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This course offers students the opportunity to study graphic narratives as a prominent contemporary literary form. The course examines how artists use the graphic novel medium to provide cultural commentary through the interdependence of text and visual art. Students will explore major works that comment on history, mythology, and contemporary issues. The course covers genres such as superhero comics, autobiographical graphic novels, and revisionist historical narratives. It provides tools for analyzing how graphic narratives address topics like race, gender, caste, ethnicity, and sexuality. Students will discuss exam strategies and complete assignments and tests to demonstrate their conceptual and textual understanding.

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English Language

Uploaded by

Uttam Baskey

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DCE COURSE

PAPER D1
AMERICAN LITERATURE
Semester 5

Course Statement

This course offers students an opportunity to study the American literary tradition as a tradition
which is distinct from and almost a foil to the traditions which had developed in European
countries especially in England. A selection of texts for this course therefore highlights some of
the key tropes of mainstream America's self-perception such as Virgin Land the New World
Democracy Manifest Destiny the Melting-Pot and Multiculturalism. At the same time there are
specifically identified texts that draw the attention of students to cultural motifs which have
either been erased brutally suppressed or marginalized (the neglected and obscured themes from
the self-expression of the subaltern groups within American society) in the mainstream's pursuit
of the fabled American Dream. A careful selection of writings by native Americans African
Americans as well as texts by women and other sexual minorities of different social
denominations seeks to reveal the dark underside of America's progress to modernity and its
gradual emergence as the most powerful nation of the world.

Course Objectives

The course aims to

• acquaint students with the wide and varied literatures of America: literature written by
writers of European particularly English descent reflecting the complex nature of the
society that emerged after the whites settled in America in the 17th century
• include Utopian narrative transcendentalism and the pre- and post- Civil War literature of
the 19th century
• introduce students to the African American experience both ante-bellum and post-bellum
reflected in the diversity of literary texts from narratives of slavery political speeches
delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X as well as the works of
contemporary black woman writers
• familiarize students with native American literature which voices the angst of a people
who were almost entirely wiped out by forced European settlements and
• include modern and contemporary American literature of the 20th century.
Course Content

Unit 1

James Fennimore Cooper The Pioneers

Unit 2

Toni Morrison Beloved

Unit 3

Arthur Miller Death of a Salesman (Penguin 1978).

Unit 4
Poetry

a) Walt Whitman ‘O Captain! My Captain’ in Walt Whitman: Poetry and Prose ed.
Shira Wolosky (The Toby Press 2003) pp. 360-61).
b) Emily Dickinson ‘Because I Could Not Stop for Death’ in The Poems of Emily
Dickinson ed. Ralph W. Franklin (Harvard UP 1998).
c) Allen Ginsberg ‘A Supermarket in California’ in Selected Poems 1947-1995
(Penguin Books 2001) p. 59.
d) Langston Hughes (i) ‘The Negro Speaks of Rivers’(ii) ‘The South’ (iii) ‘Aunt
Sue’s Stories’ in The Weary Blues (New York: Alfred A. Knopf 2015) pp. 33 36 39.
e) Joy Harjo (i) ‘Perhaps the World Ends Here’(ii) ‘I Give You Back’ in The Woman That I
Am: The Literature and Culture of Contemporary Women of Color ed. D. Soyini Madison
(New York: St Martin’s Press 1994) pp. 37-40.

Short Stories

f) Herman Melville ‘Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street’ (1853)

(Createspace Independent Publishing Platform).
g) Flannery O’ Connor ‘Everything that Rises Must Converge’ in Everything that
Rises Must Converge (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux 1965).
h) Leslie Marmon Silko ‘The Man to Send Rain Clouds’ in Nothing but the Truth: An
Anthology of Native American Literature ed. John L. Purdy and James Ruppert (New Jersey:
Prentice Hall 2001) pp. 358-61.
Unit 5
Readings

a) ‘Declaration of Independence’ July 4 1776 in For Liberty and Equality: The Life
and Times of the Declaration (OUP 2012) pp. 312) or ‘Abraham Lincoln Gettysburg Speech’
in Gettysburg Speech and Other Writings (Barnes &Noble 2013).
b) Ralph Waldo Emerson Nature (1836) (Boston: James Munroe and Company 1836
[2006]) pp. 5-9.
c) Martin Luther King Jr ‘I have a dream’ in African American Literature ed. Kieth
Gilyard Anissa Wardi (New York: Penguin 2014) pp. 1007-11)
d) Malcom X Extracts from ‘Ballot or Bullet’ in African American Literature ed.
Kieth Gilyard Anissa Wardi (New York: Penguin 2014) paras 9-40 pp. 1120-130.
e) Adrienne Rich ‘When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision’ College English
Vol. 34 No. 1 Women Writing and Teaching pp. 18-30.

Teaching Plan
Paper D1: American Literature

Week 1 -- Introduction to Paper 1: American Literature

Week 2 – Unit 1 -- Novel: Cooper The Pioneers
Week 3 – Unit 1 – Cooper (contd)
Week 4 – Unit 2 -- Novel: Morrison Beloved
Week 5 – Unit 2 – Morrison (contd)
Week 6 – Unit 3 -- Drama: Miller Death of a Salesman
Week 7 – Unit 3 –Miller (contd)
Week 8 – Unit 4 – Poetry:
(a) Whitman ‘O Captain! My Captain’
(b) Dickinson ‘Because I Could Not Stop for Death’
(c) Ginsberg ‘A Supermarket in California’
Week 9 – Unit 4 – Poetry (contd):
(d) Langston Hughes (i) ‘The Negro Speaks of Rivers’ (ii) ‘The South’ (iii) ‘Aunt Sue’s
Stories
(e) Harjo (i) ‘Perhaps the World Ends Here’ (ii) ‘I Give You Back’
Week 10 -- Unit 4 -- Short Stories:
(a) Melville ‘Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street’
(b) O’ Connor ‘Everything that Rises Must Converge’
(c) Silko ‘The Man to Send Rain Clouds’
Week 11 – Unit 5 -- Prose Readings:
(a) Declaration of Independence’ July 4 1776 or ‘Abraham Lincoln Gettysburg Speech’
(b) Ralph Waldo Emerson Nature
Week 12 – Prose Readings (contd):
(c) Martin Luther King Jr ‘I have a dream’
(d) Malcom X Extracts from ‘Ballot or Bullet’ (paras 9-40)
Week 13 – Prose Readings (contd):
(e) Adrienne Rich ‘When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision.’
Week 14 - Concluding lectures exam issues etc.

Facilitating the Achievement of Course Learning Outcomes

Unit Course Learning Outcomes Teaching and Assessment Tasks

No. Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts Interactive Reading material together in

discussions in small groups initiating
small groups in discussion topics participation in
Tutorial classes discussions

2. Expressing concepts How to think Writing essay length

through writing critically and write assignments
with clarity

3. Demonstrating conceptual Discussing exam Class tests

and textual understanding questions and
in tests and exams answering
techniques

Keywords

The New World

Democracy
Multiculturalism
American Dream
Native American literature
Transcendentalism
Pre- and Post-Civil War literature
African American experience
Slavery
Beat generation
Black woman writers
Civil rights movement

Sub-committee

Al Moohshina Muzzammil Zakir Husain College (Evening) (Coordinator)

Aneeta Rajendran Gargi College
Dhanajay Kapse Kirorimal College
N. A. Jacob Ramjas College.
Sandhya Devesan Nambiar Jesus and Mary College.

Course designed in Consultation with Dr Tapan Basu Department of English University of Delhi

PAPER D2
GRAPHIC NARRATIVES
Semester 5

Course Statement

The graphic novel has become a prominent form in literary culture today speaking to a variety of
concerns spanning both the mass-market and countercultures. In each of its iterations the best
graphic narratives work through the interdependence of art and text the mutual connections
between illustration blank space size and writing. This course aims to introduce students to the
form examining how artists/graphic novelists have used the medium to provide cultural
commentary.

Course Objectives

This course aims to

• examine major graphic narratives as providing commentary on contemporary culture
history and mythology
• explore visual art as extending translating and providing a new textual vocabulary to
narrative including fictional and non-fictional narrative
• provide exposure to major genres within the field such as that of the mass-circulation
superhero the fictionalized autobiography/memoir revisionist narratives of mythological
or historical or biographical texts and that of fiction and
• provide tools for the exploration of form and genre that are sensitive to nuances of race
gender caste ethnicity ableism and sexuality.

Course Content

Unit 1

Frank Miller Batman: The Dark Knight Returns(Delhi:Random House 1986

[2016]).

Unit 2

a) Durgabai Vyamand Srividya NatarajanBhimayana: Experiences of

Untouchability (Delhi: Navayana Press 2011)
b) S. S. Rege and Dilip Kadam (Babasaheb Ambedkar: He Dared to Fight Vol. 611
(Mumbai: Amar Chitra Katha 1979).

Unit 3

a) Amruta Patil Kari (Delhi: Harper Collins 2008)

b) Marjane Satrapi Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood(London:Pantheon 2004).

Unit 4

Art Spiegelman The Complete Maus (England: Penguin 2003).

Unit 5
Readings

a) Hillary Chute ‘Comics as Literature? Reading Graphic Narrative’ PMLA 123

(2): 452-65.
b) Karline McLain ‘Introduction’ in India's Immortal Comic Books (USA: Indiana
UP 2009) pp. 1-23.
c) Scott McCloud Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (USA: HarperCollins
1993) pp. 60-137.
d) Nina Mickwitz Documentary Comics: Graphic Truth-telling in a Skeptical Age
(UK: Palgrave Macmillan 2016) pp. 1-28.
e) David K. Palmer ‘The Tail That Wags the Dog: The Impact of Distribution
on the Development and Direction of the American Comic Book Industry’ in Casey Brienza
and Paddy Johnston edsCultures of Comics Work(UK: Palgrave Macmillan 2016) pp. 235-
49.

Teaching Plan
Paper D2: Graphic Narratives

Week 1: Unit 1 – The Graphic Novel

Miller Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
Unit 5 -- Reading: Hillary Chute ‘Comics as Literature? Reading Graphic Narrative’
Week 2: Unit 1 (contd)
Week 3: Unit 1 (contd)
Week 4: Unit 2 -- Graphic Narratives:
(a) Vyam and Natarajan Bhimayana: Experiences of Untouchability
(b) Rege and Kadam Babasaheb Ambedkar: He Dared to Fight
Week 5: Unit 2 (contd)
Week 6: Unit 2 (contd)
Week 7: Unit 3 -- Graphic Novels:
(a) Patil Kari
(b) Satrapi Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
Week 8: Unit 3 (contd)
Week 9: Unit 3 (contd)
Week 10: Unit 4 -- Graphic Novels:
Spiegelman The Complete Maus
Week 11: Unit 4 (contd)
Week 12: Unit 4 (contd)
Week 13: Unit 5 – Readings:
(b) McLain ‘Introduction’ in India's Immortal Comic Books
(c) McCloud Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
Week 14: Unit 5 – Readings:
(d) Mickwitz Documentary Comics: Graphic Truth-telling in a Skeptical Age
(e) Palmer ‘The Tail That Wags the Dog: The Impact of Distribution
on the Development and Direction of the American Comic Book Industry’
Facilitating the Achievement of Course Learning Outcomes

Unit Course Learning Outcomes Teaching and Assessment Tasks

No. Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts Interactive Reading material together in

discussions in small groups initiating
small groups in discussion topics participation in
Tutorial classes discussions

2. Expressing concepts How to think Writing essay length

through writing critically and write assignments
with clarity

3. Demonstrating conceptual Discussing exam Class tests

and textual understanding questions and
in tests and exams answering
techniques

Keywords

Graphic narratives
Visual art
Forms and genres
Revisionist commentary
Culture
History and mythology

Sub-committee

Gorvika Rao Miranda House (Coordinator)

Amrita Singh Kamla Nehru College
Aneeta Rajendran Gargi College (Coordinator)
Rina Ramdev Sri Venkateswara College
Shraddha Adityavir Singh Zakir Husain College
Shweta Sachdeva Jha Miranda House
PAPER D3
INDIAN WRITING IN ENGLISH
Semester 5

Course Statement

Over the past two centuries and especially after the 1980s Indian writing in English has emerged
as a major contribution to Indian—and global—literary production. A close analysis of some of
the major works of Indian writing in English is crucial in any exploration of modern Indian
subjectivities histories and politics.

Course Objectives

This course aims to

• introduce students to Indian English Literature and its major movements and figures
through the selected literary texts across genres
• enable the students to place these texts within the discourse of post-coloniality and
understand Indian literary productions in English in relation to the hegemonic processes
of colonialism neo-colonialism nationalism and globalization and
• allow the students to situate this corpus within its various historical and ideological
contexts and approach the study of Indian writing in English from the perspectives of
multiple Indian subjectivities.

Course Content

Unit 1

Novel

Mukul Kesavan Looking Through Glass (1995)

Unit 2

Novel

Arundhati Roy The God of Small Things (1996)

Unit 3

Drama

a) Manjula Padmanabhan Lights Out (1984)

b) Mahesh Dattani Tara (1995)

Unit 4
Short Stories

a) Shashi Deshpande ‘The Intrusion’

b) Salman Rushdie‘The Prophet’s Hair’
c) Rohinton Mistry‘Swimming Lessons’

Poems

d) Kamala Das (i) ‘An Introduction’ (ii) ‘My Grandmother’s House’

e) Jayanta Mahapatra (i) ‘Hunger’ (ii) ‘Grandfather’
f) Robin Ngangom (i) ‘A Poem for My Mother’ (ii) ‘Native Land’

Unit 5
Readings

a) Raja Rao ‘Foreword’ to Kanthapura (New Delhi: OUP 1989) pp. v–vi.
b) Arvind Krishna Mehrotra‘Towards a History of Indian Literature in English’ in
Partial Recall: Essays on Literature and Literary History (New Delhi: Permanent Black
2012) pp. 196-235.
c) Meenakshi Mukherjee ‘Epic and Novel in India’ in The Novel Vol. 1 ed. Franco
Moretti (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press 2006) pp. 596-631.
d) Ulka Anjaria‘Introduction: Literary Pasts Presents and Futures’ in A History of
the Indian Novel in English ed. Ulka Anjaria (New Delhi: OUP 2015) pp. 1-30.
e) Rajeev S. Patke‘Poetry since Independence’ in An Illustrated History Of Indian
Literature in English ed. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra (New Delhi: Permanent Black 2003) pp.
243-75.
Teaching Plan
Paper D3: Indian Writing in English

Week 1 -- Introduction to Paper D3: Indian Writing in English

Week 2 – Unit 1 -- Novel: Kesavan Looking Through Glass
Week 3 – Kesavan (contd)
Week 4 – Unit 2 -- Novel: Roy The God of Small Things
Week 5 – Roy (contd)
Week 6 – Unit 3 -- Drama: Padmanabhan Lights Out
Week 7 – Padmanabhan (contd)
Week 8– Unit 3 -- Drama: Dattani Tara
Week 9 – Dattani (contd)
Week 10 – Unit 4 -- Short Stories:
(a) Deshpande ‘The Intrusion’
(b) Rushdie ‘The Prophet’s Hair’
(c) Mistry ‘Swimming Lessons’
Week 11 – Unit 4 (contd) – Poems:
(a) Das (i)‘An Introduction’ (ii) ‘My Grandmother’s House’
(b) Mahapatra (i) ‘Hunger’ (ii) ‘Grandfather’
(c) Ngangom (i) ‘A Poem for My Mother’ (ii) ‘Native Land’
Week 12- Unit 5 – Readings:
(a) Rao ‘Foreword’ to Kanthapura
(b) Mehrotra ‘Towards a History of Indian Literature’
Week 13 – Readings (contd):
(a) Mukherjee ‘Epic and Novel in India
(b) Anjaria ‘Introduction: Literary Pasts Presents and Futures’
(c) Patke ‘Poetry since Independence’
Week 14 -- Concluding lectures exam issues etc.

Facilitating the Achievement of Course Learning Outcomes

Unit Course Learning Outcomes Teaching and Assessment Tasks

No. Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts Interactive Reading material together in

discussions in small groups initiating
small groups in discussion topics participation in
Tutorial classes discussions
2. Expressing concepts How to think Writing essay length
through writing critically and write assignments
with clarity

3. Demonstrating conceptual Discussing exam Class tests

and textual understanding questions and
in tests and exams answering
techniques

Keywords

Postcolonial writing
Nationalism
Tradition
Modernity
Native imagery

Sub-committee

Karuna Rajeev Lady Shri Ram College (Coordinator)

Someshwar Sati Kirori Mal College
Dhananjay Kapse Kirori Mal College
Sherina Joshi Deshbandhu College
Yamini Dyal Singh College

PAPER D4
INTERROGATING QUEERNESS
Semester 5

Course Statement

This paper examines interrogations of the heteronorm across cultures and geographies as seen in
representative texts in western and south Asian literary traditions. Themes of the body desire
sexuality and gender are explored to understand their constructedness and historical specificity
the heteronorm is shown to coexist alongside other positions over various arcs in time. Emotive
constructs such as love and romance and sociological ones like family and kinship are examined
as concepts embedded in power relations and history culture rather than ‘nature’. The paper uses
positions that emerge in queer theory to understand how power relations that privilege
heteropatriarchal reproduction use violence erasure and invisibility to create particular
masculinities and femininities as normative.

Course objectives

This paper aims to

• enable students to examine several key themes including love desire identity gender
masculinity femininity family/kinship deviance sexuality power normativities and
resistance to these normatives
• help students follow the concept of queerness as an interrogation of heteronormativity
through its representation in diverse cultural historical and geographic landscapes to
examine how normative structures are constituted and subverted and
• use materials from diverse creative traditions including mainstream and non-marginal
texts in mythology fiction poetry to familiarise students with the idea that normative
structures of desire are themselves heterogeneous social constructs that change over time.

Course Content

Unit 1

a) Sappho (i) Select lyrics ‘Hymn to Aphrodite’(ii) select lyric fragments‘I Have
Not Had One Word From Her’ (iii)‘He seems an equal of the gods’ in If not Winter:
Fragments of Sappho ed. and trans. Anne Carson(USA: Little Brown 2003).
b) Plato (i) The Speech of Phaedrus (ii) The Speech of Pausanias (iii) The Speech of
Aristophanes (iv) The Dialogue of Socrates and Diotima from ‘Symposium’ in the
Columbia Anthology of Gay Literatureed. Byrne R. S. Fone (USA 2001) pp. 26-38.
c) The Bible (i) excerpts from the Book of Ruth 1: 1-22 2: 1-23 3: 1-18 4: 1-22 (ii)
The Old Testament The Story of Sodom: Genesis 18-19 (iii) The Holiness Code (iv)
Leviticus 18:22 (v) Leviticus 20:13 (vi) The New Testament: From the Epistles of St. Paul
(vii) Romans 1:26-27 (viii) 1 Corinthians 6:9-10.
d) William Shakespeare Sonnets 20 80 87 121 inThe Complete Sonnets and
Poems ed. Colin Burrow (UK: OUP 2002).

Unit 2

a) Mahabharata Udyoga Parva CLXXXVIII-CXCV Shikhandin trans. Kisari Mohan

Ganguly (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal 1883-96) pp. 358-72.
b) Bhagavata Purana Skanda Purana Shiva Purana on Shiva and Vishnu
Sumedha and Somavan Birth of Kartikeya Birth of Ganesha) in Same Sex Love in India eds
Ruth Vanita and Salim Kidwai (India: Macmillan 2000) pp. 69-84.
c) Madho Lal Hussein Kafis 2 3 5 10 13 trans. Naveed Alam in Verses of a Lowly
Fakir (India: Penguin) pp. 4-17.
d) Rangeen Insha Jan (i) ‘My Heart’s Desire’ (ii) ‘I Spent All Night’ (iii) ‘I’ll Give
My Life for You’ in When Men Speak as Women: Vocal Masquerade in Indo-Muslim Poetry
ed. and trans. Carla Petievich OUP: New Delhi 2007)p. 293 p. 321 pp. 333-34.

Unit 3

James Baldwin Giovanni’s Room (Penguin 2007 [1956]).

Unit 4

Suniti Namjoshi The Mothers of Maya Diip (UK: The Women’s Press 1989).

Unit 5
Readings

a) Gloria Anzaldua ‘Gestures of the Body’ Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro:

Rewriting Identity Spirituality Reality trans. and ed. Ana Louise Keating (USA: Duke UP
2015) pp.1-9.
b) Judith Butler ‘Critically Queer’ GLQ 1:1 (1993) pp. 17-32.
c) Michel Foucault ‘The Deployment of Sexuality: Method’ trans. Robert Hurley in
The History of Sexuality Vol. 1 (NY: Pantheon 1978) pp. 92-103.
d) Judith Halberstam Female Masculinity (USA: Duke UP 1998) pp. 1-44.
e) Audre Lorde ‘The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power’ in Sister/Outsider
(CA: Crossing Press 1984) pp. 53-59.

Teaching Plan
Paper D4: Interrogating Queerness

Week 1: Unit 1:
(a) Sappho (i) Select lyrics ‘Hymn to Aphrodite’ (ii) select lyric fragments ‘I Have Not
Had One Word From Her’ (iii) ‘He seems an equal of the gods’
Week 2: Unit 1 (contd):
(b) Plato (i) The Speech of Phaedrus (ii) The Speech of Pausanias (iii) The Speech of
Aristophanes(iv) The Dialogue of Socrates and Diotima from ‘Symposium’
Week 3: Unit 1 (contd):
(c) The Bible (i) excerpts from the Book of Ruth (ii) The Old Testament The Story of
Sodom (iii) The Holiness Code (iv) Leviticus 18:22 (v) Leviticus 20:13 (vi) The New
Testament: From the Epistles of St. Paul (vii) Romans 1:26-27 (viii) 1Corinthians 6:9-
10.
Week 4: Unit 1(contd):
(d) Shakespeare Sonnets 20 80 87 121
Week 5: Unit 2:
(a) Mahabharata Udyoga Parva CLXXXVIII-CXCV Shikhandin
(b) Bhagavata Purana Skanda Purana Shiva Purana on Shiva and Vishnu
Sumedha and Somavan Birth of Kartikeya Birth of Ganesha
Week 6: Unit 2 (contd):
(c) Hussein Kafis 2 3 5 10 13
Week 7: Unit 2 (contd):
(d) Rangeen Insha Jan (i) ‘My Heart’s Desire’ (ii) ‘I Spent All Night’ (iii) ‘I’ll Give My
Life for You’
Week 8: Unit 3 --Baldwin Giovanni’s Room
Week 9: Baldwin (contd)
Week 10: Baldwin (contd)
Unit 4 -- Namjoshi The Mothers of Maya Diip
Week 11: Namjoshi (contd)
Week 12: Namjoshi (contd)
Week 13: Unit 5 –Readings:
(a) Anzaldua ‘Gestures of the Body’
(b) Butler ‘Critically Queer’
Week 14: Unit 5 (contd):
(c) Foucault ‘The Deployment of Sexuality: Method’
(d) Halberstam Female Masculinity
(e) Lorde ‘The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power’

Facilitating the Achievement of Course Learning Outcomes

Unit Course Learning Outcomes Teaching and Assessment Tasks

No. Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts Interactive Reading material together in

3. Demonstrating conceptual Discussing exam Class tests

and textual understanding questions and
in tests and exams answering
techniques

Keywords

Heteronorm
Desire
Sexuality
Queerness
Queer theory
Normative masculinities and femininities

Sub-committee

Aneeta Rajendran Gargi College (Coordinator)

Brati Biswas Dyal Singh College
Karen Gabriel St Stephen’s College
Rajendra Parihar Ramjas College
Wafa Hamid Lady Shriram College
Shweta Sachdeva Jha Miranda House
PAPER D5
LITERARY CRITICISM AND THEORY– 1
Semester 5

Course Statement

This is the first of two papers dealing with literary criticism and theory as a discipline within
literary studies in the European tradition. It is crucial to the understanding of the interface
between the history of ideas and the literary texts that are studied in the Core Curriculum. The
paper covers a large historical span from the Classical Greco-Roman tradition to New Criticism
and Russian Formalism in the twentieth century. In the process it traverses key moments in the
emergence of aesthetic theory in Europe including British Neoclassicism German Romanticism
and the Nineteenth Century. The paper aims to introduce students to important excerpts from a
wide range of literary theorists and philosophers whose works intervene in specific ways with the
idea of literary representation and aesthetic theory. Each unit explores a particular set of inter-
related themes raising various connections between the theoretical questions.

Course Objectives

This course aims to

• expose students to the various theories of art and representation and critical approaches
that emerged in Europe throughout centuries
• to examine the evolution of various theoretical and aesthetic concepts across space and
time and pay close attention to the method of argument and establishment of concepts
and
• enable students to discern the connections between the theoretical formulations in this
paper which are seminal to the understanding of literary texts.

Course Content

Unit 1

a) Plato From Phaedrus trans. Robin Waterfield (New York: OUP 2002) pp. 68-75.
b) Longinus From ‘On the Sublime’ in The Norton Anthology of Theory and
Criticism ed. Vincent B. Leitch (New York: W. W. Norton & Co. 2001) pp. 138-54.
c) Plotinus ‘On the Intellectual Beauty’ trans. Stephen MacKenna from the fifth
Ennead in Plotinus: The Six Enneads (UK: Penguin Books 1991) pp. 410-24.
Unit 2

a) David Hume ‘Of the Standard of Taste’ from ‘Four Dissertations’ inThe Norton
Anthology of Theory and Criticism ed. Vincent Leitch (New York: W. W. Norton & Co.
2001) pp. 486-99.
b) Edmund Burke ‘Introduction on Taste’ from Part II and Part III in A
Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (UK: OUP
1990) pp. 11-26 53-71 83-105.

Unit 3

a) Immanuel Kant ‘Analytic of the Beautiful’ trans. Paul Guyer inThe Critique of
Judgment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2000) 89-127.
b) Friedrich Schiller Letters 2 6 and 9trans. Reginald Snell in Letters on the
Aesthetic Education of Man (UK: Dover Publications 2004) pp. 46-50 69-83 93-100.

Unit 4

a) G. W. F. Hegel (i) ‘Work of Art as Product of Human Activity’ (ii) ‘The Kantian
Philosophy’ (iii) ‘Imagination Genius and Inspiration’trans. T. M. Knox in Aesthetics:
Lectures on Fine Art Vol. 1(Oxford: Clarendon Press 1988) pp. 25-32 56-61 281-88.
b) Friedrich Nietzsche ‘What is the Meaning of Ascetic Ideals’ Book III Sections 1–
6 trans. Walter Kaufmann and John Hollingdale in On the Genealogy of Morals (New York:
Vintage Books 1967) pp. 1-6.

Unit 5

a) Mikhail Bakhtin From ‘Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel’trans.
Caryl Emerson Michael Holquist in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (Texas:
University of Texas Press 1981) pp. 84-110 243-58.
b) Cleanth Brooks (i) ‘The Language of Paradox’ and (ii) ‘Heresy of Paraphrase’ in
The Well-Wrought Urn(New York: Harvest Books 1947) pp. 12-29 185-205.
Teaching Plan
Paper D5: Literary Criticism and Theory - 1

Week 1:Introduction to Paper 5: Literary Theory and Criticism - 1

Week 2: Unit 1 -- Greek theory: Plato From Phaedrus Plotinus ‘On the Intellectual
Beauty’
Week 3: Unit 1 -- Roman theory: Longinus From ‘On the Sublime’
Week 4: Unit 2 -- Introduction to Neoclassical and Augustan Critical Theories.
Week 5: Unit 2 -- Hume ‘Of the Standard of Taste’
Week 6: Unit 2 – Burke ‘Introduction on Taste’
Week 7: Unit 3 -- Introduction to German enlightenment.
Week 8: Unit 3 – Kant ‘Analytic of the Beautiful’
Week 9: Unit 3 – Schiller Letters 2 6 and 9
Week 10: Introduction to 19th Century concepts of art and literature.
Week 11: Unit 4 – Hegel (i) ‘Work of Art as Product of Human Activity’ (ii) ‘The
Kantian Philosophy’ (iii) ‘Imagination Genius and Inspiration’
Week 12: Unit 4 – Nietzsche ‘What is the Meaning of Ascetic Ideals’ Book III
Sections 1–6
Week 13: New Criticism in the 20th Century: Cleanth Brooks (i) ‘The Language of
Paradox’ and (ii) ‘Heresy of Paraphrase’
Week 14: Unit 5 -- Formalism and its critique: Mikhail Bakhtin ‘Forms of Time and
of the Chronotope in the Novel’

Facilitating the Achievement of Course Learning Outcomes

Unit Course Learning Outcomes Teaching and Assessment Tasks

No. Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts Interactive Reading material together in

discussions in small groups initiating
small groups in discussion topics participation in
Tutorial classes discussions

2. Expressing concepts How to think Writing essay length

through writing critically and write assignments
with clarity

3. Demonstrating conceptual Discussing exam Class tests

and textual understanding questions and
in tests and exams answering
techniques
Keywords

Speech vs Writing
Sublime
Aesthetics
Taste
Beautiful
Narrative
Poetics

Sub-committee

Madhvi Zutshi SGTB Khalsa College (Coordinator)

N. A. Jacob Ramjas College
Rudrashish Chakraborty Kirori Mal College (Coordinator)
Saikat Ghosh SGTB Khalsa College
Advisors:
Dr. Rimli Bhattacharya Dept. of English
Prof. Shaswati Mazumdar Dept. of Germanic and Romance Studies

PAPER D6
LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS
Semester 5

Course Statement

This paper explores the many forms and genres found in writing for children and young adults.
The texts in this course cover a vast range from picture books to writings for children and young
adults. Through the readings students can explore the construction of childhood as well as the
emergence of children’s literature as a genre. The course explores the cultural importance of
genres aimed at young readership and simultaneously engages with theoretical frameworks by
which such texts can be read.
Course Objectives

This course aims to

• help students trace the emergence of the genre termed Children’s Fiction and link it to the
emergence of other genres as print culture has grown
• familiarize students with the idea of visual literacy illustrations etc. and their application
and use in children’s picture books and
• facilitate an engagement with the concept of Young Adult Literature and issues
associated with it.

Course Content

Unit 1

a) Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Little Prince(New Delhi: Pigeon Books 2008).

b) Oliver Jeffers Heart in a Bottle (New York: Harper Collins 2011).
c) bell hooks and Chris Raschka Happy to be Nappy(New York: Jump at the Sun
2017).
d) Mahashweta Devi The Why Why Girl(New Delhi: Tulika Publishers 2012).

Unit 2

a) Upendra Kishore Roychowdhury GoopyGyneBagha Byne (New Delhi: Puffin

Books 2004) pp. 3-27
b) Sulaiman Ahmed Amar Ayyar:King of Tricksters Chapters 1-6 51 67 68(New
Delhi: Hachette India 2012).
c) Paro Anand No Guns at My Son’s Funeral(New Delhi: India Ink 2005).

Unit 3

Mark Haddon The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (London: Vintage
2012).

Unit 4

M.T. Anderson Feed (Somerville: Candlewick Press 2002).

Unit 5
Readings

a) Molly Bang ‘Building the Emotional Content of Pictures in Picture This: How
Pictures Work (San Francisco: Chronicle Books 2018) pp. 1-50 with illustrations.
b) Perry Nodelman ‘Defining Children’s Literature’ in The Hidden Adult: Defining
Children's Literature (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press 2008) pp. 133-37.
c) John Holt ‘Escape from Childhood’. Available online at
https://canopy.uc.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-14529539-dt-content-rid-
39705338_1/courses/16SS_EDST1001005/16SS_EDST1001005_ImportedContent_2015111
7021819/Course%20Readings/Escape%20from%20Childhood.pdf
d) Rachel Falconer ‘Young Adult Fiction and the Crossover Phenomena’ in The
Routledge Companion to Children's Literature ed. David Rudd (New York: Routledge 2010)
pp. 87-97.

Teaching Plan
Paper D6: Literature for Children and Young Adults

Week 1 – Introduction to Paper 6: Literature for Children and Young Adults

Unit 5 – Nodleman ‘Defining Children’s Literature’
Holt ‘Escape from Childhood’
Week 2 – Unit 1 – de Saint-Exupéry The Little Prince
Week 3 – Unit 5 – Bang ‘Building the Emotional Content of Pictures
Unit 1 – Jeffers Heart in a Bottle
hooks and Raschka Happy to be Nappy
Week 4 – Unit 1 – Mahashweta Devi The Why Why Girl
Week 5 – Unit 5 – Falconer ‘Young Adult Fiction and the Crossover Phonomena’
Unit 2 – Roychowdhury Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne
Ahmed Amar Ayyar: King of Tricksters Anand No Guns at My Son’s
Funeral
Week 6 – Unit 2 (contd)
Week 7 – Unit 2 (contd)
Week 8 – Unit 3 – Haddon The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Week 9 – Haddon (contd)
Week 10 – Haddon (contd)
Week 11 – Unit 4 – Anderson Feed
Week 12 – Anderson (contd)
Week 13 – Anderson (contd)
Week 14 – Concluding lectures exam issues etc.
Facilitating the Achievement of Course Learning Outcomes

Unit Course Learning Outcomes Teaching and Assessment Tasks

No. Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts Interactive Reading material together in

discussions in small groups initiating
small groups in discussion topics participation in
Tutorial classes discussions

2. Expressing concepts How to think Writing essay length

through writing critically and write assignments
with clarity

3. Demonstrating conceptual Discussing exam Class tests

and textual understanding questions and
in tests and exams answering
techniques

Keywords

Children's literature
Picture books
Young adult fiction
Childhood
Visual literacy
Nonsense verse
Readership

Sub-commitee

Shweta Sachdeva Jha Miranda House College (Coordinator)

Sanam Khanna Kamala Nehru College
Neha Singh Kamala Nehru College
Nidhi Bhandari Kamala Nehru College
Nitya Dutta Sri Venkateswara College
Nivedita Sen Hansraj College
PAPER D7
LITERATURE AND MEDIALITY
Semester 5

Course Statement

This paper explores how literature inhabits and intersects with diverse media ranging from oral
and scribal cultures to graphic images and digital formats. It aims to introduce students to the
mediatedness of all literary expression and to understand what is at stake in acknowledging that
each medium constitutes the literary in specific ways. Additionally the paper will also examine
the idea of inter-mediality as well as newer notions of texts and authorship in a digital age.

Course Objectives

This course aims to

• examine different media and explore how each medium contains a set of possibilities and
limits that shape and constitute that which can be communicated
• introduce debates about the idea of mediation and how the literary gets articulated both
within and at the intersection of different media and
• study how digital technology is altering the very nature of the literary object as well as
refashioning the methodologies and function of literary criticism.

Course Content

Unit 1

Literature and the History of the Book

a) Elizabeth Eisenstein ‘Some Features of Print Culture’ in The Printing Revolution

in Early Modern Europe 2nd edn (Cambridge University Press 2005) 46-70.
b) Robert Darnton ‘What is the history of books?’ Daedalus Vol. 111.3 (1982): 65-
83.
c) Margreta De Grazia and Peter Stallybrass ‘The Materiality of the Shakespearean
Text’ Shakespeare Quarterly Vol. 44.3 (1993): 255-83.
d) Abhijit Gupta ‘The History of the Book in the Indian Subcontinent’ in The Oxford
Companion to the Book eds M. S. J Suarez and H. R. Woudhuysen (Oxford:
Oxford University Press 2012).

Unit 2

Literature and Orality/Music

a) Plato from Phaedrustrans. Robin Waterfield (New York: OUP 2002) pp. 68-75.

b) Walter Ong from ‘Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word’
(Routledge 2002) pp. 1-35.
c) Theodor Adorno ‘On Popular Music’ Studies in Philosophy and Social
Science 9:17 (1941).

d) George Meredith ‘The Lark Ascending’ (poem).

e) Ralph Vaughan Williams ‘The Lark Ascending’ (musical composition).

Unit 3

Literature and the Visual Image

a) G. E. Lessing from Laocoön: An Essay Upon the Limits of Painting and Poetry
Chapters 1 2 3 16 17 18 (Dover Publications 2005) pp. 1-19 91-117.

b) W. J. T. Mitchell ‘What Is an Image?’New Literary History Vol. 15 No. 3.

c) Murray Krieger ‘The Ekphrastic Principle and the Still Movement of Poetry or
LaocoönRevisited’ in The Play and Place of Criticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press 1967).

d) John Berger from Ways of Seeing Chapter 7 (Penguin Classics 2008) pp. 129-55.

Unit 4

Literature and the Digital

a) Adam Hammond from Literature in the Digital Age.

b) Franco MorettiGraphs. Maps. Trees (Verso 2005).

c) N. Katherine Hayles ‘Intermediation from Page to Screen’ in Electronic

Literature: New Horizons for the Literary (University of Notre Dame Press 2008) pp. 43-86.

Unit 5

Readings

a) W. J. T. Mitchell from Picture Theory.

b) Theodor Adorno from Philosophy of New Music.

c) Donna Haraway ‘A Cyborg Manifesto: Science Technology and Socialist-
Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century’ in Simians Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention
of Nature (Routledge 1991) pp. 149-81.

d) N Katherine Hayles from Writing Machines.

Teaching Plan
Paper 7: Literature And Mediality

Week 1 – Introduction -- History of the BookUnit 1:

(a) Eisenstien ‘Some Features of Print Culture’
Week 2 -- History of the Book (contd):
(b) Darnton ‘What is the history of books?’
(c) Grazia and Stallybrass ‘The Materiality of the Shakespearean Text’
Week 3 -- History of the Book (contd):
(d) Gupta ‘The History of the Book in the Indian Subcontinent’
Week 4 -- Literature and Orality:
(a) Plato from Phaedrus
Week 5 -- Literature and Orality (contd):
(b) Ong from ‘Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word’
Week 6 -- Literature and Music:
(c) Adorno ‘On Popular Music’
Week 7 -- Literature and the Visual Image:
(a) Lessing from Laocoön: An Essay Upon the Limits of Painting and Poetry
Week 8 -- Literature and the Visual Image (contd):
(b) Mitchell ‘What Is an Image?’
Week 9 -- Literature and the Visual Image (contd):
(c) Kreiger ‘The Ekphrastic Principle and the Still Movement of Poetry or
LaocoönRevisited’
Week 10 -- Literature and the Digital:
(a) Hammond from Literature in the Digital Age
Week 11 -- Literature and the Digital (contd):
(b) MorettiGraphs. Maps. Trees
Week 12 -- Literature and the Digital (contd):
(c) Hayles from Writing Machines
Week 13 --Readings:
(a) Mitchell from Picture Theory
(b) Adorno from Philosophy of New Music
(c) Donna Haraway ‘A Cyborg Manifesto: Science Technology and Socialist-Feminism
in the Late Twentieth Century’
(d) Hayles from Writing Machines
Week 14 -- Readings (contd)
Facilitating the Achievement of Course Learning Outcomes

Unit Course Learning Outcomes Teaching and Assessment Tasks

No. Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts Interactive Reading material together in

discussions in small groups initiating
small groups in discussion topics participation in
Tutorial classes discussions

2. Expressing concepts How to think Writing essay length

through writing critically and write assignments
with clarity

3. Demonstrating conceptual Discussing exam Class tests

and textual understanding questions and
in tests and exams answering
techniques

Keywords

Literature
Media
Book history
Orality
Digital
Music

Sub-committee

Shraddha Singh Zakir Husain Delhi College (Coordinator)

N. A. Jacob Ramjas College
Madhumita Chakraborty Zakir Husain Delhi College (E)
Saikat Ghosh SGTB Khalsa College
Shubhra Ray Zakir Husain Delhi College (E)
PAPER D8
LITERATURES OF DIASPORA
Semester 5

Course Statement

This paper intends to introduce to the students a preliminary view of diasporic literatures. The
concepts of identity multiculturalism assimilation transnationalism transculturalism homeland
and host land migration exile refugee expatriation etc are critically examined. The chosen themes
and concepts will be explicated from a multiple range of genres such as memoir/autobiography
novels plays short stories poetry and prose. The course is divided into five units. The course
content and objectives are outlined below.

Course Objectives

This course aims to

• provide students with preliminary knowledge on the intrinsic connection between
literature and diaspora
• help them acquire a set of basic skills in literary communication narration and explication
of diasporic practises and processes
• enable an appreciation of the global intersectionalities stemming out of increased
migration and cross cultural living culminating into diasporic practices
• inculcate in students the ability to read and understand various literary genres of diaspora
• analyse the writings of diverse authors representing world’s major diasporic communities
and
• help students decipher the literary features and push and pull factors of Jewish South-
Asian American Chicano Armenian Fiji British Canadian Gulf Malaysian European
Philippino and Chinese diasporic writings.

Course Content

Unit 1
Memoir/Autobiography

Maxine Hong Kingston The Woman Warrior (USA: Knopf Publishers 1976).

Unit 2
Novel

M. G. Vassanji The In-Between World of Vikram Lall (Toronto: Doubleday Canada

2003).
Unit 3
Drama

a) Hanif Kureishi My Beautiful Laundrette(London: Faber and Faber 1986).

b) Uma Parameswaran Rootless but Green Are the Boulevard Trees (Toronto: Tsar
Publishers 1987).

Unit 4
Short Stories

a) Bernard Malamud ‘The Jewbird’ The Idiots First (New York: Farrar Straus &
Giroux 1963).
b) K. S. Maniam ‘Haunting The Tiger’ in Story-Wallah: A Celebration of South
Asian Fiction ed. Shyam Selvadurai (Toronto: Thomas Allen Publishers 2004).
c) Romesh Gunesekera ‘Captives’ in Story-Wallah: A Celebration of South Asian
Fiction ed. Shyam Selvadurai (Toronto: Thomas Allen Publishers 2004).
d) Sophie Judah ‘Hannah and Benjamin’ in Dropped From Heaven (Knoph
Doubleday Publishing Group 2007).

Poetry

a) Shirley Geok-lin Lim ‘Learning to Love America’ in What the Fortune Teller
Didn’t Say (New Mexico: West End Press 1998).
b) Eugene Gloria ‘Milkfish’ in Drivers at the Short-Time Motel (USA: Penguin
2000).
c) Jimmy Santiago Baca ‘Immigrants in Our Own Land’ in Immigrants in Our Own
Land (New Directions Publishing Corporation 1990).

Unit 5
Readings

a) Vijay Mishra ‘Introduction: The Diasporic Imaginary’ in The Literature of the

Indian Diaspora: Theorising The Diasporic Imaginary (New York: Routledge 2007).
b) Elif Shafak ‘Cinnamon’ in The Bastard of Istanbul (USA: Viking Penguin 2007).
c) Deepak Unnikrishnan Temporary People Chapters 1 and 2 (New York: Restless
Books 2017).
d) Caryl Phillips ‘Somewhere In England’ in Crossing The River (London: Random
House 1993).
e) Paul Gilroy ‘The Black Atlantic as a Counterculture of Modernity’ The Black
Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (London: Verso 1993).
Background Topics

• Hyphenated identities
• Multiculturalisms—melting pot mosaic salad bowl etc.
• Transnationalism and transculturalism
• Memory/nostalgia
• Push and pull factors
• Hybridity assimilation and dual consciousness
• Notions of homeland and host/new/alien land

Teaching Plan
Paper D8: Literatures of Diaspora

Week 1 – Introduction to Paper D8: Literatures of Diaspora

Week 2 – Unit 1 -- Memoir/Autobiography:
Kingston The Woman Warrior
Week 3 – Kingston (contd)
Week 4 – Unit 2 -- Novel:
Vassanji The In-Between World of Vikram Lall
Week 5 – Vassanji (contd)
Week 6– Unit 3 – Drama:
Kureishi My Beautiful Laundrette
Week 7– Kureishi (contd)
Week 8 – Unit 3 – Drama (contd):
Parameswaran Rootless but Green Are the Boulevard Trees
Week 9 – Unit 4 -- Short Stories:
(a) Malamud ‘The Jewbird’
(b) Maniam ‘Haunting The Tiger’
Week 10 – Unit 4 - Short Stories (contd):
(c) Gunesekera ‘Captives’
(d) Judah ‘Hannah and Benjamin’
Week 11 – Unit 4 – Poetry (contd):
(e) Shirley Geok-lin Lim ‘Learning to Love America’
(f) Gloria ‘Milkfish’
(g) Baca ‘Immigrants in Our Own Land’
Week 12 – Unit 5 -- Prose Readings:
(a) Mishra ‘Introduction: The Diasporic Imaginary’
(b) Shafak ‘Cinnamon’ in The Bastard of Istanbul
Week 13 – Unit 5 -- Prose Readings (contd):
(c) Deepak Unnikrishnan Temporary People
(d) Phillips ‘Somewhere in England’ in Crossing The River
(e) Gilroy ‘The Black Atlantic as a Counterculture of Modernity.’
Week 14 -- Concluding lectures exam issues etc.

Facilitating the Achievement of Course Learning Outcomes

Unit Course Learning Outcomes Teaching and Assessment Tasks

No. Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts Interactive Reading material together in

discussions in small groups initiating
small groups in discussion topics participation in
Tutorial classes discussions

2. Expressing concepts How to think Writing essay length

through writing critically and write assignments
with clarity

3. Demonstrating conceptual Discussing exam Class tests

and textual understanding questions and
in tests and exams answering
techniques

Keywords

Hyphenated identities
Multiculturalisms
Melting pot
Mosaic
Salad bowl etc.
Transnationalism
Transculturalism
Memory/nostalgia
Push and pull factors
Hybridity
Assimilation and
Dual consciousness
Homeland
Host/new/alien land

Sub-committee

B. R. Alamelu Indraprastha College for Women (Coordinator)

Al Moohshina Muzzammil Zakir Husain Delhi College (Evening)
Dhananjay Kapse Kirori Mal College
Mukul Chaturvedi Zakir Husain Delhi College (Morning)
Aneeta Rajendran Gargi College
Chaity Das Kalindi College

PAPER D9
MODERN INDIAN WRITING IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION
Semester 5

Course Statement

Striving to transcend a nativist rejection of Indian writing in English and a Rushdie-esque denial
of the strength and value of Indian writing in languages other than English the need of the hour is
to study the varied contributions of modern Indian writing through their translations into English
free from the anxiety or hegemony of authenticity.

Course Objectives

This paper aims to

• give students a glimpse of the vast diversity of modern Indian writing in bhasha
traditions
• show students the polyphonic tumultous richness of the 19th and 20th centuries from
peasant life in colonial India in Fakir Mohan Senapati’s novel to the mythical reality of
O.V. Vijayan’s novel from the reworking of a Mahabharata story in Girish Karnad’s play
to the myriad life-worlds of the poems and stories and
• encourage through the carefully selected poems stories and prose selections a deeper
engagement with and a nuanced discussion of issues of history memory caste gender and
resistance.
Course Content

Unit 1
Novel

Fakir Mohan Senapati Six Acres and a Third trans. Rabi Shankar Mishra Satya P.
Mohanty Jatindra K. Nayak and Paul St-Pierre (Penguin 2006).

Unit 2
Novel

O. V. Vijayan The Legends of Khasak translated by the author (Penguin 2008).

Unit 3
Drama

Girish Karnad The Fire and the Raintranslated by the author (OUP 2004).

Unit 4
Short Stories

a) Premchand ‘Kafan’ (The Shroud) trans. M.Asaduddin.

b) Perumal Murugan ‘The Well’ trans. N. Kalyan Raman.
c) Arupa Patangia Kalita ‘Doiboki’s Day’ trans. Bonita Baruah.

Poems

a) Rabindranath Tagore (i) ‘Where the mind is without fear trans. William Radice
(ii) ‘It hasn’t rained in my heart’ trans. Fakrul Alam.
b) G. M. Muktibodh ‘Brahmarakshas’ trans. Nikhil Govind.
c) Thangjam Ibopishak (i) ‘The Land of the Half-Humans’ (ii) ‘I want to be killed by
an Indian Bullet’ trans. Robin S. Ngangom.

Unit 5
Readings

a) Rabindranath Tagore ‘Nationalism in India’ in Nationalism (Delhi: Penguin

Books 2009) pp. 63-83.
b) U. R. Ananthamurthy ‘Being a Writer in India’ in Tender Ironies ed. Dilip Chitre
et al. pp 127-46
c) Namvar Singh ‘Decolonizing the Indian Mind’ Indian Literature Vol. 35 No. 5
(151) (Sept.-Oct. 1992) pp. 145-56.
d) Vinay Dharwadker ‘Some Contexts of Modern Indian Poetry’ Chicago Review 38
(1992): 218-31.
e) Aparna Dharwadker ‘Modern Indian Theatre’ in Routledge Handbook of Asian
Theatre ed. Siyuan Liu (London: Routledge 2016) pp. 243-67.

Teaching Plan
Paper D9: Modern Indian Writing In English Translation

Week 1 -- Introduction to Paper D9: Modern Indian Writing In English Translation

Week 2 – Unit 1 -- Novel:
Senapati Six Acres and a Third
Week 3 – Senapati (contd)
Week 4 – Unit 2 -- Novel:
Vijayan The Legends of Khasak
Week 5 – Vijayan (contd)
Week 6 – Unit 3 -- Drama:
Karnad The Fire and the Rain
Week 7 – Unit 4 -- Short Stories:
(a) Premchand ‘Kafan’
(b) Murugan ‘The Well’
(c) Kalita ‘Doiboki’s Day’
Week 8 – Unit 4 -- Poems:
(a) Tagore ‘Where the mind is without fear’ ‘It hasn’t rained in my heart’
(b) Muktibodh ‘Brahmarakshas’
Week 9 – Unit 4 – Poems (contd):
(c) Ibopishak ‘The Land of the Half-Humans’ ‘I want to be killed by an Indian bullet’
Week 10 --Unit 5 -- Prose Readings:
(a) Tagore ‘Nationalism in India’
Week 11 – Unit 5 -- Prose Readings (contd):
(b) Ananthamurthy ‘Being a Writer in India’
Week 12 – Unit 5 -- Prose Readings (contd):
(c) Singh ‘Decolonizing the Indian Mind’
Week 13 – Unit 5 -- Prose Readings (contd):
(d) Dharwadker ‘Some Contexts of Modern Indian Poetry’
Week 14 --Concluding lectures exam issues etc.
Facilitating the Achievement of Course Learning Outcomes

Unit Course Learning Outcomes Teaching and Assessment Tasks

No. Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts Interactive Reading material together in

discussions in small groups initiating
small groups in discussion topics participation in
Tutorial classes discussions

2. Expressing concepts How to think Writing essay length

through writing critically and write assignments
with clarity

3. Demonstrating conceptual Discussing exam Class tests

and textual understanding questions and
in tests and exams answering
techniques

Keywords

Colonialism
Post-colonial
Decolonization
Translation
History
Memory
Caste
Class
Gender
Resistance

Sub-committee

Yamini Dayal Singh College (Coordinator)

Dhananjay Kapse Kirori Mal College
Sheuli Chowdhury Kamla Nehru College
Shweta Sachdeva Jha Miranda House
Someshwar Sati Kirori Mal College
PAPER D10
NINETEENTH CENTURY EUROPEAN REALISM
Semester 5

Course Statement

The rise of the novel as a dominant and popular literary genre in nineteenth-century Europe
parallels the dominance of positivism and empiricism in the sciences the cycle of political and
industrial revolutions the emergence of mass publishing and the advancement of ideological
grand-narratives. While students acquaint themselves with the nineteenth-century English novel
in the Core curriculum their perspective is enlarged and reflection is deepened through a
comparative engagement with the development of different trajectories in the continental
European novels primarily in France and Russia wherein the widespread popularity of novels
occasioned a profound cultural debate on the value of a new aesthetic realism. This paper
involves a study of the most representative and significant French and Russian novels of the
crucial period between 1835 and 1870 when realism had dominated the sphere of aesthetic
representation.

Course Objectives

This course aims to

• acquaint the student with realism as an historically and culturally specific mode of
representation obtainable from the study of novels in nineteenth-century Europe
• allow the student an opportunity to see critical connections between Nineteenth-Century
European Aesthetics and epistemological and political debates around reality and
historical change and
• offer a wider comparatist perspective on the emergence of the Novel as dominant genre
of literary expression in Nineteenth-Century Europe.

Course Content

Unit 1

Honoré de Balzac Old Man Goriot (1835) trans. Olivia McCannon (UK: Penguin
Classics 2011).
Unit 2

Nikolai Gogol Dead Souls (1842) trans. Robert A. Maguire (UK: Penguin Classics
2004).

Unit 3

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary (1856) trans. Geoffrey Wall (UK: Penguin
Classics 2003).

Unit 4

Fyodor Dostoyevsky Crime and Punishment (1866) trans. Oliver Ready (UK:
Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) 2014.

Unit 5
Readings

a) Honoré de Balzac ‘Society as Historical Organism’ from Preface to ‘The Human

Comedy’ in The Modern Tradition ed. Richard Ellmann et al. (Oxford: OUP 1965) pp. 265-
67.
b) V. G. Belinsky ‘Letter to Gogol (1847)’ in Selected Philosophical Works (Moscow: Moscow
Foreign Languages Publishing House 1948) pp. 506-07.
c) Gustave Flaubert ‘Heroic Honesty’ in The Modern Tradition ed. Richard Ellmann et al.
(Oxford: OUP 1965) pp. 242-43.
d) Leo Tolstoy ‘Man as Creature of History’ in The Modern Tradition ed. Richard Ellmann et al.
(Oxford: OUP 1965) pp. 246-54.
e) György Lukàcs ‘Balzac and Stendhal’ in Studies in European Realism (London: Merlin
Press 1972) pp. 65-85.

Teaching Plan
Paper D10: Nineteenth Century European Realism

Week 1: Introduction to Paper D10: Nineteenth Century European Realism

Week 2: French Revolution: Impact on the Novel as a form.
Week 3: Reading Balzac's theory of human comedy: 'Society as Historical Organism'
And Old Man Goriot as examples.
Week 4: Old Man Goriot as a realist novel.
Week 5: Shift from Realism to Naturalism in 19th Century French Literature.
Week 6: Reading Flaubert's essay and Madame Bovary as texts of historical
transition.
Week 7: Discussion on Madame Bovary continued.
Week 8:The Russian context in the 19th Century: From the Napoleonic Wars to the
Emancipation.
Week 9: The Russian politics between the Slavophiles and the Westerners: Belinsky's
letter to Gogol 1847
Week 10: Turgenev Fathers and Sons: Critique of peasantry and aristocracy.
Week 11: Turgenev (contd): A critique of emancipation.
Week 12: Leo Tolstoy: 'Man as a Creature of History'.
Week 13: Dostoevsky Crime and Punishment: a novel of conflicting ideologies.
Week 14: Dostoevsky (contd).

Facilitating the Achievement of Course Learning Outcomes

Unit Course Learning Outcomes Teaching and Assessment Tasks

No. Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts Interactive Reading material together in

discussions in small groups initiating
small groups in discussion topics participation in
Tutorial classes discussions

2. Expressing concepts How to think Writing essay length

through writing critically and write assignments
with clarity

3. Demonstrating conceptual Discussing exam Class tests

and textual understanding questions and
in tests and exams answering
techniques
Keywords

French Revolutions
Agrarian feudalism
Positivism
Scientific determinism
Industrial capitalism
Novel and history
Emancipation of the serfs
Naturalism
The woman question
Novel
Ideology

Sub-committee

Rudrashish Chakraborty Kirori Mal College (Coordinator)

Saikat Ghosh SGTB Khalsa College
Dhananjay R. Kapse Kirori Mal College
Madhvi Zutshi SGTB Khalsa College
N. A. Jacob Ramjas College
Shraddha Adityavir Singh Zakir Husain Delhi College

Advisors
Dr. Rimli Bhattacharya Dept. of English
Prof. Shaswati Mazumdar Dept. of Germanic and Romance Studies
PAPER D11
AFRICAN LITERATURES
Semester 6

Course Statement

This course is for students who may wish to engage further with African literatures while
studying the Core Postcolonial Literatures paper. It asks the questions:What is African
literature? How is it different from other literatures of the world? Why do African writers write
predominantly in English and French? How is womanhood depicted in African fiction? These
questions are answered by engaging with a variety of texts from the continent some written
originally in English while others available today in translations.

Course Objectives

This course aims to

• introduce students to a detailed analysis of African literatures in different genres and
• chart the distinctive position that African literatures have today in the postcolonial world.

Unit 1

Flora Nwapa Efuru (Heinemann 1966).

Unit 2

Sembène Ousmane Xala (Heinemann 1976).

Unit 3

Wole Soyinka ‘A Dance of the Forests’ in Collected Plays: Vol 1 (OUP 1997).

Unit 4
Short stories

a) Nadine Gordimer ‘Jump’ in The Individual and Society (University of Delhi

Department of English New Delhi: Pearson 2005).
b) Grace Ogot ‘The Green Leaves’ in Land without Thunder (Kenya: East African
Publishing House 1968).
c) Leila Aboulela ‘Missing Out’ in The Granta Book of the African Short Story ed.
Helon Habila (Granta 2012).
d) Chimamanda Adichie ‘A Private Experience’ in The Thing around Your Neck
(UK: Fourth Estate 2009).

Poems

a) Gabriel Okara ‘Once upon a time’ in Collected Poems African Poetry Book
Series ed. Brenda Marie Osbey (University of Nebraska Press 2016).
b) Otok P. Bitek ‘Song of Lawino’ in Anthology of African Literature ed. Anthonia
C. Kalu (New Delhi: Viva Books 2012) pp. 739-51.

c) Beyten Breytenbach ‘New York September 12 2001’ at

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/new-york-september-12-2001/

Unit 5
Readings

a) Frantz Fanon ‘The Negro and Language’ trans. Charles Lam Markmann in Black
Skin White Masks (London: Pluto Press 2008) pp. 8-20.
b) Nelson Mandela (i) ‘The Struggle is My Life’ Part 4 and (ii) ‘Riviona’ Part 7in
Long Walk to Freedom (London: Abacus 1995) pp. 153-64 319-22.
c) Ezekiel Mphahlele (i) ‘The African Personality’ (ii) ‘What Price Negritude?’ (The
white man’s policy on apartheid…in other parts of Africa) in The African Image (New York:
Frederick A Praeger 1962) pp. 19-24 31-39.
d) Chinua Achebe ‘The African Writer and the English Language’ in Morning yet on
Creation Day (London: Heinemann 1975).
e) Chimananda Adichie We Should All Be Feminists (New York: Vintage 2014).

Teaching Plan
Paper D11: African Literatures

Week 1 – Introduction to Paper 11: African Literatures

Week 2 – Unit 1 – Novel: Nwapa Efuru
Week 3 – Nwapa (contd)
Week 4 – Unit 2 -- Novel: Ousmane Xala
Week 5 – Ousmane (contd0
Week 6 – Unit 3 – Drama: Soyinka ‘A Dance of the Forests’
Week 7 – Soyinka (contd)
Week 8 – Unit 4 -- Short stories:
(a) Gordimer ‘Jump’
(b) Ogot ‘The Green Leaves’
(c) Aboulela ‘Missing Out’
(d) Adichie
Week 9– Short Stories (contd)
Week 10 – Unit 4 -- Poetry:
(a) Okara ‘Once upon a time’
(b) Bitek ‘Song of Lawino’
(c) Breytenbach ‘New York September 12 2001’
Week 11 – Unit 5 -- Prose Readings:
(a) Fanon ‘The Negro and Language’
(b) Mandela (i) ‘The Struggle is My Life’ Part 4 and (ii) ‘Riviona’ Part 7 (c) Mphahlele
(i) ‘The African Personality’(ii) ‘What Price Negritude?’
(d) Achebe ‘The African Writer and the English Language’
(e) Adichie We Should All Be Feminists
Week 12– Prose Readings (contd)
Week 13 – Prose Readings (contd)
Week 14 – Concluding lectures exam issues etc.

Facilitating the Achievement of Course Learning Outcomes

Unit Course Learning Outcomes Teaching and Assessment Tasks

No. Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts Interactive Reading material together in

discussions in small groups initiating
small groups in discussion topics participation in
Tutorial classes discussions

2. Expressing concepts How to think Writing essay length

through writing critically and write assignments
with clarity

3. Demonstrating conceptual Discussing exam Class tests

and textual understanding questions and
in tests and exams answering
techniques
Keywords

Colonialism
Postcolonialism
Decolonisation
Gender

Sub-committee

Madhumita Chakraborty Zakir Husain College (E) (Coordinator)

Gitarani Devi Shivaji College
Nandini Sen Bharati College
Varsha Singh Deshbandhu College

PAPER D12
LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE
Semester 6

Course Statement

The oral and written literatures of the Latin America are rich and varied in terms of history
language culture ethnicity and literary tradition. This paper introduces to undergraduate students
the landmarks of Latin American writing by including a representative selection of various
forms/genres that encompasses the diversity and heterogeneity of the continent.

Course Objectives

This course aims to

• critically engage with innovation in form voice representation and various modes of
storytelling that are specific to Latin American literature but are relevant to students of
literary studies as it has impacted global literatures
• examine how the experimentation in terms of form and perspective engages with
questions of identity dissidence resistanceand recuperation and resonates with the
colonial and postcolonial histories and literatures of developing worlds and
• critically examine issues of race class gender culture and identity in order to understand
the evolving character of Latin American society and to trace its resonances with
literatures of the global South particularly with reference to India.
Course Content

Unit 1
Novel

Gabriel Garcia Marquez The General in His Labyrinth (Penguin 1990).

Unit 2
Short Stories

a) Jorge Luis Borges ‘The Library of Babel’ in Fictions (Penguin 1999) pp. 65-75.
b) Isabel Allende ‘Of Clay We Are Created’ in The Stories of Eva Luna (Penguin
1991).
c) Roberto Bolano ‘William Burns’ in The Return (New Directions 2010) pp. 52-69.
d) Juan Rulfo ‘Luvina’ in The Penguin Book of Latin American Short Stories ed.
Thomas Colchie (London and New York 1993) pp. 283-90.

Unit 3
Poetry

a) Pablo Neruda (i) ‘Rise up and be born with me’ (XII) from‘The Heights of Machu
Picchu in The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems ed. Mark Eisner (San Francisco: City Lights
Books 2004) pp. 90-91 (ii) ‘Every Day You Play’ in Pablo Neruda: Selected Poems (Penguin
1975) pp. 27-28.
b) Octavio Paz (i) ‘As One Listens to the Rain' and (ii) 'Between What I See and
What I Say' in The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz 1957-1987 ed. Eliot Weinberger (New
York: New Directions 1991) pp. 614-16 485-87.
c) Gabriela Mistral (i) 'The Story Teller' and (ii) 'Ballerina' in Madwomen: The Locas
Mujeres Poems of Gabriela Mistral Bilingual edition ed. and trans. Randall Couch (Chicago
and London: The University of Chicago Press 2008) pp.103-107 43-45.
d) Jose Marti (i) ‘A Sincere Am I’ and (ii) ‘Once I was Sailing for Fun’ trans.
Manuel A. Tellechea in Versos Sencillos/ Simple Verses (Houston Texas: Arte Publico Press
1997) pp. 52-53 16-21.

Unit 4
Testimonio/Memoir

a) Rigoberta Menchu I Rigoberta Menchu an Indian Woman from Guatemala trans.

Ann Wright ed. Elizabeth Burgos Debray (London and New York: Verso 1984) pp. 1-37.
b) Che Guevara The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey
(Melbourne and New York: Ocean Press 2004) pp. 44-77.
c) Alicia Partnoy The Little School: Tales of Disappearance and Survival (San
Franciso: Midnight Editions Cleis Press 1986) pp. 77-95.
Unit 5

Readings

a) Bartolomé De Las Casas The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account trans.
Herma Briffaul (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press 1974) pp. 27-57.
b) Alejo Carpentier ‘On the Marvelous Real in America’ in Magical Realism:
Theory History and Community eds Lois P. Zamora and Wendy B. Faris (Durham and
London: Duke University Press 1995) pp. 75-89.
c) Eduardo Galeano Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of Pillage of a
Continent (Delhi: Three Essays Collective 2008) pp. 1-28.
d) Roberto Fernando Retamar Caliban and Other Essays(Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press 1989) pp.3-16.
e) Gabriel Garcia Márquez ‘The Solitude of Latin America’ Nobel Lecture in
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: New Readings eds. Bernard Mc Guirk and Richard Cardwell
Cambridge University Press 1987) pp. 207-12

Teaching Plan
Paper D12: Latin American Literature

Week 1 -- Introduction to the Paper D12: Latin American Literature

Week 2 -- Unit 1 – Novel: Marquez The General in His Labyrinth
Week 3 -- Unit 1 (contd)
Week 4 -- Unit 1 (contd)
Week 5 -- Unit 2 – Short Stories:
(a) Borges 'The Library of Babel’
(b) Allende 'Of Clay We Are Created'
Week 6 -- Unit 2 (contd): Bolano ‘William Burns’ Rulfo ‘Luvina’
Week 7 -- Unit 2 (contd)
Week 8 -- Unit 3 – Poetry:
(a) Neruda ‘Rise up and be born with me’ ‘Every Day You Play’
(b) Paz ‘As One Listens to the Rain' 'Between What I See and What I Say'
Week 9 -- Unit 3 – (contd):
(c) Mistral 'The Story Teller' 'Ballerina' (d) Marti ‘A Sincere Am I’ ‘Once I was Sailing
for Fun’
Week 10 -- Unit 4 – Testimonio/Memoir:
(a) Menchu I Rigoberta Menchu an Indian Woman from Guatemala
(b) Guevara The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey
Week 11 -- Unit 4 – (contd):
(c) Partnoy The Little School: Tales of Disappearance and Survival
Week 12 -- Unit 5 -- Background Prose Readings:
(a) Las Casas 'The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account’
(b) Carpentier ‘On the Marvelous Real in America’
Week 13 -- Unit 5 (contd):
(c) Galeano Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of Pillage of a Continent
Retamar Caliban and Other Essays
(d) Márquez Nobel Lecture: ‘The Solitude of Latin America’
Week 14 -- Concluding lecture exam questions

Facilitating the Achievement of Course Learning Outcomes

Unit Course Learning Outcomes Teaching and Assessment Tasks

No. Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts Interactive Reading material together in

discussions in small groups initiating
small groups in discussion topics participation in
Tutorial classes discussions

2. Expressing concepts How to think Writing essay length

through writing critically and write assignments
with clarity

3. Demonstrating conceptual Discussing exam Class tests

and textual understanding questions and
in tests and exams answering
techniques

Keywords

Magical realism
Latin America
LatAm literature
Memory
Resistance
Marquez
Octavio Paz
Testimonio
Testimonial
Neruda
Sub-committee

Mukul Chaturvedi Zakir Husain College (Coordinator)

Krishnan Unni P Deshbandhu College
Shivranjani Singh Dyal Singh College
Shraddha Adtiyavir Singh Zakir Husain College
Smita Bannerjee DCAC
With inputs from:
Dhananjay Kapse Kirori Mal College
Rudrashish Kirori Mal College
Shweta Sachdev Miranda House

PAPER D13
LITERARY CRITICISM AND THEORY - 2
Semester 6

Course Statement

This course explores some of the crucial theoretical concerns in literary studies in the twentieth
century. Beginning with Freudian psychoanalysis after the First World War the paper introduces
some of the seminal concepts of critical theory including historical materialism structuralism
poststructuralism feminism postcolonialism and cultural studies. It underlines a tectonic shift in
literary studies in the twentieth century: from literature as ‘a formal artifice’ to a ‘cultural
intertext’—an interdisciplinary approach which establishes literature as a socially symbolic act.

Course Objectives

The course aims to

• expose students to the history of ideas in the twentieth century and the material and
discursive conditions of intellectual production
• encouragestudents to grapple with literary studies from a privileging of form to an
interdisciplinary engagement with the literary text
• help students develop a critical wherewithal which would enable her to engage with a
literary text from multiple pedagogical entry-points and
• have students closely examine the methods of argument and rhetorical constructions
through which important theoretical ideas and concepts have been established and made
to impact the field of cultural production in the West.
Course Content

Unit 1

a) Antonio Gramsci ‘The Formation of the Intellectuals’ and ‘Hegemony (Civil

Society) and Separation of Powers’ in Selections from the Prison Notebooks (1939) ed. and
trans. Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New Delhi: Orient Longman 1998) pp. 5-
14 245-246.
b) György Lukàcs‘The Phenomenon of Reification’ trans. Rodney Livingstone in
History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics (1939) (London: Merlin Press
2003) pp. 83-109.
c) Louis Althusser ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’ trans. Ben Brewster
in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1970) (New Delhi: Aakar Books 2006) pp. 85-
126.

Unit 2

a) Claude Levi-Strauss ‘The Science of the Concrete’ trans. George Weidenfeld in

The Savage Mind (1962) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1967) pp. 1-35.
b) Jacques Derrida ‘Structure Sign and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences’
trans. Alan Bass in Writing and Difference (1967) (New York London: Routledge 1978) pp.
351-70.
c) Michel Foucault ‘The Order of Discourse’ trans. Ian McLeod in Untying the
Text: A Post-structuralist Reader ed. Robert J. Young (Boston MA: Routledge 1981) pp. 48-
78.

Unit 3

a) Sigmund Freud ‘The Uncanny’ trans. David McLintock in The Uncanny (1919)
(London: Penguin Books 2003) pp. 1-21.
b) Jacques Lacan ‘The Mirror Stage’ trans. Alan Sheridan in Ecrits: A Selection
(1949) (New York London: Routledge 1989) pp. 1-8.
c) Julia Kristeva (i) ‘The Semiotic Chora Ordering the Drives’ and (ii) ‘The Thetic:
Rupture and/or Boundary’ trans. Margaret Waller in Revolution in Poetic Language (1974)
(New York: Columbia University Press 1984) pp. 25-30 43-45.
Unit 4

a) Luce Irigaray (i) ‘This Sex Which Is Not One’ and (ii) ‘Commodities Amongst
Themselves’ trans. Catherine Porter and Carolyn Burke in This Sex Which is Not One (1977)
(Ithaca New York: Cornell University Press 1985) pp. 23-33 192-97.
b) Judith Butler (i) ‘Preface 1990’ (ii) ‘Women as the Subject of Feminism’ (iii)
‘Bodily Inscriptions Performative Subversions’in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the
Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge 1999) pp. xxvii- xxix 3-18 163-80.
c) Joan W. Scott ‘Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis’ The
American Historical Review Vol. 91 No. 5 (Dec. 1986) pp. 1053-75.

Unit 5
Readings

a) Theodor Adorno ‘The Schema of Mass Culture’ trans. J. M. Bernstein in The

Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture (1972) (London: Routledge 2007) pp. 61-
97.
b) Homi Bhabha ‘How Newness Enters the World’ in The Location of Culture (New
York London: Routledge 1994) pp. 303-37.
c) Frederic Jameson ‘Postmodernism Or The Cultural Logic of Late
Capitalism’ New Left Review No. 146 (July-August) 1984: 59-92.

Teaching Plan
Paper D13: Literary Criticism and Theory - 2

Week 1 – Introduction to Paper D13: Literary Criticism and Theory - 2

Week 2 – Unit 1
(a) Gramsci ‘The Formation of the Intellectuals’ and ‘Hegemony (Civil Society) and
Separation of Powers’
(b) Lukàcs ‘The Phenomenon of Reification’
(c) Althusser ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’
Week 3 – Unit 1 (contd)
Week 4 – Unit 2
(a) Levi-Strauss ‘The Science of the Concrete’
(b) Derrida ‘Structure Sign and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences’
(c) Foucault ‘The Order of Discourse’
Week 5 – Unit 2 (contd)
Week 6 – Unit 3
(a) Freud ‘The Uncanny’
(b) Lacan ‘The Mirror Stage’
(c) Kristeva (i) ‘The Semiotic Chora Ordering the Drives’ (ii) ‘The Thetic: Rupture
and/or Boundary’
Week 7 – Unit 3 (contd)
Week 8 – Unit 4
(a) Irigaray (i) ‘This Sex Which Is Not One’ and (ii) ‘Commodities Amongst
Themselves’
(b) Butler (i) ‘Preface 1990’ (ii) ‘Women as the Subject of Feminism’ (iii) ‘Bodily
Inscriptions Performative Subversions’
(c) Scott ‘Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis’
Week 9– Unit 4 (contd)
Week 10 – Unit 4 (contd)
Week 11 – Unit 5: Readings
(a) Adorno ‘The Schema of Mass Culture’
(b) Bhabha ‘How Newness Enters the World’
(c) Jameson ‘Postmodernism Or The Cultural Logic of Late
Capitalism’
Week 12 – Readings (contd)
Week 13 – Readings (contd)
Week 14 – Concluding lectures exam issues etc.

Facilitating the Achievement of Course Learning Outcomes

Unit Course Learning Outcomes Teaching and Assessment Tasks

No. Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts Interactive Reading material together in

discussions in small groups initiating
small groups in discussion topics participation in
Tutorial classes discussions

2. Expressing concepts How to think Writing essay length

through writing critically and write assignments
with clarity

3. Demonstrating conceptual Discussing exam Class tests

and textual understanding questions and
in tests and exams answering
techniques
Keywords

Hegemony
Ideology
Uncanny
Gender
Mass Culture
Postmodernism

Sub-committee

N. A. Jacob Ramjas College (Coordinator)

Saikat Ghosh (Coordinator) SGTB Khalsa College
Madhvi Zutshi SGTB Khalsa College
Rudrashish Chakraborty Kiori Mal College
Shraddha Adityavir Singh Zakir Husain Delhi College

Advisors

Dr. Rimli Bhattacharya Dept. of English

Prof. Shaswati Mazumdar Dept. of Germanic and Romance Studies

PAPER D14
LITERATURE AND CINEMA
Semester 6

Course Statement

Literature and cinema have had a close relationship with one another manifest in the celluloid
‘adaptation’ of classics and ‘inspired’ productions in the earlier days to the film text studies of
recent times. The writer and the auteur both produce art that oftentimes is in conversation
particularly since the cultural revolution of modernism. This paper attempts to trace the
genealogy of this collaborative mediation between literature and cinema between the textual and
the visual.
Course Objectives

This course aims to

• examine the close relationship between literature and cinema by studying the points of
contact of literary and cinematic praxis
• enable students to study cinema as a composite medium since the texts under discussion
will open space for examining cinema as audio-visual articulation as
adaptation/translation and as a form of (popular) culture with its own parameters of
reception and its own history (movements/frameworks of study)
• equip students in a practical sense for understanding the cinematic medium
• examine cinema as an art employing different time frames situations literary cultures and
other media/forms to compose itself as a text
• provide students with texts in emerging media thus broadening the field of literary study
in relation to cinematic language
• stress the interdisciplinary nature of academic work by imparting skills of reading and
understanding literary texts and cinematic expressions through the development of
relevant critical vocabulary and perspective among students and
• provide a theoretical framework to strengthen the awareness about intertextuality and the
convergence between the modes of literature and cinema.

Course Content

Unit 1

Language of Cinema: mise en scene film vocabulary signs and syntax

James Monaco‘The Language of Film: Signs and Syntax’ Chapter 3 in How to Read
a Film: The World of Movies Media and Multimedia (New York: OUP 2009) pp. 170-249.

Unit 2

Origin of Cinema as a New Form of Art: questioning the traditional functions of art
analyzing new art forms in the 20th century film as a new form of art silent cinema
Walter Benjamin‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.’

Film

Modern Times dir. Charlie Chaplin perf. Charlie Chaplin (1936).

Unit 3

Cinematic Adaptations of Literary Texts: theory of adaptation the relationship between literature
and films film as an adapted text film itself
Drama

William Shakespeare Macbeth (1623).

Films

a) Maqbool dir. Vishal Bhardwaj (2003).

b) Throne of Blood dir. Akira Kurosawa (1957).

Unit 4

Gender and Sexuality connection with literature the difference between sexuality in films and
that in literary texts the gaze the body representation cinematography
Laura Mulvey ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ in Film Theory and
Criticism: Introductory Readings eds Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (New York: Oxford
UP 1999) pp. 833-44.

Films

a) Thelma and Louise dir. Ridley Scott (1991).

b) Margarita with a Straw dir. Shonali Bose (2014)

Unit 5
Readings

a) Madhava Prasad ‘The Absolutist Gaze: The Political Structure and the Cultural
Form’ in Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical Construction pp. 48-82.
b) Ranjani Mazumdar‘Gangland Bombay’ in Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the
City (Ranikhet: Permanent Black 2007) pp. 149-96.

Suggested films for this paper:

a) Kaliyattam dir. Jayaraaj (1997) Malayalam.
b) Charulata dir. Satyajit Ray (1965) Bangla.
c) Enthiran dir. S. Shankar (2010) Tamil.

Facilitating the Achievement of Course Learning Outcomes

Unit Course Learning Outcomes Teaching and Assessment Tasks

No. Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts Interactive Reading material together in

discussions in small groups initiating
small groups in discussion topics participation in
Tutorial classes discussions

2. Expressing concepts How to think Writing essay length

through writing critically and write assignments
with clarity

3. Demonstrating conceptual Discussing exam Class tests

and textual understanding questions and
in tests and exams answering
techniques

Keywords

Cinema
Literature
Adaptation
Gender
Sexuality

Sub-committee

Mithuraaj Dhusiya Hansraj College (Coordinator)

Dhananjay Kapse Kirorimal College
Gorvika Rao Miranda House
Jenny Rowena Miranda House
Krishnan Unni.P Deshbandhu College
Namita Paul Kamla Nehru College
Paper D15
LITERATURE AND DISABILITY
Semester 6

Course Statement

Over the past two decades literary and cultural disability studies have opened up new discursive
spaces from where the traditional notion of disability as a state of negative difference in relation
to normalcy can be interrogated and problematized. Though this discipline has been
insititutionalised in the West for quite some time now it is yet to find its way into the English
departments of Indian universities. This paper introduces undergraduate students to this new
discipline and acquaints them with the experience of disablement through a familiarization with
literary representations of the phenomenon.

Course Objectives

This course aims to

• help students approach literature through the lens of disability and enable them to
develop a fresh critical perspective for reading literary representations
• enable them to explore various forms of literary representations of disability in order to
become aware of the different ways in which disability figures and operates in a literary
narrative
• develop through a reading of literature a critical understanding of the relation between the
impaired body and the social world and the matrix of power that structures and defines
this relationship
• equip students with the necessary critical tools to analyze representations of disability and
to develop the ability to systematically understand and unpack the various discursive
processes through which the hegemony of normalcy is constituted and perpetuated
• help students understand how literature is used to negotiate and interrogate this
hegemony and to evolve an alternative conception of corporeal difference
• inculcate in them an approach to disability based on notions of intersectionality that is to
understand the experience of disablement in conjunction with other forms of
marginalised identities
• evolve an understanding of disability in relation to the contemporary contexts of
capitalism and neo-liberalism emphasising inclusive political agendas built on notions of
cultural diversity and the changing meaning of citizenship and citizen's rights and
• introduce the undergraduate student to the fundamental tenets of literary and cultural
disability studies with the professed intention of bringing about a change in the way that
we have been traditionally responding to disability and disabled people.
Course Content

Unit 1
Novel

Firdaus Kanga Trying to Grow (1991) (New Delhi India: Penguin 2008).

Unit 2
Autobiography

a) Helen Keller (i) The Story of My Life (1903) Chapters 3 4 5 6 8-15 (New York:
Simon and Schuster Paperbacks 2010) (ii) ‘How I Became a Socialist’ in Helen Keller: Her
Socialist Years ed. Philip S. Foner (New York: International Publishers 1967) pp. 21–26.
b) Georgina Kleege Sight Unseen Chapter 1 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press
1999).
c) Naseema Hurzuk Naseema: The Incredible Story trans. Asha Deodhar ed. Rukmini Sekhar
(New Delhi: The Visaka Foundation 2006).
d) Malini Chib ‘Why Do You Want To Do BA’ One Little Finger (New Delhi: Sage 2011) 49–
82.
e) Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay (i) ‘No Wonder I Don’t Talk’ (18) (ii) ‘Flapping My
Hands Flapping My Shadow’ (21) (iii) ‘Autism! A Fancy Word’ (22-23) (iv) ‘Why was
Mother Stopping Me from Climbing?’ (30) (v) ‘Feeding My Body’ (44-45) (vi) ‘Wish He
Could Dress Himself!’ (46-47) (vii) ‘How Do You Perceive a Linear Situation’ (55-56)
(viii) ‘Exposure Helps Shape Visual Perception’ (67-8) and (ix) ‘Learning to Write’ (90) all in
How Can I Talk If My Lips Don’t Move: Inside My Autistic Mind (New York: Arcade
Publishing 2008).

Unit 3
Short Stories

a) Daniel Keyes ‘Flowers for Algernon’ The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction Vol. 16:
4 (April 1959) pp. 5-30.
b) Andre Dubus ‘Dancing After Hours’ in Dancing After Hours: Stories (New York:
Knopf Doubleday Publishing 2011) pp. 240-56.
c) Anne Finger ‘Comrade Luxemburg and Comrade Gramsci Pass Each Other at a
Congress of the Second International in Switzerland on the 10th of March 1912’ in Call Me
Ahab: A Short Story Collection (United States of America: Library of Congress 2009) pp. 61–
72.
d) Rabindranath Tagore ‘Dhristidaan’ trans. Arunava Sinha in Seminar on ‘The Nation and Its
Poet: A Symposium on Rabindranath Tagore 1861-1941: Life Language Legacy’ Vol. 623
(July 2011) pp. 71-79.
e) Rashid Jahan ‘Woh’ (That One) trans. M.T. Kahn in Women Writing in India 600
BC to the Present Vol. 2 eds Susie Tharu and K. Lalita (New York: The Feminist Press 1993)
pp. 119-22.

Unit 4
Drama

Girish Karnad ‘Broken Images’ in Collected Plays. Vol. II. (New Delhi: Oxford
University Press 2005) pp. 261–87.

Poetry

a) Vassar Miller ‘Dramatic Monologue in the Speaker’s Own Voice’ in Beauty is a Verb: The
New Poetry of Disability ed. Jennifer Bartlett Sheila Black and Michael Northen (USA and
Mexico: Cinco Press 2011) p. 51.
b) Jim Ferris ‘Poems With Disabilities’ in Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of
Disability ed. Jennifer Bartlett Sheila Black and Michael Northen (USA and Mexico: Cinco
Press 2011) p. 89.
c) Raghuvir Sahay ‘The Handicapped Caught in a Camera’ trans. Harish Trivedi
Chicago Review Vol. 38: 1/2 (1992) pp. 146-7.
d) Jyotsna Phanija ‘See’ in Ceramic Evening (New Delhi: Writers Workshop 2016)
p. 49.

Unit 5
Readings

a) Simi Linton ‘Disability Studies/Not Disability Studies’ Disability & Society Vol. 13.4
(1998) pp. 525-40.
b) Lennard J. Davis ‘Constructing Normalcy’ in Enforcing Normalcy: Disability Deafness and
the Body (London and New York: Verso 1995) pp. 23–49.
c) Ato Quayson ‘A Typology of Disability Representation’ in Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability
and the Crisis of Representation (Columbia: Columbia University Press 2007) pp. 32–53.
d) Thomas Couser ‘Signifying Selves: Disability and Life Writing’ in The Cambridge
Companion on Literature and Disability eds Clare Barker and Stuart Murray (New York:
Cambridge University Press 2017) pp. 199–211.
e) Shilpaa Anand ‘Historicizing Disability in India: Questions of Subject and Method’
in Disability Studies in India: Global Discourses Local Realities ed. Renu Addlakha (New
York: Routledge) pp. 35–60.
f) Das Veena and Renu Addlakha “Disability and Domestic Citizenship: Voice Gender and
the Making of the Subject” Public Culture Vol. 13:3 (2001) pp. 511-531.

Teaching Plan
Paper D15: Literature and Disability

Week 1 – Introduction to Paper D15: Literature and Disability

Week 2 – Unit 1 – Novel: Kanga Trying to Grow
Week 3 – Kanga (contd)
Week 4 – Unit 2 – Autobiography:
(a) Keller (i) The Story of My Life Chapters 3 4 5 6 8-15 (ii) ‘How I Became a Socialist’
pp. 21–26.
(b) Kleege Sight Unseen Chapter 1
(c) Hurzuk Naseema: The Incredible Story
(d) Chib ‘Why Do You Want To Do BA’ One Little Finger 49–82.
(e) Mukhopadhyay (i) ‘No Wonder I Don’t Talk’ (18) (ii) ‘Flapping My Hands
Flapping My Shadow’ (21) (iii) ‘Autism! A Fancy Word’ (22-23) (iv) ‘Why was
Mother Stopping Me from Climbing?’ (30) (v) ‘Feeding My Body’ (44-45)
(vi) ‘Wish He Could Dress Himself!’ (46-47) (vii) ‘How Do You Perceive a Linear
Situation’ (55-56) (viii) ‘Exposure Helps Shape Visual Perception’ (67-8) and
(ix) ‘Learning to Write’ (90)
Week 5 – Autobiography (contd)
Week 6 – Autobiography (contd)
Week 7 – Unit 3: Short Stories:
(a) Keyes ‘Flowers for Algernon’
(b) Dubus ‘Dancing After Hours’
(c) Finger ‘Comrade Luxemburg and Comrade Gramsci Pass Each Other at a Congress
of the Second International in Switzerland on the 10th of March 1912’
(d) Tagore ‘Dhristidaan’
(e) Rashid Jahan ‘Woh’ (That One)
Week 8 – Short Stories (contd)
Week 9 – Unit 4: Drama: Karnad Broken Images
Week 10 – Unit 4: Poetry:
(a) Miller ‘Dramatic Monologue in the Speaker’s Own Voice’
(b) Ferris ‘Poems With Disabilities’
(c) Sahay ‘The Handicapped Caught in a Camera’
(d) Phanija ‘See’
Week 11 – Unit 5 -- Prose Readings:
(a) Linton ‘Disability Studies/Not Disability Studies’
(b) Davis ‘Constructing Normalcy’
(c) Quayson ‘A Typology of Disability Representation’
(d) Couser ‘Signifying Selves: Disability and Life Writing’
(e) Anand ‘Historicizing Disability in India: Questions of Subject and Method’
(f) Anita Ghai ‘Disabled Women: Issues Concerns and Voices from Within’
Week 12 – Prose Readings (contd)
Week 13 – Prose Readings (contd)
Week 14 – Concluding lectures exam issues etc.

Facilitating the Achievement of Course Learning Outcomes

Unit Course Learning Outcomes Teaching and Assessment Tasks

No. Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts Interactive Reading material together in

discussions in small groups initiating
small groups in discussion topics participation in
Tutorial classes discussions

2. Expressing concepts How to think Writing essay length

through writing critically and write assignments
with clarity

3. Demonstrating conceptual Discussing exam Class tests

and textual understanding questions and
in tests and exams answering
techniques

Keywords

Disability representation
Narrativising disability
Normalcy
Ableism
Marginality
Identity and Agency
Sub-committee

Someshwar Sati Kirori Mal College (Coordinator)

Alamelu Indraprastha College for Women
B. Mangalam Aryabhatta College
Karuna Rajeev Lady Shri Ram College for Women
Rohith Deen Dyal Upadhyay College
Viraj Kafle Dyal Singh College (Morning

PAPER D16
PARTITION LITERATURE
Semester 6

Course Statement

This paper looks at representations of the Partition of India in 1947. It aims to give the students a
comprehensive range of literary responses to one of the subcontinent’s most traumatic histories
of vivisection trauma and violence. The paper encompasses literatures from Punjab PakistanWest
Bengal the Northeast and Bangladesh though the varied genres: memoirs short stories and the
novel along with theoretical background reading materials.

Course Objectives

This paper aims to

• enable an understanding of the affective dimensions of the Partition in varied geopolitical
spaces
• aid the student in comprehending the country’s postcolonial realities and
• introduce students to the following topics through the study of literary texts: colonialism
nationalisms and the Partition of India in 1947 communalism violence and the British
Rule in India homelessness exile and migration women and children in the Partition
refugees rehabilitation and resettlement borders and borderlands.
Course Content

Unit 1
Novel

Intizaar Hussain Basti Tr. Frances W Pritchett 1995.

Unit 2
Novel

Sunil Gangopadhyay, Arjun (originally Bangla Arjun) trans. Chitrita Bannerjee

(Penguin 1987).

Unit 3
Short Stories

a) Manto‘Toba Tek Singh’ (Urdu Pakistan) trans. Harish Trivedi in Modern Indian Literature
(Department of English Delhi University) pp. 105-114.
b) Krishan Chander‘Peshawar Express’ (Urdu Punjab) trans. Jai Ratan in Stories About the
Partition of India ed. Alok Bhalla (Delhi: Indus 1994) Vol. 3 pp. 205-215.
c) Manik Bandopadhyay ‘Final Solution’ (Bangla West Bengal) trans. Rani Ray in
Mapmaking: Partition Stories from Two Bengals ed. Debjani Sengupta (Delhi: Amaryllis
2011) pp. 17-30.
d) Sunanda Bhattacharya ‘Border Stories’ (Bangla Tripura ‘Borderer Golpo’) trans. Debjani
Sengupta in Looking Back: The 1947 Partition of India 70 Years On eds. Rakhshanda Jalil
Tarun Saint and Debjani Sengupta (Delhi: Orient BlackSwan 2017) pp. 265-76.
e) Syed Waliullah‘The Story of a Tulsi Plant’ (Bangla Bangladesh) trans. Rani Ray
in Mapmaking pp.101-114.

Unit 4
Memoirs/Reminiscences

a) Fikr Taunsvi ‘The Sixth River’ (Urdu ‘Chhata Dariya’) trans. Maaz Bin Bilal in Looking
Back: The 1947 Partition of India 70 Years On eds. Rakhshanda Jalil Tarun Saint and
Debjani Sengupta (Delhi: Orient BlackSwan 2017) pp. 148-61.
b) Himani Bannerji ‘Wandering Through Different Spaces’ in The Trauma and The
Triumph: Gender and Partition in Eastern India Vol. 2 eds Jasodhara Bagchi and
Subhoranjan Dasgupta (Kolkata: Stree 2009) pp. 105-30.
c) Hena Das ‘Kaloibibi: A Leader of the Nankars’ in The Trauma and the Triumph
Vol. 2 pp. 143-56.
Unit 5
Readings

a) Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin ‘Introduction’ in Borders and Boundaries (Delhi: Kali For
Women 1998).
b) Urvashi Butalia Chapter 4 in The Other Side of Silences: Voices from the Partition of India
(Kali for Women 2000) pp. 109-171.
c) Ashis Nandy ‘The Invisible Holocaust and the Journey as an Exodus’ in A Very Popular
Exile (Delhi OUP 2007) pp. 98-139.

Teaching Plan
Paper D16: Partition Literature

Week 1: Introduction to Paper D16: Partition Literature

Week 2 – Unit 1 -- Novel: Hussain Basti
Week 3 – Unit 1 – Hussain (contd)
Week 4 – Unit 2 -- Novel: Gangopadhyay Arjun
Week 5 – Unit 2 – Gangopadhyay (contd...)
Week 6 – Unit 3 -- Short Stories:
(a) Manto ‘Toba Tek Singh’
Week 7 – Unit 3 –Short Stories (contd):
(b) Chander ‘Peshawar Express’
(c) Bandopadhyay ‘Final Solution’
Week 8 – Unit 3 –Short Stories (contd):
(d) Bhattacharya ‘Border Stories’ ‘
(e) Waliullah ‘The Story of a Tulsi Plant’
Week 9 – Unit 4 -- Memoirs/Reminiscences:
(a) Taunsvi ‘The Sixth River’
(b) Bannerji ‘Wandering Through Different Spaces’
Week 10 – Unit 4 -- Memoirs/Reminiscences (contd):
(c) Das ‘Kaloibibi: A Leader of the Nankars’
Week 11 – Unit 5 -- Readings:
(a) Menon and Bhasin ‘Introduction’
Week 12 – Unit 5-- Readings (contd):
(b) Butalia Chapter 4 in The Other Side of Silences: Voices from the Partition of India
Week 13 – Unit 5 –Readings (contd):
(c) Nandy ‘The Invisible Holocaust and the Journey as an Exodus’
Week 14 - Concluding lectures exam issues etc.
Facilitating the Achievement of Course Learning Outcomes

Unit Course Learning Outcomes Teaching and Assessment Tasks

No. Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts Interactive Reading material together in

discussions in small groups initiating
small groups in discussion topics participation in
Tutorial classes discussions

2. Expressing concepts How to think Writing essay length

through writing critically and write assignments
with clarity

3. Demonstrating conceptual Discussing exam Class tests

and textual understanding questions and
in tests and exams answering
techniques

Keywords

Nationalism
Partition
Communalism
Borders and Borderlands
Gender and Violence
Refugees and Rehabilitation
Migration and Exile
Children and Marginalized Experiences of the Partition

Sub-committee

Debjani Sengupta IP College (Coordinator)

Dhananjay Kapse Kirori Mal College
Parul Bhardwaj Miranda House
Yamini Dyal Singh College
PAPER D17
PRE-COLONIAL INDIAN LITERATURES
Semester 6

Course Statement

While Classical Indian literature and Modern Indian literature have become well established in
many university curricula the prolific oral and scribal output of the so-called ‘medieval’ period
remains under-studied in the Indian classroom. A paper on pre-colonial Indian literatures is
indispensible to the analysis—and interrogation—of categories such as classical traditional pre-
modern and modern.

Course Objectives

This course aims to

• introduce students to the culturally and evocatively rich literatures of pre-colonial early
modern India
• explore concepts of devotional and secular love through Bhakti and Sufi poetry
indigenous forms of narratives and story-telling through Kathas and Dastans and the
gendered re-working of myths and histories through women’s narratives
• introduce a bridge between classical and modern Indian literatures and
• engage with the continuities as well as breaks among different narrative and verse
traditions of Indian literature.

Course Content

Unit 1
Devotion

a) Nammalvar ‘My Lord My Cannibal’ trans. A.K. Ramanujan in Hymns For the Drowning.
b) Mahadeviakka (i) ‘Why do I need this dummy’ (ii) ‘I have Maya for mother-in-law’ trans.
A.K. Ramanujan in Speaking of Siva.
c) Tukaram (i) ‘Born a Shudra I have been a trader’ (ii) ‘I am telling you’ (iii) ‘I have seen my
death’ trans. Dilip Chitre in Says Tuka.
d) Ravidas (i) ‘Oh well born of Benares’ (ii) ‘The regal realm with the sorrowless name’ trans.
Hawley and Jurgensmeyer in Songs of the Saints of India.
e) Amir Khusrau (i) ‘Don’t Be Heedless of My Sorry State’ (ii) ‘You are the friend to sorrowful
hearts’ trans. Losensky and Sharma in In the Bazaar of Love.
Unit 2
Love

a) Jayadeva Gitagovinda Parts 1-5 (Krishna: joyful careless bewildered tender longing for
love) trans. Barbara Stoler Miller pp. 69-94.
b) Manjhan Madhumalati Verses 77-99 (Nymphs and Madhumalati described) Verses 401-417
(The Seasons of Madhumalati’s Separation) trans. Aditya Behl (New Delhi: OUP) pp. 33-43
168-75.

Unit 3
Story

a) Somadeva KathasaritsagaraBook 1 - Kathapitha trans. Arshia Sattar pp. 1-49.

b) Ghalib Lakhnavi and Abdullah Bilgrami Dastan-e-Amir-Hamza Chapters 52 55 (Aasman
Peri) trans. Musharraf Ali Farooqi.

Unit 4
Women’s voices

a) ‘Chandravati Ramayana’ trans. Mandkranta Bose and Sarika Priyadarhini Bose in A

Woman's Ramayana: Candravati's Bengali Epic pp. 52-91.
b) Gul-badan Begum from ‘Humayun Nama’ in Women Writing in India Vol. 1 pp. 99-102.

Unit 5
Prose readings

a) Aditya Behl ‘Introduction to the Madhumalati pp. xi-xlvi.

b) Sheldon Pollock ed. Literary Cultures in History (New Delhi: OUP 2003) pp. 1-36.
c) Francesca Orsini ‘How to do multilingual literary history? Lessons from fifteenth- and
sixteenth-century north India’ The Indian Economic and Social History Review 49 2 (2012)
pp. 225–46.
d) G. N. Devy ‘A Never Ending Transition’ in After Amnesia (New Delhi: Orient
Longman 1992) pp. 56-101.
Teaching Plan
Paper D17: Pre-colonial Indian Literatures

Week 1 – Introduction to Paper D17: Pre-Colonial Indian Literatures

Week 2 – Unit 1 – Devotion:
(a) Nammalvar ‘My Lord My Cannibal’
(b) Mahadeviakka (i) ‘Why do I need this dummy’ (ii) ‘I have Maya for mother-in-law’
(c) Tukaram (i) ‘Born a Shudra I have been a trader’ (ii) ‘I am telling you’ (iii) ‘I have
seen my death’
(d) Ravidas (i) ‘Oh well born of Benares’ (ii) ‘The regal realm with the sorrowless
name’
(e) Khusrau (i) ‘Don’t Be Heedless of My Sorry State’ (ii) ‘You are the friend to
sorrowful hearts’
Week 3 – Devotion (contd)
Week 4 – Devotion (contd)
Week 5 – Unit 2: Love
(a) Jayadeva Gitagovinda Parts 1-5 (Krishna: joyful careless bewildered tender longing
for love) trans. Barbara Stoler Miller pp. 69-94.
(b) Manjhan Madhumalati Verses 77-99 (Nymphs and Madhumalati described)
Verses 401-417 (The Seasons of Madhumalati’s Separation)
Week 6 – Love (contd)
Week 7 – Unit 3: Short Stories:
(a) Somadeva Kathasaritsagara Book 1 – Kathapitha
(b) Ghalib Lakhnavi and Abdullah Bilgrami Dastan-e-Amir-Hamza Chapters 52 55
(Aasman Peri)
Week 8 – Short Stories (contd)

Week 9 – Unit 4: Women’s Voices:

(a) ‘Chandravati Ramayana’ trans. Mandkranta Bose and Sarika Priyadarhini Bose
(b) Gul-badan Begum from ‘Humayun Nama’
Week 10 – Women’s Voices (contd)
Week 11 – Unit 5 -- Prose Readings:
(a) Behl ‘Introduction to the Madhumalati
(b) Pollock ed. Literary Cultures in History
(c) Orsini ‘How to do multilingual literary history? Lessons from fifteenth- and
sixteenth-century north India’
(d) Devy ‘A Never Ending Transition’
Week 12 – Prose Readings (contd)
Week 13 – Prose Readings (contd)
Week 14 – Concluding lectures exam issues etc.
Facilitating the Achievement of Course Learning Outcomes

Unit Course Learning Outcomes Teaching and Assessment Tasks

No. Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts Interactive Reading material together in

discussions in small groups initiating
small groups in discussion topics participation in
Tutorial classes discussions

2. Expressing concepts How to think Writing essay length

through writing critically and write assignments
with clarity

3. Demonstrating conceptual Discussing exam Class tests

and textual understanding questions and
in tests and exams answering
techniques

Keywords

Traditions
Multi-linguality
Syncreticism
Bhakti
Sufi

Sub-committee

Dhananjay Kapse Kirori Mal College (Coordinator)

Sheuli Chowdhury Kamla Nehru College
Shweta Sachdeva Jha Miranda House
Someshwar Sati Kirori Mal College
Yamini Dayal Singh College
PAPER D18
SPECULATIVE FICTION AND DETECTIVE LITERATURE
Semester 6

Course Statement

Since its emergence as a genre in the 19th century science fiction has sought to raise questions
about the intervention of science and technology in human life. As its popularity grew many sub-
genres emerged amongst these speculative fiction is significant for its exploration of what it
means to be human even as it questions the shape possible futures may take and the fate of
humanity in these possible futures. Detective fiction has even in its earliest forms investigated
the category of crime and foregrounded the use of science and rationality in the decoding of
crime. Through this course students are familiarized with both genres and explore the changing
nature of crime and detection as well as issues of citizenship and bio-ethics through the
prescribed readings.

Course Objectives

This course aims to

• investigate the categories of literature termed ‘speculative fiction’ and ‘detective
literature’ and the accompanying social and philosophical issues associated with them
• help students engage with questions about the idea of ‘progress’ and the role of science
and technology in human life and
• encourage students to explore the meaning of hitherto naturalized terms such as ‘crime’
and ‘human/humanity’.

Course Content

Unit 1

Margaret Atwood The Handmaid’s Tale (London: Vintage Books 1986 1996).

Unit 2

Kashigo Ishiguro Never Let Me Go (London: Faber and Faber 2005 2010).

Unit 3

a) Ibn-e-Safi House of Fear (New Delhi: Penguin Random House 2011).

b) Madulika Liddle Crimson City (Delhi: Hachette 2015).
Unit 4

Kathy Reichs Bones Never Lie (London: Arrow Books 2015).

Unit 5
Readings

a) Robert A. Heinlein ‘On the Writing of Speculative Fiction online at

https://mab333.weebly.com/uploads/3/2/3/1/32314601/writing_sf_-
_01_on_the_writing_of_speculative_ficiton.pdf
b) N. Katherine Hayles ‘Towards Embodied Virtuality’ in How We Became Posthuman: Virtual
Bodies in Cybernetics Literature and Informatics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press
1999) pp. 1-24.
c) Donna Haraway‘A Cyborg Manifesto: Science Technology and Socialist-Feminism in the
Late Twentieth Century’ in Simians Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New
York: Routledge 1991) pp. 149-181. (Online at
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html)
d) Charles J. Rzepka ‘Introduction: What is Crime Fiction?’ in Companion to Crime
Fiction: Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture eds Charles J Rzepka and
Lee Horsley (Oxford: Wiley and Blackwell 2010) pp. 1-9.
e) Joy Palmer ‘Tracing Bodies: Gender Genre and Forensic Detective Fiction’ South Central
Review Vol. 18 No. 3/4 Whose Body: Recognizing Feminist Mystery and Detective Fiction
(Autumn-Winter 2001) pp. 54-71.

Teaching Plan
Paper D18: Speculative Fiction And Detective Literature

Week 1 – Introduction to Paper D18: Speculative Fiction and Detective Literature

Unit 5 – Heinlein and Hayles essays
Week 2 – Unit 1 -- Atwood: A Handmaid’s Tale
Week 3 – Unit 1 (contd)
Week 4 – Unit 1 (contd)
Week 5 – Unit 1 (contd)
Week 6 – Unit 2 -- Haraway essay Ishiguro Never Let Me Go
Week 7 – Unit 2 (contd)
Week 8 – Unit 2 (contd)
Week 9 – Unit 3 -- Rezpka essay Ibn-e-Safi House of Fear
Week 10 -- Unit 3 (contd)
Week 11 – Unit 4 – Palmer essay Reichs Bones Never Lie
Week 12 – Unit 4 (contd)
Week 13 – Unit 4 (contd)
Week 14 – Concluding lectures exam issues etc.

Facilitating the Achievement of Course Learning Outcomes

Unit Course Learning Outcomes Teaching and Assessment Tasks

No. Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts Interactive Reading material together in

discussions in small groups initiating
small groups in discussion topics participation in
Tutorial classes discussions

2. Expressing concepts How to think Writing essay length

through writing critically and write assignments
with clarity

3. Demonstrating conceptual Discussing exam Class tests

and textual understanding questions and
in tests and exams answering
techniques

Keywords

Spec-fic
Speculative fiction
Detective fiction
Forensics
Dystopia/Utopia
Bio-ethics in literature
Crime literature
Sub-committee

Sanam Khanna Kamala Nehru College (Coordinator)

Gorvika Miranda House College
Nidhi Bhandari Kamala Nehru College
Nitya Dutta Sri Venkateswara College
Shraddha A. Singh Zakir Hussain College
Shweta Sachdeva Jha Miranda House College

PAPER D19
STUDIES IN MODERN INDIAN PERFORMANCE TRADITIONS
Semester 6

Course Statement

The encounter between diverse popular performance traditions and colonial modernity evolved
into distinct theatrical practices in twentieth century India. The plays included here are
representative of this engagement within performative traditions and have a very strong bearing
on the body-politic of modern India. The broad trends embodied here will illustrate the way in
which theatre made sharp interventions in the socio-political scenario in India. The plays in this
course range from the pre-Independence period to the present. They take into cognizance the
popular folk and proscenium traditions in Indian theatre.

The period before independence is marked by Bijon Bhattacharya’s Nabanna, seen as the
defining moment in Indian theatre. It is the nucleus of a new kind of theatre at the level of form
and content. Post-independence India is marked by varied theatrical formations. The proscenium
theatre of Vijay Tendulkar exists alongside the more flexible Third theatre of Badal Sircar. The
1970s see a burst of theatrical activity with a special emphasis on street theatre. Jan Natya
Manch’s contribution with plays like Aurat are noteworthy. Tribal performance with a special
focus on the Denotified Tribes (DNT) is presented in Budhan. The anxieties of post-
Independence India form the focus in Inquilab and Water.
Course Objectives

This course aims to

• provide an overview of the varied performance traditions in modern India
• enable students to understand the significant mediations made by theatre at crucial
moments in history
• show how each of the plays in this course functions as a historical marker bringing in
new insights into an understanding of theatre and life and
• introduce the student to the dynamic structure of the street play.

Course Content

Unit 1

Bijon Bhattacharya Nabanna trans. Arjun Ghosh (New Delhi: Rupa 2018).

Unit 2

a) Jan Natya Manch ‘Woman’ (‘Aurat’) Seagull Theatre Quarterly Vol.16 pp. 23-24 1997
b) Badal Sircar‘Procession’ trans. Samik Bandyopadhyay Badal Sircar and Kalyani Ghose in
Three Plays: Procession Bhoma Stale News (Calcutta: Seagull 2009).

Unit 3

a) Asif Currimbhoy‘Inquilab’ in The Bengal Trilogy: Inquilab The Refugee Sonar Bangla
(Calcutta: Writers Workshop 1993).
b) Denotified Charras‘Budhan’ in Painted Words: An Anthology of Tribal Literature ed. G. N.
Devy (Vadodra: Purva Prakash 2012) pp. 243-73).

Unit 4

a) Vijay Tendulkar‘Silence The Court is in Session’ trans. Samik Bandyopadhyay in Collected

Plays in Translation (New Delhi OUP 2003).
b) Komal Swaminathan Water trans. S. Shankar (Calcutta: Seagull 1999).

Unit 5
Readings

a) Badal Sircar ‘The Third Theatre’ in On Theatre (Calcutta: Seagull 1999) pp. 1-18.
b) Utpal Dutt ‘Innovation and Experimentation in Theatre’ in On Theatre (Calcutta: Seagull
1999) pp. 53-63.
c) ‘All India People’s Theatre Conference Draft Resolution’ in People’s Art in the Twentieth
Century: Theory and Practice (New Delhi: Jan Natya Manch 2001) pp. 373-75.
d) Rustom Bharucha (i) ‘Performance/Performativity/Theatre’ (ii) ‘Dangerous Liasions: Terror
and Performance’ in Terror and Performance(New Delhi: Tulika 2014) pp. 19-29 29-32
(iii) ‘The Indian People’s Theatre Association’ in In the Name of the Secular: Contemporary
Cultural Activism in India (Delhi: OUP) pp. 26-51.
e) Nemichandra Jain, ‘Role of IPTA in Asides’ Themes in Contemporary Indian
Theatre (New Delhi: NSD 2003) pp. 182-93.
f) K.A. Gunasekaran, ‘Reflections on the Need for a Dalit Theatre’JSL Autumn 2006 Special
Issue on Theatre/Performance (New Delhi: JNU) pp. 76-81.

Teaching Plan
PAPER D19: Studies in Modern Indian Performance Traditions

Week 1 – Introduction to Paper 20: Studies in Modern Indian Performance Traditions

Week 2 – Unit 1 – Bhattacharya Nabanna
Week 3 – Unit 2 – Jan Natya Manch Woman
Week 4 – Unit 2 – Sircar ‘Procession’
Week 5 – Sircar (contd)
Week 6 – Unit 3 -- Denotified Charras ‘Budhan’
Week 7 – Unit 3 -- Currimbhoy ‘Inquilab’
Week 8 – Unit 3 -- Denotified Charras ‘Budhan’
Week 9 – Unit 4 – Tendulkar ‘Silence the Court is in Session’
Week 10 -- Tendulkar (contd)
Week 11 – Unit 4 – Swaminathan Water
Week 12 – Unit 5 -- Prose Readings:
(a) Sircar ‘The Third Theatre’
(b) Dutt ‘Innovation and Experimentation in Theatre’
(c) All India People’s Theatre Conference Draft Resolution
Week 13 – Prose Readings (contd):
(d) Bharucha ‘Performance/ Performativity/ Theatre’ ‘Dangerous Liasions: Terror and
Performance’ ‘The Indian People’s Theatre Association’
(e) Jain ‘Role of IPTA in Asides’
(f) Gunasekaran ‘Reflections on the need for a Dalit Theatre’
Week 14 – Concluding lectures exam issues etc.
Facilitating the Achievement of Course Learning Outcomes

Unit Course Learning Outcomes Teaching and Assessment Tasks

No. Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts Interactive Reading material together in

discussions in small groups initiating
small groups in discussion topics participation in
Tutorial classes discussions

2. Expressing concepts How to think Writing essay length

through writing critically and write assignments
with clarity

3. Demonstrating conceptual Discussing exam Class tests

and textual understanding questions and
in tests and exams answering
techniques

Keywords

Popular performance traditions

Colonial modernity
IPTA
Folk
Proscenium
Theatre and marginality

Sub-committee

Sanjay Kumar Hansraj College (Coordinator)

Anshuman Singh Dyal Singh College
Payal Nagpal Janki Devi Memorial College
Sachin N. Dyal Singh College
Sanjib Kumar Baishya Zakir Hussain College (Evening)
Vinod Verma Maharaja Agrasen College
PAPER D20
TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPEAN FICTION
Semester 6

Course Statement

This is a new paper that partly extends the line of enquiry about the relationship between
historical change and narrative forms. It emerges from a study of nineteenth century European
realism into the twentieth century and partly looks at the emergence of new narrative
experiments related to modernism and postmodernism in Europe. It engages with critical fictions
that problematise and even undermine the idea of a unified Europe as the perceived cultural and
political centre of the world since the period of the Enlightenment while also assessing the
continuing impact of European forms of storytelling on literatures around the globe.

Course Objectives

This course aims to

• acquaint students with the main currents of fiction in twentieth-century Europe
• help develop an understanding of Europe as a cultural idea represented debated and
questioned in the fictions of the twentieth century
• compare a variety of literary responses to the socio-political forces of change and
ideologies that impinged on the lives of people in different regions of Europe in the
twentieth century and
• allow the student to reflect on the situation of the European writer as a cultural
spokesperson yet in a state of perpetual exile physically displaced and metaphorically
distanced from the established centres of cultural power.

Course Content

Unit 1
Novellas

a) Franz Kafka Metamorphosis (1915) trans. Willa and Edwin Muir (New York: Vintage
Classics 1992).
b) Albert Camus The Stranger (1942) trans. Matthew Ward (New York: Vintage Classics
1989).
Unit 2
Novel

Elfriede Jelinek The Piano Teacher (1983) trans. Joachim Neugroschel UK: Serpent's Tail Books
2010).

Unit 3

Novel

José Saramago The Stone Raft (1986) trans. Giovanni Pontiero (New York: Vintage Classics
2000).

Unit 4
Short Stories

a) Isaac Babel ‘The Story of My Dovecoat’ (1925) trans. Peter Constantine in The Complete
Works of Isaac Babel (New York: W. W. Norton and Co. 2005) pp. 601-611.
b) Bruno Schulz ‘The Street of Crocodiles’ (1934) trans. Celina Wieniewska in The Street of
Crocodiles and Other Stories (UK: Penguin Classics 2008) pp. 63-72.
c) Ilse Aichinger ‘The Bound Man’ (1956) trans. Eric Mosbacher in The Art of The Tale: An
International Anthology of Short Stories ed. Daniel Halpern (New York: Penguin 1986) pp.
10-17.
d) Natalia Ginzburg ‘The Mother’ (1963) trans. Isabel Quigly in The Art of The Tale: An
International Anthology of Short Stories ed. Daniel Halpern (New York: Penguin 1986) pp.
23-34.

Unit 5
Prose Readings

a) Maurice Blanchot ‘Reading Kafka’ (1949) trans. Charlotte Mendel in The Work of Fire
(California: Stanford University Press 1995) pp. 1-11.
b) Milan Kundera ‘The Depreciated Legacy of Cervantes’ (1984) trans. David Belos in The Art
of the Novel (UK: Penguin 2004) pp. 3-20.
c) Tony Judt ‘The Past is Another Country: Myth and Memory in Postwar Europe’ Daedalus
121.4 (Fall 1992) pp. 83-118.
d) Zygmunt Bauman ‘Dream of Purity’ Theoria 86 (October 1995). pp. 49-60
e) Dubravka Ugrešić ‘The Writer in Exile’ (2010) in In Exile (e-published in Kitch Institute for
art production and research Ljubljana 2007-2010) url:
http://kitch.si/livingonaborder/node/1
Teaching Plan
Paper D20: Twentieth Century European Fiction

Week 1 – Introduction to Paper D20: Twentieth Century European Literature

Week 2 – Unit 1: Novellas
(a) Kafka Metamorphosis
(b) Camus The Stranger
Week 3 – Unit 1 (contd)
Week 4 – Unit 1 (contd)
Week 5 – Unit 2: Novel: Jelinek The Piano Teacher
Week 6 – Jelinek (contd)
Week 7 – Unit 3: Novel: Saramago The Stone Raft
Week 8 – Unit 3 (contd)
Week 9 – Unit 4: Short Stories
(a) Babel ‘The Story of My Dovecoat’
(b) Schulz ‘The Street of Crocodiles’
(c) Aichinger ‘The Bound Man’
(d) Ginzburg ‘The Mother’
Week 10 – Short Stories (contd)
Week 11 – Unit 5: Readings
(a) Blanchot ‘Reading Kafka’ (1949
(b) Kundera ‘The Depreciated Legacy of Cervantes’
(c) Judt ‘The Past is Another Country: Myth and Memory in Postwar Europe’
(d) Bauman ‘Dream of Purity’
(e) Ugrešić ‘The Writer in Exile’
Week 12 – Readings (contd)
Week 13 – Readings (contd)
Week 14 – Concluding lectures exam issues etc.

Facilitating the Achievement of Course Learning Outcomes

Unit Course Learning Outcomes Teaching and Assessment Tasks

No. Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts Interactive Reading material together in

3. Demonstrating conceptual Discussing exam Class tests

and textual understanding questions and
in tests and exams answering
techniques

Keywords

Existentialism
War
Exile
Holocaust
Totalitarianism
Fascism
Resistance
Avant-Garde
Surrealism
Testimony
Dissidence
Repression
Iron Curtain
Postmodernism
European Union
Balkanisation

Sub-committee

Saikat Ghosh SGTB Khalsa College (Coordinator)

Dhananjay R. Kapse Kirori Mal College
Madhvi Zutshi SGTB Khalsa College
N. A. Jacob Ramjas College
Rudrashish Chakraborty Kirori Mal College
Shraddha Adityavir Singh Zakir Husain Delhi College
Advisors
Dr. Rimli Bhattacharya Dept. of English
Prof. Shaswati Mazumdar Dept. of Germanic and Romance Studies
____________________________________________________________________
AECC

Course Objectives

Effective communication is an essential skill for success in any sphere of life from leadership
responsibilities teamwork interviews presentations and inter-personal relations. This is a skill
that needs to be taught in a systematic manner so that students imbibe the fundamentals of both
creating and receiving communication. All speech and writing intends to persuade an audience of
the author’s point of view whether that audience is a single person or a large group. The art of
persuasive speaking and writing depends crucially on clarity of thought regarding one’s own
intentions. In addition one must assume all audiences to be skeptical and therefore difficult to
persuade. In order to succeed at persuasion we need to use multiple persuasive strategies.

The ability to think critically is crucial for a good communicator and involves several steps: first
to be aware of where our ideas come from and to be aware of the power structure within which
these ideas exist second to understand our audience and readers their ways of thinking their
perceptions so that we can attempt to alter those perceptions and persuade them to accept ours
third to intelligently determine what tools we should use to appeal to our audience – to their logic
their emotions their ethics and morality and finally to convey what we want to do once we have
persuaded them that is to recognize our proposed course of action. All of these aspects are
present in rudimentary form in our minds every time we speak or write whether we are
persuading our examiner to give us more marks or convincing our parents to let us go on an
outstation trip. We often use persuasive strategies instinctively but unconsciously. However if we
study every stage of this process systematically then we will be much more effective at
communicating successfully in interviews public speaking letter writing report writing
presentations and inter-personal relations.

Learning Outcomes

o Students should master the art of persuasive speech and writing.

o Students should master the art of listening reading and analyzing. Students will spend the
bulk of their time in class reading other people’s writing so a good student is also a good
reader one who interprets the text carefully and one who clearly recognizes the author’s
intentions and strategies.
o Students should become skilled at critical thinking whether while writing or while
analysing.
o They will be introduced to principles established in universities the world over principles
of academic reading and writing. These principles are based on tried and tested formulae
evolved by the ancient Greeks chiefly discussed in Aristotle’s writings on rhetoric.
o The course is divided into five sections. The first section defines the text the next two
sections relate to authors their intentions and strategies the fourth section examines the
ways in which the text is received by audiences and readers and the fifth and final section
o Students are trained to look at the ways in which to structure a written argument in an
academic assignment. The first section contains four samples of writing by different
authors and each subsequent section includes three samples of writing. Students will
analyse each sample based primarily on the aspects we are discussing in that section.

However we need to be aware of the fact that the five sections are not watertight categories but
fluid indications with many overlaps. Each text in any section can be analysed using a variety of
strategies ranging over text context author and audience.

AECC

The following is an outline of the sections and their readings:

1. Understanding the Text

General Your Tank

Why I Want a Wife
Fire and Ice
Chinese Folk Tale

2. Contextualisation and Perspectivism

A Lesson in Drawing
My Young Men Shall Not Work
The Paper Bag Princess

3. Reception

‘Much Madness’
Disability Conversation Letter
The Eyes Have It

4. Evaluation and Synthesis

Ain’t I A Woman?
Imagine
Girls
5. Analysis

Bosom Friend
An Enabling Garment
Story of an Hour
Teaching Plan
AECC

Week 1 – Introduction to AECC: Communication Critical Thinking Writing Speaking

Week 2 – Introduction of Concepts (contd)
Week 3 – Unit 1 – Understanding the Text:
General Your Tank
Why I Want a Wife
Fire and Ice
Chinese Folk Tale
Week 4 – Understanding the Text (contd)
Week 5 – Unit 2 -- Contextualisation and Perspectivism
A Lesson in Drawing
My Young Men Shall Not Work
The Paper Bag Princess
Week 6 – Contextualisation and Perspectivism (contd)
Week 7 – Unit 3: Reception
‘Much Madness’
Disability Conversation Letter
The Eyes Have It
Week 8– Reception (contd)
Week 9 – Unit 4: Evaluation and Synthesis:
Ain’t I A Woman?
Imagine
Girls
Week 10 – Evaluation and Synthesis (contd)
Week 11–Unit 5: Analysis
Bosom Friend
An Enabling Garment
Story of an Hour
Week 12 – Analysis (contd)
Week 12 – Clarifying concepts through group discussions
Week 13 – Expressing concepts through practicing writing
Week 14 – Concluding lectures exam issues etc.
Facilitating the Achievement of Course Learning Outcomes

Unit Course Learning Teaching and Assessment Tasks

No. Outcomes Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts Interactive Reading material together in

discussions with small groups listening to
students to aid material from different media
critical thinking working in peer groups to
through reading discuss material
and listening

2. Expressing concepts How to think Group discussions public

through speech critically and speaking dialogue interview
express with
clarity

3. Demonstrating Discussing exam Class tests assignments

conceptual and textual questions and
understanding through answering
writing assignments tests techniques
and exams

Keywords

Critical reading
Comprehension
Summary
Paraphrase
Translation
Context
Argumentation
Perspective
Reception
Audience
Evaluation
Synthesis
Communication theory
Verbal communication
Non-verbal communication
Personal communication
Social communication
Barriers to communication
Intra-personal communication
Inter-personal communication
Group discussion
Miscommunication
Public speech
Literary knowledge
Writing skills
Documentation
Report writing
Note taking
Letter writing

Sub-committee

Vinita Chandra Ramjas College (Coordinator)

Roopa Dhawan Ramjas College
AECC Syllabus with Readings

1. Introduction
Theory of Communication Types and modes of Communication (Introductions to all Five
Sections)

2. Language of Communication:
Verbal and Non-verbal (Ain’t I a Woman) (Spoken and Written)
Personal communication (Why I Want a Wife)
Social communication (Imagine)
Business Communication (Women Smohalla)
Barriers and Strategies (An Enabling Garment)
Intra-personal Communication (Women)
Inter-personal Communication (Why I Want a Wife)
Group communication (Fire and Ice)

3. Speaking Skills:
Monologue (The Paper Bag Princess)
Dialogue (Why I Want a Wife The Story of an Hour)
Group Discussion Fire and Ice
Effective Communication Imagine
Mis-Communication (A Lesson in Drawing)
Public Speech (Girls)

4. Reading and Understanding

Close Reading (The Eyes Have It)
Comprehension (Ain’t I a Woman?)
Summary (Disability Conversation)
Paraphrasing (Much Madness)
Analysis (Enabling Garment)
Interpretation (Ain’t I a Woman)
Translation (Girls) (from Indian languages to English and vice-versa) Literary/Knowledge Texts
(Why I Want a Wife Fire and Ice Story of an Hour)

5. Writing Skills
Documenting (Much Madness)
Report Writing (Smohalla)
Making notes (A Lesson in Drawing)
Letter writing (Chinese Folk Tale Disability Conversation)
List of readings plus syllabus applications.

1. Understanding the Text

General Your Tank

Why I Want a Wife Interpersonal dialogue
Fire and Ice Group discussion
Chinese Folk Tale Letter Writing Intrapersonal dialogue

2. Contextualisation and Perspectivism (Definition)

A Lesson in Drawing Miscommunication Notes Analysis

My Young Men Shall Not Work Report
The Paper Bag Princess Monologue

3. Reception (Audience – Appeals)

‘Much Madness’ Paraphrase Documentation

Disability Conversation Letter Summary Informal Letter
The Eyes Have It Close Reading

4. Evaluation and Synthesis

Ain’t I A Woman? Verbal and non-verbal communication Paraphrase

Comprehension
Imagine Public letter (semi-formal)
Girls Public speech Translation

5. Analysis

Bosom Friend Report Analysis Argumentation

An Enabling Garment Communication Barriers and Strategies Analysis
Story of an Hour Dialogue
AECC DETAILED COURSE MATERIAL

SECTION 1 - UNDERSTANDING THE TEXT

What is a text? A text is anything we can read. We assume that we can only read words on paper
or screen. However we ‘read’ everything around us as text every moment of our lives: we read
people as texts from the clothes they wear the way they speak to their expressions and actions we
read spaces as text as to whether they are hostile inclusive safe welcoming or intimidating and
we certainly read events as texts when we consider evidence of what happened different
perspectives of the event the situation or the outcome. At a much simpler level we read songs
movies advertisements billboards pictures. Whether we think about any of these things critically
or not our brain responds to everything around us by ‘reading’ it at some level analysing and
finally arriving at a value judgment. Because this is the process we are constantly undertaking it
becomes very important to undertake it consciously and with critical awareness.

No matter what kinds of texts we are trying to read the arguments are essentially of three kinds.
That is there are only three ways in which a text presents itself. One it may be defining
something by answering the question ‘What is it?’ For example an author may be defining
beauty. What is beauty? Is it a rosy complexion and big eyes? Or is it kindheartedness and
courage? Two the text might be evaluating something or answering the question ‘Is it good or
bad?’ or ‘What is its value?’ For instance is Dangal a good film about women’s empowerment?
Or is it a problematic film that emphasizes women’s lack of freedom to choose? Three a text can
be presenting a proposal or answering the question ‘What should be done about it?’. By way of
illustration can we solve border disputes by war or by diplomacy? So a text will try to be
persuasive through definition evaluation or proposal.

In this course you are looking exclusively at those texts that use the written word. While you
read them pay attention to what genre of text is before you. You will be able to identify different
genres: a short story an essay a poem a song. How are they different from one another?
Readings for Section 1

General Your Tank is A Powerful Vehicle

Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) a German poet playwright and theatre director was an influential
literary figure of the twentieth century. He started writing newspaper articles including theatre
reviews at the age of eighteen. When he was nineteen he won for his first three plays the Kleist
prize Germany’s most prestigious literary award at the time. He is associated with the Neue
Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement in German art with the collaborative approach to
artistic production and with the experimental genre ‘epic theatre’. He has written hundreds of
poems and many plays such as Mother Courage and Her Children (1938) and The Good Person
of Szechwan (1939).

A committed Marxist all his life he expressed his opposition to the National Socialist and Fascist
movements of Europe through his creative and theoretical writings. As a result he had to leave
Germany in 1933 fearing persecution by Hitler’s regime and ultimately went to America after
Hitler proceeded to invade most of Europe. Even in America his extreme communist political
views resulted in his being targeted by the government.

His writings advocate independent thinking and anti-establishment political action. ‘General
Your Tank’ was probably written between the two world wars. Here he underscores the power of
critical thought as the ultimate weapon against war and oppression.

************

General your tank is a powerful vehicle.

It smashes down forests and crushes a hundred men.
But it has one defect:
It needs a driver.

General your bomber is powerful.

But it has one defect:
It needs a mechanic.
General man is very useful.
He can fly and he can kill.
But he has one defect:
He can think.

Questions:

1. The text suggests that the tank and the bomber are not perfect. Usually one would assume
drivers and mechanics to be helpful to machines. The poet suggests that this may not be
the case. Why does he think so?
2. In the third stanza the human being flies and kills for the general. As such the human is
powerful. What is the single word that indicates that power?
3. Why does thinking make a human being defective? For whom is he thus defective? For
himself or for the general?
4. Why is a thinking human inconvenient for armies and wars?Why might wars require
humans who do not or cannot think?
5. Does Brecht highlight the power of all kinds of thinking or only some kinds? Consider
concepts such as debating criticizing challenging questioning opposing rebelling etc.
6. What is the purpose and effectiveness of repetition in this poem? How does the genre of
poetry help put forward the poet’s message? Note similar uses of repetition in other texts
in this course: ‘Why I Want a Wife’ ‘My Young Men Shall Not Work’ ‘Ain’t I a
Woman?’ and ‘Imagine.’

Application

Write a speech for college students on the power of critical thinking and its benefits to
society. Use repetition in the speech to strengthen the argument.

Why I Want a Wife

Judy Brady

Judy Brady (1937-2017) was an American feminist a political and environmental activist and a
freelance writer. She was part of what was then known as the Women’s Liberation movement.
Women were fighting for multiple social and political rights and had won the right to vote and
finally the right to an abortion. However the women’s movement was an ongoing battle and
Brady like other activists fought it on several fronts. She became a prominent figure in the West
Coast Women’s Liberation movement.
Her classic essay ‘Why I Want a Wife’ was first published in the first issue of Ms. magazine in
1972 and reprinted as ‘Why I [Still] Want a Wife’ in Ms. in 1990. For the first publication she
used her married name of Syfers but subsequently used her maiden name Brady as an early
declaration of independence from marital convention. She first read her essay in San Francisco to
a crowd celebrating the 50th anniversary of the 19th amendment that gave American women the
right to vote.

************

I belong to that classification of people known as wives. I am A Wife. And not altogether
incidentally I am a mother.

Not too long ago a male friend of mine appeared on the scene fresh from a recent divorce. He
had one child who is of course with his ex-wife. He is looking for another wife. As I thought
about him while I was ironing one evening it suddenly occurred to me that I too would like to
have a wife. Why do I want a wife?

I would like to go back to school so that I can become economically independent support myself
and if need be support those dependent upon me. I want a wife who will work and send me to
school. And while I am going to school I want a wife to take care of my children. I want a wife
to keep track of the children's doctor and dentist appointments. And to keep track of mine too. I
want a wife to make sure my children eat properly and are kept clean. I want a wife who will
wash the children's clothes and keep them mended. I want a wife who is a good nurturant
attendant to my children who arranges for their schooling makes sure that they have an adequate
social life with their peers takes them to the park the zoo etc. I want a wife who takes care of the
children when they are sick a wife who arranges to be around when the children need special
care because of course I cannot miss classes at school. My wife must arrange to lose time at
work and not lose the job. It may mean a small cut in my wife's income from time to time but I
guess I can tolerate that. Needless to say my wife will arrange and pay for the care of the
children while my wife is working.

I want a wife who will take care of my physical needs. I want a wife who will keep my house
clean. A wife who will pick up after my children a wife who will pick up after me. I want a wife
who will keep my clothes clean ironed mended replaced when need be and who will see to it that
my personal things are kept in their proper place so that I can find what I need the minute I need
it. I want a wife who cooks the meals a wife who is a good cook. I want a wife who will planthe
menus do the necessary grocery shopping prepare the meals serve them pleasantly and then do
the cleaning up while I do my studying. I want a wife who will care for me when I am sick and
sympathize with my pain and loss of time from school. I want a wife to go along when our
family takes a vacation so that someone can continue to care for me and my children when I need
a rest and change of scene.

I want a wife who will not bother me with rambling complaints about a wife's duties. But I want
a wife who will listen to me when I feel the need to explain a rather difficult point I have come
across in my course studies. And I want a wife who will type my papers for me when I have
written them.

I want a wife who will take care of the details of my social life. When my wife and I are invited
out by my friends I want a wife who will take care of the baby-sitting arrangements. When I
meet people at school that I like and want to entertain I want a wife who will have the house
clean will prepare a special meal serve it to me and my friends and not interrupt when I talk
about things that interest me and my friends. I want a wife who will have arranged that the
children are fed and ready for bed before my guests arrive so that the children do not bother us. I
want a wife who takes care of the needs of my guests so that they feel comfortable who makes
sure that they have an ashtray that they are passed the hors d'oeuvres that they are offered a
second helping of the food that their wine glasses are replenished when necessary that their
coffee is served to them as they like it. And I want a wife who knows that sometimes I need a
night out by myself.

I want a wife who is sensitive to my sexual needs a wife who makes love passionately and
eagerly when I feel like it a wife who makes sure that I am satisfied. And of course I want a wife
who will not demand sexual attentionwhen I am not in the mood for it. I want a wife who
assumes the complete responsibility for birth control because I do not want more children. I want
a wife who will remain sexually faithful to me so that I do not have to clutter up my intellectual
life with jealousies. And I want a wife who understands that my sexual needs may entail more
than strict adherence to monogamy. I must after all be able to relate to people as fully as
possible.

If by chance I find another person more suitable as a wife than the wife I already have I want the
liberty to replace my present wife with another one. Naturally I will expect a fresh new life my
wife will take the children and be solely responsible for them so that I am left free.

When I am through with school and have a job I want my wife to quit working and remain at
home so that my wife can more fully and completely take care of a wife's duties. My God who
wouldn't want a wife?
Questions

1. By describing a typical wife what is Brady actually saying about typical wives? What is
the central argument of the text?
2. While discussing wives what kinds of evidence does the author present in support of her
point? How is a wife defined? What are her duties?
3. What kind of reader does the text seek to persuade? Why do you think Brady focuses on
this population of readers?
4. The title states that Brady would like a wife for herself. The phrase ‘I want a wife’ is
repeated multiple times in the text. Does this mean that Brady approves of typical wives?
Does she really want a wife? Or are the title and the essay ironical? If so how so?
5. How do you think women reading this article would respond? Would different kinds of
women respond in different ways? Likewise how do you think men would respond?
6. What kind of person is the speaker? Is she a typical wife herself? In that case why would
she too want a wife?
7. What would the male equivalent of this wife be like? How does our society define an
ideal husband?

Application

Write aninterpersonal dialogue between two friends(a wife and a single woman) in which
they are debating the disadvantages and advantages of being either married or single.

Fire and Ice

Robert Frost

Robert Frost (1874-1963) was an American poet known for the simplicity of his style. Yet his
matter-of-fact vocabulary masked heavily ironic and symbolic ideas. He was frequently awarded
during his lifetime receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for poetry.

A popular anecdote about this poem relates that the then famed scientist Harlow Shapley met
Frost during a social gathering a couple of years before this poem was published. According to
Shapley Frost asked him how the world would end. Shapley replied that it would either be burnt
by the sun or a permanent ice age would descend upon it.

However one of Frost's biographers suggests that ‘Fire and Ice’ was inspired by a passage in
Canto 32 of Dante's Inferno where while in hell the worst sinners are submerged in ice. The
poem was first published in 1920 in Harper’s Magazine. Frost moves beyond the literal using the
popular scientificbelief only as a springboard to discuss human emotions like desire and hatred.
The poem contains the familiar Frostian combination of opposites—moderation of language and
tone contrasted with serious philosophical themes.

************

 
Some say the world will end in fire
Some say in ice. 
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire. 

But if it had to perish twice 

I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice 
Is also great 
And would suffice.

Questions

1. While considering the two ways in which the world will end the poet begins by choosing
the side of fire (in the first stanza). Why does he make that choice? What is the symbolic
connection between fire and desire? Why do we associate passion with the colour red?
2. The entire second stanza is about hatred. Does this stanza therefore overturn his earlier
choice of desire for destruction? Does he now think it is more likely that hatred will end
the world? If so why so?
3. The opening of this poem suggests that a scientific question is being debated the contest
between two end-of-the-world scenarios. How does the text manage to remove us from
the scientific and transport us to the philosophical?
4. What do you think is more destructive for humankind? Desire or hatred? Can you think
of examples for both in our modern social climate? Could elements like power greed
corruption materialism war envy contribute to the destruction of the world?

Application

Consider a group discussion (amongst four people) about the various social factors that
might contribute to the destruction of humankind. This would involve four different
points of view on the subject. Are we as a species as vulnerable to extinction as animals
and plant species? In what ways could our destruction be self-inflicted?
Women

[Anonymous]

Like most folk tales this Chinese tale is undated and anonymous. Chinese folklore is influenced
by the country’s religions such as Taoism Confucianism and Buddhism. Emerging from a
civilization that is about 4000 years old these tales span multiple styles and subjects ranging
from stories with morals those about philosophical subjects cautionary tales ghost stories satirical
tales those involving the gods and those focusing on ordinary humans. Multiple levels of
character commentaries are represented including values like moderation loyalty justice and
wisdom.A variety of tones are employed such as gentle and meditative aggressive and down-to-
earth and ironical.

The tale narrated here called ‘Women’ perhaps belongs to that last category. It speaks of a
husband’s desire to control his wife and the innovative way in which he seeks to ‘imprison’ her.
The story ironically relates the way in which the tables are turned upon him.

************

After he was married Chang the Third no longer wanted to go to work. He sat at home the whole
day and played with his wife. He gazed endlessly at her beautiful face and the longer he looked
the less he wanted to go out. Finally he gave up his job and remained night and day with his
wife. He went on this way for six months and then for a year but even the largest fortune is soon
exhausted if one does nothing and Chang had merely lived on his earnings. In two years all his
wife’s jewels the chairs the tables the linen the clothes in fact everything they had was pawned or
sold and they were left without a penny.

His wife was really unusually beautiful but she thought to herself ‘Since his marriage my
husband has never left the house. Day and night he sits around nothing but eat. In a short while
we shall no longer have the wherewithal to live.’ So she upbraided him saying ‘You really can’t
stay at home all day. All men must go to work.’ But Chang saw her beauty and he thought
anxiously ‘If I went out another man could come and make love to her.’ And instead of listening
to her words he remained at home preferring to eat the most miserable food.

But eventually their poverty became unbearable. They could no longer live if he did not work.
Finally one morning he said good-bye to his wife and decided to go to a village. On his way he
met a fine-looking man of about fifty years who said to him ‘Which is the way to such and such
a village?’ Chang answered ‘I am going there myself so we can go together.’ During their walk
Chang told the stranger his story. ‘I am so unhappy at leaving my wife’ he said. ‘But I must look
for work to enable us to live.’

The stranger replied ‘The simplest thing is to bottle up your wife. I will give you the bottle and
every day when you leave you will only need to look at your wife and blow into the bottle and
she will vanish inside at once. As you can always take it with you you will never need to lose
your wife. I must now take another road so farewell.’ Then he handed Chang a large three-inch
bottle from h is bag and disappeared. Chang dropped the bottle into his bag noting what the man
had said and set off gaily for the village. The next day he tried the gift. As his wife was combing
her hair before the mirror he secretly blew into the bottle. The woman saw in the mirror the
reflection of her husband blowing into a bottle but hen she lost consciousness and woke up to
find herself inside the bottle. Chang put the bottle in his pocket and went off to his work in the
village. He was quite contented for no other man could flirt with his wife. In the evening he
tipped the bottle and his beautiful wife stood before him as before.

One day however he was forced to leave his wife at home to do the washing. He begged her not
to leave the house when the washing was finished and then set off to the village forgetting to take
the bottle with him.

After he husband’s departure the wife went down to the river to wash the clothes. While she was
rinsing a shirt she suddenly felt a long hard thing between her fingers. She took it out and looked
at it carefully. ‘It’s a bottle’ she said to herself. ‘Every morning my husband blows into it and I
vanish inside. Why has he forgotten it today?’ While she was pondering over the matter a
handsome young man passed by on the other bank. She looked up at him and without thinking
what she was doing blew into the bottle whereupon the young man disappeared. When she had
finished the washing she replaced the bottle in her husband’s clothes.

When the man arrived home he immediately asked for the bottle he had left behind and his wife
handed it to him without a work. The next day when he went out he blew into the bottle as usual
and his wife disappeared and again he flattered himself that she was safe from the caresses of
other men.

That evening on his return he tipped the bottle but this time two people appeared his wife and a
handsome young man. He was very much surprised and said to himself. ‘How strange! I thought
my wife was quite safe shut up in a bottle but now she has got a man with her! How odd it is!
And how impossible it is to keep a beautiful wife to oneself.’
Questions

1. Describe the relationship between Chang and his wife. How does it change in the course
of the story? In what ways does Chang try to control his wife?
2. What type of marriage does the bottle symbolize? What does the mirror symbolize? What
role do symbols play in the text of folk tales?
3. What seems to be the point of this tale? (Consider that it was the husband himself who
bottled up his wife with a potential lover.) Folk tales are supposed to impart wisdom to
the community. Why would the wisdom or lesson of this story be an important one?
4. Do you think the title works? Why or why not? Would an equally good title be ‘Men’?
Could you argue that the story exposes male nature? How could this text be rewritten for
the present day?

Applications
1. As president of the students’ union writea formal letter to your principal drawing her
attention to the various forms of sexual harassment in your college.
2. Write an intra-personal monologue in which the woman speaks to herself about this
entire incident. Note: she will retell the story from her point of view.

SECTION 2 – CONTEXTUALISATION AND PERSPECTIVISM

When we read a text it is crucial to first place it in its historical social political and economic
context. A story or poem written in 1917 will certainly be different to one written in 1947 or in
2017. (How do you think it would be different?) A song or a play written in India is likely to be
different from one written in Iceland. (Where would those differences come from?) A text
emerging from the Hindu tradition would sound/read differently from one formed within the
Christian tradition. Therefore before we start reading a text we need to be aware of the cultural
material context in terms of the time period in which it was written the geographical location the
community the economic and social background of the writer the political climate prevailing at
the time and so on.

The context determines the perspective of the author. We do not need to agree with the
perspective but we need to understand it before we critique it or even accept it. The perspective
of an author in India in the 1930s in the midst of the freedom struggle is bound to differ from that
of an author in Europe at the same time since the 1930s in Europe was the period of the Great
Depression between the two world wars. The perspective of a woman who walks in the streets
of Delhi after dark will certainly not be the same as that of a man. Every author writes/creates
from their own perspective and we will read the text better if we identify this perspective.
Readings for Section 2

A Lesson in Drawing

Nizar Qabbani

Nizar Tawfiq Qabbani (1923-1998) was a celebrated Syrian poet and publisher. He started
writing poetry at the age of sixteen and self-published his first poetic collection. Initially his
poetic themes were mainly about romantic and erotic love and themes deeply sympathetic to
women. He was affected when he was fifteen by the death of his sister who killed herself
because she was being forced into marriage. This incident triggered in him an interest in the
problems of Arab women. In his later career his work focused on issues of Arab identity and had
political themes highlighting the social and political turmoil of Syria and other Arab countries.

In ‘A Lesson in Drawing’ Qabbani draws attention to the several levels of loss suffered by those
living in extended war-torn regions and their dreams of a pre-war homeland.

************

My son places his paint box in front of me

and asks me to draw a bird for him.
Into the color gray I dip the brush
and draw a square with locks and bars.
Astonishment fills his eyes:
‘… But this is a prison Father
Don’t you know how to draw a bird?’
And I tell him: ‘Son forgive me.
I’ve forgotten the shapes of birds.’

My son puts the drawing book in front of me

and asks me to draw a wheatstalk.
I hold the pen
and draw a gun.
My son mocks my ignorance
demanding
‘Don’t you know Father the difference between a
wheatstalk and a gun?’
I tell him ‘Son
once I used to know the shapes of wheatstalks
the shape of the loaf
the shape of the rose
But in this hardened time
the trees of the forest have joined
the militia men
and the rose wears dull fatigues
In this time of armed wheatstalks
armed birds
armed culture
and armed religion
you can’t buy a loaf
without finding a gun inside
you can’t pluck a rose in the field
without its raising its thorns in your face
you can’t buy a book
that doesn’t explode between your fingers.’

My son sits at the edge of my bed

and asks me to recite a poem
A tear falls from my eyes onto the pillow.
My son licks it up astonished saying:
‘But this is a tear father not a poem!’
And I tell him:
‘When you grow up my son
and read the diwan of Arabic poetry
you’ll discover that the word and the tear are twins
and the Arabic poem
is no more than a tear wept by writing fingers.’

My son lays down his pens his crayon box in

front of me
and asks me to draw a homeland for him.
The brush trembles in my hands
and I sink weeping.
Questions

1. How does the poem present two contrasting perspectives? Why are those perspectives so
different from one another? Is it only because one is a child’s point of view and the other
an adult’s?
2. How would an understanding of Syrian culture and politics enable us to better appreciate
the ideas in the poem?
3. The first two stanzas of the poem focus on the natural agricultural economic and cultural
changes in the landscape of Syria because of the war. What is the effect on the reader of
these multiple ways of examining a problem?
4. The fourth stanza focuses on the ways in which Arabic poetry is able to express grief and
loss. Can Arabic art as Qabbani suggests arrive at the truth about the Arab experience in
the Middle East?
5. How does the poet use imagery rather than logical argument to present his perspective?
Can you identify some of those images?
6. How do wars alter the life experiences of ordinary people living in those regions? Think
closer to home of similar conflicted regions like Kashmir and the Indian northeast.

Applications

1. ‘A Lesson in Drawing’ displays a series of miscommunications between son and father.

Make notes on the different ways this happens.
2. Write an essay on how and why miscommunication takes place between people paying
attention to ideas like conflicting assumptions and contexts.

My Young Men Shall Not Work

Chief Smohalla

Smohalla (1815-1895) was a Native American warrior medicine man and spiritual leader best
known for introducing a revitalized Washani religion amongst his people the Wanapums of
America's Pacific Northwest. Smohalla is closely associated with the Dreamer religion as the
new Washani faith came to be called. It emerged in part as a reaction to the intrusions of white
settlers the U. S. Army and the subsequent Indian policies of the U. S. government. The Dreamer
faith which spread rapidly in the mid- and late-nineteenth century called for a return to Native
American traditions and lifestyles and a rejection of white cultural influences. Because
Smohalla's religious doctrines were so deeply ingrained in the traditional religious beliefs of the
Wanapum people they continued to be a part of the spiritual life of the Native American cultures
of the Pacific Northwest well into the twentieth century.
The Nez Perce are a tribe of American Indians formerly occupying much of the Pacific
Northwest whose reservation is in Idaho. Because Native Americans resisted giving up their
homes and nomadic way of life to become farmers white people have often called them lazy
stubborn and impractical. But to Indians for whom land and hunting were sacred anything that
threatened any one of these threatened their whole system of beliefs and values—in short their
very life.

************

My young men shall never work. Men who work cannot dream and wisdom comes in dreams.

You ask me to plow the ground. Shall I take a knife and tear my mother’s breast? Then when I
die she will not take me to her bosom to rest.

You ask me to dig for stone. Shall I dig under her skin for bones? Then when I die I cannot enter
her body to be born again.

You ask me to cut grass and make hay and sell it and be rich like white men. But how dare I cut
off my mother’s hair?

It is a bad law and my people cannot obey it. I want my people to stay with me here. All the dead
men will come to life again. We must wait here in the house of our fathers and be ready to meet
them in the body of our mother.

Questions

1. In what ways does Smohalla describe the earth as the body of the mother? Do you think
this metaphor is appropriately used? Do many cultures call their land ‘Mother Earth’?
2. How does the perspective of viewing the earth literally as the body of the mother change
the way we think about farming mining construction industrialization? How does this
perspective affect the way we think about work? Would hunting fishing and gathering
fruits be considered work?
3. What does the context of the Nez Perce and the Native Americans tell us about tribal
values? Do we see similar tribal values in India where the earth and water bodies are
sacred and are protected from mining and industrial use?
4. Are the Nez Perce objecting to all work? What do they value more than work? How
common is it for a culture to place the highest value on something other than work?
5. Smohalla followed the Dreamer religion. In what context would dreaming and imagining
become more important than work? Can we review our own context of the work ethic
from the perspective of the Dreamer faith?
Application

Write a report on homework and punishment in school policy.

The Paper Bag Princess

Robert Munsch

Robert Munsch (b. 1949) is an American writer of children’s books. He grew up in a family of
nine children and has written more than 25 books for children including The Paper Bag Princess
(1980) and Stephanie's Ponytail (1996). He studied to be a Jesuit priest before deciding to work
with children instead. He taught in a variety of nursery schools and daycare centers while he
earned a master’s degree in Early Childhood Education.

On his website Robert Munsch says ‘The Paper Bag Princess was first told at the Bay Area
Child Care Center in Oregon where I had a job in 1973 and 1974. I had been telling lots and lots
of dragon stories. They were all fairly regular dragon stories where the prince saves the princess
from the dragon. One day my wife who also worked at the daycare centre said ‘How come you
always have the prince save the princess? Why can’t the princess save the prince?’’’

************

When Elizabeth was a beautiful princess she lived in a castle and had expensive princess clothes.
She was going to marry a prince named Ronald. Unfortunately a dragon smashed her castle
burned all her clothes with his fiery breath and carried off Prince Ronald.

Elizabeth decided to chase the dragon and get Ronald back. She looked all over for something to
wear but the only thing she could find that was not burnt was a paper bag. So she put on the
paper bag and followed the dragon. He was easy to follow because he left a trail of burnt forests
and houses' teeth.

Finally Elizabeth came to a cave with a large door that had a huge knocker on it. She took hold
of the knocker and banged on the door. The dragon stuck his nose out the door and said ‘Well a
princess! I love to eat princesses but I have already eaten a whole castle today. I am a very busy
dragon. Come back tomorrow.’ He slammed the door so fast that Elizabeth almost got her nose
caught.

‘Is it true’ said Elizabeth ‘That you can burn up ten forests with your fiery breath?’

‘Oh yes’ said the dragon and he took a huge deep breath and breathed out so much fire that he
burnt up fifty forests.

‘Fantastic’ said Elizabeth and the dragon took another huge breath and breathed out so much fire
that he burnt up one hundred forests. ‘Magnificent’ said Elizabeth and the dragon took another
huge breath but this time nothing came out. The dragon didn't even have enough fire left to cook
a meatball.

Elizabeth said ‘Dragon is it true that you can fly around the world in just ten seconds?’

‘Why yes’ said the dragon and jumped up and flew all the way around the world in just ten
seconds. He was very tired when he got back but Elizabeth shouted ‘Fantastic do it again!’

So the dragon jumped up and flew around the whole world in just twenty seconds. When he got
back he was too tired to talk and he lay down and went right to sleep.

Elizabeth whispered very softly ‘Hey dragon.’ The dragon didn't move at all. She lifted up the
dragon's ear and put her head right inside. She shouted as loud as she could ‘Hey dragon!’ the
dragon was so tired he didn't even move.

Elizabeth walked right over the dragon and opened the door to the cave. There was Prince
Ronald. He looked at her and said ‘Boy are you a mess! You smell like ashes your hair is all
tangled and you are wearing a dirty old paper bag. Come back when you're dressed like a real
princess.

‘Ronald’ said Elizabeth ‘your clothes are really pretty and your hair is all neat. You look like a
real prince but you are a bum.’ They didn't get married after all.

[Editor’s note: In the book (illustrated by Michael Martchenko) Elizabeth is shown at the end
wearing a paper bag and dancing joyously into the sunset.]

Questions

1. This is a fairy tale written from a different perspective. What is that perspective? What is
the context in which Munsch writes this tale?
2. Would we consider Princess Elizabeth an ‘unconventional’ princess? What are the
reader’s expectations at the beginning of the fairy tale about the behavior and actions of
Elizabeth once Ronald is taken away by the dragon? How do we expect Ronald to act?
What is the significance of the absence of Ronald throughout the story? What are the
implications of his being neither surprised nor grateful at being rescued by a girl?
3. Clothes play a crucial role in this fairy tale. Can we compare and contrast the role of
clothes in this story with that of Cinderella?
4. Can we compare and contrast the role of beauty in this story and that of Snow White and
the Seven Dwarfs or in The Frog Prince?
5. Analyze the context in which this story is written where Elizabeth immediately decides to
chase the dragon and bring Ronald back and uses her resources of intelligence and wit to
do so. Is the fairy tale set in a patriarchal context? In this context how would you analyze
the ending of the story? Is it a disappointing ending since all fairy tales end with the
prince and the princess being married and living happily ever after? Why does the fairy
tale not begin with the phrase ‘Once upon a time…’?
6. Does the perspective of fairy tales influence children of impressionable age and do they
eventually grow out of the ideas established about gender roles in these stories? In the
context of women being educated having careers and being more independent should the
narrative start changing?

Application

Write a monologue spoken by the Dragon when he wakes up to find he has been
outwitted and Ronald has escaped.

SECTION 3 – RECEPTION

We have seen in previous sections that understanding the author’s context and his intentions
facilitates our engagement with the text. In this section we will focus on the audience of a text
meaning us or the reader. The author is not the only one with beliefs and biases. When we read a
story or an article we too react to that story through the prism of our own beliefs and biases. We
will only appreciate the text if the author has managed to appeal to our beliefs and to address our
concerns.

There are three ways in which the author can appeal to the reader. The first is by using the ethos
appeal. Through this method the author tries to present himself or herself as an attractive
believable personality. The author must try to seem knowledgeable and trustworthy so that the
audience is willing to believe the argument. The second is by employing the logos appeal.
Through this strategy the author appeals to the audience’s logic their reasonableness and their
common sense. If this method works the audience will see the argument as rational and therefore
believable. The third method called pathos appeals to the audience’s emotions and values such as
positive or negative feelings of sympathy solidarity outrage fear love shame or hatred. If the
audience can be made to feel appropriate feelings for the author’s arguments then they will more
readily be persuaded.

Keep in mind: all persuasive texts are ‘manipulative’ in nature. This means that the author is
trying to change your mind about something to encourage you to accept a different point of view.
If you accept someone’s opinion without critically applying your mind you risk being
manipulated. But if you accept the author’s arguments with knowledge and clarity you are not
being manipulated but persuaded.

So when you read the texts in this section pay attention to how you as an audience or reader are
being persuaded by the writer through the use of multiple strategies of argument. As readers you
should be acutely aware of the author’s intentions. Become a reader with critical awareness one
who is not blindly brainwashed into believing anything a writer says. Become a reader who can
be persuaded only after clear-headedly analysing the arguments examples and reasons provided
by the author.

Readings for Section 3

‘Much Madness’

Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) is considered one of the most original 19th century American
poets. She lived in the orthodox environment of Amherst Massachusetts in an equally puritanical
family. She is noted for her unconventional use of language and punctuation (such as her use of
dashes and random capitalization). Her subjects are highly personal and individualistic and her
poems usually challenge the ultra-religious beliefs of her society.

For various emotional and medical reasons Dickinson lived most of her life in the seclusion of
her home. She seldom left her house and was often labeled abnormal anti-social and introverted.
‘Much Madness’ was probably written around 1862 though it was published along with all her
poetry posthumously almost thirty years later in 1890. The poem can be seen as a defense of her
deliberate withdrawal from society and of her unconventional life choices.

************

Much Madness is divinest Sense—

To a discerning Eye—
Much Sense—the starkest Madness—
’Tis the Majority
In this as All prevail—
Assent—and you are sane—
Demur—you ’re straightway dangerous—
And handled with a Chain.

Some terms explained

discerning eye – the ability to understand wisdom

starkest madness – the ultimate insanity
assent – to agree to conform
demur – to express doubt to disagree

Questions

1. According to the poet what would we the readers realize if we had ‘a discerning eye’?
What opposing concepts is she asking her readers to re-consider?
2. The poem invites readers to alter their traditional definitions of madness and sanity. How
does Dickinson challenge their reception of once-familiar concepts by de-familiarising
them?
3. According to Dickinson what does the ‘majority’ believe? How are people treated when
they ‘assent’ and how when they ‘demur’? Why does society react that way?
4. Are there other texts in your course where similar arguments are made by the author? Do
you think Lennon’s ‘dreamer’ would be considered ‘mad’ by his society? Or Chief
Smohalla’s men who will not work?
5. Look at your own political and social environment and identify examples where people
are rewarded for obedience and punished for dissent.
Applications

1. Write a paraphrase of this poem to bring out its meaning.

2. Document this poem. Add a glossary (difficult words and terms paraphrased and
explained) cite this poem (as it is within this book) and cite the book itself (a
bibliographical entry).

From ‘Disability and Poetry: An Exchange’

Jennifer Bartlett John Lee Clark Jim Ferris and Jillian Weise

Jennifer Bartlett (b. 1969) is an American poet writer and disability activist. She has co-edited
Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability (2011) considered a ground-breaking collection
of disability poetry and essays on disability. Her most recent book is Autobiography/Anti-
Autobiography (2014).

John Lee Clark (b. 1978) is a DeafBlind poet essayist and independent scholar from Minnesota.
He has edited two anthologies Deaf American Poetry (2009) and Deaf Lit Extravaganza (2013).
His latest book is a collection of essays called Where I Stand: On the Signing Community and
My DeafBlind Experience (2014).

Jim Ferris (b. 1954) is an American poet performance artist and disability studies scholar. He is
the author of several books on poetry and disability. In 2004 his collection of poems Hospital
Poems was written in memory of his childhood years spent in hospitals. His groundbreaking
essay ‘The Enjambed Body: A Step Toward a Crippled Poetics’ appeared in The Georgia Review
(2004).

Jillian Weise (b. 1981) is a playwright and poet who boldly explores themes like disability and
sexuality as can be seen in her first poetry collection The Amputee’s Guide to Sex (2007). Her
second book of poetry was The Book of Goodbyes (2013) which was awarded the Academy of
American Poets. Her plays have been staged at the New York and Massachusetts theatre
festivals.

The conversation below has been excerpted for the purposes of this book and features these poets
speaking about their work and its relation to their disabilities. They highlight abled people’s lack
of insight when it comes to the artistic lives of the disabled and draw attention to the prejudiced
assumptions made by abled analysts and writers alike about disabled people’s relationship with
beauty and aesthetics.

************

John Lee Clark: When I started writing my problem was that I wasn’t conscious enough. As a
second-generation DeafBlind man who grew up exposed to American Sign Language (ASL)
storytelling and poetry I should have gone straight to those treasuries and looted them for my
English products. I didn’t. This was because I was also exposed to ableism and audism in
English literature. English poets are especially fond of romanticizing and demonizing both
deafness and blindness equating these with silence and darkness—and death.

My gut response was to protest. If for example they waxed poetic about birdsong to emphasize
how terrible it must be to be deaf I would write about how our lives are full of music in motion
and how beautiful ASL is. Later while assembling Deaf American Poetry I was surprised to read
so many Deaf poets writing the same things all the way back to James Nack. In his nifty 1827
poem ‘The Music of Beauty’ the Deaf speaker luxuriating in the visual glories of nature and the
charms of his blue-eyed maid says ‘I pity those who think they pity me.’ He goes so far as to jeer
at hearing people’s ‘marble eyes.’ What a marvelous beginning to Deaf poetry!

Since then though protest has remained the primary mode. Perhaps it’s because Deaf people’s
cultures and languages continue to be marginalized. Protest is a worthy logical response but it
can also be limiting. Instead of the full range of our realities and imaginations we get drawn into
arguments we did not choose for ourselves. For example ‘visual music’ and ‘ASL is beautiful’
are the two most common tropes in Deaf poetry working to counter audist notions of deafness
and muteness meanwhile in real life Deaf people are busy cooking videochatting texting dating
raising families and making transactions not all of them legal. I realized that I needed to write
beyond these arguments not to leave behind our causes or obscure my identity but to claim more
and more space in which we can just be.

Jim Ferris: Disability is dangerous. We represent danger to the normate world and rightly so.
Disabled people live closer to the edge. We are more vulnerable or perhaps it is that we show our
human vulnerability without being able to hide it in the ways that nondisabled people can hide
and deny the vulnerability that is an essential part of being human.

But there is something glorious in being considered so odd so marginal to society. Disability
brings with it a wonderful range of remarkable and powerful vantage points. It is so much easier
to see when you can gain a little distance a little perspective. Some of what we see is peculiar to
disability as suggested in Stephen Kuusisto’s ‘Harvest’ in which the speaker admires ‘the white
moon of the morning / even if my eyes tell me there are two moons.’ But most of what we
perceive isn’t peculiar to disability—it’s peculiar to human life. And that’s what we need to be
writing.

We. I presume I claim an ‘us’ even though there are myriad ways of embodying (and denying)
disability and no two disabled people’s experiences are the same. Disabled people are well
schooled whether impairment is acquired early or late to identify with and aspire to be as much
like nondisabled people as possible.

But if we don’t claim our difference if we don’t write disability the normies will keep doing it for
us. It is crucial that we don’t keep leaving the field to them even when we love them. Even when
they tell us it’s for our own good.

I love John’s desire ‘to claim more and more space in which we can just be.’ And Jennifer’s
point that identities are always complex and variable is crucial. Who ‘we’ are is always shifting.
Is disability or whiteness or maleness most salient in this moment? Or poetness vegetarian-ness
musician-ness or on and on? I don’t demand that poetry or any other art form serve utilitarian
goals however laudable they might be. But I do want poetry including my own to open the world
to pay attention to what is without getting stuck there.

I turn to poetry to help me to think to feel to perceive. I’m not sure if I could write long enough
to list all the poets who have influenced me. But if I can give readers and listeners a little
different way to perceive to feel to make sense of the things we only ever know partially then
perhaps I’m doing a little something worthwhile.

Jillian Weise: I like John’s point: ‘We get drawn into arguments we did not choose for
ourselves.’ Sometimes I feel like I would rather talk about Kathy Acker. But what does the word
‘disability’ mean? Is it useful to me? Can I get some heat from it? I am reminded of what Borges
said to his nephew ‘If you behave I’ll give you permission to think of a bear.’ Most often I think
about disability when I am asked to think about it. Then I feel an obligation to behave.

Yes there is ableism. One able-bodied writer said to me ‘Jillian do you know why we use
disabled speakers?’ Do tell Grandmaster. ‘Because all writers are outsiders and disabled speakers
are the most outsider.’ Noted. But I also hear this kind of thing: another writer once wrote to me
‘I wish your book was not so dominated by disability poems.’ And there’s the trap of ableism:
disability is for able-bodied writers to write because it’s easy for them and they don’t have to
think too hard about it but disabled writers should stay out of it altogether.

And the metaphors. The moon is blind. The sky is deaf. My love is lame. Your death is a
phantom limb. This is a complaint about bad poetry more than ableism. Can we agree that in
2014 disability stereotypes and clichéd metaphors make bad poetry? As Rosemarie Garland-
Thomson writes ‘the always overdetermined metaphoric uses of disability efface and distort the
lived experience of people with disabilities evacuating the political significance of our lives.’ Or
is it too soon to come to this agreement? Will it take time? I hope one day editors reject these
poems.

For the full length version visit:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/70179/disability-and-poetry

Some terms explained

ableism – discrimination in favour of able-bodied people

audism – discrimination in favour of those who can hear negative stigma against
deafness
to romanticize – to describe something as more attractive than it really is
to demonize – to portray something as more evil or threatening than it really is
to wax poetic – to praise using exaggerated language
ASL (American Sign Language) – a system of signing for deaf peopledifferent
countries usually have their own sign languages
to marginalize – to treat a person or group or idea as unimportant and worthless
to limit – to restrict to reduce the power of something
trope – a theme that repeats itself usually in art or culture
to counter – to show disagreement to present an opposing opinion or idea
audist – a person who believes that deaf people are inferior to those who can hear
to obscure – to prevent from being understood to conceal
normate – that which is considered ‘normal’
marginal – less important
vantage point – a physical or mental position that allows the clearest view of a thing or
an idea
myriad – very large numbers a large variety
to embody – to express to represent
well schooled –well educated well trained
impairment – disability
to aspire – to try to achieve
normies – ‘normal’people people without physical disabilities
salient – most noticeable or important
utilitarian – useful or practical rather than attractive
laudable – worthy of praise
to perceive – to understand
obligation – duty something you feel you must do
able-bodied – without physical disability
outsider – a person who does not belong one who is excluded
dominated by – full of excessively influenced by
metaphor – a figure of speech that indirectly compares two thing through images
phantom limb – a sensation experienced by someone who has had a limb amputated
who feels that the limb is still there
stereotype – an oversimplified belief about something
cliché – an overused phrase or opinion
overdetermined – overused unnecessarily repeated
to efface – to erase to ignore
to distort – to misrepresent
to evacuate – to leave empty

Questions

1. According to John Lee Clark how to abled poets usually represent deafness and blindness
in their poetry? What is meant by ‘romanticizing’ and ‘demonizing’?
2. This conversation introduces readers to a few new terms such as ‘ableism’ and ‘audism’.
Why do you think disabled poets are making readers aware of these new concepts?
3. Clark says that deaf poets look for ‘music in motion’. How does ASL (American Sign
Language) provide that music? Watch someone using ASL on the internet to help you see
the grace of those movements.
4. Deaf poets find music in visual beauty. How does this counter the common assumption
that deaf people do not have access to music?
5. Clark feels that by constantly protesting disabled writers get ‘drawn into arguments’ they
did not choose for themselves. What does he mean by that statement?
6. Clark recommends that disabled writers should move beyond protest not in order to leave
it behind but to express the other aspects of their lives. What are those aspects and why
does Clark want disabled authors to shift their focus away from protest?
7. Jim Ferris states ‘Disability is dangerous.’ What does he mean by that statement?
8. Ferris questions his own use of the word ‘we’ to describe disabled people’s view and
feelings. He feels ‘we need to claim our differences.’ Why does he feel that ‘we’ might
be a limiting word? Why does he say ‘who ‘we’ are is always shifting’?
9. Explain the statement ‘if we don’t write disability the normies will keep doing it for us’.
10. Ferris wants readers toreceive disabled poetry by feeling and experiencing differently.
Why do you think he stresses on newness of thoughts and ideas?
11. Jillian Weise points out a contradiction: able-bodies writers are willing to write about
disability but they want disabled writers to avoid a display of disability. Why do you
think this is the case?
12. Weise hopes that one day poems that use clichéd disability metaphors will be rejected as
bad poetry. Why do you think such clichés ‘distort the lived experience of people with
disabilities’?
13. How can able-bodied readers alter their reception of disability based on the ideas
discussed in this conversation?
Applications

1. Write a summary of this conversation so that a reader gets an overview of the main
arguments.
2. Consider the idea of ‘architectural amnesia’ which indicates that most buildings are
constructed in complete disregard for the needs of people with different disabilities. Use
your own observations of the buildings around you to find examples. Then write a letter
to your able-bodied friend drawing her attention to this issue.

The Eyes Have It

Ruskin Bond

I had the train compartment to myself up to Rohana then a girl got in. The couple who saw her
off were probably her parents. They seemed very anxious about her comfort and the woman gave
the girl detailed instructions as to where to keep her things when not to lean out of windows and
how to avoid speaking to strangers.

They called their goodbyes and the train pulled out of the station. As I was totally blind at the
time my eyes sensitive only to light and darkness I was unable to tell what the girl looked like.
But I knew she wore slippers from the way they slapped against her heels.

It would take me some time to discover something about her looks and perhaps I never would.
But I liked the sound of her voice and even the sound of her slippers.

'Are you going all the way to Dehra? I asked.

I must have been sitting in a dark corner because my voice startled her. She gave a little
exclamation and said I didn't know anyone else was here.'

Well it often happens that people with good eyesight fail to see what is right in front of them.
They have too much to take in I suppose. Whereas people who cannot see (or see very little)
have to take in only the essentials whatever registers tellingly on their remaining senses.

I didn't see you either' I said. 'But I heard you come in.'
I wondered if I would be able to prevent her from discovering that I was blind. Provided I keep
to my seat I thought it shouldn't be too difficult. The girl said I am getting off at Saharanpur. My
aunt is meeting me there.'

‘Then I had better not get too familiar’ I replied. 'Aunts are usually formidable creatures.'

'Where are you going?' she asked. 'To Dehra and then to Mussoorie.'

'Oh how lucky you are. I wish I were going to Mussoorie. I love the hills. Especially in October.'

'Yes this is the best time' I said calling on my memories. ‘The hills are covered with wild dahlias
the sun is delicious and at night you can sit in front of a log fire and drink a little brandy. Most of
the tourists have gone and the roads are quiet and almost deserted. Yes October is the best time.'

She was silent. I wondered if my words had touched her or whether she thought me a romantic
fool. Then I made a mistake. 'What is it like outside?' I asked.

She seemed to find nothing strange in the question. Had she noticed already that I could not see?
But her next question removed my doubts. 'Why don't you look out of the window?' she asked.

I moved easily along the berth and felt for the window ledge. The window was open and I faced
it making a pretence of studying the landscape. I heard the panting of the engine the rumble of
the wheels and in my mind's eye I could see telegraph posts flashing by. 'Have you noticed' I
ventured 'that the trees seem to be moving while we seem to be standing still?'

‘That always happens' she said. 'Do you see any animals?'

'No' I answered quite confidently. I knew that there were hardly any animals left in the forests
near Dehra.I turned from the window and faced the girl and for a while we sat in silence.

'You have an interesting face' I remarked. I was becoming quite daring but it was a safe remark.
Few girls can resist flattery. She laughed pleasantly—a clear ringing laugh.

'It's nice to be told I have an interesting face. I'm tired of people telling me I have a pretty
face.'Oh so you do have a pretty face thought I. And aloud I said: 'Well an interesting face can
also be pretty.'

'You are a very gallant young man’ she said. 'But why are you so serious?'
I thought then that I would try to laugh for her but the thought of laughter only made me feel
troubled and lonely. ‘We'll soon be at your station’ I said.

'Thank goodness it's a short journey. I can't bear to sit in a train for more than two or three hours.'

Yet I was prepared to sit there for almost any length of time just to listen to her talking. Her
voice had the sparkle of a mountain stream. As soon as she left the train she would forget our
brief encounter. But it would stay with me for the rest of the journey and for some time after.

The engine's whistle shrieked the carriage wheels changed their sound and rhythm the girl got up
and began to collect her things. I wondered if she wore her hair in a bun or if it was plaited.
Perhaps it was hanging loose over her shoulders. Or was it cut very short?

The train drew slowly into the station. Outside there was the shouting of porters and vendors and
a high-pitched female voice near the carriage door. That voice must have belonged to the girl's
aunt.

'Goodbye’ the girl said.

She was standing very close to me. So close that the perfume from her hair was tantalizing. I
wanted to raise my hand and touch her hair but she moved away. Only the scent of perfume still
lingered where she had stood.

There was some confusion in the doorway. A man getting into the compartment stammered an
apology. Then the door banged and the world was shut out again. I returned to my berth. The
guard blew his whistle and we moved off. Once again I had a game to play and a new fellow
traveller.

The train gathered speed the wheels took up their song the carriage groaned and shook. I found
the window and sat in front of it staring into the daylight that was darkness for me.So many
things were happening outside the window. It could be a fascinating game guessing what went
on out there.

The man who had entered the compartment broke into my reverie.

'You must be disappointed’ he said. 'I'm not nearly as attractive a travelling companion as the
one who just left.'

'She was an interesting girl’ I said. 'Can you tell me—did she keep her hair long or short?'
'I don't remember’ he said sounding puzzled. 'It was her eyes I noticed not her hair. She had
beautiful eyes but they were of no use to her. She was completely blind. Didn't you notice?

Questions

1. How does the blind author gather information about the girl’s physical appearance?
Which ‘remaining senses’ does he use?
2. What are the strategies Bond uses to conceal his blindness from the girl? Do those
strategies seem to work?
3. Notice that we as readers know only as much as Bond does. Since the story is written by
a blind person we too are lacking visual information about the girl. Is the author’s ‘blind’
account adequate for abled readers? Are we able to imagine the girl through non-visual
senses? What does that tell us about our assumptions about blindness?
4. The revelation at the end that the girl was blind too clearly takes the writer (and the
reader) by surprise. Why do you think he fails to notice the girl’s blindness?
5. In this story Bond seems to be focusing on physical blindness. Does he also draw
attention to other kinds of blindness? If so how so?
6. If we consider that blindness can be a state of mind how does that realization help us
reconsider our beliefs about disability?

Application

Undertake a close reading of the story and make a list of all vocabulary and imagery that
involves non-visual descriptions.

SECTION 4 – EVALUATION

The previous sections discussed the various ways in which to interpret an argument: by
examining the features of the text by analysing the positions and biases of the author by
studying the persuasive strategies used by the author and by being critically aware of our own
beliefs and predispositions.

In this section we will see how we as readers can employ all these interpretive skills to determine
the central purpose of the text. We introduce you to an important word: thesis. Every argument
has a thesis or a theory. We can go back to Aristotle and the ancient Greeks who formulated the
importance of a thesis in all arguments. The thesis is a statement of purpose. This statement can
be found clearly stated early on in the text (in the case of prose writing such as articles essays or
opinion pieces) or may be inferred as an implied statement (in the case of poetry or fictional texts
like short stories and novels) answering the question: What am I going to prove in this text?
What do I believe? What do I want you to recognize by the end of my text?

You must assume that each piece of communication each text seeks to persuade its audience. For
example if I write an article on child labour my purpose is to convince you of my opinions on the
subject. If I write a poem about the beauty of the Bengal landscape I want my readers to feel the
way I do about Bengal. If I write a short story on the devastation of the World War II I intend
that my audience should react to my views with sympathy and agreement.

Ultimately you as a reader are analysing the text in order to determine the following: What is the
writer’s thesis (whether stated or implied)? What strategies does the writer use to convince us of
the validity of the thesis?

Readings for Section 4

Ain’t I a Woman?

Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth (born Isabella (Belle) Baumfree 1797-1883) was born into slavery in upstate
New York and was the youngest child of James and Elizabeth Baumfree. Like most enslaved
people her family was broken up several times when she and her siblings were repeatedly sold.
In 1826 when she was around thirty years old she escaped to freedom with her infant daughter
Sophie. A year later she filed a case to free her son Peter who had been sold in Alabama. She
won the case and Peter was returned to her.

In her forties she renamed herself Sojourner Truth because she felt it was her calling to travel
and tell her story. She became an activist for abolition and women’s rights and continued doing
so until her death. This ex-slave and fighter for women's rights and the abolition of slavery was
well known as an articulate orator.
‘Ain’t I a Woman’ is Truth’s most famous speech delivered in 1851 at the Women's Rights
Convention in Akron Ohio. Because the speech was never formally writtenseveral versions exist
as people related it from memory. The following is an eye-witness account by Frances Gage an
abolitionist and president of the Convention who wrote the account in 1863. ‘Ain't I a Woman?’
made a great impact at the Convention and has become a classic expression of women's rights.

************

Several ministers attended the second day of the Woman's Rights Convention and were not shy
in voicing their opinion of man's superiority over women. One claimed ‘superior intellect’ one
spoke of the ‘manhood of Christ’ and still another referred to the ‘sin of our first mother’.
Suddenly Sojourner Truth rose from her seat in the corner of the church. ‘For God's sake Mrs.
Gage don’t let her speak!’ half a dozen women whispered loudly fearing that their cause would
be mixed up with Abolition.

Sojourner walked to the podium and slowly took off her sunbonnet. Her six-foot frame towered
over the audience. She began to speak in her deep resonant voice:

‘Well children where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think
between the Negroes of the South and the women of the North – all talking about rights – the
white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this talking about?’

Sojourner pointed to one of the ministers. ‘That man over there says that women need to be
helped into carriages and lifted over ditches and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever
helps me into carriages or over mud-puddles or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman?’

Sojourner raised herself to her full height. ‘Look at me! Look at my arm.’ She bared her right
arm and flexed her powerful muscles. ‘I have plowed I have planted and I have gathered into
barns. And no man could head me. And ain't I a woman?’

‘I could work as much and eat as much as man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well!
And ain't I a woman? I have borne children and seen most of them sold into slavery and when I
cried out with a mother's grief none but Jesus heard me. And ain't I a woman?’ The women in
the audience began to cheer wildly.

‘She pointed to another minister. ‘He talks about this thing in the head. What's that they call it?’
‘Intellect’ whispered a woman nearby.
‘That's it honey. What’s intellect got to do with women's rights or black folks’ rights? If my cup
won't hold but a pint and yours holds a quart wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have my little
half-measure full?

‘That little man in black there! He says women can't have as much rights as men ’cause Christ
wasn't a woman.’ She stood with outstretched arms and eyes of fire. ‘Where did your Christ
come from? Where did your Christ come from?’ she thundered again. ‘From God and a
Woman! Man had nothing to do with him!’

The entire church now roared with deafening applause.

‘If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone
these women together ought to be able to turn it back and get it right-side up again. And now that
they are asking to do it the men better let them.

‘Obliged to you for hearing me and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say.’

Questions
1. What is the central argument of the speech? What is Truth trying to prove here? Can you
express Truth’s thesis in two or three sentences?
2. Why does Truth repeat the phrase ‘ain’t I a woman’ so many times? Why does she think
people might have difficulty considering her a woman? How does her physical
appearance add value and effectiveness to her argument?
3. Note that although Truth is speaking at a woman’s rights convention her audience is not
necessarily made up of friendly supporters. Who among the audience would be
considered hostile to her presence and her words and why?
4. Why do you think Truth addresses the skeptical members of the audience directly? How
would you evaluate her strategy of singling out her most difficult listeners? Does this tell
you something about her argumentative techniques?
5. How does traditional society define the term ‘woman’? What characteristics are
associated with the word?
6. How does Truth’s background as a black woman and an ex-slave help her make her
point?
7. How would you evaluate the success of Truth’s speech? Would it be by speculating on
how many minds she may have changed? Could it be valued simply as a morale-raising
speech in a meeting for women’s rights?
Applications

1. Write an essay interpreting the verbal and non-verbal ways in which public
speakerscommunicate with their audiences. Consider politicians TV anchors religious
preachers teachers etc. How do such communicators use repetition humour and gesture to
make their arguments?
2. Write a simpler version of this speech (a paraphrase in modern English) in order to
facilitate comprehension for readers who may find the American colloquialisms difficult
to understand.

Imagine

John Lennon

John Lennon (1940-1980) was a British singer songwriter and pacifist remembered as the co-
founder of the rock-and-roll band The Beatles which achieved worldwide fame in the 1960s. The
mid-sixties and early seventies in Britain were full of social turmoil and political upheaval and
the music of the Beatles often critiqued what young people saw as the materialism and greed of
mainstream society.

‘Imagine’ is one of Lennon’s most famous songs and also rated by British and American music
magazines and analysts as one of the best songs ever written. In the song the poet attempts to
move his audience away from the ugliness of their socio-political environment into an imaginary
world where all social problemsare miraculously erased.

******************

Imagine there's no heaven

It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one.

Note:

‘Utopia’ is an imaginary ideal world where common social and political problems do not exist.
Utopic texts (poems stories plays or songs) picture a world far removed from the real
environment of the author and the audience. This song imagines one such world.

Questions
1. In describing various kinds of worlds why does the poet use the word ‘imagine’? Why
doesn’t he ask his audience to ‘describe’ such worlds?
2. There are three things the poet asks the reader to imagine. What are those things?
3. When Lennon asks us to imagine a world without heaven or hell which major social
belief is he questioning? Can you think of words in your native languages that have the
same meanings as ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’?
4. Why does the poet want a world without countries? What are the negative impacts of
boundaries in our present world? Why does he feel that peace is not possible in a world
with countries?
5. Why does the poet feel that he will be perceived as a ‘dreamer’? What are the
implications of the word? How is dreaming unsuitable in the ‘real’ world?
6. The word ‘utopia’ refers to an ideal perfect state or place. How is this a utopian poem?
7. Why do you think Lennon chose to write a utopic song? In what social circumstances
might a utopic text be useful or meaningful? By evaluating this utopic world how does
Lennon implicitly invite his audience to evaluate the ‘real’ present world?

Application

Write an open letter to the prime minister (to be published in a newspaper) describing
your vision for an ideal society. Focus on the eradication of problems that are pertinent to
your society such as poverty corruption pollution and crime (including crimes against
women).

Girls

Mrinal Pande

Mrinal Pande (b. 1946) is an Indian television personality journalist and author and till recently
chief editor of the Hindi daily Hindustan. She left Hindustan in 2009 and was appointed the
following year chairperson of Prasar Bharati the apex body of the official Indian Broadcast
Media a post she occupied until 2014. She also hosts a weekly interview show titled
'BaatonBaaton Mein' on Lok Sabha TV. Earlier she worked for Doordarshan and Star News. She
has also written a few short stories and was the editor of the popular women's
magazine Vama from 1984-87.

‘Girls’ (published in Hindi Dharmyugmagazine in 1983 and translated into English for
Manushithe same year)describes the psychological influence of patriarchy on women from a
very young age when they constantly hear conversations about their being unwanted and being
considered burdens. Although the protagonist of the story is a lively imaginative and
mischievous eight-year-old girl the plight of women of all ages is reflected here including the
nani the maasi the mami and the protagonist’s older sister.

************
The day we left with Ma for Nani's house Babu broke a surahi. I don't know whether he did it on
purpose or by accident but anyway the floor was flooded with water. Ma held up her sari and
called Saru's mother—who was trying to eavesdrop from the adjacent room—to mop up the
water because if someone were to slip and break the bones it would be yet another problem. To
Ma everything in life was a problem. As far as she was concerned whether we were at home or at
school ill or just playing around we were a problem. While mopping the floor Saru's mother
looked up at Ma and asked ‘This time you'll be away for at least three months won't you?’ Ma
squatted down and said ‘Yes they won't allow me to come back sooner.’ She turned to me and
ordered me to go out and play. I always seemed to turn up at the wrong time and at the wrong
place. As I was leaving the room I managed to pick up a piece of the broken surahi which I
enjoyed sucking and I overheard Ma addressing either Saru's mother or the cobwebs hanging
from the roof: ‘I hope it's a boy this time. It will relieve me of the nuisance of going through
another pregnancy.’ I could just imagine Saru's mother in her usual manner shaking her head and
saying ‘Why not?... Why not?...’

When we reached the station I scrambled on to the train fought my way through people and
luggage and secured a place next to the window. Triumphantly I stuck my tongue out at
everyone and went ‘Eee…eee.’ But when I noticed Ma's gaze turning towards me I immediately
started chanting the alphabet ‘Eee for Imli Ee for Eekh.’ Ma was actually not looking at me
though because she was preoccupied with all her problems. She had to mind the luggage the
wobbling surahi the three of us and cope with the exhaustion of pregnancy as well. At one of the
stations we bought a lot of samosas filled with chillies. Just when we were buying them a woman
was making her child urinate through the next window. The sight made me feel quite nauseous
and I couldn't eat my samosa so I gave it to Ma instead. Meanwhile I crushed a piece of potato
which was lying on the seat into the shape of an insect to frighten my younger sister. She
screamed Ma smacked me and I started to cry as well. My elder sister was irritated and said ‘Oh
what a nuisance you are!’ Despite her irritation I knew that it was only my elder sister who really
loved me everyone else was horrible.

Mama was waiting to receive us at the station. On the way to Nani's I sat next to Mami and
noticed the rubies in her ear lobes bobbing up and down while she chewed paan. Everytime the
driver pressed the jeep's horn my sisters and I would scream in unison ‘Poo...poo.’ The driver
was amused at our screaming and when we reached the house he lifted me and my younger sister
out of the jeep. He had a huge moustache which smelt of tea and bidis and wore a uniform made
of coarse wool which tickled me and made me feel sleepy. When thesurahi was lifted out of the
jeep it overturned and once again there was water everywhere. This incident reminded me so
much of Babu that absent-mindedly I trod hard on my younger sister's sandal nearly tripping her
up. ‘You are the cause of all my problems!’ Ma hissed at me through tightly clenched teeth so
that no one could hear. She then grabbed hold of my arm as if to prevent me from falling over
but actually pressed it so hard that my shoulder hurt.
I thought of Babu because whenever we came to Nani's house he never accompanied us. And as
soon as we arrived Ma would be lost in the company of Masis Mamis Nani and old
maidservants. If you tried going near her during the day someone or other would say ‘Let the
poor thing have some rest at least while she is here.’ Ma too would put on a pathetic act as if we
always harassed her at home. I felt disgusted at the thought of entering Nani's house so I
deliberately loitered near the bushes. Then I heard someone mentioning my name inside the
house and saying ‘Now where has she disappeared?’

I entered the house along with the dogand saw Nani sitting with Mama's son on her lap. As soon
as she saw the dog she shooed it away because to her all animals were as untouchables. The dog
used to being reprimanded tucked its tail between its legs and went out. I was told to bend down
and touch Nani's feet. Someone from the familysaid ‘Not like that...bend properly. You are born
a girl and you will have to bend for the rest of your life so you might as well learn.’ Nani blessed
me by waving her hand over my bowed back and said ‘This girl hasn't grown taller. Who would
believe she is eight years old?’

‘Oh what a nuisance this is’ Ma kept complaining. The old lady from the neighbourhood who
had come to see Ma told Nani ‘This time Lali will definitely have a boy. Just look at her
complexion—when she was expecting the girls it was pink but now it has a tinge of yellow. I am
sure it will be a boy this time.’

‘Who knows perhaps even this time...’ moaned Ma as she put on a pathetic expression and began
paring her nails.

‘Is there anyone to cook for your husband?’ asked the old lady. Her question set me thinking
about Babu how good he smelt and the softness of his lap. And how when we came here Ma did
not allow us to lie in her lap for too long and complained ‘Ugh! Oh! My bones are aching my
sari is all crushed. Get up now. I have such a lot of work to do and to top it all there is this huge
nuisance. Come on get up.’

Nani folded her hands and prayed: ‘Oh Goddess protect my honour! At least this time let her
take a son back from her parents' home’. At the end of her prayer she dried her tears with her
pallav.

From the corner of my eyes I could see that my sisters were fast asleep. All the lights had been
switched off and the room was flooded with moonlight. Tulsa Dai was applying oil to the soles
of Ma's feet and saying ‘If it's a boy this time I will demand a sari with stainless steel zari.’
‘If I have a boy this time then I will be relieved of this burden forever’ she tells Tulsa Dai and
then adds ‘You can go home now your children must be waiting for you. Be sure you put the oil
vessel under the bed otherwise one of these kids will kick it over in the morning....’ Ah a bad
omen. Whenever Ma left a sentence unfinished it seemed to loom in the air like the ticking of the
clock. I wonder why grown-ups always complete their sentences when they are talking about
pleasant things but always leave them unfinished if it is something unpleasant. Like ‘Ah a
woman's fate....’ Or ‘Oh three girls....’ There's always a silence after these half statements.

There's a bright star in the sky. Is that the Dhruva star? Babu used to say that if I worked hard I
could become anything I wanted just as Dhruva became a star. ‘But I can't become a boy can I?’
I once asked obstinately. I was surprised at Babu's reaction when he put on a serious look and
said sternly ‘Don't argue with your elders now.’ I find it difficult to understand them. My elder
sister says one should never trust grownups because if they want to know something they will
prise it out of you by hook or by crook but they themselves will never tell you a thing.

It's true nobody ever tells us anything. In this place it's when we go to sleep that the world of the
elders awakens opening like a magic casket. I want to stay awake and listen I don't know why I
fall asleep halfway through. I wonder whose voice it is now it seems as if someone is crying in
suppressed tones. Is it ChottiMasi? ‘I don't get as much respect as a dog does in that house’ she
tells Ma. I wonder where she is treated worse than a dog then I hear Ma telling her ‘All of us
suffer like that one just has to endure it.’ My eyes shut and I fall asleep.

The next morning when everyone is having breakfast I ask Ma what ‘endure’ means. I remind
her by asking what does ChottiMasi have to endure? I get one tight slap then another but before
Ma strikes me again Mami saves me and says ‘Let it be. She is only a child after all.’‘She is no
child she is a witch’ says Ma as her stomach wobbles in anger. ‘She's always listening on the sly
to elders talking. Heaven knows what will become of her.’

When I go into the garden my elder sister throws the flowers she has gathered at me. ‘Oh...you! I
have told you a hundred times not to question grown-ups. If you keep on like this one day these
people will beat you so hard you will die.’‘I will ask questions. I will. I will’ I answer crying.
‘Then go and die’ says my elder sister and continues to thread a garland for Nani's Gopalji. Nani
stands by her and says loudly ‘You are my precious Lakshmi’ with the intention that I should
hear. In the afternoons I tell the younger children horror stories of ghosts and demons who lived
in the walnut tree. I tell them that if they should wake up at twelve o'clock on a full-moon night
they would see children being bathed in blood. They would also hear the ghosts speaking
through their noses which at first is difficult to follow. The children follow me all over the house
like mice following the Pied Piper.
‘Move aside’ says Hari's mother who is carrying a tray laden with glasses of tea into the room.
‘Move. This is not for you it's for the grown-ups. Move out of myway.’Hari's mother's nose is
like a frog's and her eyebrows meet above her nose. Whenever she laughs her cheeks hang loose
like bats. ‘Do move aside’ she says to me again. ‘I won't’ I say and try to block her way. ‘I'll
only move if you say girls are nice.’‘All right all right I have said it so now move out of the way’
says Hari's mother. ‘No’ I persist ‘say it properly.’

‘Oh Hari's Ma what's happening?’ asked Maasi irritably from the room. ‘Are you going to bring
the tea next year or what?’ Hari’s mother knits her thick eyebrows together and says ‘This Lali's
middle daughter won't let me....’ She starts laughing and as she does so her frog-like nose bobs
up and down. I can hear Ma naming me and saying ‘That girl must be harassing her. She was
born only to plague my life.’ Someone in the room advises her that she should not get angry in
her condition.

For a long time I sit outside the house watching the birds flying and wishing that I had been born
a bird. ‘Do mother birds too think their girl birds are inferior?’ I wonder. Then I hear a voice
calling ‘Where has she gone?’ and I know someone is searching for me. I hide behind the wall
where no one can ever find me. I wish that somewhere anywhere I could find that magic betel
nut which would make me invisible as soon as I put it in my mouth. What wonderful fun that
would be!

‘Where are you? Girls?’ calls Nani with a tray of crimson powder in her hands. In front of her
there is a dish of halwa and a plate filled with puris she has prepared as offerings to the Devi on
Ashtami day. A mat has been spread in front of her for us to sit on. ‘Come on girls let me put the
teeka on your foreheads.’ She lights the camphor for aarti. ‘Come now let me do aarti to all of
you.’ My two sisters and Maama's beautiful daughters sit cross-legged in front of Nani. She puts
a teeka on each forehead and then rings a bell. Exactly like the guard on the train. After the bell
rings she blows the conch. ‘Poo...ooo’. I am suddenly transformed into a railway engine and race
around the ledge of the courtyard. I shout ‘Come on pay your fares to go to Calcutta. Poo...ooo.’

In the background I hear Nani saying ‘Come on dear let me put the teeka on you. You are my
Kanyakumari aren't you?’

‘No’ I retort ‘I am an engine.’ Mami's son claps his hands with excitement and says ‘Oh an
engine an engine!’

Suddenly I see Ma waddling towards me with a clenched fist and my stomach grows tight with
fear. Her face is filled with rage. ‘I'll make an engine out of you this very minute.’
The elderly neighbour intervenes catches hold of Ma’s hand and says ‘Have you gone mad Lali?’
She signals to me to obey and adds ‘She's after all a child a Kanyakumari. Today is Ashtami the
Devi's day you mustn't hit a Kanyakumari it is a sin.’

I jump down from the ledge with a thud and see Nani serving the other girls halwa-puri with the
tightly clenched mouth.

‘Go on. Take the prasad from Nani. Why do you make your mother cry when she is in this
condition?’Masi asked me irritably.

‘When you people don't love girls why do you pretend to worship them?’ My voice breaks into a
sob and I feel so furious with myself that I want to swallow the burning camphor to choke my
treacherous throat. I want to ask ‘Why’ again but don't risk it because I am afraid I will start to
cry. I don't want to cry in front of them.

Hari's mother addresses the wall saying ‘Just listen to her. What a temper for a girl to show!’

Nani is distributing a rupee and a quarter to each girl. I notice the mark of the crimson powder on
the tip of her thumb like a bloodstain.

I start moving back towards the wall and screaming ‘I don't want all the halwa-puri teeka or
money. I don't want to be a goddess.’ I screamed so loudly that the pigeons pecking at the
scattered grain in the courtyard took off in a flurry as if a bullet had been fired somewhere.

Questions

1. The young protagonist of the story is always getting into trouble with her mother. What
are the different kinds of things that get her scolded and beaten through the story? Is she
sometimes at fault?
2. Why does Mrinal Pande use such a young girl as her storyteller? Would the central idea
of this story the critique of the desire for a male child be more effectively narrated by one
of the older women? What are the uses of seeing the world through the eyes of a child?
3. What is the girl’s relationship with her father? Is it her father who allows her to think
independently and to ask questions that her sister tells her she will get beaten for?
4. How do we evaluate a story that is told humourouslybut ends with this penultimate line:
‘Nani is distributing a rupee and a quarter to each girl. I notice the mark of the crimson
powder on the tip of her thumb like bloodstain’?
5. Evaluate the last line of the story. What is the significance of the sound of pigeon wings
being compared to the sound of a bullet?
Applications

1. Write a public speech on female infanticide.

2. Since this story was first written in Hindi what comprehension problems would a non-
Hindi speaking reader face while reading it in English? How could a good translation
bridge the communication gap? Focus on words and phrases that are difficult to translate.

SECTION 5 – ANALYSIS

So far you have studied the various ways in which a writer presents an opinion and argument or a
point of view. You have also looked at the levels at which you as the reader/audience can
critically read the text. This section will draw your attention to a vital task that is performed by
all students and researchers in all academic disciplines. This task is that of writing.

As students we are required to demonstrate our understanding of texts through the written word
in assignments presentations tests and examination papers. No matter with what smartness and
sophistication you have analysed texts you need to convert that knowledge into essays for your
teachers peers and examiners to evaluate. In this case you are the author writing what is called a
‘rhetorical analysis’ of the texts in your course. It is this rhetorical analysis that the examiner will
evaluate and grade.

How do you begin a rhetorical analysis essay? You will start with an introduction explaining the
historical social and cultural context of the text in question. When was the text written by whom
and for whom? Next you will state your argument. What aspect of the text is this essay (your
essay) about to examine? What is your thesis about the text? Thus your thesis will appear at the
end of your introduction. Remember just as you search for other writer’s theses at the beginning
of their texts you too must announce your thesis at the end of the very first paragraph of your
essay.

Once you have done so what remains is for you to use intelligent and logical paragraphing to
present at least three different aspects of analysis. Use all the interpretive skills we discussed in
earlier parts of this book. Remember just as you expect other writers to furnish evidence of their
findings so too in your rhetorical analysis your readers/examiners expect you to prove your
points through definitions examples comparisons and logical and reliable arguments.

Once you have substantiated your claims write a brief conclusion to wind up the argument and to
suggest elements for further investigation and study.
When you look at the texts in this section think also about how you might write a rhetorical
analysis on them where you are the writer the examiner is your audience and your subject is the
thorough analysis of the text.

Readings for Section 5

Bosom Friend

Hira Bansode

Hira Bansode (b. 1939) one of the best-known woman Dalit poets in Marathi brought a feminist
slant to Dalit poetry. Born into a Mahar family a Kamble in a village of Pune district she moved
to Mumbai as a child when her father became a municipal worker. She studied up to the ninth
standard before being married at the age of 14. Encouraged by her husband and father-in-law she
completed her S. S. C. and then began working as a railway clerk a jobshe still holds. It took
thirteen years of endeavor for her to take the B.A. and M.A. in Marathi.

‘Bosom Friend’ is one of her most famous poems. The ironic title of the poem points to the
hypocrisy of Indian society in its treatment of issues of caste. The poem recalls the centuries of
caste oppression that forms the history of India.

************

Today you came over to dinner for the first time

You not only came you forgot your caste and came
Usually women don’t forget that tradition of inequality
But you came with a mind large as the sky to my pocket size house
I thought you had ripped all those caste things
You came bridging that chasm that divides us
Truly friend I was really happy
With the naïve devotion of Shabari I arranged the food on your plate
But the moment you looked at the plate your face changed
With a smirk you said Oh My – Do you serve chutnykoshambir this way?
You still don’t know how to serve food
Truly you folk will never improve.

I was ashamed really ashamed

My hand which had just touched the sky was knocked down
I was silent
Toward the end of the meal you asked
What’s this? Don’t you serve buttermilk or yoghurt with the last course of
rice?
Oh My Dear we can’t do without that…
The last bit of my courage fell away like a falling star
I was sad then numb
But the next moment I came back to life
A stone dropped in the water stirs up things on the bottom
So my memories swam up in my mind
Dear Friend – You ask about buttermilk and yoghurt
What/How shall I tell you?

You know in my childhood we didn’t even have milk for tea much less
yoghurt or buttermilk
My mother cooked on sawdust she brought from the lumberyard wiping
away the smoke from her eyes
Every once in a while we might get garlic chutny on coarse bread
Otherwise we just ate bread crumbled in water
Dear Friend – Shrikhand was not even a word in our vocabulary
My nose had never smelled the fragrance of ghee
My tongue had never tasted halva basundi
Dear Friend – You have not discarded your tradition
Its roots go deep in your mind
And that’s true true true
Friend – There’s yoghurt on the last course of rice
Today the arrangement of food on your plate was not properly ordered
Are you going to tell me what mistakes I made?
Are you going to tell me my mistakes?

1. What does the gratitude and happiness of the protagonist of the poem tell us about the
reality of her relationship with her ‘bosom friend’? Why is she so happy?
2. The protagonist describes her emotions as moving from happiness to shame then to
numbness and finally to coming ‘back to life’. How can we analyze this journey of
emotions as the journey from submission to resistance?
3. How does Hira Bansode use different kinds of food and their preparation to discuss caste
discrimination? Why does she narrate her past through food to bring out her family’s
deprivation?
4. Analyse the conclusion of the poem: ‘Are you going to tell me what mistakes I made? /
Are you going to tell me my mistakes?’ How do the last lines turn the tables on the guest
showing her as the mistake-maker rather than the protagonist? Discuss the strategy
Bansode uses to focus the reader's attention on the historic oppression of Dalits.
Application

Write a report on caste in present day Indian society. Explain the background of the caste
system analyse problems that result from the system and suggest solutions. To do so
design a three-fold argument (thesis). What evidence would you use in support of your
argument? And finally what would be your conclusion?

An Enabling Garment

Mukul Kesavan

Mukul Kesavan (b. 1957) is an Indian historian novelist and political and social essayist. His first
novel Looking Through Glass (1994) was recognized internationally as have his shorter pieces of
writing over the years.In 2014 The New Republic included his Homeless on Google Earth in its
list of the year's best books describing Kesavan as ‘[a] novelist and essayist a historian and poet a
social commentator and public intellectual [who] commands an enviable following in the
Anglophone world beyond America and Britain’. He teaches social history at Jamia Millia
Islamia in Delhi.

This article was written for The Telegraph(Calcutta) in 2006 in which he counters British
politician Jack Straw’s analysis of the veil. His views are informed by his first-hand experience
teaching mostly Muslim women at Jamia. The article has been abridged for the purposes of this
book.

************

Britain's former foreign secretary Jack Straw wrote an article in the Lancashire Telegraph a local
newspaper that circulates in his parliamentary constituency describing his difficulty in
communicating with Muslim constituents who met him with their faces veiled. He wrote that he
often requested them to unveil themselves (always in the presence of another woman) so that he
could read their expressions as they conversed because the point of two people meeting (as
opposed to talking over the phone) was so that they could be literally face-to-face.

I teach in Jamia Millia Islamia a university in Delhi. Jamia was founded and nurtured by a
remarkable group of Muslims in the early 20th century: Maulana Mohammad Ali Professor
Muhammad Mujeeb and Dr Zakir Hussain. Given its history Muslims make up a much larger
proportion of its student body and faculty than is usual in Indian universities. In some of my
classes the attendance register lists more Muslims than non-Muslims. In the fifteen years I've
taught there one or two of these Muslim students have worn the burqa the enveloping black
garment that generally (though not always) veils the wearer's face. …

As a young lecturer I thought I might have some trouble connecting a veiled student's name with
her face because it wasn't on view but the opposite was true. There were no more than one or two
burqa-ed girls in any class and their conspicuousness was a kind of cue. Telling them apart
wasn't an issue either: every lecturer learns that there are only two sorts of students: animated
ones on the verge of asking a question and sleepwalkers a breath away from snoring. Veiled
students I discovered weren't quieter than the unveiled ones just more covered up.

Did I have a view on the burqa? Yes I did. I thought it was a traditionalist hold-over something
that represented the seclusion of women that would be less and less commonly worn as women
entered the public world. Since the overwhelming majority of women in Jamia both students and
teachers didn't wear the burqa I assumed it was vestigial. I thought the burqa was an extreme
version of other forms of veiling that I had encountered within my (Hindu) family: I had aunts
and cousins on my mother's side of the family who lived in Chandni Chowk and used the anchal
of their saris their ghoongats to cover their faces in the presence of fathers-in-law and other
strange men…. None of the girls in my extended family deploy their ghoonghats like their
mothers did and over the years I've seen a secular decline in the incidence of burqas in Jamia….

Jack Straw is entitled to feel uneasy about the niqab and in a free society he is within his rights to
publish his feelings. But he is unwise to request his constituents to remove their veils…he makes
a mistake in assuming that the burqa is uniquely disruptive of human contact. It's much harder
conversing with someone wearing dark glasses. Where Jack Straw needs lips and noses to look at
I need eyes and I find it irritating even offensive when people don't do me the courtesy of
shedding their goggles through a long conversation. But I don't ask them to take them off neither
I imagine does Jack Straw.

Obstacles to face-to-face conversations depend on what you're used to and therefore comfortable
with. Straw is probably undistracted by tiny skirts and plunging necklines but it might be harder
for an Asian MP accustomed to more covered-up women to concentrate on a constituent's
problems if her every move revealed (in his prudish mind) inches of intimate skin….

But Straw in his column isn't opposed to the burqa only because it obscures a woman's face he
wants women to discard it because he is concerned that ‘..wearing the full veil was bound to
make better positive relations between the two communities more difficult. It was such a visible
statement of separation and of difference.’

That's a large statement and it tells us more about Straw and possibly the English attitude
towards difference than it does about the burqa as an alienating symbol. I went to a Jesuit school
in Delhi and I remember as a child being astonished by the cassocks the padres wore. Men in
authority wearing maxis: it was very odd and ungendered and had Straw been a classmate he
might have described the cassock as a visible statement of separation and of difference even an
obstacle to better positive relations between two communities. But as Indians we grow up
surrounded by such ripely different sorts of people that after our initial bewilderment my
classmates and I decided that padres came with cassocks attached. Our acceptance of difference
was so complete that when we met padres in trousers they seemed forked and lewd.

…Goodwill in the face of perceived difference is the responsibility of the beholder. A burqa is
no more a statement of separation than a mini-skirt is an invitation to familiarity. The next time
he walks into his surgery or settles down to blog Jack Straw might remember that.

Questions

1. According to the author what are Jack Straw’s objections to the veil?
2. The author discusses the reasons why communicating with veiled women in his classes is
not difficult. How does this passage challenge Jack Straw’s position?
3. What is the author’s opinion on the use of the burqa?
4. While discussing his views on the burqa the author refers to the use of the ghoongat by
Hindu women. What do you think is his intention in drawing this comparison? What
prejudices and assumptions in his readers might he be targeting through this argument?
5. Why do you think the author discusses the clothing of the Jesuit padres in his school?
What connection does the author want the reader to make between padres wearing
cassocks western women wearing skirts and Muslim women wearing burqas?

Application

The following statement appears at the end of this article: ‘Goodwill in the face of
perceived difference is the responsibility of the beholder.’ Assuming that all the
arguments in this article are leading to this one statement analyse the statement referring
to the rest of the article for arguments reasons and examples. What are the barriers to
inter-cultural communication? What are the strategies for bridging communication gaps?

The Story of An Hour

Kate Chopin

Kate Chopin (1850-1904) is considered one of the first feminist authors of the twentieth century.
She is often credited for introducing the modern feminist literary movement. Chopin was
following a rather conventional path as a housewife until an unfortunate tragedy—the untimely
death of her husband—altered the course of her life. She became a talented and prolific short
story writer.

‘The Story of an Hour’ (1894) is seen as a pioneering modern feminist short story one that plays
a role in launching modern feminist literature in America. The reader should note the
relationship of the leading figure in that story to the circumstances of Chopin’s own life where
the death of her own husband started a process that would ultimately push her beyond the roles
of wife and mother of six to the life of an artist. ‘The Story of an Hour’ makes the reader analyze
and challenge conventional roles for women through the twists and turns in the narration of
events that take place in the short period of one hour.

************

Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble great care was taken to break to her
as gently as possible the news of her husband's death.

It was her sister Josephine who told her in broken sentences veiled hints that revealed in half
concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there too near her. It was he who had been in the
newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received with Brently Mallard’s
name leading the list of ‘killed.’ He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a
second telegram and had hastened to forestall any less careful less tender friend in bearing the
sad message.

She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same with a paralyzed inability to
accept its significance. She wept at once with sudden wild abandonment in her sister's arms.
When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no
one follow her.

There stood facing the open window a comfortable roomy armchair. Into this she sank pressed
down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.

She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the
new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was
crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly and
countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.

There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled
one above the other in the west facing her window.

She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair quite motionless except when a
sob came up into her throat and shook her as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob
in its dreams.

She was young with a fair calm face whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength.
But now there was a dull stare in her eyes whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those
patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection but rather indicated a suspension of
intelligent thought.
There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it fearfully. What was it? She did
not know it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it creeping out of the sky reaching
toward her through the sounds the scents the color that filled the air.

Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was
approaching to possess her and she was striving to beat it back with her will--as powerless as her
two white slender hands would have been. When she abandoned herself a little whispered word
escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under the breath: ‘free free free!’ The
vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and
bright. Her pulses beat fast and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.

She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted
perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. She knew that she would weep again
when she saw the kind tender hands folded in death the face that had never looked save with love
upon her fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of
years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to
them in welcome.

There would be no one to live for during those coming years she would live for herself. There
would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women
believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a
cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of
illumination.

And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love
the unsolved mystery count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly
recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!

‘Free! Body and soul free!’ she kept whispering.

Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhole imploring for
admission. ‘Louise open the door! I beg open the door--you will make yourself ill. What are you
doing Louise? For heaven's sake open the door.’

‘Go away. I am not making myself ill.’ No she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that
open window.

Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days and summer days and all
sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was
only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.

She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a feverish
triumph in her eyes and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her
sister's waist and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the
bottom.
Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered a little
travel-stained composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene
of the accident and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's
piercing cry at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.
When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills.

Questions

1. Why is Richard anxious about Mrs. Mallard’s probable response to the news of her
husband’s death? What is her first reaction to the news of the death? How does this
response change as she sits in the chair and looks out of the window? And finally what is
her response to the knowledge that her husband is not dead?
2. Comment on the irony of the last line in which the (male) doctors diagnose her death as
resulting from joy while the reader knows that she dies from the shock of realizing that
her husband’s continued presence in her life will mean a loss of her newfound freedom.
3. In what ways does Kate Chopin make us analyze society’s view of the crucial importance
of marriage for a woman? ‘What could love the unsolved mystery count for in the face of
this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse
of her being!’ In what ways does this comment question the central place of romantic
love? What does she think is more important than love?
4. This powerful short story asks us to change our assumption that love and marriage are the
most important events in the lives of women. The story goes against the way in which
mainstream media and pop culture shapes our thinking about this issue through movies
advertisements songs and the marketing of romance. How important is it to analyze those
ideas that seem ‘natural’ to us and to question where these ideas come from?

Application

Write a dialogue between Mr. and Mrs. Mallard in which they discuss their relationship.
How would Mrs. Mallard try to explain to her husband why she does not feel free in her
marriage to him? What would Mr. Mallard say in response? What would be the result of
this dialogue? What strategies might Mrs. Mallard use to try to convince Mr. Mallard of
her position? Would Mr. Mallard react with anger or with compassion or would he be
unable to understand his wife’s position altogether?
SKILL ENHANCEMENT COURSES (SEC)

PAPER S1: ANALYTICAL READING AND WRITING

Course Objectives

This course will teach students the fundamentals of rhetorical or persuasive writing organized
according to a pedagogic system of academic writing that is followed the world over. Students
everywhere are expected to follow this system in universities while they write assignments and
take term examinations. In this age of globalized academics Indian students need to know both
the theory and practice of academic analysis and academic writing in order for them to
participate in an increasingly international academic environment. All of us who teach analysis
and writing have learned and internalized this pedagogic structure usually without being
consciously aware of its mechanics. In our M. Phil courses we learnt through trial error
emulation and example how to write research papers. Those of us who have written Ph. D. theses
are aware that we had to write within strict academic norms. Likewise when we read essays that
students have written we expect the same academic form of writing from them and penalize them
or reward them for their accomplishment in this discipline of writing. But so far nowhere across
Indian universities have we seen a systematized codification of such norms in the form of
courses or workshops. This course is an attempt to fill this academic gap.
As the title of the course suggests we focus on both reading (which is comprehending and
analyzing other writers’ rhetorical arguments) and writing (which is producing cogent and
complex rhetorical arguments of our own. We want to pass on a uniform set of writing strategies
to our students. Students will learn according to the classical principles of rhetoric.

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this course we expect the students to learn the following:
o Consider the act of writing as a goal oriented task oriented towards the goal of
persuasion.
o Examine and interpret other writers’ writings (contained in the course reader) as a crucial
preliminary stage to being able to produce successfully persuasive writing themselves.
o Identify the writer’s central purpose or thesis.
o Consider how writers use personal authority and trustworthiness argumentative logic
comparison and contrast example and emotional appeals to make their arguments.
o Identify their own historical social and personal contexts to understand their own biases
and ideologies.
o Analyse an academic topic or question to gather information and to notionally organize
that material required to address that topic or to answer that question.
o Design and then write a lucid thesis statement that outlines the students’ central
argument in the paper thesis essay or article.
o Produce both preliminary and fleshed-out outlines which identifies the structure of the
proposed paper.
o Finally produce a paper that follows the guidelines of their own outline.
o Use the appeals of ethos logos and pathos throughout the paper as multiple persuasive
strategies.

Course Contents

Unit 1
How to read/write/think: Rhetoric or the art of persuasion.

Rhetorical Triangle: Consider each writing task as an act of rhetoric—that is an act where
someone is communicating to someone else on a subject that is known to both. Imagine a
rhetorical triangle made up of a speaker (the writer) the subject (the answer/tute/presentation)
and the audience (the teacher/examiner). It is the interaction of the three that makes the act of
writing rhetorical in nature. The relationship between writer and audience is unequal in the sense
that the writer needs to prove something to an audience who must be assumed to be skeptical and
in need of persuasion. To be able to write articulately it is first crucial to read and think with
clarity. Each of the three components therefore need to be studied in detail.

a. Writer/Speaker – In the act of writing the writer or the speaker is the student in
this class. Therefore the first task is to locate the students in their historical socio-
economic cultural materiality. Antonio Gramsci’s idea of creating a personal
inventory of historical traces to date on the self would be one useful way to think
about this.
b. Text – What is a text? From what perspective do we read a text? What is the
perspective from which it is written? What is the context in which this argument
was made? What is the context in which we are reading it. One of the ways of
thinking about these issues to is consider everything around us as a text. We read
the world around us all the time. Reading means critically analyzing through
prism of one’s own ideology. As we read and analyze we evaluate and also form
value judgments about them.
c. Audience – We only ever speak/write to persuade an audience. Who are we
writing to? With what motive? What investment? Eagleton points out that we only
speak if there is reason a motive a message. To analyze the appeals that are used
in persuading the audience one first needs to understand the character of the
audience.
Unit 2
How to write: Creating a rhetorical argument: What How Why (Definition Evaluation Proposal)

Writing is a goal-oriented task. It is the teaching of each specific rhetorical tool that will form the
stages of this course. The syllabus is structured to teach - how to analyze questions how to make
thesis statements outlines and paragraphs how to link ideas how to write introductions and
conclusions and how to use examples and critics. These skills are to be taught not for their own
sakes or to fulfil some aesthetic desire to see a nicely written essay. These skills are inextricable
from the rhetorical act of persuasion itself and persuasive writing cannot take place until these
skills are systematically learnt.

Thesis Statement

How do we recognize a thesis statement? It answers the question – What are you going to prove?
What do you want your reader to believe by the end of your answer? While planning the thesis
statement it is important to spell out precisely what you're going to say. It should answer how
and why the argument is being written.

Unit 3
How to write: Creating a rhetorical argument: What How Why (Definition Evaluation Proposal)

Outline

The thesis statement discussed earlier outlines the major sections of the essay. The technique of
writing the thesis statement is sometimes called blueprinting. Based on the thesis statement the
formal outline provides a clearer blueprint of the assignment.

Expanding the Outline

In this step the information required under each point in the rough outline needs to be sourced
and noted. The evidence needed to support the thesis statement and the authority or analysis of
the evidence will flesh out the outline made in the above section.

Unit 4
How to write: Creating a rhetorical argument.

Introduction and Conclusion

There is a format or structure for writing the introduction and the conclusion that is generic to all
tasks of writing. These two paragraphs are to be written after the argument has been established
and proven to aid the rhetorical task of persuasion.
Unit 5
How to write: Creating a rhetorical argument.

Linkages Transitions and Signposting

These elements are crucial for the writer to lead the reader through the process of following the
thesis the outline the evidence and the progression of the argument.

Paragraphing and Sentence Structure

These skills are not taught for their aesthetics. They are crucial to the logical argument as
language determines order at the sentence level and the ordering of points in paragraphs
determines the structure of the argument.

Readings

There will be a Reader with 8 – 12 texts/readings which will be selected according to graded
difficulty to be accessible by students of different abilities. Each reading will be accompanied by
a series of topics of discussion to aid reading the text from the different aspects taught in the
class. They will also be accompanied by a series of 6 – 10 questions from which one or two
questions can be chosen to ask the class to write assignments. The texts would try to cover
different issues of interest to students to generate meaningful discussion in class and analysis in
the process of writing.

Course structure

The course will be structured around 3 assignments. In the first assignment the student will be
expected to analyze the reading and the question and to write about the issues the question asks
for and then to condense that into a roughly three sentence thesis statement. The second
assignment will require the student to write a thesis statement and to make an outline to match
the thesis statement. The third assignment will require the student to start with the thesis
statement follow with outline and finally produce an entire essay.

Prose:
1. Jane Tomkins: 'Indians' Textualism Morality and the Problem of History (Difficult)
2. Paulo Friere: 'The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education' (Medium Difficult)
3.Martin Luther King Jr: Letter from Birmingham Jail (Medium medium)
4. Rebecca Solnit: 'Men Explain Things to Me' (Medium Easy)
5. Aurangzeb Letter to his Teacher (Easy)

Poetry
1. Agha Shahid Ali: 'Ghazal' (Difficult)
2. Margaret Atwood: 'This is a photograph of me' (Medium Difficult)
3. Dylan Thomas: 'Do not go gentle into the night (Medium medium)
4. Bob Dylan: 'The Times They are A-changing' (Medium easy)
5. Robert Frost: The Road Not Taken (Easy)
Short Story
1. Heinreich Boll: Stranger Bear word to the Spartans we... Difficult)
2. Shirley Jackson: 'The Lottery' (Medium Medium)
3. Vaikom Basheer: 'The Card-Sharper's Daughter (Medium Medium)
4. Om Prakash Valmiki: 'Joothan' (Easy)
5. Alice Munro

Teaching Plan
Paper S1 – Analytical Reading and Writing

Weeks 1 & 2 -- How to read

Week 3 -- Introduce and Discuss Reading 1
Week 4 -- Thesis Statement
Assignment 1 due Week 5 -- Three paragraphs for thesis statement reduced to three
sentences
Week 5 -- Introduce and Discuss Reading 2
Week 6 -- Thesis Statement
Week 7 & 8 -- Outline corresponding to Thesis statement
Assignment 2 due Week 9
Week 9 -- Introduce Reading 3
Week 10 -- Thesis Statement
Week 11 -- Outline
Week 12 -- Introduction and Conclusion
Week 13 -- Rough draft and revision of draft
Week 14
Assignment 3 due Week 14

Facilitating the achievement of Course Learning Outcomes

Paper S1: ANALYTICAL READING AND WRITING

Unit Course Learning Outcomes Teaching and Assessment Tasks

No. Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts of Interactive Reading theoretical material

skill to be taught discussions with together in small groups working
students to guide in peer groups to discuss
them towards skill material
based learning
2. Application of skill Practical Producing assignments preparing
application of skill project folders
performed under
supervision of
teacher

3. Demonstrating conceptual Discussing exam Class tests

understanding and practical questions and
application of skill in tests answering
and examinations techniques

Keywords

Reading analytically
Reading techniques
Audience
Persuasive writing
Argumentation
The appeals
Logical argument
Authority
Rhetoric
Thesis
Outline
Writing introduction
Writing conclusion
Signposting
Transitions

Sub-committee

Roopa Dhawan Ramjas College (Coordinator)

Vinita Chandra Ramjas College
Rina Ramdev Sri Venkateswara College
Sanam Khanna, Kamala Nehru College
PAPER S2: LITERATURE IN SOCIAL SPACES

Course Objectives

According to Emile Durkheim the categories of time space class personality (and so on) are
social in nature. Social spaces therefore have to be understood as products of the distribution of
individuals/communities kinship ties and professional relationships. Since such spaces are
crucial for the orientation and growth of individuals ideally they should be constructed by
ensuring inclusivity empathy and self-awareness.

Humanities as a field encourages us to ask pertinent questions share different world-views and
produce alternate truths in the process. It is in this regard that we are offering a course that will
use texts (literary or otherwise) to equip students with skills crucial to understand and deal with
the practicalities of the everyday be it with regard to workplace intimate networks or social
media.Recent research has inferred that the study of Humanities and Social Sciences are
effective in developing soft skills considered of vital importance in the dynamic workplace of the
21st Century.

This course draws attention to the link between critical thinking skills developed by studying the
Humanities especially Literature and other skills which are often termed ‘soft skills’. The course
focuses on the empathy building capacity of Literature and the application of critical thinking
and problem solving skills employed in literary analysis to develop an understanding of the value
of literature in social and professional spaces. Literary readings will provide the foundation for
developing skills such as better communication and empathy understanding the value of
teamwork the need for adaptability and the role of leadership and mentoring.

Learning Outcomes

• Students will be familiarised with the link between the Humanities and ‘soft skills’
• They will be encouraged to focus on the value of literature as an empathy-building
experience.
• They will learn to apply critical thinking and problem solving skills developed by the
study of literature to personal social and professional situations.
• Students will be encouraged to enhance their teamwork skills by working in groups and
to understand the processes of leadership and mentoring.
• Students will work on their presentation skills and build on the idea of ‘narratives’ to
better communicate with target audiences.
Readings

NOTE: These readings are suggested readings but no direct questions will be asked from them in
the examination. The intention is to initiate discussion on the topics and to explore definitions
and characteristics through literature. Hence the teacher is free to alter or add readings which she
feels are most suited for the purpose of eliciting student interest and response.

Unit 1
Humanities and Soft skills

a) ‘Creative and Arts Graduates have the Soft Skills needed to make them Work-Ready’ by
Mark Harman in The Independent 22 June 2016
(https://www.independent.co.uk/student/career-planning/creative-arts-graduates-soft-skills-
graduate-employment-university-subjects-work-ready-a7095311.html)
b) ‘Leadership in Literature’ by Diane Coutu in The Harvard Business Review March 2006
(https://hbr.org/2006/03/leadership-in-literature)
c) ‘How Literature informs Notions of Leadership’ by Gregory L. Eastwood in Journal of
Leadership Education Vol 9 Issue 1 2010
(http://journalofleadershiped.org/attachments/article/161/JOLE_9_1_Eastwood.pdf)

Unit 2
Emotional Intelligence Adaptability and Mental Health

a) Daniel Goleman. ‘Don’t let a bully boss affect your mental health’
http://www.danielgoleman.info/dont-let-a-bully-boss-affect-your-mental-health/
b) William Blake ‘The Chimney Sweeper’ from Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience
(both versions - 2 poems)
c) W. Somerset Maugham ‘The Verger’ (short story)

Unit 3
Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

a) ‘On the Writers Philosophy of Life’ by Jack London in The Editor October 1899 (essay)
b) Nicholas Bentley ‘The Lookout Man’ (short story) in S. P. Dhanvel’s English and Soft Skills
(Delhi: Orient Blackswan 2010).
c) J. K. Rowling. ‘The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination' (extract
from her speech at Harvard 2008) https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/06/text-of-j-k-
rowling-speech/
Unit 4
Teamwork and Team Management

a) Extract from Mark Twain Huckleberry Finn in S.P. Dhanvel’s English and Soft Skills
(Delhi: Orient Blackswan 2010).
b) ‘The Builders’ by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (poem)

Unit 5
Leadership and Mentoring

a) ‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling (poem)

b) ‘Are you my Mentor?’ by Sheryl Sandberg in Lean in: Women Work and the Will to Lead
(London: Penguin Random House 2015).

Suggested Screenings

1. 2002 Documentary -- The Tales of the Night Fairies (teamwork leadership and adaptability)
2. 1993 Film -- What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? (self-awareness family and care)
3. 2000 Film -- Erin Brockovich (soft skills and empathy)
4. 2003 Film -- Monalisa Smile (leadership and mentorship)
5. 2016 Film-Hidden Figures (affective leadership and teamwork)
6. 2016 TV Serial -- Black Mirror: Season 3 Nosedive (mental health and social media)
7. 2007 Film -- Chak De India (teamwork leadership mentoring)

Teaching Plan
Paper S2 – Literature in Social Spaces

Week 1 – Introduction to Paper

Week 2 – Unit 1 -- Humanities and Soft skills
Week 3 – Unit 1 (contd)
Week 4 – Unit 1 (contd)
Week 5 – Unit 2 -- Emotional Intelligence Adaptability and Mental Health
Week 6 -- Unit 2 (contd)
Week 7 – Unit 3 -- Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
Week 8 – Unit 3 (contd)
Week 9 – Unit 3 (contd)
Week 10 – Unit 4 -- Teamwork and Team Management
Week 11 – Unit 4 (contd)
Week 12 – Unit 5 -- Leadership and Mentoring
Week 13 – Unit 5 (contd)
Week 14 – Concluding lectures exam issues etc

Facilitating the Achievement of Course Learning Outcomes

Paper S2: Literature in Social Spaces

Unit Course Learning Outcomes Teaching and Assessment Tasks

No. Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts of Interactive Reading theoretical material

skill to be taught discussions with together in small groups working
students to guide in peer groups to discuss
them towards skill material
based learning

2. Application of skill Practical Producing assignments preparing

application of skill project folders
performed under
supervision of
teacher

3. Demonstrating conceptual Discussing exam Class tests

understanding and practical questions and
application of skill in tests answering
and examinations techniques

Keywords

Committee Members

Brati Biswas, Dyal Singh (E) (Coordinator)

Sanam Khanna, Kamala Nehru College
Manpreet Kaur, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee College
Rajorshi Das, Indraprastha College for Women
PAPER S3: LITERATURE IN CROSS-CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS

Course Objectives

Acknowledging literature’s status as an important medium in making sense of the world we live
in this paper will enable students to critically view their locatedness within a larger globalized
context. By reading texts cross-culturally students will engage with people’s experience of
caste/class gender race violence and war and nationalities and develop the skills of cross-cultural
sensitivity. The paper will give them the vocabulary to engage with experiences of people from
varying cultures and backgrounds particularly relevant in contemporary times as these issues
continue to be negotiated in the workplace as well as larger society.

Learning Outcomes

• The students will develop skills of textual and cultural analysis

• They will develop insights into and interpretations of complex cultural positions and
identities.
• They will pay specific attention to the use of language and choice of form/genre that
affects the production and reception of meaning between writers and readers.

Readings

Selections from The Individual and Society: Essays Stories and Poems edited by Vinay Sood et
al. for The Department of English University of Delhi New Delhi Pearson 2006.

Unit 1
Caste/Class

1. ‘Caste Laws’ -- Jotirao Phule

2. ‘Deliverance’ -- Premchand
3. ‘Kallu’ -- Ismat Chughtai
4. ‘Bosom Friend’ -- Hira Bansode
Unit 2
Gender

1. ‘Shakespeare’s Sister’ -- Virginia Woolf

2. ‘The Exercise Book’ -- Rabindranath Tagore
3. ‘A Prayer for My Daughter’ -- WB Yeats
4. ‘Marriages Are Made’ -- Eunice de Souza
5. ‘The Reincarnation of Captain Cook’ -- Margaret Atwood

Unit 3
Race

1. ‘Blackout’ -- Roger Mais

2. ‘Telephone Conversation’ – Wole Soyinka
3. ‘Harlem’ -- Langston Hughes
4. ‘Still I Rise’ -- Maya Angelou

Unit 4
Violence and War

1. ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ -- Wilfred Owen

2. ‘Conscientious Objector’ -- Edna St Vincent Millay
3. ‘Naming of Parts’ – Henry Reed
4. ‘General Your Tank Is a Powerful Vehicle’ – Bertolt Brecht
5. ‘A Chronicle of the Peacocks’ – Intizar Husain
6. ‘Ghosts of Mrs Gandhi’ -- Amitav Ghosh

Unit 5
Living in a Globalized World

1. ‘Toys’ -- Roland Barthes

2. ‘Indian Movie New Jersey’ -- Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
3. ‘At Lahore Karhai’ – Imtiaz Dharker
4. ‘The Brand Expands’ -- Naomi Klein

(5 sections – 12 poems 11 essays/stories – to be completed in 14 weeks 42 lectures + 14

practicals)
Teaching Plan
Paper S3 -- Literature in Cross-Cultural Encounters

Week 1 – Unit 1: Caste/Class

Week 2 – Unit 1 (contd)
Week 3 – Unit 1 (contd)
Week 4 – Unit 2: Gender
Week 5 – Unit 2 (contd)
Week 6 – Unit 2 (contd)
Week 7 – Unit 2 (contd)
Week 8 – Unit 3: Race
Week 9 – Unit 3 (contd)
Week 10 – Unit 4: Violence and War
Week 11 – Unit 4 (contd)
Week 12 – Unit 5: Living in a Globalized World
Week 13 – Unit 5 (contd)
Week 14 – Concluding lectures discussion on exam pattern etc.

Facilitating the achievement of Course Learning Outcomes

Paper S3: Literature in Cross-Cultural Encounters

Unit Course Learning Outcomes Teaching and Assessment Tasks

No. Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts of Interactive Reading theoretical material

skill to be taught discussions with together in small groups working
students to guide in peer groups to discuss
them towards skill material
based learning

2. Application of skill Practical Producing assignments preparing

application of skill project folders
performed under
supervision of
teacher

3. Demonstrating conceptual Discussing exam Class tests

understanding and practical questions and
application of skill in tests answering
and examinations techniques
Keywords

Race
Caste
War
Class
Globalisation
Gender
Violence
Literature
Culture
Cross Cultural Encounters
Critical thinking

Commitee Members

Sanam Khanna, Kamala Nehru College (Coordinator)

Amrita Singh, Kamala Nehru College
Samarth Singhal, Kamala Nehru College
Vinita Chandra, Ramjas College

PAPER S4: ORAL AURAL AND VISUAL RHETORIC

Course Description

This paper is designed to introduce students to theory and practice of rhetorical studies. Rhetoric
has meant an art an artifact and a kind of discourse. The aim here is to investigate the art of
expression whether with words with musical notes or with lens. It is to treat all cultural artifacts
such as oratory music photography as texts which can be read/heard/seen and analyzed and
appreciated in class. The paper initiates the students to classical and modern rhetorical theories
both in the West and in India in the first unit. In the rest of the units students will learn to closely
read any non-literary text become attentive listeners and feel the tone and texture of images.

This course surveys and explores a number of rhetorical traditions from around the world
studying sample texts along two axes: firstly temporal where texts are read in their original
historical contexts secondly ideational where texts are read for themes and perspectives.
Learning Outcomes

o Students will be trained in developing their oral/aural/visual senses to appreciate a

cultural text while at the same time using a theoretical framework and position to read a
text.
o Students will learn to identify and engage with the themes of:

i. Argumentation and persuasion

ii Language and writing
iii. Intention and motivation of the author/orator/painter/musician.
iv. Emotive element in speech and music
v. Performative language

Unit 1
Theory of Rhetoric: Western and Indian

1. Herrick James A. ‘ An overview of rhetoric’ The History and Theory of Rhetoric: An

Introduction (Routledge 2016) p 1-30
2. Aristotle On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse. Trans. George A Kennedy. Book 1
chapter 3 p 46-51.
3. Perelman The Idea of Justice and the Problem of Argumentation (‘Act and Person in
Argument p 196-208).
4. Bharata Natyasastra ed and trans. Manmohan Ghosh (selections Chapter 19 p 344-352).
5. Mccrea Lawrence. ‘‘Resonance’ and its Reverberations: Two cultures in Indian
epistemology of Aesthetic Meaning’ The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian
Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art. Ed. Arindam Chakrabarti (London: Bloomsbury
2016) pp 25-42

Unit 2
Oratory

1. Martin Luther King: Messianic Myth

28th August 1963 ‘I have a Dream’ address at march on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vDWWy4CMhE
25th March 1965 ‘ Our God is Marching on!’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n5WbNCEeHM
Reading

Black Jonathan-Charteris. ‘Martin Luther King: Messianic Myth’ (chapter 3 pp 58-84)

Politicians and Rhetoric: The Persuasive Power of Metaphor (Palgrave Macmillan 2005).

2. Susan B Anthony on Women’s Right to Vote

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T57dwhJBtts

Reading

Katheryn M. Conway ‘Woman Suffrage and the History of Rhetoric at the Seven Sisters College
1865-1919 Reclaiming Rhetorica: Women in the Rhetorical Tradition ed. Andrea A Lunsford.

3. Nehru Tryst with Destiny speech to the Indian constituent assembly on 14th August 1947.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzdVKGdZUpQ

Reading

Black Jonathan-Charteris. ‘Persuasion Legitimacy and Leadership’ (chapter 1 pp 1-26)

Politicians and Rhetoric: The Persuasive Power of Metaphor (Palgrave Macmillan 2005).

Unit 3
Music

1. Bob Dylan musical piece ‘Blowin’ in the wind’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G58XWF6B3AA

Readings and music

1. Brian Vickers ‘Figures of Rhetoric/Figures of Music?’ Rhetorica ii (1984) 1-44

Karl Eschman, ‘The Rhetoric of Western Music’ The Musical Quarterly vol 7 no 2 (April 1921)
pp 157-166.
2. Ol’ Man River in many versions and contexts:
i. Ol’ Man River by Paul Robeson for the film ‘Showboat’ in 1936.
ii. The version with altered and more revolutionary lyrics which he sang on stage in the
1930s.
iii. Bhupen Hazarika's Assamese version ‘Bistirno Parare’
iv. Bangla ‘BistirnoDupare’
v. Nepali ‘Bristit Kinarako’ with subtitles
3. Sumangala Damodaran ‘The IPTA Musical Tradition's Repertoire’ The Radical Impulse:
Music in the Tradition of the Indian People's Theatre Association (New Delhi: Tulika 2017).
The chapter ‘Ol' Man River’ in the book The Undiscovered Paul Robeson: An Artist's Journey
1898-1939 by Paul Robeson Jr.
4. Hemango Biswas ‘A Glorious Heritage’ Folkmusic and Folklore: An Anthology.
Pradip Kumar Sengupta Foundations of Indian Musicology (ch 7: ‘Raga and Rasa’ p 99-124).
5. ‘Na to Karvan ki talaash hai’ Barsaat ki Raat movie of 1950s.
6. Kumkum Sangari ‘Viraha: A Trajectory in the Nehruvian Era’ in Poetics and Politics of
Sufism and Bhakti in South Asia: Love Loss and Liberation ed. Kavita Panjabi

Unit 4
Photography

Lady Filmer’s Album

Readings and visuals

1. ‘Photographs fun and flirtations’ Patrizia De Bello Women’s Albums and Photography in
Victorian England: Ladies Mothers and Flirts (Ashgate 2007).
2. Jyotindra Jain ‘The visual culture of the Indo-British cotton trade’ Marg: A Magazine of the
Arts The Story of Early Indian Advertising (March-June 2017).
3. 1857 uprising photos - Memorial well at Cawnpore (Kanpur) Kashmiri Gate in Delhi the
Residency at Lucknow.
4. Karlekar Malavika. ‘Sites of Past Conflict’ (pp57-62) and ‘The ‘Second Creature’ (pp159-
164) Visual History: Photography in the Popular Imagination (OUP 2013)
5. Dayanita Singh and Aveek Sen ‘House of Love’(short story) House of Love (Peabody
Museum Press 2010).

Teaching Plan
Paper S4 - Oral Aural and Visual Rhetoric

Week 1 – Unit 1 -- Theory of Rhetoric: Western and Indian

Week 2 – Unit 1 (contd)
Week 3 – Unit 1 (contd)
Week 4 – Unit 1 (contd)
Week 5 – Unit 2 -- Oratory
Week 6 – Unit 2 (contd)
Week 7 – Unit 2 (contd)
Week 8 – Unit 3 -- Music
Week 9 – Unit 3 (contd)
Week 10 – Unit 3 (contd)
Week 11 – Unit 4 -- Photography
Week 12 – Unit 4 (contd)
Week 13 – Unit 4 (contd)
Week 14 – Concluding lectures discussion on exam pattern etc.

Facilitating the achievement of Course Learning Outcomes

Paper S4: Oral Aural and Visual Rhetoric

Unit Course Learning Outcomes Teaching and Assessment Tasks

No. Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts of Interactive Reading theoretical material

skill to be taught discussions with together in small groups working
students to guide in peer groups to discuss
them towards skill material
based learning

2. Application of skill Practical Producing assignments preparing

application of skill project folders
performed under
supervision of
teacher

3. Demonstrating conceptual Discussing exam Class tests

understanding and practical questions and
application of skill in tests answering
and examinations techniques

Keywords

Rhetoric
Close Reading
Writing
Oratory
Photography
Music

Course Committee

Nabanita Chakraborty, Hansraj College (Coordinator)

Prachee Dewri, Hansraj College
Amrita Singh, Kamala Nehru College
Brati Biswas, Dyal Singh College-E
Prachee Dewri, HRC
PAPER S5: INTRODUCTION TO CREATIVE WRITING FOR MEDIA

Course Objectives

This course introduces students to the concepts of ‘creativity’ in general and ‘creative writing’ in
particular. This paper focuses especially on writing for the media ranging from newspapers and
magazines to emerging new media forms. After being given a foundation in the theoretical
aspects of writing for the media real life examples will provide a practical exposure. This course
will encourage students to be active readers and writers who will engage with contemporary
issues in a well informed manner. This course will be of interest to those students who wish to
pursue creative writing especially those who wish to work in the media.

Learning Outcomes

o This course will introduce students to the idea that creativity is a complex and varied
phenomenon which has an important relationship with social change.
o Students will become familiar with ideas about language varieties and the nuances of
language usage.
o Students will be introduced to the language and types of media writing across forms and
genres.
o This course will encourage students to revise their work critically and inculcate the skills
of proofreading.

Course Content

Unit 1
What is Creative Writing?

a) Defining and Measuring Creativity

b) Inspiration and Agency Creativity and Resistance
c) What is Creative Writing? Can it be taught?
d) The importance of Reading

Unit 2
The Art and Craft of Creative Writing

a) Styles and Registers

b) Formal and Informal Usage
c) Language Varieties Language and Gender
d) Disordered Language
e) Word order Tense and Time Grammatical differences

Unit 3
Writing for the Media

a) Introduction to Writing for the Media

b) Print Media
c) Broadcast Media
d) New Media
e) Advertising and Types of Advertisments

Unit 4
Revising Rewriting and Proof Reading (pages 205-208)

a) Revising
b) Rewriting
c) Proof reading and proof-reading marks

Prescribed Text
Creative Writing: A Beginners’ Manual by Anjana Neira Dev et al. For The Department of
English University of Delhi New Delhi Pearson 2008.

Recommended Additional Resources: English for Journalists (vol 2) by Wynford Hicks.

Routledge: New York 2007.

Suggested Methods of Internal Evaluation: It is recommended that students be asked to prepare a

portfolio of original writings which will include any 4 from:

a) Creativity in everyday life

b) An advertisement
c) A news report
d) A review of a film/book/play/restaurant
e) A travel review /page from a travelogue
f) An editorial
g) A blog /vlog entry
Teaching Plan
Paper S5 -- Introduction to Creative Writing for Media

Note: Ample time must be devoted in during practical periods to actual writing and the practice
of the theory that is taught in class.
Contemporary real time examples are encouraged.
The student’s portfolio must emerge based on classroom work and exercises

Week 1 – Unit 1 -- What is Creative Writing?

Week 2 – Unit 1 (contd)
Week 3 – Unit 1 (contd)
Week 4 – Unit 2 -- The Art and Craft of Creative Writing
Week 5 – Unit 2 (contd)
Week 6 – Unit 2 (contd)
Week 7 – Unit 2 (contd)
Week 8 – Unit 3 -- Writing for the Media
Week 9 – Unit 3 (contd)
Week 10 – Unit 3 (contd)
Week 11 – Unit 4 -- Revising Rewriting and Proof Reading
Week 12 – Unit 4 (contd)
Week 13 – Unit 4 (contd)
Week 14 – Concluding lectures exam issues etc.

Facilitating the achievement of Course Learning Outcomes

Paper S5: Introduction to Creative Writing for Media

Unit Course Learning Outcomes Teaching and Assessment Tasks

No. Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts of Interactive Reading theoretical material

skill to be taught discussions with together in small groups working
students to guide in peer groups to discuss
them towards skill material
based learning

2. Application of skill Practical Producing assignments preparing

application of skill project folders
performed under
supervision of
teacher
3. Demonstrating conceptual Discussing exam Class tests
understanding and practical questions and
application of skill in tests answering
and examinations techniques

Keywords

Creative writing
Writing for the media
Advertisements
Proof reading
Newspaper reports
Media literacy
Blogs
Vlogs
Reviews
Language for the media

Committee Members

Anuradha Marwah, ZHDC (Coordinator)

Shatarupa Sinha, Gargi College
Sanam Khanna Kamala Nehru College
Amrita Singh Kamala Nehru College

PAPER S6 -- TRANSLATION STUDIES

Course Objectives

In a multicultural country like India translation is necessary for better governance and for greater
sensitivity to other cultural groups. As the world shrinks further due to increased communication
translation is required for smooth flow of knowledge and information. The course will sensitise
students to the processes involved in translation. Students will be familiarised with various
methods strategies and theories of translation. Further they will learn to recognise a translated
text as a product of its cultural social political and historical contexts.
Learning Outcomes

Through the study of this course the student will develop the ability to
• sensitively translate literary and non-literary texts including official and technical
documents from one language to another.
• interpret from one language to another.
• examine what is translated and why
• discern the difference in language systems through the practice of translation.
• understand the processes involved in translation in mass media especially news reporting
advertising and films.
• engage with the demands of subtitling and dubbing.
• compare translations.
• evaluate and assess translated texts.
• edit translated texts.

Course Content

Unit 1
Introducing Translation

Introducing a brief history and significance of translation in a multi-linguistic and multicultural

society like India.
Introducing basic concepts and terms used in Translation Studies through relevant tasks:
Equivalence Source Language Target Language Source Text Target Text Language variety
Dialect Idiolect Register Style Mode Code mixing and Switching transliteration simultaneous
and consecutive interpreting.

Unit 2

a. Brief Theory of Linguistics – morphology phonology syntax

b. Defining the process of translation (analysis transference restructuring) through critical
examination of diverse translated texts.

Unit 3
Types and modes of translation

a. Semantic and Literal translation

b. Free Sense-to-sense and Literary translation
c. Functional and Communicative translation
d. Technical and Official translation
e. Transcreation
f. Audio-visual translation: subtitling dubbing voice-overs
g. Back translation
h. Rank-bound and Unbounded translation
i. Machine Translation

Unit 4
Practice of Translation

Source Texts
Idiomatic Expressions/ Headlines/Taglines
Poetry
Short-story/Novella/Excerpt from a novel
Newspaper Report/Editorial/Review/Feature Article
Songs/Films
Advertisements: Print and Audio-Visual

Unit 5
Issues in Translation

Translation and Gender

Translation and Caste
Translation and Culture
Translation and Technology
Translation and Mass Communication
Comparison and Evaluation of Translated texts

WEEK 1 -- Introduction to Translation Studies

Unit 1 (a): A brief history of translation in India significance of translation in a multilingual and
multicultural society like India
Unit 1 (b): Introduction to basic terms and concepts used in translation studies through relevant
tasks -- Source Language Target Language Source Text Target Text.
WEEK 2 -- Unit 1 (b) contd: Language Variety Dialect Idiolect Register Style Equivalence
Mode Code Mixing and Switching Transliteration Simultaneous and Consecutive Interpreting.
WEEK 3 -- Unit 2 (a) Brief theory of Linguistics – Morphology Phonology Syntax
WEEK 4 -- Unit 2 (b) Defining the process of translation (analysis transference restructuring)
through critical examination of diverse translated texts.
WEEK 5 -- Unit 3: Discussing types and modes of translation with examples
a. Semantic and Literal translation
b. Free Sense-to-sense and Literary translation
c. Functional and Communicative translation
WEEK 6 -- Unit 3 contd.
d. Technical and Official translation
e. Transcreation
f. Audio-visual translation: subtitling dubbing voice-overs
WEEK 7 -- Unit 3 contd.
g. Back translation
h. Rank-bound and Unbounded translation
i. Machine Translation
WEEK 8 -- Unit 4: Practice of translation with examples
Idiomatic Expressions/ Headlines/Taglines
Newspaper Report/Editorial/Review/Feature Article
WEEK 9 -- Unit 4 contd.
Poetry Songs/Films Advertisements: Print and Audio-Visual
WEEK 10 -- Unit 4 contd.
Short-story Novella Excerpt from a novel
WEEK 11 -- Unit 5: Discussing Issues in Translation
Translation and Gender
Translation and Caste
WEEK 12 -- Unit 5 contd.
Translation and Technology
Translation and Mass Communication
WEEK 13 -- Unit 5 contd.
Translation and Culture
Comparison and Evaluation of Translated Texts
WEEK 14 -- Discussion of individual portfolios

Facilitating the achievement of Course Learning Outcomes

Paper S6 -- Translation Studies
Unit Course Learning Outcomes Teaching and Assessment Tasks
No. Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts of Interactive Reading theoretical material

skill to be taught discussions with together in small groups working
students to guide in peer groups to discuss
them towards skill material
based learning

2. Application of skill Practical Producing assignments preparing

Keywords

Translation
Interpreting
Source text
Target text
Source language
Target language
Equivalence
Machine translation
Adaptation
Transcreation

Commitee Members

Anjana Srivastava, Kamala Nehru College (Coordinator)

Neha Khurana, Gargi College
Tasneem Shahnaaz, ARSD
Tulika Prasad, Satyawati College-E

PAPER S7 -- INTRODUCTION TO THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE

Course Objectives

The course is intended for students who specialise in English Literature. The idea is to
acquaint them with historical processes at work to understand the way in which
techniques/methodology of drama have evolved over a period of time. There are two
aspects to this course. One is the development of aesthetics in the Indian context from
the pre-independence to post-independence period. The course also looks at censorship
acts the politics of the market and other factors to locate the socio-political context of
drama. There will also be a discussion of the popular forms of performance in India.
The second aspect is the development of theories and practice of drama in Europe and
their impact on the Indian context.

Learning Outcomes

• The students opting for this course will be able to understand the different theories of
drama in Europe and India both from the point of view of theory and performance.
• The students will be able to make connections between socio-economic processes at work
and the emergence of a certain kind of dynamic within theatre.
• As this is a Skill Enhancement Course the students will put up a performance at the end
of the course making use of the different kinds of aesthetics they have studied.

Unit 1
Introduction

• What is a text?
• What is a performance?
• The uniqueness of the dramatic text: Literature and/or Performance?
• The politics of a Dramatic text: endorsement status quo vs. subversion

Unit 2
Theories of Performance

• Performance theory
(Richard Schechner/Dwight Conquergood)
• Radical theories
(Bertolt Brecht Augusto Boal)
• Classical theories
(Natyashastra Aristotle)

Unit 3
The State the Market and the History of Theatre

• Under British rule

(Viceroy Northbrook–censorship Neeldarpan Nabanna– IPTA)
• (Popular forms: Jatra Tamasha Nautanki Burrakatha Dastangoi and others)
• Modern Indian theatre in the post-independence period
o (Bourgeois theatre and theatre of change Feminist theatre)
o (Street theatre Janam)
Unit 4

Modern Western theatre

• Naturalism (Realism)
o (Stanislavsky)
• Epic theatre: theatre as criticism
o Brecht Dario Fo and France Rame)
• Theatre that resists the state and market

Unit 5
The Performative Act

• Performance space
o (in the round proscenium amphitheatre thrust stage etc.)
• Space Lights Costumes Sets

The students must be asked to create a performance from a text (their choice/assisted by the
teacher).

Readings

‘Faith and the Sense of Truth’ Section I (pp. 121-23)

From chapter 8
Stanislavski Constantin. 1936. An Actor Prepares. London: Methuen 1988
‘A Short Organum for the Theatre’ (para 26 - 67) (pp.186-201)
Brecht Bertolt. Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic. Trans. and Ed. Willett
John.New York: Hill and Wang 1957.
‘Breaking Down the Fourth Wall’ (pp. 73-74)
Dario Fo. The Tricks of the Trade. Trans. Joe Farell. London: Methuen Drama 1991.
‘The Fan and the Web’ (pp. xvi -xix)
Schechner Richard. Performance Theory New York: Routledge 2002

Suggested Plays for Performance

Euripides Medea
Clifford Odet Waiting For Lefty
Bertolt Brecht Caucasian Chalk Circle
Dario Fo Can't Pay Won't Pay
Franca Rame A Woman Alone
Mahesh Dattani Dance Like A Man
Teaching Plan
Paper S7 -- Introduction to Theatre and Performance

Week 1 – Introduction to Paper 10: Introduction to Text and Performance

Week 2 – Unit 1 – Introduction (contd)
Week 3 – Unit 2 – Theories of Performance
Week 4 – Theories of Performance (contd)
Week 5 – Unit 3 -- The State the Market and the History of Theatre
Week 6 – Unit 3 (contd)
Week 7 – Unit 3 (contd)
Week 8 – Unit 4 -- Modern Western theatre
Week 9 – Unit 4 (contd)
Week 10 – Unit 5 -- The Performative Act
Week 11 -- Unit 5 (contd)
Week 12 – Discussion of plays and rehearsals for performance
Week 13 – Discussion of plays and rehearsals for performance
Week 14 – Concluding lectures exam issues etc.

Facilitating the Achievement of Course Learning Outcomes

Paper S7 -- Introduction to Theatre and Performance

Unit Course Learning Outcomes Teaching and Assessment Tasks

No. Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts of Interactive Reading theoretical material

skill to be taught discussions with together in small groups working
students to guide in peer groups to discuss
them towards skill material
based learning

2. Application of skill Practical Producing assignments preparing

application of skill project folders
performed under
supervision of
teacher

3. Demonstrating conceptual Discussing exam Class tests

understanding and practical questions and
application of skill in tests answering
and examinations techniques
Keywords

Performance theory
Natyashastra 
Radical drama
Classical theory
Bertolt Brecht
Augusto Boal
Neeldarpan
Nabanna
IPTA
Jatra
Tamasha
Nautanki
Burrakatha
Dastangoi
Street theatre
Janam in the round
Proscenium
Amphitheatre
Thrust stage

Commitee Members

Sanjay Kumar, Hansraj College (Coordinator)

Payal Nagpal, Janki Devi Memorial College
Anshuman Singh, Dyal Singh College
Manpreet Kaur, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee College
PAPER S8: MODES OF CREATIVE WRITING -- POETRY FICTION AND DRAMA

Course Objectives

This course introduces students to Creative Writing in the three fundamental modes – poetry
fiction (short story and novel) and drama (including scripts and screen plays). The students will
be introduced to the main tropes and figures of speech that distinguish the creative from other
forms of writing. The students will be able to see language as not just a means of
communication but as something that can be played with and used for the expression of the
whole range o f human emotion and experiences. Within each literary mode the students will
study conventional as well as contemporary expressions. This course will interest those who
wish to engage with the discipline of creative writing in its varied manifestations.

Learning Outcomes

• This course will introduce students to a variety of tropes and figures of speech and
sensitise them to the texture of literary language. This will help them to understand the
importance of reading with a view to unlocking the writers’ craft.
• The students will be introduced to the various forms of poetry fiction and drama and the
wide range of possible genres within them.
• The students will be made aware of the range of career opportunities that exist within the
field of creative writing as well as within the realm of theatre and performance.
• This course will encourage students to revise their work critically and inculcate the skills
of editing and preparing their work for publication.

Course Contents

Unit 1
The Art and Craft of Writing

a) Tropes and Figures of Speech

(examples of figures of speech based on similarity/obliqueness/difference/extension/utterance
and word building should be discussed and practiced in class)

Unit 2
Modes of Creative Writing -- Poetry and Fiction

a) Writing to Communicate
b) Writing Poetry-Definitions of Poetry/Difference between Poetry and Prose
c) Form and Technique Shapes
d) Dominant Forms and Modes of Poetry
e) Writing Verse for children
f) Writing Fiction-Differences between Fiction and Non Fiction
g) Literary and Popular Fiction
h) Creating Character Plot Setting and POV
i) Writing for Children

Unit 3
Modes of Creative Writing-Drama and Screenplay

a) What is a Drama-Concept
b) Plot and Character in Drama
c) Verbal and Non-verbal elements in Drama
d) Contemporary Theatre in India – a brief overview
e) Writing for Films -- Screenplay conventions
f) Scripting for Children -- Theatre and Films

Unit 4
Editing and Preparing for Publication (pages 208-216)

a) Editing and proof reading your manuscript

b) Preparing a manuscript for Publication

Prescribed Text
Creative Writing: A Beginners’ Manual by Anjana Neira Dev et al. for The Department of
English University of Delhi New Delhi Pearson 2008.

Recommended Additional Resources

Cambridge Companion to Creative Writing edited by David Morley and Philip Nielsen.
Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 2012.

Suggested Methods of Internal Evaluation

It is recommended that students be asked to prepare a portfolio of original writings which will
include any 4 from:
a) Illustrated examples using tropes and figures of speech in writing
b) A Poem
c) A Short Story
d) A Dramatic Sequence
e) Writing for Children -- a poem/short story/dramatic sequence
f) A Dummy Manuscript
g) A poem/short story/dramatic sequence in a different form from the one used in a)/b)/c)

Teaching Plan
Paper S8: Modes of Creative Writing -- Poetry Fiction and Drama

Note: Ample time must be devoted in during practical periods to actual writing and the practice
of the theory which is taught in class.
Students should be encouraged to engage with texts and can suggest texts which they have an
interest in
The student’s portfolio must emerge based on classroom work and exercises

Week 1 – Unit 1-- The Art and Craft of Writing

Week 2 –Unit 1: continued
Week 3 – Unit 1: continued
Week 4 – Unit 2 -- Modes of Creative Writing -- Poetry and Fiction
Week 5 – Unit 2: continued
Week 6 – Unit 2: continued
Week 7 – Unit 2: continued
Week 8 – Unit 3 -- Modes of Creative Writing -- Drama and Screenplay
Week 9 – Unit 3: continued
Week 10 – Unit 3: continued
Week 11 – Unit 3: continued
Week 12 – Unit 4: Editing and Preparing for Publication
Week 13 – Unit 4: continued
Week 14 – Concluding lectures discussion on exam pattern etc.
Facilitating the Achievement of Course Learning Outcomes
Paper S8: Modes of Creative Writing: Poetry Fiction and Drama

Unit Course Learning Outcomes Teaching and Assessment Tasks

No. Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts of Interactive Reading theoretical material

skill to be taught discussions with together in small groups working
students to guide in peer groups to discuss
them towards skill material
based learning

2. Application of skill Practical Producing assignments preparing

application of skill project folders
performed under
supervision of
teacher

3. Demonstrating conceptual Discussing exam Class tests

understanding and practical questions and
application of skill in tests answering
and examinations techniques

Keywords

Creative writing
Writing fiction
Writing poetry
Writing for children
Writing for the stage
Script writing
Writing for theatre

Committee Members

Anjana Neira Dev, Gargi College (Coordinator)

Sanam Khanna, Kamala Nehru College
Amrita Singh, Kamala Nehru College
Anuradha Marwah, ZHDC
PAPER S9: ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

This course is designed to help students of the undergraduate program develop pedagogical and
theoretical skills required for teaching English language. Other than basic theories in ELT it will
examine a variety of aspects related to learner needs including multiple intelligences learning
styles and strategies communication strategies classroom management issues use of technology
and concepts of learner autonomy and learner training. The course will also explore important
aspects of learning teaching and assessment for English language as well as certain fundamental
aspects of the same.

Course Objectives

• to recognize the role of affect in language learning and account for individual differences
among learners in regard to motivation and attitude personality factors and cognitive
styles
• to help identify and adapt to the needs and expectations of the learner
• to be aware of the significant and current approaches in the fields of cognition and
language pedagogy
• to highlight the importance of teaching materials (in relation to the teaching-learning
context and their teaching purposes)
• to understand the importance of planning in ELT and develop lessons in the framework of
a planned strategy adapted to learners' level.
• to strengthen concepts of the fundamentals of English language.
• to understand the need for assessment and devise techniques for an evaluation plan that is
integrated into the learning process.

Course Content

Unit 1

English Language Teaching

1. Knowing the Learner

2. Learner Variables – age gender learning and participation styles learning disabilities
multiple intelligences socioeconomic & cultural background motivation levels of
proficiency
3. Theories of Learning – Bloom’s taxonomy Krashen’s concept of Comprehensible Input
Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky could be deleted)
4. Modern Approaches to teaching -- Communicative Language Teaching Task based
Approach Cooperative Learning Dogme approach (materials-light teaching) and Bring
your own device (Mobile learning).

Unit 2
Structures of English Language:

1. Phonetics – speech mechanisms (vowels and consonants) features of connected speech –

word stress rhythm intonation
2. Morphology – word formation processes (coining borrowing etc.)
3. Syntax – parts of speech clauses & phrases punctuation

Unit 3
Teaching Language: Methods Practices and Materials

i. Lesson Planning: lesson aim and objectives context for practice skill focus board work.
ii. Teaching listening skills
iii. Teaching speaking skills
iv. Teaching reading skills
v. Teaching vocabulary
vi. Teaching writing skills
vii. Teaching grammar

Unit 5
Assessing language skills

i. Addressing errors and language expectations (desired level of proficiency)

ii. Qualities of a good test – transparency validity reliability wash back effect
iii. Types of assessment – formal versus informal summative versus formative large scale
versus classroom

Week 1 -- Introduction to ELT

Week 2 -- Knowing the variables regarding the learner
Week 3 -- Learning theories
Week 4 -- Modern Approaches to teaching
Week 5 -- Phonetics morphology and Syntax
Week 6 -- Lesson Plan
Week 7&8 -- Teaching Listening Speaking Reading Writing Skills
Week 9 -- Teaching Vocabulary and Grammar
Week 10 -- Assessing proficiency
Week 11 -- Knowing the Qualities of a good test
Week 12 & 13 -- Knowing the different kinds of test
Week 14 -- Preparing a lesson plan and a test of proficiency

Facilitating the achievement of Course Learning Outcomes

Sec 9: English Language Teaching

Unit Course Learning Outcomes Teaching and Assessment Tasks

No. Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts of Interactive Reading theoretical material

3. Demonstrating conceptual Discussing exam Class tests

understanding and practical questions and
application of skill in tests answering
and examinations techniques

Keywords

Pedagogical skills
Learner needs
Learner autonomy
Assessment
Teaching plan
Phonetics
Listening
Good test
Teaching plan
Communicative skills
Reading skills
Writing skills
Speaking and listening

Course Committee

Tasneem Shahnaaz, ARSD

Anjana Srivastava, Kamala Nehru College
Sanam Khanna, Kamala Nehru College
Tulika Prasad, Satyawati College-E
PAPER S10: FILM STUDIES

Course Objectives

This paper enables students to gain skills in the language of film via appreciation of its specific
features as a medium. The course is practically oriented so as to encourage students to acquire
the competence necessary to become engaged viewers critics/reviewers and creators/producers in
the medium. The course will attempt to make film a democratic and accessible medium for
students as creative and analytical persons and may further enable students to take up work in
different arenas of digital humanities.

Learning Outcomes

1. To examine those specific features of composition that help create films: camera- sound-
script- and editing-work will be studied so that students learn the elements of putting a film
together.
2. To study cinema as a form with history and context the paper traces genres and geographies
examining the legacies left to us to renew.
3. To take up work in the medium the course will require them to write and review films so as to
generate a repertoire of analyses and interpretations.
4. Projects and/or practical work may be used to supplement units 1&4 most particularly to help
students interested in the medium to build up a portfolio of work through practice of the
Discipline.

Course Content

Unit 1
Language of Cinema

Mise en scene - cinematography - editing - sound

Reading
Dix Andrew. Beginning Film Studies. Pp. 9-100. New Delhi: Viva 2010.
Unit 2
Genre in Hollywood Cinema

Definitions of genre -- taxonomies of genre -- genre as economic strategy -- genre as cognition --

rethinking genre

Reading
Nelmes Jill Ed. An Introduction to Film Studies. Pp. 152-169. London and New York: Routledge
2003.

Unit 3
Themes from Contemporary Indian Cinema (From the 70s to the present)

The city -- underworld -- communalism -- terrorism -- gender issues -- the Indian Art Cinema

Readings
a) Mazumdar Ranjani. Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the City. Pp. 79-109. Ranikhet:
Permanent Black 2007.
b) Vasudevan Ravi. ‘The Melodramatic Public’. Pp. 303-333. Ranikhet: Permanent Black 2010.

Unit 4
Film Review Criticism and Script writing

Readings
A Short Guide to Writing About Film (9th Ed) Timothy Corrigan. Pearson 2014.

Screenplays
a) Vishal Bhardwaj Maqbool
b) Thelma and Louise

Suggested Films
a) Psycho (1960 dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
b) Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (1983 Kundan Shah)
c) Akam (2013 dir. Shalini Usha Nair)
d) Nayakan (1987 dir. Mani Ratnam) - Tamil
e) Hirak Rajar Deshe (1980 dir. Satyajit Ray) - Bangla
Suggested Readings

a) Mrinal Sen and Arun Kaul ‘Manifesto of the New Cinema Movement’ in Scott Mackenzie
(Ed.) Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures: A Critical Anthology. Pp. 165 -168.
Berkeley London and Los Angeles: University of California Press 2014.
b) Rajadhyaksha Ashish. ‘The 'Bollywoodization of the Indian Cinema: Cultural Nationalism in
a Global Arena’ in Anandam P. Kavoori and AswimPunathambekar (Ed.) Global Bollywood. Pp.
17-40. New Delhi: OUP 2009.

Unit 5
Practical Component Evaluation

1. Students may turn in a portfolio of 4 film reviews/one academic paper/one short film/one film
script (fiction or nonfiction)
2. For reviews: criteria for choice of films must be explicitly stated in the form of a position
paper. Films must be from a wide time-arc and must include old and just-released films. Total
word count of 4 reviews+position paper must not exceed 3000 words.
3. Academic paper can be on any aspect of film and follow all the usual considerations thereon.
3000 words including bibliography and notes.
4. Film script including shots camera position sound/background notes and cuts. Script may be
for a film of max 20 minutes length.
5. Film Length: 5-7 minutes of moving image not stills. Films can be evaluated as creative output
on the following counts and teachers may decide what gets weightage for the entries they
receive: Creativity Originality Screenplay/ Storytelling Technical Execution Narrative/
Performance/Props costumes sets locations ( production design) Cinematography (camera angles
movement lighting frames etc.) Use of background music/enhancement w credit - Use of visual
enhancements like transitions titles credits subtitles or even special effects etc...if any

Teaching Plan
Paper S10 – Film Studies

Week 1 – Unit 1 - Language of Cinema

Mise en scene - cinematography - editing - sound
Readings: Dix Andrew. Beginning Film Studies. Pp. 9-100. New Delhi: Viva 2010.
Week 2 – Unit 1 (contd.)
Week 3 – Unit 1 (contd.)
Week 4 –Unit 1 (contd.)
Week 5 -- Unit 2 -- Genre in Hollywood Cinema. Definitions of genre -- taxonomies of genre –
genre as economic strategy -- genre as cognition – rethinking genre
Readings: Nelmes Jill Ed. An Introduction to Film Studies. Pp. 152-169. London and
New York: Routledge 2003.
Week 6 – Unit 2 (contd.)
Week 7 – Unit 2 (contd.)
Week 8 – Unit 3 -- Themes from Contemporary Indian Cinema. From the 70s to the present city
-- underworld -- communalism -- terrorism -- gender issues -- the Indian Art Cinema
Readings
a) Mazumdar Ranjani. Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the City. Pp. 79-109.
Ranikhet:Permanent Black 2007.
b) Vasudevan Ravi. ‘The Melodramatic Public’. Pp. 303-333. Ranikhet: Permanent Black
2010.
Week 9 – Unit 3 – (contd.)
Week 10 -- Unit 3 – (contd.)
Week 11 – Unit 4 -- Film Review Criticism and Script writing
Readings: How to write about film by Timothy Corrigan.
Week 12 – Unit 4 (contd.)
Week 13 – Unit 4 (contd.)
Week 14 – Unit 4 (contd.)

Facilitating the Achievement of Course Learning Outcomes

SEC 10: Film Studies

Unit Course Learning Outcomes Teaching and Assessment Tasks

No. Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts of Interactive Reading theoretical material

skill to be taught discussions with together in small groups working
students to guide in peer groups to discuss
them towards skill material
based learning

2. Application of skill Practical Producing assignments preparing

Keywords

Language of Cinema
Genre
Hollywood Cinema
Contemporary Indian Cinema
Indian Art Cinema
Film Review
Criticism
Script Writing

Course Committee

Namita Paul, Kamala Nehru College (Coordinator)

Nidhi Bhandari Kamala Nehru College
Sachin N, Dyal Singh Colleg
Sakshi Dogra, Hansraj College
Shweta Sachdeva Jha, Miranda House
Vinod Verma, Maharaja Agrasen College
PAPER S11: APPLIED GENDER STUDIES: MEDIA LITERACIES

Course Objectives

This course will help students perceive understand and interpret issues of gender in various
cultural texts in India particularly in mass media representations including advertising cinema
and journalism. The course aims to mainstream ideas from gender theory so as to equip the
common student to intervene in these issues in an informed way and to become both an informed
consumer as well as a confident and ethical participant. The course will focus on enhancing
students’ textual skills via the use of Indian primary conceptual critical and applied texts to
create media literacy.

Learning Outcomes

• Train students to identify read closely and rewrite narratives of gendered privilege in
contemporary Indian popular representation.
• Examine the intersections of gender with other categories like caste race etc. to
understand how different forms of privilege/oppression and resistance/subversion interact
in heterogeneous and variable formations.
• Focused on practical application students will over the duration of the course create a
portfolio of interpretative work that analyses fictional and non-fictional mass medium
narratives and that can serve as foundations/sourcebooks for intervention to reduce
gender discrimination through media literacy.
• The course may be taught to Honours and Program course students. Teachers may evolve
more advanced practical work methodologies for advanced students.

Course Content

Unit 1
Gender/s: concepts and frameworks

Femininities/Masculinities Cis/Trans bodies Heterosexuality/ Homosexuality/

Heteronormativity/ Heteropatriarchy Sexism/Privilege/Biology/Reproduction

Unit 2
Analysing gender in advertising

The use of gendered stereotypes and privilege in advertising hegemonic and normative ideas of
gender and sexuality in selling and buying products consumption of goods bodies
commodification and objectification the reach and memorability of advertising matrimonial and
personal ads and reinforcement of caste/class/gender binaries.

Unit 3
Analysing representations of gender in reporting and journalism

Vocabulary of news media coverage in relation to gender representation of

masculine/feminine/non-dimorphic bodies Re-narrativizing this vocabulary productively
difference in coverage of stories of obviously ‘gendered’ subjects such as rape heroism war
domestic violence sexual harassment and supposedly ‘neutral’ subjects like labour rights or work
and wages or health or politics advocacy networks for various minority subjects persistence of
sexism in new media

Unit 4
Gender as represented in film (fiction and nonfiction/documentary)

Narrative time available to male/female/trans subjects use of normative heterosexuality and

gender privilege in plots casting narrative development and marketing of films the Bechdel test:
the importance of clearing it and the implications for mainstream narrativization consistently
failing the test documentary films for presentation of alternative narratives.

Readings

1. Kandasamy, Meena. ‘Screwtiny’ ‘Pride goes before a full-length mirror’ ‘Joiussance’ and
‘Backstreet Girls’ in Ms Militancy. Delhi: Navayana 2014.
2. Dasgupta, R.K and Gokulsing K. M. ‘Introduction: Perceptions of Masculinity and Challenges
to the Indian Male’ Rohit K. Dasgupta & K. Moti Gokulsing (eds). Masculinity and its
Challenges in India: Essays on Changing Perceptions. Jefferson NC: McFarland 2014 pp 5-26
3. Selections from Autobiographies of Transgenders: Laxmi PG Joshi (translator) and R Raj Rao
(translator) Me Hijra Me Laxmi. New Delhi: OUP/ A. Revathi V. Geetha. The Truth About Me:
A Hijra Life Story. New Delhi: Penguin 2010.
4. Nadimpally S. and V. Marwah. ‘Shake her she is like the tree that grows money! In Of
Mothers and Others: Stories Essays Poems.’ Edited by J. Mishra. New Delhi: Zubaan 2013.
5. Chaudhuri Maitrayee. ‘Gender and Advertisements: The Rhetoric of Globalisation’ Women's
Studies International Forum 2001 24.3/4 pp. 373-385.
6. Jha Sonora and Mara Adelman. ‘Looking for love in all the white places: a study of skin color
preferences on Indian matrimonial and mate-seeking websites.’ Studies in South Asian Film &
Media 1.1 (2009): 65-83.
7. View and discuss any one of the feature films: (a) Dangal (Dir. Nitish Tiwari. 2016. UTV and
Walt Disney Pictures) (b) Chak De (Dir. Shimit Amin. Yash Raj Films 2007) (c) Pink (Dir.
Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury. Rashmi Sharma Telefilms 2016).
8. View and discuss the documentary films Unlimited Girls (Dir. Paromita Vohra. Sakshi 2002)
and Newborns (Dir. Megha Ramaswamy. Recyclewala Labs 2014).
9. Khabar Lahariya FAQ (http://khabarlahariya.org/faqs/ accessed on 05.05.2018) and ‘Open
letter to ourle Colleagues of the Media World from Khabar Lahariya Editors’
(http://khabarlahariya.org/an-open-letter-to-our-male-colleagues-of-the-media-world-from-
khabar-lahariya-editors/ May 03. 2018. Accessed on 05.05.2018).
10. Rege Sharmila ‘Dalit Women Talk Differently: A Critique of 'Difference' and Towards a
Dalit Feminist Standpoint Position’ in Economic and Political Weekly Vol. 33 No. 44 1998 pp.
WS39-WS46.
10. Dixit Neha and Sen Orijit. ‘The Girl Not from Madras.’ In First Hand. Delhi: Yoda Press
2016. Pp 324-43 and ‘It is Hard to be a Journalist in India. Is it Harder if you’re a Woman?’
(http://theladiesfinger.com/press-freedom/ September 16 2016. Accessed on 05.05.2018).
12. Siddiqui Gohar. ‘Behind Her Laughter is Fear: Domestic violence and transnational
feminism’. Jump Cut 55 (2013 Fall)
(https://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc55.2013/SiddiquiDomesAbuseIndia/index.html. accessed
on 05.05.2018)

Notes
For visually challenged students

Reading no. 7 is Phadke Shilpa Sameera Khan and Shilpa Ranade. ‘Why Loiter? Women and
Risk on Mumbai Streets’. New Delhi: Penguin 2011. Pp. 65—106.
Reading no. 8 is Agnihotri Anita. ‘The Peacock.’ Seventeen. New Delhi: Zubaan 2011. 69-79
and Paromita Vohra's ‘Interview with Veena Mazumdar part 1’ and ‘Interview with Veena
Mazumdar part 2’. Unlimited Girls footage. Point of View. https://pad.ma/MH/info and
(https://pad.ma/NC/info. Accessed on 05.05.2018).
Reading 10 to replace graphic story is ‘Sarpanch Woodcutter Handpump Mechanic: Dalit
Women in UP tell Women@Work Stories’. (http://theladiesfinger.com/woodcutter-sarpanch-
handpump-mechanic-dalit-women-work-stories. May 02 2018. Accessed on 05.05.2018).

Evaluation

1. Emphasis will be on student's ability to apply concepts generatively rather than to test memory
and to encourage intersectional thinking. Therefore all the readings may be treated as applying to
all units in terms of concepts and techniques therein.
Practicals (14 hours)

1. Students may submit for evaluation either one full-length academic essay or produce a
portfolio that re-writes or re-scripts or reviews texts they select (with the assistance of the
teacher) from contemporary Indian media such that units 2 3 and 4 each are represented in the
portfolio. Alternatively students may choose to focus on any one of units 2/3/4 should they have
special aptitude for or interest in any area.
2. The objective of the course is to enable the student to intervene as an informed gender-ethical
respondent to media narratives so any mode of media that permits this analysis such as blog-
posts television programming new media including social media documentary and other short
films news coverage may also be admitted such that they are equivalent in total effort to a full-
length academic essay.
3. Students may also be encouraged to create samplers and portfolios of contemporary coverage
thematically.
4. Students are to be encouraged to find and bring supplementary texts to classroom discussion
for all units.

Teaching Plan
Paper S11: Applied Gender Studies: Media Literacies

Week 1 -- Unit 1: Gender/s: concepts and frameworks

Topics: Femininities/Masculinities Cis/Trans bodies Heterosexuality/ Homosexuality/
Heteronormativity/ Heteropatriarchy Sexism/Privilege/Biology/Reproduction
Texts:
Kandasamy Meena. ‘Screwtiny’ ‘Pride goes before a full-length mirror’ ‘Joiussance’ and
‘Backstreet Girls’.
Dasgupta R.K and Gokulsing K. M. Introduction: Perceptions of Masculinity and
Challenges to the Indian Male.
Revathi A. A Life in Trans Activism. Pp. 158—168.
Nadimpally S. and V. Marwah. ‘Shake Her She is Like the Tree That Grows Money!’
Rege Sharmila ‘Dalit Women Talk Differently: A Critique of 'Difference' and Towards a
Dalit Feminist Standpoint Position’. (Practicals as applicable to unit)
Week 2 -- Unit 1 (contd.)
Week 3 -- Unit 1 (contd.)
Week 4 -- Unit 1 (contd.)
Week 5 -- Unit 2: Analysing gender in advertising
Topics: The use of gendered stereotypes and privilege in advertising hegemonic and
normative ideas of gender and sexuality in selling and buying products consumption of
goods bodies commodification and objectification the reach and memorability of
advertising matrimonial and personal ads and reinforcement of caste/class/gender
binaries.
Readings
Chaudhuri Maitrayee. ‘Gender and Advertisements: The Rhetoric of Globalisation’.
Jha Sonora and Mara Adelman. ‘Looking for love in all the white places: a study of skin
colour preferences on Indian matrimonial and mate-seeking websites.’
(Practicals as applicable to unit)
Week 6 -- Unit 2 (contd.)
Week 7 -- Unit 2 (contd.)
Week 8 -- Unit 3: Analysing representations of gender in reporting and journalism
Topics: Vocabulary of news media coverage in relation to gender representation of
masculine/feminine/non-dimorphic bodies Re-narrativizing this vocabulary productively
difference in coverage of stories of obviously ‘gendered’ subjects such as rape heroism
war domestic violence sexual harassment and supposedly ‘neutral’ subjects like labour
rights or work and wages or health or politics advocacy networks for various minority
subjects persistence of sexism in new media
Readings
Khabar LahariyaFAQ (http://khabarlahariya.org/faqs/) and ‘Open letter to our Male
Colleagues of the Media World from Khabar Lahariya Editors’.
Dixit Neha and Sen Orijit. ‘The Girl Not from Madras.’ and ‘It is Hard to be a
Journalist in India. Is it Harder if you’re a Woman?’
For visually challenged students replace second reading with ‘Sarpanch Woodcutter
Handpump Mechanic: Dalit Women in UP tell Women@Work Stories’.
(Practicals as applicable to unit)
Week 9 -- Unit 3 (contd.)
Week 10 -- Unit 3 (contd.)
Week 11 -- Unit 4: Gender as represented in film (fiction and nonfiction/documentary)
Topics:
Narrative time available to male/female/trans subjects use of normative heterosexuality
and gender privilege in plots casting narrative development and marketing of films the
Bechdel test: the importance of clearing it and the implications for mainstream
narrativization consistently failing the test documentary films for presentation of
alternative narratives.
Readings
View and discuss any one of the feature films: Dangal or Chak De or Pink.
For visually challenged students --
Phadke Shilpa Sameera Khan and Shilpa Ranade. Why Loiter? Women and Risk on
Mumbai Streets. Pp. 65—106.
View and discuss the documentary films Unlimited Girls and Newborns.
For visually challenged students:
Agnihotri Anita. ‘The Peacock.’ Seventeen. New Delhi: Zubaan 2011. 69-79 and
Paromita Vohra's ‘Interview with Veena Mazumdar part 1’ and ‘Interview with
Veena Mazumdar part 2’. Unlimited Girls footage. Point of View.
Siddiqui Gohar. ‘Behind her Laughter is Fear: Domestic violence and transnational
feminism’.
Week 12 -- Unit 4 (contd.)
Week 13 -- Unit 4 (contd.)
Weeks 14 -- Unit 4 (contd.)

For entire course: Practical work done by students is to be shared in class to enable dissemination
of knowledge produced.

Facilitating the Achievement of Course Learning Outcomes

Paper S11: Applied Gender Studies: Media Literacies

Unit Course Learning Outcomes Teaching and Assessment Tasks

No. Learning Activity

1. Understanding concepts of Interactive Reading theoretical material

skill to be taught discussions with together in small groups working
students to guide in peer groups to discuss
them towards skill material
based learning

2. Application of skill Practical Producing assignments preparing

application of skill project folders
performed under
supervision of
teacher

3. Demonstrating conceptual Discussing exam Class tests

understanding and practical questions and
application of skill in tests answering
and examinations techniques
Keywords

Femininities
Masculinities
Heteronormativity
Heteropatriarchy
Social Reproduction
Intersections
Resistance

Course Committee

Dr Aneeta Rajendran Gargi College (Coordinator)

Ms A. Jeyakirthana J. Gargi College
Rina Ramdev, Sri Venkateswara College
Vinita Chandra, Ramjas College

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