Tuesday, July 21, 2009

III Semester MA English Research and Writing Heuristics CIA 2

Attempt a semiotic study of Girish Karnad’s play assigned to you. You may finalise your own topic/title around the play assigned. If you wish you may do a semiotic study of the translation of the play to the language you are most familiar with. In which case please inform me in advance and during the submission of your research paper, attach a copy of the translation.


You will be evaluated based on understanding of semiotics, research competence displayed, and overall performance. Should you wish to incorporate any other criteria do let me know. Please ensure that you are making an argument in your research paper.


You will have to submit the paper in hard copy, printed back to back, and email a soft copy to me. Format: A4 paper, 14 font size, 1 ½ line spaced, font- Times New Roman. While the hard copies will be bound and made available in the library for general reference, the soft copies will be uploaded to this blog and scribd.


Date of submission will be decided mutually during my lecture hour tomorrow.


Plays Assigned

· Tuglaq (Jijo, Priyadarshini)

· Hayavadana (Joe, Payal, Swathi)

· Bali: The Sacrifice (Aditi, Tomy)

· Naga-Mandala (Anjali, Sarjoo, Sunita)

· Tale-Danda (Anju, Saima)

· The Fire and the Rain (Fancy, Shreyasi)

· The Dreams of Tipu Sultan (Gorgia, Yashaswini)

· Flowers (Harita, Thammanoon, Samji)

· Broken Image (Jolsna, Sayori)

· Wedding Album (Levin, Priya)

· Yayathi (Namitha)

· Semiotic study of the self-translation of Naga-Mandala (Rashmi)


All the plays are available in Collected Plays: Volume One and Collected Plays: Volume Two by Girish Karnad, except for Wedding Album which is printed separately. The copies can be found in the library.

All the best

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Links to digital articles databases

Click on the links below to visit the cites

Saturday, July 18, 2009

A Death of an innocent misconception

Class Note, 15th July, 09 (I M.A English)
A discussion on Plato’s REPUBLIC had barely ensued, when with the customary tendency to float away that comes with being a man of many thoughts, Mr. Pinto typically steered us from poor Plato and into the field of Psychology. Opinions were exchanged about that discipline, judgments were made (some fair some not) and then a question was raised trying to connect Psychology, the study of the mind, to Literature.
“Don’t we, as Literature students, also study various texts with the hope of understanding the mind of the author behind the text?”
In response, there was a laugh from the man of Literature himself. Not unkind laughter but more like an “I’m sorry, but I’m going to now slowly and systematically disabuse you of all your sweet notions” sort of laugh.
Exit: Plato’s ‘Republic’
Enter: ‘Death of the Author” – Roland Barthes.
Barthes made famous the notion of doing away with the Author, the idea of the text as a site of free play or pleasure, and differences such as those between ‘work’ and ‘text’, and ‘writerly’ and ‘readerly’ works of art. The idea that it is not the Author who is primary but the reader.
He talks of the problem of the subject, insisting on viewing an author or persona as a grammatical rather than a psychological subject. The well known formulation of this problem occurs in ‘Death of the Author’ (1968), a phrase which has come to be associated with both Barthes and structuralism just as the phrase ‘God is dead’ had been attributed (accurately/ inaccurately) to Nietzsche (it had first occurred in Hegel’s ‘Phenomenology’???).

Barthes begins the essay by quoting a sentence from Balzac’s novella ‘Sarra Sine’: ‘This was woman herself, with her sudden fears, her irrational whims, her instinctive worries, her impetuous boldness, her fussings, and her delicious sensibility.’
He throws open the question, who is the speaker of the words? Is it the hero of the story, or Balzac himself drawing on his experience of women? Or is he professing literary notions of feminity? Or is it universal wisdom?

His answer is that we can never know because “writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin. Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing.”
Even in the present, says Barthes, our studies of Literature and Literary history are “tyrannically centered on the author.” The newer modes of criticism (by which he presumably means phenomenological and psychoanalytical criticism), he claims, have often consolidated this obsession. Recently many writers have challenged this centrality of the author. Mallarme recognized that it is “language which speaks, not the author.”

At this point, a small experiment was conducted in class. We were asked to take a blank sheet of paper and follow Mr. Pinto’s instructions carefully and write a poem (or just about any thought that came into the head). We were asked not to think and just go with the flow of our thoughts. When he instructed us to write the first line, we were to write it and move on to writing the second line only when he said so. Like this we jotted down our thoughts in twenty lines and discovered that even though our initial lines seemed a little constructed and structured (it was inevitable that some of us would cheat and not follow the instruction of ‘don’t think too much’), as we were writing the last 12 lines or so, it was indeed our language which was guiding us into writing and not our preconceived thoughts, ideas or plans of writing according to a theme/ purpose/ objective.

Proof of this is in the impromptu writing of Rungkan, ‘Apple’, of my class. This is what she composed during our experiment and it is dedicated by her to Mr. Pinto:

There is a man who comes
Nothing in hands, but books
And knowledge in brain
He is neither mad nor bad
He asked me to write
Something that he named it ‘poem’
I took my pen jolt down something strange and meaningless
Nothing I understood what he said
He is not mad but I’m running mad
Because I know nothing about writing
That he said and claimed as ‘poem’
Stanza, octave, and rhythm all these I have learnt
But I don’t know where to start
And how to end
So I start making fun of myself
Writing this poem…
First time in my life ‘English Poem’
Is it a poem? I still know nothing
Whether it is poem or not
Then he stops before my poem starts…
( :) Surely, this deserves an applause?)
The removal of the author transforms the modern text. Previously, the author was conceived as the past of his own book, the preexisting cause and explanation. In contrast, the modern scriptor is born simultaneously with the text…there is no other time than that of the enunciation and every text is eternally written HERE and NOW.

Hence we can no longer think of writing in the classical ways, as recording, representing, or depicting. Rather, writing is a “performative” act in which “the enunciation has no other content (contains no other proposition) than the act by which it is uttered – something like the I DECLARE of Kings or the I SING of very ancient poets.”

In writing, the modern scriptor traces a field with no origin, or at least one which has “no other origin than language itself, language which ceaselessly calls into question all origins.” What’s more, a text can no longer be viewed as releasing in a linear fashion a single ‘theological’ meaning, as the message of the “Author-God”. Rather, it is a multi dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The writer has only the power to mix writings.

The demise of the author spells the demise of criticism: deciphering a text becomes a futile endeavor: “To give a text an author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing.”

Barthes concludes by pointing out that the multiplicity of writing – its drawing from various cultures and styles – is focused and unified in one place: the Reader (not the Author). A text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination.

Yet, Barthes cautions that the humanism we have rejected via removal of the author should not be reintroduced through any conception of the reader as a personal and complete entity. The reader of which Barthes speaks is a reader “without history, biography, psychology; he is simply that SOMEONE who holds together in a single field all the traces by which the written text is constituted.” In other words, the reader, like the author, is a function of the text. In this sense, the birth of the Reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.

Friday, July 17, 2009

WikiWars - conference based international event on the Wikipedia, February 2010

Call for Participation; 12th, 13th January, 2010, Bangalore

Event One for the Critical Point of View Reader

CPOV (Critical Point of View) Context: The Wikipedia has emerged as the de facto global reference of dynamic knowledge. Different stakeholders – Wikipedians, users, academics, researchers, gurus of Web 2.0, publishing houses and governments have entered into fierce debates and discussions about what the rise of Wikipedia and Wiki cultures means and how they influence the information societies we live in. The Wikipedia itself has been at the centre of much controversy, pivoted around questions of accuracy, anonymity, vandalism, expertise and authority.


The Centre for Internet and Society (Bangalore, India) and the Institute of Network Cultures (Amsterdam, Netherlands) are working together to produce a critical Reader on Wikipedia and to build a Wikipedia Knowledge Network. Under the rubric CPOV, we propose two events that bring together different perspectives, approaches, experiences and stories that critically explore different questions and concerns around Wikipedia. The proceeds from these two events will result in a Reader that consolidates critical points of view about Wikipedia.


WikiWars Conference: The first conference to be held in Bangalore, called WikiWars, invites participation from users, scholars, academics, practitioners, artists and other cultural workers, to share their experiences, ideas, experiments, innovations, applications and stories about Wikipedia. The WikiWars conference embodies the spirit that guides an open encyclopaedia like the Wikipedia, by referring to the edit battles that users enter into over topics that have many points of view. WikiWars also refers to the contradictory positions adopted by different stakeholders on the various issues of credibility, authority, verifiability and truth-telling, on the Wikipedia. This conference calls for diverse and varied knowledges to come together in a critical dialogic space that informs and augments our understanding of the Wikipedia.


Conference Themes: The possible themes and areas for presentations (projects, experiences, experiments, stories or documentation) can include but are not limited to:

  • Wiki Theory: Endorse, question/contest or delineate the theoretical approaches and view points on the Wikipedia
  • Wikipedia and Critique of Western Knowledge Production: The predominance of textual or linguistic cultures, post-western knowledge production systems, and indigenous knowledge systems
  • Wiki Art: Art that uses Wikipedia models, structures or data to explore and expand the practice of Wikipedia project; and accounts that document Wikipedia based art practices or debates
  • Designing Debate: Suggestions, innovations, critiques and ideas that focus on the design and form of the Wikipedia, to explore the claims of neutrality, objectivity, emergent hierarchy, control and authenticity on the Wikipedia
  • Critique of Free and Open: Areas like Wikipedia governance, economic practices of and around Wikipedia, and the nature of freedom in usage, production and participation on the Wikipedia
  • Global Politics of Exclusion: Exploring questions of non-western material inclusion, language, connectedness, oral histories, women, non-geeks, and alternative material that cannot be documented on Wikipedia etc.
  • The Place of Resistance: Space of resistance and dissent in the Wikipedia, structures that allow for alternative voices, experiences and ideas
  • Wikipedia and Education: Wikipedia usage in classrooms as a teaching resource, and its effect on pedagogy, the role of Wikipedia in the knowledge production sector, and mobilisation of academic communities around the Wikipedia

For detailed information on each theme, please go to http://cis-india.org/publications/workshops/conference-blogs/Wikiwars


Who Should Apply: The conference in Bangalore aims to bring together an interesting mix of diverse voices from different cultures, geo-political spaces, and context-based practices from around the world, to start consolidating the approaches, experiences, and impact of the Wikipedia:

  1. Students and Wikipedia users who belong to different local chapters or have editorial/contribution experiences on the Wikipedia,
  2. Academics and publishers who are exploring the changes caused by Wikipedia, both in classroom pedagogy and in knowledge production systems,
  3. Researchers and theoreticians, practitioners and proponents, artists and social activists, who are interested in Wikipedia cultures and their socio-political conditions, should be attending this conference.


How To Apply: To apply for the conference, please send the following information by email to infowiki@cis-india.org by the 31st of August, 2009. 1. A note of interest (450 - 700 words) detailing your ideas and possible contribution 2. Your updated resume 3. A sample of your work (term papers, published articles, peer-reviewed papers, books, art-projects, social intervention projects etc.)


Conference time-line:

Last Date for submitting Note of Interest and Funding options – 31st August, 2009

Announcement of short-listed proposals – 21st September, 2009.

Sharing of Detailed Proposals with all participants – 15th December, 2009

Announcement of Conference Schedule and Logistics – 30th December 2009

Online Registration for non-presenting participants – 3rd January 2010

Conference Dates – 12th, 13th January 2010


Travel support: Travel support is available for some of the conference participants (national and international). The selected participants will be provided with the basic travel and accommodation costs for the duration of the conference from their home-countries/cities to travel to Bangalore for the conference. If you are applying for travel support, please indicate clearly in your “Note of Interest” any of these three options: 1. Full travel support required. 2. Partial travel support required with estimate. 3. Travel support not required. Travel support will be provided by the conference organisers on a case-by-case basis.


Conference Organisers: Sunil Abraham (Sunil@cis-india.org) and Nishant Shah (Nishant@cis-india.org ), Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. If there are any queries regarding the WikiWars conference please write to us.

Research and Editorial Team: Geert Lovink and Sabine Niederer (Amsterdam), Nathaniel Tkacz (Melbourne), Johanna Niesyto (Siegen), Sunil Abraham and Nishant Shah (Bangalore).

Monday, July 13, 2009

Summer Course: Film and the Historical Imagination

Course instructor: Ranjani Mazumdar, Associate Professor, Cinema Studies,
School of Arts & Aesthetics, JNU

July 27 – August 7, 2009

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

The JB MRC invites applications from graduate students, media researchers and practitioners for a two-week long theory course titled “Film and the Historical Imagination”

Course Description:
Film is an archive of sensations, of emotions, of images and of sounds. As a powerful recorder of life and its events, Film lends itself to organizing not just historical knowledge but also commenting on the nature of historical narration. This two week introductory course on Film and the Historical Imagination will map the specific ways in which history and ideas about the past get constructed through the medium of cinema. Issues related to questions of evidence, memory, historical catastrophe, nostalgia, myth and heritage will be discussed and analyzed in relation to world cinema. The course is structured in the form of five illustrated lectures, followed by five full length screenings. The course will conclude with a round table discussion with all participants. A set of key essays will be provided in the form of a reader. The sessions would be held from 11 am to 5 pm every alternate day of the week, excluding weekends.

Ranjani Mazumdar is Associate Professor of Cinema Studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her publications and films focus on urban cultures, popular cinema, gender and the cinematic city. She is the author of Bombay Cinema: Archive of the City which was co published by the University of Minnesota Press and Permanent Black, 2007. She is currently co-authoring a book on the Contemporary Film Industry. Her current research interests include the cinema of the 1960s, Globalization and Film Culture, and Film and History.

To apply: Send your CV and a brief statement (500 words max) outlining your interest in attending the course to courses.jbmrc@gmail.com<mailto:courses.jbmrc@gmail.com> or to the Course Coordinator, JB MRC, AJK MCRC, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi 110025.
• Last date for applications: July 23, 2009
• Course commencement date: July 27, 2009

Selected applicants will be charged Rs. 650/- as the course fee

Historical Biographical and Moral Philosophical approach

( The Following is lectures notes by Mr. Pinto - P.S.ENG-III)

In the words of Mr. Pinto, literature does not teach us anything. If, for instance, an individual take up psychology she can become a psychologist or if one is engaged in the field of sociology he can become a sociologist, literature is the only subject wherein an individual cannot be an expert. For example, literature will not teach us how to write a poem. All literature does is engage us in a textual analysis. Our unconscious is accustomed towards textual analysis and hence our engagement in the classroom with the various texts is nothing but a textual analysis of the text. This was Mr. Pinto’s reply to all those who didn’t have a text in the class.

Mr. Pinto wanted us to cultivate an interest in
1. Logic

2. Few schools of philosophy- Socratic school of philosophy

3. The works of Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Khant, Engel and Foucault.

In today’s’ class Mr. Pinto commented on the historical biographical approach and Moral philosophical approach. He took up the word “text” and analyzed it for us. He said textile and textual drew similar ideas. Just as textile is a mixture of various elements, text/ual is also quite similar. A text, like textile, is woven together giving us a definite pattern of writing. Mr. Pinto highlighted the limitations of language by saying that one cannot go beyond the structure of the text. He said that there can be constant replays, modification and difference in perception of the text but all this can take place only within the boundaries of the structure of the text. He said that with a close engagement with the text we can see through it. We cannot accuse the writer based on one notion of the text it is important to take into account the authenticity of the text. The versions that come to us might not always be the original publication but rather the edited versions or editions. For e.g. In Andrew Marvell’s “To his Coy Mistress” instead of “dew” the first edition of the poem had “glue”. Shakespeare’s works’ that we have read is also not the original version but rather edited versions of his work.
The term Genre is a French word that divides the text into various segments. A text may have various genres ranging from poems, essays, short stories and novels. In similar ways poem is also divided into various genres. A poem can be ballad, sonnets, villanelle, the elegy, the ode, the sestina, the haiku and the dramatic monologue. The Elegy harbours the pattern of lamentation; the Ode uses the Pindaric pattern and haiku is a celebration of wisdom which delays understanding.
Haiku combines form, content and language in a meaningful yet compact form. Mr Pinto quoted

“O wonder marvel,
I cut woods,
I drew water from the well.”
These lines have been written by a Buddhist monk after getting enlightened. Though he witnessed change within him, life does not after enlightenment. The monk’s perception towards life may be different after enlightenment but he still had to cut wood and draw water from the well.

Historical biographies concern itself with the emphasis on super structure and the biography of the poet. It was in the seventeenth century that Andrew Marvell wrote “To his Hoy Mistress”. The social setup in that particular time was highly puritan. Renaissance had influenced classical learning and hence Logic. Logic is the formal and systematic study of principle of valid inference and correct reasoning. The term logic is very precise and very particular with the use of languages. For example the opposite of white is non-white and not black or green. The Physical world is structured in such a way there is only an existence of zero and one. To his Coy Mistress is an argument towards a school of thought of puritans and the structure. The argument was a reflection of the writing process removed from traditional conceptions of time and a discourse on the urgency of creating written material within human time frames with the presentation of written material as a celebration of life. This pattern of writing did not reflect the poet’s personal emotions but rather a comment on the structure of the society. Thus the weaving of the text was only a pattern to say something.

Taking a moral philosophical approach towards reading “To his Coy Mistress” Mr. Pinto said that the poem is not of sexual imagery but of time. Mr. Pinto also says that to have clarity in idea one must read philosophy. Andrew Marvell systematically reasoned with his desired object about the futility of delaying their interlude when the hours available to them were limited. Metaphysical writers viewed poetry as an intellectual exercise, an opportunity to develop ideas in a logical, argumentative structure; for them, the object of poetry was not to serve as an outlet for an effusion of emotional sentiments. If one approaches "To a Coy Mistress" as a discussion of the pressures which time placed upon a writer, Marvel's apostrophe took on an ironic twist. He used his analytical skills to coax his writing to manifest his intended desires, providing a playful look at the connection between a man and his work. Complicating this relationship was the necessity of negotiating under the terms and constraints of an outside third party: time.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

A Peek at Plato

Mr. Pinto’s Class Note – 10th July, 09.


(Scene: It’s 5 minutes to the end of Mr. Pinto’s class and he hasn’t yet arrived; busy with an extended interview-meeting. Just when we were all trudging along outside to enjoy a lazy day at the campus, he’s in our class in a flash. There’s an explosion of energy and in just about 10 minutes, he gives us a mine of information. By all rights we should have been groaning and saying nasty things about him, for first making us wait, and then making us stay those extra 10 minutes. But the palpable energy being exchanged in those ten minutes was, to everyone’s good fortune, mutually relished. Besides, it was obvious we had rescued him from what appeared at that time to be brain atrophy. So who cares about those extra 10 minutes when we were briefly heroes?!?)

‘Adeimantus, you and I are not making up stories at the moment; we are founding a community.’

[379, Republic, Book II]


Whether he had known at that time his impact on the future generations of thinkers or not, there is no disputing that the Greek Philosopher Plato laid the foundations of Western Philosophy. He gave initial formulation to the most basic questions and problems (which will be discussed in the next few postings) of Western thought. Literary critics throughout the ages have returned again and again to the classical themes set down by Plato and it would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that history of criticism cannot properly be understood without some of Plato’s key ancient texts, especially since they have exerted such a seminal influence on the discourse of criticism in the ages to come.


A lot of speculation is drawn about the personal details of Plato, only natural considering his popularity. Even his name is being speculated about. Plato or Aristocles, after his grandfather? We know that his birth was roughly around 427/428 B.C and his death, 347/348 B.C. He came from an old Athenian family, said to have played a prominent part in Athenian politics. So it’s interesting that he chose philosophy over politics as his way of curing the ills of society.


An old story says Dionysius sold Plato as a slave and his friends and uncles bought him and set him free. He then became a student of Socrates and later founded the ACADEMY. The Academy was the first school of philosophy and is acknowledged as the first university of the world. At the entrance of the Academy was written:


‘Those who don’t know geometry do not enter this portal.’


This doesn’t just refer to the significant role of mathematics in philosophy and a philosopher’s life but also the importance of abstract thinking required of a philosopher. The little that is known about the Academy is that it was a public gymnasium and that Plato didn’t charge fees for his lessons. It is unlikely that Plato’s school had many of the institutional features of a modern university, so all those who’d like to visualize Plato in his Academy as a sort of Father Vice Chancellor at Christ University, kindly cease thinking along that line of thought.


One known public lecture of Plato’s on ‘The Good’ was said to be a fiasco because the audience came to hear about probably the good life and Plato talked about mathematics.


Plato was the first thinker to demarcate philosophy as a subject, as a distinct way of thinking about, and relating to, a wide range of issues and problems. Philosophy in this sense is still taught and learned in schools and universities today. To put it succinctly, we’re still tackling the questions and problems laid down by Plato in this very 21st Century and that sums up the significance of Plato’s theories in our lives.


[References: Mr. Pinto; A History of Literary Criticism and Theory – M. A. R Habib; PLATO – A Very Short Introduction, Julia Annas]

Friday, July 10, 2009

Emergence of English as a Subject of Study

(Mr. Pinto’s Class Note – 8th July ‘09)
(Notes contributed by Panom and Divya)
The 3 reasons for English becoming a subject of study were: to consolidate declining feudal power; Imperialism; Military/ totalitarian purposes.

Before examining the above mentioned areas, let’s address the interesting question of When Did Literature Emerge?

Invention of the printing press (1453) by John (Johannes) Gutenberg coincided with the gradual removal of the monopoly that the clergy held over literacy. This shift in monopoly was made possible largely due to urbanization and industrialization. We saw that the onus on the primary sector (agriculture) was slowly diminishing and secondary sector (Industries) took off. What has to be noted is that this industrialization became possible due to colonization.

With the advent of industrialization, there was a need for more clerks and book keepers etc. who naturally needed to be taught and educated in order to increase their efficiency. Earlier, the tradition of education was mainly a seminary one (Wordsworth, Shelly, Keats etc.) and was limited to the age old institutions of Oxford and Cambridge. With the concept of division of labor and regulated work hours, it allowed for a certain novelty called ‘free time’ which was not seen before. Until then there weren’t any regulated work hours like the 8 hour concept we see in the 20th century. In fact, there was a large percentage of children being employed as workers as well and exploited for their ability to work long hours. (References were made by Mr. Pinto to William Blake’s THE CHIMNEY SWEEPER) In this new found free time people naturally turned to reading. Free grammar schools with scholarships began to appear; a lot many workers pooled their resources and hired teachers to teach their children in evening schools. They started reading and studying Romances (full of wars, heroes, knights etc.)

There became an increasing need to ‘know’ more and learn more, even if they happened to be practical pieces of information such as instances of the happenings around them. They started ‘telling stories’ to know more which gave birth to two things – Journalism; Literature.

The ‘Novel’ took off as it was a way of telling “something new”, like a new story that converted incidents into a narrative. The colonials contributed to this ‘novel’ or storytelling. (Mr. Pinto made references to the chapter ‘Defoe’s England’ in G. M. Trevelyan’s ENGLISH SOCIAL HISTORY) Defoe himself had perfected the art of the reporter; even his novels such as Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders are imaginary ‘reports’ of daily life. For Defoe was one of the first who saw the old world through a pair of sharp modern eyes.

(Note: By the 19th Century, all experiments regarding the novel had already been exhausted – with perhaps the exception of the Stream Of Consciousness which came about in the 20th Century.) (FYI: Observers would notice that the 19th Century wrote and read far more number of novels than the 20th Century ever saw.)
So many forces played a role in what we today call “reading habits or reading culture”. All this and also the theories of evolution (those existing even before Darwin’s conception) created a huge change in social structure which saw the rise and seemingly inevitable decline in feudal power.

Consolidation of this power in the 19th Century was done in the form of literature. It was used as a political tool and also a source. Literature in a sense addresses all structures of society; the working class, the middle class and the elite. This therefore explains its success as a tool. From Eagleton’s essay The Rise of English, we see how Literature was first introduced as a subject of study to mechanical engineers to bring about ‘morality’. Later, it was studied extensively by women at Oxford, perhaps because they were discouraged from studying the sciences. It was a social construct of expectation and opportunity allotting.

Imperialism being the second reason for English becoming a subject of study saw its works being implemented wherever the English went when they had to consolidate their power. “Flag follows the trade” – the classic imperialistic principle. Literature was introduced to the middle classes and texts were carefully selected and doled out, ensuring that the English stamped their power and superiority over the colonies. On retrospect, it seems like such an obvious design. We saw it happen in Africa by the English, French and Germans. We also saw it in Latin countries as well as India by the British.

Military purposes and totalitarian control were the third reason for English becoming a subject of study. Cleary a strategic move and language typically was introduced to consolidate power and subdue confusion. We saw it happen with India as well where Hindi was introduced after independence in an attempt to unify the nation. Similarly, Britain introduced English Literature to do the same.

'The Rise of English

'Construction of English'
Notes composed by: Nidhi V Krishna
1st MA Lecture, 8th June, 2009
Up until the 14th Century, the Feudal class possessed utmost power as the population engaged solely in primary sector economic activities such as agriculture, mining and animal husbandry. However, the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in the 1450s brought about the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial revolution influenced the emergence of English.
The Industrial Revolution, transformed the cities into urban centers, raised the standard of living and exhilarated the emergence of urban spaces. The secondary sector, now, occupied a dominant position. The operation of the manufacturing units required extensive labor. The advent of the manufacturing industry led to the creation of several job opportunities. Besides foremen, clerks, book keepers, store keepers etc., were employed.
Eventually, Industrial capitalization created a clear demarcation between the feudal class and the working class. It made the lives of the working class strenuous and mechanical. The oppressed working class chose to break away from the shackles of the feudal class. Colonization fuelled the rebellion and gave momentum to the Romantics. The Romantics assumed the role of political activists. The writers used Journalism and Literature as the ‘medium of telling’. Journalism sought to reproduce stories in a refreshingly new manner whereas Literature used the ‘novel’ as device to transform society.
Due to this defiance, the Feudal class started losing ultimate power, and hence took recourse in literature. They used Literature as a tool to consolidate their power. Literature was introduced in the Mechanics Institutes to instill moral values into the intellectually deprived working class. In universities, women were excluded from disciplines such as science and other professions. Therefore they had to resort to English.
During this era, imperialism took centre stage. The value system was pushed among the intellectuals. The imperialists used Literature, predominantly tragedies, to consolidate the working class, so that the separate parts of the British Empire that were falling apart could be secured as a single state.
English Literature was then, threatened by German Literature when everyone in England began relishing the contents of the latter. In an effort to contain English Language and English Literature, the totalitarian strategy was adopted. The military took upon itself, the responsibility of preserving and promoting English by reviving national pride among the masses.

Thursday, July 09, 2009

The essays and people discussed in class

Rene Descartes
Thomas Hobbes
Immanuel Kant
Roland Barthes- Death of the Author
Derrida
Michel Foucault- What is an Author?
T.S Eliot- Traditions and Individual Talent

Certificate Programme in the Technology and Culture (Digital Classroom)

Certificate Programme in the Technology and Culture (Digital Classroom)

1. Introduction:
Certificate Programme in the Digital Class will be conducted by Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS), Bangalore with the direct participation of Centre for Internet Studies (CIS), Bangalore and Centre for Education Beyond Curriculum (CEDBEC), Christ University, Bangalore and organised by Department of Media Studies, Christ University, Bangalore.

2. Programme Objective:
The purpose of this course is to investigate the transformations taking place in the classroom through the process of digitization of the various aspects of classroom pedagogy. Both courses and class readings are downloadable on various formats, teachers commonly use blog and wiki formats as pedagogic devices, students ‘publish’ their assignments and engage in various kinds of peer-learning practices. While several universities and undergraduate colleges have actively adopted such technologies, it is unclear as to how drastic the change is. Is the change no more than conventional content and teaching/assessment strategies moving to new platforms? Or is the change more fundamental than that?

5. Programme Structure:

This course, to be conducted with media students of the Christ University will also see the active participation of faculty from a range of disciplines across the board: education, law, computer science and sociology. It will be conducted over 10 sessions to be divided into five modules which are tentatively listed below:

Module 1: The University and the Class
This module, pivoted around Bill Readings’ The University in Ruins (Harvard, 1996), explores the historic transformation of the classroom as the location for the pursuit of ‘excellence’. From its classic Humboldtian origins, to its ‘developmental’ stage – the rise of the mass-classroom, the principle of education for all – to a present space in which it is a gigantic agglomeration of a variety of small experimental spaces – the classroom has changed dramatically. This module will explore the theory of the classroom, and the change taking place in the category of the student, the teacher and the ‘imparting’ of knowledge paradigm. Students will explore key websites which have explored how such paradigms have changed, and report on their findings.

Module 2: The Public Nature of the Classroom
Both students and teachers are recognizing that the classroom is a very public space: students ‘publish’ their papers, teachers upload their class lectures and put up blogs that are technically accessible to the public at large. What does the entry of the world outside do to the classroom as a closed space for intellectual work, frank debate and the display of insecurity? This module will work with John Willinsky’s The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship (MIT Press, 2006), sections on ‘Development’, ‘Public’, ‘Politics’ and ‘Rights’.

Module 3: The Digital Native
The concept of the ‘digital native’ originates with Marc Prensky’s Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants (2001) to look at a ‘new breed of student entering educational establishments’. The term draws an analogy between how a country's natives, for whom the local religion, language, and folkways are natural and indigenous, separate them from immigrants to a country who often are expected to adapt and assimilate to their newly adopted home. Prensky refers to accents employed by digital immigrants, such as printing documents rather than commenting on screen or printing out emails to save in hard copy form. Digital immigrants are said to have a "thick accent" when operating in the digital world in distinctly pre-digital ways, when, for instance, he might "dial" someone on the telephone to ask if his email was received. How ‘native’ is the digital student today? What happens to the ‘immigrant’, i.e. someone seriously technologically challenged by the heavy reliance on digital ‘insiderism’?

This module will split into an inquiry into the problems faced by the both the class teacher and the student, both of whom may or may not be digital natives. It will include one survey to be conducted about volunteer faculty and volunteer students in Christ University, on the problems and possibilities of digital insiderism. Students will assemble and publish survey results online.

Module 4: Technologies Of L;Earning (1): The Institution And The Institutional Repository
This section will be a set of practical sessions on the role and purpose of repositories in academic institutions. Students will actively explore such classic repositories as CSeARCH (http://culturemachine.tees.ac.uk/CSeARCH.HTM) to see the benefits and problems of repositories. It will end with hands-on experience of a repository, located either at CSCS or at Christ University itself.

Module 5: Technologies of Learning (2):
This session will include two key components:
• Role of peer learning, or student-teach-student.
• Role of examination processes: Are examinations changing? Should they change?
This will again be a hands-on experiment, working mainly with hand-held devices, and the role such devices play in the facilitating peer/participatory learning, and in the continuous assessment mechanisms that are replacing end-of-term examinations. We may actually experiment with a new device here, supported by the Nokia Research Centre, Bangalore (to be confirmed).

Duration: Three months. Classes conducted on Saturdays 2-4 pm. Classes begin on 11 July

Contact: Anil Pinto, Dept of Media Studies - ajpinto42 at gmail dot com
Programe Fee: Rs 1000
Venue: Room 913, II Floor, Auditorium Block

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Intentional Fallacy

( The Following is lectures notes by Mr. Pinto - P.S.ENG-III)

Intentional Fallacy was the topic of discussion in Mr. Pinto’s class today. Intentional Fallacy addresses the assumption that the meaning intended by the author, of a literary work, is of primary importance. He said that fallacy was a fault in the argument or something that is not logical. Intentional Fallacy depicts that the writer has the final interpretation. The entire authority of interpretation lies with the author. He supported this with a Marxist example, where he said that the structure had the authority of defining social meaning.

New criticism emerged in the United States of America after the Second World War. Post World War-II lots of “men” sent to fight the war for the government were brought back to the country. In order to engage the soldiers, they were sent to colleges. The classrooms suddenly became huge and it was becoming problematic for the English lecturers especially in keeping the class engaged. To overcome this, the lecturers started handing out photocopies of a poem to the class and told them to interpret it in their own way. Thus it ultimately gave rise to new criticism.
Mr. Pinto then presented us with the argument of Marshal Melchan. With the rise in global media Melchan held the view that technology was determined with how one interacts with it. He supported his argument by saying that the modern day journey is towards loneliness and books primarily does it. He said that when we write poems or journals, we do not invent new things instead we write through our limitations, that is the limitation of language. Mr. Pinto said that what we are learning in the classroom is just another means of getting ourselves accustomed to the structure and power that exist within the system of the society. He again switched back to the argument of Marshal Melchan, he said that theatre or cinema was not meant for a single person but rather directed towards a crowd. Marshall also challenged the existing form of knowledge which in time to come this knowledge could become non- responsive.

Intentional Fallacy is also defined as confusion between the poem and its origin. New criticism emphasises its importance within the text. A text has three classifications:
Ø Internal Evidence: the evidence is present as the facts of a given work. This includes those things physically present in the work itself.

Ø External Evidence: what is not actually contained in the work itself is external. Statements made privately or published in journals, gazettes about the work, or in conversation, e-mail, etc. External evidence is concerned with the claims about why the artists made the work, lessons external to the fact of the work itself.

Ø Contextual Evidence: assumes what the text eventually meant. Concerns any meaning derived from the specific work’s relationship to other art made by the particular artists. Intentional Fallacy is interconnected with the contextual evidence.

Mr. Pinto positioned us with the argument of the New Historicists. New Historicists believed that:
o We will never know what the intention of the author was.
o The author himself does not know what he meant through his writing.
o Even if the author has the plot, a frame work for the text, he can’t control the direction.
New historicist believe that writing precede thought. The fact that writing is born with thoughts and not followed by it, highlights that thought alone cannot exist outside language. He said this saying that even for a ghost to exist ghosts require a body just like thought require language for expression. He ended his lecture saying that Intentional fallacy tries to locate the “gentle hand of the author” which forces us to read the text in a particular way.

Literature as a Construct

Mr Pinto’s Class Note on THE RISE OF ENGLISH, Terry Eagleton.

7th July, 09

One of the important arguments in Eagleton’s ‘The Rise Of English’ is that Literature is a construct.

The obvious questions that arise are who constructs it and why is it done? It is certainly done for social, political and cultural reasons by certain influential forces. A prominent example of such a construct is gender identity. We can see the journey gender identity (heterosexuality, incest love, homosexuality to name a few) has taken place throughout the history of literature and how its suppression becomes a construct of social/political control and influence.

Lets trace this back to the much studied Greek tragedy ‘Oedipus The King’ by Sophocles. On unknowingly obliging a prophecy and killing his own father (Laius) and marrying his own mother (Jocasta), Oedipus, King of Thebes, being a fair and just King decides to go into exile after blinding himself. What can be observed is that there is a control exerted by Greek Literature here to suppress a form of sensuality. Mother – Son.

Interestingly, Judith Butler (Gender Trouble) had raised the question as to why the prophecy existed in the first place. Her archive based research showed that Oedipus’ father, Laius, had been engaging with a young boy, the result of which invited the curse of the Gods and hence the prophecy. Here we observe that the sensuality between man and man is being disapproved, suppressed and controlled by suggesting that sexuality of that kind is punishable by the Gods.

Another important Greek tragedy was of Antigone. Antigone was the daughter of Oedipus. Antigone’s conflict with Creon, Oedipus’ brother, arises when Creon declared that the body of Antigone’s brother may not be given a proper burial as he was suspected to have betrayed Thebes. But Antigone wishes to give her brother a proper burial nevertheless and defying Creon’s orders, buries him. Conclusions drawn were that her incestuous love for her brother resulted in her taking a stand against the King and his orders. Clearly, a covert disapproval of incest sensuality between brother and sister.   

All three cases, when studied individually, suggests a taboo against homosexuality and incest through the medium of literature. With the hope of idealizing or supporting heterosexuality? That can be left open to interpretation. There is, however, a certain masculine hegemony being promoted because nowhere does it raise the taboo against female homosexuality (lesbianism). In fact, the subject doesn’t even get addressed in order to be disapproved of. But what is irrefutable is that through a systematic representation and repression of such ideas, ‘illegitimizing’ (for want of a better word) certain kinds of sensualities proves that Literature is indeed a ‘construct’ for socio-political and cultural reasons by powerful social forces. 

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

My Studies Begin - Ramabai Ranade

The following note on 'My Studies Begin' by - Ramabai Ranade is prepared by Maria Thomas, Sriya Bhaskar and Ananya Rao of I year HEP.

--------------------------------------

Background to the author:

The Late Smt. Ramabi Ranade - whose birth centenary was celebrated in India on January 25, 1962 - was born on 11th January 1862. Her father had not taught her to read and write. Girls' education was a taboo in those days. As a little girl of 11 years she was married to Shri Madhav Govind Ranade, a pioneer in the social reform movement. He devoted all his apparel time to educate her in face of all the opposition of the woman of the house and helped her to become an ideal wife and a worthy helpmate in social and educational reform work. Ramabai made her entry into public life in the 1870s but it was after Justice Ranade's death in 1901 that she wholly identified herself with the cause of. tried to regenerate their souls. She visited the Lunatic Asylum and attended meetings of its managing committee. She went to see boys in the reformatory school, spoke to them and distributed sweets to them on festive occasions. Ramabai's philanthropic instincts knew no bounds. After his death she chose as her life work one of her husbands activities. Justice Ranade was a reformer and deeply interested in the uplift of Indian womanhood. Ramabi threw herself heart and soil into the Seva Sadan. She concentrated her whole energy upon it. The result is that the Seva Sadan has become an institution without a second of its kind throughout India." The Post and Telegraph Department feels honoured in paying a tribute to this great lady by bringing out a special postage stamp in commemoration of her birth centenary celebrated this year. Ramabai died in 1924


Summary:

This text describes the marital life of Ramabai Ranade who was married to a progressive, “reformist” justice, Mahadev Govind Ranade. Unlike most women at the time, she was encouraged by her husband to read and write and thus learnt both Marathi and English. This extract from her autobiography presents the conflicts that occurred between Ramabai and the other women in the household who, despite being educated in the same fashion, resent Ramabai’s education and often tease her. Ramabai also recounts an instance wherein she resented the decision of the women of the temple to exclude the wives of the reformists and thus left the temple, thinking she had made a good decision. The extract continues with the description of her husband’s dissatisfaction with that particular decision and their first disagreement.


Themes:

The extract deals with several themes –

1. Marital relationships – though unconventional, the relationship does display many concrete trends of regular relationships with the submissive wife who tends to her husband’s every whim. An important element of the marital relationship addressed here is that of the reformist relationship where Western-educated men encouraged their wives to be literate. This new dimension raises questions as to whether the status of women was really improved or not.

2. Women and the patriarchal society – the extract represents Ramabai’s conflicts with the other women of the household and this portrays the role of women in enforcing the patriarchal society. The rifts between women in the household suggests that it is the women who represent the more difficult hurdle in marital life, an aspect which is curious considering the accepted notion of the man being most restrictive.

3. Roles of women in society - there are conventionally elements of female responsibilities here, such as cleaning, cooking and serving, as well as the religious element with reference to the temple and the cunning of the non-reformist women. This theme raises to mind questions of whether the roles of women have changed at present from the fundamental roles established in the past.


Societal setting:

The story ‘My Studies Begin’ by Ramabai Ranade is set in colonial India. The traditions and customs of the people were more rigid than ever. Many men of that period were being educated in the west and they picked up the western ideas of equality and education for women. They were known as the reformists. Like Ramabai’s husband in this story, some men expected their wives to learn how to read and write. The wives had to do this in addition to the daily household work and they had to bear severe opposition from other members in the family.

The common misconception or superstition around that time was that if women were educated, they would be widowed very quickly. Therefore in order to safeguard their husband’s life they would have to remain illiterate. This was prominent along the same time as Sati and child marriage that were some social evils that people were fighting against. Though there were a few changes being brought about, not everyone welcomed these changes. The women married to progressive men had double the work to do in terms of studying and completing all the household chores on time. As joint family systems prevailed at that time, it was not easy for these women to study without facing ridicule from the rest of the family. Some women could not adjust to the constant criticism and refused to study further while some women adopted certain mechanisms to counter the treatment they received in the hands of other members of the family. Some women lashed out and showed their feelings openly to everyone while some women, like Ramabai, remained submissive and unresponsive. In the story, Ramabai feels that this attitude will discourage the other women and they would slowly stop their ridiculing but it was not always so.

Not only the women in the family, but the women in the society openly rejected the wives of reformist men. This we can see in the story when Ramabai and the other reformist women were not allowed to sit with the women but were made to sit with the men in the assembly hall. This was a great insult to the women which Ramabai could not handle. The uneducated women in society did not like that the reformist women discussed matters openly with men and “pretended” to be equal to them. The patriarchal values that were instilled in these women rebelled strongly against ideas like equality and they made life for progressive women very difficult. They were being pulled from both sides and had to satisfy the wishes of their husbands as well as society. Many women like Ramabai Ranade and Pandita Ramabai faced these obstacles bravely and managed popularize education for women all over India.


Further Questions:


1. To what extent have the roles of women changed from those that were established in Ramabai’s times?

According to our discussion, it was established that the roles of women have not changed from the fundamental ones established many years ago. The extract described Ramabai’s roles as cooking, serving food and tending to her husband’s needs and it is understood that even today women still continue with the same household duties. The only change has been the increase in the number of roles women have to juggle as not only must they run the household but some must also work in offices as well.


2. To what extent have the roles of men changed from those that have always been maintained in the past?

Strangely enough, our discussion established that the roles of men have indeed changed as men are now more likely to get involved in the household than they were in Ramabai’s times. Also, we touched upon many instances where the man has taken over the woman’s entire household responsibility and this suggests that there really has been some sort of transformation in the traditional mentality, even though these instances are rare.


3. Would a matriarchal society be more beneficial than our current patriarchal society?

The resulting discussion of this question cemented the fact that a matriarchal society would not be any better than a patriarchal society. Many of the males in our class did not favour patriarchy themselves and everyone agreed that a society where both genders are equal would be most beneficial.


4. Why is there rivalry between women, as displayed in this extract?

The class suggested that it was an ego problem that acted as a barrier between the older women and the younger women of a household, promoting the infamous rivalry between mother-in-laws and daughter-in-laws. In addition to this, the need to enforce superiority also appeared to be a key reason for the tension. Finally, the class decided that the older women feel that their relationship with the younger woman’s husband is threatened with the presence of this new woman in the household and this results in the conflict.


Sunday, July 05, 2009

Summary of "What is Literature?" by Terry Eagleton

Terry Eagleton was a student of Raymond Williams, the famous theorist who published the book 'Keywords'. Eagleton does not straight arrive on his argument and state evidence to prove his statement. In stead he examines all the ideas proposed about Literature, all the definitions provided for the same, then gradually unpacks them and finally points out his problems with them. Towards the end he arrives at his own idea and tries to define what Literature is. Mr. Pinto suggested that students take this route of reasoning while writing their research papers so that they do not end up summarizing their own argument in the first paragraph itself and would be exhausted. Descartes also emphasized on the importance of doubt in order to attain knowledge.

Some of the immediate ideas that Eagleton throws in are following:
He first examines if Literature is imaginative fiction or just fact. Literature can't be just one of these because it spans from newspapers to philosophical treatises to novels and poems. While newspapers maybe purportedly reporting facts and daily happenings, one may wonder why so many newspapers exist to do the same work. Though the question and its answer cannot be so simple, one can see that readership of different newspapers is dictated by the interesting/informative/humorous nature of reporting which distinguishes each paper. Also, this definition of literature seems to exclude texts that transcend pure writing like manga or comic books.

Then he comes to the formalist argument about literature. Mr Pinto first briefly explained why the fascination with formalism. It is so because formalism tried to break away from the existing norm and resorted to examining the medium itself: language. The Formalist definition: Literature is organized violence committed on ordinary speech. This definition focuses on how for a text to be valued as literature, the importance is to write in a certain way and use a particular register. This can be marked as the linguistic turn in literature. Register in linguistic simply means a variety of language used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting. Looking at register as a "formality scale" and placing it in context of literature's formalist definition, we can say that when one shifted to using "very formal/printed word" language or "formal/archaic" words that were not used in ordinary conversation, the writing written so could be qualified as literature. Otherwise, as the signifier does not refer to the commonly known signified, for example, "thou unravished bride of quietness" (it is not necessary that the person is talking about the bride or it is not even necessary that the bride should exist). Formalists defy reference to such quasi mystical symbolism and draw attention to material reality. Formalists say that literature (poetry was particularly talked about) is not a vehicle for content/ideas because what is written could have been written by anybody else located in that time under those conditions. Preethi then asked, if this is not contradictory to the formalist argument of rejecting social background and its influence on the author's life and work. Mr Pinto agreed that it was indeed one of the shortcomings of the theory but even so, formalists paid more attention to the forms of writing like satire, allegory etc and explained that it is the nature of the form that makes the content what it becomes in the end.

Talking about estrangement, Eagleton says that if content is removed out of context and its own social reality, like Shakespeare read in today's time, it is estranged. One cannot comprehend it in context of social reality and it results in delayed gratification causing increase in interest. Thus, what is estranged might be sometimes qualified as literature. But this does not hold ground because even when misread/interpreted out of context, work does not cease to make sense completely because of the way people relate in their own ways to it irrespective of their social or chronological frames. So, we can say that literature has no "essence" or inherent common quality/ies across all the texts that are included in literature but rather something to do with the way the reader relates to it makes it literature. Mr. Pinto stated that Literature received its non-pragmatic license and special aura only after Romanticism.

But Literature cannot only be what people think it is because then everything will be literature. So, then literature is something that a particular group relates to for some reason and values it. What could be the possible reasons? Practicality/usefulness is not the reason because otherwise, Mill and Bentham would also be included in literature. The reasons change from time to time based on the values and concerns of that period. For example, Matthew Arnold emphasized on serious literature and Eliot did not regard Wordsworth as worthy of reading and brought in John Donne who until then was never considered. So, we can safely conclude with the help of the last paragraph of his essay that the preferences of people who are in a capacity to decide what constitutes literature are shaped by larger structures and value systems, those of class and other categories. We can also replace the larger preferences which can be classified into categories as ideology(?)

Eagleton concludes saying "

Wednesday, July 01, 2009

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON UNDERSTANDING & INTERROGATING "FOURTH WORLD LITERATURES"

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
ACHARYA NAGARJUNA UNIVERSITY
Nagarjuna Nagar
Guntur
Andhra Pradesh
India – 522 510

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON

UNDERSTANDING & INTERROGATING
"FOURTH WORLD LITERATURES"

7-9 SEPTEMBER 2009

Deadline for Abstracts: 10. 08. 2009

The Conference will cover the following areas: Native American Studies, Native Canadian Studies,Aboriginal Australian, Dalit, African & South African Studies. The term 'Fourth World' was coined by George Manuel and M. Posluns in The Fourth World: an Indian Reality (1974). This was further analysed in political terms by Noel Dyck in Indigenous Peoples and the Nation State: 'Fourth World' Politics in Canada, Australia and Norway (1992). The emergence of Native literatures such as Native American, Native Canadian, Aboriginal Australian, Maori New Zealandian and Dalit literature of India demands a scholarly probe into the evolution and consolidation of Fourth World people in socio, economic, political, literary and cultural aspects of life. The objective of the conference is to introduce and espouse Fourth World Identity that would interrogate the discourse of conventional epistemology. .


Abstracts of Papers for presentation focusing on the above areas with inter disciplinary approach exploring diversity, multi culturalism, Inter Culturalism, History, Anthropology, Sociology & Economy of Natives/Aboriginals/Dalits/Africans/South Africans are welcome from colleagues all over the world.

Abstracts should meet the approximate word account of 250-300. Abstracts may be submitted by email to the following address: derrida@rediffmail.com or derrida.derrida@gmail.com.

Registration Fee

:

Local Delegates: Rs. 600.


:

Non Local Delegates: Rs.800


:

Foreign Delegates: Rs. 5000

The Registration fee covers accommodation, Break fast, Lunch, Dinner, Snacks, Tea/Coffee for three days and the Conference Kit. The registration fee has to be paid through Demand Draft drawn infavour of Dr. Raja Sekhar, director International Conference payable at SBI ( Nagarjuna University Campus Branch No:4793), Nagarjuna Nagar. Guntur.

*** Acharya Nagarjuna University is located in between Vijayawada & Guntur, the two popular cities in coastal Andhra Pradesh. The University is 17 K.M. from Vijayawada and 15 K.M. from Guntur. The nearest local airport is in Vijayawada and the International airport is in Hyderabad. The University is surrounded by world famous tourist places like Undavalli caves, Bhavani Island, Durga temple, Krishna barrage in Vijayawada. The world famous Buddhist site Amaravathi is 30 K.M. from Guntur.

For mailing abstracts and inquiries:

Dr. P. Raja Sekhar,
Director, International Conference
Dept. of English
Acharya Nagarjuna University
Guntur. India. 522510
Mobile : + 91 9704464829
Email : derrida.derrida@gmail.com,
derrida@rediffmail.com

Website: www.fourthworldlitt.in
http://www.nagarjunauniversity.ac.in/engseminar.asp

Archive Research Contd....

How do we ensure objectivity in Research?
The Subjectivity/ Objectivity question in Archival Research.
A Work is said to be objective,
if the existing knowledge on the topic is reiterated,
if the new knowledge is expressed in existing modes of academic representation,
if the writing does not refer to subjective experience and the writing subject is seen detached, from the work,
if citations are given, a work is said to be objective.
Interestingly, computer has become a metaphor of objectivity!

Book to read : Derrida, Archival Fever
Cultural studies show that Theory is one way of performance.
The Concept of Archives
Archives do not seem to be part of oriental cultures. The museums are often filled with folklore artifacts and some tribal antiquities. Preserving historical documents have not been taken seriously in India. The very sense of Archive is found in wanting in this region. Looking at this scenario one can say that
The project of modernism is only half built in India.

Do's and don’ts of the archives
1. Unlike novel or poem, for a historian the documents are not intended for the eyes. The content is more important for him/her.
2. Read the archival documents lovingly.
3. You formulate the ideas after reading them not while reading.
4. You critique a text of history on the basis of a larger historical perspective, not on the individual stories written there.
5. The literature guys keep reading things neglected by other disciplines and vice versa. E.g. There is an interest in Shakespeare in other disciplines while in English Department it is les
6. Women studies have used the archival studies seriously. ‘My studies begin” the story of Justice Ranade’s wife is one such.
7. Archives are residues of modernity.
8. Museums and archives are the first building blocks of the nation states. Bombay National Musuem has letters from Afganisthan, Burma, Sri Lanka. The museum was the mark of a territory that belonged to the British. A Nation talks of its area, through its museums.
If there are no museums no nations????
9. Archives and museums are also instruments of totalitarianism. It registers, classifies, archives etc.... events and people. The state can do whatever it wants if the unique Identification Number is implemented on all citizens. This could be sometimes dangerous, threatening the citizens (persons) State is the perpetrator of the largest proportion of violence.
10. Who collects the data in the archives? It is important to ask questions like these? What are the ideological purposes that they serve?
11. It is important not to photocopy but transcript. These documents are precious.
12. Time management: organising
13. Read archival material with the clear idea that there is a lot more than what is available. All that we have got of the Greek literature is only 3-4 percent of the total. The great idea of the Greeks is formed from this small percentage. Think how much is lost.


The content is the class note of Jijo K.P. on Anil’s Lectures on Archval Research (Part II) for MA English II Yrs. On 30th June.

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Video on the 'soul of India'

An amazing video on the 'soul of India'

Dicussion on Theatre

Discussion on Theatre Workshop

(MA II English, 16-17 May)

All the students shared their opinion on the workshop on theatre. Many students opined that the workshop helped them to come out of their inhibitions and stage fright.

Why should we learn acting if we are not interested in the field? Why did we introduce theatre in Literature? These were some of the questions that were discussed in the class on 16th.

Mr. Pinto counter questioned why this question comes only about theatre studies and not other subjects. He clarified that Drama is a subject proper to English Studies or English Department. And the Department always maintained the opinion that the best way to teach drama is acting it although there are very few who actually try it out. The name is shifted from Drama to Theatre Studies because of its emphasis on practical. So it is important to undergo the process or theatrical workshop.

He also said that experience should be an important aspect of theoretical formulation where possible. English dept had long divorced the performative-experience of theatre from the study of plays.

When Drama/theatre, although originally part of English Department, was losing its significance in the discipline, comparative studies connected it with apparently unconnected discussions. The comparative study itself was a new way of keeping the old colonialism alive in academics.

Mr. Pinto also said that with an interest to make the paper more practical, there was a plan to involve Rangasangkara to teach this paper in the University. This was to fill one of the gaps in Indian universities. as they do not collaborate with actual practitioners of the art like Drama, although they are brought for short term lecturing.

Newer academic spaces also are yet to completely open up to this as they are concerned more with their brand name and identity which could be lost by involving other people regularly in their curriculum, he commented. Some universities are attempting to make innovations in the field of English Studies and Dramatics.


Notes by Jijo, II MA

Articles for reading

Ashis Nandy on Recent developments in Hindutva Politics

I HEP Instructions

Groups for Plays

Group I

Group II

Group III

Group IV

1

5

10

15

20

25

29

33

37

2

7

12

17

22

26

30

34

38

3

8

13

18

23

27

31

35

39

4

9

14

19

24

28

32

36


The presentations should contain

1. Summary

2. Background to the text and author

3. Themes/ arguments

4. Possible Questions

5. Possible language learning through the text

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Articles for reading

1. On Rethinking Medical Education in India
2. On reconsidering Communication Curriculum

Archival Research


27th June, 2009 in MA IIYr. Class
(The following content is a note prepared by Fr. Jijo and Joe Jacob on Mr. Pinto’s lecture on Archival Research on 27th June, 2009 in MA IIYr. Class. )
Pedagogy: The topic was discussed among students in bench-work-groups and the reports were compiled later. Clarity with regard to the difference between methods, methodology and skills is required when you further proceed on research methodology.
Discussion
Discuss the following hypothesis in with your companions on the benches. If someone has to write a history of Christ University, s/he has to do a research. What are the steps one will take to write the history?
The students came up with the following answers
Data Collection

Written and Visual Records
1. Have a background idea of the University from the available sources, have a structure of what you want to write about. (If you have no idea what to look for you will have endless materials and endless searching)
2. Take notes on the documents, journals, magazines, Newspaper writings about Christ, publications by the institution and its staff, brochures, chronicles, minutes of the MC s and Sponsoring bodies staff meetings and other bodies that make critical decisions, Documents of the sister concerns, Land records, MoUs with Government and Universities, Placement files, Department Files, Diaries of the founding fathers and key figures related to the institution and similar other documents.
3. Visual History: through photographs, websites
4. Social History of the time of foundation, through Government census, Demography Documents, History books about the period.
Oral Accounts

5. Interview: Interviewing alumni of Christ, fathers worked, working, long term serving staff, Funding Agencies, other colleges for opinions, impressions, founding fathers (if anyone is alive)
Evaluation
6. Divide between events and interpretations
7. Find alternative interpretations if available
8. Find sources for the gaps either in the oral or written records, if there are
Compilation
Define Perspectives of Interpretation
Actual Writing



Mr. Pinto commented at the end of the discussion that the following matters should be born in mind while doing an archival research.
Data collection done with the surety of what one is looking for. To define that one must find the Framing Questions.
Then List the sources

However before all these you must Challenge your own idea of history, what is archive. Read Foucault Derrida and Freud on archives.
Question oneself; do I know the theoretical ground of what I am researching.
Mr. Pinto concluded the class saying , Archival research is a journey towards loneliness. It is a rigorous lonely work with books ideas and away from the rest of the world.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Research Practices in English Department

(The following notes are based on the Lecture of Mr. Pinto to MA English Students of Christ University, Bangalore on 23rd June, 2009)

Department of English and Research
• English Departments have not taught research methods anywhere in the world until 2000. The best of its practice was confined to asking a candidate of PhD to defend the sources or bibliography. Any discussion on research in English Department puts off people. Even where English Departments conducted classes on research methods, they are the least seriously conducted one. The professors who take these classes tend to be apologetic saying it is a vast subject.
• The students who did research often had the wrong idea that the research skills came through practice and not through training or learning.
• Training given on Research Methodology in some institutes give high school stuff like Adler....’s guide which is used for middle school students in America.
• The wrong argument of learning by doing has affected the learning research process. The reason for this approach is because the supervisors themselves have undergone the same procedure. They do not generally update and re-skill themselves with the best practices in the field. Even the teachers who spent in buying books of the trade are few in English Department whereas in other fields the re-skilling is done more regularly. The IT sector has to continuously re-skill.
• The culture of re-skilling and reinventing oneself is not a norm but sparsely done under individual initiatives. So the ordinary teachers do not take seriously the research activity.
• The misconceptions about research also resulted in Individualism in English Departments. Eng. Depts do not bring out papers as a group which is a regular procedure in some other disciplines. E.g. Science Dpt. has collective researches regularly. However this dim scenario in research is changing. It has become a serious part in all higher education centres, mainly after 1996 when research activities in India were highly rewarded by the government. The allowance has created researchers as well as knowledge production in the subject. From 1996, grants ranging from 40000 to 12 lakhs were provided for those who wanted to do research projects, according to the requirements of the project.
• The government proposal pattern for the grant itself was instrumental in developing a certain research methodology among the candidates. The Government stipulated for example a pattern as follows.
1. The name
2. The investigators
3. The resources
These incentives from the Government have created research space and culture in English.
Qualitative and Quantitative Researches
Humanities largely abhorred qualitative researches. MSW, Psychology and Economics are interested only in quantitative methods.
When the Government set up different Committees to study the research practices they asked the questions like “what kind of research methods they needed.” As a result, two styles emerged.
a) Response method. These are based on individual needs
Most of the activities that came in English Department were based on response method.
b) Pro-active method. It does not cater to the pronounced responses of the target group.
Research Skills
1. Library skills
2. Computer skills
3. Bibliography
4. Reading short hand reading skill
5. Interview skills
These skills were not considered in research earlier. Another wrong assumption in the field of research is that the research method that one used for Ph.D is the only method that s/he will use or may be useful for the future. Methods vary from discipline to discipline.
Innovation in any field and particularly in Education must have research backing. People will not accept such changes unless you cite research results.
The Department structure itself could be a problem, some times, to engage in serious research activities.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Certificate Programme in Technology and Culture (The Digital Classroom)

Date: 11 July 2009 - till the end of September
Time: 2 pm to 6 pm every Saturday.
Place: MSCom Classroom, II Floor, Auditorium Block
Coordinator: Naresh Rao, Dept of Media Studies
Instructors: CSCS, and Dept of Media Studies

For clarification email: naresh dot rao at christuniversity dot in, anil dot pinto at christuniversity dot in
For a detailed write up on the programme structure please click here.

Certificate Programme in Phonetics

Date: II, III and IV week of July 2009

Time: 4 - 6.30 pm, Monday through Friday.

Place: Dept of Media Studies

Coordinator and instructor: Anil Pinto, Dept of Media Studies

For clarification email: anil dot pinto at christuniversity dot in

For the syllabus please click here.

Response to Post Secularism

Last week I attended a paper presentation by Nizzar in Casa Andree on “Life after Secularism.” There were serious and not so serious discussions on the topic in and outside the University among friends. Some tried to swap the words to form ‘secularism after life’. This put a startling question in my mind, whether in the life after death one will be secular or religious. But, keep that question as it is. Let me go to the content of the paper. The paper seemed to complexify ordinary notions just by changing them into unfamiliar terminology, like ‘life forms’ for religions and mind regimes for ethics. I did not find any purpose achieved by these new significations nor proposing anything worthwhile. But the discussion that ensued animated by Sunder Sarukhai and Arindham brought the issues at stake clearly. What follows is my response to the paper.
Ever since the Nation of Islam was discussed in the class sometime last year, the concept of Secularism was being churned in my mind. Religion played a major role in the formation of most countries in the world. In fact, I know very few countries that are not formed on the basis of religion. Think of its vestiges still haunting/following America, UK, India, Pakistan and not to speak of the Middle East.
The concept of secularism evolved in countries where only one religion was in practice, viz. Christianity. They conceived the idea that in the economic dealings religion should not be considered a barrier. (Judeo-Christian religion had placed strong censures on certain types of economic transactions.) The idea was transplanted to India where many religions existed side by side. It came to be that the meaning of secularism changed into ‘refraining from discrimination based on religion’. Now the two concepts have totally different connotations. The idea of secularism is discussed anew in west when it is threatened by the influx of Hindus, and Muslims. They are awakened to a new sense of identity and apparently slipping into religious fundamentalism. The west is finding it difficult to practice the secularism they once preached.
The speeches of Obama like a religious preacher symbolize that resurgent religiosity. The political parties that have created vote banks on religion in India speaks volumes on how fundamentalism has returned in a modified form to India. In the wake of such resurgent religiosity my question is how dare Nizzar think of ‘Life after Secularism’ when secularism itself has not come. I do not believe in secularism as a final goal to be achieved either. I believe that religious radicalism is the key to better understanding among people. What shape that religion takes at different periods will be decided by the pace of the psychological evolution human kind will achieve in each era.
Following secularism amounts to speaking against one’s own deepest self to some extent. How many people in our country can make a decision in life without having recourse to spiritual counsel? So to live secularism as a way of life is not a natural behaviour. You will come at odds with yourself when it comes to actually implementing it.
What then is the option? Religious radicalism is the option. All religions at their base, root (radix) believe in universal brotherhood and love. Aggression on another’s conscience on whatever ground one tries to justify, does not fall in line with any religious teaching. If any fundamentalism has arisen in any religion it comes out of a narrow interpretation of the rules and not a defect in the religious code itself. So keeping religions and their teaching will make people feel comfortable within themselves and with others. This is what I mean radicalism in religion.

Friday, June 19, 2009

Understanding Computer Science

Understanding Computer Science

Interpreting Social Science response to Research


Assumptions underlying the answers given by teachers interviewed regarding research:

  • Research is a complex process
  • The student is already doing research
  • Research is individual
  • No reference to method
  • The problem/question has already been identified
  • Mistaking skill for method
  • Social sciences do not distinguish between applied research and fundamental research.


distinction between
  • method and skill
  • curriculum, course, programme, discipline


'Seminar' on Indian Cinema

Special Issue of Seminar on 'Indian Cinema in 1940s and 1950'

THEATRE TRAINING WORSHOP

12 June 2009


There are four kind of theatre namely Arena theatre, Shakespearean theatre, Ampi theatre and Proscenium theatre. He spoke mostly about the proscenium theatre.

A proscenium theatre is like a peeping from a window to someone’s house or
In this the actor’s right is the stage right. There is to be total silence and darkness in the audience. Three sides are closed.

The stage is divided into nine parts Upper Right (UR), Upper Centre (UC), Upper Left (UL), Centre Right (CR), Centre Stage (CS), Left Centre (LC), Down Right (DR), Down Centre (DC), Down Left (DL).


CYCLORAMA
UR UC UL
WINGS CR CS CL WINGS
DR DC DL

APRON

There are various parts of the stage.

Cyclorama is the white screen behind the stage. To give the effects of shadow, sun, moon, etc.

Wings- decide the opening of the acting area used for hiding the actor and the backstage. It is covered by black or blue cloth. Wings depend on the length of the stage.

Apron-is the front stage.

FOH - front of the house

Stage light- from the top of the stage.

Side light- gives 3D effect

Frills- covers the lights to hide the source of light from the audience.

THREE TYPES OF THEATRE

Realistic theatre- with normal emotions.

Stylised theatre- comedy, song, drama, exaggeration.

Absurd theatre- without connection.


HOW TO GO ABOUT A PLAY

The organisation of a play has two functions - the aesthetic function and the commercial function. In the aesthetic function we have a Playwright and a play reading committee.

Playwright- executes the theme by words. He constructs various themes and sub themes, out of which the director decides the main theme of play. The playwright evolves a character but does not give meaning to the character. Director gives the meaning to the character. He gives the posture, mannerism, expression, movement and so on.

Under the play reading committee comes the director under whom works the set designer, technical director , costume designer, light designer, music composer, assistant director and the stage manager.

Stage manager- is the link between the director and the actor and the rest of the crew. He is the most powerful person in the group. Even the director is answerable to him/her.

Set design- is done in a 45 degrees axis. Diagonal lines are powerful on stage. Parallel lines and angles are always avoided. In the diagonal angle, three fourth of the actor’s body is seen by the audience. The furniture and props are also placed in a 45 degree axis so that it does not merge with the cyclorama. Props must not obstruct the movement of the of the actor. It should not hide the actor and must be in the corners.

There is also a symbolic set in which the theme is conveyed in a symbolic way using symbols and paintings and other props.

Technical director- finances the set and costumes and holds and organises meetings.

Costume- costumes are designed taking account of the time period in which the play is set. Use of primary and secondary colours.

Light designing- there are three important lights namely, key light (more intensity and illumination), fill in light (gives the 3D effect) and back light. If the key light is 1000 KW then fill in light must be 500 KW and the back light must be 250 KW.

Filters and frost are used to give different effects of lighting. General area lighting is divided into 6 parts . Use of halogens and flood lights as their intensities cannot be controlled. Para lights or spotlights are used as they can be dimmed as per requirement.

ACTING THEORIES

There are three acting theories

Iff theory- Actor prepares in 27 steps to transform himself/herself into the personality of the character that he/she is playing. This theory works very well for that particular play but has a somewhat permanent effect on the actor and therefore is not prescribed.
Method acting- in this the actor undergoes a training in the situations that he has to face. For example if he/has to play a role of a blind person he/she goes and stays for some days with the blind people.
Simultaneous acting- this that type in which the actor in his daily life has already observed the situations and hence does not need an extra training.


Mr. D’souza says that if someone is interested in theatre he/she must read and watch more and more plays.

In the afternoon session there we started with some games. The first game was “Tom says”, in which we were supposed to do what Tom says and nothing else. If we did some thing that Tom did not say and we were out. Suppose Mr. Walter said ‘ lift your left hand’ we are not supposed to lift our hand, but if he says ‘Tom says lift your left hand’ then you are supposed to lift your left hand.

He even promised a return ticket from Singapore and hotel fare, but unfortunately no one won it.

The main point of this exercise was to inculcate absolute concentration into the actor. That he has to do whatever Tom says, and he must not pay attention to anything else at all. It applies to an actor on stage who must not be distracted by anything or anyone in the audience or anywhere else. His absolute concentration must be on the stage.

Then we played a game in which we were supposed to move randomly in a space and as soon as he said a number we were supposed to form groups of the same number. And whoever failed to form that number was out.

After doing this several times he asked us to be in groups of six and gave a theme ‘Cave’ in which we had to form a still scene where the theme was portrayed . Two more similar exercises were done with themes of Marriage and Mourning House.

Then after the lunch break we had voice training session in which everyone’s pitch was discovered. Before that we did some breathing exercises. In the voice exercise we needed to say all vowels loud and check our pitch.

D'Souza, Walter. Class Lecture. Theatre Training Workshop. Christ University. Bangalore, India. 12 June 2009


13 June 2009

MAKE UP

The day started with learning about make-up. “you should know what you want and be able to tell the designer or the make-up person what exactly you want.

There are two kinds of make-up, character make-up in which mythological characters are depicted on the face and the other is straight make-up which is a realistic play make-up. For example beard.

In straight make-up, to highlight certain face muscle pan cakes are used.

Then comes the age factor. Using this wrinkles can be made on the required areas. Now on that if a moustache or a beard is required crape hairs are used.

Crape hairs are of two kinds the American and Indian. The American crape hair is first comes in knots which needs to be opened and soaked in water. When it is dried it becomes pulpy. Then the ends are cut. It now looks like hairs. Spirit gum is applied on the skin and hair is pressed on it with a wet cloth. Then the desired shape is given. In the Indian one the hair does not get pulpy at all, and 2-3 coats of hair are required to be applied, with high chances of the layers falling off on the stage!

For greying of hair, in theatre Zinc powder is used and in TV aluminium powder is used. There are different effects that you can gain by different ways like, to show a fallen teeth spirit gum is applied on the teeth and let dry, then kajal is applied on the area.

Putti make-up is used to enlarge nose or for other facial distortions. First spirit gum is applied and then latex.

Egg make up can also be used to bring wrinkles. The white of the egg is applied on the face and let dry, it produces wrinkles.

Spirit gum is water and oil friendly. There for can easily be removed by cream or oil.

There are a few things that one must remember. First of all I think everyone knows, make up must always be put after the putting on the costumes and one of the most important things is that when make-up is on, actor must not leave the green room.

REHEARSAL

There are two kinds of rehearsals

Scheduled rehearsal- it starts from act 1 till the end and requires everyone to be present at the practice.

Break-up rehearsal- the practice is carried on in a segmented way in which only the actors participating in that act needs to be present.


NATIONAL SCHOOL OF DRAMA

To get into National School of Drama in started in 1965. It initially started for a one year course then built on to 3 years degree course. It had one seat for every state and five seats for foreign students. Now it has 18 seats for scholarship with stipend.

The minimum requirement to enter is to have atleast ten years of experience in theatre, a bachelor’s degree worked in atleast 10 productions and a recommendation by two passed out NSD students.

NSD in Bangalore is also starting.

MIME

Mime originally evolved though church. The church was initially against theatre but somehow decided to use the theatre for to serve its own purpose. They had three parts in which the holy body would be at the centre with minimum movements, the angels at the right with restricted movements that were only to praise the holy one and on the left side was the evil one showing lot of movements and instability.

Since the movement in the left side was free people kept improvising and putting in more and more varieties. It was made more interesting to make the audience sit for the whole thing and not get bored. But slowly they got so good with their different professional abilities on the left side that people would only come and watch that part and leave. So the purpose with which the church brought theatre in was not fulfilled. Therefore ultimately the left side team was thrown out of the church. Now these people did not know anything but theatre so they started putting up there shows outside in the commercial places. Since they did not have any money for the props they started miming. That is how mime started.

Points to remember for mime

Lot of practice required

Arms and legs must be strong.

Good imagination and creativity is required

Always remember what you have created, as the audience is keenly keeping a check on your mistakes.

Observe day to day activities and learn from them

Miming does not mean that you are acting like a speech impaired person, you can move your mouth but not say anything.

Exaggeration of expression and action.

Timing must be perfect

Costumes must be relative to the background, for example if the background is black costume must be white and vice versa.

Mime is not only for comedy but also for tragedies.

D'Souza, Walter. Class Lecture. Theatre Training Workshop. Christ University. Bangalore, India. 13 June 2009


14 June 2009

Today each grout was supposed to enact the scene given to them using creative props. Some groups had a scene from Girish Karnad’s ‘Tughlaq’ while the other groups were given a scene from his play ‘Hayavardana’.

Once all the performances were over he showed us where we went wrong and what were our strong points.

He ended by speaking about Street Theatre.

The experience was entirely thrilling! And we are extremely thankful to all the teachers whose efforts were into keeping five seats for us undergraduate students.


D'Souza, Walter. Class Lecture. Theatre Training Workshop. Christ University. Bangalore, India. 14 June 2009

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Perception of Research Among Science Teachers

Following are outcome of the survey conducted by the II year MA English students among science faculty from different departments and one commerce teacher on campus on their perception of research. The first part is compiled by Jijo K. and the second by Rungring Buphate.

--------------------------------

Q. What is research

· Solving a new problem

· Discovering a new cause

· Finding something new.

· Building knowledge.

· Applied research has definite answers

Q. Difference between Science and Social sciences

  • Discovering or acquiring a new kdg which is converted into a technique. Sicenc helps mankind directly. Human science gives only studies about mankind. Do not make a contribution to the betterment of mankind.
  • Improve the human standards of living
  • Science needs laboratory (controlled environment)
  • We get definite answers in science but only interpretations in social science
  • The distinction is between natural sciences and social sciences.


Q. Procedure of science

Observation, Experiment, Testing in Laboratary, Hypothesis, Falsification, Law statement, Theory

Know the problem, review the literature, take an expert’s help.


Q. Interdisciplinarity in research

  • The same phenomenon is looked at from different perspectives to understand the deeper dynamics of the phenomenon.
  • e.g. cognitive science, neurology
  • Removing the isolation between disciplines. It is no more than a trend.

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Namita and rung group

1) What is research?

- Find out more information

- Establish or renovate new knowledge

2) What is the difference between science research and social science research?

- Science research based on algorithm . Social science and other researches based on history .

- Science research based on experiments and compiles all knowledges together . It is more quantitative . Social science research is more qualitative . It differs from culture to culture

3) What is the processes of science research ?

- Find out problems , analyses data , find out solution and conclusion

- Find out problem , collect data , do experiments , get results and make conclusion

4) What is interdisciplinary ?

- Using different subjects in that particular topics . Sometimes we have to go through mathematics in computer science research

- Require help from other subject analyses and apply data to your research


Saima group

1) Giving a new dimension to the old area .

2) Science research is objective and quantitative .

- Humanity research looks for individual uniqueness .

3) Constant engagement observation and experimentation in a specific area (narrowing down the topic )

4) Interdisciplinary is there is the most of the area . It is necessary to compare and contrast with other related discipline to have clear picture and understanding of that specific area


Fancy group

1) Systematic of collecting and analyzing information . Research is the way you educate yourself . Research is investigation . Research is the study which is already existed . Research invents new things .

2) Conduct field survey , interview , collect data where the data is already available . Humanistic interpretation is different in science there is define answer .

3) First literatise survey based on literature , obtains infrastructure for the topic area from books , journals etc , conduct experiments , compile data , get results and interpret results

4) All subjects are related , In science new knowledge is related to different field


Saju group

1) Discovering something which is already there or inventing something new . It includes experimentation , observation in which hypothesis is created and theory built .

2) Science requires specimens .

3) Identify field problem , get problem , and find out targeting problem . Build up synopsis ,

Methodology can be both quantitative and qualitative .

4) Interdisciplinary between botany and zoology , statistics and math , and physics and chemistry .


Priya group

1) Finding new dimensions , building on something which is already present . Coming out of one own mind .

2) Purpose and objectives are same but methodology are different .

3) Identify the field , consult the field , contract founding theory through experiment and hypothesis .

4) Interdisciplinary is possible to give various perspectives to a research is required . Sometimes we have to depend on other disciplines and subjects in order to get complete discipline.


Sayori group

1) Research is something to explore new thing , work out core elements of a phenomenon / experience , indepth analysis .

2) Science research uses instrument and observation . Methodology in science research is scientific . It has rationality and objectivity . Social science research is more specific and localized political and cultural elements .

3) Psychology is different from social science because it is more concrete . Psychology has methodology which follows natural science .

4) In approach disciplinary . set of compare mentalization . Connecting to different disciplinaries , sociopolitical context . Psychology variable from different perspectives combining different disciplinaries to approach core of psychology .



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