The Department of English, School of Humanities, University of Hyderabad (UoH) organized the CT Indra Endowment Lecture on 18th February, 2026 at ASIHSS Hall, School of Humanities. The lecture “Literary Theory and its Discontents” was delivered by Professor Saugata Bhaduri from the Centre for English Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. The lecture was attended by nearly 100 members, including students and faculty from GITAM University, MANUU, and the different Departments of the UoH. The Head of the Department, Pramod K Nayar welcomed the gathering, duly acknowledging the support of Professor CT Indra to the UoH English Department in the creation of the Endowment. He recorded that Professor Indra has been a long-standing friend of the Department and to many of its Faculty in an individual capacity, as was the speaker of the day, Professor Bhaduri. Goutam Karmakar, the Faculty Coordinator for the lecture, formally introduced Professor Bhaduri including his various publications and teaching assignments abroad. He also gave a brief bio of Professor Indra, listing her major works of translation and in Theory.
Professor Bhaduri in his talk traced the birth of Literary Theory, from Kant to Žižek, as a response to the debates surrounding the crisis of the humanities and the need for rigorous methods in the humanities. He argued that Literary Theory emerged from a need to defend the legitimacy of literary studies (and by extension, the Humanities) against accusations leveled against it by other disciplines, and to introduce to it, a rigorous and structured method.
Professor Bhaduri also highlighted a few potential pitfalls of literary and cultural studies, the general character of which now exhibits the employment of a myopic form of ideology critique, bordering nitpicking. He commented on the practice of employing “hermeneutics of suspicion” while approaching a text and the resulting brooding cynicism and lack of perspective. The relevance of literary studies cannot be limited to utility; rather, it resides in the understanding of literature’s capacity for transgression, subversion, and affect and the ability of the critic to discern it through the right method.
A formal vote of thanks was delivered by Goutam Karmakar, and followed by tea during the course of which many from the audience interacted with Professor Bhaduri.