Dr. Anjana Neira Dev Dr. Anjana Neira Dev did her MPhil from the University of Cambridge and her PhD in Indian English Poetry from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Delhi. Her PhD dissertation titled Nations within and without: a Study of Seven Post Independence Indian English Poets has since been published (2012). Considering her work on the idea of ‘nation’ and the current turn of events that nationalism has taken, she is pretty vocal about this dystopia and believes that this climate of intolerance has “fractured the world we are living in”. Having taught at Gargi College as an Associate Professor of English for numerous years, Dr. Anjana Neira Dev is adept at grasping the diversity within the student body. In addition to teaching literature and language to English majors, she also teaches courses on Academic Writing, Business Communication, Technical Writing and Creative Writing to students majoring in other disciplines. Her published books include four textbooks commissioned by the University of Delhi: an edited bilingual anthology on Indian Literature: An Introduction (2005), Business English (2008), Creative Writing: A Beginner’s Manual (2009), and an edited Anthology of Indian English Poetry and Short Stories (2014). She even has a book on Bridge Gyan! We could not do a first issue of the department’s literary magazine without an interview with one of its senior most, flamboyant members. Qn: Do you agree that academic excellence is not the only criterion for becoming a teacher? For me a teacher is someone who has the following qualities and talents: a deep engagement with the subject and a love for it; the ability to communicate the nuts and bolts of the subject to the learner and give him/her an unshakable foundation on which to build his/her understanding of it. This has to go along with an awareness of the diversity among the students that comes from a variety of factors – socio-cultural and economic experiences, self perception, intellectual abilities, interest, relevance of the subject for the fulfilment of personal and professional goals, affective responses to the experience of being in the classroom and confidence in the teacher, to name a few. After these elaborate prefatory remarks, my answer to the question is that these are the unwritten but ‘essential qualifications’ for being a teacher. So with academic excellence, you have only climbed the first step on the qualification ladder towards being a teacher. Qn: In a place like Delhi University, where a teacher has to interact with students from diverse backgrounds, what are the challenges and considerations that s/he has to keep in mind? First of all, the challenge is to understand that the world in which the students are growing up and their experience of it is very different from the world in which I grew up and my experience of it. This difference is not restricted to the individual differences in the linguistic, socio-economic and cultural domains. If my engagement with the students has to be mutually empowering I have to build bridges across these gaps and find a ‘common ground’ to communicate with them. The second important challenge is to enthuse the students to think independently in an environment that traditionally rewards conformity and give them the confidence to be as different as they please. One of the most important challenges, according to me, is to help the students engage in critical self-assessment and become aware of their own strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats, a personal SWOT analysis if you like; one that will help them to map, in a more realistic fashion, the ‘road that they wish to travel and the destination that they desire to reach.
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Vol 1.1
