Doing BA with English Major in India: A Beginners’ Guide

In India, one of the most sought-after degrees in Arts is Bachelor of Arts with English literature major. However, its popularity is largely due to mistaken preconceptions about it rather than understanding what the program actually is. Hence, it is a good idea to look at what is NOT in order to understand what it IS and think about why one should or should not do it.  This blog attempts to lay out the widely prevalent misconceptions about BA with English major in the Indian context and provide greater clarity to the students who want to enter the field or find themselves stuck in it.

Misconception 1: It is ‘a Spoken English’ coaching class.

BA with English major will NOT directly provide you the basic conversational English or basic comprehension skills, grammar or compositional skills, in fact, it actually DEMANDS that you ALREADY HAVE these foundational language skills. This gives a distinctive advantage to the students from the English-medium background over those not from the English-medium, though some students from non-English backgrounds are also known to do well in this program. Nonetheless, they have to put in plenty of extra efforts working on their English.

You are unlikely to be a good speaker by reading a Shakespeare play or a Jane Austen novel prescribed in your syllabus. Hence, if you want to do BA with English to do better in IELTS/TOEFL type exams, or impress your crush with your fluent English, this program is unlikely to be of any great help. We need to keep this in mind because as Indians many of us take bachelor’s degree programs to ensure that we don’t remain bachelors for the rest of our lives (which is also not as bad as it is made out to be).

Misconception 2: It is ‘a Written English’ coaching class.

In case you happen to be from an English-medium background, and know that you suck at writing, it would be an error to take up a BA with English major program to fix your writing skills. You are unlikely to be a good content writer or be an expert in writing emails, memos or office presentations by reading that Shakespeare play or a Jane Austen novel (nowadays ChatGPT can do these things for you).

The need for English for the sake of conversation, comprehension and composition is usually addressed in the foundational, vocational, ability enhancement courses and papers that you can take up even WITHOUT doing the BA with English major program. You can take these courses in your college even if you are doing Bachelors of commerce or science or majoring in subjects like sociology, economics, psychology etc.

In case you think you are a poet or novelist, even then, BA with English can hardly be of any great help to you because it is NOT a creative writing program and you can be a good poet or a writer even without doing BA with English (on that note let me point out that neither Shakespeare nor Jane Austen- arguably some of the greatest writers – held college degrees in English literature as these degrees did not exist in those days!). Consequently, due to these mistaken preconceptions of the students, the Shakespeare play, or the Jane Austen novel prescribed in the BA English syllabus in India remains largely unread, and the exams still cleared.

 

If you are not discouraged enough, here is a third misconception. But this misconception would actually lead us to greater understanding of what it really is.

Misconception 3: It teaches English Literature.

It does NOT teach us English literature (which in very narrow and restricted sense means poems, plays, novels, criticism etc). Some thinkers like Northrop Frye would point out that literature cannot be taught     What it actually teaches instead is HOW to STUDY literature in ENGLISH.

By HOW to STUDY, I mean the study-skills, critical thinking skills, and research skills necessary to study literature. We don’t study poems or novels in our class, but learn HOW to analyze them, study them, critically reflect upon them, research them. We pay special attention to language of literature - literature being a linguistic art, we ask questions about distinctive features of literary language, we ask questions about interpretation and classification of literary texts, we ask questions about the historical, ideological and cultural contexts of production and interpretation of these texts. And as any human activity makes sense only in its context, we lay a great emphasis on historical contexts of literature and culture. In short, papers on genres like poetry, drama, fiction and non-fiction, literary history, and literary criticism.

These activities, traditionally belong to the field of literary and cultural criticism and scholarship, and therefore, what you actually sign up for when you sign up for a BA with English program is the introductory course in the field of literary criticism and scholarship in English language.

It should be noted here that what once carried the label of ‘English literature’ has gone beyond the older definitions of the field over the past thirty years: it is no longer merely ‘English’ (it may include substantial amount of cultural material translated into English) and no longer merely ‘literature’ (it may include wider range of cultural narratives: films, graphic novels, or webseries). ‘English Literature’ thus is a field of questions, debates and problems and not a set of texts.

I often begin my first year BA English major classes by asking students why the current class is called a first year BA class and not standard 13 (13 being an unlucky number after all). I try to establish the fact that a bachelor’s degree program in any field provides basic knowledge in a field, a masters program updates our study skills by introducing us to advance knowledge in the field and finally a research degree involves contributing to more specific field by producing knowledge within our broad area of study. In our case, BA with English program, thus would provide us with the basic and introductory knowledge in the field of literary and cultural studies in English, hence it is the beginning of one’s specialization rather than an extension of one’s school education.

In my class, I also point out the woeful colonial history of university English studies in India, how it started first in the colony (India) and only later it was accepted in the UK. I also refer to the infamous Macaulay’s 1835 project of attempting to “form a class” in his words of “who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, -a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect”. The consequence of such a project was the deep-seated belief in inherent cultural and economic superiority of English and ‘backwardness’ of rest of Indian languages. Hence, the so-called choice made by the students when they chose English majors was already determined to a large extent by history (And well, English major is THE class where we can discuss these things!). 

Besides, this is the reason why 'Spoken English' classes are so often advertised together with ' Personality Development Classes': we think that only those who can speak in English ' have personality' and those who can't , have no personality at all! While the craze for English in India, thanks to colonialism and globalization, comes close to the craze for sex and social media, it so happens that BA with English major program hardly has any true vocational value in the job market today. This, of course, doesn’t mean it is useless.

Some of my nice teachers would say that studying English literature makes us a good human being, or a good citizen or provides us with critical thinking skills. As far as I know, these are things that schools are supposed to do, just as they are supposed to provide us with the basic communication skills. The condition of the world today reveals that schools have not really succeeded in these matters.  A college degree cannot remedy what schools have failed to cure-it is too late.  A college is not a rehabilitation center for badly educated people (and that means most of us). 

This brings us then to the fundamental question: why study it at all.

You may say you opt for it because you love literature, but then you may love literature (as many people do) even if you are studying commerce or science, you can continue reading novels, stories and poems (mostly the ones you like instead of the ones that are forced upon you) as you keep doing other things for livelihood.

A cynical politician may say that we study it because of our colonial hangover (personally I feel that there are other things that give us better hangovers).

A good answer would be more intellectually complicated.  We can say that as modern Indians we are trying to understand ourselves in this rapidly globalizing world. Culturally and historically Indian modernity is deeply influenced by western modernity through colonialism and globalization from past two hundred years and English language and literature have played an extremely crucial role in the process. Therefore, critically studying English language and literature (understood broadly) in India helps us in understanding our ‘own modernity’ and how it is historically different or similar from ‘their modernity’, in short, an act of comparative cultural inquiry.

Hence, using a comparative cultural framework, studying English literature can yield us valuable insights.

And there is a less intellectual, but more interesting reason as well: as Sir Edmund Hillary explained why he climbed Mt. Everest, “because it is there”.

He is also have supposed have told Tenzin Norgay, “We've knocked the bastard off”.

Possible Areas for Doctoral Research in English Studies

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

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, 19^th 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.

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.

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’.

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'.

Choosing a Topic for the Research Project in English Studies: Some Tips

Many students request me to suggest ‘some topic or an area’ for their post-graduate research projects. More often than not, such queries come from the assumption that post-graduate research is the ‘Third Year of MA’, that is, the teacher suggests the texts, authors and reference material, the students go to the library and basically Google the topic, followed by Control C and Control V and presto-the assignment is ready!

This conception is fairly popular, not merely with the students, but also with their teachers. In fact, the teachers have a lion’s share in spreading ‘the Third Year MA syndrome’. You only have to look at the explosive growth in the ‘Peer-Reviewed Journals of International Research with ISBN numbers’ to publish tonnes of pseudo-research based on the Third Year MA syndrome brought out by college and university teachers to publish their crap and earn ‘API or Academic Performance Index’ points that are mandatory for advancement and promotions in their careers and make some easy money. When teachers follow this model, no wonder the students also emulate their peers.

The defining characteristic of this ‘Third Year MA syndrome’ is the desire to follow the path of least resistance: to read and think as little as possible and finish that damned paper or dissertation with minimum intellectual efforts. The outcome is usually the re-re-re-invention of the wheel and coming up with clichéd and stale work on obvious themes in the canonical writers that adds nothing to what is already known about the subject. There are full-fledged Shashi Deshpande, Girish Karnad, or Diaspora factories at work in academia producing plenty of garbage.   At its worst, this model is plagiarism of earlier bad research, and at its best, it is plagiarism of good research work with one’s own cosmetic surgery added to make it uglier.

I have already written about the basics of research, research question and about the format and fundamentals of writing a research proposal. Hence I am not going to rehearse these things again: Click on- A Beginner’s Guide to Doing a PhD in English Literature and Writing a Research Proposal for English Studies: Some Hints. The tips given here are for those not interested in The Third Year MA model, in short, those who are serious researchers, and are based on my earlier entries. These are not rules, but basically rules of thumb for those beginning their life as serious researchers and hence, are also obvious at times.

You have to keep in mind is that coming up with a viable research topic requires plenty of exploration (reading, thinking, discussing) and may take months. There is no short-cut here. You have to follow your own intellectual preoccupation and curiosity.

1) One of the simplest and obvious tips to start with is to consider the author, genre ( Fiction, poetry, Drama), literatures (like Gujarati literature or Indian Writing in English) or a critical idea (e. g. Gender, or Caste consciousness or both) that appealed to you the most during your BA or MA studies.  However, this is not a strict rule as there is always a possibility that there are other less explored authors, literatures and ideas which you may not be very familiar with. You may also begin by exploring authors, genres, literatures and ideas you have very little idea about.

2) The ideas and texts that appeal to you are not ‘accidents of taste’ but have links with your own life, the things that have happened to you and the relations you have with others and yourself.  Remember, research in literary studies and humanities is very often search for who you are: your own gender identity (the self awareness as belonging to a particular gender), caste identity, class identity, regional or linguistic identities play a significant role in your research and intellectual life. My own research is shaped by my identity as a bilingual- male -middle class poet writing in Marathi and English, born and brought up in Gujarat and trained in study and teaching  ‘Eng. Lit’ as a profession. ( Have a look at my thesis and research work by clicking here)

Again, while the self consciousness about your identity will definitely make your life as researcher more interesting and may also be a valuable contribution to the identity politics, this is not a strict rule and there is absolutely no reason why a Dalit student should not explore science fiction or cyberpunk or a gay researcher should not explore the questions of indigenous/Adivasi culture and literature.   There is no reason why an upper caste and upper class man not research Dalit women’s writing.

3) Researching literature and culture of the society in which you are born and brought up is far more valuable than going for the American, the British or the Continental literatures. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, because plenty of good quality research has already been conducted on these literatures, there is very little one can contribute as an outsider, unless you are going in for a comparative framework. They have already done excellent work on writers like Keats and Bernard Shaw or the themes like the Absurd or Love in Hemingway or Sex in Jane Austen, for instance, and there is very little left for us to add.

 Unless, of course there is a comparative angle. Reception of Keats or Jane Austen in Marathi or Punjabi is indeed a very good idea. But then, so is the reception of Namdeo Dhasal or Arun Kolatkar in Tamil.

Secondly, the research which contributes to your own society and culture is in my view more relevant and necessary than the research which would contribute to the American or Canadian society. As ours is a multilingual, casteist, patriarchal society with a history of colonial experience and globalization, exploring the questions of literary historiography, translation, caste, genders, modernity, regional identities, technology, and consumerism in cultural texts ( not just the literary ones, but also popular cultural texts like films, TV serials and bestsellers) in Indian languages (including English) using comparative frameworks of postcolonial studies, gender studies, Dalit studies and cultural semiotics will make your research interesting and relevant to present times.

So these are my ‘tips’ for the beginners, and I would love to hear more from you and other scholars about what you think of these. You can also check out my blog on  Translation Studies in India and Comparative Literature and you can also check out my blog on Literary theory .

Read my blog on using Semiotics of Culture as a Theoretical Framework for Indian Literatures and Cultures.

Writing a Research Proposal for English Studies: Some Hints

Coming up with a clear research proposal is the foundation of your research project. The clarity you bring to your research proposal goes a long way in impacting the quality and velocity of your work. Any research proposal is basically a statement and plan of your research project that explains what you want to do, why is it important to do it, and how you propose to do it. The following write-up offers some hints for a beginner who intends to take up a post-MA research project leading up to an M.Phil or a Ph.D in English studies in India. My hints are mainly regarding exploratory, qualitative research in literary studies in an Indian context. English Language Teaching not being my field, my suggestions and observations will come from literary studies.

One of the major difficulties faced by an aspiring researcher while coming up with a sound research proposal is having insufficient clarity about the research question. Many Indian post-graduates approach me asking for what ‘topic’ they should select for their research- or even worse, that they have already found one,  and want me to supervise it. Most of the times these ‘topics’ are dreadfully clichéd, and the researchers often come up with a justification that they selected them because ‘they liked it and are interested in it’. I say, “Good for you that you are interested. I am not.” It is then that they start asking me what topic would be good.  This happens largely because of the ignorance of what research in literary studies is. I suggest the beginner to look up my earlier blog entry ‘A Beginners Guide to Doing A PhD in English’ for help in this regard. In very early stages, one can only decide a broad area of research interest which may tentatively include specific form/s, author/s and literature/s. I suggest that one should go for the area which one can relate to, or appeals to you as a human being, and excite you.

The research question comes from what is called the ‘research gap’, a ‘gap’ in the existing knowledge, an unexplored or an under-explored aspect of the textual archive (the body of texts termed as ‘primary sources’). This gap may be an unexplored or under-explored methodological (or theoretical) angle that one brings in to bear on a canonical archive- as for instance ‘Caste Consciousness in Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri’ which deploys ideas and insights from Dalit studies in reading the canonical Indian Writing in English text, or it may be an underexplored textual archive ( primary sources)  using an established theoretical framework -as for example in ‘Postcoloniality and the question of Identity in contemporary Gujarati Poetry’.  Identification of the research gap makes your project specific. (Check out my blog on application of the theory of interliterariness to Indian literature)

It is important to note that I have assumed that after the ‘crisis in English studies’ debate of the late nineteen eighties, English studies in India have moved far beyond the study of ‘English Literature’ or ‘Indian Writing in English’, and have imbibed the spirit of comparative literature ( You can read my entry on Comparative Literature   and Translation Studies in India on this blog)  in being open to literatures in Indian languages (‘bhashas’ as Prof GN Devy terms them) and open to the expanded notion of the text which includes films, popular literatures, visual culture, oral narratives, and popular culture. This makes the research work inevitably interdisciplinary in nature. I am aware that this assumption is not always accepted by many English departments in India. However, this is the assumption I uphold and promote. (Check out my blog on how to read translation)

Identifying the ‘research gap’ and arriving at the research question will automatically lead to ‘why’ and ‘how’ of your research project. Obviously, in trying to locate what is unexplored or underexplored in your domain, you have to find out what is already explored. This demands extensive reading of already existing knowledge (‘secondary sources’) in the particular domain. Mentioning what you have read in your research proposal is often called ‘Review of Literature’. This extensive pre-reading is indispensible in formulating your argument which is the backbone of your research project. The argument begins when you either disagree with prevalent views and ideas about your subject or you start being aware of the limitations of these views. The ‘why’ of your research (rationale/objectives/ justification) emphasizes the underexplored aspects of your subject and the limitations of the already prevalent views. The rationale also underscores the contemporary social relevance of your research project (the scope and significance). It implies that the knowledge that you produce will be useful and contributing for the society that you inhabit by promoting enhanced understanding of itself.  In my personal view, the research projects dealing with languages and cultures of the society we inhabit, the Indian society, have more direct relevance than those dealing with societies and cultures which are distant from us.  (Check out my blog on the possible areas of research in translation studies)

The ‘how’ or the question of ‘method’ of the research project follows logically from ‘what’ and ‘why’ of it. Using Griffin’s distinction between ‘skills, methods and methodology’ (2005), one can say that ‘Postcoloniality and the question of Identity in contemporary Gujarati poetry’ will evidently use exploratory, qualitative methods involving textual analysis and explication. It might include oral interviews, archival methods, and draw upon the methodological frameworks from comparative studies, postcolonial studies, and identity studies. I recommend Research Methods for English Studies (2005) edited by Gabriele Griffin to everyone who want to do research. (Check my blog on Theorizing Indian Literatures for a brief introduction to Semiotics of Culture as methodology)

As I am talking about exploratory and qualitative research in humanities, it is not necessary to talk about ‘hypothesis’ the concept which belongs more accurately in the domain of natural sciences. As MPhil and PhD programs come with their own time-frames in India, it is not very important to talk about them either. Chapterization of the thesis also comes later and need not be laid down or may be mentioned tentatively. The ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ is usually followed by a list of important books and articles (bibliography) you have mentioned in your ‘Review of Literature’ section. You should use the format given by MLA Handbook (8th Edition).

So the outline of your research proposal may be as follows:

I) The Title and the Topic: The discussion of ‘what’ of your project, the research question in specific terms, and a brief introductory background to the author/s, and texts.

II) Rationale (‘why’ is it important): The discussion of the ‘research gap’, ‘Review of Literature’ and its social significance.

III) Methodological (Theoretical) Framework: The discussion of the relevant theoretical concepts and ideas and their justification.

IV)  Bibliography

Translation Studies in India: A Brief Overview

Translation studies in India is an evolving discipline.  Historically, it was only in mid-nineteenth century that the translation became a significant intellectual issue in India when the question of ‘imagining a nation’ became problematic with the realization of multilingual and multiethnic nature of Indian society. While the idea of nation as a linguistic and cultural unit based on the Eurocentric model started appearing clearly inadequate, translation started to appear as an urgent cultural necessity for nationalistic, indologicial and orientalist projects. The earliest writings on translation in India emerged during this period of the rise of print capitalism and Vishnu Shastri Chiploonkar’s Nibandhmala in Marathi in 1874 can be seen as one of the earliest attempts to intellectually confront the issue of translation. 

 Practitioners and thinkers of this period like Romesh Chander Dutt, and Sri Aurobindo reflected on translation from nationalistic, indological and orientalistic perspectives. The source language, needless to say, was largely Sanskrit and the target language was very often English.

It was only in post- independence period, that the dissatisfaction with the nationalistic, indological and orientalist idea of culture and nation made Indian intellectuals to search for alternative models of theorizing and reflecting on nation and civilization. The questions of regional and linguistic identities became prominent during the processes of linguistic reorganization of states. The questions of caste and gender identities and the movements against discrimination and injustice started gaining ground. In such a context, the idea of nation as an elitist upper caste, upper class and patriarchal construct started being vigorously interrogated. The little magazine movements challenging the predominant formalist and idealist poetics also started questioning the political underpinnings of the established literary culture. It was against this politics of interrogation and revision that the questions of translation started being posed. The major practitioners and scholars of this period like AK Ramanujan, Dilip Chitre, Sujit Mukherjee among many others approach the questions of translation in the context of this shift from nationalist, orientalist elitist framework to more regional/ local and demotic outlook towards culture and nation. This shift is clearly noticeable in their choice of source languages and texts which are very often from the marginalized oral, folk and ‘native’ traditions or from bhashas instead of Sanskrit. Their reflections on translation also reveal these re-visionary attitudes.

However, most of the thinking about translation practiced by academics in this period not just in India was around the ‘problems’ of translation very often in a normative way and limiting itself to viewing translation as a process. Internationally, the shift from this normative, process-oriented and hierarchic view of translation to more descriptive, product-based, ideological and subversive view of translation emerged only with the rise of ‘translation studies’ as a discipline in the nineteen seventies.

The late nineteen eighties and nineties was an exciting period for the discipline of translation studies in India. Seminal writings like GN Devy, In Another Tongue: Essays on Indian English Literature (1993), Sujit Mukherjee’s Translation as Discovery and Other Essays on Indian Literature in English Translation (1994), Tejaswini Niranjana, Siting Translation History, Post-Structuralism, and the Colonial Context  (1995)  and invaluable anthologies like  Promod Talgeri, and Verma.  S.B.  eds. Literature in Translation from Cultural Transference to Metonymic Displacement (1988),   AK Singh ed. Translation: Its theory and Practice (1996) , Dingwaney,  Anuradha and Carol Maier.(eds.)  Between Languages and Cultures: Translation and Cross-Cultural Texts (1996)  S.Ramakrishna ed. Translation and Multilingualism.  PostColonial Contexts (1997), Tutun Mukherjee ed. Translation: From Periphery to Centrestage (1998) and Susan Bassnett and Trivedi eds. Post Colonial Translation: Theory and Practice. (1999) burst upon the scene. Most of these writing build upon the reflections and practice of translator-scholars like A. K. Ramanujan. These writings are not only informed by the ‘ cultural’ turn in translation studies but also draw heavily upon theorization of postcolonial studies, gender studies, Dalit studies and post structuralism.

With the twenty-first century, globalization permeated nook and corner of Indian society forcing people to seriously rethink the questions of nation, cultural identities, languages and civilization. The explosive growth of digital technology in form of the internet, cellphones and social media in the beginning of the twenty first century has altered the way people communicate and process information and knowledge. The economic reforms from the nineteen nineties of liberalization and privatization intertwined with the processes of globalization producing a new urbanized middle-class and a distinctive landscape dominated by multi-storied complexes, mega-malls and proliferation of multiple types of automobiles. The economic growth was not without its catastrophic implications. The rise of religious fanaticism, terrorism, alarming development of farmers committing suicide and environmental disasters accompanied by growing criminalization and corruption of public life raised new questions before Indian society. The politics of electoral democracy in the post-Mandal period when there was a reconfiguration of politics of caste and reservations has undergone substantial shift. The questions of very existence of Indian languages, marginal identities, ethnic minorities, and natural environment have become more acute than ever. At this juncture it will be fruitful to think of how translators and translation scholars engage with these new questions. It will be interesting to find out how translation studies scholars extensively and intensively deliberate upon the complex emergent issues like:

·         Translation in India and the Digital Revolution

·         Translation and the Fate of Indian Languages

·         Translation and the question of Literary Historiography of post-Independence Indian Literatures

·         Politics of Translation between the Bhashas

·         Teaching Translation Studies in Indian Universities

·         Poetics and Politics of Translation of translating marginal literary discourses like the Dalit literatures, the Adivasi literatures and LGBT writings into English and into Bhasha

·         Politics and Mechanics of Film and TV Adaptation and subtitling into Indian Languages

• Translation and Corpora Linguistics in India

Read More about Translation Studies Elsewhere on My Blog by clicking HERE
 Read my blog on using Semiotics of Culture as a Theoretical Framework for studying Indian literatures and cultures.

OF AERIEL ROOTS AND THE BANYAN CITY

In the scorching Baroda summer of 1993, a young man from a place called Valsad walks into a smallish room for his viva of MA entrance test. The room is packed with some of the most renowned professors from the Department of English, the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda.  He finds himself facing Prof. Ranu Vanikar, the then Head of Department, and Prof. G. N.Devy among others. In response to the standard question regarding his favourite writers, he has the audacity of an undergraduate to say, “Sri Aurobindo is one of my favourite writers and I have translated some portions from Savitri into Hindi.” This brings smile on the face of Prof Devy. It is one of those famous Devy smiles which no has managed to decipher till date- whether it is ironical or pleased or both or neither. For Prof Devy, a renowned Aurobindo scholar himself, it was probably all these things. He asked me further questions regarding his poetry and the only answer which I recall after twenty years is that his poetry was ‘metaphysical’ but not in the sense Donne’s or Marvell’s poetry is metaphysical. (I actually got away with it).

Two decades after that curious incident, I will be sitting in the same room listening to such audacious undergraduates appearing for their MA entrance viva in the scorching Baroda summer, this time as a teacher. It is a privilege and a humbling experience to be in the same place where the internationally renowned scholars like Prof Devy, Prof Kar, Prof Joneja, Prof VY Kantak, and Prof Birjepatil or giants like Sri Aurobindo and AK Ramanujan once “professed” literature. Sri Aurobindo and AK Ramanujan are some of the most important names in Indian literature; famous for their fabulous creative writing, translations, sharp and erudite criticism and philosophy. It is the legacy of multilingual creativity, translation, and comparative research which I inherit as a modest practitioner of same activities. I write poetry and criticism in Marathi and English and I translate into these languages. I translate from all four languages I know. I have guts to say this as I seem to have retained some of the audacity I had when I was an undergraduate student.

The person who walked into the MA program of the MS University in the year 1993 was not the same person who walked out of it in 1995. I did my Bachelors from J. P. Shroff Arts College, Valsad.  Valsad is a small non-metropolitan town, where English is not just spoken in Gujarati, but also taught in Gujarati.  What we studied was a standard and astonishingly outdated ‘English Literature’ canon, comprising of the usual suspects:  starting out with Chaucer, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Milton, Pope, Dryden, the Brontes, Blake, Austen, Shelley, Keats, Arnold, Tennyson, and Browning and ending with T.S Eliot, with lots of whimper and no bang.  For literary criticism, we had books like English Literature: An Introduction for Foreign Readers by R. J. Rees (published in 1973) and a strange book called The Making of Literature by Scott James written in 1946. The books were in the syllabus ever since they were published or probably ever since Scott-James was born. The reason for their eternal recurrence was the fact that the professors of the affiliated colleges were so much in love with the notes on books which they had inherited ( or made) when they students, that they were unwilling to part with their treasure. The Scott-James book was not even meant as an introduction to literary criticism. It grappled with a specific and rather worthless issue of literary criticism, namely that of whether only writers can be good critics. However, the only thing that can reassure Mr. Scott-James (if he is dead and in his grave) is the fact that no one read it. Most of the students read bilingual ‘guides’ brought out by Popular publication, Surat only, and most of the teachers too did not read it. Most of the teachers and most of the students gave a damn about literature and fancy things like that.  The students selected English as a major subject for their bachelors because they thought it might improve their English, raise their social status, and add some glamour to the BA degree which was groveling at the lowest rung of the Varna-Jati system of higher education in India.

I was obviously an odd man in this set up. I had completed my higher secondary schooling in the science stream, and much to the annoyance of many of our family friends and acquaintances, selected Arts stream with English Major. My dad, a steno-typist and literature lover himself believed that a person who knows English and has a degree in English and knows steno-typing will never die of hunger. So much for parental expectations. When Dr. Madhurita Choudhary, a young, freshly appointed lecturer asked us why you have opted for English major, I bluffed that I wanted to go for journalism. Actually I did not have guts to give the real answer. The real answer was I had scored 53% in my HSC and doing BA with English and doing stenography side by side would ensure that I don’t starve. And yeah, I wrote poetry and yeah, I loved literature and yeah, I loved English literature. But then I loved English and Biology as subjects in my higher secondary education and when the board results were out, I had barely managed to pass in these subjects! I remember scoring 41 out of 50 in English in my internal examination and in the board examination, I retained the score of 41, but this time out of hundred! By then I had fallen in love with Lewis Carroll, Jerome K Jerome,  William Blake,  TS Eliot and Wallace Stevens( whose poems did not make any sense when I had read it then and do not make any sense even today for me, but then who cares for silly things like meaning these days?) in my higher secondary English text books. Come to think of it, my school curriculum was in fact more exciting than my college one! However. The damage had already been done. I was beyond repair.

So when the undergrad college started, I loved Keats and was smitten by Macbeth and Julius Caesar. I even loved Milton. (Imagine!) (While doing my MA, Prof Devy had asked us to read Paradise Lost Book I and was convinced no one would read it. It so happened that I read it and told Devy about it. His comments were typical Devy comments: “Milton has found a reader, at last.”). 

I was so much in thrall of Macbeth that I tried to translate some portions into Hindi! It was the devastating magic of literature and its overwhelming power that turned me into translator.  I translated into Hindi because it was the only Indian language which I could write more or less properly and because I loved Hindi at school too. Yes, I loved literary criticism and actually found Scott-James interesting, because he was looking at the relationship between the creative writer and the critic-the question which was staring me as a writer and wannabe scholar in face. 

When I joined the MS University Department, I was in a strange and exciting world.  Prof Kar was lecturing on Deconstruction and Derrida, almost as if on an auto-pilot.  Prof Joneja was talking about his Greek inheritance while teaching Aristophanes. I distinctly remember him mentioning in the class that his nose showed his Greek ancestry.

 Prof Devy had won Sahitya Akademi prize for his polemical nativist book After Amnesia and was a celebrity. It was the aftermath of the Age of Theory and it was the Age of ‘Crisis in English Studies’ studies debates in our country.  A wide array of theories like Feminism (didn’t hear much of Gender studies much in those days), Deconstruction, structuralism, culture studies and what have you.

The Department had a paper called ‘Politics and Ideology of Teaching English’ in those days,-probably modeled on something similar in the JN University. I read a “radically heterogeneous” canon comprising of writers as dissimilar as Kafka, Holderlin, Faulkner, Stevens, Brecht, Namdeo Dhasal, Ravji Patel, Eliot, Stevens (Yea! Stevens once again, and this time too he made no sense but made me love him even more), Shakespeare and Basheer. And equally “heterogeneous” array of critics and theorists like Derrida, Barthes, Foucault, Lacan, Poulet, Iser, Stanley Fish and the rest of them. The leap from Scott- James to Lacan was indeed a quantum one. The seminars and discussions in the Department were exciting. I listened to the internationally renowned faculties digress from the topics they were supposed to teach with fascination and awe. The juicy digressions and debates opened up a wealth of insights which have shaped me as a researcher and creative writer today. 

Yes, I also realized that plays are meant to be performed on the stage rather than just read in classrooms. The Shakespeare Society staged plays often in those days and I remember watching Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie and Mahesh Elchunchwar’s Reflection. I remember enjoying Dr Arvind Macwan strumming on his guitar and Dr. Rani Dharkar, who is a noted novelist today, teaching us Girish Karnad. The program liberated me intellectually and creatively. All these things would not have been possible had I stayed in Valsad. 

I taught Lacan, Fish and Derrida for many years in Baroda. Whether I lived up to the levels of Prof Kar or Prof Devy, I simply don’t know. But what I do know, is the profound impact these teachers and texts have made on me is the one that has made me who I am today as a teacher. Obviously, the two years I spent doing MA are unforgettable not just because of the teachers and the texts, but also due to great friends I made- and yes most of them are on Facebook today. Someday I will write another entry about these things. 

So when the college reopens, I will be sitting in probably the same room where I had faced my MA interviews as a student, and when yet another youngster from some god-knows-which place will walk into the room, I will wonder  about what influence this department will leave on her when she goes out. Frankly, I am scared. I am excited.

A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO DOING A PhD IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

There is a sudden rise in the number of PhD aspirants in these parts of the country. This may be because many universities in Gujarat and elsewhere offering the PhD Entrance Test (TET) in a quick succession. It may also be due to the UGC resolution that those who have completed their PhD following 2009 norms will be exempt from National Eligibility Test (NET) for lecturer-ship, and probably also due to the new Academic Performance Index being introduced by the UGC in the sixth pay commission.  However, not many are clear about what research in literary studies means, or why they are doing it in the first place.These dreadful questions may haunt them later in many forms if they jump on the bandwagon hastily.

This lack of clarity shows up in the stock responses to the question ‘why do you want to do PhD./doctoral research?’. The typical responses range from ‘ I want to develop myself further/ increase my knowledge’  or ‘ For intellectual pleasure’ to ‘ for a better job/salary/ status’. Though all these reasons are valid, it should be kept in mind that doing doctoral research is not the only way of fulfilling on these objectives. One could read widely, or clear the N.E.T., or get rich by starting one’s own business or by becoming a religious preacher, for instance. So why should one do doctoral or Mphil research at all? An answer to this question lies in knowing what doctoral or Mphil research is.

So what is doctoral or M.Phil research after all? Well, the obvious answer is that it is a program that trains you to become a systematic and disciplined researcher: it builds the foundation to the later research actitivity. Hence the real reason why should do Mphil or PhD is that you want to be researcher for the rest of your life, and the doctoral research program is the opportunity to equip and train yourself to become a serious researcher. It is a net practice and coaching program if you want to graduate from gully-cricket to international cricket. (Click here to read my other entries on research). 

Research is commonly perceived as as purposive and systematic search for information and knowledge about something. Even the hunt for a date on the Internet can be an example of research. However, research as we understand it academically is not primarily  a search for answers to the personal questions. The whole idea of ‘objectivity’ in research does not imply that you are ‘ impersonal’ but what you are investigating and exploring has value beyond one’s personal quest for answers. Hunting for a date for yourself may also be research, but gathering information about pretty girls in your surrounding locality has relevance to more than one person and hence of greater social value.

So what is research, especially in literary studies, after all? In very ordinary language, research is a contribution to a particular domain of knowledge. By contribution, I mean addition to what we already know about the particular area. If I want to write one more thesis on ‘Postcolonialism in Amitav Ghosh’ ‘ Spirituality in Sri Aurobindo’ or ‘ Feminism in Shashi Deshpande’, I am not really adding to what scholars already know about these things. Research which provides knowledge which is obvious and already known is of little use to anyone. Reinventing the wheel may earn you a degree (very often in our universities we keep doing that) but that would not prove that you have done research.

By ‘particular domain’ I imply an area of research which is sufficiently specific and sufficiently narrow enough to be ‘ do-able’ within time and space of the thesis. Yet it should not be so narrow that the generalization we make would be nullified. 'Postcolonial consciousness in Indian Writing in English' would be too vast an area, and probably an analysis of a  single novel by Salman Rushdie would be too narrow for making valuable generalizations about either Salman Rushdie or Indian writing in English.

Learning how to develop an argument is a crucial research skill-after all, the term 'thesis' means 'a position.' It is very important to understand the logical movements from specific and particular to generalized knowledge or theoretical knowledge ( inductive approach) and from generalization ( theoretical) to particular and specific ( deductive approach) in your exploration. You may start with a general understanding of the area and form a hypothesis which can be verified by analysis of specific texts or patterns or else you may start with particular observations about the patterns in the texts/ authors and then generalize and theorize them. Which approach is suitable for your purpose depends on your research question. If you want to examine ‘ Representations of Masculinity in the post-independence Indian novels in English’, you may start with the hypothesis that the representation of masculinity in the post-Independence  Indian novels in English differs significantly from the representation of masculinity in the pre-Independence Indian novels in English, and that this shift occurs because of historical reasons.  The logical movement of your argument would largely be deductive. ‘Archetypal Patterns in the Post-nineties Indian Poetry in English by women’ may start with an analysis of patterns in various Indian women poets in English writing in the nineties and then may move on to theoretical generalizations in an inductive fashion. Though usually it is a combination of both logical processes, one process is often primary.

The key to successful research lies in asking a valuable research question, an important question which is not often asked or not sufficiently  explored regarding the area of research. ‘The Elements of Grotesque  in Sri Aurobindo’s Poetry’ or ‘ Folk motifs in Shashi Deshpande Short Fiction’ would be yield knowledge that is not very common and hence, interesting. ‘Surrealism in Arun Kolatkar’s poetry’ is an obvious observation, the research,  however,  begins when you want to understand why surrealism is found in his works, how does he deploy surrealistic devices, what does it do in the particular cultural context and what is its significance.

One of the most important questions of writing a research paper or thesis is the question of  language of research. What is the appropriate ‘register’ for the language of research? What is the place of technical and theoretical vocabulary in the language of research? What about the jargon? The answer becomes clear when we understand that a research thesis is a serious dialogue or a conversation between two experts and scholars, and not between two M.A. students or even between a postgraduate student and the examiner, or even worse, between a teacher and a student.  In your research paper or thesis, an expert speaks with an expert. Hence the language has to be technical ( remember two lawyers discussing law in the court or doctors discussing a disease or treatment?). This does not mean that you should use the technical terminology to show-off your learning ( pedantry) or obscure you own ignorance (cheating). Bad research today often suffers either from naivete ( as if a teacher talking to her student) or from the other extremity- pedantry, obscurantism and masking of ignorance ( brahminism).

When we understand that in research writing, an expert is talking to another expert, we can also cut down and structure our thesis in a better way. What is already well-known is usually not elaborately discussed, and is often reduced to minimum. So the things like biographical details, details of various works or well known facts and information occupies minimum space.

This brings us to yet another important and problematic question: what is the place of ‘theory’ in the period which is ‘post-theory’. Theory as we know is not vaseline or Tiger Balm to be ‘ applied’. Theoretical approaches ( Psychoanalytical, Marxist, structuralist, postcolonialist,  Feminist,subaltern, LGBTs, poststructuralists etc etc) are perspectives, points of views, ways of looking and conceiving the object of our research. ( Click here to read my blog on various theoretical approaches) Today, we know what ‘IS’ our object of research ( what we once knew as ‘literature’ in our good very old days) has become more and more problematic and contested, and what is literature often depends on how we look at it. ‘What’ we see is very often a function of ‘How’ we see it, and so it is not as simple as there is preexisting ‘literature’ “ out there” and we use theoretical frameworks as aspects to see it. You cannot imagine literature existing independently of a conceptual frame, and when you claim that you are not using any theory, it is very likely that some theory already is using you. Today, if you are honest, you have to be self-conscious of which the theory is using you, and you are using which theory, and you should have an awareness of advantages and limitations of your own conceptual frames ( those which are using you and those you are using). Literary research today has to be autocritical.

Besides, I have also often heard complaints that too much criticism and theory is  spoil sport and it takes away ‘fun’ from reading literature. You don’t need to ‘study’ literature in order to have fun and enjoyment. You may enjoy watching flowers, but you don’t become botanist in order to enjoy flowers. You may get pleasure and enjoy studying plants, but you need not produce a body of knowledge about plants to enjoy viewing them or tending them. You need not be an expert in evolutionary biology to enjoy playing with your cat. The same thing applies to the study of literature. When you ‘study’ literature, you are engaging with a vast body of knowledge about literature. That it provides a distinctive type of intellectual pleasure  may be a bonus, but it is more likely to produce lot of pain in some unmentionable parts of your body. You HAVE to go beyond your personal likes and tastes , and you HAVE to read plenty of difficult theoretical writings, if you want to be a serious researcher. Reading Lacan, Judith Butler or Spivak is not an enjoyable pastime, but then research in literature is not a pastime.  

I want to end this longish entry by recommending two very useful books for the beginners here: i) Research Methods for English Studies by Gabrielle by Gabriele Griffin and ii) Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction by Jonathan Culler. Critical comments, suggestions and feedback on my blog entries are welcome.

Useful Links ( click on them):
i)  Choosing a Topic for the Research Project in English Studies: Some Tips
ii) Writing a Research Proposal for English Studies: Some Hints

iii) Possible areas of research in English studies in India.
iv)  Comparative Literary Studies
v) Translation Studies in India: A Brief Overview

vi) My blog on various theoretical approaches to the study of literature