 Are you someone who is looking for some hot and spicy topic that you can use for doing PhD in English literature? If yes then this video is for you because in today's video we are going to cover the topics which are extremely popular right now in the field of English literature and is apt for doing a PhD in. So if you are somebody who is doing a dissertation or is writing a research paper or is planning to do a PhD and still worried about the topic hold your breath because you are at the right destination. All your questions are going to be answered today. Hello friends my name is Arpita Karva and welcome back to my channel. In today's video I will be sharing a list of topics that you can do your PhD or dissertation in. Friends before moving ahead I want to tell you that the topics that I am going to tell you today are very very trendy and very very popular for PhD thesis right now. But before that let me give you three tips that you should always remember while selecting your research topic. Number one you need to be passionate about the topic of your PhD. Just like you need to be compatible with your life partner before marrying them because marriage is a long-term commitment similarly you will be stuck with your PhD topic for three or four years or at times even five years and if you are not passionate enough about the topic you will get bored eventually. You need to have a topic which excites you for which you can study for long hours. For me I am somebody who is never interested in post-colonialism and I am somebody who is very passionate about psychoanalysis. I have had psychology as a subsidiary subject while I was doing my bachelor's. I also have done a course in counseling hence I could read for hours about this topic without getting bored and that's why I made sure that this psychoanalysis theory becomes a part of my PhD thesis. Keep watching this video I am going to soon talk about my thesis topic as well. The second important thing that you should be careful about while you are choosing a topic is that your research should be useful to the society. You are adding something new to the literary world. It should not be a case that you are writing your thesis about something which has already been researched about. So always be real strong extensively before selecting a topic. You have to think that whatever topic you are choosing should add value to the society and should add value to the upcoming research scholars. Now students often have a doubt about how they should know if a particular topic is already researched or not. The answer is very simple. There is a site called Shodh Ganga. It is a depository of thesis in India. Anybody who wants to check if a particular research exists can type the topic, see the existing research paper. You can check the overlapping sections as well. This will help you understand if another person has researched on the same topic or not because in that case your research will have no added advantage to the society. The third tip is to ensure that enough reading material is available on your topic. If no material is available on your topic then how will you write a 500 to 700 page thesis. So don't make anything which is trendy but has no material as a research topic. So to summarize you need to take care of three things. You need to be passionate about the topic. The topic should add value to the society and there should be enough reading material in the market so that you can write a 500 to 700 page thesis about it. Okay friends so now that I have prepared the ground for you to understand and absorb the information that I'll be throwing at you in this video let's jump right into the first trending topic for PhD thesis in English literature. But before that if you are new to this channel please hit the subscribe button and press the bell icon so that you never miss an update from my side. We are proud to share that we are India's largest growing YouTube channel in the field of UGC net exam preparation right now having the maximum number of subscribers. So the first hot topic is applying literary theory to a work. So friends till now people were analyzing dramas and novels in terms of themes characters autobiographical elements etc but in recent years there have been a significant shift. Now a lot of literary theories are coming into the picture for example there is Marxism which talks about socialism and capitalism then there is psychoanalytical criticism then there is structuralism post structuralism then there is post colonialism these kinds of literary theories are getting very popular these days there are some very new theories also that are coming up like reader response criticism cure theory on LGBTQ eco-feminism etc it is because English literature is not just about English literature anymore it is about all the other interdisciplinary subjects subject like sociology psychology are influencing English literature so it's becoming very popular these days that you pick one or two novels and look at those novels through the lens of some literary theory so whenever you're picking this theme you have to ensure that both the novels and the literary theory you are selecting should be of interest to you if you don't have interest in either of the two you will lose track and get bored for example my topic my PhD thesis topic is masculinity and the concept of manhood in the selected works of Jane Austin and Charlotte Bronte I'm looking at two works Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice from two different literary angles namely psychoanalytical criticism and feminist literary theory and I love both these authors as well as both the theories now if you want me to give some examples or for how do you choose a research topic based on literary lens let's take the example of psychology psychology has a lot of sub branches like child psychology taking this into consideration you can pick a novel like Mill on the Floss by George Eliot and then you can analyze the sibling relationship and the child psychology of Maggie Tillipa and Tom Tillipa then if you take Marxist theory you can take works from Victorian period writers like Charles Dickens and you can look at social inequality or capitalism if you talk about colonialism you can take the works of postcolonial writers you can also focus on how the English language was used by Britishers for political and linguistic expansion and one of the very prominent example that comes to our mind when it comes to colonialism is the work written by George Orville shooting of an elephant is an essay written by him it shows how colonialism had themed into the psychology of people living at that time so friends the first hot topic that you can take up is you can take a literary theory and apply it to any particular literary work so as a PhD topic you can take up a novel or play or a poem that interests you and look at it from different literary theory lenses now moving on to the second hot topic for PhD that is comparing writers sharing similar themes now you can take up two writers coming from different eras who are sharing same theme so for example you can take up a feminist writer from Victorian period and a feminist writer from modern period like Elizabeth Gilbert has written a very important work each pre love I love that movie it has Julia Roberts so that is from psychoanalytical criticism point of view you can take that story it is about a female who is trying to understand herself after going through a divorce you can compare this work with Virginia wolf to the lighthouse so the theme is similar both are feminist writers but the periods are different one is modern one is postmodern or contemporary so this is how you take two texts similarly you can take two texts written by writers living in two different countries you can take a work from India and you can take a work from UK and then you can compare those novels or you can even take two different languages for example you can take Margaret Atwood and compare her works to Anita Desai two female writers writing from different countries another example is you take common themes on the grounds of societal issues for example pre chance work talks about divide between rich and poor and you can compare this very well with great Gatsby written by F Scott Fitzgerald so what are you doing both the writers have talked about a similar issue or similar societal issue and you are comparing the works of these two writers okay now here also we are comparing two writers from different countries but with respect to the same theme another important comparative study happens when you compare the original text which has been translated into a different language and you see how a lot of things were lost in the translation so you see whether the translation was up to the mark whether it was good or bad so you can take for example Abhijan Shakuntilam by Kalidas and you see that it was originally written in Sanskrit and then it was translated in so many other languages let's take English as the example so you see the original text written in Sanskrit and you also read the comparison of the same text or translation and you trace the similarity and the differences this is how you do the comparative study of two different works now coming on to the next important hot topic that you can take up as a subject of your study which is Indian literature so for instance Indian literature is restricted to Indian subcontinent outside research scholar have never really explored in research on Indian writers so it opens a lot of new doors for Indian scholars Indian research candidates this gives us a chance to also put Indian literature on the world map where only the prominent British and American writers are flashing right now just like female writers have been marginalized similarly even Indian literature has also been marginalized we give a very high value to British English and even European literature but we don't give that high of a value to Indian literature but nowadays a lot of good Indian writers are coming up and they are taking up so many different themes when they are writing on current issues so friends research on Indian literature has not only been explored by Indians but have also been explored a little bit by other people as well but not much have been done in this field and by taking a topic from Indian literature you're actually contributing to the English literary canon and you are ensuring that Indian writers are given the same position as American or English writers British writers now the only difficulty that you might face here is that it is very difficult to find enough secondary material on Indian writers if you take up any unknown writer or less popular writer or a contemporary Indian writer like Ashwin Sanghi who is a famous mythological writer and look at it from a contemporary angle or any different literary theory angle the only problem is that you won't find past research papers or any secondary reading material all you will have is a book by Ashwin Sanghi you have to come up with the insights by reading the book that's the only way also even if you don't have a contemporary writer you can still do so much and explore so much in the field of Indian literature for example you can research on how British rule in India helped in the development of English literature and at the same time you can also look at it from the angle of Marxism and talk about how Britishers used English for political and linguistic expansion and you can look at the positives and the negatives of the same you can also take up literature of translation when it comes to Indian writing for example Telugu Marathi has some really good works the only problem is that people from other states are not reading those works so you can take it as a topic of your research so that a lot of other scholars will know about such works which have been marginalized till date a very good example to explain this and substantiate this is Kabir Singh it was originally a movie which was actually made in South India so it was a famous South Indian movie named Arjun Reddy but when it was rebate in Hindi it became popular famous with the help of known actors like Shahid Kapoor this gave a huge stage to South Indian cinema so similarly you can take up any Telugu Tamil Marathi work which is very dear to your heart and look at it from the point of view of translation studies you can see how it was originally written and how it was translated and what was lost in between the translation and if we talk about contemporary writers I think that there are four prominent writers which are very very close to my heart and I think a very good subject for research as they're doing a very good job in the field of Indian English writing first one is Sudha Murthy wife of Sarayan Murthy second is Abhishra party when it comes to Indian mythology he's just fantastic then we have Shashi Tharoor who talks about colonialism and how the English language was used as a tool by Britishers and looking at it from the post-colonial lens then we have Deidwat Patanayak another contemporary author looking at Indian mythology but at the same time he is also looking at multiple interpretations that we can derive from the old mythological text so before we move on to the next point here is something I want to share if you are preparing for UGC net paper one paper two MA entrance PhD entrance PGT TGT exam or any other competitive exam related to English literature I have an amazing news for you we're proud to announce that we are the only institute in India that have started teaching through animated videos in the field of English literature we have separate video course for all these competitive exam available on our website our videos are designed using 3d graphics and animation which enhance the visual memory of the students so that they are able to retain the complicated summaries of novels plays and poems easily and we call it effectively during the exam in our online course we provide you with topic-wise video lessons with rich animations covering all topics in a step-by-step manner which works even when you've not done any previous preparation we cover all important topics writers and works in our online course the detailed list of all these writers that are covered in our online course is available free of cost on our website arpithakarva.com you can even download this list free of cost and start preparing for these exams on your own the link of the website and all the courses are given in the description box below you can check out the course details from our website and even watch a free demo lecture and attempt a free demo mock test before you decide to enroll in the course for more information related to our courses feel free to shoot a whatsapp message on the number displayed on the screen and me and my team will be more than happy to assist you and now we move on to the next topic of phd in English literature which is to look at the contemporary issues related to English literature or English language development so if you look at contemporary society we are facing issues which nobody faced in the past so earlier there were issues like poverty colonialism then there were issues related to patriarchy feminism but right now in the 21st century because of the internet and technological advancement there are so many other issues that are coming up again and again you can take up one such topic and study works written on that particular topic for example digital dystopia is one such topic it is a very new topic which is coming up and which has also been talked about in a lot of works by different writers friends digital dystopia is basically when you look at the role of social media and development of creative expression in the English language digitalization has changed the world as we know it people have shifted from offline or physical books to kindle people have been putting so much time to explore the world of social media every day our identity on social media is something that we constantly work on to improve keeping these things in mind a lot of novels are being written about it like how we have so many friends on social media but in real life we all are so isolated similarly in digital dystopia we are portraying a fake image on social media we are very sad from inside but what we create is a fake happy life to be shown on instagram and facebook these are the things you can talk about when you are taking a phd topic like digital dystopia then there is homosexual literature another interesting phd topic that you can work on you can talk about how lgbtq community still doesn't get much respect in the conservative society like india and a lot of novels are being written about gender identities and related issues then you can also relate it to the laws that different countries are coming up with for example in india lgbtq has been recently legalized you can talk about that then you can pick up a writer whose works are gaining momentum for example 2022 noble awardee louis elizabeth gloop you can talk about a writer like that there are many writers like that who are depicting the contemporary mindset of the society one of my very favorite writers harugi murakami he's a japanese writer who talks about how we all are going through an indecisive phase in our life how we all are going through a midlife crisis that kind of situation and finally the last topic that you can explore is survey based research or survey based thesis so usually research in english short to talk is done using some authors and their works you have to read about the author his works come up with your own interpretation but friends you can also do another kind of research these days which is survey based or observational research where you analyze and collect data and then make inferences out of it for example if you look at problems faced by students who learn english as a second language like esl students english as a second language students whose mother tongue is not english like all of us we learn english much later in our life we first are introduced to our mother tongue that is hindi marathi telugu tamil depends so you can also do a survey on what challenges are faced by students to learn english language for this you would need to take survey talk to students do observational research then you can also see the impact of learning communication skills on village students or rural india for this you might have to visit villages talk to students from rural india what are the challenges that they are facing what is the impact what are the teaching methods adopted all these things will be covered in this kind of research friends this is a very new type of research 95 percent of the research is done on literary works the challenges that we are facing today in english language it has not been studied so far but now it's time that english language should be studied as a part of english literature so that's something you can pick up in your phd so today the phd english literature is not just limited to writers and authors who are a part of literary canon in fact it has expanded a lot more and has incorporated other interdisciplinary fields and also has incorporated developments that are happening in english language through this we are trying to understand the language challenges that come with it as a part of the research in english literature so i hope this video would help you to gain clarity on what can you choose as your phd topic if you have questions related to phd in english literature feel free to put that in the comment section below or you can even whatsapp us on the number displayed on the screen if you have a topic in mind which you think is very unique and would want to share it with the world then please put that in the comment section too i would definitely read it and be amazed by the kind of different kind of exposure english students are getting these days so that's it from my side for this video lecture i'll meet you very very soon in the next video lecture till the time we meet next happy learning keep loving literature and 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