Department of English & Comparative Literary Studies, Saurastra University

The Department of English & Comparative Literary Studies came to be established in the year 1990. It began with just one faculty member and then its faculty strength improved in the course of time and at present it has five permanent faculty members, at present it has five permanent faculty members, of which four are Professors and one Assistant Professor. All permanent faculty members possess the highest qualification, i.e., Ph.D. The Department also has two ad hoc teachers. It offers programmes like M. A., M. Phil. and Ph. D. It has an M A intake capacity of 66 seats and M Phil intake of 09 seats. The Department attracts students from almost every region of Gujarat and often a couple of students from outside the State. The Department has organized many seminars and Workshops incollabration with various academic bodies like UGC, British Council, USEFI, SahityaAkademi, Gujarati SahityaParishad, IACS, CLAI, CIIL, Katha American Centre and Balwant Parekh Centre for General Semantics among others. Especially, its series of workshops on English Language Teaching and Testing as well as on Translation of Gujarati and Hindi creative and critical works have been quite noteworthy. These workshops on ELT and translation have brought about a remarkable change in the class-room teaching in the Saurashtra University area colleges and the translation workshops have led to the cultivation of a good number of translators in this region, who have been active in translation through the different recognized literary and research institutes. A number of students of the Department have translated historically significant texts in Indian literatures with critical introduction as a part of their M Phil or Doctoral research. Some of these works have been later on published by reputed publishers. The Department was selected by the UGC under Special Assistance Programme in the year 2002 for five years to study “The Indian Renaissance Literatures in Gujarati, Hindi and English”. During these five years of LEVEL-I, a good number of Indian and foreign scholars visited the Department as Visiting Fellows or Visiting Professors and appreciated the work done by the Department and the publications of the Department on Indian Renaissance writings. A list of the publications on Indian Renaissance has been given ahead. It was during this period that this formerly Department of English became the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies. The faculties of the Department have completed 03 UGC Major Research Projects and several more UGC Minor Research Projects also. The Department took some innovative and bold initiatives for introducing Gujarati, Hindi and Marahti texts in the syllabus for English for Comparative studies. It also introduced a full course on Indian poetics. It also introduced a course on Indian literature in English translation. At the M Phil level the students are offered a course in “Analyzing Texts: Indian & Western Approaches”. The Department also offers a few bright students an option of dissertation at the M A level also. The Department has its own library which houses the rare books on the Indian Renaissance period. Many of them are out of print and they have been procured from different libraries of the country in their photocopies. This library can be very useful to one who intends to do research on Indian renaissance writings.