Despite that the COVID-19 pandemic has affected educational systems worldwide, we have been trying our best to actively engage our students in different curricular and co-curricular activities in a number of ways since India went into the full-scale lockdown on 25th March 20. We believe that our students must regularly listen to new voices offering different points-of-view in order to become more active, dynamic and mature.
At this particular moment in time, keeping in view the importance of e-learning, the Department of English organized an online lecture on "Why Engineering & Science Students Should Read Poetry". The lecture was delivered by Paul T. Corrigan, Ph.D., Associate Professor of English, Southeastern University, USA. The lecture can be accessed at the following link:
https://youtu.be/gleyEPSRFj4
In this guest lecture for DAV University (Jalandhar, Punjab, India), poet and scholar Paul T. Corrigan makes a case for why students of engineering and science should read poetry. Using examples poems by the US poets Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Langston Hughes, Corrigan argues that reading poetry can (a) supplement the facts of science with the meaning of life and (b) help students practice skills of attention, analysis, and problem solving that are so crucial in engineering and science. He concludes connecting poetry to the current uprisings (June 2020) in the United States following the murder by a white police officer of an African American named George Floyd.
Dr. Deshbandhu Gupta (Honourable Vice-Chancellor, DAV University) expressed his gratitude to Dr. Paul T. Corrigan for his lecture. Dr. Nakul Kundra, Coordinator of the Department of English, gratefully acknowledged the support of the Vice-Chancellor Sir for his encouragement and all-time support in all academic and extracurricular activities.