The Department of English and Cultural Studies at Christ University, Lavasa, reimagines the study of literature for the digital age through its pioneering MA in English with Digital Humanities. Positioned at the intersection of literary studies, data analytics, and cultural theory, the program embraces a future-oriented pedagogy that expands both the scope and method of English Studies.
Specializing in Computational Literary Studies, this first-of-its-kind program in India explores how literature, in its evolving forms—including anime, games studies, cinema, graphic narratives, music, and digital texts—can be studied through the analytical power of text mining, sentiment analysis, and Natural Language Processing (NLP). Literature is no longer limited to the printed page; our students engage with storytelling in its multimodal forms, learning to treat popular culture artifacts as rich literary and cultural texts.
As Lavasa emerges as a hub of analytics and innovation, the programme leverages this data-rich environment to equip students with cutting-edge tools such as Voyant Tools, Twine, CATMA, ATLAS.ti, and Python-based text analysis. These platforms allow students to practice distant reading—a methodological shift from close textual interpretation to broader, data-informed literary patterns. Data visualization becomes a lens through which literature reveals new cultural, political, and historical dynamics, giving students a novel angle to study themes, narratives, and stylistics across corpora.
Rooted in the vision of India’s National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and aligned with Sustainable Development Goals for inclusive, high-quality education, our curriculum fosters multidisciplinary learning, digital fluency, and critical cultural inquiry. It prepares students to think globally, work interdisciplinarily, and engage deeply with contemporary debates on media, identity, and representation.
Graduates of this program are not only well-versed in literary and cultural theory but are also equipped for impactful careers as data journalists, computational linguists, digital curators, AI-driven content analysts, and cultural researchers. They emerge as professionals capable of bridging the gap between humanities and technology—innovators who understand culture through both the lens of literature and the logics of data.
The MA in English with Digital Humanities stands as a unique offering of our department, championing a bold, inclusive, and globally resonant vision of what literature is and what it can become in the digital era.