Bidding farewell to traditional research topics — works of Surdas and Premchand — these researchers are now focusing on films by Shyam Benegal and acting style of Naseeruddin Shah. Last year, a student looked into the recipe for a superhit movie.

According to Sudesh Pachauri, head of Hindi department, the list of PhD and MPhil research topics in the last two years has moved towards popular culture, with obvious emphasis on “visual literature” — namely Bollywood. Pachauri says the trend was sparked off after an overhaul of the department’s syllabus: “We needed to go hand-in-hand with the changing times. Abroad, a lot of students are doing research on diverse and interesting topics, so we had to find a way to keep the students moving ahead.”

Accordingly, the department suggested that its new students think differently and come up with new topics.

In 2006, students chose to research on the semiology of the movie Black, the neo-historicism of Rang De Basanti and difference between two FM channels.

This year, a number of research students are looking at Omkara, nuances of modern theatre and post-colonialism.

But according to Pachauri, despite the newfound freedom, this change is still in its nascent stage, with only a small percentage of a total of 45 MPhil students engaging in research into popular culture. At the PhD level, this number is even smaller. Mihir Pandya, who did his research on Khosla ka Ghosla in MPhil first year, says research on traditional topics is easier because of a wider availability of textual sources. Sometimes, all that is needed is “copy and paste” from the Internet, he says.

“On the other hand, any new topic needs a lot of hard work and you have to go to many other libraries in search of material,” he says.

Then there is peer pressure. Vineet Kumar, a PhD student who is researching on the use of language in television channels, says he used to be laughed at by his friends.

“They would call me ‘the musician’ when I was doing my MPhil research on FM channels but once I submitted my paper, the attitude changed,” he says. And if this is an indication, attitudes are changing fast, with more MPhil students deciding to opt for offbeat topics. And of course, the biggest topic still remains Bollywood.