Totally there are 16 papers, a graduate seminar and a thesis in this course. The papers are in the form of themes which will draw upon many disciplines and will thus exemplify what interdisciplinarity means. All the papers in this course will have a strong theoretical basis drawn from philosophy and other intellectual traditions, both from the Indian and the non-Indian perspectives. They will engage with seminal texts in these areas. All the courses will require written essays for purposes of grading. Students are expected to read from an extensive reading list.

Total Credits: 90
Participation in Workshops, Conferences and Outreach Assignments – 10 Credits

List of Courses with sample topics:

MA in English
Syllabus

First Year

Reading and Writing
• History and Theories of reading and writing from philosophy and literature studies
• Orality and Literacy
• Phenomenology of reading and writing
• Art and writing

Thinking, Imagination
• Indian and Western philosophical perspectives on the nature of thinking, thought and imagination
• Varieties of thinking such as critical and creative thinking
• Varieties of imagination such as the artistic
• literary and scientific imagination
• Fiction and imagination
• Thinking and language
• Originality

Reason and the Senses
• The nature of the senses
• Phenomenology of the senses
• The description of the mind
• Theories of reason and rationality
• Introduction to Indian and Western logic
• Types of reason such as reason in science and arts
• Critique of reason and rationality
• Reason and tradition

Truth and Knowledge
• Indian and Western epistemology
• Theories of truth
• Literature, art and truth
• Varieties of truth and knowledge in social and natural sciences
• Politics of truth and knowledge

Language
• Sanskrit

Individual-Self
• Historical and conceptual ideas of self from Indian and Western traditions
• Notions of individual and person
• Cultural constructions of self
• Self and Identity

Collective-Social
• On collection and group
• Nature of the social
• Science of the social and the creation of social sciences
• Social and the political
• Social and the individual
• Understanding other cultures
• Society as universal category
• Understanding Indian society

Language and Reality
• Philosophy of language drawn from Indian and Western traditions
• Realism, idealism and other varieties
• Relation between language and reality
• Different modes of reality such as social, literary, artistic and scientific
• Languages of social and natural reality

Time and Narrative
• Nature of time in various traditions
• The problems of time
• Time and history
• Theory of narrative
• Relation between time and narrative
• Individual time and social time
• The dynamics of time, narrative and reality


Second Year

The History of Indian Literature
• Pre-20 century Indian literature and literary and spiritual philosophy.
• Conceptual relation between culture and power
• The rise of regional languages and Islam
• Literary theorists in the medieval period

Indian Literature
• Indian Literature in the 20th century
• Emergence of the Indian novel.
• The public sphere
• Regional literature of colonial and postcolonial India

Sexuality
• Sexuality as a theme in Indian literature.
• Contextual study of ancient texts and contemporary theory

Caste and Religion
• Ancient and contemporary texts with an emphasis on the latter.
• Popular Contemporary Culture
• Hindi and regional film as well as contemporary bestsellers.
• Texts on representative Bollywood films

Political Rhetoric
• Relationship of language to political thought

Medical Humanities
• Relation of medical narratives of health and illness to language.
• Medical ethics
• Medical anthropology
• Literature and medicine
• Gender and medicine
• Law and Medicine

Creative Writing
• The short story, drama, poetry, essay, and the novel.

Spiritual Rhetoric
• Claims made toward the spiritual in the twentieth century
• The rhetorical mechanisms of such claims
• Agnostic about their inherent truth.
• Situating spiritual claims through Indian Philosophy