History of the Department of English

The Department of English was established in 1958 for several reasons.

1.      The Mahagujarat Movement was at its height in mid-1950s and the bifurcation of the then Bombay Province into Gujarat and Maharashtra had started appearing to be a distinct possibility. The proposed state of Gujarat would need new institutions of higher learning and new universities to take care of its needs. Our visionary leadership took the initiative of establishing Sardar Patel University.

2.      A Postgraduate Department of English were among the felt needs of the region for a long time once the University started functioning. Moreover, since the needs of the region were special, the visionaries felt it necessary to set up this Department as one of the first few Postgraduate Departments in the initial years.

3.      Sardar Patel University was originally a rural-based university much in the same way as it is even today, and thus the needs in it were (and are) different and, therefore, institutions here were required to be based on an indigenous model of education.

Successive Heads

The founder head of the Department, Professor Ramesh Ambalal Dave, who was Reader and Head between 1958 and 1977, became Professor and Head in 1978, and had the longest tenure of 28 years, which came to an end with his superannuation on 28 February 1986. Professor Kirtinath Dattatreya Kurtkoti headed the Department between 1 March 1986 and 5 November 1988 for a period of 2 years and 8 months. Professor Dayashankar Suryabali Mishra, the current head, took office on 6 November 1988.
 

Development of the Department under various Heads

The Department has been fortunate that it has had men of vision as Heads all through its 45 years of existence.

Professor R A Dave

To the founder Head of this Department goes the credit of laying a strong foundation for it. He introduced courses in Shakespeare Studies, Literary Forms, Literary Criticism, English Literature, American Literature, Modern English Usage, and World Classics in Translation. He equipped the Department with a fairly good library in the form of our Emerson Library, which has now shifted to the Bhaikaka Library (University Library) as well as the initial collection in Bhaikaka Library, established the Library of Sound, initiated the MPhil and PhD programmes, and introduced instructional programmes like study-aids.

Professor K D Kurtkoti

In his short tenure of 2 years and 8 months as Head, the late Professor K D Kurtkoti, who was a well-known Kannada Literature as a critic of eminence and often referred to as the T S Eliot of Kannada Literature, updated courses in Literary Criticism at the MA and MPhil, introduced English Language Teaching in Higher Education, Contemporary European Fiction, and Indian English Literature at the MA. He organised two Summer Institutes in English, was also instrumental in the establishment of the Language Laboratory that the Department shares with three other language departments in the University.

Professor D S Mishra

The incumbent Head of the Department, Professor D S Mishra, has been actively engaged in strengthening the Department. He has introduced Canadian Literature, Comparative Literature, Gender Studies, Indian Literatures in Translation, Literature, Psychology and Psychoanalysis, Literary Theories, and Translation Studies in the MA Programme; and Applied Linguistics, Stylistics and Text Linguistics, and Translation Studies in the MPhil Programme. He has added MA (Self-finance) Programme, built a good Departmental Library, upgraded the Library of Sound, and set up a Computer Laboratory to run Courses in Computer Literacy in the Department. His tenure has thus seen the induction of computers in the Department. It was due to his efforts that we have two lectureships sanctioned. Unfortunately, one of them is still lying vacant. He has launched Mimamsa, the Departmental bi-annual journal.

Development of infrastructural facilities

The Department has been able to add substantially to its collection of books and journals. The Emerson Library was built out of a collection gifted to us in the 1970s by an American citizen who had worked for some time in India. The British Council has donated 60 classical English texts to the Department and the British Library Ahmedabad gifted us with a collection of nearly 50 books in the early 1990s. A good Departmental Library started taking shape in 1995-96 and has now a good stock of 3000 books.

Some Important Pieces of Statistics

Particulars	PG	Research
Ratio of applications to available seats	16:1	1:8
Success rate (examination results)	92%	60%
Progression to higher education rate	25%	----
Employment rate (up to 1997 before the ban on recruitments)	70%	----
Ratio of full-time teachers to part-time teachers	N/A	N/A
Ratio of academic staff to administrative staff	----	----
Requests for re-valuation to students who took the examination	26%	Nil
Ratio of students to teachers	47: 1	5.33:1

Particulars	Data
Ratio of research scholars to teachers (eligible to guide research students)	5.33:1
Ratio of research papers published during the last 3 years at international and national levels to number of teachers	12:4
Number of PhD theses guided during the last two years	10
Number of MPhil Dissertations guided during the last two years	14

Particulars	Year of entry: 2001-02		Year of entry: 2002-03
	Class	Total	Class	Total
Admitted to the programme	MA Previous	99	MA Previous	155
	MA Final	84	MA Final	110
Drop-outs within four months of joining	MA Previous	06	MA Previous	05
	MA Final	02	MA Final	02

Particulars	2001-02	2002-03
Appeared for the MA Final Examination	145	143
Passed in the MA Final Examination	89	136
Passed in I Class	13	12
University ranks, if any	01	01