

c)    The Unequal Lives of Persons and Things: Waste and Want; Things as Extensions of Persons. 

The Death of Things: Dilemmas of Classification and the Problem of Agency and Ownership

·     Chakrabarti, D K. 2006. The Oxford Companion to Indian Archaeology: The Archaeological Foundations of Ancient India, Stone Age to AD 13th century, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

·     Gerritsen, Anne and Giorgio Riello (eds.). 2015. Writing Material Culture History, London: Bloomsbury.

·     Hurcombe, Linda M. 2007. Archaeological Artefacts as Material, New York: Routledge.

·     Jones, Andrew (ed.) 2007. Memory and Material Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.

·     Schiffer, Michael B. and Richard A. Gould (eds.). 1981. Modern Material Culture: The Archaeology of Us, New York: Academic Press.

·     Thapar, Romila. 2005. Somanatha: The Many Voices of History, New Delhi: Verso.

·     Thapar, Romila. 2014. The Past as Present: Forging Contemporary Identities Through History, New Delhi: Aleph. 

·     Tilley, Christopher et.al. (eds.). 2006. Handbook of Material Culture, London:  Sage Publications.

·     Varma, Supriya. 2003. Ayodhya: Archaeology, History and Politics. Ababhash, July-Sept., Kolkata, pp. 53-63.

·     Woodward, Ian. 2007. Understanding Material Culture, Los Angeles:  Sage Publications.

·       Batchelor, Jennie and Cora Kaplan. 2007. Women and Material Culture, 1660–1830, London: Palgrave Macmillan.

·       Fritsch, Juliette. 2004. Museum Gallery Interpretation and Material Culture, New York and London: Routledge.

·       Gosden, Chris and Chantal Knowles (eds.) 2001. Collecting Colonialism: Material Culture and Colonial Change, Oxford, New York: Berg.

·       Hallam, Elizabeth and Jenny Hockey. 2001. Death, Memory and Material Culture, Oxford and New York: Berg.

·      Jamir, T and M Hazarika (eds). 2014. Fifty years after Daojali-Hading: Emerging Perspectives in the Archaeology of Northeast India, New Delhi: Research India Press. 

·       Jones, Andrew. 2007. Memory and Material Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.

·      Knappett, Carl, 2009. An Archaeology of Interaction: Network Perspectives on Material Culture and Society, Oxford: Berg.

·      Korasick, John E. 2005. Collecting Africa: African Material Culture Displays and the American Image of Africa, 1885-1930,PhD Thesis submitted to Saint Louis University.

·      Miller, Daniel. 2001. Anthropology and the Individual: A Material Culture Perspective, Routledge.

·      Pratap, A. 2014. Indian Archaeology and Postmodernism: Fashion or Necessity? Ancient Asia, 5: 2, pp. 1-4.

·      Ratnagar, S. 2016. Harappan Archaeology: Early State Perspectives, Delhi: Primus. 

·      Riggs, E P and Z R Jat. 2016. The 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan: Migration, Material Landscapes, and the Making of Nations, Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 3 (2). 

·       Scapp, Ron and Seitz, Brian (eds.). 2013. Living with Class: Philosophical Reflections on Identity and Material Culture, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

·      Schug, Gwen Robbins & S. R. Walimbe (eds). 2016. A Companion to South Asia in the Past, New Delhi: Wiley Blackwell. 

·      Simte, Lamminthang L. 2015. Rocks, Relics and Paths: Tracing Places in the Early Historic Landscapes of the Southern Vindhyas.Unpublished PhD Thesis submitted to Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

·      Simte, Lamminthang L. and Prerana Srimaal. 2018. Timeless Aesthetics? Rock art Studies as Sites of Contestation' in the Southern Vindhyan Landscape. South Asian Cultural Studies (SACS) Journal, Special Issue on Imaging South Asian culture in non-English: Reconstructing popular textual and visual representations, pp. 34-43.

·      Srimaal, Prerana and Lamminthang L. Simte. 2017. Values, Valorisation, and the 'Package': The Conservation of Early Buddhist Heritage-Sites of Central India, in, Sanjay Garg (ed.), Archaeology of Buddhism: Recent Discoveries in South Asia, New Delhi: Manohar, pp. 501-514.

·       Staniforth, Mark. 2002. Material Culture and Consumer Society: Dependent Colonies in Colonial Australia, New York: Springer-Science+Business Media.

·       Stocking, George W. Jr. 1985. Objects and Others: Essays on Museums and Material Culture. London: The University of Wisconsin Press.

·       Swann, Marjorie. 2001. Curiosities and Texts: The Culture of Collecting in Early Modern England, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

·       Turnau, Irena. 1991. History of Dress in Central and Eastern Europe from Sixteenth to the eighteenth Century. Warszawa.

·       Urgo, Joseph R., and Ann J. Abadie (eds.) 2007. Faulkner and Material Culture, Jackson: University of Mississippi Press.

·      Varma, Supriya and Jaya Menon. 2017. Households at Work: An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Variation in Ceramic Production in North India, Ethnoarchaeology, 9:1, pp. 3-29, DOI: 10.1080/19442890.2017.1278862. 

Weatherill, Lorna. 1998. Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in Britain 1660–1760, London and New York: Routledge.

Mid Semester Examination

End Semester Examination

 Course Description

 Arendt in her thought revives the Aristotelian idea of politics as speech. For Arendt the Political cannot be exhausted in any ideology or a political regime, as the idea of the political rests on speech, and the task should be to extract the political from all ideological domestication.  The extraction of the political in other words implies identifying those speech-situations which adds a dimension in our lives which disturbs the various constellations of society like Family, State, and Religion, which we have come to accept as something essential. Arendt’s thought pushes us to identify these speech-situations, the possibilities emanating from it, which are dispersed in everyday life. But from where and how exactly we will find those speech-situations? Can we even make a provisional assessment of where these dispersed speech-situations might be located? Does Arendt’s thought help us in this regard? Arendt’s thought only pushes us to find those speech-situations, it pushes us to experience realities, because speech-situations can never be restricted to a thought or a philosophy it can only be found in an untheorized plural world which every time claims us  anew. This was the reason why Arendt insisted on being identified as a Political Philosopher and not as a Philosopher, because Political Philosophy always happens in plurality whereas Philosophy is always singular. Arendt’s thought reaches literature because what is literature if not a foray in human plurality. Political for Arendt lies in the newer possibilities which every story contains within itself. The course would be an attempt to transmit to students how Arendt’s thought culminates not in her texts or spoken word but in different territories- Stories.

Course Objectives

·         To further enrich the vocabulary of Politics.

·         To liberate the study of Politics, Political thinking from all instrumental conception

·  

Students would be able to learn that meaning of Politics is not there in any constitutional or legal text, but in our social context.

In this Unit Arendt’s work on totalitarianism would be discussed, especially the idea of Arendt that totalitarianism is just not a transient Governmental set-up, but a possibility which lurks in the modern condition itself.

In this Unit Arendt’s idea of how Political should not be seen as a mere means which will cease once an ideal State is reached, but something which is an end itself. The Unit would also discuss the Arendtian revival of Aristotle’s idea of political as speech.

In this section Arendt’s idea of Banality would be explored. The emphasis would be to highlight how banality which is a state of thoughtlessness culminates in  a desire for totalitarian Government. This section would also draw from the contemporary fascination with the right wing Government.

In this section the possibilities of considering Political as Speech would be explored. The emphasis would be to show how possibilities in speech would expand the democratic sphere.

Why Arendt would love  reading Haruki Murakami and Orhan Pamuk?

This section would analyze the political possibilities which novel creates simply by writing another story.

Arendt Hannah,  On Revolution , Penguin Books, (England), 2006.

Arendt, Hannah,  Between Past and Future , Penguin Classics, (New York), 2006.

Arendt, Hannah,  Responsibility and Judgment , Schocken Books, (New York), 2003.

Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition , The University of Chicago Press, (Chicago), 1998.

Arendt, Hannah, The Life of the Mind , Harcourt.Inc, (USA), 1978.

Arendt, Hannah,   The Origins of Totalitarianism , Schocken Books, (New York), 2004

Kadare, Ismail,  The Concert , Vintage Books, (London), 2013

James, King, The Bible , Penguin Classics, (England), 2006.

Kadare, Ismail,  The Concert , Vintage Books, (London), 2013.

Kristeva, Julia,  Hannah Arendt :  Life Is A Narrative , University of Toronto Press, (Toronto), 2001.

Arendt Hannah,  On Revolution , Penguin Books, (England), 2006.

Arendt, Hannah,  Between Past and Future , Penguin Classics, (New York), 2006.

Arendt, Hannah,  Responsibility and Judgment , Schocken Books, (New York), 2003.

Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition , The University of Chicago Press, (Chicago), 1998.

Arendt, Hannah, The Life of the Mind , Harcourt.Inc, (USA), 1978.

Arendt, Hannah,   The Origins of Totalitarianism , Schocken Books, (New York), 2004

Kadare, Ismail,  The Concert , Vintage Books, (London), 2013

James, King, The Bible , Penguin Classics, (England), 2006.

Kadare, Ismail,  The Concert , Vintage Books, (London), 2013.

Kristeva, Julia,  Hannah Arendt :  Life Is A Narrative , University of Toronto Press, (Toronto), 2001.

Lacan, Jacques,  Ecritis , Tavistock Publications, (USA), 1977.

Lefort, Claude,  Democracy and Political Theory , Polity Press,  (Cambridge), 1998.

Nietzsche, Friedrich,  The Gay Science , Vintage Books, (New York), 1974.

Orwell, George,  1984 , Penguin Classics , (London), 2000.

Schmitt, Carl,  Legality and Legitimacy , Duke University Press, (USA), 20000

Schmitt, Carl, Political Theology :  Four Chapters on the Concept Of Sovereignty , The  University of Chicago Press, (Chicago), 2005.

Schmitt, Carl,  The Concept of the Political , The University of Chicago Press, (Chicago),  2007.

Villa R. Dana,  Arendt and Heidegger :  The Fate  of the Political , Princeton University Press,  (Princeton), 1996.

Wiekart, Richard,  Hitler’s Ethic , Palgrave Macmillan, (USA), 2009.

Zaffon Ruiz, Carlos,  The Shadow of the Wind , Phoenix Paperback, (Great Britain), 2005.

Zizek, Slavoj, Tarrying with the Negative , Duke University Press, (Durham), 1993.

Zizek, Slavoj, The Plague of Fantasies , Verso, (London), 2008.

Zizek, Slavoj,  The Sublime Object of Ideology , Navayana Publishing, (New Delhi), 2008.

Zizek, Slavoj, The Ticklish Subject , Verso, (London), 2000

Pamuk, Orhan, The Museum of Innocence, Faber, (USA), 2010.

Pamuk, Orhan, My name is Red, Faber, (USA), 2011.

Pamuk, Orhan, Snow, Faber, (USA), 2004.

Yanagihara, Hanya, A Little Life, Picador, (USA), 2016.

Yanagihara, Hanya, The People in the Trees, Atlantic, (USA), 2015.

Hua, Yu, Chronicle of a Blood Merchant, Anchor, (England), 2004.

Hua Yu, Brothers, Picador, (USA), 2010.

Murakami, Haruki, 1Q84, RHUK, (USA), 2012.

Murakami, Haruki, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, RHUK, (USA), 1999.

End Semester Examination

Description

The Mentoring and Practice Teaching Programme developed for the students of MA English with Cultural Studies gives learners hands-on experience in teaching and research writing. Each student is assigned a mentor from the faculty of English Studies, with whom the student will receive training in teaching selected undergraduate classes as well as guidance on conducting research and publishing academic papers. The learners are expected to deliver the teaching modules created as a part of the course titled Curriculum, Pedagogy, and, Assessment in the respective classes that would be assigned to them as a part of this course.

Objectives: The programme is aimed at enabling postgraduate students to:

1. Engage in practice teaching for skill-based as well as discipline-specific undergraduate courses.
2. Work with a faculty member on a research project that might culminate in a joint publication by the student and professor during the student’s second year.

Learning Outcomes: By the end of the course, learners are expected to:

1.  Gain a first-hand experience in conducting classes with undergraduate students. (Teaching Skills)
2.  Receive a substantial amount of training in conducting research. (Research Skills)
3.  Learn how to write papers for publication. (Academic Writing Skills)
4.  Strive towards publishing a research paper co-authored with the faculty-mentor.

 Schedule and requirements: Students will conduct a minimum of four hours of practice teaching during the first year.

• Depending on the discretion of the faculty mentor, students may begin with one or two hours of teaching the skill-based teaching modules which they co-create with their mentors. If the mentor deems fit, they may then progress to core papers for the English Honours and EPH programmes.
• The student will design a detailed lesson-plans for conducting the skill-based teaching modules created by them.
• Mentors and students will identify a common area of research that is of interest to both.
• Students may assist mentors on existing research projects such as MRPs, monographs, PhD research, etc.
• A new research project may also be conceptualised by the team based on mutual areas of interest.
• A joint publication by the mentor and ward/s ideally to be completed before the end of the fourth semester.

• Conduct classes in English literature, language and cultural studies in classes belonging to different disciplines

• Develop the capability of transacting their subject knowledge to students belonging to different disciplines

• Exhibit an understanding of researching for various classes and subjects

• Create lesson plans and understand what the objectives and outcomes of a particular

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. Under the guidance of their mentors, the learners will develop the lesson plan which will elaborately state the module details, module objectives and outcomes, time of delivery, methodology of delivery, assessment patterns, 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 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 analyze their classroom interactions with the help of their respective mentors.

The learners are expected to seek the help of their mentors in identifying various under-researched areas in the field of Cultural Studies and conduct exhaustive readings about the same. The mentors are expected to train the learners based on their area of interest about the various research methods that can be implemented to conduct the study successfully. The learners can write proposal based on their readings which will help them in their projects when they graduate to their final semester.

Ball, D. Thames, M., Phelps, G. Content Knowledge for Teaching: What Makes It Special? Journal of Teacher Education 59(5) 389-407, 2008.

Berger, R. An Ethic of Excellence: Building a Culture of Craftsmanship with Students. Heinemann, 2003.

Coe, R., Aloisi, C, Higgins, S., Elliot Major, L.  What makes great teaching? Review of the Underpinning Research. Sutton Trust, 2014.

Ball, D. Thames, M., Phelps, G. Content Knowledge for Teaching: What Makes It Special? Journal of Teacher Education 59(5) 389-407, 2008.

Berger, R. An Ethic of Excellence: Building a Culture of Craftsmanship with Students. Heinemann, 2003.

Coe, R., Aloisi, C, Higgins, S., Elliot Major, L.  What makes great teaching? Review of the Underpinning Research. Sutton Trust, 2014.

Grossman, P., Compton, C., Igra, D., Ronfeldt, M., Shahan, E., Williamson, P.  Teaching

Practice: A Cross-Professional Perspective. Teachers College Record (111, 9), 2055–2100, 2009.

Powell, Stuart. "Special teaching in higher education." Special Teaching in Higher Education. Routledge, 2003. 12-18.

Thody, Angela. Writing and presenting research. Sage, 2006.

Willingham, D. Why don’t students like school? A cognitive scientist answers questions about how the mind works and what it means for the classroom. Jossey-Bass, 2009.

This course is a practical course, with marks collected at the end of the course/semester for a total of 50. Students would be assessed consistently by their academic mentors for 25 marks. At the end of the course, each student is to submit a 2000-word report on their experience of teaching practice. This report would be assessed with a viva-voce.

The Skill Development course is a booster course to help students plug gaps in their knowledge and skills. It will consist of masterclasses, writing labs, discussions, seminars and guest lectures. The course is designed to enable students to equip themselves with skills over and above their knowledge-domain skills. 

2. Create a portfolio of written work

3. Apply skills in their academic and professional contexts through their Industry exposure and through masterclasses and field visits

Students will be introduced to diffeent conceptual ideas related to the discipline, as well as parctical activities to improve their reading, writing and presentation skills. A lot of emphasis will be placed on individual written work, with regular sharing of texts in progress along with peer feedback. The sessions include:

Skill Development/ Masterclass (not in order of sequence)

1.     Introduction to Cultural Studies 

2.     Culture and Economy

3.     Culture and Law

4.     Gender and Caste – Roots of the struggle

5.     Gender & Caste – discourse and representation

6.     Disability Studies

7.     Reading Violence

8.     Reading Disease

9.     Postfeminism&Postgenderism –

10.  Feminism & Postcolonial theory

11.  Queer Theory

12.  Ecocriticism

* Units are subject to being changed based on the availability of resource persons.

As mythologies continue to shape and define the world around, it is imperative to discern what makes myths meaningful expressions across cultures. The course attempts to introduce students to the historical as well as the contemporary approaches to understanding mythologies, with particular focus on the oeuvre of Indian myths. What makes myths windows to various cultures? What gives Indian mythology its peculiar character? How have contemporary attempts at retelling myths transformed the Indian cultural tapestry? The course will investigate some of these areas in order to understand what has contributed to the preservation and dissemination of myths across Indian history. The course will also look at the role of performative art forms in retelling and revisioning of Indian myths. The course, therefore, is aimed at encouraging an interdisciplinary scholarship.

This course aims to help students:

·      Understand the cultural and historical significance of myths

·      Identify universal mythic patterns

·      Develop a cross-cultural perspective on myths

·      Understand the fundamentals of Mnemoculture

·      Recognise the role of performative art within mythology

The unit seeks to familiarise students with the anthropology of myths and establish the connect between myths, rituals, symbols. The attempt is to elucidate the cross-cultural overlaps that myths bring to the fore.

Sir James George Frazer: The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion

John Fiske: Myths and Myth-Makers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology

Mircea Eliade: Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return

Amar Chitra Katha

Thomas Bulfinch: Bulfinch’s Mythology

Hesiod:“Theogony”

Aesops Fables

Thomas Malory: Le Morte d’Arthur

Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales

The focus of this unit is on contemporary Indian mythical narratives. The texts under this unit will help locate the manner in which myths have been reinterpreted and retold by contemporary authors to offer alternate, if not multiple readings of such narratives. The unit will also bring to the fore the difference between ‘myth’ and ‘history.’By exclusively focusing on the treatment of myths in India, the unit is going to delve into the process of decoding myths and the ways in which popular imagination helps to reinterpret myths and keep them alive.

 Amish Tripathi – Shiva Trilogy

Chithra Devakaruni: Palace of Illusions

Devdutt Patnaik: Shikhandi

Kavita Kané: Menaka’s Choice

Shivaji Sawant: Mrityunjaya- The Death Conquerer

Carole, Satyamurti. Mahabharata - a Modern Retelling.

Ajay K. Rao. Re-Figuring the Rāmāyaṇa as Theology: A History of Reception in Premodern India.

This unit will introduce students to the concept of ‘mnemocultures’ or the cultures of memory and how through the enactment or performance of memories, they help in the transmission of mythologies, traditions, and cultural beliefs.

 D. Venkat Rao: Cultures of Memory in South Asia: Orality, Literacy and the Problem of Inheritance

Donald H. Mills: The Hero and the Sea: Patterns of Chaos in Ancient Myth

This unit will focus on the role of performative art forms in the dissemination of myths. The focus will also be on the manner in which myths pervade contemporary living through popular cultural mediums or digital platforms.

 Possible Art Forms to be considered include:

Kavad

Thiruvathira

Mata Ni Pachedi

Koodiyattam

Poorakali

Villu Paatu

Sarpam Thullal

Chaau Dance

Yakshagana

Gondha

Puppetry shows

Ramleela Performances

Bakhtin, Michail Michajlovič. Rabelais and His World. Indiana University Press, 2009.

Brodbeck, Simon, and Brian Black. Gender and Narrative in the Mahābhārata. Routledge, 2007.

Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane the Nature of Religion. Harcourt Brace, 1959.

Ellwood, Robert S. The Politics of Myth: a Study of C.G. Jung, Mircea Eliade, and Joseph Campbell. State University of New York Press, 1999.

Grimal, Pierre, et al. A Concise Dictionary of Classical Mythology. Basil Blackwell, 1994.

Hiltebeitel, Alf. Rethinking the Mahābhārata: a Reader's Guide to the Education of the Dharma King. Oxford University Press, 2002.

Jensen, Jeppe Sinding. Myths and Mythologies A Reader. Taylor and Francis, 2014.

Morford, Mark P. O., et al. Classical Mythology. Oxford University Press, 2019.

Ramanujan, A. K. “Telling Tales.” Daedalus118:04. 1989. 

Ramen, Fred. Indian Mythology. Rosen Central, 2008.

Roland, Barthes. Mythologies. Points, 2014.

Soni, V & Thapar, R. (2017). Mythology, Science and Society. The Hindu. Retrieved from:

https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/mythology-science-and-society/article6571525.ece

Wilford, J.N.(2000). Greek Myths: Not Necessarily Mythical. The New York Times. Retrieved from : https://www.nytimes.com/2000/07/04/science/greek-myths-not-necessarily-mythical.html

Thomas Bulfinch: Bulfinch’s Mythology

Mid Semester Examination

End Semester Examination

This course introduces students to key questions in the context of postcolonial literary and cultural contexts. One of the significant aims of the course is the ‘revisit’ many of the postcolonial questions that have been in circulation in academic discourses. In effect, the course also attempts to position the contemporaneity of several postcolonial questions in the midst of a changing sociocultural landscape. The course will provide an overview of postcoloniality and its futures, as it were, and help students develop critical trajectories to work with. Students are expected to engage with any one domain from the last unit and also conduct a student-led seminar around the same.

• Delineate the impact of the postcolonial question in literary and cultural studies

• Construct critical and anaytical tools to engage with cultural and literary texts  in the postcolonial context

• Create and position questions and debates pertaining to questions and discourses of postcoloniality

• Produce knowledge by use of postcolonial concepts and interventions in various contexts

This module includes key issues in Postcolonial studies as being framed in today’s context. Language, identity and the postcolonial voice would be introduced here as key ideas.

·         Stephen Selmon “The Scramble for Postcolonialism”

·         Bill Ashcroft “The Future of English”

·         Diana Brydon “The White Innuit Speaks”

·         Selections from Fanon Wretched of the Earth

Reading, Writing, and Postcolonial Studies: This module engages with some of the key issues around reading and writing postcolonial concerns. The unit includes a selection of prose and fiction that will help student frame some of the postcolonial questions in today’s contexts.

·         Kwame Anthony Appiah “Cosmopolitan Reading”

·         Chinua Achebe “Today: the Balance of Stories”

·         Coetzee Foe/ Waiting for the Barbarians

·         V. S. Naipaul The Middle Passage/

·         Selections from Age of Anger by Pankaj Mishra

Reading India and Postcoloniality: This unit will provide a macro understanding of some of the issues surrounding globalisation, capitalism and postcoloniality in and through imagining India.

·         A. K. Ramanujan “Is there an Indian Way of Thinking?”

·         M. T. Ansari “Re-figuring the Fanatic: Malabar 1836-1922”

·         From Sanal Mohan’s Modernity of Slavery: Struggles Against Caste Inequality in Colonial Kerala

·         Select lectures from What the Nation Really Needs to Know: The JNU Nationalism Lectures

·         Select records about erstwhile Cantonment (Bangalore) through a visit to UTC Library