About the Department
The Department follows a multi-pronged teaching approach, balancing a curriculum which can equip the
students for careers anywhere, in academia or outside (following all-India requirements in this regard), with a sharp
focus on developing cutting-edge research potential among students, to make them nationally and globally competitive.
Teaching combines standard lectures (accompanied by visual and audio-visual aids) with student-focussed interactive
sessions, discussions, and presentations, including analysis of primary texts by students to equip them for research.
Focus is also placed on interdisciplinary approaches to studies, with faculty members collaborating with faculty from
other departments (such as Philosophy and English) to carry out joint classes and discussions. Department members often
take part in national and international conferences, and the department itself also often organizes conferences and
workshops. The Department every year organizes a number of special seminars and lectures. Apart from having these
specific academic objectives, the broader aim of the Department is to help students to become socially-aware citizens
so that they can use the conceptual resources provided by the study of the distant as well as proximate past (of India
and of the wider world) to better understand the universe around them, and to negotiate with that world in a socially
responsible manner, deploying, among other things, the analytical techniques offered to them by classroom teaching and
interactions.
