MA (CSS) Eng2015

INSTITUTE OF ENGLISH
Syllabus
MA (CSS) English Language and Literature
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Syllabus
Core Courses
Semester I
ENG 511 Chaucer to the Augustan Age

ENG 512 Shakespeare
ENG 513 Romantics and Victorians
Semester II
ENG 521 The Twentieth Century

ENG 522 American Literature
ENG 523 Literary Theory I
Semester III
ENG 531 Indian writing In English

ENG 532 Contemporary Literature in English
ENG 533 Literary Theory II
Semester IV
ENG 541 Linguistics

ENG 542 English language Teaching
ENG 543 Cultural Studies
ENG 544 Keralam : History, Culture and Literature.
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Institute of English, University of Kerala
MA (CSS) Degree Course in English Language and Literature
ENG 511 – Chaucer to the Augustan Age

Semester: One Credits: Four Instructors: Dr. Maya Dutt
Vishnu Narayanan
Aim of the course
The course aims at providing a comprehensive introduction to English Literature starting

from the Age of Chaucer to the Neoclassical Age with reference to the origin and
development of English Poetry, Drama, Prose and fiction. The twentieth century critical
responses to the writings of the age are also given importance in the course.
Course Description
1. Socio-political background of Chaucer’s Age

2. The Renaissance in England
3. Ballads and sonnets – Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney, Spenser
4. Metaphysical poetry – Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, Marvell
5. The development of prose – More, Sidney, Bacon, Browne, Isaac Walton, Thomas
Hobbes
6. The rise of English drama – Miracle plays, Morality plays, Interlude,Revenge tragedy.
7. University Wits – Ben Jonson – Comedy of Humours
8. Jacobean drama – Webster, Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, Dekker
9. The Reformation
10. Milton – life and works
11. The Restoration
12. The poetry of Dryden and Pope
13. Transitional poetry – Gray, Collins, Cowper, Burns
14. The rise of modern prose – criticism, satire, diaries – Milton, Dryden, Swift, Locke,
Pepys, Addison, Steele and Dr. Johnson.
15. Restoration drama – Comedy of Manners – Heroic drama – anti-sentimental comedy –
Wycherley, Congreve, Goldsmith, Sheridan
16. The rise of the novel – Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Smollett
Prescribed Books
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a Poetry:
1. Chaucer: “The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales”: lines 1-41, The Wife of
Bath (lines 455-486, The Summoner (lines 641-688)(Nevil Coghill’s version)
2. Spenser: “Epithalamion”
3. Donne: “The Canonization”.
4. Marvell: “To His Coy Mistress”.
5. Ballad: “Sir Patrick Spens”
6. Milton: Paradise Lost Book I– The Stygian Council
7. Dryden: “Absalom and Achitophel” – the portraits of Achitophel and Zimri
8. Blake: “The Sick Rose” & “The Tiger”
9. Gray: “An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”
b. Prose:
1. Bacon: “Of Discourse”
2. Sidney: An Apology for Poetry. Ed. V. Chatterjee. Orient Blackswan.
3. Donne: Meditation 17 (from “Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions”,
Norton Anthology)
4. Milton: Areopagetica
5. Dr. Johnson: “Preface to Shakespeare”
6. Blake: “Proverbs of Hell” (Norton Anthology)
c. Fiction:
1. Defoe: Robinson Crusoe
2. Sterne: Tristram Shandy
d. Drama:
1. Kyd: The Spanish Tragedy
2. Marlowe: Dr. Faustus
3. Congreve: The Way of the World
4. Sheridan: The Rivals
e. Critical Responses:
1. T. S. Eliot: “The Metaphysical Poets”
2. Terry Eagleton: The Function of Criticism: 9–27.
Assessment
Assignment 1
Students are required to make a seminar presentation on the prescribed texts and essays. Max
marks: 10
Assignment 2
Students are required to submit a term paper on the texts prescribed for study. Students are
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advised to write their papers on texts which they did not use to make their seminar
presentations. Max marks: 10
Test
Students are required to take a test for 15 marks
Attendance in Lectures/Participation
Students get 5 marks for 100% attendance
Summative Assessment
Internal Assessment: 40 marks
End semester examination: 60 marks
Total: 100 marks
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ENG 512 – Shakespeare

Semester: One Credits: Four Instructors: Dr. B Hariharan
Vishnu Narayanan
Aim of the course
The course intends to study the works of Shakespeare as our contemporary that factors in
recent scholarship on his works.
Course Description
"He was not of an age, but for all time!" declared Ben Jonson. A study of Shakespeare’s
works enables the students watch the birth of modern English. It also sets up a very
important moment in the history of the evolution of the western theatre tradition. This will
help students understand some of the way in which theatre evolved in the subsequent
centuries. The course will help students to evolve an enriched cultural literacy.
General topics for study
1. Shakespeare and his age

2. Elizabethan theatre and audience
3. Life and works of Shakespeare – sources – Comedies – Histories – Problem Plays –
Tragedies – the Last Plays – Sonnets
4. Folios and Quartos
5. Shakespeare’s language – use of blank verse – prose
6. Shakespeare’s characters – heroes, women, villains, fools and clowns
7. Songs
8. The Supernatural element
9. Imagery
10. Shakespearean criticism – pre-1950 to post-1950.
Texts and Critical Responses for Study
1. The Merchant of Venice
2. Julius Caesar
3. Hamlet
4. Othello
5. Macbeth
6. Henry IV Part 1
7. Measure for Measure
8. The Tempest
9. The Sonnets
Critical responses:
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1. Bradley, A. C. Shakespearean Tragedy (Lecture 1)
2. Sinfield, Alan, and Jonathan Dollimore. “Introduction: Shakespeare, Cultural
Materialism and the New Historicism,” in Political Shakespeare: New Essays in
Cultural Materialism. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985: 2–17.
3. Brown, Georgia. “Time and the Nature of Sequence in Shakespeare’s Sonnets: ‘In
sequent toil all forwards do contend’.” How to do Things with Shakespeare: New
Approaches New Essays. Ed. Laurie Maguire. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008: 236–254.
4. Showalter, Elaine. “Representing Ophelia: Women, Madness, and the
Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism.”Shakespeare and the Question of Theory. Ed.
Patricia Parker and Geoffrey Hartman. New York & London: Methuen, 1985: 77–
94.
5. Belsey, Catherine. “Iago the Essayist.” Shakespeare in Theory and Practice.
Catherine Belsey. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2008: 157–170.
6. Salter, Denis. “Acting Shakespeare in Postcolonial Space.” Shakespeare, Theory and
Performance. Ed. James C. Bulman. London: Routledge, 1996: 117–136.
Assessment
Assignment 1
Students are required to make a seminar presentation on the prescribed texts and essays. Max
marks: 10
Assignment 2
advised to write their papers on texts which they did not use to make their seminar
presentations. Max marks: 10
Test
Total: 100 marks
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ENG 513 – Romantics and Victorians

Semester: One Credits: Four Instructors: Dr. Meena T. Pillai
Dr. Suja Kurup P. L
Vishnu Narayanan
Aim of the course
The course aims to familiarize students with the fundamental premises of the Romantic
Movement and Victorian literature, their theoretical and ideological frameworks, and major
trends and offshoots across various genres.
Course Description
1. The Romantic Revival–Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats

2. Prose – modern review, magazines, essay, criticism – De Quincey, Coleridge,
Hazlitt,Lamb, Mary Wollstonecraft
3. Fiction – 19th century novel – historical novel, gothic novel, domestic novel – Realism
and the novel
4. Social and political background of Victorian England–the politics of industrialization and
colonization
5. Science and religion in the Victorian period
6. Victorian Poetry –Tennyson, Arnold, Clough, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Browning
7. Pre-Raphaelites
8. Precursors to modernist poetry – Hopkins, Hardy, Kipling, Thompson, Housman, Bridges
9. Prose and criticism – Carlyle, Ruskin, Arnold, Pater, Leslie Stephen, Huxley, Newman
10. Comedy of Manners –Wilde
Prescribed Books
a. Poetry:
1. Wordsworth: “Tintern Abbey”
2. Coleridge: “Kubla Khan”
3. Shelley: “Ode to the West Wind”
4. Keats: “Ode to Autumn” and “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
5. Tennyson: “Ulysses”
6. Browning: “My Last Duchess”
7. Rossetti: “The Blessed Damozel”
8. Arnold: “Dover Beach”
9. Hopkins: “The Windhover”
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b. Prose:
1. Lamb: “Dream Children”
2. Coleridge: Biographia Literaria – Chapter 14
3. Mary Wollstonecraft: “The Rights and Involved Duties of Mankind Considered”
[fromA Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Part I. Chap. I]
4. Arnold: “Sweetness and Light”, Culture and Anarchy. (Chapter I. Pp. 1-
19)
c. Fiction:
1. Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice
2. Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
3. Dickens: Oliver Twist
4. Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights
5. Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre
6. Hardy: Tess of the D’Urbervilles
d. Drama:
Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest
e. Critical responses:
1. Susan J. Wolfson “Romanticism and Gender.” Duncan Wu, ed. A Companion to
Romanticism. Oxford : Blackwell,1998:385-396
2. Ian Watt: “The Reading Public and the Rise of the Novel.” The Rise of
the Novel: 36-61
Assessment
Assignment 1 – 10 marks
Students will be asked to make seminar presentations on topics related to their area of study.
Students will be asked to submit term papers on topics related to their area of study.
Test – 15 marks
A written Mid – semester examination will be conducted.
Attendance in Lectures/Participation – 5 marks
75 % attendance mandatory.
Summative Assessment – 100 marks
Internal Assessment – 40 marks
End Semester Assessment – 60 marks
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ENG 521 – The Twentieth Century

Semester: Two Credits: Four Instructors: Dr. Maya Dutt
Dr. Meena T. Pillai
Aim of the course
It deals with the recent trends in British writing and the 20th century socio-political
background in literature and society. It examines the movements that dominated arts, culture
and literature that produced significant shifts in patterns of thinking and living.
Course Description
1. Liberal Humanism – literature and media.

2. Poetry – Symbolist Movement – Yeats – poets of World War I – Owen – modernist
poetry – Eliot, Pound – Auden and the poets of the thirties – World War II and its
aftermath – Movement Poetry – Larkin, Gunn, Jennings – new poets of the 50’s – Ted
Hughes, Betjeman – Mavericks – ’60s and ’70s – Heaney, Motion, Geoffrey Hill – 1980s
– Carol Ann Duffy – contemporary poetry.
3. Prose – criticism – Eliot, Virginia Woolf, I. A. Richards, Empson, F. R. Leavis, Raymond
Williams, Terry Eagleton – the essay – Belloc, Chesterton, Beerbohm, Russell, Huxley –
biography – Strachey – periodicals – the little magazine.
4. The Novel – psychological novel – D. H. Lawrence – stream-of-consciousness – Joyce,
Virginia Woolf – E. M. Forster – George Orwell – post-war fiction – Graham Greene,
Golding, Kingsley Amis, John Wain, Allan Sillitoe, Beckett, Angus Wilson, Doris
Lessing, Anita Brookner, Iris Murdoch.
5. Drama – The new drama – influence of Ibsen – Bernard Shaw – poetic drama – Eliot, Fry
– Irish Dramatic Movement – Abbey Theatre – Yeats, Synge, O’Casey – post-War drama
– Kitchen-sink drama – Wesker – the Angry Young Men – Osborne – Theatre of the
Absurd – Beckett, Pinter, Bond.
6. Recent trends in British writing.
Prescribed Books
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a. Poetry:
1. W. B. Yeats: “The Second Coming” & “Leda and the Swan”
2. T. S. Eliot: “The Waste Land”
3. W. H. Auden: “In Memory of W. B. Yeats” & “Musee des Beaux Arts”
4. Dylan Thomas: “Poem in October”
5. Philip Larkin: “Church Going”
6. Ted Hughes: “Thought Fox”
7. Seamus Heaney: “Punishment”
8. Andrew Motion: “The Last Call”
9. Carol Ann Duffy: “Anne Hathaway”
10. Benjamin Zephaniah: “We Refugees”
b. Prose:
1. T. S. Eliot: “Tradition and the Individual Talent”
2. I. A. Richards: “Four Kinds of Meaning”
3. Virginia Woolf: “Modern Fiction”
4. F. R. Leavis: Chapter I. The Great Tradition.Pp.1 –27.
5. Raymond Williams: Excerpt from “Culture Is Ordinary”
c. Drama:
1. G. B. Shaw: The Doctor’s Dilemma
2. Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot
3. Harold Pinter: The Birthday Party
4. Tom Stoppard: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
5.Caryl Churchill: A Number
d. Fiction:
1. Josef Conrad: The Heart of Darkness
2. James Joyce: The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man
3. D. H. Lawrence: Sons and Lovers
4. John Fowles: French Lieutenant’s Woman
5. Jeanette Winterson: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
1. Jürgen Habermas: “Modernity: An Unfinished Project”
2. Georg Lukacs: “The Ideology of Modernism”, in David Lodge, ed. 20th
Century Literary Criticism.
Assessment
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Test – 15 marks
75% attendance mandatory.
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ENG 522 – American Literature

Semester: Two Credits: Four Instructors: Dr. Suja Kurup P. L
Dr. B.S Jamuna
Vishnu Narayanan
Aim of the course
The course aims to familiarize students with American Literature focusing on all the major
writings from the early period to the present.
Course Description
1. Historical background – colonization – European heritage
2. Puritanism – Americanness of American literature – contributions of the 19th century
3. Transcendentalism – Emerson, Thoreau, Poe
4. Contributions of Dickinson – Whitman – Hawthorne – Melville – Mark Twain
5. Lost generation – Hemingway – O’Neill – American Theatre
6. New Critics
7. Modernism – Frost – e. e. cummings – Williams Carlos Williams – Wallace Stevens –
Harlem Renaissance – Langston Hughes
8. Dramatists – Miller – Tennessee Williams – Sam Sheppard
9. Recent trends in American literature
Prescribed Books
a. Poetry:
1. Walt Whitman: “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking”
2. Emily Dickinson: The following poems: –
280: “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain”
320: “There is a Certain Slant of Light”
327: “Before I Got My Eye Put Out”
465: “I Heard a Fly Buzz when I Died”
1624: “Apparently with No Surprise”
3. Edgar Allan Poe: “Raven”
4. Robert Lowell: “The Skunk Hour”
5. Sylvia Plath: “Daddy”
6. Langston Hughes: “Harlem”
7. William Carlos Williams: “The Red Wheel Barrow”
8. Robert Frost: “Birches” and “Fire and Ice”
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9. Allen Ginsberg: “A Supermarket in California”
10. Denise Levertov: “Writer and Reader”
b. Prose:
1. Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Self-Reliance”
2. Martin Luther King: “I Have a Dream”
3. Leslie Fiedler: Chapter I of Love and Death in American Fiction
4. Wimsatt and Beardsley: “The Intentional Fallacy” & “The Affective Fallacy”
c. Drama:
1. Eugene O’ Neill: Emperor Jones
2. Arthur Miller: After the Fall
3. Edward Albee: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
4. Lorraine Hansberry: What Use Are Flowers?
d. Fiction:
1. Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter
2. Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury
3. Hemingway: For Whom the Bell Tolls
4. Alice Walker: The Color Purple
5. Leslie Silko: Ceremony
6. Thomas Pyncheon: Crying of Lot 49
1. Henry James: “The Art of Fiction”
2. Amiri Baraka: “The ‘Blues Aesthetic’ and the ‘Black Aesthetic’: Aesthetics as
the Continuing Political History of a Culture
Assessment
Test – 15 marks
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ENG 523 – Literary Theory I

Semester: Two Credits: Four Instructors: Dr. B. Hariharan
Dr. Suja Kurup P. L
Dr. Meena T. Pillai
Aim of the course
The two courses on Literary Theory, spread over two semesters, introduce the students to
some of the key concepts in contemporary literary theory and also to representative essays in the
areas identified for study. Literary Theory I introduces representative works from important
theoretical schools that have brought a paradigm shift in our understanding of language,
ideology, mind, texts and social power structures.
Course Description
The two courses on Literary Theory, spread over two semesters, introduce the students to some
of the key concepts in contemporary literary theory and also to representative essays in the areas
identified for study. The course is designed in such a way to facilitate the learner to do theory
and discover the undercurrents and interfaces between various positions and belief systems.
Literary Theory I introduces four major areas of study that include Structuralism, Psychoanalysis,
Historicism and Cultural Materialism and Feminism. Two texts are chosen for study in each
module apart from key concepts. The third component in each module will be texts for
methodological application. The ten concepts in each module may be discussed in five hours.
The texts discussing the theoretical formulations may be given at least six hours. The third
component in every module is intended for the students to learn how they have integrated the
insights gained about the concepts discussed in the class.
Objectives:
a. To enable students to have a grounding in various critical approaches and advanced literary
theories
b. To facilitate the critical and analytical skills of students
c. To help students participate in a self-evaluative process as they learn to use various concepts
and ideas
d. To familiarize the learners with the trends and cross-disciplinary nature of literary theories
Prescribed Books
Term Papers:
Students may be encouraged to write
 Position papers
 Book review of theories and criticism
 Article reviews selected from journals and books
 Interpretation of literary and cultural texts(films, drama and Television shows) on
the basis of given critical approaches or theories
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Module I Structuralism
Concepts:
 Structure
 Sign, Signifier, Signified
 System
 Langue and Parole
 Binary
 Synchrony
 Diachrony
 Narratology in India
 Semiotics and Semiology
 Discourse
Texts for Study
Saussure, Ferdinand de “The Nature of the Linguistic Sign” A Course in General Linguistics.
(65 – 71).
Barthes, Roland. “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative.” Image Music Text.
(79 – 124).
Text for methodological application
William Blake “The Chimney Sweeper” from Songs of Innocence
Module II: Psychoanalysis
Concepts:
 The Conscious and the Unconscious
 The Ego, the Id and the Super – Ego
 Oedipus Stage
 Mirror Stage
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 Phallus
 Gaze
 The Semiotic and the Symbolic
 Sublimation
 Real
 Literature and Psychoanalysis
Texts for Study
Sigmund Freud. “The Uncanny”. Trans. Alix Strachey. Imago. Allanmc/www. Freud 1.
Pdf . Bd. V 1919. 1-21. /
Jacques Lacan. “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Foundation of I as Revealed
in Psychoanalysis Experience.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin and
Michael Ryan. USA: Blackwell, 1998: 178 – 183.
Texts for Methodological Application
“The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe.
Module III: New Historicism and Cultural Materialism
 Literature, Culture, History – Interrelatedness
 Discourse
 The historicity of the text and the textuality of history
 Representation
 Thick description
 High and Low Cultures
 Archive
 Structures of feeling
 Cultural Imaginary
 Residual, Emergent and Oppositional Cultural elements
Texts for Study
Michel Foucault, Introduction to The Archaeology of Knowledge.
Raymond Williams, “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory”
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William Shakespeare Henry IV
Module IV: Feminism
Concepts:
 Patriarchy
 Female, Feminine, Feminist
 First and Second Wave Feminism
 Liberal Feminism
 Marxist Feminism
 Radical Feminism
 Socialist Feminism
 French Feminism
 Black Feminism
 Post-feminism
Texts for Study
Gayle Rubin, ‘Traffic in Women: Notes on the Political Economy of Sex’
Gail Omvedt, “Women’s Movements: Some Ideological Debates’
Andrew Marvell, ‘To His Coy Mistress’
Assessment
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Test – 15 marks
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ENG 531 – Indian Writing in English

Semester: Three Credits: Four Instructor: Dr. Meena T. Pillai
Vishnu Narayanan
Aim of the course
The aim of this course is to introduce students to the various phases of the evolution in Indian
Writing in English, it variant modes and genres, and acquaint them with the highly pluralistic
and ideological dimensions of this literature, both in original and in translation.
Course Description
1. Historical context for the rise of Indian Writing in English
2. Indian Renaissance – Rise of Indian nationalism – the concept of the nation
3. Early Indian English poets – Toru Dutt and her contemporaries
4. Contributions of Tagore – Vivekananda – Gandhi – Aurobindo – Nehru
5. Development of Indian English fiction – the Big Three – Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao and
R. K. Narayan
6. Flowering of Indian English poetry
7. Women novelists – their contributions
8. Indian English drama – Tagore – Karnad – Tendulkar
9. Major concerns in Indian fiction
10. Indian writing in English translations
Prescribed Books
a.Poetry:
1. Toru Dutt: “Our Casuarina Tree”

2. Sarojini Naidu: “Bangle Sellers”
3. Tagore: Songs 1, 6, 50, 81, 95 &103 [from Gitanjali]
4. Parthasarathy: “Exile”
5. Nissim Ezekiel: “Goodbye Party to Miss Pushpa T. S.”
6. Kamala Das: “Introduction”
7. Imtiaz Dharkar “Purdah I”
8. A.K. Ramajujan “Obituary”
9. Jayanta Mahapatra: “Freedom”
10. Arun Kolatkar: “An Old Woman”
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b. Prose in English and English Translation:
1. Macaulay: Minute on Indian Education
2. Tarabai Shinde: From Stree-purushatulana. Trans. Rosalind O’Hanlon, in
Rosalind O’Hanlon, A Comparison between Women and Men: Tarabai Shinde and
the Critique of Gender Relations in Colonial India. Madras: Oxford UP, 1994: 75-7;
99-111; 114-18; 122-4.
3. Gandhi: Hindswaraj
4. Partha Chatterjee: “Whose Imagined Community” from Empire and Nation:
Selected Essays
5. Meenakshi Mukherjee: “Realism and Reality: The Novel and Society in India
Introduction.
6. Gauri Viswanathan: “The Beginning of English Literary Study.” Masks of
Conquest.
c. Drama:
1. Girish Karnad: Hayavadana
2. Vijay Tendulkar: Kanyadaan
3. Mahesh Dattani: Final Solutions
d. Fiction:
1. R. K. Narayan: Swami and Friends
2. Salman Rushdie: Midnight’s Children
3. ShashiTharoor: The Great Indian Novel
4. Arundhati Roy: The God of Small Things
5. Amitav Ghosh: Shadow Lines
e. Indian Fiction in English Translation:

1. O. Chandu Menon: Indulekha (1888). Trans. Anitha Devasia
2. U. R. Ananta Murthy: Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man. Trans. A. K. Ramanujan
3. Mahasweta Devi: Draupadi. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
4. Bama: Karukku. Trans. Lakshmi Holmstrong
Assessment
Test – 15 marks
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A written Mid-semester examination will be conducted.

75% attendance mandatory
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ENG 532 – Contemporary Literatures in English

Semester: Three Credits: Four Instructor: Dr. B. Hariharan
Dr. Suja Kurup P.L
Aim of the course
The course introduces the student to emerging areas in English Studies which will help in
interrogating some of the assumptions that govern the study of English in the classroom.
Course Description
This course introduces the students to the way the English language has found rich expression
across continents. The course will discuss issues like the idea of “Englishes”,
multiculturalism, nationalism, post colonialism, race, ethnicity, and diaspora. This will help
in interrogating some of the assumptions that govern the study of English in the classroom.
1. Multiculturalism – Growth of “literatures” of national cultures
2. Language of resistance – colonial and postcolonial discourse
3. Decolonization
4. The Emergence of “Englishes”
5. Race and Ethnicity
6. Impact of colonialism/colonial encounters
7. The emergence of diaspora
8. Creolization
9. Canon Formation.
Prescribed Books
a. Poetry:
1. Alamgir Hashmi: “So what if I live in a house made by Idiots?”
2. Maki Kureishi: “Curfew Summer”
3. Maki Kureishi: “Language Riot”
4. Lakdasa Wikkramasinha: “Don’t talk to me about Matisse”
5. Kamala Wijeratne: “On Seeing a White Flag across a by-Road”
6. Edwin Thumboo: “Ulysses by the Merlion: A Poem for Singapore”
7. Muhammed Haji Salleh “Blood”
8. A.D. Hope “Death of a Bird”& “His Coy Mistress to Mr. Marvell”
9. Allen Curnow” “House and Land”
10. Claire Harris: “Translation into Fiction”
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11. Margaret Atwood: “Notes towards a Poem that Can Never be Written”
12. John Pepper Clark: “Night Rain”
13. Chinua Achebe: “Refugee Mother and Child”
14. Derek Walcott: “A Far Cry from Africa”
(Alamgir Hashmi, Lakdasa Wikramasinha, Kamala Wijeratne, Muhammad
Haji Salleh, A.D. Hope’s “Death of a Bird”, Allen Curnow, John Pepper
Clark, Chinua Achebe, and Derek Walcott are from An Anthology of
Commonwealth Poetry. Ed.C.D. Narasimhaiah. Claire Harris and Margaret
Atwood are from Canadian Voices. Ed. Shirin Kudchedkar and Jameela
Begum)
b. Prose:
1. Christopher Clausen: “‘National Literatures’ in English: Towards a new Paradigm.”
New
Literary History No: 25 Vol: 1. Winter 1994. 61 – 72.
2. Robert Sullivan “Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property Rights: A Digital
Library
Context”
3. Northrop Frye: “Conclusion to A Literary History of Canada”
4. Ngugi Wo Thiongo “The Language of African Literature” from Decolonising the
Mind
5. Frantz Fanon. “The Fact of Blackness.” The Post-colonial Studies Reader.Ed.
Ashcroft,
Griffith and Tiffin
c. Drama
1. David Williamson: Money and Friends
2. Wole Soyinka: Kongi’s Harvest
3. Drew Hayden Taylor: Someday
d. Fiction
1. Khalid Hosseini: And the Mountains Echoed
2. V.S. Naipaul: The Enigma of Arrival
3. Robert Kroetsch: Badlands
4. Hanif Kureishi: The Buddha of Suburbia
5. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Half of a Yellow Sun
Assessment
Assignment 1 – 10 Marks
25
Test – 15 marks
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ENG 533 – Literary Theory II

Semester: Three Credits: Four Instructors: Dr. Meena T. Pillai
Dr. Suja Kurup P. L
Dr. B.S. Jamuna
Vishnu Narayanan
Aim of the course
The course aims to acquaint students with socio – political and cultural issues in the
contemporary world, drawing from the recent debates on historicity, discourse, representation
and sexuality.
Course Description
Literary Theory II introduces four major areas of study that include Post structuralism,
Postmodernism, Post colonialism, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Two texts are chosen for
study in each module apart from key concepts. The third component in each module will be
texts for methodological application. The ten concepts in each module may be discussed in
five hours. The texts discussing the theoretical formulations may be given at least six hours.
The third component in every module is intended for the students to learn how they have
integrated the insights gained from the concepts discussed in the class.
Objectives:
a. To enable students to have a grounding in various critical approaches and advanced
literary theories
b. To facilitate the critical and analytical skills of students
c. To help students participate in a self-evaluative process as they learn to use various
concepts and ideas
d. To familiarize the learners with the trends and cross-disciplinary nature of literary theories
Prescribed Books
Term Papers:
Students may be encouraged to write
 Position papers
 Book review of theories and criticism
 Article reviews selected from journals and books
 Interpretation of literary and cultural texts(films, drama and Television shows)
on the basis of given critical approaches or theories
Module I: Post structuralism
Concepts:
 Supplementarity
 Trace
 Transcendental Signified
 Exergue
 Aporia
 Textuality
 Deconstruction
 Differance
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 The Yale School
 French Post structuralisms /post structuralism
Texts for Study
Jacques Derrida. “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Humanities.” Modern
Criticism and Theory. Ed. David Lodge and Nigel Wood. 89 – 103.
Paul de Man “The Resistance to Theory.” Modern Criticism and Theory. Ed. David Lodge
and Nigel Wood. 331 – 347.
Text for Methodological Application
Rudyard Kipling. “The Jungle Book.”
Module II Postmodernism
Concepts:
 Modernism
 Subjectivity
 Historicity of texts
 Eclecticism
 Popular culture
 Anti-enlightenment
 Commodity culture in late capitalism
 Post-industrial society and culture
 Information society and cyber culture
 Amnesia
Texts for Study
Jean Francoise Lyotard. “The Postmodern Condition.” Literary Theory : An Anthology.

Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. 2nd Ed. 355 – 364.
Jean Baudrillard : “Simulacra and Simulations” Modern Criticism and Theory. Ed. David
Lodge and Nigel Wood. 407 – 412.
Text for methodological application:
Jorge Luis Borges “The Garden of the Forking Paths” Labyrinths Ed. Donald A Yates &
James E Irby. New York: New Directions . 1964. 19 - 29.
Jorge Luis Borges “Three Versions of Judas” Labyrinths Ed. Donald A Yates & James E
Irby. New York: New Directions . 1964. 95 - 100.
Module III: Postcolonialism
Concepts:
 Colonialism
 Colonisation
 The Orient
 Hegemony
 Ideology
 Decolonisation
 Abrogation
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 Appropriation
 Creolisation
 Subaltern
Texts for Study
“Introduction” The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post Colonial Literatures,
edited by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin. London: Routledge, 1989: 1 – 11
“Situating Colonial and Postcolonial Studies” in Colonialism / Postcolonialism by Ania
Loomba. London: Routledge, 1998.
Texts for Methodological Application

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.
Module IV: Gender and Sexuality

Concepts :
 Sex and Gender

 Class, Race, Ethnicity and Gender
 Constructions of masculinity and femininity
 Gender Performance
 Institutionalized Heterosexuality
 Regulation of Gender and Sexuality
 Racism, Sexism, Heterosexism, Homophobia
 Heteronormativity and Alternative Sexualities
 Queer theory
 Popular Culture and Representations of Gender and Sexuality
Texts for Study
Judith Butler. “Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire.” Gender Trouble

Janaki Nair and Mary John, Introduction in Janaki Nair and Mary John (Ed), ‘A question of
Silence: the sexual economies of modern India, New Delhi, Kali for women, 1998.

Fire by Deepa Mehta
Assessment
Test – 15 marks
A Written Mid – semester examination will be conducted.
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30
ENG 541 – Linguistics

Semester: Four Credits: Three Instructors: Dr. Maya Dutt
Vishnu Narayanan
Aim of the course
This course proposes to introduce the student to the latest trends in 20th century linguistic
theory, from the beginnings of modern linguistic theory to the characterization of linguistics
today.
Course Description
Various schools of thought including Bloomfield’s American Structuralism, Noam

Chomsky’s T. G. Grammar among others, will be studied in addition to Singulary and
Double-based transformations in T.G. Grammar, and the derivation of sentences. The course
takes in three extensions of linguistic study – Sociolinguistics, Psycholinguistics and
Stylistics, as well as aspects of Phonetics. The topics that will be covered are as follows:
1. The Nature of Language – Linguistics as the scientific study of language.
2. Human Languages and Systems of Animal Communication.
3. The Properties of Natural Human Languages.
4. The Fallacies of Traditional Grammar.
5. Structuralism – its roots and theoretical formulation.
6. Structural Phonology / Structural Morphology / Structural Syntax – IC Analysis/The
Problems of the Structuralist Paradigm.
7. The Need for Transformational Generative Grammar – Noam Chomsky and his
theories
8. Transformations:
(a) Singulary: [Interrogation (Y/N and Wh); Negation; Passivization; Tag Questions]
(b) Double-based: (Relativization, Complementation, Adverbialization,
Coordination).
9. Sociolinguistics
10. Psycholinguistics
11. Stylistics
12. Phonetics and the Phonology of English
Prescribed Books
Ferdinand de Saussure A Course in General Linguistics
David Crystal Linguistics
Frank Palmer Grammar
H. A. Gleason An Introduction to Descriptive Linguistics
C. F. Hockett A Course in Modern Linguistics
R. W. Langacker Language and its Structure
H. B. Allen, ed. Readings in Applied Linguistics
C. C. Fries The Structure of English
Martin Joos Readings in Linguistics
John Lyons Chomsky
Peter Trudgill Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society
Ronald Wardhaugh An Introduction to Sociolinguistics
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R. Titone and M. Danesi Applied Psycholinguistics
Balasubramaniam Phonetics.
George Yule: The Study of Language
M. Garman: Psycholinguistics
S. K. Verma and N. Krishnaswamy: Modern Linguistics
Adrian Akmajain, et al. Linguistics: An Introduction to Language and Communication
Graham Hough: Style and Stylistics
Assessment
Test – 15 marks
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ENG 542 – English Language Teaching

Semester: Four Credits: Three Instructor: Dr. B.S. Jamuna
Aim of the course
The course aims to introduce students to the basic concepts and the current developments in
English Language Teaching.
Course Description
Linguistic theories and its impact on language teaching; different teaching methods and their
pedagogical implications will be taken up for study. Students will be introduced to the
various classroom strategies, techniques and teaching aids; lesson plan for teaching
effectively the different genres and language skills; the process and procedure for testing and
evaluation and materials productions.
Prescribed Books
Module I: Basic Terms and Concepts: ESL and EFL; L1 and L2; Bilingualism and
multilingualism; Teaching/Learning, Acquisition/Learning distinction; language skills –
LSRW, critical & creative skills. Sociolinguistics, Psycholinguistics; communicative
competence vs linguistic competence; ESP – Business English, Legal English, Medical
English and Technical English.
Module II: Psychological approaches to language learning – Behaviourism, Cognitivism,
Constructivism – Skinner, Chomsky, Vygotsky – learner factors – age, aptitude, personality,
conditions of learning and environment.
Module III: Methods of Language Teaching – Grammar Translation Method, Direct
Method, Audio-lingual Method, Silent Way, Suggestopaedia, Communicative Language
Teaching, Community Language Learning; Multiple Intelligence; ICT-enabled Language
Teaching, web tools for language learning.
Module IV: Classroom Procedures: Literature and Language Teaching; Practice in classroom
teaching; Learner-oriented teaching – interactive teaching – peer/group work, seminars,
tutorials and library work – Lesson Plans to teach grammar, prose, poetry, drama and fiction.
Module V: Testing and Evaluation – internal and external evaluation; types of tests, types of
questions – criteria of a good test; preparation of model questions for evaluating LSRW.
Module VI: Materials production; teaching/learning packages for teaching LSRW;
teaching/learning packages for teaching poetry, prose, drama and fiction.
H. H. Stern: Fundamentals of Language Teaching

Wilga Rivers: Teaching Foreign Language Skills
Harold V. Allen: Teaching English as a Second Language
R. Mitchell and F. Myle: Second Language Learning Theories
D. H. Harding: New Patterns of Language Teaching
Jean F. Forrester: Teaching without Lecturing
M. L. Tickoo: English Language Teaching
C. Packard: Second Language Learning and Technology, 1995.
L. Winston: Computer Assisted Language Learning, 1995.
K. Cameron, ed.: Multimedia CALL: Theory and Practice, 1998.
P. Hubbard, ed.: Computer Assisted language Learning. 2009
Assessment
33
Test – 15 marks


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ENG 543 – Cultural Studies

Semester: Four Credits: Three Instructor: Dr. Meena T. Pillai
Aim of the course
Cultural Studies is a new area of research and teaching that brings in new perspectives to our
notions regarding “texts” and “meanings” and therefore to the study of literatures, cultures
and societies. This course will try to develop theoretical tools and critical perspective to
interrogate the advertisement, film, television, newspaper and internet texts that saturate our
lives.
Course Description
1. Historical context for the rise of Cultural Studies
2. New perspectives to the notion of “Texts”
3. Defining Cultural Studies
4. Cultural Studies and English Literature
5. Revising the concept of “Culture”
6. Hegemony, Culture and Power
7. Culture and Discourse
8. Culture and Representation
9. Popular Culture
10. Methodologies
11. How to do Cultural Studies
Prescribed Books
Unit I: Cultural Studies: Ideas and Concepts
1. Henry Giroux, et al. “The Need for Cultural Studies: Resisting Intellectuals and
Oppositional Public Spheres”
2. Simon During. Cultural Studies Reader, Introduction. Pp. 1-6. culturestudies reader.pdf
Unit II: Cultural Studies: Theory
1. Adorno and Horkheimer: Excerpts from “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as
Mass Deception”
2. Raymond Williams. “Hegemony”; “Traditions, Institutions, Formations”; and
“Dominant, Residual, Emergent’, in Marxism and Literature. Oxford UP, 1977, 1978:
108-27.
Unit III: Cultural Studies: Methodology
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1. Stuart Hall. “Encoding, Decoding”.
http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/SH- Coding.pdf
2. Janice Radway. Excerpts from Reading the Romance. UNC P, 1984.
3. Chandrima Chakraborty. Bollywood Motifs: Cricket Fiction and Fictional Cricket.
Essential Reading:
1. Theodor W. Adorno: “Culture Industry Reconsidered”
2. Stuart Hall: “Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms”
3. John Fiske: “Shopping for Pleasure”
4. Arjun Appadurai: “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy”
Recommended Reading:
1. Lawrence Grossberg, et al., eds. Cultural Studies
2. John Storey, ed. What Is Cultural Studies?
3. Simon During, ed. The Cultural Studies Reader (1999)
4. Pramod K. Nayar. An Introduction to Cultural Studies
Assessment
Test – 15 marks

36
ENG 544 – Keralam: History, Culture and Literature

Semester: Four Credits: Three Instructor: Dr. G.S. Jayasree
Aim of the course
This course aims to offer a reading of the cultural history of Keralam, that is living,
continuous and open. It takes the stand against the search for origins and cultural totalities. It
seeks to factor in the performative in terms of histories, representations and patterns of life.
Course Description
This paper aims to encourage the students to connect with the local and the specific. It
has a four-fold division, with the first module giving an idea of how the history of Keralam
has been recorded and read. It attunes the students to the complexities of historiography and
the different methodologies adopted by different schools of thought, indeed, the different
interests that mark these schools.
Pageants, festivals and public spectacles from the Thrissur pooram to velan kali
colour the life in Keralam. The second module introduces ways of reading culturally
significant activities from visual and performing arts, both “folk” and “classical”, to rituals
and social customs. The strong imprints of caste identity in food, clothing or every day
practices like bathing or engaging in indoor games are fast being erased. However we find
the culture industry capitalizing on their symbolic value with many of these practices
reappearing in vastly different and seemingly neutral contexts. The essays included in this
module examine the shifting meanings of culture and how the ideals of the hegemonic are
naturalized in the cultural front.
The third and the fourth modules give selections from the rich literary output of
Keralam over the last one hundred and twenty years. The first gives selections from poetry,
drama and prose and the second, fiction.
Prescribed Books
Module 1 – History:
1. Kesavan Veluthat. “The Keralolpatti as History.” The Early Medieval in South India.
New Delhi: Oxford UP, 2009.
2. Rajan Gurukkal. “The Formation of Caste Society in Kerala: Historical Antecedents.”
Social Formations of Early South India. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 2010.
3. Meera Velayudhan. “Growth of Political Consciousness among Women in Modern
Kerala.”Perspectives on Kerala History, Kerala State Gazetteers vol. 2. Ed. P. J.
Cheriyan. Thiruvananthapuram: Government of Kerala, 1999.
4. Sanal Mohan. “‘Searching for Old Histories’: Social Movements and the Project of
Writing History in Twentieth-Century Kerala.”History in Vernacular.Ed. Raziuddin
Aquil & Partha Chatterjee. New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2008.
Module 2 – Culture:
1. Sarah Caldwell. “Landscapes of Feminine Power.” Oh Terrifying Mother: Sexuality,
Violence and Worship of the Goddess Kali. Oxford UP: New Delhi, 1999.
2. G. Arunima. “Multiple Meanings: Changing Conceptions of Matrilineal Kinship in
37
Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Malabar.” The Indian Economic and Social
History Review 33, no. 3.
3. Diane Daugherty & Marlene Pitkow. “Who Wears Skirts in Kathakali?” TDR 35
(1991).
4. Rich Freeman. “Thereupon Hangs a Tail: The Deification of Vāli in the Teyyam
Worship of Malabar.”Questioning Ramayanas: A South Asian Tradition. Ed. P.
Richman. Berkeley: UCP, 2000.
5. Gita Kapur. “Representational Dilemmas of a Nineteenth-Century Painter: Raja Ravi
Varma.” When was Modernism: Essays on Contemporary Cultural Practice in
India.2nd edn.Tulika: New Delhi, 2001.
6. K.N. Panikkar. “Chapter 6: Conclusion.” Against Lord and State: Religion and
Peasant Uprisings in Malabar 1836-1921.3rd edn.Oxford UP: New Delhi, 2001.
7. Robin Jeffrey. “Introduction: Capitalism, Politics and the Indian- Language Press.”
India’s Newspaper Revolution:Capitalism, Politics and the Indian-Language Press.C.
Hurst, 2000.
Module 3 – Literature: Poetry, Drama, Prose
1. Kumaran Asan: Excerpts from Sita Immersed in Reflection
2.Edesseri Govindan Nair: “The Kuttippuram Bridge”
3.R. Ramachandran: “To a Parted Companion”
4.Akkitham Achuthan Nampoothiri: “The Berry in the Palm”
5.K. Satchidanandan: “How to Go to the Tao Temple”
6.A. Ayyappan: “The Buddha and the Lamb”
7.Savithri Rajeevan: “Gandhi”
8. Balachandran Chullikkad: “Where Is John?”
9.S. Joseph: “The Fishmonger”
10. Anvar Ali: “Season of Rains
11.V.T. Bhattathiripad: Excepts from From the Kitchen to the Stage
12.C.N. Sreekantan Nair: Excerpts from Kanchana Sita
13.Sreeja K.V.: Excerpts from In Every Age
14.C. Kesavan: Excerpts from Life’s Struggle
15.Kuttikrishna Marar: “Two Salutations”
16.E.M.S. Namboodiripad: “The Malayalam of Malayalis”
17. P.K. Balakrishnan: “The Evolution of Language and the Birth of
Literature”
18.B. Rajeevan: “Ethical Foundations of Modern Kerala”
Module 4 – Fiction:
1. O. Chandu Menon: Excerpts from Indulekha
2. Lalithambika Antharjanam: “Admission of Guilt”
3. Uroob: Excerpts from The Beautiful and the Handsome
38
4. Kovilan: Excerpts from Thattakam
5. O.V. Vijayan: Excerpts from The Legends of Khasak
6. Madhavikkutty (Kamala Das): “Scent of a Bird”
7. P. Vatsala: Excerpts from Aagneyam
8. M. Mukundan: Excerpts from On the Banks of the Mayyazhi
9. Maythil Radhakrishnan: “Pythagoras”
10. C. Ayyappan: “Spectral Speech”
11. Ashita: “In the Moonlit Land”
12. S. Sithara: “Fire”
Assessment
Test – 15 marks

39
ELECTIVES
Instructor: Dr. G.S. Jayasree
I Editing
ENG 504 Editing
II Gender Studies
ENG 5021 Introduction to Gender Studies
ENG 5011 Indian Feminist Thought
ENG 5017 Women’s Writing
ENG 502 Caste, Gender and Sexuality
III Translation Studies

ENG 5026 Translation Studies
ENG 5027 Indian Fiction in English Translation
ENG 5016 Contemporary Malayalam Literature in Translation
IV Indian Postcolonial Studies

ENG 5031 Discourses on Colonialism: Reading India
ENG 5030 Genealogies of Medicine in Colonial India
V Life Writing
ENG 5018 Technologies of the Self : Writing Lives, making history
ENG 5029 Writing Lives, Performing Gender
Instructor: Dr. Meena T. Pillai

ENG 5013 Film Studies
ENG 5015 Comparative Literature
Instructor : Dr. B. S. Jamuna

ENG 505 Fourth World Literature
ENG 506 Literature and Ecology
ENG 5019 New Writing spaces and Poetics of the New Media
ENG 5025 English for Communication
Instructor: Dr. B. Hariharan

ENG 501 The Arctic Landscape in Canadian Fiction
ENG 503 Diaspora Writing: Theory and Practice
ENG 5020 Translation and its Contexts
ENG 5022 Introduction to Canadian Studies
Instructor: Dr. Suja Kurup P. L

ENG 5010 European Fiction
ENG 5014 European Drama
40
ENG 5023 Asian Canadian Literature
ENG 5028 Australia: History, Culture, Literature
Instructor : Vishnu Narayanan

ENG 507 Native Canadian Studies
ENG 508 Dalit Writing
ENG 5012 Travel Literature on India
ENG 5024 Phonetics and Spoken English
Instructor :
ENG 509 Writing for the Media
41
Intra-Departmental Elective Courses – Course Descriptions
ENG 504 – Editing

Credits: Two Instructor: Dr. G. S. Jayasree
Aim of the course
The aim of the course is to impart the skill of editing texts to students of English Language
and Literature, so that they will find placements in newspapers, online medias and Publishing
Houses.
Course Description
This course will consist of two modules. The first module will train the students on practices
of text-editing. The second module on copy-editing is intended to equip the students in text
and caption writing, editing copy for publication, dummying, page make-up, graphics and
computerized editing. The course will follow the work-shop model and train the students in
design, layout, creative combination of types, photographs and other illustrative material, and
modes of production.
Prescribed Books
Module 1: The first module will teach the students to edit a story
1. structurally: paragraph by paragraph (substantive editing)

2. textually: sentence by sentence (line editing)
3. in detail: word by word, letter by letter (proofreading)
Module 2: The second module will look at the mechanics of style and presentation with
focus on
1. grammar; word use and abuse

2. spelling and punctuation
3. headline and caption writing
4. Layout and page make-up
5. graphics and computerized editing
6. creative combination of types
7. photographs and other illustrative material
8. modes of production
9. How to use style manuals: capitalization, numbers, abbreviations, signs, and symbols
10. Libel and fairness, editing against bias: fair treatment of women, minority groups, the
elderly and
the disabled
The following topics could be taken up for discussion:
1. Editing Newspapers
2. Editing Magazines
3. Editing Books–Academic
4. Editing Books–Non-Academic
5. Editing Translations
6. Online Journalism
7. Internet Sources
8. Blogging
The following topics could be covered through class room presentations and term
42
papers:
Book Publishing Ghostwriting, as told to

Abstracting and abridging Ghostwriting, no credit
Anthology editing House style
Book jacket copywriting Indexing
Book proposal writing Manuscript evaluation and critique
Book summaries for book clubs/catalogues Movie novelization
Content editing (scholarly) Novel synopsis for a literary agent
Content editing (textbook) Page layout (desktop publishing)
Content editing (trade) Production editing/project management
Copyediting Proofreading
Documentation Publishing and marketing
Formatting Research for writers or book publishers
Rewriting
Assessment
Students will be asked to make seminar presentations on topics related to their study.
Students will be asked to submit term papers on topics related to their study.
Test – 15 marks


43
ENG 5021 – Introduction to Gender Studies

Aim of the course
This course is meant for students with little or no formal background in feminist scholarship.
Designed as an introductory course, it explores the theoretical deployment of the category of
gender as it has come to occupy contemporary feminist thought, in a variety of national
contexts and across various historical periods. In addition to covering the basic histories of
feminism as a historical force, the students would be introduced to the general scope of
feminist studies as an interdisciplinary intellectual project in the academy. The course
questions notions of natural difference in order to explore how such notions are implicated in
epistemologies, histories, broader cultural practices and relations of power. Offering an
interdisciplinary explanation of how the category of gender has come to defy the human
subject, this course would be useful to students of all disciplines.
Course Description
Module I focuses on three important key figures in western feminist thought.
Mary Wollstonecraft was an 18th Century English writer and advocate of women’s rights.
She is best known for her work Vindication of the Rights of Women, in which she argues that
women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education.
She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a
social order founded on reason. This is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy which
argues that women are essential to the nation, and they ought to have education to free
themselves from the limitations imposed on them by society.
Simone de Beauvoir is a French Existentialist Feminist whose work, The Second Sex is one
of the earliest attempts to confront human history from a feminist perspective. This
meticulously researched work states that the social construction of women as the ‘other’ is a
flawed process that acts as the cause of her oppression in society. She then moves to history
to trace the source of these profoundly imbalanced gender roles, and studies the ways that
women can support themselves and achieve autonomy.
Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, is widely credited with sparking the beginnings of
second wave feminism in the U.S. In this book she criticizes the concept of ‘Feminine
Mystique’ ---- the idea created by society that women are naturally fulfilled by devoting their
lives to being house wives and mothers. This book goes deep into the processes that
institutionalize such restrictive notions on femininity, its effect on women and children and
the need to break such a mystique. Friedan also calls for a rethinking of what it means to be
feminine, offering several practical suggestions promoting education and meaningful work as
the useful method by which women can avoid being trapped in Feminine Mystique.
Module II looks into Indian feminist thought.

Uma Chakravarthy is a feminist historian who writes on gender and caste in India, and her
work is a reflection on the reproduction and regulation of patriarchy in different class, caste
and gender within colonial period. It analyses the patriarchal discourses of colonial society,
the shaping of Hindu Aryan Identity, the parameters of cultural nationalism, and the
implications of patriarchy in political economy and culture. It suggests a different history of
44
‘reform’ movements and of class/gender relations that can reshape the historical
consciousness.
Tanika Sarkar focuses on the intersections of religion gender and politics in both Colonial
and Postcolonial period, in particular on women and Hindu rights. Her work examines the
relationship between imperialism, patriarchy and nationalism in colonial India, and traces the
ideological origins of revivalist nationalist tradition in Bengal, that has important implications
regarding the status of women in Indian Society. She seeks to uncover the dialectical relation
of feminism and patriarchy, both in the policies of the colonial state and the politics of
anticolonial movements.
Module III analyses feminist research methodology.
Shulamit Reinharz and Lynn Davidman’s Feminist Methods in Social Research offers
views on conducting scientific investigations and generating theory from an explicitly
feminist standpoint and examines the wide range of experiments feminist researchers
undertake. It explains the relationship between feminism and methodology and challenges the
stereotypes that might exist about feminist research methods. There are a variety of
perspectives in feminist research method and this diversity has been of great value to feminist
scholarship, seeking to overcome biases in research, bringing about social change, displaying
human diversity, and acknowledging the position of the researcher.
Prescribed Books
The course will consist of three units where the following texts would be discussed:-
Unit I: Western feminist thought
1. Selections from Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Women.
2. Selections from Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex.
3. Selections from Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique.
Unit II: Indian feminist thought
4. Uma Chakravarthy. “Whatever Happened to the Vedic Dasi”
5. Tanika Sarkar. “Nationalist Iconography: The Image of Women in Nineteenth
Century Bengali Literature.”
Unit III: Feminist research methodology
6. Shulamit Reinharz with Lynn Davidman. Feminist Methods in Social Research.
Assessment
Test – 15 marks
45

46
ENG 5011 – Indian Feminist Thought

Aim of the course
This course aims at situating and defining Indian Feminist thought in the context of the
academy where Feminist Thought is generally believed to be Western. Defining a set of
issues, a body of concept, and methodologies of approach specific to India, it hopes to
institutionalize the emerging body of Indian thoughts with reference to issues of gender,
culture and development.
Course Description
A feminist is one who holds that there is gender discrimination in society and takes conscious
measures to correct it. Though the awareness of gender based discrimination has been there
in India from the earliest times, feminism as a concerted movement to contest this began only
in the 1970’s. Many came forward to ensure justice for women and end sexism that exists in
many forms. Hence, we have different kinds of feminism in India as there are in other parts
of the world and this paper attempts to provide an overview of Indian Feminist Thought.
This paper is divided into four modules. The first module charts the contributions of feminist
thought to intellectual debates in social engagement, cultural criticism, and epistemology
since 1970. It will also briefly touch upon the origin and development of Indian Women’s
Movement (IWM), which runs almost parallel to the awakenings in the intellectual domain.
In fact, the paper will examine how both are mutually contributory. The second section will
look into theories of gender that tries to grapple with contemporary issues. The third section
broadens this perspective in the wider framework of the nation. The fourth section will look
into the new challenges that feminists face. Three major issues are identified, viz, women’s
reservation, sexual violence and visual representation.
1. Women’s Studies methodology

2. Political movements and representation of women
3. Gendered Identity
4. Question of rights
5. Framing the nation/religion
6. Narrating the self
7. Demographic transition and reproductive health
8. Women’s education
9. Global capital/Countering global capital
10. Feminization of labour
11. Violence against women
12. Gender, culture, representation.
Prescribed Books
47
Module I: Women’s Studies, Women’s Movements
1. Desai, Neera, and Maithreyi Krishnaraj. “An Overview of the Status of Women in India.”
Class, Caste, Gender: Readings in Indian Government and Politics. Ed. Manoranjan
Mohanty.Vol. 5. New Delhi: Sage, 2004: 296-319.
2. Sanghatana, Stree Shakti. “We Were Making History: Women and the Telangana
Uprising.”
Feminist Review 37. Spring, 1991: 108-11.
3. Dietrich, Gabriele. “Women, Ecology and Culture.” Gender and Politics in India. Ed.
Nivedita Menon. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1999: 72- 95.
4. Rege, Sharmila. “Dalit Women Talk Differently.” Feminism in India. Ed. Maitreyi
Chaudhuri. New Delhi: Kali for Women and Women Unlimited, 2004: 211-225.
Module II: Contemporary Theories of Gender

1. Tharu, Susie, and Tejaswini Niranjana. “Problems for a Contemporary Theory of Gender.”
Ed. Nivedita Menon. Gender and Politics in India. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1991: 494-
525.
2. Sangari, Kumkum. “The Politics of the Possible.” Interrogating Modernity: Culture and
Colonialism in India.Ed. Tejaswini Niranjaja and Vivek Dhareshwar. Calcutta: Seagull,
1993: 242–272.
3. Viswanathan, Gouri. “The Beginning of English Literary Study.” Masks of Conquest. New
Delhi: Oxford UP, 1989: 23-44.
4. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravarti. “Can The Subaltern Speak: Speculations on the Widow
Sacrifice.” Wedge 7/8. Winter/Spring, 1985: 120-130.
Module III: Women, Society and the Nation

1. Karve, Iravathi. “The Kinship Map of India.” Family, Kinship and Marriage in India. Ed.
Patricia Uberoi. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1993: 50-73.
2. Chakravarti, Uma. “Conceptualizing Brahminical Patriarchy in Early India: Gender, Class
and State.”Class, Caste, Gender: Readings in Indian Government and Politics. Ed.
Manoranjan Mohanty.Vol. 5. New Delhi: Sage, 2004: 271-295.
3. Velayudhan, Meera. “Growth of Political Consciousness among Women in Modern
Kerala.” Perspectives on Kerala History, Kerala State Gazetteer. Ed. P. J. Cheriyan. Vol.
2 Thiruvananthapuram: Government of Kerala, 1999: 486-511.
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Module IV: Contemporary Issues and New Challenges
1. Karat, Brinda. “On Political Participation.” Survival and Emancipation: Notes from
Indian Women’s Struggle. New Delhi: Three Essays Collectives, 2005: 117-151.
2. Kishwar, Madhu. “Women and Politics: Beyond Quotas.” Economic and Political
Weekly. 26, Oct 1996: 2867-2874.
3. Menon, Nivedita. “Embodying Self: Feminism, Sexual Violence and the Law.” Subaltern
Studies. Ed. Partha Chatterji and Pradeep Jaganathan. Vol.11. New Delhi: Permanent Black,
2003: 67-105.
4. Vindhya, U. “Battered Conjugality: The Psychology of Domestic Violence.” The Violence
of Normal Times. Ed. Kalpana Kannabiran. New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2005: 196-223.
Assessment
Test – 15 marks

49
ENG 5017 – Women’s Writing

Credits: Two Instructor Dr. G. S. Jayasree
Aim of the course
Women write to express their selves. However, this body of writing had never found its place
in the Canon, nor been used for pedagogical purposes. This course aims to grant the much
needed recognition to the creative works of women and examines the aesthetic specificities of
Women’s Writing and relates them to the socio-cultural milieu.
Course Description
This paper is a testament to the creativity of women who have always borne witness
to life, but were hardly ever permitted to speak. The poems, stories, plays and essays in this
paper will look at historical understandings that frame relationships in different social
contexts. It will go on to examine the possibilities and limitations that the body imposes on
women and the way to freedom that is the dream of every woman. Writing offers a medium
to record the nature of this journey to selfhood, at times joyous and at times painful.
1. Women’s Writing as a genre.

2. The richness and variety of women’s writing and to make them discern its wide range.
3. Key concepts and debates in women's writing
4. Major women writers and the salient features of the works of major women writers.
5. Analyze texts written by women.
6. Strategies employed by women in their writing practices.
7. Tracing the female literary tradition.
8. Understanding of women, their work and family through their own representation.
9. Women’s Writing from different communities, classes, countries etc.
10. Strategies used by women writers for the contestation of gender representation.
Prescribed Books
a.Poetry:
1. Kamala Das: “Too Late For Making Up”

2. Shanta Acharya: “Delayed Reaction”
3. Vijila: “A Place for me”
4. Imtiaz Dharker: “Minority”
5. Sylvia Plath: “Balloons”
6. Alice Walker: “Before I Leave the Stage”
7. Judith Wright: “Naked Girl and Mirror”
8. Carol Ann Duffy: “Eurydice”
9. Vijayalekshmi: “ThachanteMakal”
10. Pratibha Nandakumar: “Poem”
11. Sugatha Kumari: “Devadasi”
12. Temsula Ao: “Heritage”
b. Drama
1. Susan Glaspell: Trifles
2. Vinodini: Thirst
50
3. Alice Dunbar Nelson: Mine Eyes Have Seen
c. Prose
1. Virginia Woolf: “Professions for Women”
2. Nabaneeta Dev Sen: “Women Writing in India at the Turn of the Bengali)”
3. P. Sivakami: “Land: Woman’s Breath and Speech”
4. Jasbir Jain: “From Experience to Aesthetics: The Dialectics of Language and
Representation”.Growing up as a Woman Writer. New Delhi:
Sahitya Akademi, 2006. Pp. 361-369.)
5. Tanika Sarkar: “Nationalist Iconography”
6. Anna Julia Cooper: “Loss of Speech through Isolation”
7. Romila Thapar: “Translations: Orientalism, German Romanticism and the Image
of “Sakuntala”
8. Susan B. Antony: “On Women’s Right to Vote”
9. Dorothy Parker: “Good Souls”
d. Fiction
1. Lalithambika Antarjanam: Goddess of Revenge
2. Mahaswetha Devi: The Divorce
3. P. Vatsala: The Nectar of Panguru Flower
4. Shashi Deshpande: Independence Day
5. Doris Lessing: No Witchcraft for Sale
6. Katherine Mansfield: A Doll’s House
7. M. Saraswati Bai: Brainless Women
8. Kumudini: Letters from the Palace
9. Penelope Fitzgerald: The Axe
10. Mrinal Pande: A Woman’s Farewell Song
11. Sarah Orne Jewett: A White Heron
Reference:
 Leo Braudy & Marshall Cohen, eds. Film Theory and Criticism. New York and Oxford:
Oxford UP, 1999.
 Jeffrey Geiger & R. L. Rutsky, eds. Film Analysis: A Norton Reader. New York: Norton,
2005.
Assessment
Test – 15 marks
51
52
ENG 502 – Caste, Gender and Sexuality

Aim of the course
In India, identity is defined in terms of caste, gender and sexuality. However, the complex
issues related to these categories have not been subjected to close critical enquiry. This
course examines the nature of caste, gender and sexuality and their intersections in the
context of Indian society.
Course Description
Questions of power, agency and resistance have become central to any course offered at the
post-graduate level. If we wish to challenge and transform structures of power in society, it
will be necessary to equip the students to question and decode the meanings of signs that
describe and perpetuate such structures. This course helps us to understand the reasons for the
subordinate status of women in terms of caste, gender and sexuality. Uma Chakravarti
analyses the concepts of Brahminical patriarchy in Vedic India, where as Kumkum Roy
examines a key text in the context of sexual economies of post vedic India. Paola Bacchetta
looks at the intersections of sexuality and religious belief systems, where as Sharmila Rege
narrows down the enquiry into the life texts of dalit women. Kalpana Kannabiran and
Vasanth Kannabiran flag another important issue in gender and sexuality by examining the
dynamics of power and violence. Jaya Sharma and Dipika Nath open up discussions on same
sex relations in India, while Bisakha Dutta talks about the representational realities of sex
workers in India. The last essay in this section by Shohini Ghosh focuses on the queer vision
in Bombay cinema. Together, this series of eight essays would help the students to get a
better understanding of the issues related to caste, gender, and sexuality in contemporary
cultural studies.
Prescribed Books
1. Chakravarti, Uma. “Conceptualizing Braminical Patriarchy in Early India: Gender,

Caste, Class and State.” Caste, Class, Gender: Readings in Indian Government and
Politics. ed. Manoranjan Mohanty. New Delhi: Sage, 2004: 271-295.
2. Roy, Kumkum. “Unravelling the Kamasutra.” A Question of Silence? The Sexual
Economies of Modern India. Eds. Mary E. John and Janaki Nair. New Delhi: Kali for
Women, (1998) 2000: 52-76.
3. Bacchetta, Paola. “Communal Property/ Sexual Property: On Representations of
Muslim Women in a Hindu Nationalist Discourse.” Gender in the Hindu Nation: RSS
Women as Ideologues. New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2004: 93-144.
4. Rege, Sharmila. “Debating the Consumption of Dalit ‘Autobiographies’: The
Significance of Dalit ‘Testimonios.’” Writing Caste/Writing Gender: Narrating Dalit
53
Women’s Testimonios. New Delhi: Zubaan, 2006: 9-92.
5. Kannabiran, Kalpana and Vasanth Kannabiran. “Caste and Gender: Understanding
Dynamics of Power and Violence.” De-Eroticizing Assault: Essays on Modesty,
Honour and Power. Calcutta: Stree, 2002: 55-67.
6. Sharma, Jaya and Dipika Nath. “Through the Prism of Intersectionality: Same Sex
Sexualities in India.” Sexuality, Gender and Rights: Exploring Theory and Practice
in South and Southeast Asia. Eds. Geetanjali Misra and Radhika Chandiramani. New
Delhi: Sage, 2005: 82-97.
7. Dutta, Bisakha. “Not a Sob Story: Representing the Realities of Sex Work in India.”
Sexuality, Gender and Rights: Exploring Theory and Practice in South and Southeast
Asia. Eds. Geetanjali Misra and Radhika Chandiramani. New Delhi: Sage, 2005:
260-276.
8. Ghosh, Shohini. “False Appearances and Mistaken Identities: The Phobic and the
Erotic in Bombay Cinema’s Queer Vision.” The Phobic and the Erotic: The Politics
of Sexualities in Contemporary India. Calcutta: Seagull, 2007: 417-436.
Assessment
Test – 15 marks

54
ENG 5026 – Translation Studies

Aim of the course
This course aims to introduce students to the fundamentals of translation theory. This would
involve the study of the evolution of the concept of translation and the various strategies used
in the process. It will examine the various forms of translation and carry a module on
practical aspects, enabling the students to choose translation as a profession.
Course Description
This course handles Translation Studies as a discipline that deals with theories of translation,
the role of the translator, the cultural turn in translation, gender, sexuality and other issues,
the postcolonial translation studies, the translation of religious texts, the politics involved in
the entire process and the central issues and difficulties confronted during translation. It thus
treats translation as an academic interdiscipline dealing with the systematic study of the
theory, description and application of translation, interpretation and localization and its
relevance and utility in society.
Prescribed Books
Unit I: Literary Translation: Domain, Debates
1. Walter Benjamin: The Task of the Translator

2. Roman Jakobson: On the Linguistic Aspects of Translation
3. Eugene Nida: Principles of Correspondence
4. George Steiner: The Hermeneutic Motion
5. Itamar Even-Zohar: The Position of Translated Literature within the Literary
Polysystem.
6. Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi: Of Colonies, Cannibals and Vernacular
Unit II: Literary Translation: Histories
1. James S. Holmes: The Name and Nature of Translation Studies

2. Sukrita Paul Kumar: Language as Content: Literary Translation into
English
Unit III: Literary Translation: Debates in India
1. Ayyappa Paniker: Towards an Indian Theory of Literary Translation

2. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak : The Politics of Translation
3. Tejaswini Niranjana: Introduction: History in Translation
4. Vanamala Viswanatha: Breaking Ties
Unit IV: Processes of Translation

1. J. C. Catford: Translation Shifts
2. Jean-Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet: A Methodology for Translation
3. G. Samuelsson-Brown: A Practical Guide for Translators
4. M. Sofer: The Translator’s Handbook
55
Assessment
Test – 15 marks


56
ENG 5027 – Indian Fiction in English Translation

Aim of the course
This course aims to familiarize the students with the development of Fiction in Indian
languages other than English, in the post-Independence period. Keeping in view the need to
relate English Studies to the Indian cultural context, the course will encourage the students to
learn the texts from different languages to understand their distinctive identities as well as
their common concerns. To understand the socio-cultural movements which have become
decisive in the evolution of fiction in a pan-Indian perspective is another aim of the course.
Course Description
The course is based on the English translations of select masterpieces from various languages
and examines the narrative strategies/techniques/styles employed by writers in a multi-
linguistic context. It makes students aware of various forms of literary art and genuine socio-
cultural ethos presented through the writings in different Indian regional languages and acts
as a source of linguistic as well as cultural expansion that widens the capacity for meaning
and literary creativity.
Prescribed Books
Bhishma Sahni: Thamas (Tr. by author)
Mahasweta Devi: The Breast Giver (Tr. by Gayatri Spivak)
M. T. Vasudevan Nair: Mist (Tr. by Premila V.M.)
Manik Bandyopadhyay: The Boatman in Padma (Tr. Prof. Hiren Mukherjee)
O. V .Vijayan: Legends of Khasak (Tr. by author, Penguin India)
U. R. Anantamurti: Samskara (Tr. A. K. Ramanujan)
Neela Padmanabhan: Pallikondapuram (Tr. Dakshinamurthy, CLS
Publication)
Assessment
Test – 15 marks
57
58
MA(CSS) Degree Course in English Language and Literature
ENG 5016 – Contemporary Malayalam Literature in English Translation

Aim of the course
Malayalam has a rich body of writing and the aim of the course is to offer select texts in all
genres from 1950s English translation. It maps the changing sensibilities in the literary
landscape of Malayalam and gives a brief overview of shifting schools from late
Romanticism to Postmodernism. In addition, the course examines the poetics and politics of
translation when moving a text from Malayalam into English.
Course Description
It deals with the history of Malayalam literature in translation from 1900 to1950 and post-
1950 developments in the field of translation. It also analyses modern, post-modern and
current trends in Malayalam poetry and drama, new genres of Malayalam prose –
autobiography, travelogue and magical realism, and familiarizes the students with recent
trends in Malayalam literature like writings on culture/art forms, the concepts of existence
and survival, and Literature of minorities.
Prescribed Books
a.Poetry
G. Kumara Pillai: “EthraYadrischikam”

O.N.V. Kurup: “Those Who Haven’t Finished Loving” [Trans. A. J. Thomas]
N. N. Kakkad: “Fever” [Trans. Prema Jayakumar]
K. Ayyappa Paniker: “The Village”
Attoor Ravi Varma: “Samkramanam”
K. G. Sankara Pillai: “What Said I to the River” [Trans. Prema Jayakumar]
O. V. Usha: “O Agnimitra”
b. Drama
Narendra Prasad: Sowparnika.
C. J. Thomas: Behold He Comes Again [Sahitya Academy]
G. SankaraPillai: Wings Flapping Somewhere.
c. Fiction and Short Fiction:

(i) Novels:
Thakazhi: Chemmeen. [Trans. Anita Nair]
Anand: The Death Certificate [Trans. Geetha Krishnankutty]
P. Valsala: Agneyam [Trans. Prema Jayakumar]
Narayanan: Kocharethi: The Araya Woman [Trans. CatherineThankamma]
(ii) Stories:
Karoor: “Wooden Dolls”
Rajalekshmi: “Aparajitha”
M. Sukumaran: “Marichittillathavarude Smarakangal”
K. R. Meera: “Yellow is the Colour of Longing” [Trans. by J. Devika]
59
d. Prose:
(i) Autobiography:
V. T. Bhattathiripad: My Tears, My Dreams [Trans. Sindhu V. Nair]
(ii) Writings on Culture/Music:
S. Guptan Nair: “Indian Poetics”
Reference:
 Krishna Chaitanya. A History of Malayalam Literature. Orient Longman,
1971.
 A. J. Thomas. Seventeen Contemporary Malayalam Short Stories.
 Dr. K. M. Tharakan. A Brief Survey of Malayalam Literature. NBS, 1990.
 B. K. Menon, trans. Marthanda Varma. “An Apology about Translation”.
Introduction to the latest edition by Dr. Ayyappa Paniker
Assessment
Test – 15 marks


60
ENG 5031 – Discourses on Colonialism: Reading India

Aim of the course
The critical enterprise of colonialism has seen many shifts and turns since India gained
independence in 1947.Presently we see thinkers from India mounting a critique of
postcolonial readings largely from Nationalist/Marxist/Subaltern/Post-structuralist/
Postmodernist/Gender and Sexuality and Caste perspectives. This course examines the fast
changing terrain of discourses of colonialism that aims to read India from a culturally situated
theoretical position.
Course Description
In terms of intellectual claims, India still remains a victim of western modernity. The west
defines the contours of thought for us. However, the last two decades have seen efforts to
shake away this dominance without resorting to narrow prescriptive “us versus them”
paradigms. The essays in this paper map this exciting field examining the protracted issues of
nation, nationalism and the postnation from a specifically Indian context. The nationalist
imaginary in visual and print media and the sartorial preferences that had a definite political
content are also looked into. One cannot ignore the scholarship on religion, caste and gender
in the context of responses to colonialism. The poetics and politics of writing forms another
strand within this rich body of thought and in this I have chosen readings on Sufism and
Bhakti.
Prescribed Books
1. Partha Chatterjee. “Nationalism as a Problem in the History of Political Ideas.”

Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? The Partha
Chatterjee Omnibus. New Delhi:Oxford UP, 1994: 1-35.
2. Dipesh Chakrabarty. “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History.” Representations 37,
Special Issue: Imperial Fantasies and Postcolonial Histories (Winter 1992): 1-26.
3. Tanika Sarkar. “Nationalist Iconography.” HinduWife, HinduNation: Community,
ReligionandCulturalNationalism. New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2000: 250-267.
4. Flavina Agnes. “From Shah Bano to Kausar Bano: Contextualizing the “Muslim
Woman” within Communalized Polity.” South Asian Feminisms. Eds. Ania Loomba and
Ritty A. Lukose. Durham: Duke UP, 2012: 33-53.
5. Laura Brueck. “At the Intersection of Gender and Caste: Rescripting Rape in Dalit
Feminist Narratives.” South Asian Feminisms. Eds. Ania Loomba and Ritty A. Lukose.
Durham: Duke UP, 2012: 224-243.
6. Kavita Panjabi. “The Ethos of the Fakir: Of Affective Belonging and Institutional
61
Partitions across South Asia.” Poetics and Politics of Sufism and Bhakti in South Asia:
Love, Loss, and Liberation. Ed. Kavita Panjabi. Kolkata: Orient BlackSwan, 2011: 153-
170.
7. Peter Gonsalves. “Subverting the Self.” Khadi: Gandhi’s Mega Symbol of Subversion.
New Delhi: Sage, 2012: 3-30.
8. Nivedita Menon. “Thinking through the Postnation.” The Indian Postcolonial: A Critical
Reader. Eds. Elleke Boehmer and Rosinka Chaudhuri. London: Routledge, 2011: 316-
333.
Assessment
Test – 15 marks
62
ENG 5030 – Genealogies of Medicine in Colonial India

Aim of the course
The ways of managing health in colonial India are interesting as we continue to follow much
of their ways long after the British left. This course examines the diverse facets of the social
history of health and medicine in colonial India. Based on inter-disciplinary research, it offers
valuable insights into topics that are recently receiving scholarly attention, encouraging
students to look closely at what is taken-for-granted in regimes of health.
Course Description
The British gave us the railways, telegraph; they gave a language and taught us to read our
own languages. They organized the legal system for us. Indeed, there was no side of our life
they were not concerned about. They wanted to save the Indians from plague and Kalaazar,
and therefore set up elaborate systems for saving our bodies. As we were not quite sure who
was sane and who was not, they built lunatic asylums to lock up both. We groveled in dust,
filth and excrement and therefore they took elaborate steps to promote sanitary
consciousness. They knew that diseases spread because we never bathed and worse, we
answered nature’s call under the wild skies. All this would have been okay, if we did not
multiply ourselves the way we did. So they had to put in extra effort and teach us artificial
methods to keep our numbers manageable. These were particularly aimed at women, because
everyone knows that it is the woman who bears the child.
Prescribed Books
1. Mark Harrison and Biswamoy Pati. “Social History of Health and Medicine: Colonial
India.” The Social History of Health and Medicine in Colonial India. Eds. Mark Harrison
& Biswamoy Pati. New Delhi: Primus, 2011: 1-14.
2. David Arnold. “Touching the Body: Perspectives of the Indian Plague.”Modern Asian
Studies. Vol. 30, No. 3 (July 1996): 707-714.
3. Anand Zachariah & R. Srivatsan. “What Makes a Disease Marginal: Tracing the History
of Kalaazar.” Towards a Critical Medical Practice: Reflections on the Dilemmas of
Medical Culture Today. Eds. Anand Zachariah, R. Srivatsan & Susie Tharu. Delhi: Orient
BlackSwan, 2010: 39-56.
4. Waltraud Ernst. “Institutions, People and Power: Lunatic Asylums in Bengal, c. 1800-
1900.” Social History ofHealth and Medicine: Colonial India. Eds. Mark Harrison &
Biswamoy Pati. New Delhi: Primus, 2011: 129-150.
5. Sumit Guha. “The Population History of South Asia from the First to the Twentieth
Century: An Exploration.” Health and Population in South Asia from Earliest Times to
63
the Present. New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001: 24-67.
6. Mridula Ramanna. “Promotion of Sanitary Consciousness.” Health Care in Bombay
Presidency, 1896-1930. New Delhi: Primus, 2012: 39-75.
7. Muhammad Umair Mushtaq. “Public Health in British India: A Brief Account of the
History of Medical Services and Disease Prevention in Colonial India.” Indian Journal of
Community Medicine: Official Publication of Indian Association of Preventive& Social
Medicine. 2009 January; 34(1): 6- 14.Medknow: 1-26.
8. Indrani Sen. “Memsahibs and Health in Colonial Medical Writings, c. 1840 to c.
1930.”South Asia Research. November 2010.Vol. 30,No. 3: 253-274.
Assessment
Test – 15 marks
64
ENG 5018 –Technologies of Self: Writing Lives, Making History

Aim of the course
This course is a tribute to Foucault on technologies of the self. Foucault redefined the very
concept of the self that we had uncritically internalized for centuries, particularly notions of
Selfhood that emerged with Enlightenment Modernity. The blurring distinctions between the
Public and the Private makes for a revisionary reading of many Life-Texts included for
detailed reading.
Course Description
The study of an individual’s life as a means to understand the times of which he or she
forms an important part or cuts a representative figure has been regarded as a useful tool for
historical understanding of a period. The recent interest in individual’s life goes beyond this
and assumes that there are certain aspects of historical enquiry that are most usefully or even
inevitably carried out through a study of the lives of individuals. On a closer inspection we
find that several other domains of life at the level of practices, may not have as explicit a
relationship to the corporeal as is thought of, or may be at significant variance from the
principles articulated in doctrinal texts. In fact the very lives of such texts may be traced by
exploring the ways in which individuals and groups devise life practices which actualize
these doctrines even as they transform them. Recent theoretical investigations on the
technologies of the self, the possibilities of counter-history and practices of everyday life,
allow an understanding of the intricate ways in which the social informs the constitution of
individual lives. In this paper five examples of life writing are placed alongside five critical
articles to allow a contrapuntal reading of the texts.
1. Culture, Politics, and Self-Representation
2. Archives of the Self
3. Double-Voiced Autobiographies
4. Fictional Lives
5. Righting the Self
6. Life Writing and the Work of Mediation
7. Gendered Life-Writing
8. Life-Writing in the Postcolonial Context
9. Life-Writing and Censorship
10. The Pleasures of Reading Life-histories
Prescribed Books
1. Wolpert, Stanley. Gandhi’s Passion: The Life and Legacy of Mahatma Gandhi. New
York: Oxford UP, 2001.
2. Kadar, Marlene. “Coming to Terms: Life Writing: From Genre to Critical Practice.” In
Essays on Life Writing: From Genre to Critical Practice. Ed. Marlene Kadar.U of
Toronto P, 1992.
3. Namboodirippad, Kanippayyur Sankaran. Ente Smaranakal. Kunnamkulam:
Panchangam, 1965.
4. Arnold, David and Stuart H. Blackburn. “Introduction: Life Histories in India.” In
Telling Lives In India: Biography, Autobiography and Life History. Ed. David Arnold and
Stuart H. Blackburn.Indiana UP, 2004.
65
5. Menchu, Rigoberta. I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala. London:
Verso, 1984.
6. Arata, Luis O. “The Testimonial of Rigoberta Menchú in a Native Tradition”. In
Teaching and Testimony: Ed. Allen Carey-Webb and Stephen Benz. New York: SUNY
P, 1996.
7. Viramma, Josiane, and Jean Luc Racine. Viramma: Life of an Untouchable. London:
Verso, 1997.
8. Rege, Sharmila. “Debating the Consumption of Dalit Autobiographies: The Significance
of Dalit Testimonio.” In Writing Caste Writing Gender: Reading Dalit Women’s
Testimonios. by Sharmila Rege. Zubaan, 2006.
9. Levi, Primo. If this is a Man. London: Abacus, 1979.
10. Agamben, Giorgio. Section 1 (Witness). From Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and
the Archive.Zone, 2002.
Assessment
Test – 15 marks

66
ENG 5029 – Writing Lives, Performing Gender

Aim of the course
This paper with its focus on dancing bodies in performance shall open up enquiries into the
behaviors of gendered, raced and sexed bodies within the cultural space. The extracts from
life-writing chosen from three iconoclastic performers open up multiple ways of thinking
about bodies in performance, beyond the normalized ways of embodying selves. The critical
essays shall guide the students towards a concrete understanding of how the performers have
dealt with and re-negotiated their societies through the subversive kinesthetic of their
performing bodies and shall sensitize them towards developing more informed ways of
understanding lives and bodies in performance.
Course Description
The extract from the life of Isadora Duncan shall acquaint the students with the persistent
struggle of an iconoclastic performer, considered the creator of modern dance in the west, to
extend the grammar of female dancing body beyond the codified rigidities of classical ballet.
Duncan wanted to restore dance to a high art form instead of entertainment and for this she
continually sought to redefine the connection between emotions and movement. Her
autobiography tries to capture the agonies of a life that was devoted to experimenting with
the self, body and the other.
Chandralekha is in many ways an epochal eastern counterpart of Isadora Duncan and hence
elaborates the enquiries of the students begun in the first extract to a more familiar cultural
scenario. Her incessant experiments to widen the idiom of bharatanatyam to encompass the
powerfully fluid movements of limbs in kalaripayattu and yoga, to tap multiple ways of erotic
expression, her quests to bring out the feminine within the male, and her own postulations of
the seamless body shall incite further critical thinking in these directions.
A dancer-choreographer who shocked the classical ballet audience used to stipulated

kinesthetics of the moving male body, Vaslav Nijinsky’s modes of expression were futuristic
in many ways. From dancing en pointe which was not expected of men to extreme sparseness
employed in rendering and his two dimensional movement vocabulary set against lush music
and open expression of physicality on stage, Nijinsky’s life both on and off the stage was
riveting. This extract brings in myriad questions into norms of masculinity that popular art
and literature promote.
The extract from Sarah Caldwell’s study of mudiyettu in many ways consolidates the
explorations incited by the other selections in this paper. The remarkable power of this
book’s analyses of sexualities in performances in a ritual space in Kerala comes from the
position of an involved participant that she takes, as against any supposed objective
scholarship on the same. The mix of insight in the form of entries in her journal and letters
that generously peppers her academic analysis enables her to pour forth the frustrations
within her person as she encounters conventions of female behaviour and gender performance
in Kerala. The vividly examined psychological dynamics working behind ritual structures,
the conflicts between genders it reflects and the way the same are negotiated through ritual,
all narrated with empathy shall encourage students further in their own experiential
67
assessments.
Prescribed Books
Module 1:
Required Reading:
 Duncan, Isadora. My Life. New York: Liveright, 1995.
1. Franko, Mark. “The Invention of Modern Dance.” Dancing Modernism: Performing
Politics. New York: IUP, 1995.
2. Foster, Susan Leigh. “The Ballerina’s Phallic Pointe.” Corporealities: Dancing
Knowledge, Culture and Power. New York: Routledge, 1996.
3. Phelan, Peggy. “Dance and the History of Hysteria.” Corporealities:Dancing Knowledge,
Culture and Power. New York:Routledge, 1996.
Module 2:
Required Reading:
 Barucha, Rustom. Chandralekha: Woman, Dance, Resistance. New Delhi: Harper
Collins, 1999.
1. Chatterjee, Ananya. “Chandralekha: Negotiating the Female Body and Movement in
Cultural/Political Signification.” Moving History, Dancing Cultures: A Dance History
Reader. Ed. Dils Ann and Ann Cooper Albright. New York: WUP, 2001.
2. Coorlawala, Uttara. “Ananya and Chandralekha – A Response to Chandralekha:
Negotiating the Female Body and Movement in Cultural/Political Signification.” Moving
History, Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader. Ed. Dils Ann and Ann Cooper
Albright. New York: WUP, 2001.
3. Hanna, Lynne Judith. “The Sense and Symbol of Sexuality and Gender in Dance
Images.” Dance, Sex and Gender: Signs of Identity, Dominance, Defiance and Desire.
Chicago: UCP, 1998.
Module 3:
Required Reading:
 Nijinsky, Vaslav. The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky. Ed. Romola Nijinsky. London: UCP,
1971.
1. Kopelson, Kevin. “Nijinsky’s Golden Slave.” Dancing Desires: Choreographing
Sexualities on and off the Stage. Ed. Jane Desmond. Wisconsin: UWP, 2001.
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2. Hodson, Millicent. “Searching for Nijinsky’s Sacre” Moving History, Dancing Cultures:
A Dance History Reader.Ed. Dils Ann and Ann Cooper Albright. New York: WUP, 2001.
3. Burt, Ramsay. “Dissolving in Pleasure: The Threat of the Queer Male Dancing Body.”
Dancing Desires: Choreographing Sexualities on and off the Stage.Ed. Jane
Desmond.Wisconsin: UWP, 2001.
Module 4:
Required Reading:
 Caldwell, Sarah. Oh Terrifying Mother: Sexuality, Violence and Worship of the
Goddess Kali. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1999.
1. Joyce, Rosemary. “Goddesses, Matriarchs and Manly-Hearted Women: Troubling
Categorical Approaches to Gender.”Ancient Bodies, Ancient Lives: Sex, Gender and
Archaeology. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2008.
2. Perry, E. M., and Rosemary Joyce. “Providing a Past for Bodies that Matter: Judith
Butler’s Impact onthe Archaeology of Gender.” International Journal of Sexuality and
Gender Studies. 6: 63-76.
3. Brewer, Carolyn. “‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ Women: The Virgin and the Whore.” Shamanism,
Catholicism and Gender Relations in Colonial Philippines, 1521-1685. London: Ashgate,
2004.
4. Bahrani, Zainab. “Metaphorics of the Body: Nudity, the Goddess and the Gaze.” Women
of Babylon: Gender and Representation in Mesopotamia. London: Routledge, 2001.
Assessment
Test – 15 marks

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ENG 5013 – Film Studies

Credits: Two Instructor: Dr. Meena T. Pillai
Aim of the course
This course aims to introduce students to the language of cinema and also teach them how to
‘read’ a film. It attempts to make familiar various aspects of film studies including film
analysis, film history and film theory. It would help in understanding the function of
narrative in film and the social, cultural, and political implications of the film text.
Course Description
The objective of this course is to enable literature students to read film texts and understand
how they push forward the function of narrative. The attempt would be to make the students
analyze the language of cinema, its development, the ideological implications of the image
and the problems posed by notions of gaze. The essays prescribed would be sufficient in
helping the student understand these aspects. The lectures should use a lot of clips from
different films to illustrate the points. It is strongly recommended that films or film clips
should be screened as often as possible for every essay to illustrate the points being made.
Any film of the teacher’s choice other than the ones suggested may also be screened to
illustrate specific topics. The four films selected for close analysis help in understanding the
language, conventions, ideology and issues of representation and gaze in cinema. The other
films for general viewing can be screened to create a greater awareness of and insight into the
language, medium, genres and methods of cinema.
1. What is Cinema?
2. Grammar, composition and narrative logic in Cinema
3. Film Language
4. Film Form
5. History of Cinema
6. Film Movements
7. Auteur Theory
8. Film Genres (Film Noir, Horror, Avant-garde/Experimental, Documentary)
9. Ideology and Cinema
10. Representation and Cinema
Prescribed Books
1. Sergei Eisenstein. “Word and Image”
2. André Bazin. “The Evolution of the Language of Cinema”
3. Jean Louis Baudry. “ Ideological Effects of Basic Cinematographic
Apparatus”
4. Laura Mulvey. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”
5. Moti Gokulsing and Wimal Dissanayake. “The Distinctiveness of Indian Popular
Cinema”. In Moti Gokulsing and Wimal Dissanayake, eds. Indian Popular Cinema: A
Narrative of Cultural Change. Trent: Trentham, 1998.
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6. Christian Metz. “On the Notion of Cinematographic Language”
7. Stam and Spense. “Colonialism, Racism and Representation: An
Introduction”
8. Films for Detailed Study/viewing:
a. Sergei Eisenstein: Battleship Potemkin
b. John Ford: Stagecoach
c. Mehboob: Mother India
d. Adoor Gopalakrishnan: Elippathayam
(All essay and short questions only from Sections I and II)
9. Films for General Viewing:
1. Robert Wiene: The Cabinet of Dr Caligari
2. Jean Renoir: The Rules of the Game
3. Carl Theodore Dreyer: The Passion of Joan of Arc
4. Chaplin: Modern Times
5. Hitchcock: Rear Window
6. Gene Kelly: Singing in the Rain
7. Godard: Breathless
8. Alain Resnais: Hiroshima Mon Amour
9. Ozu: Tokyo Story
10. Guru Dutt: Pyaasa
11. Satyajit Ray: Pather Panchali
12. Ritwik Ghatak: Meghe Dhaka Tara
13. K. G. George: Yavanika
a.Leo Braudy & Marshall Cohen, eds. Film Theory and Criticism. New York and Oxford:
Oxford UP, 1999.
b.Jeffrey Geiger & R. L. Rutsky, eds. Film Analysis: A Norton Reader. New York: Norton,
2005.
Assessment
Test – 15 marks
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ENG 5015 –Comparative Literature

Credits: Two Instructor: Dr. Meena T. Pillai
Dr. Suja Kurup P. L
Aim of the course
The aim of this course is to introduce the students to the origin, growth, definition and scope
of Comparative Literature. It will attempt to look at the major concepts/theories and
methodologies of Comparative Literature
Course Description
1. Origins of Comparative literature as a discipline

2. Historical development of Comparative Literature in the West
3. Various definitions, scope and application of Comparative Literature
4. The French, German and American Schools of Comparative Literature
5. Influence and Reception Studies
6. Thematology
7. Genre and Movement Studies
8. Postcolonial approaches to Comparative Literature
9. Comparative Literature in the Indian context
10. Comparative Literature and Translation
Prescribed Books
1. Prawer, S. S. Comparative Literary Studies: An Introduction. London: Duckworth, 1973.
2. Weisstein, U. Comparative Literature and Literary Theory. Bloomington: Indiana UP,
1973.
3. Stallknecht, Newton P., & Frenz, eds. Comparative Literature: Method & Perspective.
Illinois: Southern Illinois UP, 1971.
4. Bassnett, Susan. Comparative Literature: A Critical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell,
1993.
5. Wellek, Rene. Discriminations: Further Concepts of Criticism. Delhi: Vikas, 1970.
Chandra Mohan, ed. Aspects of Comparative Literature: Current Approaches. Delhi: Indra,
1989.
6.Paniker, K. Ayyappa. Spotlight on Comparative Indian Literature. Calcutta: Papyrus, 1992.
7. Dev, Amiya, and Sisir Kumar Das, eds. Comparative Literature: Theory and Practice.
8. Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1989.
9. Majumdar, Swapan. Comparative Literature: Indian Dimensions. Calcutta: Papyrus, 1987.
Note to the teacher:

The nine books prescribed for reference will offer deeper insights into the topics to be
covered in this course. The book by Susan Bassnett will be especially useful. However it is
difficult to prescribe one book to deal with all these topics and therefore the rationale for this
long list of reference books.
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Assessment
Test – 15 marks

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ENG 505 – Fourth World Literature

Credits: Two Instructor: Dr. B. S. Jamuna
Aim of the course
The aim of the course is to familiarize the students to literature from the margins by
aboriginals, Dalits and other native populations.
Course Description
This course introduces students to writings that have evolved from the native populations of
Canada and Australia. The study will also look into Dalit literature marked by revolt and
hope for freedom of the “untouchables.” The writings reveal the pangs of discrimination,
traditional beliefs, a minority culture and the fear of an uncertain future.
Prescribed Books
1. Pauline Johnson: The Cattle Thief

2. Rita Joe: Women of Peace, Men of Peace
3. R. Z. Nobis, Jr: Ordinary Man
4. Namdeo Dhasal: Hunger
(Selections from Agnes Grant, ed. Our Bit of Truth: An Anthology of Canadian Native
Literature, & Arjun Dangle, ed. Poisoned Bread.)
5. Lee Maracle: Ravensong
6. Mudrooroo: Promised Land
7. Omprakash Valmiki: Joothan
8. Bama: Sangati
9. Sharankumar Limbale: Towards an Aesthetics of Dalit Literature
Assessment
Test – 15 marks

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ENG 506 – Literature and Ecology

Aim of the course
The two-credit course on Literature and Ecology aims at providing a comprehensive
introduction to the ways in which the creative imagination has responded to Ecology. It aims
to create an awareness of the ecological issues and to develop a movement from ego
consciousness to Eco-consciousness.
Course Description
The writers prescribed for study voice the ecological concerns and the need to address the
rising global threats. Units I will provide the theoretical background to the course and Units II
and III will discuss specific literary texts.
Prescribed Books
Unit I:
1. Glotfelty, Cheryl. “Literary Studies in an age of Environmental Crisis”. The Ecocriticism
Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology.Ed. Cheryl Gotfelty and Harold Fromm. Athens:
U of Georgia P, 1996: xx–xxv.
2. Gadgil, Madhav. “Environmentalism at the Crossroads”. Ecological Journeys: The
Science and Politics of Conservation in India. Madhav Gadgil. New Delhi: Permanent
Black, 2001: 121-135.
3. Howarth, William. “Some Principles of Ecocriticism.” The Ecocriticism Reader:
Landmarks in Literary Ecology.Ed. Cheryll Gotfelty and Harold Fromm. Athens: U of
Georgia P, 1996. 69-87.
Unit II:
1. Ted Walter: “Spurned Goddess”.
2. John Burnside: “Penitence”.
3. David Constantine: “Endangered Species”.
4. Andrew Waterman: “Evolution”
5. George Kenny: “Sunset on Portage”
(“Sunset on Portage” from Our Bit of Truth: An Anthology of Canadian Native Literature.
Ed. Agnes Grant. Toronto: Pemmican, 1990. All other poems are from Earth Songs: A
Resurgence Anthology of Contemporary Eco-poetry. Ed. Peter Abbs. Devon: Greenbooks,
2002.)
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Unit III:
1. Farley Mowat: A Whale for the Killing.
2. Wangari Mathai: Replenishing the Earth
3. Amitav Ghosh: The Hungry Tide
4. Nadine Gordimer: The Conservationist
Assessment
Test – 15 marks

Total- 100 marks
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ENG 5019 – New Writing Spaces and Poetics of the New Media
Aim of the course
The course aims to introduce students to new media writings which are composed,
disseminated and read on computers.
Course Description
Mainstream writings articulate the views of a single author, whereas new media writings
reverberate the views that are created by a synergy between human beings and computers.
The aim of the study will be to look into this synergy’s continuities and breaks with past
literary practices and its implications for the future.
Prescribed Books
Module 1: Terms and Concepts

New Media art; Hypermedia; Hypertext; Hyperlinks; Intermedia, Memex, Storyspace
Literary Machines
Interactive multimedia, Interactive narratives
Digital writing and reading
Digital poetry, kinetic poetry, visual poetry, holographic poetry.
Module 2: Literary theory and new media

Post structuralism; Theories of meaning
Strategies of Reading: Conventional, Mediated and Virtual
Web-based Writing and Reading
Major Practitioners and Major Theories
WEB 2.0 Technology and Theories of Literature
Randall Packer, ed. Multimedia – from Wagner to Virtual Reality.
Adelaide Morris & Thomas Swiss. New Media Poetics: Contexts, Technotexts & Theories.
Lunenseld, ed. Digital Dialectics.
Andrew Dewdney. New Media Handbook.
Martin Lister. New Media: A Critical Introduction.
Anna Everett. New Media: Theories and Practice.
Delany & Landow. Hyper Media and Literary Study.
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Assessment
Test – 15 marks

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ENG 5025 – English for Communication

Aim of the course
This two-credit course on English for Communication aims at developing the communicative
skills in English of students. Communicative competence, both oral and written, will be the
prime concern of this course.
Course Description
In this course, emphasis will be placed on the use of the language in various contexts of use
thus enhancing their ability to deal with real life situations such as facing interviews,
participating in group discussions and also for effective written communication. All the units
will provide training to develop the communicative skills of the learners.
Unit I: Language and Communication Skills – Listening Comprehension – Types of
Listening – Global and Specific; Practice exercises to improve listening comprehension
Unit II: Conversation Skills – Formal and informal Use of English; Interviews; Debates;
Group
Discussions; Telephone conversation; Practice Exercises to improve conversational skills.
Unit III: Reading Skills – Types of reading – Skimming, Scanning; Vocabulary building;
Synonyms, Antonyms, Homonyms, Homographs, Homophones; Phrasal Verbs; Idioms and
Phrases; Practice exercises to improve reading skill.
Unit IV: Written Comprehension – Correspondence: Formal and Informal; Business
Correspondence; Agenda; Minutes; Advertisements; Notices; Reports; Proposals; CV and
Covering Letter
Unit V: Common Errors made by Indian users of English
Prescribed Books
Doff, Adrian and Christopher Jones. Language in Use.Upper-Intermediate. CUP, 1999
Grellet, Francoise. Developing Reading Skills.A Practical Guide to Reading Comprehension
Exercises.CUP, 2003.
Hanock, Mark. English Pronunciation in Use.CUP, 2003.
McCarthy, Michael and Felicity O’Dell. English Vocabulary in Use (Upper-
Intermediate).CUP, 2001.
Taylor, Shirley. Model Business Letters, Emails and Other Documents. 6th Edition.
Financial Times Management.UK, 2003.
Assessment
Students will be asked to make oral presentations like speech; short plays; debates and group
discussions
Students will work on guided and free compositions
Test – 15 marks
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Oral examination/viva voce – 20 marks
Written examination – 60 marks
Attendance in Lectures/Participation - 5 marks

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ENG 501 – The Arctic Landscape in Canadian Fiction

Credits: Two Instructor: Dr. B. Hariharan
Aim of the course
This course will explore the depiction of the Arctic Landscape in Canadian fiction.
Course Description
The idea of the north, its mystery and its alluring fascination both for the explorer and the
writer will form the context for the study of the novels of Rudy Wiebe, John Moss and Aritha
Van Herk. Each of these writers sees the Arctic from their subjective position, which is
rooted in their diverse cultural background. Concepts such as historiography, geografictione
and spatiality will be analyzed with reference to these writers.
Prescribed Books
1. Rudy Wiebe: Playing Dead
2. John Moss: Enduring Dreams: An Exploration of Arctic Landscape
3. Aritha Van Herk: Places Far From Ellesmere: A Geografictione
Assessment
Assignment 1
Students are required to make a seminar presentation on an area that concerns the Canadian
Arctic. Max marks: 10
Assignment 2
welcome to engage in interdisciplinary research, to prepare their term papers. Max marks: 10
Test
Total: 100 marks
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ENG 503 – Diaspora Writing: Theory and Practice

Aim of the course

The theory of Diaspora Writing is significant in the context of globalization and multicultural
societies and so this course introduces the student to some of the basic concepts about
Diaspora.
Course Description
Languages and cultures are transformed as they come into contact with other languages and
cultures. Immigration/Exile has created new dimensions of nationhood and narration.
Writing from adopted homelands of a ‘lost world’; has paved the way for a literature that is
both heterogeneous and culture specific. This course will include essays on theorizing
Diaspora and select novels/film of diaspora writers like Salman Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri and
Michael Ondaatje.
Prescribed Texts
1. Salman Rushdie: Imaginary Homelands
2. Vijay Mishra The Diasporic Imaginary: Theorizing the Indian Diaspora
3. Stuart Hall: Culture, Identity and Diaspora
4. Jhumpa Lahiri: The Namesake
5. Michael Ondaatje: Anil’sGhost
6. Deepa Mehta: Water (Film)
Assessment
Assignment 1
Students are required to make a seminar presentation on an area that concerns Diaspora
Studies. Max marks: 10
Assignment 2
welcome to engage in interdisciplinary research to prepare their term papers. Max marks: 10
Test
Total: 100 marks
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ENG 5020 – Translation and its Contexts

Aim of the course
This elective aims to introduce the learner to some of the contexts in which translation
functions.
Course Description
The purpose is to enable an understanding of some of the ways in which translation impacts
everyday living. While the texts listed for study are essays that theorize different translation
contexts, the learner will engage in translation practice bearing in mind the issues that emerge
in classroom discussions.
Prescribed Texts
1. Walter Benjamin. “The Task of the Translator.” The Translation Studies Reader. Ed.
LawrenceVenuti.15–25.
2. Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi. “Introduction: of Colonies, Cannibals and
Vernaculars.” Postcolonial Translation Theory.1–18.
3. Michael Cronin. “Globalization and the New Politics of Translation.” Translation
and Globalization.104–137.
4. Esperança Bielsa and Susan Bassnett. “Translation in Global News Agencies.”
Translation in Global News.56–73.
5. Michael Cronin. “Translation and Migration.” Translation and Identity. 43–74.
6. Mary Snell-Hornby. “The Turn of the 1990s.” The Turn of Translation Studies: New
Paradigms or Shifting Viewpoints?115–148.
Assessment
Assignment 1
Students are required to make a seminar presentation on an area that concerns Translation
Assignment 2
Test
85
Total: 100 marks
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ENG 5022 – An Introduction to Canadian Studies

Aim of the course
This course provides an introduction to the study of Canada from an interdisciplinary
perspective. It will introduce some concepts and concerns that shape Canada.
Course Description
The paper will discuss four major narratives, namely, History, Multiculturalism and
Diaspora, Land and Environment, and Hockey. The course will also introduce the student to
interdisciplinary study in a specific area.
Prescribed Texts
a. History
1. Trigger, Bruce G. “The Historians’ Indian: Native Americans in Canadian Historical
Writing from Charlevoix to the Present.” The Native Imprint: The Contribution of
First Peoples to Canada’s Character. Vol 1: To 1815. Ed. Dickason, Olivia Patricia.
Np: Athabasca University. 1995: 423–450.
2. Shorten, Lynda. “Limmy Mix.” Without Reserve: Stories from Urban Natives.
Edmonton: Newest, 1991.
b. Multiculturalism and Diaspora

3. Kortenaar, Neil Ten. “Multiculturalism & Globalization.”Cambridge History of
Canadian Literature. Ed. Coral Ann Howells & Eva Marie Kroeller. London:
Cambridge UP, 2009: 556–580.
4. Hua, Anh. “Diaspora and Cultural Memory.” 2005. Diaspora, Memory and Identity: A
Search for Home. Ed. Vijay Agnew. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2008: 191–208.
3. Alistair Macleod. No Great Mischief. 1999. Toronto: Emblem, 2001.
c. Sports
5. Jason Blake. “Hockey as a Symbol of Nationhood.”Canadian Hockey Literature: A
Thematic Study. Toronto: U of Toronto P. 2010: 17–38.
6. Richards, David Adams. Hockey Dreams: Memories of a Man who Couldn’t Play.
1996. Toronto: Doubleday, 1996.
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d. Land and Environment
7. MacEachern, Alan. “Changing Ecologies: Preservation in Four National
Parks.”Canadian Environmental History. Ed. David Freeland Duke. Toronto:
Canadian Scholars’ P, 2006: 361–386.
Assessment
Assignment 1
Students are required to make a seminar presentation on an area that concerns Canadian
Assignment 2
Test
Total: 100 marks
88
ENG 5010 – European Fiction

Credits: Two Instructor: Dr. Suja Kurup P. L.
Aim of the course
The course aims to familiarize students with the rich variety of works in European Fiction
based on a selection of works from France, Germany, erstwhile USSR and Greece.
Course Description
1. The beginnings of fiction in Europe
2. Italian renaissance
3. Contributions of Boccaccio, Rabelais and Cervantes
4. The Romantic Movement
5. The picaresque novel – Gothic novel – Historical Romance
6. Contributions of Goethe, Balzac, Stendhal, Hugo, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy,
Kafka and Proust
7. Modernism in European fiction – 20th Century German novel – Thomas Mann –
Herman Hesse – 20th century French novel – Camus – modern Italian fiction – Alberto
Moravio
8. Neo Romanticism – Post-war Russian novel – Solzhenitsyn
9. Post-modernism – Milan Kundera.
10. Contemporary Greek fiction – Kazantzakis.
Prescribed Books
1. Emile Zola: Nana

2. Thomas Mann: Death in Venice
3. Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment
4. Marcel Proust: Swann’s Way
5. Gustave Flaubert: Madame Bovary
6. Boris Pasternak: Doctor Zhivago
7. Herman Hesse: Siddhartha
8. Milan Kundera: The Joke
9. Nikos Kazantzakis: Zorba the Greek
Assessment
Assignment 2 - 10 marks
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Test – 15 marks


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ENG 5014 – European Drama

Credits: Two Instructor: Dr. Suja Kurup P. L.
Aim of the course
The course aims to familiarize students with European Drama, tracing the beginnings from
Greek tragedy through to plays in twentieth – century Europe.
Course Description
The origin of drama in Europe – Dithyramb and Greek Chorus
1.
Greek stage – production and acting methods
2.
Tragedy – Comedy – Aristotle’s views on tragedy
3.
4.
Contributions of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes
5.
Old Comedy and New Comedy
Christian elements in medieval theatre – Renaissance Italian drama
6.
French classical tragedy and comedy – contributions of Racine
7.
Modern age – the contributions of: Ibsen – Bertolt Brecht – Pirandello – Chekhov –
8.
Ionesco – Camus
9. Major dramatic/literary movements of the 19th and 20th centuries – naturalism, realism,
dadaism, expressionism, surrealism, postmodernism.
10. Major Theatre movements of the 19th and 20th centuries – Moscow Art Theatre, Theatre
of the Absurd, Epic Theatre, Theatre of Cruelty, Poor Theatre.
11. Major contributors to modern European Theatre – Strindberg, Chekhov, Stanislavski,
Artaud, Lorca, Camus, Brook, Grotowski, Barba.
Prescribed Books
1. Sophocles: Oedipus Rex [Penguin edition]

2. Aristophanes: The Frogs [Penguin edition]
3. Henrik Ibsen: Ghosts [Penguin edition]
4. Bertolt Brecht: Mother Courage and Her Children [OUP edition]
5. Anton Chekov: The Cherry Orchard [Penguin edition]
6. Jean-Baptiste Racine: Phaedra [Penguin edition]
7. Luigi Pirandello: Six Characters in Search of an Author [Penguin edition]
8. Albert Camus: Caligula [Penguin edition]
9. Eugene Ionesco: Rhinoceros [Penguin edition]
 Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 6th edition. Bangalore: Prism, 1993.

 Banham, E. Martin. The Cambridge Guide to the Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
1993.
 Gascoigne, Bamber. Twentieth Century Drama. London: Hutchinson, 1974.
 Gassner, John, and Edward Quinn. The Reader’s Encyclopedia of World Drama. London:
Methuen, 1975.
 McGuire, Susan Bassnett. Luigi Pirandello. London: Macmillan, 1983.
 Trussler, Simon. 20th Century Drama. London: Macmillan, 1983.
 Williams, Raymond. Drama from Ibsen to Brecht: A Critical Account and Revaluation.
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England: Penguin, 1983.
 Howatson, M. C. The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature. New Delhi: Oxford UP,
2011.
Assessment
Test – 15 marks

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ENG 5023 – Asian Canadian Literature

Credits: Two Instructor: Dr. Suja Kurup P. L
Vishnu Narayanan
Aim of the course
The course aims to familiarize students with minority literature’s divergences and
convergences with multicultural writing, with specific emphasis on Asian Canadian writing.
Course Description
Canadian society is a multicultural mosaic of people from a variety of nations,
cultures, races and religions. Each group preserves its unique identity even as it blends with
the whole. Asians, who form a significant proportion of the immigrant population, are part of
the ‘visible minority’ among Canadian citizens. Though they come from very different
backgrounds, their Asian identity serves as a unifying factor, and the Asian-Canadian identity
is distinct enough to merit separate study. The struggle of the immigrants to carve their own
space in the adopted country without entirely giving up their culture and traditions is reflected
in their writing. This course will examine prominent writers from all areas, highlighting
commonalities and differences.
Prescribed Books
Poetry
1. Lakshmi Gill: Me; Letter to a Prospective Immigrant; Manna
2. Himani Bannerji: Paki Go Home; Wife
3. Cyril Dabydeen: The Forest; Elephants Make Good Stepladders
4. Fred Wah: From “Waiting for Saskatchewan”
(From Canadian Voices. Ed. Shirin Kudchedkar & Jameela Begum)
5. Michael Ondaatje: Light
Drama
6. Uma Parameswaran: Rootless but Green are the Boulevard Trees
Fiction
7. Joy Kogawa: Obasan
8. M. G. Vassanji: No New Land
9. Cyril Dabydeen: “Homecoming” (from Black Jesus and Other Stories)
10. Rohinton Mistry: “Swimming Lessons” (from Tales from Firozsha Baag)
Assessment
93
Test – 15 marks
94
ENG 5028 – Australia: History, Culture and Literature

Credits: Two Instructor: Dr. Suja Kurup P. L
Aim of the course
The course aims to initiate and enhance understanding of the vibrant diversities of Australia.
Course Description
This course is aimed at acquainting the students with Australian history, culture and
literature. Since its days as a British colony, Australia has developed a complex national
culture with immigrants from many parts of the world as well as an indigenous Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islanders population. The historical experience of convictism, pioneering,
the bush, Gold fever and the post-war boom is essentially bound up with perceptions of the
Australian character as egalitarian, anti-authoritarian and irreverent toward social pretension.
Excerpts from books on Australian history and culture and select poems, novels and plays are
included in the syllabus to increase an in-depth awareness of Australian history, culture and
literature.
Prescribed Books
a. Australian History and Culture

1. David Day: Changing a Continent: A New History of Australia
2. John Hirst: The Australians
3. Mudrooroo: Us Mob: History, Culture and Struggle: An Introduction
to Indigenous Australia
4. Whitlock and Carter: Images of Australia
b. Australian Literature
(i) Poetry:
1. Aboriginal Songs from the 1850s
2. Barron Field: “The Kangaroo”
3. Henry Lawson: “The Men Who Come Behind”
4. C. J. Dennis: “The Traveller”
5. Les Murray: “Immigrant Voyage”
6. Fay Zwicky: “Reckoning”
7. Chris Wallace-Crabbe: “The Shape-Changer”
8. Barry Humphries: “Edna’s Hymn”
9. Richard Allen: “Epitaph for the Western Intelligentsia”
(Poems selected from Les Murray, ed. The New Oxford Book of Australian
Verse, and Robert Gray and Geoffrey Lehman, eds. Australian Poetry in the
20th Century)
(ii) Fiction
1. Sally Morgan: My Place
2. Colleen McCullough: Thornbirds
3. Thomas Keneally: The Playmaker
4. Peter Carey: Illywhacker
(iii) Drama
1. Jack Davis: No Sugar
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2. David Williamson: The Brilliant Lies
Assessment
Test – 15 marks

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ENG 507 – Native Canadian Studies

Credits: Two Instructors: Dr. Maya Dutt
Vishnu Narayanan
Aim of the course
The course aims at providing a comprehensive introduction to Native literature in Canada,

focusing on the works of selected poets, prose writers, dramatists and novelists.
Course Description
The course covers the socio-political, cultural and historical background, against which the
literature is set.
Prescribed Books
a. Poetry:
1. Traditional Songs: My Breath
2. Traditional Orature: Fragment of a Song.
3. Rita Joe: Today’s Learning Child; I Lost My Talk;
4. Jeannette Armstrong: History Lesson; Stone Age; Mary Old Owl; Dark
Forests.
5. Daniel David Moses: The Sunbather’s Fear of the Moon; The Line; Inukshuk
6. Duke Redbird: I Am Canadian
a. Prose:
1. D. D. Moses and T. Goldie: Two Voices.
2. Duke Redbird: We Are Metis (selections from this essay.)
3. Harold Cardinal: A Canadian What the Hell’s It’s All About.
4. Jeannette Armstrong: The Disempowerment of First North American Native
Peoples and Empowerment through their Writing
c. Drama:
Tomson Highway: The Rez Sisters
d. Fiction:
1. Beatrice Culleton: In Search of April Raintree
2. Basil H. Johnston: Moosemeat and Wild Rice
Reference:
Daniel David Moses and Terry Goldie, eds. An Anthology of Canadian Native Literature in
English
Assessment
97
Test – 15 marks
98
ENG 508 – Dalit Writing

Credits: Two Instructor: Vishnu Narayanan
Aim of the course
This course aims to help the students extend their appreciation and enjoyment of Dalit
literature, to provide curricular recognition to the experience, art and knowledge of a
marginalized community and to expose students to the Dalit renewal of the discussion on
democracy, humanism and literature and extend their awareness of the social and aesthetic
questions being raised in the Dalit writing.
Course Description
The course covers the writings of the key modern Dalit writers and thinkers and the issues at
stake in the contemporary Dalit movement.
1. Definitions of Dalit
2. Varna and caste hierarchy
3. Opposition to Brahminical hegemony and ideology
4. Bhakti Movement
5. B. R. Ambedkar’s contributions to Dalit Movement
6. Dalit Panther Movement
7. Adi Dharm Movement
8. Dalit Buddhist Movement
9. Role of Brahmo Samaj and Arya Samaj
10. Dalit Movement in Kerala and contributions of Sri Ayyankali
Prescribed Books
a. Poetry:
1. Satish Chandar. “PanchamaVedam.” K. Satyanarayana and Susie Tharu, eds. From
Those Stubs Steel Nibs are Sprouting: New Dalit Writing from South India: Kannada
and Telugu.
2. N. D. Rajkumar. “Our Gods do not Hide”. Give us this Day a Feast of Flesh. New
Delhi: Navayana, 2011.
3. S. Joseph. “Identity Card.” No Alphabet in Sight. New Delhi: Penguin, 2011.
4. Poikayil Appachan. “Song”. M. Dasan, et al, eds. The Oxford India Anthology of
Dalit Literature. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 2012. Pp. 5-6.
5. M. R. Renukumar. “The Poison Fruit”. M. Dasan, et al, eds. The Oxford India
Anthology of Dalit Literature. Pp. 32-33.
6. Prathiba Jeyachandran. “Dream Teller”. Ravikumar and Azhagarasan, eds. The
Oxford Anthology of Tamil Dalit Writing.New Delhi: Oxford UP, 2012. Pp. 5-6.
7. N. K. Hanumanthiah. “Untouchable, Yes I am!” From Those Stubs Steel Nibs are
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Sprouting.
8. Madduri Nagesh Babu. “A This-Worldly Prayer”; What People are You?” From Those
Stubs Steel Nibs are Sprouting.
9. Namdeo Dhasal. “Cruelty.”A Current of Blood. New Delhi: Navayana, 2011.
10. G. Sasi Madhuraveli. “With Love”. Dasan, et al, eds. The Oxford India Anthology of
Dalit Literature.New Delhi: Oxford UP, 2012. Pg. 22.
b. Prose:
1. R. Ambedkar. “Annihilation of Caste.” Valerian Rodrigues, ed. The Essential
Writings of B. R. Ambedkar. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 2002. Pp. 263-305.
2. Gopal Guru. “Dalit Women Talk Differently.” EPW, Vol. XXX. No. 41-42, October
14, 1995.
3. T. M. Yesudasan. “Towards a Prologue to Dalit Studies.” K. Satyanarayana and Susie
Tharu, eds. No Alphabet in Sight. New Delhi: Penguin, 2011. pp. 611-630.
c. Autobiography:
1. Sharan Kumar Limbale. The Outcaste. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 2003.
2. Om Prakash Valmiki. Jhootan.
3. Balbir Madhopuri. Changia Rukh. Trans. Tripti Jain. New Delhi. Oxford UP, 2010.
d. Drama:
1. A. Santhakumar. Dreamhunt. M. Dasan, et al, eds. The Oxford Anthology of
Malayalam Dalit Writing.New Delhi: Oxford UP, 2012. Pp. 168-179.
2. K. Gunashekaran. Touch. Ravikumar and Azhagarasan, eds. The Oxford Anthology of
Tamil Dalit Writing.Oxford UP, 2012. Pp 163-168.
e. Fiction:
1. Potheri Kunhambu. Saraswathi Vijayam. Trans. Dilip Menon. New Delhi: The Book
Review Literary Trust, 2002.
2. Gogu Shyamala. Father May Be an Elephant and Mother only a Small Basket, But…..
New Delhi: Navayana, 2012.
3. P. Sivakami. The Grip of Change and Author’s Notes. Translated by the Author.
Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan, 2006.
4. Paul Chirakkarode. “Nostalgia”.Dasan, et al, eds. Pg. 61.
100
5. C. Ayyappan. “Madness.”Dasan, et al, eds. Pg. 68.
Assessment
Test – 15 marks
101
ENG 5012 – Travel Literature on India

Credits: Two Instructor: Vishnu Narayanan
Aim of the course
The paper aims to explore and study the wonderfully varied ingredients of a travel book:
politics, archaeology, history, philosophy, art or magic. Even to possibly cross-fertilize the
genre with other literary forms—biography, or anthropological writing—or, perhaps more
interesting still, to follow in the traveller’s footsteps and muddy the boundaries of fiction and
non-fiction by crossing the travel book with some of the wilder forms of the novel.
By the end of this course, students should be able to read the rhetoric of travel writing,
demonstrate a sound knowledge of the various primary sources studied on the course and
develop the ability to engage with them critically to reach conclusions both about the society
observed and the subjectivity of the observer. They must be able to critically engage with the
theoretical issues involved with using colonial and travel literature as a source and critically
engage with wider categories, concepts and issues such as race, gender, class, caste,
criminality, coercion, resistance, identity etc.
The paper also intends to help the student to analyze travel texts different theoretical
perspectives and historical methodologies and help to develop the ability to evaluate and use
effectively the relevant information and the capacity for analytical and critical thinking.
At the end of the course it is expected that the student will be able to comprehend the
theoretical positions of “gaze” and how it infiltrates society at large.
Course Description
1. The varied ingredients of a travel book: politics, archaeology, history, philosophy, art
or magic.
2. Cross-fertilization of the genre with other literary forms - biography, or
anthropological writing.
3. Analysis of the various primary sources on the course.
4. Evaluate the ability to reach conclusions both about the society observed and the
subjectivity of the observer.
5. Critically engage with the theoretical issues involved with using colonial and travel
literature.
6. Concepts and issues such as race, gender, class, caste, criminality, coercion, resistance,
identity etc.
7. Different theoretical perspectives and historical methodologies.
Prescribed Books
102
Unit 1: Reversing the Gaze: It is an interesting turn of event to read the curiosity of a cultural
encounter seen from the eyes of a native who visits a foreign land during the colonial period.
In the following texts we can find Indians writing to define their identity and place abroad.
1. Meera Kosambi, ed. & trans. Pandita Ramabai’s American Encounter: The Peoples of the United
States (1889).Indiana UP, 2003.
2. Fisher, M. H., ed. The Travels of Dean Mahomet: An Eighteenth-Century Journey through India.
London: U of California P, 1997.
Further reading:
 Reina Lewis. Gendering Orientalism: Race, Femininity and Representation. Routledge, 1996.
 Sara Mills. Discourses of Difference: An Analysis of Women's Travel Writing and
Colonialism. Routledge, 1991.
Unit 2: British Writings on India: This section gives an introduction to the blasé tone of
racial dominance rendered by the colonial British writings on India. It nevertheless looks at
the concepts and issues such as race, gender, class, caste, criminality, coercion, resistance,
identity etc inscribed in the texts.
1. W. H. Sleeman. Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official.Constable, 1893.
(Available online)
2. Fanny Parkes Parlby. Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque. Manchester:
Manchester UP, 2001.
Further reading:
 Nandini Bhattacharya. Reading the Splendid Body: Gender and Consumerism in
Eighteenth-century British Writing on India. Delaware: University of Delaware P, 1998.
 Pramod K. Nayar. “Marvelous Excesses: English Travel Writing and India, 1608-1727”,
Journal of British Studies, 44, 2005, pp. 213–238.
 Pramod K. Nayar. “The Sublime Raj: English Writing and India, 1750-1820.” Economic
and Political Weekly, Vol. 39, No. 34. Aug. 21-27, 2004. pp. 3811-3817.
 Indira Ghose. Women Travelers in Colonial India: The Power of the Female Gaze.
Calcutta: Oxford UP, 1998.
 J. Nair. “Uncovering the Zenana: Visions of Indian Womanhood in Englishwomen’s
Writing, 1813- 1940”, Journal of Women’s History.vol. 2:1, 1990.
Unit 3: On the Threshold of the Twilight: This session deals with the interesting points of
view of travel writers of the 30s to 50s, who had divided opinions of the Raj as well as
equally interesting views on the people of the Raj. Through a series of recaptured incidences
and in the fictionalized travel experiences, we will be looking into the changing face of the
Raj as well as the aesthetic progression of travel writing as a genre. This session will also
give a contrary perspective to seeing travel writers as outriders of colonialism, attempting to
demonstrate the superiority of western ways by "imagining" the east as decayed and
degenerate.
1. George Orwell: Burmese Days
2. Aldous Huxley: Jesting Pilate: The Diary of a Journey
Further reading:
 Nigel Leask. Curiosity and the Aesthetics of Travel Writing, 1770-1840: “From an Antique
103
Land”. Oxford UP, 2004.Introduction.
 Mary Louise Pratt. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. Routledge, 1992.
Introduction, “British Travel Writing and Imperial Authority”.
Unit 4: (a) Travels with(out) Colonial Burden and (b) Indian Travel Writing Masterpieces
a) Travels with(out) the Colonial Burden: After independence, the nature of the encounter
altered. Indians were writing on their own terms, and debating national issues which had no
requirement for an external opinion. By the end of the 20th century, fiction set in India
written by foreigners, which had been a mainstay of earlier generations, had dried up. Instead
there were travel books, the amateur passing through and catching local colour— scooters,
cows, dialogue, etc. became more fashionable.
1. William Dalrymple: The City of Djinns, 1993.
2. Michael Wood: The Smile of Murugan: A South Indian Journey, 1995.
b) Indian Travel Writing Masterpieces: Not long after India’s economy was liberalised, a
further change took place: its literature became globally desirable. Indian travellers have by
and large left their indelible mark on the literature of travel.
1.Pico Iyer: Video Night in Kathmandu. Vintage, 1989.
2. Amitav Ghosh: In an Antique Land: History in the Guise of a Traveler’s Tale. Vintage,
1994.
Further reading:
 Bernard Cohn. “Notes on the History of the Study of Indian Society and Culture”, in An
Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1987.
pp. 136-171.
 Steven H. Clark. Travel Writing and Empire: Postcolonial Theory in Transit. Zed, 1999.
 Casey Blanton. Travel Writing: The Self and the World. Routledge, 2002. Chapter 1.
Assessment
Test – 15 marks
104
105
ENG 5024 –Phonetics and Spoken English

Credits: Two Instructors : Dr. Maya Dutt
Vishnu Narayanan
Aim of the course
This course seeks to improve the speaking skills of the students. It begins by
familiarizing students with the basic sounds, stress and intonation patterns in English, the
difference between British, American and Indian varieties of English, the common mistakes
made due to mother-tongue influence, and the peculiarities to look out for while interacting
with native speakers of English. Great importance will be placed on the simultaneous
deployment of both the listening and speaking skills. At the end of the course they will be
able to understand the speech of native speakers and have enough acquaintance with
strategies necessary for simple, small-scale conversation.
Course Description
Teaching will be based on sample materials of native speakers. It starts off with
speech sounds, moves on to sentences, and finally conversations. Alongside the exposure, the
students will be urged to make conversations, initially two-to-four-liners. This lets them
practice what they have learned. The students will also be trained to speak accurately and
fluently on any topic given to them for extempore speech.
1. Organs of speech
2. Cardinal Vowels
3. Segments of RP – Vowels and Consonants – Allophonic variations – Phonemic and
Allophonic transcription – Vowel sequences
4. The Syllable
5. Stress, Rhythm and Intonation in connected speech
6. Differences between RP, GIE and Malayali English
7. Mother Tongue Interference – remedial measures
8. Listening Comprehension – RP and GIE
9. Speech Practice – strategies for initiating and repairing communication
Prescribed Books
106
Baker, Ann. Ship or Sheep: An Intermediate Pronunciation Course. London: Cambridge UP,
1981.
Balan, Jayasree. Spoken English. Chennai: Vijay Nicole, 2006.
Hancock, Mark. English Pronunciation in Use. London: Cambridge UP, 2003.
Scarbrough, David. Reasons for Listening. London: Cambridge UP, 1984.
Sinha, Thakur K. B. P. Better English Pronunciation. Chennai: Vijay Nicole, 2005.
Syamala, V., and Ganga Dhanesh.Speak English in Four Easy Steps.
Thiruvananthapuram: Improve English Foundation, 2006.
Richards, Jack C. BASIC Tactics for Listening. London: Oxford UP, 1996.
Assessment
Test – 15 marks
107
ENG 509 – Writing for the Media

Credits: Two Instructor:
Aim of the course
It aims to enable the students to write with confidence in a variety of media situations. It
offers a systematic and critical approach to mass media writing making the students aware of
the specific strategies and skills.
Course Description
1. Dynamics of communication
2. Types of communication
3. Uses and functions of Mass Communication
4. Types of writing – essays, features, monographs/abstracts
5. Writing for the print medium
6. Literature and Mass Media
7. Writing for the Broadcast Media
8. Computer as a Mass Medium.
Prescribed Books
Unit 1: Communication – Definitions and types – interpersonal communication,
intrapersonal communication, gestures, chemical communication, proxemics –
communication and culture – ‘Mass culture’, Popular culture’, and Folk culture’ –
communication and language – Mass Communication – major Mass Media – their
characteristics and functions.
Unit 2: Writing for the print medium – news – types, structure, values – basics of reporting –
newspaper, magazine, newsletter – reporting skills – types of reporting – crime, court, civil,
political, business, science and technology, sports, culture – writing techniques – OP-ED,
letter to the Editor, film review, book review, sports review – terms used in broadcast
journalism – print medium and Indian Independence Struggle.
Unit 3: Writing for the Broadcast Media – Radio – Radio Journalism – key elements of radio
writing – preparation of radio news – characteristics of a radio script – radio feature,
documentary, drama, interview, discussions, and commercials/jingles – future of radio – TV
– similarities and differences between print and broadcast journalism – writing for visuals –
Spots (TV ads ) and creation of spots – live news reports – live shows – anchoring –
interviews – terms used in TV journalism – Web writing – online journalism – features –
interactivity – hypermedia – media studies
Recommended reading:
1. David K. Berlo: The Process of Communication
2. Marshall McLuhan: Understanding Media
3. Ault, Emery, et al: Mass Communication
4. George A. Miller: The Psychology of Communication
5. Richard Keeble: Newspaper Handbook
6. Thomas S. Kane: The New Oxford Guide to Writing
7. Fred Fedle: Reporting for the Media
8. Bonime and Pohlmen: Writing for the News Media
108
9. Robert McLeish: Techniques of Radio Production
10. William Van Nostram: Script writer’s Handbook
11. Delancy and Landow: Hypermedia and Literary Studies
12. Allen Rosenthal Writing, Directing and Producing Documentaries
13. Nigel D. Turton: ABC of Common Grammatical Errors
Assessment
Test – 15 marks

109

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INSTITUTE OF ENGLISH

MA (CSS) English Language and Literature

ENG 511 Chaucer to the Augustan Age

ENG 521 The Twentieth Century

ENG 531 Indian writing In English

ENG 541 Linguistics

ENG 511 – Chaucer to the Augustan Age

The course aims at providing a comprehensive introduction to English Literature starting

1. Socio-political background of Chaucer’s Age

ENG 512 – Shakespeare

1. Shakespeare and his age

ENG 513 – Romantics and Victorians

1. The Romantic Revival–Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats

ENG 521 – The Twentieth Century

1. Liberal Humanism – literature and media.

A written Mid – semester examination will be conducted.

Attendance in Lectures/Participation – 5 marks

75% attendance mandatory.

Summative Assessment – 100 marks

Internal Assessment – 40 marks

End Semester Assessment – 60 marks

ENG 522 – American Literature

Attendance in Lectures/Participation – 5 marks

75% attendance mandatory.

Summative Assessment – 100 marks

Internal Assessment – 40 marks

End Semester Assessment – 60 marks

ENG 523 – Literary Theory I

Students may be encouraged to write

 Book review of theories and criticism

 Article reviews selected from journals and books

 Interpretation of literary and cultural texts(films, drama and Television shows) on

the basis of given critical approaches or theories

 Sign, Signifier, Signified

 Langue and Parole

 Semiotics and Semiology

Texts for Study

Text for methodological application

William Blake “The Chimney Sweeper” from Songs of Innocence

Module II: Psychoanalysis

 The Conscious and the Unconscious

 The Ego, the Id and the Super – Ego

 The Semiotic and the Symbolic

 Literature and Psychoanalysis

Texts for Study

Pdf . Bd. V 1919. 1-21. /

Jacques Lacan. “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Foundation of I as Revealed

in Psychoanalysis Experience.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin and

Michael Ryan. USA: Blackwell, 1998: 178 – 183.

Texts for Methodological Application

“The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe.

Module III: New Historicism and Cultural Materialism

 Literature, Culture, History – Interrelatedness

 The historicity of the text and the textuality of history

 High and Low Cultures

 Residual, Emergent and Oppositional Cultural elements

Texts for Study

Michel Foucault, Introduction to The Archaeology of Knowledge.

Raymond Williams, “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory”