Department Chairperson:
Dr. Akhter Jahan
Telephone: 09666775577
Ext – 217
Email: akjahan@ewubd.edu
The Department of English is one of the earliest departments of East West University. It began its journey in August 1996 and is now the second largest department of the university with 41 full-time faculty members. The department currently offers a wide variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in English language, linguistics and literature.
The department is committed to providing state-of-the-art facilities to its students and faculty members. It has a multimedia language lab, a seminar and reading room, and online access to a well-stocked library. At East West, the BA (Honours) and MA programmes offer a unique blend of literature in English and applied linguistics. They represent, on the one hand, a broad sampling of British, American, and world literature written in English; on the other, developments in linguistics and language teaching that provide the opportunity to learn the use and evaluation of current classroom techniques for the teaching of English. Extensive reading and writing, along with discussion and presentation skills are required in virtually all the courses offered by the department. The expectation is that English majors will learn to turn to research, apply critical thinking and express themselves in a clear and interesting style. The focus on critical reading and analytic reasoning and lucid writing is central to the mission of the department.
Students are encouraged to take part in departmental seminars, featuring speakers from within and outside the university. The department plays a key role in the Debating Club, the English Conversation Club and the Poetry and Drama Club. These clubs organize a full-range of co-academic and social events throughout the year. One of the major strengths of the Department of English is its faculty. The fact that many of our faculty members have international exposures from North America, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and India certainly is a measure of the quality, variety and reputation of the department.
The department has been organizing seminars and discussion programmes regularly since 2004, as well as carrying out research activities in many fields of literature and ELT. In April 2006, it successfully organized an international conference entitled Passages: English Studies in the Region 2006 (15-16 April), where 12 of our faculty members presented papers. In addition, during semesters, departmental seminars and discussion programmes are held from time to time where faculty members, and sometimes speakers from home and abroad, present their papers and engage in meaningful academic discussions in the presence of colleagues and senior students. At the moment, two major research projects (funded by EWUCRT) are being conducted by our faculty members.
