Comparative Perspectives
Veena Kapur
Reconsidering English Studies in Indian Higher Education by By Suman Gupta, Richard Allen, Subarno Chatterji, and Supriya Chaudhuri Routledge, London, New York, 2015, 230 pp., $122.00
May 2017, volume 41, No 5

The book under review examines the status of English Studies in India, as well as the aspirations pinned on it by students, teachers, policy makers and society. It is an invaluable resource book for academic readers who are interested in English Studies as a discipline at the higher education level. In this context, English Studies consists of the study of English literature, language, linguistics as well as cultural studies.

Reconsidering English Studies in Indian higher Education is the result of a collaborative research project which was conducted in the period 2012–2014, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK. The authors have tried to point out and bring to the foreground the crises in the discipline with effects on both pedagogy and scholarship. The book offers an account of the past and current condition of the discipline while speculating about its future prospects. These are explored in four parts of the book entitled: Background; Professional Concerns; Students; Comparative Perspectives.

The most significant contributions to the book come from all participants of the two workshops, the teachers in various Delhi based institutions who administered the survey questionnaire, and the students who responded to it.