The Department of English in collaboration with TEFSOL, India, conducted a Faculty Development Programme in October, 2017, in honour of the Golden Jubilee Celebrations at the College. The FDP had a  twofold objective: to help identify the challenges and problems in English Language Teaching to students from heterogeneous backgrounds; and to collaboratively arrive at useful pedagogic and assessment strategies for the new Skill Enhancement Course on ELT  that was then introduced through the CBCS system by the University.   

English, has become the language of business and commerce, trade and technology, journalism and media. As a result, the pool of undergraduate students eager to learn communication in the English language in order to use it to advance their careers has  become progressively more diverse in terms of regional, cultural and linguistic backgrounds, making the task of the instructor far more complex and crucial. The workshop-intensive FDP equipped the department’s faculty to hone their skills with regard to English Language Teaching in this milieu. 

The Department of English conducted a three- day National Seminar on "Commemorations, Legacies, Afterlives: Four Hundred Years of Shakespeare and Cervantes". The seminar took stock of the literary and cultural act and projects of memorialization around Shakespeare and Cervantes, two figures who, despite their European origin, remain relevant today in post-colonial India.  Resourcepersons from Delhi University, JNU, Jamia Milia Islamia University, Ashoka University, Shiv Nadar University and authors from Bangalore attended.  The seminar also  featured senior academicians, novelists and performers, including dancer and Sangeet Natak Akademi award- winner Navtej Johar who performed a Bharatanatyam  recital and rendition of a Shakespearean Sonnet. 

Writer and award-winning documentary film-maker Ryan Lobo whose debut novel Mr. Iyer Goes to War had a book reading and release; academic Vibha Maurya who translated Don Quixote for the first time into Hindi read and discussed her work here. Other eminent academics included Professors Shirshendu Chakrabarti, K. Madavane, Soumyabrata Choudhury, Sambuddha Sen, S. P. Ganguly and Vijaya Venkataraman, Surabhi Sonya Gupta and N. P. Ashley. The seminar also produced in-house work that we are very proud of, in the form of subtitles for a Malayalam film adaptation of Shakespeare's Othello, single-handedly and sensitively rendered by a third year Honours student, Ms. Shyama Sadasivan. All sessions and competitions drew good university level participation.

For Student Progression