Evolving Notions and Experiences of English Studies and Pedagogy in Contemporary India

Abstract

The article highlights how new sub-disciplines such as Malayalam literature are increasingly emerging as the mainstay of Literary studies in India. Though there is a debt to the British model that highlighted the canon from Chaucer to the twenty-first century, it has become increasingly clear that India will have to find its own understanding of what English Studies can best represent for contemporary Indian interests. Innovation will thus have to emerge both in terms of the content and a student-centred pedagogy. Shift in languages, with an increasing interest in gender, caste, visual culture has been an important step. In terms of pedagogy, negotiation between the need for articulations in mother tongue and English as a second language requires pedagogical reflections.