Department of English

Brief History of the Department

Commencing its journey in 2013 as one of the founding academic departments in the university, the Department of English has already witnessed five fruitful and happening years. In these five years, the department has remained engaged unfailingly in academic pursuits – trying in a sustained manner to cater to the academic needs of postgraduate students at the university campus as well as of those at the PG Departments of B.C.College, Asansol (from 2013), TDB College, Raniganj (from 2016) and Michael Madhusudan Memorial College, Durgapur(from 2018), as also of the undergraduate students enrolled in the affiliated colleges. To this end, the department has always endeavoured to keep the syllabi updated (as per UGC guidelines), and at par with that of other prominent universities in and outside the state, and has organised seminars, special lectures (as part of Quest Lecture Series), workshops, and tutorials regularly.

Vision and Mission of the Department

With five permanent faculty members along with visiting faculty and guest lecturers of repute, the Department currently offers courses that enable the students at the postgraduate level to explore different nuances of South Asian Literatures, new Literatures in English and Dalit Literature along with canonical British Literature. It also brings into its repertoire current theoretical trajectories on literary and cultural studies. It offers special papers on American Literature, New Literature, Subaltern studies and Literature in translation. To keep pace with the changing trends, it promises to introduce more novel papers around emerging areas of global scholarship in the near future.
Simultaneously, the department has always stressed the need for Advanced Research in the humanities, because without critical and conscientious research, a university PG Department is never worth its name. Consequently in 2015, the department introduced its PhD Programme, thus honing the available research expertise of its faculty members. There has been no looking back since then, and the department now boasts of having 16 Ph.D. Scholars on the rolls at present, and running successfully a Major Research Project with funding from ICSSR and a Post-doctoral Research Programme under the aegis of the department. The latest achievement of the department has been the introduction of Choice-Based Credit System both at the UG as well as the PG levels. The department also plans to introduce an integrated M.Phil.-Ph.D programme shortly.
We are confident to incrementally grow from strength to strength, with plans to engage ourselves more actively in various academic activities that would enrich both students, research scholars and the faculty members.

Programme/ Course Offered