The academic performance of the students of the department has been consistently good. Many have gone on to pursue post-graduate studies in English at Jawarharlal Nehru University, Jadavpur University, Presidency University and the English and Foreign Language University (Hyderabad) while some have diversified into higher studies in journalism and media studies, the social sciences and management. Several students are pursuing programs in higher research in universities abroad.
The extra-curricular activities of the students reveal the variety of their interests: they are involved in theatrical and film productions, music, advertisement and art exhibitions, debating, social causes, environmental issues and animal rights. Several students have interned with reputed newspapers like The Telegraph and The Statesman and have written for online magazines and websites. Manisha Ganguly, a panelist at a discussion on ‘Gender and the Indian Education System’ organized by Penn State University, was selected for the ‘Create to Inspire Fellowship 2014’ and presented a paper and exhibited her artwork & films at the Feminist Art Conference at OACD University, Toronto, Canada (2015). Student teams participate in inter-college creative writing competitions and literary quizzes. Meghna Sapui won the Romantic Quiz organized by the Centre for Studies in Romantic Literature, 7th February 2014.The students of the department are also actively engaged in the various extra-curricular activities organized by the English Academy and Fine Arts Society.
Among NCC cadets, Bodhi Darshanee Rai distinguished herself by being selected for the Republic Day Camp at New Delhi. She was Commentator for the Defense Minister and the Chiefs of the Army, Navy and Air force and received the Governor’s Medal, 2015. She represented India in the Youth Exchange Programme in Sri Lanka in held in October-November 2015 and received the Sri Lankan Cadet Medal, 2015.
The department has several talented sportspersons. Abhishikta Rudra won the Calcutta University Inter College Table Tennis Tournament, 2014 and represented Calcutta University in the All India Table Tennis Competition in 2013 and 2014. Siddharth Joshi represented Calcutta University in Basketball at the All India Inter University level held in Benaras, 2014. Manikankana Sengupta, Urmimala Sengupta and Aafreen Naaz were winners at the Team Event at the Calcutta University Table Tennis Trials while Tina Dey and Steffy Jose represented the college at the State Basketball Championship.
The activities of the Department of English are designed to harmonise with the serious pursuit of literary studies. While students are encouraged to participate in the teaching-learning process by presenting student papers in the course of the semester, the Department also creates other forums for expression and discussion. Department Workshops and Seminars are organized to open up new approaches to the subject and to expose students to areas of areas of research interest beyond the framework of the syllabus.
At the First Year seminar on ‘Poetry and the Other Arts’ on 18th September 2014 students were encouraged students to adopt inter-disciplinary approaches to literature. Student presentations explored the relationship between poetry and other art forms such as music, cinema, painting and comic illustrations.
On 18th March, 2015, at a Department Seminar, Dr. Malcolm Sen, Irish Council Fellow, Harvard University, delivered a talk on ‘Inheriting the Global Commons: Literary Study and the Climate Change Crisis’. Presenting a critical new area of research, Dr. Sen’s paper addressed the issue of climate change and, discussing the relevance of Environmental Studies to literature, introduced students to the new genre of ‘cli-fi’.
At the Department Seminar on ‘Cartoons and Caricatures’, held on 9th October, 2015, well-researched and illustrated student papers traced the development of the comic and looked critically at the literary and political aspects of the cartoon and the literary caricature. Bulbul Rajagopal and Sharmistha Chatterjee examined Quentin Blake’s illustrations of Roald Dahl’s work in ‘Grown Ups: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly’. In ‘Hergé: A Look over the Shoulder of the Creator of Tintin’, Arunashish Sen researched the creation of the popular Tintin comic books while Sayantani Mukhopadhyay’s presentation on ‘Punch magazine’ analysed the satirical and political impetus of Punch magazine cartoons. The last two papers of the day, ‘War on the “Leaden Front” presented by Chandril Chattopadhyay, Paushali Bhattacharya and Moumita Mukherjee and ‘The Use of Animation and Propaganda in the Second World War’ by Vidit Sahewala, focused on the use of popular Disney cartoons and animation films as propaganda in the World Wars.
A Crime Fiction Writing Workshop was organized by the Department of English in association with the British Council, Kolkata, on the 14th and 15th January, 2016. The two day workshop was conducted by Dom Hastings, Director of Bloody Scotland, Scotland’s International Crime Writing Festival and attended by fifty students from the English department of the college. Following an introduction to the genre and an interactive discussion on classic crime fiction, students engaged in practical exercises in crime fiction writing. Six Third Year students were also selected to participate in a Workshop on Creative Poetry Writing on 29th January, 2016, conducted by British poet, Melissa Lee-Houghton, and organized by the British Council & Poetry Paradigm.
On 2nd March 2016, the English Department held a seminar conducted by Dr. Jane Dowson, Reader in Twentieth-Century Literature at De Montfort University, Leicester, a critically acclaimed author and an authority on Twentieth-Century women’s poetry, on ‘One Hundred Years of British Women’s Poetry’. Based on Dr. Dowson’s own extensive archival research, the one hour talk traced a tradition of women’s poetry and covered issues that that ranged from the gender dynamics of writing poetry as a woman to surviving as a woman poet in a male-dominated patriarchal society. The session ended with a discussion of poems by twentieth-century women poets including Frances Cornford, Anna Wickham, Sylvia Plath, Carol Rumens, Imitiaz Dharker and Carol Ann Duffy.
The Department also organizes film screenings followed by seminars and class discussions on prescribed texts such as The Importance of Being Earnest, Pride and Prejudice, Huckleberry Finn, Look Back in Anger and Twelfth Night.
The English Academy and The Fine Arts Society, cultural societies run by department teachers, also offer students the opportunity to participate in literary quizzes, creative writing competitions, art and photography exhibitions and western music concerts.