II BA English - Assignment on Rhetoric - Reg

Dear Students of II BA English,

Today is your last date for submission of your Assignment, as part of your I CIA on Rhetoric. So far, I've got 17 assignments in my mail box, and still counting.I wish to reiterate, what i've said earlier, that no possible extension of the deadline will be given. So, make sure you submit your assignments by tonight. The mail id is: rufusonline@gmail.com

With all best wishes,

Rufus

II CIA - Reg

Dear Students of I BSc Pbt/Zoo (Reg),

As announced earlier, you will be tested based on all the prescribed poems/essays with special focus on the novel Animal Farm. The Internal Test will be held at the same venue in which you wrote your I CIAs.

II BA English Literature students are expected to submit your assignments (as part of your I CIA) on or before Friday, 30 March 2012, failing which you will be forfeiting your marks for the same. All your assignments on Oratory should be in the form of MS Word, 1.5 spacing, Times New Roman, and sent to me as an email attachment at rufusonline@gmail.com. For an overview of the topics, kindly click on this link here

With all best wishes,

Rufus
Course teacher

UGC Seminar - A Report

The UGC-Sponsored One-day National Seminar got off to a grand start on Monday, 12 March 2012 at 9 am at the Centre for Media Studies Auditorium. The key-note address by Prof. K. Srilata, IITM, tuned the audience to the theme of the session - Post-Independence Indian Writing in English: Theory and Praxis. The second issue of our Peer-reviewed Journal 'Eclectic Representations' was released by the key-note speaker on the occasion. There were in all sixteen paper presenters, who did great presentations, and answered questions (sometimes irritating questions too) with aplomb and dignity. 

The cream of the afternoon session  was the valedictory address by Dr. Premila Paul, Associate Professor of English, The American College, Madurai. She had all the minds and hearts spellbound by her rapturous insights into the various facets of Post-Independence Indian Writing in English. The book Mapping Territories, containing papers of the participants, was released by Dr. Premila Paul, while Dr. Shanthi Manuel, Member of the Board, released the Student' initiative 'Cornucopia'.

Students' performance was the icing on the cake. Radha and Arul Jyoti performed a dance recital, and students of II MA English (Anki & Shruti) gave a soulful rendition of patriotic songs followed by our National Anthem. The national integration video 'Mile sur mera tumhara' was screened towards the end of the afternoon session. 

Dr. K. Ganesh presented the Vote of Thanks.

Shashi Tharoor's take on 'why engineers become terrorists.!'

An IIT graduate - so the story goes - is walking near a pond one day when a frog speaks to him. "Kiss me," it says, "and i will turn into a beautiful princess." The IITian does a double-take, turns back to check if he has heard right, and sure enough, the frog repeats itself: "Kiss me and i will turn into a beautiful princess." He looks thoughtfully at the frog, picks it up and puts it into his pocket. A plaintive wail soon emerges: "Kiss me and i will turn into a beautiful princess." He ignores it and walks on. Soon the frog asks, "Aren't you going to kiss me?" The IIT guy stops, pulls the frog out of his pocket, and replies matter-of-factly: "I'm an engineer. I don't have time for a girlfriend. But a talking frog is cool." 

No prizes for guessing what a literature graduate would have done in the same situation! Such is the self-image of the engineer in India: rational, hard-working, self-disciplined, steady, focused on the results of his work. Parents pray for the smartest of their kids to become engineers. Any child with better than average marks in science at school is pushed towards the profession, sustained by peer pressure that convinces him there could be no higher aspiration.

And no doubt for some there isn't. But that clearly isn't the whole story. Disturbing new research at Oxford University by sociologists Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog points to an intriguing - one might say worrying - correlation between engineering and terrorism.

If that doesn't raise eyebrows at the IITs, nothing will. But consider the evidence: Osama bin Laden was a student of engineering. So were the star 9/11 kamikaze pilot Mohammed Atta, the alleged mastermind of that plot, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and their all-but-forgotten predecessor, the chief plotter of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Ramzi Yousef.