Nikita's blog

  Pedagogical Shift from Text to Hypertext: Language & Literature to the Digital Natives Introduction This blog reflects on my learning experiences from the Faculty Development Programme “A Pedagogical Shift from Text to Hypertext: Language & Literature to the Digital Natives.” It combines my personal experience of the Moral Machine activity with key insights from the presentation and keynote video session by Professor Dilip Barad . The goal is to show how digital pedagogy not only changes the tools we use but also transforms the very relationship between teachers, learners, and content. My Experience and Learning Outcome of Moral Machine Activity The Moral Machine simulation placed me in ethically charged scenarios involving passengers, pedestrians, humans, and animals. My results showed: Most killed characters: Women Most saved character: A dog (pet) Preferences: Saving younger, fit, and socially valued people over others   (Click Here) At first, I treate...

  Lab Session: Digital Humanities This blog is a reflection on my learning journey through activities assigned by Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad as part of our digital humanities study. The main focus of the task was to explore the question, “Can a computer write poetry?” through Oscar Schwartz’s perspective and to engage with different digital tools that connect literature and technology. In this blog, I share my experience of taking a test to identify whether a poem was written by a human or a computer, exploring the CLiC Dickens Project and Activity Book, and experimenting with Voyant tools such as Cirrus, Links, Dreamspace, and Phrases. By writing about these activities, I aim to document not only what I learned but also how these tools changed the way I look at literature and creativity.The purpose of this blog is to record my personal and academic growth, and to show how digital approaches can enrich traditional literary studies. 1. Understand how once we used to debate on if machines...

 Jean Rhys: An Introduction Jean Rhys (1890–1979) was a Dominican-born British writer who grew up on the Caribbean island of Dominica. Her identity as a white Creole woman shaped much of her writing, which often explores feelings of exile, displacement, and marginality. After moving to England at sixteen, she experienced alienation, poverty, and loss, which left a deep mark on the mood and tone of her fiction. Rhys is widely remembered for giving voice to outsiders—especially women silenced or misunderstood by dominant cultures. Her most celebrated work, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), revived her literary career after years of obscurity. Wide Sargasso Sea Published in 1966, Wide Sargasso Sea is a postcolonial response to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre . It reimagines the story of Bertha Mason—the so-called “madwoman in the attic”—and gives her a voice through the character of Antoinette Cosway, a white Creole woman living in Jamaica and Dominica during the 1830s. The novel examines how r...

From Terminator to Twine: Why AI Scares Us and How Digital Humanities Can Write a Better Future Introduction  The 21st century has introduced a new monster: Artificial Intelligence. For students of the humanities, this is more than just a fleeting science-fiction trope; it’s an existential crisis and a creative opportunity that is reshaping our literary landscapes, academic practices, and fundamental narratives about what it means to be human. My recent M.A. coursework in Digital Humanities (DH) has forced me to confront this challenge head-on, urging us to move from narratives of AI-induced doom to stories of AI-assisted fulfillment. 1. What is Digital Humanities, and Why is it in the English Department? Digital Humanities is not merely about using computers in the classroom; it is a methodological and interdisciplinary academic movement at the intersection of computing and traditional humanities disciplines like literature, history, and culture. The DH Revolution in English For...

The New Poets, Three Prose Writers & Conclusion Q.1 – Critical Note on Nissim Ezekiel’s Night of the Scorpion Nissim Ezekiel’s Night of the Scorpion stands among his finest works, offering a vivid recollection of a childhood memory. The incident of his mother being bitten by a scorpion becomes a lens through which larger concerns faith, superstition, science, suffering, and maternal devotion are explored with remarkable sensitivity. Themes 1. Tradition versus Modern Thought Ezekiel contrasts the village community’s reliance on religious chants, ritualistic practices, and karmic beliefs with his father’s scientific attempts at remedies. This duality mirrors India’s cultural tension between inherited traditions and the rational outlook of modernity. 2. Community Participation The collective presence of neighbours in the family home illustrates how suffering becomes a shared experience in rural life. Their solidarity, though guided by superstition, reflects empathy and communal concer...