The Graduate Programme in English at Chanakya University is an interdisciplinary exploration of aesthetic and literary ideas emerging from multiple intellectual traditions globally. The programme aims to train scholars, researchers, creative arts practitioners, art and literary critics who can bring the insights of humanistic inquiry to bear on questions of contemporary significance. We hope to shape graduates who could be best described as Renaissance Polymaths, as Bahushruta scholars, who bring to bear a wide array of learning to address issues from perspectives that are informed by their knowledge of many places and many ages.
The Graduate Programme in English includes explorations into literary and aesthetic traditions from the Euro-American world and the Indian subcontinent, global history of ideas ranging from science, philosophy, and social thought, in-depth studies of classic literary texts, rhetoric, logic and argumentation, courses on great books, and studios on digital humanities, creative writing, translation, and feature writing.
The twenty-first century looks to humanities scholars to provide historically informed and conceptually rich explorations of questions that face the world today: for instance, questions about the human condition in the age of gene-manipulation technologies, about communities and customs in the age of nation-states, about human creativity in the age of artificial intelligence, forms of mindful living in the age of consumption-driven economies, social order and cooperation in the age of skewed growth, and institutions that drive collective meaningful action in the age of homogenised social media. Alongside the task of finding technical solutions, these questions call for a study of human cultures, creativity, and forms of reflection across different cultures and across different times.
Chanakya University’s Graduate Programme in English is our response to this exciting intellectual challenge.