ABSTRACT
In the last few decades, a seismic shift within the English discipline has opened up the ‘Beowulf to Virginia Woolf’ syllabi to include other ‘Englishes' of different races and cultures, adopt theoretical tools and multidisciplinary approaches, and adjust to the market economy that prioritises skills over knowledge. The fault-line of English Studies exposes two sites of concern: internally, the discipline has to yield to the market demand for teaching English as a ‘global’ language – the de facto lingua franca of the world; externally, it has to negotiate with different bureaucratic and funding agencies that have little sympathy for critical knowledge production within liberal arts and humanities. Ironically, while civil service remains the career of choice for English graduates in Bangladesh, the strategic interventions of donor agencies have created service-oriented private sectors as the dominant niche where communicative competence is prioritised. The chapter explores the various issues related to language, literature, and ideology that contributed to the reshaping of English departments in Bangladesh. It particularly illustrates the tension within the discipline that pits language against literature and suggests ways of bridging the gap.
