Department of English

University of Hyderabad
M. Phil English:
Semester – I, August – November 2016

Chetna Singh, M. Phil, “Introduction to Indian Writing in English”

4 credits
B Krishnaiah

1. Tentative Title: Image of New Woman in the Fiction of Manju Kapoor

B. Krishnaiah
Wednesday 11-01

This course will introduce the student to the Indian Writing in English with selected texts of
poetry, prose, fiction and drama. The student is expected to read both literary and critical
material for the thorough comprehension of the origin and the growth of Indian Writing in
English.

Background Study:
Rise of the Indian Novel, Feminism, Women’s Liberation Movement, New Woman

Prose:
Murali Manohar. “Introduction.” Indian English Women’s Fiction. New Delhi: Atlantic, 2007.
B. Krishnaiah. “Indian English Women Novelists: An Overview.” Image of Woman in the Recent
Indian English Fiction by Women. New Delhi: Prestige Books International, 2011.

Poetry:
Toru Dutt: Sita
Sarojini Naidu: The Pardah Nashin
Kamaladas: An Introduction, The Old Playhouse,
Nissim Ezekiel: Enterprise, Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher

Fiction:
Krupabai Satthianandan: Kamala: A Story of a Hindu Wife
Shashi Deshpande: That Long Silence

Drama:
Girish Karnad: Hayavadana
Vijay Tendulkar: Sakharam Binder

Suggested Reading:
Bai, K. Meera. “The Concept of ‘New Woman’ and Her Appearance in Indian Writing in
English.” Women’s Voices: The Novels of Indian Women Writers. New Delhi: Prestige,
1996. 16.
Dhawan, R.K. “introduction: Indian Women Novelists.” Indian Women Novelists Set. I, Vol. 1.
New Delhi: Prestige, 1991.
Iyengar, K.R. Srinivas. Indian Writing in English. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1989.
Kumar, Satish. “Women Novelists.” A Survey of Indian English Novel. Bareilly: Prakash Book
Point, 1996.
Mehrotra, A. K. History of Indian literature in English. New York: Columbia University Press,
2003.
Naik, M. K. A History of Indian English Literature. Delhi: Sahitya Academy, 1982.
Singh, Veena. “Women Novelists of the Post-colonial India.” Indian Writing in English. Ed.
Mohit K. Ray. Delhi: Atlantic Publishers, 2003. 166-175.
Suneel, Seema. “Emergence of New Woman in Indian Fiction: A Study of Bharati Mukherjee’s
Wife, Shashi Deshpande’s That Long Silence and R. W. Desai’s Frailty, Thy Name id
(W)oman.” Feminism and Literature. Ed. Veena Noble Dass. New Delhi: Prestige, 1995.
219-229.
Mary Wollstonecraft: Vindication of the Rights of Women (Introduction and Chapter II)
https://uniteyouthdublin.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/a-vindication-of-the-rights-of-
woman-by-mary-wollstonecraft.pdf
Simon de Beavour: The Second Sex (Introduction, Woman as the other)
http://www.aaronvandyke.net/summer_readings/de%20Beauvoir-womanasother.pdf

Assessment
Internal, continuous assessment: 40%, and End-semester examination: 60%
 Department of English
University of Hyderabad
M. Phil English:
Semester – I, August – November 2016

Chetna Singh
2. Author Course: The Fiction of Manju Kapoor

B. Krishnaiah
Friday 11-01

The course will have a first-hand reading of the fiction of Manju Kapoor to explore the
themes such as woman’s struggle for emancipation, conflict between tradition and modernity,
her identity crisis and psychological turmoil in a male-dominated society. It discusses the
existential predicament of the subdued women in a patriarchal society with their feminine
sensibility and psychological insights. It provides a foundation for the student’s subsequent
analysis of her selected texts for the programme. The titles of the programme as follows:
Kapoor, Manju. Difficult Daughters. New Delhi: Penguin India, 1998.
--- A Married Woman. London: Faber and Faber, 2003,
--- Home. Gurgaon: Random House India, 2006.
--- The Immigrant. Gurgaon: Random House India, 2008.
--- Custody. London: Faber and Faber, 2011.

Suggested Reading:
Devi, Shakuntala. Women’s Status and Social Change. Jaipur: Pointer, 1999.
Forbes, Geraldine. Women in Modern India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Gore, M.S. Urbanisation and Family Chage. Bombay: Popular, 1969.
Iyengar, K.R. Srinivas. Indian Writing in English. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1989.
Naik, M. K. A History of Indian English Literature. Delhi: Sahitya Academy, 1982.
Seshadri, Vijayalakshmi. The New Women in Indian-English Women Writers since the 1970s.
Delhi: B.R. Publications, 1995.
Singh, Sushila. Feminism: Theory, Criticism, Analysis. Delhi: Pencraft International, 1997.
Uma, Alladi. Women and Her Family: Indian and Afro-American – A Literary Peerspective.
New Delhi: Sterling, 1989.
Walsh, William. Indian Literature in English, London, Longman, 1990.
Mishra, Binod (ed). Critical Responses to Feminism. New Delhi: Sarup& Sons, 2006.
Pathak, R. S (ed). Indian Fiction of the Nineties. New Delhi: Creative Books, 1997.
Prasad, Amar Nath (ed). New Lights on Indian Women Novelists in English Vol. I. New Delhi:
Sarup& Sons, 2003.
Ray, Mohit K. & Ramakundu (ed). Studies in Women Writers in English. New Delhi: Atlanta
Publishers, 2005.
Assessment
Internal, continuous assessment: 40%, and End-semester examination: 60%
3. Tentative Title: ‘Women Studies’. (Instructor: D. Murali Manohar)
 DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
The University of Hyderabad

CRITICAL APPROACHES
M. Phil. / Ph. D. (Semester I) July—December 2016
(Instructor: K. Narayana Chandran, Room 9, English Department)

Texts for Presentation/ Discussion through Weekly Meetings

____________

Jacques Derrida, “The time of a thesis: punctuations.” Philosophy in France Today.

Ed. Alan Montefiore. Cambridge UP. 1983.
Cornel West, “The New Cultural Politics of Difference.” Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures.
Ed. R. Fergusson, M. Gever, T. T. Minh-ha and Cornel
West. New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1990.
Jamaica Kincaid, “In History.” Callaloo. 24.2 (Spring 2001).620- 626.
Audre Lorde, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference.” Ibid.
Terry Eagleton, “The End of English.” The Eagleton Reader. Wiley, 1997.
Raymond Williams, “Film and the Cultural Tradition.” Cinema Journal, 52.3 (Spring 2013):19-24.
_________, “Introduction.” Keywords. Penguin, 1976.
George Steiner, “‘Critic’/ ‘Reader.’ George Steiner: A Reader. Penguin, 1984.
Edward Said, “The Politics of Knowledge.” Raritan 1 (Summer 1991). 18-31.
Lucé Irigaray, “A Chance to Live.” Thinking the Difference. Trans. Karin Montin. Athlone Press, 1994.
Gayatri C. Spivak, “Explanation and Culture: Marginalia.” In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics.
Routledge, 2006.
A.K. Ramanujan, “Is there an Indian way of thinking? An Informal Essay.” Contributions to Indian Sociology.
23. 1 (1989). 41-58.
Salman Rushdie, “Step Across This Line.” The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, 2002.
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari,”What is a Minor Literature?” Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature.
U Minnesota P. 1986.
Pierre Bourdieu, “The Metamorphosis of Tastes;” “The Linguistic Market.” Sociology in Question. Sage, 1993.
Leslie Fiedler, “Giving the Devil His Due.” The Journal of Popular Culture. 12. 2 (Fall 1978). 197-207.
Margaret Atwood, “Communion: Nobody to Nobody: The eternal triangle: the writer, the reader, and the book
as go-between.” Negotiating with the Dead. Cambridge UP, 2002.
Michel Foucault, Abnormal: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1974-1975. Selections.
Trans. Graham Burchell. Verso, 2003.
Partha Chatterjee, “Talking about Modernity in Two Different Languages.” A Possible India. OUP, 1997.

Additional texts

Harold Pinter, Mountain Language, One for the Road

Adrienne Rich, Selections from her Poetry
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 2009 lecture. www .ted.com/talks/lang/
en/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_ story.html
Nuruddin Farah, Maps
Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye, Power Politics
Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body
Derek Walcott, Selections from Poetry and Prose
 DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
THE UNIVERSITY OF HYDERABAD
COURSE: An Introduction to Salman Rushdie.
M.Phil. I Semester; July - November 2016
Credits: 4

Instructor: Sindhu Menon

This course is intended to be an introductory survey of Salman
Rushdie’s works including novels essays and a travelogue. The
aspects of narrative, ideology, magic realism, fantasy and
political commentary in the works will be studied.
Primary Texts
Salman Rushdie: Midnight’s Children
Salman Rushdie: The Ground Beneath Her Feet
Salman Rushdie: Imaginary Homelands
Salman Rushdie: Enchantress of Florence
Salman Rushdie: The Moor’s Last Sigh
Salman Rushdie: Shalimar the Clown
Salman Rushdie: The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey
Recommended Reading
Goonetilleke, D. C. R. A. Salman Rushdie. NY: Macmillan. 1998.
Print.
Harrison, James. Salman Rushdie. NY: Macmillan. 1992. Print.
Thiara, Nicole Weickegennant. Salman Rushdie and Indian
Historiography: Writing the Nation into Being. NY: Macmillan.
2009. Print.
Treverson, Andrew: Salman Rushdie. Manchester: Manchester
University Press. 2007. Print.
Hassumani, Sabrina. Salman Rushdie: A Postmodern Reading of His
Major Works. Farleigh: Farleigh Dickinson University Press.
2002. Print.
Bloom, Harold. (ed). Salman Rushdie. Philadelphia: Chelsea House
Publishers. 2003. Print.
Modes of Assessment
40% of the evaluation will be based on internal assessment which will
consist of the best two class tests or assignments out of three and
60% will be from the end semester examination.
 DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
THE UNIVERSITY OF HYDERABAD
COURSE: Children’s Literature
M.Phil. I Semester; July - November 2016
Credits: 4
Instructor: Sindhu Menon
This course is intended as an introductory survey of Children’s
Literature in English Children’s texts as well as theories on
Children’s Literature will be examined. Narrative Techniques, Content,
Visual Aspects etc will be examined. Fantasy will be a predominant
element in the Course.
Primary texts:
Geoffrey Rogers: The Boy, The Bear, The Baron and The Bard
Rudyard Kipling: Just So Stories
Subhadra Sen Gupta: A Princess’s Diary: Jahanara
Lucy M Boston: The Stones of Green Knowe
Susan Cooper: King of Shadows
Nilanjana Roy: The Wildings
C.S .Lewis : The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
Roderick Townley: The Great Good Thing
Kate Di Camillo: The Tale of Despereaux
Rick Riordan: Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief.
Recommended Reading.
Hunt, Peter. An Introduction to Children’s Literature. Oxford:
OUP.1994. Print
--- (ed) Understanding Children’s Literature. London: Routledge.1999.
Print.
Carpenter, Humphrey. Secret Gardens: The Golden Age of Children’s
Literature. Boston: Houghton. 1985. Print.
Aveling, Helen. (ed) Unseen Childhoods. London: Bettany Press. 2009.
Print.
Ewers, Hans- Heino. Fundamental Concepts of Children's Literature
Research: Literary and Sociological Approaches. London: Routledge.
2009. Print.
Modes of Assessment
40% of the evaluation will be based on internal assessment which will
consist of the best two class tests or assignments out of three and
60% will be from the end semester examination.
 DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
THE UNIVERSITY OF HYDERABAD
COURSE: Salman Rushdie’s Children’s Tales
M.Phil. I Semester; July ‐ November  2016
Credits: 4
Instructor: Sindhu Menon
This course is intended to examine in detail the two Children’s texts by Salman Rushdie and 
critical material on them. As the thesis will be largely structured around these two texts, an 
intensive close reading strategy will be employed.
Primary Texts.
Salman Rushdie: Haroun and the Sea of Stories
Salman Rushdie: Luka and the Fire of Life
Suchismitha Sen: “Memory, Language and Society in Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of 
Stories” Contemporary Literature. Vol. 36, No. 4 (Winter, 1995), pp. 654‐675
Anne Scott McLeod: “Censorship and Children’s Literature” The Library Quarterly: Information, 
Community, Policy. Vol. 53, No. 1 (Jan., 1983), pp. 26‐38
Meenakshi Bharat: “Creative Fear in Salman Rushdie's Haroun and Luka: The “Safe House” of 
Children's Literature” . Marvels & Tales. Vol. 29, No. 2 (2015), pp. 304‐323
Carlo Coppola: “Salman Rushdie's Haroun And The Sea Of Stories: Fighting The Good Fight Or 
Knuckling Under” Journal of South Asian Literature. Vol. 26, No. 1/2, Miscellany (Winter, Spring, 
Summer, Fall 1991), pp. 229‐237
Soumava Maiti: “The Art of Storytelling and the Role of Memory in Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the 
Sea of Stories and Luka and the Fire of Life” Rupkatha Journal. Volume VIII, Number 1, 2016. Pp. 206‐13.

Janet Mason Ellerby: “Fiction under Siege: Rushdie’s Quest for Narrative Emancipation in Haroun and 
the Sea of Stories”. The Lion and the Unicorn. Vol 22. No:2. April 1988.PP.211‐220.

Megan.L. Musgrave “Gaming as Civic Engagement in Salman Rushdie’s Luka and the Fire of Life”. 
Children’s Literature Quarterly. Vol 30, No:3, Fall 2015. pp. 238‐256.
Margaret Mackey: Narrative Pleasures in Young Adult Novels, Films and Video Games. New York: 
Palgrave, 2011.

Recommended Reading

Hunt, Peter (ed). Children’s Literature: The Development of Criticism. London: Routledge. 1990. Print.

Hourihan, Margery. Deconstructing the Hero: Literary Theory and Children's Literature. London: 
Routledge. 1997. Print.

Lurie, Alison. Don’t Tell the Grown‐Ups: The Subversive Power of Children’s Literature. New York: Little & 
Brown. 1990. Print.

Stephens, John. Language and Ideology in Children’s Fiction. London: Longman, 1992.

Modes of Assessment 

40% of the evaluation will be based on internal assessment which will consist of the best two class tests 
or assignments out of three and 60% will be from the end semester examination.
Leenu Sugathan, M.Phil, ‘Justice, Human Rights and the Subject in
Contemporary Literature'’
1. Tentative Title: “Writing the Subject in Human Rights Literature”
Leenu Sugathan
Pramod K Nayar
4 credits
Wednesday 9-11

This course functions as an introduction to the emerging field of

Human Rights Literary studies. It provides theoretical fespecially
those dealing with torture, imprisonment and the law. It hopes to
provide the foundation for the student’s eventual analysis of her
chosen texts – contemporary literary narratives dealing with the above
topics. It foregrounds questions of voice, representation, self-
fashioning among those who are identifiable and who identify
themselves as victims.
Texts chosen for this course will be, in the main, those that examine
questions of life writing from prison, the social frames of
incarceration, human rights and the narrative modes employed by
inmates or former inmates (if the narratives were composed after their
prison experience) as well as literary texts like those of JM Coetzee,
Arundhati Roy and others. Critical studies of Truth and Reconciliation
Commissions, such as Leigh Payne’s will also be incorporated.
Readings
Anker, Elizabeth S. Fictions of Dignity: Embodying Human Rights in
World Literature. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2012.
Athey, Stephanie. ‘Dark Chamber, Colonial Scene: Post-9/11 Torture and
Representation’, in Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg and Alexandra
Schultheis Moore (eds) Theoretical Perspectives on Human Rights and
Literature. New York: Routledge, 2012. 180-197.
Bartley, Aryn. ‘The Violence of the Present: David’s Story and the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission’, Comparative Literature Studies
46.1 (2009): 103-124.
Cornwell, Gareth. ‘Realism, Rape, and J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace’,
Critique 43.4 (2002): 307-322.
Dawes, James. That the World May Know: Bearing Witness to Atrocity.
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007.
---. ‘Human Rights in Literary Studies’, Human Rights Quarterly 31.2
(2009): 394-409.
Goldberg, Elizabeth Swanson. Beyond Terror: Gender, Narrative, Human
Rights. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2007.
Goldberg, Elizabeth Swanson and Alexandra Schultheis Moore.
‘Introduction: Human Rights and Literature: The Development of an
Interdiscipline’, in Goldberg and Moore (eds) Theoretical
 perspectives on Human Rights and Literature. London and New York:
Routledge 2012. 1-16.
Harlow, Barbara. Barred: Women, Writing, and Political Detention
(1992).
Kissack, Mike and Michael Titlestad. ‘The Dynamics of Discontent:
Containing Desire and Aggression in Coetzee’s Disgrace’, African
Identities 3.1 (2005): 51-67.
Kossew, Sue. ‘The Politics of Shame and Redemption in J. M. Coetzee’s
Disgrace’, Research in African Literatures 34.2 (2003): 155-162.
Langlois, Anthony J. ‘The Narrative Metaphysics of Human Rights’,
International Journal of Human Rights 9.3 (2005): 369-87.
Moses, Michael Valdez. ‘The Mark of Empire: Writing, History, and
Torture in Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians’, The Kenyon Review
15.1 (1993): 115-127.
Schaffer, Kay and Sidonie Smith. Human Rights and Narrated Lives: The
Ethics of Recognition. New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan,
2004.

Meetings will be structured around the readings assigned for (through

mutual agreement) that week, and the student is expected to come with
detailed notes and discussion points from the readings. These
discussions will account for grades within the internal assessment
component. There will be short written assignments throughout the
course
Assessment
Internal, continuous assessment: 40 %, End-semester examination: 60 %
2. Mikhail Bakhtin and the Liberal Imagination (Instructor: K.
Narayana Chandran), 4 credits

Language in Society: liberal imagination and illiberal selves (how

meaning is both individual and social)
The dialogic (imagination): ethical and social; dialogism of the word
Myth and Language: heteroglossia, glossolalia (how they undermine/
rewrite language)
Challenges to the Ethical Self (“There is no alibi for being,”
Bakhtin.)
The Novel and /in many languages: polyphony
Open and proletarian discourse; fictional character, plurality of
voices
The Carnival: festival, body, laughter, satire, parody....
Authoritarian politics, hierarchies, and democratic values in a
pluralistic society
Transgression/ traversal: overlapping themes in Foucault, Cixous,
Kristeva, Barthes, Benjamin, Derrida, Irigaray, Levinas, et al.
Assessment
Internal, continuous assessment: 40 %, End-semester examination: 60 %

3. Tentative Title: 'Politics and Human Rights in Conflict Regions'

(Instructor: Shaji Sudhakaran, Pol. Sci.), 4 credits
 M. Phil.(English)
Research Methodology and Dissertation Writing
Instructor: E. Nageswara Rao
2 credits

The course will explore the methodology used in literary research. It

will discuss, among others, the following topics:

1. Formulation of a research problem,

2. Preparation of an outline of the proposed topic, its scope and
significance,
3. Compilation of a preliminary or working bibliography,
4. Making notes of several kinds,and
5. Importance of documentation and the use of the MLA Style
Sheet.

The second part of the course will focus on elements of good writing.
The different components of a dissertation will be examined.
Recommended Reading:

Altick, Richard. The Art of Literary Research. (Revised). New York:

Norton, 1975.

Barzun, Jacques. and Henry C. Graff. The Modern Researcher. (Fourth

Edition). San Diego: Harcourt, 1985.

Bateson, F.W. The Scholar-Critic: An Introduction to Literary

Research. London: Routledge, 1972.

Foerster, Norman. Literary Scholarship: Its Aims and Methods. Chapel-

Hill: University of North Carolina, 1941.

Modern Language Association of America. Handbook for Writers of

Research Papers. (Fourth Edition). New York: MLA, 1995.

Perrin, Porter G. Writer's Guide and Index to English. Fourth

Edition. Chicago: Scott Foresman, 1965.

Thorpe, James. The Aims and Methods of Scholarship in Modern Languages

and Literatures, New York: MLA, 1963.

Watson, George. The Literary Thesis: A Guide to Research. London:

Longman, 1970.

Wellek, Rene. and Austin Warren. Theory of Literature. New York:

Harcourt, 1956.

The course will involve library assignments on research procedures so

that students receive practical experience in their research.
There will be a mid-term and a final exam. The assignments and mid-
term will carry 20% each while the final exam will carry 60%.