IIT Madras is a public technical and research university located in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Founded in 1959, it is recognised as an Institute of National Importance.

IIT Madras has been ranked as the top engineering institute in India for four years in a row by the National Institutional Ranking Framework of the MHRD

It currently offers undergraduate, postgraduate and research degrees across 16 disciplines in Engineering, Sciences, Humanities and Management. About 596 faculty belonging to science and engineering departments and centres of the Institute are engaged in teaching, research and industrial consultancy.

IIT Madras

The article explores the singing and dancing of pey, a dual spirit (benevolent and malevolent) found in the folktales from Karisial Kādu (the area around Tuticorin district in southern Tamil Nadu, India) as embodying aesthetics of excess. The tales have been collected by Ki. Rajanarayanan in Natupura Katai Kalañiyam (repository of folktales). Although a dual spirit, pey belongs to the sacred in Karisial Kādu. The divine world of Karisial Kādu populated by folk deities conceptualizes sacred differently from the scriptural religion and its pantheon of pan-Indian deities. This divide in the divine world becomes apparent in an aesthetic that characterizes the singing and dancing of the pey in these stories. As a response to and a manifestation of an excess it disturbs composure and does not fit into the controlled and transcendental aesthetics of Nātyaśāstra. The paper studies this deviant aesthetics associated with the singing and dancing of pey and its function in Karisial Kādu through the lens of the Nietzchean category of the Dionysian. © AesthetixMS 2021.

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Department of Humanities and Social Sciences

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Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities

Aesthetics of excess: The singing and dancing of pey in the folktales from Karisial Kādu

This paper is concerned with the dilemma faced by foreign language studies. On the one hand, foreign language education has humanistic leanings and on the other it is increasingly tending to vocational skills. It argues that these two positions need not be seen in opposition. Anchored in a philological perspective, the paper takes stock of foreign language studies in India to elucidate the dilemma. It looks at the narrow vocational focus and increasing corporate culture brought into foreign language curricula and universities respectively. It proposes “transcultural competence” as the “humanistic learning objective”, to balance effectively the dilemma confronting foreign language learning. Given this objective, the paper talks of the identity of a foreign language teacher, who in the transcultural perspective is a mediator between cultures. In addition, the responsibility of a foreign language teacher is to help students not only to discover the foreign culture but&nbsp; also to look at own culture/tradition afresh and to begin questioning one’s understanding of oneself all over again.

Language and Language Teaching

Foreign Language Studies in India: Some Critical Observations

Abstract is unavailable for this paper.

Inclusive Education in India.Concepts, Methods and Practice

Rethinking Inclusive Education

This article analyses the National Council of Educational Research and Training textbooks of environmental studies using critical discourse analysis to shed light on questions such as how the environment is dealt with in the text, using what kind of language are environmental concerns framed, how is the current environment crisis contextualized both in terms of ecological and social justice, if at all, and what solutions are suggested in this regard. The article finds that though the content of the textbooks exhibits strong social contextualizing of learners’ surroundings, the thrust is anthropocentric, and the environment figures only as a peripheral concern. Themes such as gender, caste, hygiene, culture, equality and discrimination emerge stronger than those of biodiversity, conservation, pollution, water crisis and global warming. While the in-built thrust on conviviality in the textbooks is necessary and heartening, a better infusion of the current predicament in terms of the environment crisis and how it could be mitigated is recommended.