AU to set up school of languages

ALLAHABAD UNIVERSITY (AU) is now planning to emerge as a major centre for teaching and research in languages, literature and culture of India, Asia and the world.

The varsity has decided to set up a school of languages to undertake a broad range of research and teaching work related to fields like literary studies, linguistics: intellectual, social and cultural history; literary, linguistic and cultural theory; film studies and translation studies.

"The AU Vice-Chancellor Prof Rajen Harshe presented the proposal for the school of languages before the UGC during his recent visit to New Delhi.

The UGC showing its support to the initiative has already sanctioned four posts of lecturers for the proposed school," said AU PRO and the Chief Public Information Officer of the varsity Prof Amrendra Singh.

Prof Singh said that keeping with the huge capital and population flows that characterise globalisation, coupled with language contact, interpenetration and conflict, the school shall adopt a transnational perspective upon research into language, culture and identity.

"In an increasingly polarised world, knowledge of 'developing countries is particularly relevant. Knowledge of language is essential for the analysis of social, political and cultural change in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, the Caribbean and South Africa to address the key issues as globalisation, inequality, poverty, gender relations, ethnicity and cultural representation," Prof Singh said.

As per the plans, the proposed school will also respond to the national decline in students studying languages with a vigorous widening participation and outreach programmes, which, the varsity hopes, shall yield strong, year on year growth in demand for its undergraduate and postgraduate programme.

"It has been envisaged that the school will develop links with a small number of Japanese and Chinese universities and with external agencies with an interest in promoting research and scholarly exchange between India and other Asian Countries too," Prof Singh added.

He said that Asia and Latin America presents enormous opportunities and challenges to the United State in the 21st century.

"Statistics relating to fall 2002 and fall 1998 foreign language enrolments in US colleges and Universities reveals that the Chinese and Japanese are the two popular Asian languages and we plan to capitalise on this," he added.

He said that if successful in its mission, the varsity could even establish a full-fledged language lab complex at the school in the future to play a great role in making successful of the school's teaching method in very novel way.

"The innovativeness of the programmes, with specially designed courses available nowhere else in the country will make the production of requisite pedagogical materials imperative, particularly in the case of teaching of languages," he said.

The varsity at present has a department of English and Modern European Languages where German, French and Russian is taught besides having a separate departments of Urdu, Arabic and Persian and running diploma courses in Bengali and Punjabi— all of which could  now be brought under the proposed School of Languages.