Fachbereich 05: Sprache, Literatur, Kultur - Anglistik - Master of Arts (Studienbeginn bis Sommersemester 2020)

Welcome! This class deals with the development of Anglophone poetry from the eighteenth century until today. The focus will be on British and US-American (incl. Native American) poems, but we will also look at examples by indigenous Australian authors. We will discuss the features of the most important literary periods as well as the question of how to identify individual poems as belonging to these larger frameworks. At the same time, the class serves as an introduction to poetry analysis. After clarifying the question of how poetry can be recognized, we will discuss the question of how the rhyme scheme, the meter, rhetorical devices, the speaker, and the mentioned topics or themes contribute to the meaning of poetry.

Welcome! This class seeks to familiarize students with the phenomenon of fan fiction, i.e., rewrites produced by fans based on plotlines or characters from either a single source text or else a ‘canon’ of works. Fan fiction is doubly situated: in relation to its canon but also regarding other fans’ comments, interpretations, and rewrites. Fan fiction is created outside the commercial literary market; it is published online (on sites such as Archive of Our Own [AO3], FanFiction.net, or Wattpad); and it often gives pre-existing storyworlds a new, sometimes bizarre direction. We will deal with theoretical conceptualizations of fan fiction that concern both its functioning (in narratological terms) and its (ideological) functions and then analyze several examples of fan fiction. We will also address the fact that fan fiction is a female-dominated art form that involves a commitment to gift culture and the question of why these rewrites tend to concentrate on fantasy and science fiction.

Welcome! This class deals with the metafictional or self-reflexive prose narratives of the latter half of the twentieth century. On the one hand, we will discuss definitions of and theoretical approaches to postmodernism, and on the other hand, we will look at representative examples of postmodern prose. More specifically, we discuss novels and short stories by Martin Amis, Robert Coover, John Fowles, Gabriel Josipovici, and Philip Roth, and discuss ways of making sense of them.

This course addresses the definitional questions and political status of utopianism and science fiction in the particular example of solarpunk, a genre of speculative fiction that focuses on possible, positive futures and is explicitly positioned against apocalyptic, dystopian, and doomsaying visions. The solarpunk aesthetic, if there is one, draws on afroturism and other approaches to science fictionality to explore sustainable and progressive possibilities. In this course, we will read 21st-century utopian and solarpunk fictions and films, and engage in world-building and creative writing activities to explore our own visions of a hopeful present and future.

We organize our lives with a framework of rules, regulations, and norms that shapes interactions between and among people and nations. We also organize our lives through narrative—using stories to shape and understand our actual experiences. The legal system and literary expression are both experienced through language. Law is expressed in language, which is also the primary tool for enforcing law’s authority. Literary texts, similarly, are framed through language, and can even challenge the legal system by exploring boundaries of convention—banned books are both literary and legal artifacts. This course surveys the broad field of law and literature, largely through Anglo-American common law, via canonical texts presenting problems in jurisprudence and moral philosophy. The course begins with a slow reading and viewing of Aeschylus’s Oresteia, before looking at two exemplars of law-in-literature and law-in-film: “Billy Budd” and Rashomon.

Welcome! This class deals with the development of Anglophone poetry from the eighteenth century until today. The focus will be on British and US-American (incl. Native American) poems, but we will also look at examples by indigenous Australian authors. We will discuss the features of the most important literary periods as well as the question of how to identify individual poems as belonging to these larger frameworks. At the same time, the class serves as an introduction to poetry analysis. After clarifying the question of how poetry can be recognized, we will discuss the question of how the rhyme scheme, the meter, rhetorical devices, the speaker, and the mentioned topics or themes contribute to the meaning of poetry.

Welcome! This class seeks to familiarize students with the phenomenon of fan fiction, i.e., rewrites produced by fans based on plotlines or characters from either a single source text or else a ‘canon’ of works. Fan fiction is doubly situated: in relation to its canon but also regarding other fans’ comments, interpretations, and rewrites. Fan fiction is created outside the commercial literary market; it is published online (on sites such as Archive of Our Own [AO3], FanFiction.net, or Wattpad); and it often gives pre-existing storyworlds a new, sometimes bizarre direction. We will deal with theoretical conceptualizations of fan fiction that concern both its functioning (in narratological terms) and its (ideological) functions and then analyze several examples of fan fiction. We will also address the fact that fan fiction is a female-dominated art form that involves a commitment to gift culture and the question of why these rewrites tend to concentrate on fantasy and science fiction.

Welcome! This class deals with the metafictional or self-reflexive prose narratives of the latter half of the twentieth century. On the one hand, we will discuss definitions of and theoretical approaches to postmodernism, and on the other hand, we will look at representative examples of postmodern prose. More specifically, we discuss novels and short stories by Martin Amis, Robert Coover, John Fowles, Gabriel Josipovici, and Philip Roth, and discuss ways of making sense of them.

This course addresses the definitional questions and political status of utopianism and science fiction in the particular example of solarpunk, a genre of speculative fiction that focuses on possible, positive futures and is explicitly positioned against apocalyptic, dystopian, and doomsaying visions. The solarpunk aesthetic, if there is one, draws on afroturism and other approaches to science fictionality to explore sustainable and progressive possibilities. In this course, we will read 21st-century utopian and solarpunk fictions and films, and engage in world-building and creative writing activities to explore our own visions of a hopeful present and future.

We organize our lives with a framework of rules, regulations, and norms that shapes interactions between and among people and nations. We also organize our lives through narrative—using stories to shape and understand our actual experiences. The legal system and literary expression are both experienced through language. Law is expressed in language, which is also the primary tool for enforcing law’s authority. Literary texts, similarly, are framed through language, and can even challenge the legal system by exploring boundaries of convention—banned books are both literary and legal artifacts. This course surveys the broad field of law and literature, largely through Anglo-American common law, via canonical texts presenting problems in jurisprudence and moral philosophy. The course begins with a slow reading and viewing of Aeschylus’s Oresteia, before looking at two exemplars of law-in-literature and law-in-film: “Billy Budd” and Rashomon.

Welcome! This lecture serves as an introduction to cognitive literary studies (CLS). It addresses the question of how readers process literature through cognitive parameters and mechanisms that are derived from their real-world experiences. More specifically, we will discuss experientiality; the creation of mental models like storyworlds (including top-down and bottom-up processes); knowledge structures (such as frames and scripts); mechanisms of perception (figure vs. ground; primacy and recency effects); processing mechanisms (such as the principle of minimal departure, naturalization, and blending); the worlds of text-world theory; character models; theory of mind; hypothetical intentionalism; storyworld possible selves; as well as important differences between first- and second-generation approaches within cognitive literary studies. At the end of the term, we will move towards empirical literary studies (ELS) to demonstrate that empirical investigations are essential if we want to get a sense of what flesh-and-blood readers do when they process literary texts. Most of the readings will be taken from the new Routledge Companion to Literature and Cognitive Studies (ed. Alber/Schneider, 2026).

This course addresses the definitional questions and political status of utopianism and science fiction in the particular example of solarpunk, a genre of speculative fiction that focuses on possible, positive futures and is explicitly positioned against apocalyptic, dystopian, and doomsaying visions. The solarpunk aesthetic, if there is one, draws on afroturism and other approaches to science fictionality to explore sustainable and progressive possibilities. In this course, we will read 21st-century utopian and solarpunk fictions and films, and engage in world-building and creative writing activities to explore our own visions of a hopeful present and future.

We organize our lives with a framework of rules, regulations, and norms that shapes interactions between and among people and nations. We also organize our lives through narrative—using stories to shape and understand our actual experiences. The legal system and literary expression are both experienced through language. Law is expressed in language, which is also the primary tool for enforcing law’s authority. Literary texts, similarly, are framed through language, and can even challenge the legal system by exploring boundaries of convention—banned books are both literary and legal artifacts. This course surveys the broad field of law and literature, largely through Anglo-American common law, via canonical texts presenting problems in jurisprudence and moral philosophy. The course begins with a slow reading and viewing of Aeschylus’s Oresteia, before looking at two exemplars of law-in-literature and law-in-film: “Billy Budd” and Rashomon.

Welcome! This class deals with the development of Anglophone poetry from the eighteenth century until today. The focus will be on British and US-American (incl. Native American) poems, but we will also look at examples by indigenous Australian authors. We will discuss the features of the most important literary periods as well as the question of how to identify individual poems as belonging to these larger frameworks. At the same time, the class serves as an introduction to poetry analysis. After clarifying the question of how poetry can be recognized, we will discuss the question of how the rhyme scheme, the meter, rhetorical devices, the speaker, and the mentioned topics or themes contribute to the meaning of poetry.

Welcome! This class seeks to familiarize students with the phenomenon of fan fiction, i.e., rewrites produced by fans based on plotlines or characters from either a single source text or else a ‘canon’ of works. Fan fiction is doubly situated: in relation to its canon but also regarding other fans’ comments, interpretations, and rewrites. Fan fiction is created outside the commercial literary market; it is published online (on sites such as Archive of Our Own [AO3], FanFiction.net, or Wattpad); and it often gives pre-existing storyworlds a new, sometimes bizarre direction. We will deal with theoretical conceptualizations of fan fiction that concern both its functioning (in narratological terms) and its (ideological) functions and then analyze several examples of fan fiction. We will also address the fact that fan fiction is a female-dominated art form that involves a commitment to gift culture and the question of why these rewrites tend to concentrate on fantasy and science fiction.

Welcome! This class deals with the metafictional or self-reflexive prose narratives of the latter half of the twentieth century. On the one hand, we will discuss definitions of and theoretical approaches to postmodernism, and on the other hand, we will look at representative examples of postmodern prose. More specifically, we discuss novels and short stories by Martin Amis, Robert Coover, John Fowles, Gabriel Josipovici, and Philip Roth, and discuss ways of making sense of them.

This course addresses the definitional questions and political status of utopianism and science fiction in the particular example of solarpunk, a genre of speculative fiction that focuses on possible, positive futures and is explicitly positioned against apocalyptic, dystopian, and doomsaying visions. The solarpunk aesthetic, if there is one, draws on afroturism and other approaches to science fictionality to explore sustainable and progressive possibilities. In this course, we will read 21st-century utopian and solarpunk fictions and films, and engage in world-building and creative writing activities to explore our own visions of a hopeful present and future.

We organize our lives with a framework of rules, regulations, and norms that shapes interactions between and among people and nations. We also organize our lives through narrative—using stories to shape and understand our actual experiences. The legal system and literary expression are both experienced through language. Law is expressed in language, which is also the primary tool for enforcing law’s authority. Literary texts, similarly, are framed through language, and can even challenge the legal system by exploring boundaries of convention—banned books are both literary and legal artifacts. This course surveys the broad field of law and literature, largely through Anglo-American common law, via canonical texts presenting problems in jurisprudence and moral philosophy. The course begins with a slow reading and viewing of Aeschylus’s Oresteia, before looking at two exemplars of law-in-literature and law-in-film: “Billy Budd” and Rashomon.

Welcome! This class deals with the development of Anglophone poetry from the eighteenth century until today. The focus will be on British and US-American (incl. Native American) poems, but we will also look at examples by indigenous Australian authors. We will discuss the features of the most important literary periods as well as the question of how to identify individual poems as belonging to these larger frameworks. At the same time, the class serves as an introduction to poetry analysis. After clarifying the question of how poetry can be recognized, we will discuss the question of how the rhyme scheme, the meter, rhetorical devices, the speaker, and the mentioned topics or themes contribute to the meaning of poetry.

Welcome! This class seeks to familiarize students with the phenomenon of fan fiction, i.e., rewrites produced by fans based on plotlines or characters from either a single source text or else a ‘canon’ of works. Fan fiction is doubly situated: in relation to its canon but also regarding other fans’ comments, interpretations, and rewrites. Fan fiction is created outside the commercial literary market; it is published online (on sites such as Archive of Our Own [AO3], FanFiction.net, or Wattpad); and it often gives pre-existing storyworlds a new, sometimes bizarre direction. We will deal with theoretical conceptualizations of fan fiction that concern both its functioning (in narratological terms) and its (ideological) functions and then analyze several examples of fan fiction. We will also address the fact that fan fiction is a female-dominated art form that involves a commitment to gift culture and the question of why these rewrites tend to concentrate on fantasy and science fiction.

Welcome! This class deals with the metafictional or self-reflexive prose narratives of the latter half of the twentieth century. On the one hand, we will discuss definitions of and theoretical approaches to postmodernism, and on the other hand, we will look at representative examples of postmodern prose. More specifically, we discuss novels and short stories by Martin Amis, Robert Coover, John Fowles, Gabriel Josipovici, and Philip Roth, and discuss ways of making sense of them.

This course addresses the definitional questions and political status of utopianism and science fiction in the particular example of solarpunk, a genre of speculative fiction that focuses on possible, positive futures and is explicitly positioned against apocalyptic, dystopian, and doomsaying visions. The solarpunk aesthetic, if there is one, draws on afroturism and other approaches to science fictionality to explore sustainable and progressive possibilities. In this course, we will read 21st-century utopian and solarpunk fictions and films, and engage in world-building and creative writing activities to explore our own visions of a hopeful present and future.

We organize our lives with a framework of rules, regulations, and norms that shapes interactions between and among people and nations. We also organize our lives through narrative—using stories to shape and understand our actual experiences. The legal system and literary expression are both experienced through language. Law is expressed in language, which is also the primary tool for enforcing law’s authority. Literary texts, similarly, are framed through language, and can even challenge the legal system by exploring boundaries of convention—banned books are both literary and legal artifacts. This course surveys the broad field of law and literature, largely through Anglo-American common law, via canonical texts presenting problems in jurisprudence and moral philosophy. The course begins with a slow reading and viewing of Aeschylus’s Oresteia, before looking at two exemplars of law-in-literature and law-in-film: “Billy Budd” and Rashomon.

Welcome! This class deals with the development of Anglophone poetry from the eighteenth century until today. The focus will be on British and US-American (incl. Native American) poems, but we will also look at examples by indigenous Australian authors. We will discuss the features of the most important literary periods as well as the question of how to identify individual poems as belonging to these larger frameworks. At the same time, the class serves as an introduction to poetry analysis. After clarifying the question of how poetry can be recognized, we will discuss the question of how the rhyme scheme, the meter, rhetorical devices, the speaker, and the mentioned topics or themes contribute to the meaning of poetry.

Welcome! This class deals with the metafictional or self-reflexive prose narratives of the latter half of the twentieth century. On the one hand, we will discuss definitions of and theoretical approaches to postmodernism, and on the other hand, we will look at representative examples of postmodern prose. More specifically, we discuss novels and short stories by Martin Amis, Robert Coover, John Fowles, Gabriel Josipovici, and Philip Roth, and discuss ways of making sense of them.

Current research indicates that fluency is a neglected component of instruction and learning in the EFL classroom. This raises a number of issues and questions: (a) what does fluency mean, and what does it mean to EFL teachers and learners? (b) how familiar are teachers with research findings in foreign language fluency? (c) how confident are teachers in promoting fluency in class? (d) how do they actually go about promoting fluency in the classroom? (e) what practices and formats of interaction are most likely to contribute to fluency development in the EFL classroom? In this course, participants will gain a detailed understanding of fluency and systematic fluency development in various EFL classroom settings. Special emphasis will be given to fostering productive and receptive oral fluency through creative practice and improvisation at the secondary school level.

Prerequisites:
Teacher Education Programme: Successful completion of Moduls TEFL I and TEFL II.
Anglophone Studies MA Programme: BA

Required Reading:
A comprehensive course bibliography will be made available on Stud.IP.

Credit:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in class
Graded: in addition to the above, a term paper

Exam period:
Term paper to be submitted by September 15, 2026.
Exam candidates are advised to submit their term papers by August 15, 2026.

Registration: Flex-Now

In order to communicate in English, learners need to acquire a broad range of lexico-grammatical competences and skills. For instance, they need to learn the meanings of words, how they are pronounced and written, and how they are used in combination with other words to produce and understand text (in the broadest sense of the term). Based on current national and international research, this course looks at vocabulary learning and instruction from a theme-based perspective. Its central aims are a) to familiarize participants with current concepts and models of lexico-grammatical learning, and b) to advance their professional expertise in teaching vocabulary in thematically based EFL sequences, focusing on secondary schools.

Prerequisites:
Teacher Education Programme: Successful completion of Moduls TEFL I and TEFL II.
Anglophone Studies MA Programme: BA

Required Reading:
A comprehensive course bibliography will be made available on Stud.IP.

Credit:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in class
Graded: in addition to the above, a term paper

Exam period:
Term paper to be submitted by September 15, 2026.
Exam candidates are advised to submit their term papers by August 15, 2026.

Registration: Flex-Now

Project-oriented learning refers to communicative classroom settings which are enquiry-, discovery-, task- and solution-oriented. It is also associated with authentic ‘real-life’ encounters with English speakers from around the world (oral or written, face-to-face or virtual, etc.). In this seminar, specific attention is given to the central theoretical and practical aspects of conceptualizing and implementing sustainability education in project-oriented EFL settings. Student learning and work in this course will itself be informed by project-based principles, such as the development of differentiated task learning, learning with course-external relevance, task- and project-based assessment, etc. All participants will be required to develop a sustainability project of their choice in teams and present it toward the end of this course.

Please note that this course will be conducted in an asynchronous, computer-mediated virtual format predominantly. Since asynchronous online courses are not conducted live and in-person, participants are not required to be logged in at the same time as everyone else, for instance, to attend virtual lectures or participate in video conferences and chat sessions. Instead, the instructor will distribute coursework through a virtual learning management system (i.e. StudIP, usually at the beginning of each week). Participants can complete the provided writing assignments and tasks at their own paces, adhering to the deadlines requested by the instructor (usually at the end of each week). This means that they can log on whenever they want, completing the coursework as they would like during each weekly block of learning.

Prerequisites:
Teacher Education Programme: Successful completion of Moduls TEFL I and TEFL II.
Anglophone Studies MA Programme: BA

Required Reading:
Readings will be made available in a number of ways (library, the web, StudIP).

Credit:
Ungraded: Active participation, weekly learning logs, forum discussions, knowledge of recommended literature
Graded: in addition to the above, a term paper

Exam Period:
Term paper to be submitted by September 15, 2026.
Exam candidates are advised to submit their term papers by August 15, 2026.

Registration: Flex-Now

This course equips future EFL teachers with foundational AI literacy and hands-on skills in prompt engineering, emphasizing its application in language education. Rooted in professional EFL teaching knowledge, students will learn how to design and refine prompts that align with pedagogical goals, principles, and methodologies, such as communicative language teaching and task-based language learning. A key component involves working with AI tools directly available on the ILIAS learning management system, enabling students to integrate AI seamlessly into their digital teaching environments. Through practical tasks and critical reflection, participants will explore the ethical and legal use of AI, address bias and reliability issues, and develop strategies for effectively prompting AI to support lesson planning and syllabi design, materials and activity development, and assessment and feedback. This course requires you to bring your own device.

This is a TEFLhybrid Course: http://www.uni-giessen.de/faculties/f05/engl/tefl/teflhybrid

Prerequisites:
Teacher Education Programme: Successful completion of Moduls TEFL I and TEFL II.
Anglophone Studies MA Programme: BA

Required Reading:
A comprehensive course bibliography will be made available on Stud.IP.

Credit:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in class
Graded: in addition to the above, a term paper

Exam period:
Term paper to be submitted by September 15, 2026.
Exam candidates are advised to submit their term papers by August 15, 2026.

Registration: Flex-Now

Current research indicates that fluency is a neglected component of instruction and learning in the EFL classroom. This raises a number of issues and questions: (a) what does fluency mean, and what does it mean to EFL teachers and learners? (b) how familiar are teachers with research findings in foreign language fluency? (c) how confident are teachers in promoting fluency in class? (d) how do they actually go about promoting fluency in the classroom? (e) what practices and formats of interaction are most likely to contribute to fluency development in the EFL classroom? In this course, participants will gain a detailed understanding of fluency and systematic fluency development in various EFL classroom settings. Special emphasis will be given to fostering productive and receptive oral fluency through creative practice and improvisation at the secondary school level.

Prerequisites:
Teacher Education Programme: Successful completion of Moduls TEFL I and TEFL II.
Anglophone Studies MA Programme: BA

Required Reading:
A comprehensive course bibliography will be made available on Stud.IP.

Credit:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in class
Graded: in addition to the above, a term paper

Exam period:
Term paper to be submitted by September 15, 2026.
Exam candidates are advised to submit their term papers by August 15, 2026.

Registration: Flex-Now

In order to communicate in English, learners need to acquire a broad range of lexico-grammatical competences and skills. For instance, they need to learn the meanings of words, how they are pronounced and written, and how they are used in combination with other words to produce and understand text (in the broadest sense of the term). Based on current national and international research, this course looks at vocabulary learning and instruction from a theme-based perspective. Its central aims are a) to familiarize participants with current concepts and models of lexico-grammatical learning, and b) to advance their professional expertise in teaching vocabulary in thematically based EFL sequences, focusing on secondary schools.

Prerequisites:
Teacher Education Programme: Successful completion of Moduls TEFL I and TEFL II.
Anglophone Studies MA Programme: BA

Required Reading:
A comprehensive course bibliography will be made available on Stud.IP.

Credit:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in class
Graded: in addition to the above, a term paper

Exam period:
Term paper to be submitted by September 15, 2026.
Exam candidates are advised to submit their term papers by August 15, 2026.

Registration: Flex-Now

Project-oriented learning refers to communicative classroom settings which are enquiry-, discovery-, task- and solution-oriented. It is also associated with authentic ‘real-life’ encounters with English speakers from around the world (oral or written, face-to-face or virtual, etc.). In this seminar, specific attention is given to the central theoretical and practical aspects of conceptualizing and implementing sustainability education in project-oriented EFL settings. Student learning and work in this course will itself be informed by project-based principles, such as the development of differentiated task learning, learning with course-external relevance, task- and project-based assessment, etc. All participants will be required to develop a sustainability project of their choice in teams and present it toward the end of this course.

Please note that this course will be conducted in an asynchronous, computer-mediated virtual format predominantly. Since asynchronous online courses are not conducted live and in-person, participants are not required to be logged in at the same time as everyone else, for instance, to attend virtual lectures or participate in video conferences and chat sessions. Instead, the instructor will distribute coursework through a virtual learning management system (i.e. StudIP, usually at the beginning of each week). Participants can complete the provided writing assignments and tasks at their own paces, adhering to the deadlines requested by the instructor (usually at the end of each week). This means that they can log on whenever they want, completing the coursework as they would like during each weekly block of learning.

Prerequisites:
Teacher Education Programme: Successful completion of Moduls TEFL I and TEFL II.
Anglophone Studies MA Programme: BA

Required Reading:
Readings will be made available in a number of ways (library, the web, StudIP).

Credit:
Ungraded: Active participation, weekly learning logs, forum discussions, knowledge of recommended literature
Graded: in addition to the above, a term paper

Exam Period:
Term paper to be submitted by September 15, 2026.
Exam candidates are advised to submit their term papers by August 15, 2026.

Registration: Flex-Now

This course equips future EFL teachers with foundational AI literacy and hands-on skills in prompt engineering, emphasizing its application in language education. Rooted in professional EFL teaching knowledge, students will learn how to design and refine prompts that align with pedagogical goals, principles, and methodologies, such as communicative language teaching and task-based language learning. A key component involves working with AI tools directly available on the ILIAS learning management system, enabling students to integrate AI seamlessly into their digital teaching environments. Through practical tasks and critical reflection, participants will explore the ethical and legal use of AI, address bias and reliability issues, and develop strategies for effectively prompting AI to support lesson planning and syllabi design, materials and activity development, and assessment and feedback. This course requires you to bring your own device.

This is a TEFLhybrid Course: http://www.uni-giessen.de/faculties/f05/engl/tefl/teflhybrid

Prerequisites:
Teacher Education Programme: Successful completion of Moduls TEFL I and TEFL II.
Anglophone Studies MA Programme: BA

Required Reading:
A comprehensive course bibliography will be made available on Stud.IP.

Credit:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in class
Graded: in addition to the above, a term paper

Exam period:
Term paper to be submitted by September 15, 2026.
Exam candidates are advised to submit their term papers by August 15, 2026.

Registration: Flex-Now

Current research indicates that fluency is a neglected component of instruction and learning in the EFL classroom. This raises a number of issues and questions: (a) what does fluency mean, and what does it mean to EFL teachers and learners? (b) how familiar are teachers with research findings in foreign language fluency? (c) how confident are teachers in promoting fluency in class? (d) how do they actually go about promoting fluency in the classroom? (e) what practices and formats of interaction are most likely to contribute to fluency development in the EFL classroom? In this course, participants will gain a detailed understanding of fluency and systematic fluency development in various EFL classroom settings. Special emphasis will be given to fostering productive and receptive oral fluency through creative practice and improvisation at the secondary school level.

Prerequisites:
Teacher Education Programme: Successful completion of Moduls TEFL I and TEFL II.
Anglophone Studies MA Programme: BA

Required Reading:
A comprehensive course bibliography will be made available on Stud.IP.

Credit:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in class
Graded: in addition to the above, a term paper

Exam period:
Term paper to be submitted by September 15, 2026.
Exam candidates are advised to submit their term papers by August 15, 2026.

Registration: Flex-Now

In order to communicate in English, learners need to acquire a broad range of lexico-grammatical competences and skills. For instance, they need to learn the meanings of words, how they are pronounced and written, and how they are used in combination with other words to produce and understand text (in the broadest sense of the term). Based on current national and international research, this course looks at vocabulary learning and instruction from a theme-based perspective. Its central aims are a) to familiarize participants with current concepts and models of lexico-grammatical learning, and b) to advance their professional expertise in teaching vocabulary in thematically based EFL sequences, focusing on secondary schools.

Prerequisites:
Teacher Education Programme: Successful completion of Moduls TEFL I and TEFL II.
Anglophone Studies MA Programme: BA

Required Reading:
A comprehensive course bibliography will be made available on Stud.IP.

Credit:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in class
Graded: in addition to the above, a term paper

Exam period:
Term paper to be submitted by September 15, 2026.
Exam candidates are advised to submit their term papers by August 15, 2026.

Registration: Flex-Now

Project-oriented learning refers to communicative classroom settings which are enquiry-, discovery-, task- and solution-oriented. It is also associated with authentic ‘real-life’ encounters with English speakers from around the world (oral or written, face-to-face or virtual, etc.). In this seminar, specific attention is given to the central theoretical and practical aspects of conceptualizing and implementing sustainability education in project-oriented EFL settings. Student learning and work in this course will itself be informed by project-based principles, such as the development of differentiated task learning, learning with course-external relevance, task- and project-based assessment, etc. All participants will be required to develop a sustainability project of their choice in teams and present it toward the end of this course.

Please note that this course will be conducted in an asynchronous, computer-mediated virtual format predominantly. Since asynchronous online courses are not conducted live and in-person, participants are not required to be logged in at the same time as everyone else, for instance, to attend virtual lectures or participate in video conferences and chat sessions. Instead, the instructor will distribute coursework through a virtual learning management system (i.e. StudIP, usually at the beginning of each week). Participants can complete the provided writing assignments and tasks at their own paces, adhering to the deadlines requested by the instructor (usually at the end of each week). This means that they can log on whenever they want, completing the coursework as they would like during each weekly block of learning.

Prerequisites:
Teacher Education Programme: Successful completion of Moduls TEFL I and TEFL II.
Anglophone Studies MA Programme: BA

Required Reading:
Readings will be made available in a number of ways (library, the web, StudIP).

Credit:
Ungraded: Active participation, weekly learning logs, forum discussions, knowledge of recommended literature
Graded: in addition to the above, a term paper

Exam Period:
Term paper to be submitted by September 15, 2026.
Exam candidates are advised to submit their term papers by August 15, 2026.

Registration: Flex-Now

This course equips future EFL teachers with foundational AI literacy and hands-on skills in prompt engineering, emphasizing its application in language education. Rooted in professional EFL teaching knowledge, students will learn how to design and refine prompts that align with pedagogical goals, principles, and methodologies, such as communicative language teaching and task-based language learning. A key component involves working with AI tools directly available on the ILIAS learning management system, enabling students to integrate AI seamlessly into their digital teaching environments. Through practical tasks and critical reflection, participants will explore the ethical and legal use of AI, address bias and reliability issues, and develop strategies for effectively prompting AI to support lesson planning and syllabi design, materials and activity development, and assessment and feedback. This course requires you to bring your own device.

This is a TEFLhybrid Course: http://www.uni-giessen.de/faculties/f05/engl/tefl/teflhybrid

Prerequisites:
Teacher Education Programme: Successful completion of Moduls TEFL I and TEFL II.
Anglophone Studies MA Programme: BA

Required Reading:
A comprehensive course bibliography will be made available on Stud.IP.

Credit:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in class
Graded: in addition to the above, a term paper

Exam period:
Term paper to be submitted by September 15, 2026.
Exam candidates are advised to submit their term papers by August 15, 2026.

Registration: Flex-Now

Current research indicates that fluency is a neglected component of instruction and learning in the EFL classroom. This raises a number of issues and questions: (a) what does fluency mean, and what does it mean to EFL teachers and learners? (b) how familiar are teachers with research findings in foreign language fluency? (c) how confident are teachers in promoting fluency in class? (d) how do they actually go about promoting fluency in the classroom? (e) what practices and formats of interaction are most likely to contribute to fluency development in the EFL classroom? In this course, participants will gain a detailed understanding of fluency and systematic fluency development in various EFL classroom settings. Special emphasis will be given to fostering productive and receptive oral fluency through creative practice and improvisation at the secondary school level.

Prerequisites:
Teacher Education Programme: Successful completion of Moduls TEFL I and TEFL II.
Anglophone Studies MA Programme: BA

Required Reading:
A comprehensive course bibliography will be made available on Stud.IP.

Credit:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in class
Graded: in addition to the above, a term paper

Exam period:
Term paper to be submitted by September 15, 2026.
Exam candidates are advised to submit their term papers by August 15, 2026.

Registration: Flex-Now

In order to communicate in English, learners need to acquire a broad range of lexico-grammatical competences and skills. For instance, they need to learn the meanings of words, how they are pronounced and written, and how they are used in combination with other words to produce and understand text (in the broadest sense of the term). Based on current national and international research, this course looks at vocabulary learning and instruction from a theme-based perspective. Its central aims are a) to familiarize participants with current concepts and models of lexico-grammatical learning, and b) to advance their professional expertise in teaching vocabulary in thematically based EFL sequences, focusing on secondary schools.

Prerequisites:
Teacher Education Programme: Successful completion of Moduls TEFL I and TEFL II.
Anglophone Studies MA Programme: BA

Required Reading:
A comprehensive course bibliography will be made available on Stud.IP.

Credit:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in class
Graded: in addition to the above, a term paper

Exam period:
Term paper to be submitted by September 15, 2026.
Exam candidates are advised to submit their term papers by August 15, 2026.

Registration: Flex-Now

Project-oriented learning refers to communicative classroom settings which are enquiry-, discovery-, task- and solution-oriented. It is also associated with authentic ‘real-life’ encounters with English speakers from around the world (oral or written, face-to-face or virtual, etc.). In this seminar, specific attention is given to the central theoretical and practical aspects of conceptualizing and implementing sustainability education in project-oriented EFL settings. Student learning and work in this course will itself be informed by project-based principles, such as the development of differentiated task learning, learning with course-external relevance, task- and project-based assessment, etc. All participants will be required to develop a sustainability project of their choice in teams and present it toward the end of this course.

Please note that this course will be conducted in an asynchronous, computer-mediated virtual format predominantly. Since asynchronous online courses are not conducted live and in-person, participants are not required to be logged in at the same time as everyone else, for instance, to attend virtual lectures or participate in video conferences and chat sessions. Instead, the instructor will distribute coursework through a virtual learning management system (i.e. StudIP, usually at the beginning of each week). Participants can complete the provided writing assignments and tasks at their own paces, adhering to the deadlines requested by the instructor (usually at the end of each week). This means that they can log on whenever they want, completing the coursework as they would like during each weekly block of learning.

Prerequisites:
Teacher Education Programme: Successful completion of Moduls TEFL I and TEFL II.
Anglophone Studies MA Programme: BA

Required Reading:
Readings will be made available in a number of ways (library, the web, StudIP).

Credit:
Ungraded: Active participation, weekly learning logs, forum discussions, knowledge of recommended literature
Graded: in addition to the above, a term paper

Exam Period:
Term paper to be submitted by September 15, 2026.
Exam candidates are advised to submit their term papers by August 15, 2026.

Registration: Flex-Now

This course equips future EFL teachers with foundational AI literacy and hands-on skills in prompt engineering, emphasizing its application in language education. Rooted in professional EFL teaching knowledge, students will learn how to design and refine prompts that align with pedagogical goals, principles, and methodologies, such as communicative language teaching and task-based language learning. A key component involves working with AI tools directly available on the ILIAS learning management system, enabling students to integrate AI seamlessly into their digital teaching environments. Through practical tasks and critical reflection, participants will explore the ethical and legal use of AI, address bias and reliability issues, and develop strategies for effectively prompting AI to support lesson planning and syllabi design, materials and activity development, and assessment and feedback. This course requires you to bring your own device.

This is a TEFLhybrid Course: http://www.uni-giessen.de/faculties/f05/engl/tefl/teflhybrid

Prerequisites:
Teacher Education Programme: Successful completion of Moduls TEFL I and TEFL II.
Anglophone Studies MA Programme: BA

Required Reading:
A comprehensive course bibliography will be made available on Stud.IP.

Credit:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in class
Graded: in addition to the above, a term paper

Exam period:
Term paper to be submitted by September 15, 2026.
Exam candidates are advised to submit their term papers by August 15, 2026.

Registration: Flex-Now

Diversity and heterogeneity shape national and international education policies (e.g., Global Citizenship Education, Education for Peace), linking directly to Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC). In EFL teaching, cultural hybridity is inseparable from ICC development. This seminar uses fictions of migration as contextualized teaching material, guiding participants to design, implement, and evaluate lessons that blend literary analysis, cultural insight, and language skills. By aligning with ICC and global citizenship principles, learners acquire empathy, conflict resolution abilities, and intercultural awareness, preparing them to act responsibly within a globally interconnected world.

Prerequisites:
Teacher Education Programme: Successful completion of modules TEFL I and TEFL II.
Anglophone Studies MA Programme: BA

Required Reading:
A digital reader will be available at the beginning of the semester.

Credit:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation, a short teaching proposal
Graded: Regular attendance, active participation, a short teaching proposal, term paper

Exam period:
Term paper must be handed in until 15th September 2026.

Registration: FlexNow

This course equips future EFL teachers with foundational AI literacy and hands-on skills in prompt engineering, emphasizing its application in language education. Rooted in professional EFL teaching knowledge, students will learn how to design and refine prompts that align with pedagogical goals, principles, and methodologies, such as communicative language teaching and task-based language learning. A key component involves working with AI tools directly available on the ILIAS learning management system, enabling students to integrate AI seamlessly into their digital teaching environments. Through practical tasks and critical reflection, participants will explore the ethical and legal use of AI, address bias and reliability issues, and develop strategies for effectively prompting AI to support lesson planning and syllabi design, materials and activity development, and assessment and feedback. This course requires you to bring your own device.

This is a TEFLhybrid Course: http://www.uni-giessen.de/faculties/f05/engl/tefl/teflhybrid

Prerequisites:
Teacher Education Programme: Successful completion of Moduls TEFL I and TEFL II.
Anglophone Studies MA Programme: BA

Required Reading:
A comprehensive course bibliography will be made available on Stud.IP.

Credit:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in class
Graded: in addition to the above, a term paper

Exam period:
Term paper to be submitted by September 15, 2026.
Exam candidates are advised to submit their term papers by August 15, 2026.

Registration: Flex-Now

The study of culture and intercultural communication remains a cornerstone of English as a foreign language (EFL) pedagogy. Over the semester, the seminar will examine how Indian culture is portrayed in English language course books, analyzing this representation as part of the broader field of world Englishes and its impact on contemporary EFL classrooms. By engaging with literary texts (both print and audio visual), expository writings, authentic cultural artefacts, and textbook materials, participants will collaboratively design, structure, and critically evaluate teaching units and lessons that integrate literary, cultural, and linguistic objectives.

Reading:
A digital reader will be available at the beginning of the semester.

Prerequisites:
Teacher Education Programme: Successful completion of modules TEFL I and TEFL II.
Anglophone Studies MA Programme: BA

Credit:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation, a short teaching proposal
Graded: Regular attendance, active participation, a short teaching proposal, term paper

Exam period:
Term paper must be handed in until 15th September 2026.

Registration: FlexNow

Diversity and heterogeneity shape national and international education policies (e.g., Global Citizenship Education, Education for Peace), linking directly to Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC). In EFL teaching, cultural hybridity is inseparable from ICC development. This seminar uses fictions of migration as contextualized teaching material, guiding participants to design, implement, and evaluate lessons that blend literary analysis, cultural insight, and language skills. By aligning with ICC and global citizenship principles, learners acquire empathy, conflict resolution abilities, and intercultural awareness, preparing them to act responsibly within a globally interconnected world.

Prerequisites:
Teacher Education Programme: Successful completion of modules TEFL I and TEFL II.
Anglophone Studies MA Programme: BA

Required Reading:
A digital reader will be available at the beginning of the semester.

Credit:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation, a short teaching proposal
Graded: Regular attendance, active participation, a short teaching proposal, term paper

Exam period:
Term paper must be handed in until 15th September 2026.

Registration: FlexNow

This course equips future EFL teachers with foundational AI literacy and hands-on skills in prompt engineering, emphasizing its application in language education. Rooted in professional EFL teaching knowledge, students will learn how to design and refine prompts that align with pedagogical goals, principles, and methodologies, such as communicative language teaching and task-based language learning. A key component involves working with AI tools directly available on the ILIAS learning management system, enabling students to integrate AI seamlessly into their digital teaching environments. Through practical tasks and critical reflection, participants will explore the ethical and legal use of AI, address bias and reliability issues, and develop strategies for effectively prompting AI to support lesson planning and syllabi design, materials and activity development, and assessment and feedback. This course requires you to bring your own device.

This is a TEFLhybrid Course: http://www.uni-giessen.de/faculties/f05/engl/tefl/teflhybrid

Prerequisites:
Teacher Education Programme: Successful completion of Moduls TEFL I and TEFL II.
Anglophone Studies MA Programme: BA

Required Reading:
A comprehensive course bibliography will be made available on Stud.IP.

Credit:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in class
Graded: in addition to the above, a term paper

Exam period:
Term paper to be submitted by September 15, 2026.
Exam candidates are advised to submit their term papers by August 15, 2026.

Registration: Flex-Now

The study of culture and intercultural communication remains a cornerstone of English as a foreign language (EFL) pedagogy. Over the semester, the seminar will examine how Indian culture is portrayed in English language course books, analyzing this representation as part of the broader field of world Englishes and its impact on contemporary EFL classrooms. By engaging with literary texts (both print and audio visual), expository writings, authentic cultural artefacts, and textbook materials, participants will collaboratively design, structure, and critically evaluate teaching units and lessons that integrate literary, cultural, and linguistic objectives.

Reading:
A digital reader will be available at the beginning of the semester.

Prerequisites:
Teacher Education Programme: Successful completion of modules TEFL I and TEFL II.
Anglophone Studies MA Programme: BA

Credit:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation, a short teaching proposal
Graded: Regular attendance, active participation, a short teaching proposal, term paper

Exam period:
Term paper must be handed in until 15th September 2026.

Registration: FlexNow

Welcome! This class deals with the development of Anglophone poetry from the eighteenth century until today. The focus will be on British and US-American (incl. Native American) poems, but we will also look at examples by indigenous Australian authors. We will discuss the features of the most important literary periods as well as the question of how to identify individual poems as belonging to these larger frameworks. At the same time, the class serves as an introduction to poetry analysis. After clarifying the question of how poetry can be recognized, we will discuss the question of how the rhyme scheme, the meter, rhetorical devices, the speaker, and the mentioned topics or themes contribute to the meaning of poetry.

Welcome! This class seeks to familiarize students with the phenomenon of fan fiction, i.e., rewrites produced by fans based on plotlines or characters from either a single source text or else a ‘canon’ of works. Fan fiction is doubly situated: in relation to its canon but also regarding other fans’ comments, interpretations, and rewrites. Fan fiction is created outside the commercial literary market; it is published online (on sites such as Archive of Our Own [AO3], FanFiction.net, or Wattpad); and it often gives pre-existing storyworlds a new, sometimes bizarre direction. We will deal with theoretical conceptualizations of fan fiction that concern both its functioning (in narratological terms) and its (ideological) functions and then analyze several examples of fan fiction. We will also address the fact that fan fiction is a female-dominated art form that involves a commitment to gift culture and the question of why these rewrites tend to concentrate on fantasy and science fiction.

Welcome! This class deals with the metafictional or self-reflexive prose narratives of the latter half of the twentieth century. On the one hand, we will discuss definitions of and theoretical approaches to postmodernism, and on the other hand, we will look at representative examples of postmodern prose. More specifically, we discuss novels and short stories by Martin Amis, Robert Coover, John Fowles, Gabriel Josipovici, and Philip Roth, and discuss ways of making sense of them.

This course addresses the definitional questions and political status of utopianism and science fiction in the particular example of solarpunk, a genre of speculative fiction that focuses on possible, positive futures and is explicitly positioned against apocalyptic, dystopian, and doomsaying visions. The solarpunk aesthetic, if there is one, draws on afroturism and other approaches to science fictionality to explore sustainable and progressive possibilities. In this course, we will read 21st-century utopian and solarpunk fictions and films, and engage in world-building and creative writing activities to explore our own visions of a hopeful present and future.

We organize our lives with a framework of rules, regulations, and norms that shapes interactions between and among people and nations. We also organize our lives through narrative—using stories to shape and understand our actual experiences. The legal system and literary expression are both experienced through language. Law is expressed in language, which is also the primary tool for enforcing law’s authority. Literary texts, similarly, are framed through language, and can even challenge the legal system by exploring boundaries of convention—banned books are both literary and legal artifacts. This course surveys the broad field of law and literature, largely through Anglo-American common law, via canonical texts presenting problems in jurisprudence and moral philosophy. The course begins with a slow reading and viewing of Aeschylus’s Oresteia, before looking at two exemplars of law-in-literature and law-in-film: “Billy Budd” and Rashomon.

Welcome! This class deals with the development of Anglophone poetry from the eighteenth century until today. The focus will be on British and US-American (incl. Native American) poems, but we will also look at examples by indigenous Australian authors. We will discuss the features of the most important literary periods as well as the question of how to identify individual poems as belonging to these larger frameworks. At the same time, the class serves as an introduction to poetry analysis. After clarifying the question of how poetry can be recognized, we will discuss the question of how the rhyme scheme, the meter, rhetorical devices, the speaker, and the mentioned topics or themes contribute to the meaning of poetry.

Welcome! This class seeks to familiarize students with the phenomenon of fan fiction, i.e., rewrites produced by fans based on plotlines or characters from either a single source text or else a ‘canon’ of works. Fan fiction is doubly situated: in relation to its canon but also regarding other fans’ comments, interpretations, and rewrites. Fan fiction is created outside the commercial literary market; it is published online (on sites such as Archive of Our Own [AO3], FanFiction.net, or Wattpad); and it often gives pre-existing storyworlds a new, sometimes bizarre direction. We will deal with theoretical conceptualizations of fan fiction that concern both its functioning (in narratological terms) and its (ideological) functions and then analyze several examples of fan fiction. We will also address the fact that fan fiction is a female-dominated art form that involves a commitment to gift culture and the question of why these rewrites tend to concentrate on fantasy and science fiction.

Welcome! This class deals with the metafictional or self-reflexive prose narratives of the latter half of the twentieth century. On the one hand, we will discuss definitions of and theoretical approaches to postmodernism, and on the other hand, we will look at representative examples of postmodern prose. More specifically, we discuss novels and short stories by Martin Amis, Robert Coover, John Fowles, Gabriel Josipovici, and Philip Roth, and discuss ways of making sense of them.

This course addresses the definitional questions and political status of utopianism and science fiction in the particular example of solarpunk, a genre of speculative fiction that focuses on possible, positive futures and is explicitly positioned against apocalyptic, dystopian, and doomsaying visions. The solarpunk aesthetic, if there is one, draws on afroturism and other approaches to science fictionality to explore sustainable and progressive possibilities. In this course, we will read 21st-century utopian and solarpunk fictions and films, and engage in world-building and creative writing activities to explore our own visions of a hopeful present and future.

We organize our lives with a framework of rules, regulations, and norms that shapes interactions between and among people and nations. We also organize our lives through narrative—using stories to shape and understand our actual experiences. The legal system and literary expression are both experienced through language. Law is expressed in language, which is also the primary tool for enforcing law’s authority. Literary texts, similarly, are framed through language, and can even challenge the legal system by exploring boundaries of convention—banned books are both literary and legal artifacts. This course surveys the broad field of law and literature, largely through Anglo-American common law, via canonical texts presenting problems in jurisprudence and moral philosophy. The course begins with a slow reading and viewing of Aeschylus’s Oresteia, before looking at two exemplars of law-in-literature and law-in-film: “Billy Budd” and Rashomon.