History

History of the department : The history of foreign language teaching in Calcutta University is almost as old as a century. In 1917 studies in foreign languages started with the teaching of Tibetan, Chinese, German and Dutch. These were followed by French and Japanese (1918-19), Portuguese (1924-25), Italian (1929-30) and Polish (1939-40). When the second world war broke out, some of these languages were withdrawn because the foreign teachers who were teaching these languages left India.

At present 9 foreign languages (Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Korean, Persian, Russian, Spanish and Tibetan) and 5 Indian languages (Bengali, Hindi, Pali, Tamil and Urdu) are taught at this department.

Research

Research Scholars Enrolled for Ph.D (Russian) :

1. Abhijit Chowdhury
2. Bichatra Basu Majumder
3. Atmoja Bose

Collaborations :

Collaborations with other Institutions

1. Academic exchange with Chonbuk National University of South Korea.
2. Assistance programme with Embassy of Spain.
3. Book Publication Programme with Akdemia Razvitiya, Russia.

Thrust areas in teaching and research of the academic Department / Center :

Thrust areas of research undertaken by the teachers

1. Indology in Russia.
2. Francophone literature (Canadian, Mexican, Algerian).
3. Linguistic approach to study of Literature.
4. Comparative literature.
5. Teaching of Russian phonetics in Indian auditorium.

Major activities :

Seminar & Conference held at the department

1. International seminar on Gerasim Lebedev and his legacy A chronicle of Indo-Russian relation.
   [February, 2011]
2. Regional seminar on Indian Philosophy, its legacy as seen through Tolstoy literature.
   [September, 2013]

Contact

Campus : College Street

Address for communication :
Asutosh Building, 2nd floor, 87/1, College Street, Kolkata-700 073