English

About Us

One among the oldest departments in the country, the Department of English Language and Literature has come to occupy a noteworthy place in both Literary Studies and Culture Studies. Established in 1837, the department has been up-to-date in curriculum planning and syllabus framing. The Department offers a broad spectrum of innovative courses under the Choice Based Credit System. Integrating the conventional approach of exposing the student to the characteristic features of each literary period and the genres and sub-genres of literature with the political readings of the literature of the present-day, the syllabus enables the students to interpret texts both aesthetically and socio-politically to understand the principles of Literary Studies as well as Culture Studies. The special papers offered at the UG and PG levels are Women’s Writings, Myth and Literature, New Writing, The Postmodern Survey, Shakespearean Criticism, Translation Studies, Critical Theory Since 1965, Ecology, Literature and Development and Indian Metatheater and Perception.

The department is a flourishing academic community of teacher-scholars, who are dedicated to sharing their expertise in various fields of their specialization. Always performance-driven, the members of the distinguished faculty are continually committed to providing the best possible education to the Undergraduate, Postgraduate, M Phil and Ph D students. The faculty members are experts in fields such as Renaissance Literature, Postcolonial Literature, English Studies and India Studies, Ecocriticism and Eco literature, American Literature, Shakespeare Studies, World Drama and Linguistics, English Language Teaching, Gender Studies, Feminism, Ecocriticism, Theatre Studies, Music and Literature and Literary Stylistics. Besides this, the department provides the Part II English students at the college with the knowledge of the four language skills- Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing. Our approach to English language learning utilizes the Communicative English Teaching Method, a way of teaching that employs a number of holistic techniques to English grammar, English vocabulary, spoken English, English listening, and English reading and writing. Our holistic techniques prioritize the ability to use these English skills in real-world situations.

The Vision of the Department is to impart a multicultural and multilingual dimension to the study of the English Language and its Literature and the Mission of the Department is to promote the study of worldwide literature written in English and extend the understanding of how the English language is inextricably intertwined with the various cultures of those who speak and write it. Being an intensely proactive department, the faculty members take the teaching and research assignments very seriously without losing sight of the Vision and Mission statements of the department.

Programmes Offered

B.A., M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D

Programme Outcomes

For Our English Literature Courses:

We investigate the design, purpose, meaning, modes of production and reception, and the uses made of literary texts. We carry out these investigations by closely examining texts in themselves and by bringing to the texts knowledge of relevant literary, historical, philosophical, and biographical contexts. We examine texts for their complicity in the construction of social norms and for their attempts to oppose or undermine such norms. The courses are designed to impart the skills of reading and writing and they have other goals as well.

However, our general English courses and our many writing courses address more directly these core skills. The department believes students should understand the “meaning” of literature in terms of social, cultural, aesthetic, and intellectual movements that are also the provinces of the social sciences. In addition, we have several courses devoted to studying theories of literature. Several others discuss literature as a realm of experience that reflects aspects of the social and cultural contexts in which it is embedded.

For Our ESL Programmes:

An Action Research Seminar cum Workshop was conducted in April 2010 to implement enquiry-centred curriculum compacting to maximize outcome-based initiatives. As James McKernan rightly asserts in Curriculum and Imagination: process theory, pedagogy and action research (2008) “a teacher’s voice is essential for action research.”  Accordingly, all the course teachers participated in open-ended and free discussions to recontextualize learning-intensive paradigms within a new competency-based curriculum to innovate a real-world syllabus. The free and impartial discussions ensured a proper understanding of contentious issues and facilitated collaborative decision making which in turn optimized process-based staff empowerment.

The Department decided on six poems and five essays to be taught throughout all the four semesters. Additionally, a play, a novel and six short stories were to be taught in the first, second and third semesters respectively. Furthermore, in addition to the routine writing units being taught throughout the first three semesters, it was decided to implement a mastery-focused writing module during the fourth semester to prepare the students for the campus placement tests.  Moreover, during the first semester, it was also decided to incorporate a remedial component to leverage performance-driven scaffolding to integrate the linguistically challenged learners into outcome-based mainstream instruction.

 

Faculty

Mekala Rajan

Head of the Department
mekalarajan@mcc.edu.in
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S. Franklin Daniel

franklindaniel@mcc.edu.in
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N. Jeyaselvi

njeyaselvi@mcc.edu.in
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Ann Thomas

annthomas@mcc.edu.in
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David Abraham Albert

davidabraham@mcc.edu.in
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G Phebe Angus

phebeangus@mcc.edu.in
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Christina Dhanasekaran

christinadhanasekaran@mcc.edu.in
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G. Udhayaraj

udhayaraj@mcc.edu.in
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A. Deepa Priyadarsini

deepapriyadarshini@mcc.edu.in
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P. Merin Wilson

merinwilson@mcc.edu.in
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J. Aruna

aruna@mcc.edu.in
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C. Monsingh Daniel

monsinghdaniel@mcc.edu.in
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M. David Wesley

davidwesley@mcc.edu.in
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M. Samuel Jayakumar

samueljayakumar@mcc.edu.in
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