This volume of selected papers from the Journal of Contemporary Thought of the Forum on Contemporary Theory of the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda commemorates the tenth anniversary of the publication of the Journal (1991-2000). The papers are organized around the topic of the discipline of English studies: its history, institutional context, transformation, and pedagogical and curricular imperatives. As the discipline is situated within a complex context of intersections of several attitudes and ideologies involving the intricate processes of knowledge-formation in both colonial and postcolonial settings, the essays included in the volume both address specific questions about English studies and broad questions about the social and political ideologies determining the institution of the discipline and its ongoing debate regarding its curricular and pedagogical imperatives. The volume will provide a useful resource to both literary scholars and scholars from the sister disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.

Prafulla C. Kar is Professor of English at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. He was Deputy Director of the American Studies Research Centre, Hyderabad during 1982-86, and Chair, Department of English at Baroda during 1995-2000. He visited the Universities of Chicago, Texas at Austin and California at Berkeley under a Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship. He was a Fellow at the School of Criticism and Theory at Dartmouth College, USA in 1986. Besides editing several scholarly books, he has published papers on American literature, critical theory and new literatures in English. He is one of the editors of the Journal of Contemporary Thought, Baroda.

Kailash C. Baral is Director, Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, North-East Campus at Shillong. He is the author of the book Freud’s Theory of Arts and Literature (Delhi: Sterling, 1994) and has edited two books, Humanities and Pedagogy: Teaching of Humanities Today (Delhi: Pencraft, 2002) and Interpretation of Texts: Texts, Meaning and Interpretation (Delhi: Pencraft, 2002). He has published papers on Indian English literature, psychoanalysis, and postcolonial criticism.

Sura P. Rath is Professor of English and Regents Professor of India Studies at Louisiana State University in Shreveport, USA. He is the President of Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association of America; of Flannery O’ Connor International Society; and Director of India Studies Program at Louisiana State University in Shreveport. He is one of the editors of the Journal of Contemporary Thought. He has edited Flannery O’Connor: New Perspectives (University of Georgia Press, 1996) and Sitakant Mahapatra: The Mythographer of Time (Delhi: 2001).