English and Humanities

Syed Waliullah is a modern Bangladeshi writer who wrote both in Bangla and English languages with equal efficiency. Lal Shalu (Red Cloth) and Tree Without Roots are two excellent examples of his excellence in this regard. The novel has also been translated in French by Ann-Marie Thibaud. An important note about this translation is that the source of the translation was not Lal Shalu but Tree Without Roots. The novel has also been translated in Urdu, German and Czech. The aim of this paper is to find out existentialist and modernistic elements from Tree Without Roots as little work has been done in this regard. In the novel, both Majeed as an individual and the people of Mahabbatpur collectively make their choice to survive or strengthen their existence in this world. Instead of having an existentialist approach, our author portrays an ever-conscious conscience of Majeed to establish him as a modern hero in Tree Without Roots.

v Introduction ...............................................................1 Chapter 1 ...................................................................4 Chapter 2 ...................................................................19 Chapter 3 ...................................................................36 Conclusion ............................................................... 49 Works Cited ................................................................51

This paper analyzes the discourse of Australian and Bangladeshi print advertisements on a sociolinguistic, semantic, lexical and stylistic level. Samples of Australian advertisement of newspapers, billboards and signboards of shops were collected from Perth, Western Australia. Multicultural environment of this country has given rise to different kinds of products from India, China, Indonesia, Malaysia etc. The names of these products have become a part of Australian market as well as print advertising. On the other hand, Bangladeshi print advertisements were collected from Dhaka-the capital of Bangladesh and newspaper archive of University of Dhaka. Influence of Hindi and English movies was found in many advertisements of Bangladesh. Both the countries create eye catching captions by using code switching, puns, stylistic variations and loan words. This research creates a common sphere where a developed country like Australia and a developing country as Bangladesh recognize the similarities and differences of their advertising strategies which reflects the influence of globalisation and cultural imperialism in advertising.

This paper focuses on the use of SMS and its impact on the transformation of formal language in the Bangladeshi context. In particular, it discusses: a) patterns of SMS usage among Bangladeshi youth; b) the factors contributing to the transformation of language due to SMS usage; and c) gender and institutional differences of the SMS language influence among University of Dhaka and private university students of the country. A random sample of 300 youth studying in different faculties of Dhaka University and nine private universities responded to self-tailored questionnaires. The results reveal that Bangladeshi youth are significantly affected by current trend of SMS communication. The youth practice code-switching, and code-mixing; break grammatical rules; use abbreviations and short forms, symbols and emoticons, and use abusive words; and form new slang words. The study found major gender and institutional differences in several aspects of SMS use.

English is the second language in Bangladesh, and it is taught as one of the core subjects in the majority of the government schools up to the Higher Secondary level (total twelve years of schooling). Students who study English Literature or Linguistics at the tertiary level need to complete a basic composition course before going into the core course. This paper reports on how different elements of literature (e.g. poems and short stories) along with reports on short study trips could be used as topics for writing responses in the English Composition class of undergraduate students. The study was conducted over three semesters from May 2010 to August 2011, among 20 students at the Department of English and Humanities, in one of the prominent private universities of Bangladesh called BRAC University. At the commencement of the course, the students were asked to practice writing structured essays and gradually they were introduced to write responses on literary pieces or their own real life experiences as a part of the course. They were guided by the researcher to think critically while writing about both the structured essays and their experiences outside classroom. The main aim of these tasks was to shape their free writing into a constructive response paper. Some common problems in this approach of teaching composition were students' insufficient vocabulary to express ideas and their tendency to resort to plagiarism. Additionally, some of the students had fossilised grammatical errors (e.g. using wrong subject-verb agreement structures) in their writings even though they had been corrected many times.

English is the second language in Bangladesh, and it is taught as one of the core subjects in the majority of the government schools up to the Higher Secondary level (total twelve years of schooling). Students who study English Literature or Linguistics at the tertiary level need to complete a basic composition course before going into the core course. This paper reports on how different elements of literature (e.g. poems and short stories) along with reports on short study trips could be used as topics for writing responses in the English Composition class of undergraduate students. The study was conducted over three semesters from May 2010 to August 2011, among 20 students at the Department of English and Humanities, in one of the prominent private universities of Bangladesh called BRAC University. At the commencement of the course, the students were asked to practice writing structured essays and gradually they were introduced to write responses on literary pieces or their own real life experiences as a part of the course. They were guided by the researcher to think critically while writing about both the structured essays and their experiences outside classroom. The main aim of these tasks was to shape their free writing into a constructive response paper. Some common problems in this approach of teaching composition were students' insufficient vocabulary to express ideas and their tendency to resort to plagiarism. Additionally, some of the students had fossilised grammatical errors (e.g. using wrong subject-verb agreement structures) in their writings even though they had been corrected many times.

Almost all the universities in Bangladesh have English Composition courses that help first year students learn how to write structured essays and complete academic assignments. Some of such courses aim to teach writing to students of various disciplines while others are designed to cater students of a specific discipine. This paper discusses how short study trips (e.g. to museums, slums and Book fairs etc.) can contribute in developing critical thinking and free writing among first year

The 'Woman Question' has been central to the nation-making process in South Asia. Through the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, it was on the terrain of the 'status of women', designated as the symbol of the 'progressiveness' or 'backwardness' of a society, that debates on tradition and modernity were played out between male elites and colonial powers (Kumar, 1993: Chapter 2; Mani, 1989; de Alwis, 2002). 1 Women became the index of the suitability or otherwise of colonies for self-government. On the other hand, traditionalist male elites asserted their anti-imperialism precisely through withdrawing from such debate, claiming that national autonomy depended on preserving the realm of tradition from western colonial intervention. Middle-class women's participation in these debates was also intense and engaged, but from the perspective of the mainstream male discourse, marginal to its outcome.

There is a strong belief that employment is a crucial avenue for the empowerment of young women, through income, greater autonomy, and bargaining power within the family. However, experiences of workplace sexual harassment undermine these potential gains. This qualitative study among agro-processing factory workers and domestic workers in Uganda and Bangladesh demonstrates that sexual harassment is widespread in both formal and informal workplaces, while domestic workers are particularly vulnerable to its most severe forms.

The 'Woman Question' has been central to the nation-making process in South Asia. Through the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, it was on the terrain of the 'status of women', designated as the symbol of the 'progressiveness' or 'backwardness' of a society, that debates on tradition and modernity were played out between male elites and colonial powers (Kumar, 1993: Chapter 2; Mani, 1989; de Alwis, 2002). 1 Women became the index of the suitability or otherwise of colonies for self-government. On the other hand, traditionalist male elites asserted their anti-imperialism precisely through withdrawing from such debate, claiming that national autonomy depended on preserving the realm of tradition from western colonial intervention. Middle-class women's participation in these debates was also intense and engaged, but from the perspective of the mainstream male discourse, marginal to its outcome.

The Postcolonial globalized world plays host to a diverse assortment of themes like hybridity, syncretity, migration, diaspora, displacement, national, transnational, ethnic identity, postcolonial identity, etc. The experience of colonization has given rise to discourses teeming with debates on need for self definition, effect of cultural hegemony on identity, loss of identity, creation of hybrid identity, etc. This paper will be looking into the aspects of postcolonial identity and the issue of identity crisis in the novel The Hungry Tide.

The use of 'ideology' in the world of literature was only an art form limited to Marxism only. However, through the course of time we have extended the meaning and what it holds. Based on the context, by ideology we mean a set of beliefs that beliefs and values that an individual or a group holds purely related to their epistemological views. With ideology it is possible to unify the complex thoughts and processes which one carry for their society in order to form a community. First published in 1977, Nguig i Wa Thiong'o's novel Petals of Blood took a toll on the government for which he was detained and arrested for crimes related to his "literary political" background. Understandably the novel involved various matters into one text which primarily shows us the situation of the then Kenya after the independence from the British Empire. In this paper I would like to discuss in details about the novel through relating it to various philosophies such as Fanonian Marxism on post colonialism, class discrimination etc. I will further add references from Homi K Bhaba and Hegel. It is also important to look into the culture, language and religious aspects through which we will look into Africa and the Kenyan society. We will look into the characters and relate the post-colonial values they hold as metaphorical individuals to the novel. It is crucial to see the abrogation and appropriation of the novel through these theories in order to discourse the ideologies that the author has accordingly. It is important to analyse the various elements of post colonial ism and African culture in order to justify the ideology that the author holds in writing just a revolutionary piece of art which still holds so much significance and is very much relatable to this day.

Although Charles Baudelaire and Fyodor Dostoevsky share striking similarities in their understanding of the “modern man,” there are some major points on which they differ from each other. This essay discusses their different approaches to romanticism, despite having similar perspectives surrounding its aesthetic.

Providing homages to pop cultural references, Dan Harmon's series "Community" brings a creative addition to the sitcom genre and delivers an exciting outlook to experimenting with meta references, a particular form of self-reflexivity amongst characters seen in films and series. The constant re-invention of this show by experimenting with genres alienates itself from traditional sitcoms. Consequently, this show is not a mere American comedy that caters to the masses but rather an inventive one that parodies this conventional form. Hence, this form of adaptation simultaneously embarks on the discourse of modernism's earnestness and postmodernism's cynicism, a state that is now accepted as metamodernism. The show finds an objective of being a post-postmodern or metamodern show by implementing the concept of "story circles". This essay studies how the sitcom adapted pop culture references and metanarrative concepts. It also acknowledges how "Community" essentially introduces metamodern sentimentality through these satirical experimentations.