Fachbereich 05: Sprache, Literatur, Kultur - Anglistik - Lehramtsstudiengang L 1

This seminar aims to explore the various ways contemporary music is represented in anglophone fiction. Following a general introduction to the field of musico-literary intermediality, we will analyze several novels that deal with popular music, rock, metal, and hip-hop. For this, we will examine how these musical genres are portrayed in literature and what functions they serve. We will delve into the specific literary techniques used to integrate musical elements into the narrative structure, as well as the cultural and social contexts in which these representations emerge.

We will discuss texts such as Rachel Cohn and David Levithan's "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" (2006), John Darnielle's "Master of Reality" (2008), Nick Hornby's "Juliet, Naked" (2009), and Jennifer Egan's "A Visit from the Goon Squad" (2011).

Relevant primary and secondary literature will be uploaded to Stud.IP at the beginning of the semester. However, participants are expected to ensure they have access to appropriate listening devices for individual work sessions and in-class group assignments (e.g., smartphone, laptop or tablet with internet access, and some type of headphones). Regular course attendance, active in-class participation, and submission of assignments are expected.

Exam for Listen Closely - Musico-Literary Intermediality in Contemporary English and American Fiction: Monday, July 21, 2025.

This seminar invites students to embark on a critical exploration of how authors have depicted England and its regions throughout literary history. It challenges traditional notions of a singular 'England' by examining the diverse ways writers have engaged with place, region, and nationhood. We will analyze how literary works construct and contest spatial identities, exploring themes such as regional identity, national belonging, and the power dynamics embedded in representations of space. A reader with all set texts will be available through StudIP from the beginning of term.

Juvenilia are literary works written by authors during their youth. In this course we will discuss a wide range of texts in various genres written during the long nineteenth century by British authors like Jane Austen, the Brontës and Virginia Woolf.

This seminar explores the intersections between postcolonial theory, cosmopolitanism, and world literature, offering a critical lens to examine the complexities of cultural exchange and global literary production in the modern era. By engaging with key concepts such as hybridity, translatability, and cultural dialogue, we aim to unpack the ways postcolonial contexts shape and challenge traditional notions of literary study. We will look at definitions of key concepts and read core theories, considering questions of identity, belonging, and the ethics of representation across diverse cultural landscapes. A reader with all set texts will be available through StudIP from the beginning of term.

This course is designed to introduce students to poetry analysis. We will start out by discussing what poetry is and why it matters. We will then move on to explore ways of reading and understanding poetry, looking at different technical matters and a broad range of examples. At the end of the course, we will consider different ways of writing about poetry and students will practise their writing skills.

Sweeney Todd, "the demon barber of Fleet Street", is one of the most captivating literary creations of the Victorian Age. This course explores his multifaceted existence across diverse mediums and genres. We will discuss how this iconic character has been reimagined, adapted, and transformed over time, shedding light on the creative liberties taken while preserving the essence of a timeless villainous figure on page, stage and screen.

On 19 February 1942, shortly after Japan’s attack on the U.S. Naval Station Pearl Harbour, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed executive order 9066, authorising the removal of all Japanese Americans living in the Pacific Coast region. This resulted in the forced evacuation of over 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry to internment camps in America’s interior regions. One month later over 22,000 Japanese Canadians living in British Columbia would be forcibly relocated and interned in a similar manner, this number making up over 90% of the entire Japanese Canadian population at the time. While the internment of Japanese Americans and Canadians was justified as a reactionary and necessary wartime measure against enemies of these nations, the fact remains that approximately two thirds of the internees were Nisei and Sansei, second- and third-generation American-born citizens. It would later become clear that the community posed no real security risk, and that internment was a result of xenophobia and economic paranoia on both accounts.

The governments’ decisions to exclude citizens on the basis of race, to deny their civil rights, and to displace them during the war had an irreversible effect on the community, resulting in the loss of language, cultural practices, and dissolution of families. This seminar will explore how three books on internment propose to answer the central question of what it means to be ethnically Japanese in North America’s multicultural environment, as informed by a history of internment, marginalisation, and racial injustice. Here we will evaluate how contemporary fiction narratives are able to step into dialogue with historical discourse and challenge the silencing rhetoric that informed internment in North America.

After a generalised introduction to internment, we will be reading Joy Kogawa’s seminal novel Obasan (1981), before moving on to John Okada’s No-No Boy (1957) and George Takei’s They Called Us Enemy (2019).

Secondary sources will be uploaded to Stud.IP. Participants are expected to read the relevant primary sources in advance of the sessions. Regular course attendance, active in-class participation, and submission of assignments are expected.

This lecture explores the dynamic relationships between happiness, literature, and wellbeing, guiding students through an interdisciplinary examination of the good life. We begin with an introduction to the core concepts of happiness, literature, and wellbeing, followed by an exploration of research-based teaching and learning methods. Students will then consider literature not only as a mirror of society but as a laboratory for testing and experimenting with various forms of the good life.

The course further investigates the value of literature in the 21st century, with an emphasis on its enduring relevance in a rapidly changing world. The good life will be approached as an interdisciplinary project, drawing on ancient wisdom and philosophical traditions (from Eudaimonia to Stoicism), alongside contemporary insights from positive psychology, economics, and sociology. By examining both historical and modern perspectives, students will see how literature functions as a vast archive of ideas and lived experiences of the good life, while also critically interrogating these forms through literary critique.

Exam: In Pursuit of Happiness, Meaning, and Wellbeing – Literature and the Forms of the Good Life
Date: Tuesday, July 22, 2025.

Movies of the Twenty-First Century
This lecture is designed to familiarize students with the most important categories for the analysis of film on the basis of recent movies. In the first part of the lecture, we will look at meaning-making elements (such as the mise-en-scène, cinematographic elements, editing techniques, sound [effects], paratextual features, and so forth). We will also deal with the concept of the cinematic narrator, syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations, film metaphors, and the representation of consciousness (or character interiority) in movies. In the second part of the lecture, we will apply these concepts by analyzing and interpreting selected films from the twenty-first century (such as Barbie and Oppenheimer).

This course aims at familiarizing students with approaches to the study of human language in general and to the study of the English language in particular. Attention will be paid to important concepts and terminology from the core areas of theoretical linguistics (phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics) and to their relevance to the fields of applied linguistics, such as language acquisition, sociolinguistics and cognitive linguistics.

Exam / Modulabschlussprüfung (MAP): To be announced at the beginning of the semester

In the broadest sense, semantics is the study of meaning. In this class we will expore what that exactly entails on various levels and from different perspectives. For instance, we will outline the core concepts concerning lexical semantics, i.e. word meaning and the relationship between words of a language, and phrasal/sentential semantics, i.e. sentence meaning. We will also consider in more detail how the study of meaning is variously approached by taking a structural semantic perspective vs. a cognitive semantic perspective.

Exam: July 21, 2025
or Term Paper: Sept. 30, 2025

Syntax is the part of grammar which deals with the ways words are combined into sentences. We will first look at some key concepts in syntax from a structuralist perspective, starting with smaller syntactic units such as the word and the notion of different word classes. Phrases are another key concept syntactically superordinate to words, which function as constituents in clauses. In this context, it will be of pivotal importance to keep the dichotomy of form and function in mind. Apart from analysing different types of clauses (and sentences) and different ways of ordering elements in a clause (and a sentence), we will also examine the semantic roles of clause elements to discover the close connection between syntax and meaning. We will then briefly look into other approaches to syntax (valency grammar, functional sentence perspective, generative grammar), before we explore syntactic variation in selected varieties of English and the differences between spoken and written grammars.

Prerequisites: Successful completion of the ‘Introduction to English Linguistics’ course.

Reading: Reading material will be made available for download from Stud.IP.

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, completion of reading and homework assignments and active participation in class.
Graded credit: In addition to the above, a final exam or a term paper.

Exam period: Final exam on 23 July 2025; deadline for term paper submission: 15 September 2025.