No Homer Simpson for college students

Students vent ire as Mumbai Univ does away with two popular BA English papers

MUMBAI: While teachers around the world try to use pop culture figures — such as Homer Simpson — from TV and movies to explain abstract concepts, Mumbai University is heading the opposite way.

Its board of studies, which decides the syllabus for colleges, has knocked off two papers — ‘Popular Culture’ and ‘Film and Literature’ — from the final year BA English syllabus that comes into effect June 2008.

As a result, many second year BA students are reconsidering taking English as their final year major. Supriya Singh, 21, who is in her second year of BA at Wilson College, says she might opt for Economics or Psychology instead.

“I wanted to study English for popular culture in order to pursue studies in cross-cultural communication later. But now the only optional papers they have retained are Grammar and Translation. I don’t want to spend the next year with Wren & Martin,” she says.

Introduced in 1995, the paper on popular culture was part of the optional component in the syllabus. Over the years, it has been viewed  as the ‘more interesting, radical and thought-provoking’ paper. Students were taught western and Indian theory, and how to apply them to the contemporary Indian context. 

Nessie Mathew, 20, in her final year of BA, English at Wilson College, did her project on romance novels such as Mills & Boon, and analysed why women need this kind of literature and how it flourishes.

“It’s a shame this paper will be dropped. These two papers are the only papers in the final year of BA English that are practical and contemporary. Students shouldn’t lose out on that.”   

Akshat Nigam, 23, now pursuing his M. Phil in English from St Xavier’s College, did his popular culture project on a study of horror and Dracula.

“The paper covered critical approaches towards the definition of popular culture. We learn that popular culture is not just aesthetic. Big industries dictate what is popular. At the undergraduate level, Popular Culture was the only paper that allowed us to connect literature and culture in our daily lives.”

The reasons for the change are unclear. Professor Arvind R Mardikar, chairperson of the Board of Studies for English, Mumbai University, says, “There is no real modification in the syllabus. We have distributed these topics in the other papers. But if you scan the new syllabus for theories that were being taught in Popular Culture - Frankfurt School, Barthes and mythology, post-modernist theorists like Baudrillard, Jameson, Lyotard, Marxist theories by Gramsci, the writings of Althusser, and theories of semiotics, structuralism, globalisation, consumerism - they are nowhere to be found.”

Mardikar says teachers of the paper were not present at the seminar where the syllabus change was discussed. He claims there was no committee present to retain the papers, and that none of the colleges contacted him to do so either.

But two teachers, who did not wished to be named, confirm they made repeated written and verbal attempts to urge the board to retain these papers, but never got a straight answer.

Mardikar still says if experts teaching this paper contact him by February 25, he will retain it but so far, nobody has asked for the paper to continue.

According to Dr Shoba Ghosh, who heads the English department at SIES College of Arts, “Democracy and empowerment is about increasing choices, not decreasing them. Over 150 students opted for Popular Culture, so there appears no reason to drop it. If it is because they have pushed the paper into the Masters of Arts course, they are choosing to disenfranchise about 150 undergraduate students for the sake of 15 Honours students.”

These optional BA English papers were being offered by numerous city colleges such as St Xavier’s, Wilson, Jai Hind, SIES and SK Somaiya. Teachers view the change as regressive.

Michelle Philips, head of the English department at Wilson College is appalled: “The Popular Culture paper puts so many things in our lives into perspective. It helps students be aware of what is being said between the lines.” Teachers are unsure whether ideologies are at the heart of the issue. Dr Kamal Jadhav, who heads the English department at Jai Hind College, feels the new syllabus places more emphasis on Indian classics like the Mahabharata.

“This could be one of the reasons for dropping the paper. But we cannot be sure.” The university may blame a low student turn-out - but that can be disregarded as more than six city colleges offered Popular Culture and over 150 students opted it. The Board has retained the optional paper on Translation - taught by only one city college.

The new batch of TYBA, English students will lose their chance to link cultural icons such as Homer Simpson, Dracula, Kyuki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi characters and advertisements and films that they consider to be relevant to popular culture with any literary theories.

Many of them will take up subjects other than English as it now seems “dry”, “dumbed-down” and “laughable”. Ambiguous replies from the Board, coupled with the confirmation from the watered-down new syllabus have led to the death of two popular papers. In an age where English departments are fighting to keep numbers up, enrolment may now take a beating.

“We are going to see an impact in the kind of students who graduate, where they go and what kind of jobs they are going to get,” says an English department head at a prominent city college.

Noted literary critic Antony Easthope’s, book Literary Into Cultural Studies (1991) argued that there was no obvious or timeless difference of value between literature and popular culture - both were markers of taste, and subject to fashion, a point that Mumbai university’s board of studies may want to consider.