English language and literature over the years has continued to be an exciting subject of study at different academic departments of Indian Universities and colleges and fascinated the imagination of the readers. With the backdrop of colonial legacy in this country the gusto for this branch of study has been on steady rise. The subject itself has undergone tremendous changes with emergence of various theories on psychology, Gender, culture, social stratification, identity, colonial and post-colonial conditions, etc. The new responses are also built up by the young readers to a wide spectrum of issues and genres when confronted with the varied situations and characters of literature from across the world. The scholars of the subject get to learn to connect to the immediate social and political issues that provoke thought in the contemporary mind. They get ample opportunity to engage in discourses, to voice their concerns and argue their positions on the larger issues inside the class rooms and beyond.
Apart from academic significance, the subject has proved to be a potential instrument of employability which is why the demand gradually increases at higher educational levels.
With the above objective in mind, the department of English was set up in the year of inception of the college in 1979 with 3 faculty Members. Gradually with the expansion of activities and number of enrollment in the subject, it has presently 10 sanctioned posts for faculty Members with enrolment of over 2000 students in the Department. Besides being the largest department in the Stream of Arts, it is also responsible for imparting instruction to various Streams such as Commerce and Science where English is a compulsory subject.
The Compulsory English course content basically aims at preparing the students for the minimum linguistic and communicative competency that will help them face the challenge of a competitive world as a graduate.
The English Elective and Major courses are designed to familiarize the students with the major genres of literature such as epic, drama, poetry, novel, novella, short story, non-fiction, etc. While the objective is to provide the students a thorough grounding in the study of literature, they will be introduced to the study of literary and cultural forms with a view to initiate them into the study of literary theory and applied criticism, and expose them to the diverse linguistic and literary expressions existing world over.
A pool of dedicated faculty members in the department are committed to providing quality teaching in the subject and strictly follow the schedule of collecting internal assignments, conducting the internal Tests, evaluating the papers with fairness and contributing in a major way to the corporate activities of the campus.
The class room meant for Major in English is equipped with Audio-visual digital projector and teachers are trained to handle it to their best advantage to make the teaching interesting for students. The Screening of movies is adopted as a regular feature of teaching aid related to syllabus and thereby highlight the way visual media shape the artistic content.
Seminars and symposia are held in the department especially with the objective of involving young students and providing them an exposure to multi-media presentation, research methodology and help shedding their stage-fright.
Mentoring the students in small groups has been introduced as a part of Teacher-Student interaction in the department and each faculty member is entrusted with the responsibility of a group.
The department setting up a library of its own with a small stock of relevant reference books is in pipeline mostly to be used by the teachers and students of Major.
Besides the regular course of RGU, the department has been running a Self-financing Certificate Course on Translation and Media Studies with the due approval of the Govt. The course duration is of 3 months and subject to the availability of the students.
Our strength is our impartial approach, our commitment to improve the standard consistently and let the students pass out with a broadened vision of life while our weakness is our humongous population and limited infrastructure.