After the recent
announcement by the HRD that a PhD will be made mandatory after the
year 2021 as minimum eligibility for applying for the post of assistant
professor, the number of interested students inquiring with me about possible
areas and topics for doing PhD has gone up. I have been regularly blogging
about doing research in English studies, the questions of methodology and coming
up with a research proposal and many people have found it useful. Please also check
out my following blogs:
i) A Beginners Guide to Doing PhD in English Literature
ii) Choosing a Topic for the Research Project in English Literature
iii) Writing a Research Proposal in English studies
iv) Possible Areas of Research on Translation Studies
v) On Theorizing Indian Literatures and Cultures
vi) Application of Dionyz Durisin's notion of interliterariness to Indian literatures
i) A Beginners Guide to Doing PhD in English Literature
ii) Choosing a Topic for the Research Project in English Literature
iii) Writing a Research Proposal in English studies
iv) Possible Areas of Research on Translation Studies
v) On Theorizing Indian Literatures and Cultures
vi) Application of Dionyz Durisin's notion of interliterariness to Indian literatures
English studies in
India, after the late nineteen eighties, has undergone a paradigm shift by moving
away from centrality of the Anglophone literatures (‘English’ literature, ‘American’
Literature and ‘Indian Writing in English’) to a more comparative Indian
literatures framework. It moved away from the study of ‘English literature’ to
‘literatures in English’. This shift was propelled by multiple factors like the
rise of postcolonial studies, ‘ the crisis in English studies’ debates in India,
growth in Indian literatures in English translation, development of translation studies and the
Dalit studies, as well as substantial
incorporation of non-Anglophone critical theory (largely continental) and
cultural studies into the English studies curriculum. It is the same cultural need to contextualize
English studies in India and make it relevant to the Indian studies that has
given rise to growing emphasis on ‘English Language Teaching’.
I have been working within this reoriented
discipline from the past two decades, and hence my suggestions for the topics
and areas for an M. Phil or PhD research comes from comparative Indian
literatures framework. These topics and areas also reflect my own understanding
of ‘the knowledge gaps’ in research in English studies today, as well as my own
personal research interests. Hence, obviously these are not the only areas. I
will be blogging more on other areas as well in future.
A distinction between ‘an area’ and ‘a topic’
needs to be kept in mind. I have offered broad outline of an area, obviously
one needs to relate it to specific authors/texts/ languages/ periods to delimit
the project. This specific delimitation would be ‘the topic’. I have given
examples from my own research and one can come up with any number of parallel ‘topics’
for their own research projects.
1)
Hypertextuality and the questions of Digital Archiving of Indian literatures
(Bhakti, 19th century etc), the post-print condition
While digital
humanities has made substantial inroads into the western humanities academia,
it is yet to make its place in India. However, after the explosion of the
internet and massive proliferation of post-print digital data (‘big data’), the
nature of knowledge, its production , circulation has undergone a profound
change, and it is often compared to the print technology revolution in the early middle period of the previous millennium. Digital humanities as a discipline engages with
methodological, epistemological and ontological issues of literary research in the context of this post-print digital universe of discourse. In the west,
digital humanities has often been
thought of in terms of ‘ waves’ where the first wave focussed on large-scale
digitization projects and the establishment of technological infrastructure
facilitating the shift from ‘ print’ to ‘ digital’ space, the later
developments and waves moved towards creating tools for dealing with ‘ born digital
texts. Digital humanities in India is still in its nascent stage and will
require transferring of massive pre-print, and print era documents into the
digital space , hence dealing with the basic issues of OCR, funding and lack of
interdisciplinary expertise. One can look up books like Digital_Humanities. eds. Anne Burdick, Johanna Drucker, et al. MIT,
2012 and Understanding Digital Humanities
, ed. David Berry , 2012 for more information about digital humanities.
2)
Globalization and Literary languages in India
The processes of
globalization unleashed during the nineteen nineties have profoundly altered
the cultural landscape of India. How literatures in Indian languages engages
with the disturbing questions of virtual reality, new corporate capitalism,
hybridization of languages, ‘post-truth’ and politics of media manipulation,
rise of social media and the questions of digital identity, privacy, freedom of
expression, pornography, and new forms of religious fanaticism is a critical
domain of research. One can study how literatures produced in Indian languages
(bhashas) in the nineteen nineties and the twenty first century comparatively. My own research on contemporary Marathi poetry deals
with such questions. How do literatures from other Indian languages engage with, and
embody these developments?
Read my write up on 21st century Marathi literature by clicking here
3) Dalit literatures of the twenty first century
Caste and gender-based
discrimination is deeply rooted in Indian society, and finds its expression in
literatures. Dalit literatures emerged during the nineteen sixties, primarily
in the form of autobiographies and poetry, and are receiving significant
attention in the English studies academia. However, most of the texts that are
being studied deal with the lives of Dalit writers during the sixties and the
eighties. There is a need to focus on the writers who grew up in the nineties
and the twenty first centuries (like Meena Kandasamy and S.Chandramohan in English and Des Raj Kali in Punjabi) in order to understand the nature of their
protest and their negotiation of caste-gender discrimination. We need to ask
the questions regarding the role of class, corporate capitalism and technology
in this negotiation. We need to compare their writings with the Dalit writers of the earlier generations.
4)
World Literature and Modernisms in
Indian languages
Though the concept
of ‘world literature’ is fairly old, going back to Goethe at least, it was
during the nineteen nineties, after globalization, that the concept started
being critically rethought by scholars such as Pascale Casanova, Franco Moretti
and David Damrosch. These scholars went beyond the traditional notion of world
literature as body of texts or a canon to
underscore the transnational, trans-regional contexts of literary production,
consumption and circulation. David Damrosch edited World Literature in Theory (2014) is the key anthology that would serve
as an introduction to various deliberations around World Literature.
Indian students
may draw upon these critical re-conceptualizations, and look at the phenomenon like
modernisms (as distinct from modern or modernity) in Indian literatures other
than English. For instance, one can look at the writings of the immensely
influential writers-scholars such as Suresh Joshi, Dilip Chitre, Agyeya,
Krishna Baldev Vaid, Vilas Sarang (Read my paper on Vilas Sarang by clicking here) , G.A. Kulkarni , Namdeo Dhasal ( Read my paper on Namdeo Dhasal by clicking here) and Nirmal Verma ( many of their creative
writings are available in English translation)
using the notion of world literature. It will help us to go beyond the
stereotypical readings of these works in terms of ‘influences’ or
‘derivativeness’ and ‘inauthenticity’ that is associated with conventional
understanding of modernism in India. One can even approach important literary movements of experimentation such
as the Theatre of Absurd in various Indian languages using this theoretical
approach.
More specifically, this approach is also helpful in looking at specific seminal authors like Anton Chekhov, T.S. Eliot, Charles Baudelaire, Samuel Beckett, Bertolt Brecht, Rabindranath Tagore as world literature and their reception in various Indian languages.
More specifically, this approach is also helpful in looking at specific seminal authors like Anton Chekhov, T.S. Eliot, Charles Baudelaire, Samuel Beckett, Bertolt Brecht, Rabindranath Tagore as world literature and their reception in various Indian languages.
Read my paper on Gujarati modernism by clicking here
My paper on Marathi modernism by clicking here
5) Reception and
the Impact of Poststructuralist, Postmodern Critical Theories on literary
criticism in Indian languages (including performative gender studies)
Though English
studies have incorporated the continental theories like poststructuralism,
postmodernism, cultural studies in its methodology, how have non-English
literary studies ‘received’ these theories need to be examined in their
cultural and historical contexts. For instance, critics like Suresh Joshi, Suman
Shah, Babu Suthar, Chandrakant Topiwala in Gujarati, Milind Malshe, Gangadhar Patil,
Vilas Sarang , M.S. Patil and Harishchandra Thorat in Marathi draw upon these theories extensively. What is their impact on the
bhasha criticism? What does this reception tell us about the historical context
and cultural politics underlying literary criticism in the bhashas?
6) Interliterary
processes in the post-Independence Indian literatures
Like the notion of
‘world literature’, the notion of ‘interliterariness’ developed by Dionyz
Durisin is extremely useful to understand formation of multiple Indian
literatures, as it helps us to overcome the notions of ‘ influences’ that
perpetuates the influencer-influenced hierarchies and also helps us to understand literatures as
processes rather than products. I am grateful to noted Marathi critic late Prof
Kimbahune for drawing my attention to this theoretical framework and its use in
multilingual Indian context. Dionyz Durisin’s Theory of Literary
Comparativistics (1984) is a useful book. One can also look up Amiya Dev and
Sisir Kumar Das edited anthology on Comparative Indian Literature for its
application in some places. Marian Gallik’s essays on interliterariness and
Durisin are helpful.
Check out my own essay on application of the notion of interliterariness to Indian literatures by clicking here.
Check out my own essay on application of the notion of interliterariness to Indian literatures by clicking here.
Watch my lecture on translation studies and world literature
7) Rethinking
Bhakti literatures and English studies (beyond colonial paradigms of reading
bhakti)
Most of the reading precolonial Indian religious literature tend to see it as ‘pan-
Indian’ ‘bhakti movement’ and read ‘universal mysticism’ and ‘democratization’
into it. This anachronistic reading of ‘bhakti’ itself was a result of the
nineteenth century colonialism and colonial nationalist modernity that
projected such modern or quasi-Christian notions derived from the Reformation
onto this body of literature.
My own research on Narsinh Mehta is deeply coloured by this conventional reading of bhakti. However, when I rethink bhakti critically today, I find it more of a sectarian (or rather panthiya or sampradayik) propaganda rather than being a product of any universal mystical community . It will be a good idea to see how these 'bhakti movements’ in various Indian languages are constructed during the colonial period, especially in English. For instance, R.D. Ranade’s book Mysticism in Maharashtra is an influential book of this kind. There is a need to ‘de-romanticize’ bhakti and rethink the relation between ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ in Indian contexts. One also needs to take a second look at the dialogic/conflictual relation between ‘bhakti’ traditions and ‘ Indian Islamic traditions’.
My own research on Narsinh Mehta is deeply coloured by this conventional reading of bhakti. However, when I rethink bhakti critically today, I find it more of a sectarian (or rather panthiya or sampradayik) propaganda rather than being a product of any universal mystical community . It will be a good idea to see how these 'bhakti movements’ in various Indian languages are constructed during the colonial period, especially in English. For instance, R.D. Ranade’s book Mysticism in Maharashtra is an influential book of this kind. There is a need to ‘de-romanticize’ bhakti and rethink the relation between ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ in Indian contexts. One also needs to take a second look at the dialogic/conflictual relation between ‘bhakti’ traditions and ‘ Indian Islamic traditions’.
8) Literary
Historiography, Pedagogy and the History of literary canonization in Indian
languages
Literary
historiography in Indian languages began with pedagogical concerns during the
late nineteenth century. How did such projects influence creation of literary
canons in those languages? How does looking at historical contexts of
historiographical writings reflect the changing poetics and politics of
literary cultures? For instance, how do historiographical writings during the
nineteen seventies and the eighties differ from the colonial projects? How does
the historiographical writings of the nineteen nineties differ from those in
the seventies or at the turn of the century? What does this difference tell
us about literary culture of its times? How are pedagogical and canonizing
concerns articulated in literary historiographies?
Watch my lecture on Literary Historiography in Indian vernaculars, Marathi Bhakti and World literature
9) Anxiety of
Influence and the Politics of Canonization in Modern Indian Literatures
Anxiety of Influence
is a powerful theory developed by the American critic Harold Bloom that seeks
to de-romanticize relationship between creative writers, and hence a very
insightful ( non-Eliotian) take on the question of tradition and modernism. How does this
quasi-Oedipal conflict between the authors and predecessors play out in
literary arenas in India? My own writings of contemporary Marathi poetry highlight
this love-hate tension between the influential modernist poets like Arun
Kolatkar, Namdeo Dhasal, Dilip Chitre and Vasant Dahake ,and the new generation
poets who emerged during the nineteen nineties like Manya Joshi, Hemant Divate,
Mangesh N. Kale, Sanjeev Khandekar and Sachin Ketkar. How does this conflict
play out in other Indian literatures?
10) Little
Magazine movements and the Literary Avant-gardes in Indian literatures
As demonstrated by
Benedict Anderson, print capitalism facilitated the imagination of ‘imagined
community’ called nation in the context of colonial modernity. The little
magazine movements in Indian languages were ‘non-periodical’ very often
ephemeral ventures that were non-capitalistic in their orientation and outcomes
of deep discontent with the cultural conservatism of the mainstream
periodicals. The dissenting, non-conservative, sexually explicit and radical
experimentation with cultural forms (including the visual) was articulated on such
fringe, ephemeral platforms during the nineteen fifties and the sixties. In
fact, important Dalit writing in Indian languages had to find space in the
little magazines.
( Read my paper on i) Marathi literary Avant-garde )
Great amount of
such avant-garde modernist writings later on became ‘mainstream’ and even ‘established’
over a period of time. Little magazines in Marathi included magazines of the
sixties and the seventies such as ‘a-ba-ka-da-ee’, ‘ aso’, vaacha’ and so on. My
own research work in Marathi is on and through the little magazines of the
nineteen nineties like Shabdavedh, Saushthav and Abhidhanantar ( Read my article on Abhidhanantar by clicking here) that defined themselves
as continuing the avant-garde tendencies of their precursors as well as expressing
the need to reinvent the idiom of poetry and the need to deal with the altered
life and cultural landscape transformed by the forces of globalization. They also
expressed their discontent with the idiom of the modernist sixties by pointing
out what was once anti-establishment had already become established and clichéd.
How did the poetics and politics of the little magazines play out in other
Indian languages? How do they compare with the little magazine movements in
other parts of the world?
One can also examine ' post-print' (non) periodicals ( e.g. Hakara in Marathi) and blogs in other Indian languages and their cultural agendas when the digital promises to shape our imaginations as ' virtual-global communities'.
One can also examine ' post-print' (non) periodicals ( e.g. Hakara in Marathi) and blogs in other Indian languages and their cultural agendas when the digital promises to shape our imaginations as ' virtual-global communities'.
5 comments:
Thank you so much Sachin sir. It's a great help for those who are about to start their PhD. I really liked the idea of comparing Dalit literLiter of 21st century with the earlier Dalit writers.
Great
Authentic suggestions for new Research Scholars
A good help for the phd aspirants.
It's really helpful for new researchers.
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