Fachbereich 05: Sprache, Literatur, Kultur - Anglistik - Bachelor of Arts (Studienbeginn ab Wintersemester 2020/21)

Welcome! This course is designed to introduce first-year students to the study of English and American literature and culture. Among other things, we will deal with the analysis and interpretation of poetry, drama, prose, film, and other cultural phenomena as well as theoretical approaches to literature and culture. Furthermore, you will learn how to do research, i.e., how to find secondary literature, how to quote literature, and how to compile a bibliography.

Welcome! When Todorov coined the French term 'narratologie' in 1969, he used the word in analogy to disciplines such as biology and sociology to convey the idea of a science of narrative. This lecture begins by zooming in on the development of classical structuralist narratology, which was, for instance, influenced by Russian formalism. In a second step, we will then focus on recent debates within the field of postclassical narratology. Among other things, we will look at new developments in the area of ethical and postcolonial narratology (compared to the 'older' rhetorical theory of narrative); crucial differences between first- and second-generation cognitive narratologists; the role of cognitive parameters vis-à-vis unnatural narratives; new approaches in the areas of feminist, queer, and transmedial narratologies; recent work on oral storytelling, small stories, and online storytelling; the narrativity of music, paintings, and dance performances; as well as the role of empirical studies. We will also discuss the question of what to do with these approaches, i.e., how to apply the theoretical frameworks to literary texts.

The lecture provides an overview of the development of Gothic literature from the late eighteenth- to the early twenty-first century, focusing predominantly (though not exclusively) on the Gothic novel. It pursues three key objectives: firstly, to familiarize attendees with major forms and subgenres of Gothic literature; secondly, to introduce key periods of literary history (as refracted through a Gothic lens); and, thirdly, to read Gothic texts as responses to cultural contexts and social anxieties. Each lecture will first introduce salient contexts for the topic at hand, then move on to a close reading of a sample text, and conclude with a brief summary and perspectives for further research. While the lecture mainly charts the evolution of Gothic literature in England, it will touch upon US-American and include postcolonial contexts the further we proceed diachronically.

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

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

This course aims at familiarizing students with approaches to the study of human language in general and to English in particular. Attention will be paid to important concepts and terms of 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 computational linguistics.

Reading: Bernd Kortmann, English Linguistics: Essentials (Berlin: Cornelsen, 2020).
Registration: FlexNow
Graded credit: Regular attendance, active participation, a mini presentation and a pass in the Modulabschlussprüfung at the end of the lecture period.

This course aims at familiarizing students with approaches to the study of human language in general and to English in particular. Attention will be paid to important concepts and terms of 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 computational linguistics.

Reading: Bernd Kortmann, English Linguistics: Essentials (Berlin: Cornelsen, 2020).
Registration: FlexNow
Graded credit: Regular attendance, active participation, a mini presentation and a pass in the Modulabschlussprüfung at the end of the lecture period.

This course aims at familiarizing students with approaches to the study of human language in general and to English in particular. Attention will be paid to important concepts and terms of 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 computational linguistics.

Reading: Bernd Kortmann, English Linguistics: Essentials (Berlin: Cornelsen, 2020).
Registration: FlexNow
Graded credit: Regular attendance, active participation, a mini presentation and a pass in the Modulabschlussprüfung at the end of the lecture period.

The study of the history of the English language offers highly relevant insights into how the language has changed over the course of the centuries and into how the English language is structured and functions all around the world today. Therefore, we will pay particular attention to the different periods in the history of the English language, i.e. Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, Late Modern English and Present-day English, in order to follow the structural changes on the levels of phonology, lexis, syntax and semantics that have led to the English language as we use it today.

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

The study of the history of the English language offers highly relevant insights into how the language has changed over the course of the centuries and into how the English language is structured and functions all around the world today. Therefore, we will pay particular attention to the different periods in the history of the English language, i.e. Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, Late Modern English and Present-day English, in order to follow the structural changes on the levels of phonology, lexis, syntax and semantics that have led to the English language as we use it today.

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

This course is taught asynchronously. Please refer to the ILIAS screencasts linked via StudIP.
There will be 2 online meetings to supplement the asynchronous teaching material:
- Tuesday, 14 October 13-14
- Tuesday, 27 Janurary 13-14
The link to the online meeting is available in the [Ablaufplan].

This lecture course surveys the sounds of English, primarily those of American and British accents. The lecture focuses on the characteristic articulation of English sounds (esp. speech organs, sound classes, places and manners of articulation) as well as the systems used for the phonetic description of vowels and consonants. We will also have a look at phonemes and allophonic distribution, phonological processes and connected speech phenomena such as word stress and intonation. Attention is also paid to those areas of articulation that tend to be problematic for German speakers. Students will also learn to read and broadly transcribe English sounds using International Phonetic Association (IPA) transcription.

Course book:
Lorenz, Frank. 2013. Basics of phonetics and English phonology. With IPA transcription. 2nd. ed. Berlin: Logos Verlag. (available as e-book through universitay library)

Registration:
FlexNow.

Credit:
Graded: Final exam 100%

Final exam in the last lecture week or MAP on 9 February 2026

This course offers an introduction into the qualitative and quantitative methods for analyzing English language structures on the various levels of linguistic description. We will not only provide an overview of these methods, but will also make sure that you have ample opportunities to practice their application to small-scale studies (with the help of data analysis software and simple statistical measures). We will also place an emphasis on how to discuss and present empirical findings.

The contents of this course will be part of the module exam "MAP: Introduction to English Linguistics II". Please note that the date for that exam will be announced at the beginning of the semester!

This course focuses on the development of the students' general language skills. The aim is to work on language development and awareness with the focus on the four skills (Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening), both in an integrated way but also separately. There will also be considerable work done and emphasis placed on the sub-skill of Vocabulary and also some work done on Grammar. With the ultimate goal of advanced communication, students will have to deal with different levels of texts and other media, through which various aspects of the language will be highlighted.

This course focuses on the development of the students' general language skills. The aim is to work on language development and awareness with the focus on the four skills (Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening), both in an integrated way but also separately. There will also be considerable work done and emphasis placed on the sub-skill of Vocabulary and also some work done on Grammar. With the ultimate goal of advanced communication, students will have to deal with different levels of texts and other media, through which various aspects of the language will be highlighted.

This course focuses on the development of the students' general language skills. The aim is to work on language development and awareness with the focus on the four skills (Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening), both in an integrated way but also separately. There will also be considerable work done and emphasis placed on the sub-skill of Vocabulary and also some work done on Grammar. With the ultimate goal of advanced communication, students will have to deal with different levels of texts and other media, through which various aspects of the language will be highlighted.

This course focuses on the development of the students' general language skills. The aim is to work on language development and awareness with the focus on the four skills (Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening), both in an integrated way but also separately. There will also be considerable work done and emphasis placed on the sub-skill of Vocabulary and also some work done on Grammar. With the ultimate goal of advanced communication, students will have to deal with different levels of texts and other media, through which various aspects of the language will be highlighted.

This course focuses on the development of the students' general language skills. The aim is to work on language development and awareness with the focus on the four skills (Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening), both in an integrated way but also separately. There will also be considerable work done and emphasis placed on the sub-skill of Vocabulary and also some work done on Grammar. With the ultimate goal of advanced communication, students will have to deal with different levels of texts and other media, through which various aspects of the language will be highlighted.

This course focuses on the development of the students' general language skills. The aim is to work on language development and awareness with the focus on the four skills (Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening), both in an integrated way but also separately. There will also be considerable work done and emphasis placed on the sub-skill of Vocabulary and also some work done on Grammar. With the ultimate goal of advanced communication, students will have to deal with different levels of texts and other media, through which various aspects of the language will be highlighted.

This course focuses on the development of the students' general language skills. The aim is to work on language development and awareness with the focus on the four skills (Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening), both in an integrated way but also separately. There will also be considerable work done and emphasis placed on the sub-skill of Vocabulary and also some work done on Grammar. With the ultimate goal of advanced communication, students will have to deal with different levels of texts and other media, through which various aspects of the language will be highlighted.

This course focuses on the development of the students' general language skills. The aim is to work on language development and awareness with the focus on the four skills (Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening), both in an integrated way but also separately. There will also be considerable work done and emphasis placed on the sub-skill of Vocabulary and also some work done on Grammar. With the ultimate goal of advanced communication, students will have to deal with different levels of texts and other media, through which various aspects of the language will be highlighted.

This course focuses on the development of the students' general language skills. The aim is to work on language development and awareness with the focus on the four skills (Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening), both in an integrated way but also separately. There will also be considerable work done and emphasis placed on the sub-skill of Vocabulary and also some work done on Grammar. With the ultimate goal of advanced communication, students will have to deal with different levels of texts and other media, through which various aspects of the language will be highlighted.

This course focuses on the development of the students' general language skills. The aim is to work on language development and awareness with the focus on the four skills (Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening), both in an integrated way but also separately. There will also be considerable work done and emphasis placed on the sub-skill of Vocabulary and also some work done on Grammar. With the ultimate goal of advanced communication, students will have to deal with different levels of texts and other media, through which various aspects of the language will be highlighted.

Focusing on the grammar of the English verb phrase (tense and aspect, modality, non-finite constructions), this course is designed to help students solidify and extend their grasp of core areas of English grammar and make the transition from upper intermediate level to lower advanced level (B2 to C1). Making this transition not only involves getting a firm grip on the essentials (structures already covered at school but all too often either forgotten or never properly mastered in the first place), it also involves adding some of those finer points that need to be mastered on the steep and thorny way to advanced language competence.

.Focusing on the grammar of the English verb phrase (tense and aspect, modality, non-finite constructions), this course is designed to help students solidify and extend their grasp of core areas of English grammar and make the transition from upper intermediate level to lower advanced level (B2 to C1). Making this transition not only involves getting a firm grip on the essentials (structures already covered at school but all too often either forgotten or never properly mastered in the first place), it also involves adding some of those finer points that need to be mastered on the steep and thorny way to advanced language competence.

Focusing on the grammar of the English verb phrase (tense and aspect, modality, non-finite constructions), this course is designed to help students solidify and extend their grasp of core areas of English grammar and make the transition from upper intermediate level to lower advanced level (B2 to C1). Making this transition not only involves getting a firm grip on the essentials (structures already covered at school but all too often either forgotten or never properly mastered in the first place), it also involves adding some of those finer points that need to be mastered on the steep and thorny way to advanced language competence.

.Focusing on the grammar of the English verb phrase (tense and aspect, modality, non-finite constructions), this course is designed to help students solidify and extend their grasp of core areas of English grammar and make the transition from upper intermediate level to lower advanced level (B2 to C1). Making this transition not only involves getting a firm grip on the essentials (structures already covered at school but all too often either forgotten or never properly mastered in the first place), it also involves adding some of those finer points that need to be mastered on the steep and thorny way to advanced language competence.

This course focuses on developing students' communicative competence in the domains of listening and speaking in academic settings at level C1 CEFRL. Students will develop and practice effective listening strategies for the global, selective and detailed decoding of aural input, specifically in academic settings (e.g. lectures), including appropriate note-taking skills. They will practice speaking fluently and eloquently in appropriate registers, specifically when contributing to academic discussions and delivering presentations. They will extend their subject-specific as well as general academic vocabulary and consolidate their knowledge of grammatical structures characteristic of academic registers.

This course focuses on developing students' communicative competence in the domains of listening and speaking in academic settings at level C1 CEFRL. Students will develop and practice effective listening strategies for the global, selective and detailed decoding of aural input, specifically in academic settings (e.g. lectures), including appropriate note-taking skills. They will practice speaking fluently and eloquently in appropriate registers, specifically when contributing to academic discussions and delivering presentations. They will extend their subject-specific as well as general academic vocabulary and consolidate their knowledge of grammatical structures characteristic of academic registers.

This course focuses on developing students' communicative competence in the domains of listening and speaking in academic settings at level C1 CEFRL. Students will develop and practice effective listening strategies for the global, selective and detailed decoding of aural input, specifically in academic settings (e.g. lectures), including appropriate note-taking skills. They will practice speaking fluently and eloquently in appropriate registers, specifically when contributing to academic discussions and delivering presentations. They will extend their subject-specific as well as general academic vocabulary and consolidate their knowledge of grammatical structures characteristic of academic registers.

.Focusing on the grammar of the English verb phrase (tense and aspect, modality, non-finite constructions), this course is designed to help students solidify and extend their grasp of core areas of English grammar and make the transition from upper intermediate level to lower advanced level (B2 to C1). Making this transition not only involves getting a firm grip on the essentials (structures already covered at school but all too often either forgotten or never properly mastered in the first place), it also involves adding some of those finer points that need to be mastered on the steep and thorny way to advanced language competence.

Does Taylor Swift use more terms of endearment in her lyrics than Justin Bieber? How do people in Sri Lanka address each other? Do women hedge their statements more often than men?

With a view to finding answers to these questions and understanding how speakers of English – as well as speakers of other languages – communicate with one another, the empirical analysis of authentic language data via linguistic corpora, i.e. text collections from song lyrics, face-to-face conversation or other textual resources, has become a generally accepted standard. In order to be in a position to devise empirical answers to some of the above questions and perspectives on English and its different varieties, several steps need to be taken and we will take them together in the course of this class.

The sequencing of a full-fledged corpus-linguistic analysis structures this class. We will familiarise ourselves with characteristics of linguistic corpora and techniques of corpus compilation and annotation. Subsequently, we will focus on how to extract data from linguistic corpora and how to add information we deem relevant for its analysis. In a last step, we will explore how different statistical approaches can help us profile central trends in our data to find answers to the questions we set out to tackle. To facilitate the individual steps, we will become acquainted with tools for corpus creation and annotation, software for corpus querying as well as for statistical analysis.

Exam date: 12 February 2026
Term paper deadline: 15 March 2026

This seminar will explore British poetry from the mid-20th century to the present day, focusing on the works of Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, George Mackay Brown, Simon Armitage, Liz Berry, Alice Oswald and others. Through close readings, critical analysis, and contextual studies, students will engage with the thematic, stylistic, and historical developments that have shaped British poetry over the past six decades. The course will emphasize the interplay between poetry and society, the relationship of poetry to the natural world, the role of the poet in contemporary society, and the evolution of poetic forms and techniques.

This course explores the various adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe's seminal short story "The Fall of the House of Usher". We will analyze how different mediums, cultures, and time periods have interpreted and reimagined Poe's classic tale, examining the themes of decay, madness, and the supernatural that permeate the story.

This course provides an introduction to Asian American literature from the mid-twentieth century to the present, exploring how writers engage with themes of immigration, race, gender, sexuality, and the construction of Asian American identities. In addition to introducing key concepts in Asian American literary studies, the course engages with some other contemporary directions in the field, including literature on trauma and healing, human relationships with the environment, and science fiction.

Students are required to acquire two books: "M. Butterfly" by David Henry Hwang and "The Best We Could Do" by Thi Bui. Additional readings will be provided on Stud.IP.

The detailed syllabus will be available on Stud.IP from 15.09.2025.

Welcome!
This course introduces first-year students to the multicultural dimensions of Elizabethan drama. We will explore how playwrights such as William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and George Peele reflected the era’s expanding global awareness, often influenced by travel writings. Through literary analysis and close reading, we will examine how drama engaged with cultural encounters and exchanges, and why these works continue to be meaningful today.

In this seminar, we will focus on phonological variation in English. We will study methods of accent analysis and apply this knowledge in a practical approach: you will conduct your own research and get the opportunity to work with authentic data. In the course of the semester, you will learn to prepare, conduct, and record a sociolinguistic interview and to transcribe, code and analyze spoken language. The project work will be closely supervized and each step will be carefully guided in class.

Examination: Exam on February 12, 2026 or a project report due on March 31, 2026

Just like any other living language, English is neither geographically nor socially homogeneous. More often than not there are many ways of saying the "same thing". For instance, in English there are different possibilities of forming negative interrogatives with do-support: "Did you not know that?", "Didn't you know that?" and some speakers would even accept "Did not you know that?" Thus, variation is one of the fundamental characteristics of human language. Sociolinguistics, the study of language in society, investigates how social groups vary in their use of a language (for example, it is imaginable that "Did not you know that?" is used more by older speakers or more by women than by men) in different situations ("Didn't you know that?" is used much more in informal spoken than in formal written language), etc.
After reviewing basic principles and assumptions of synchronic sociolinguistics, this course will focus on historical sociolinguistics, i.e. the reconstruction and analysis of the sociolinguistic variation in earlier stages of English. We will familiarize ourselves with important databases and methods in historical sociolinguistics and look at some seminal studies. A substantial part of this course will be devoted to the practical analysis of historical English texts and text collections (corpora) from a historical sociolinguistic perspective.

Credit: Graded: Regular attendance, active participation in discussions and in-class tasks, in-class presentation and a final exam or term paper (tba). Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in discussions and in-class tasks, in-class presentation.
Final exam: 10.02.2026
Term paper submission according to the department-wide deadline: 31.03.2026

“Corpus linguistics is a research approach that facilitates empirical investigations of language variation and use, resulting in research findings that have much greater generalizability and validity than would otherwise be feasible.”
(Biber & Reppen 2015: 1)

Corpus linguistics as a tool can be used in many areas of linguistics, such as variation studies, contrastive and comparative linguistics, translation studies, and it can also play an important role in applied linguistics, for instance in language teaching.

In this seminar, students will (i) learn about the field of corpus linguistics, (ii) get to know a number of important (English) corpora, (iii) learn about tools and programs that facilitate the use of corpora and the analysis of corpus data (AntConc, Excel, R Studio), and (iv) start working on their own empirical corpus study (either in pairs/small groups or individually). This research project will be the basis for the term paper.

In order to analyze variation in English, for instance based on different foreign language learners of English, by comparing different varieties of English, genres or modes, students should have an understanding of the relevant terms and concepts of the different fields of linguistics (i.e., morphology, syntax, semantics, …). Furthermore, this is a learning-by-doing course introducing statistical methods based on topical linguistic problems. Ideally, students should have an interest in quantitative data analysis (and statistics). Prior knowledge is an asset but not a pre-requisite to successfully complete this course.

Reading: Reading material will be made available for download via Stud.IP [students receive access code during the first seminar session].

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, active participation in class, completion of weekly reading and/or exercise assignments, project presentation.

Graded credit: In addition to the above, a final exam or a term paper.

Exam period: Final exam on 10 February 2026; deadline for term paper submission on 15 March 2026.

This course is devoted to the exploration of the relationship between politics and language. We will critically discuss current political discourse in the Anglophone world surrounding topics such as the electoral politics, policies concerning immigration, health care, etc. In doing so, we will pay special attention to linguistic approaches to political discourse analysis, with an emphasis on those approaches closely aligned to Cognitive Linguistics (e.g., Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Moral Politics, Critical Discourse Analysis). We will also make use of corpus-based methodologies to analyze political speeches, (social) media-based discourse and political satire.

Exam: Feb. 12, 2026
or Term Paper: March 31, 2026

Building on the overview of the internal (linguistic) and external (socio-political and cultural) history of the English language dealt with in the introductory lectures, this course will introduce you to Late Modern English. This period, spanning the 18th and 19th centuries, is the forerunner of Present Day English. It was characterised by drastic social changes due to the Industrial Revolution, increased social and geographical mobility, urbanisation, continuing British overseas expansion and colonisation, growing literacy, the rise of new genres like the novel and the newspaper, to name but a few. Nevertheless, Late Modern English has been called the “Cinderella of historical linguistics” because the common assumption was that by 1700 English had essentially already reached the present-day stage. This is why historical linguists for a long time concentrated on earlier periods. While it is true that Late Modern English is more accessible to us than, say, Early Modern English (just compare the language of Jane Austen or Charles Dickens to that of Shakespeare), the structure of Late Modern English has seen quite a few, and in some cases sweeping, changes. Some of these are still ongoing today. In this course we will examine these changes in front of the backdrop of social changes outlined above.

Credit: Graded: Regular attendance, active participation in discussions and in-class tasks, in-class presentation and a final exam or term paper (tba). Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in discussions and in-class tasks, in-class presentation.
Final exam: 09.02.2026
Term paper submission according to the department-wide deadline: 31.03.2026

This class focuses on the field of pragmatics, i.e. the study of meaning in context. After review of the basic concepts and key terms, which you will be familiar with from your introductory course, we will dive deeper into various pragmatic phenomena, including implicature, reference, speech acts, etc. We will also consider broader social and cultural aspects that go into the study of pragmatics.

Exam Date: Feb. 11, 2026
or Term Paper: March 31, 2026

Sociolinguistics is the study of the relationship between language use and society. By examining how different people use language in different social settings, sociolinguists can learn about how language works, how social relationships work in a community, and how social identities can be conveyed and constructed through language use. In this seminar, students will learn about the factors that determine the different forms of a language by focusing on regional, social, and functional variation of English. They will also take a closer look at the role of social factors in speech perception.

Reading: Reading material will be made available for download via Stud.IP (students receive access code during the first seminar session).

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, active participation in class, completion of weekly reading and/or exercises, assignment, oral presentation.

Graded credit: In addition to the above, a final exam.

Exam period: Final exam on the 9th February 2026.

The study of text linguistics involves going beyond the level of the sentence, which we have previously viewed as the largest linguistic structure. Text linguistic study not only considers the structural aspects of texts, i.e. spoken and written texts, but also dives into the overriding social contexts, in which these texts are constructed. In this vein, this class also will focus on discourse analysis and its methodologies.

Exam Date: Feb. 12, 2026
or Term Paper: March 31, 2026

“English is a highly diversified language that appears in a multitude of varieties across the globe. These varieties may differ extensively in their structural properties.”
(Siemund 2013, back cover)

The term ‘World Englishes’ typically refers to non-native or second language varieties of English (also called ‘New Englishes’) part of what Kachru (1985) classified as ‘outer circle’ varieties of English; yet it could also encompass the ‘expanding circle’ varieties or even the ‘inner circle’ varieties (Filppula et al. 2017; Meshrie & Bhatt 2008; Wolf & Polzenhagen 2009). Typically, the plural form ‘Englishes’ is used to highlight the (systematic) diversity found in the uses of this language across the world (Meshrie & Bhatti 2008: 3). The two most prominent inner circle Englishes are British and American English. However, these are not the varieties we will focus on in this course. Instead, we will investigate outer circle (such as Indian or Nigerian English) or expanding circle varieties (for example English spoken in Korea or Japan). Advances in corpus linguistics as well as the availability of corpora including samples of naturally occurring language use other than of native Englishes allow for substantial investigations of world Englishes.

The aim of this course is to acquire an understanding of (i) the central models describing the evolution of varieties of English and (ii) patterns of development of selected World Englishes, and (iii) to empirically investigate structures/patterns/grammatical features with the help of corpora.

In order to successfully follow and complete the course it is necessary that you have taken and passed the course Introduction to English Linguistics.

Reading: Reading material will be made available for download via Stud.IP [students receive access code during the first seminar session].

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, active participation in class, completion of weekly reading and/or exercise assignments, project presentation.

Graded credit: In addition to the above, a final exam or a term paper.

Exam period: Final exam on 10 February 2026; deadline for term paper submission on 15 March 2026.

Epicentres in World Englishes are regional varieties of English that exhibit structural influences on neighbouring Englishes, i.e. it has – for instance – repeatedly been shown that Indian English can be regarded as influencing other varieties in South Asia such as Sri Lankan or Pakistani English. Epicentral configurations can consequently be found in South Asia, but also in Southeast Asia as well as in Australia and potentially in other parts of the world. The regional focus of this class is thus on Australasia and the notion of linguistic epicentres provides the framework against which the regional varieties are going to be presented.

In the course of this class, we will introduce central models describing the evolution of postcolonial/non-native varieties of English (e.g. Moag 1982; Kachru 1985; Schneider 2003, 2007) and discuss the notion of a linguistic epicentre in the World Englishes paradigm. Against this background and on the basis of structural and sociohistorical evidence, we will discuss the development and present-day structure-related as well as sociolinguistic profile of a selection of varieties in Australasia. Methodologically, we will explore different ways of a) empirically studying the structures and usage patterns that profile each of these Australasian Englishes in a unique way and b) trying to delineate epicentral configurations.

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

Reading: Reading material will be provided on closed reserve in the department library or will be made available for download via Stud.IP.

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, completion of reading and homework assignments, active participation in class and an oral presentation, which may involve group activities and class discussions, or a written report.
Graded credit: In addition to the above, a final exam or a term paper.

Exam period: Final exam on 11 February 2026; deadline for term paper submission: 15 March 2026.

In this seminar, we will focus on phonological variation in English. We will study methods of accent analysis and apply this knowledge in a practical approach: you will conduct your own research and get the opportunity to work with authentic data. In the course of the semester, you will learn to prepare, conduct, and record a sociolinguistic interview and to transcribe, code and analyze spoken language. The project work will be closely supervized and each step will be carefully guided in class.

Examination: Exam on February 12, 2026 or a project report due on March 31, 2026

Just like any other living language, English is neither geographically nor socially homogeneous. More often than not there are many ways of saying the "same thing". For instance, in English there are different possibilities of forming negative interrogatives with do-support: "Did you not know that?", "Didn't you know that?" and some speakers would even accept "Did not you know that?" Thus, variation is one of the fundamental characteristics of human language. Sociolinguistics, the study of language in society, investigates how social groups vary in their use of a language (for example, it is imaginable that "Did not you know that?" is used more by older speakers or more by women than by men) in different situations ("Didn't you know that?" is used much more in informal spoken than in formal written language), etc.
After reviewing basic principles and assumptions of synchronic sociolinguistics, this course will focus on historical sociolinguistics, i.e. the reconstruction and analysis of the sociolinguistic variation in earlier stages of English. We will familiarize ourselves with important databases and methods in historical sociolinguistics and look at some seminal studies. A substantial part of this course will be devoted to the practical analysis of historical English texts and text collections (corpora) from a historical sociolinguistic perspective.

Credit: Graded: Regular attendance, active participation in discussions and in-class tasks, in-class presentation and a final exam or term paper (tba). Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in discussions and in-class tasks, in-class presentation.
Final exam: 10.02.2026
Term paper submission according to the department-wide deadline: 31.03.2026

“Corpus linguistics is a research approach that facilitates empirical investigations of language variation and use, resulting in research findings that have much greater generalizability and validity than would otherwise be feasible.”
(Biber & Reppen 2015: 1)

Corpus linguistics as a tool can be used in many areas of linguistics, such as variation studies, contrastive and comparative linguistics, translation studies, and it can also play an important role in applied linguistics, for instance in language teaching.

In this seminar, students will (i) learn about the field of corpus linguistics, (ii) get to know a number of important (English) corpora, (iii) learn about tools and programs that facilitate the use of corpora and the analysis of corpus data (AntConc, Excel, R Studio), and (iv) start working on their own empirical corpus study (either in pairs/small groups or individually). This research project will be the basis for the term paper.

In order to analyze variation in English, for instance based on different foreign language learners of English, by comparing different varieties of English, genres or modes, students should have an understanding of the relevant terms and concepts of the different fields of linguistics (i.e., morphology, syntax, semantics, …). Furthermore, this is a learning-by-doing course introducing statistical methods based on topical linguistic problems. Ideally, students should have an interest in quantitative data analysis (and statistics). Prior knowledge is an asset but not a pre-requisite to successfully complete this course.

Reading: Reading material will be made available for download via Stud.IP [students receive access code during the first seminar session].

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, active participation in class, completion of weekly reading and/or exercise assignments, project presentation.

Graded credit: In addition to the above, a final exam or a term paper.

Exam period: Final exam on 10 February 2026; deadline for term paper submission on 15 March 2026.

This course is devoted to the exploration of the relationship between politics and language. We will critically discuss current political discourse in the Anglophone world surrounding topics such as the electoral politics, policies concerning immigration, health care, etc. In doing so, we will pay special attention to linguistic approaches to political discourse analysis, with an emphasis on those approaches closely aligned to Cognitive Linguistics (e.g., Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Moral Politics, Critical Discourse Analysis). We will also make use of corpus-based methodologies to analyze political speeches, (social) media-based discourse and political satire.

Exam: Feb. 12, 2026
or Term Paper: March 31, 2026

Building on the overview of the internal (linguistic) and external (socio-political and cultural) history of the English language dealt with in the introductory lectures, this course will introduce you to Late Modern English. This period, spanning the 18th and 19th centuries, is the forerunner of Present Day English. It was characterised by drastic social changes due to the Industrial Revolution, increased social and geographical mobility, urbanisation, continuing British overseas expansion and colonisation, growing literacy, the rise of new genres like the novel and the newspaper, to name but a few. Nevertheless, Late Modern English has been called the “Cinderella of historical linguistics” because the common assumption was that by 1700 English had essentially already reached the present-day stage. This is why historical linguists for a long time concentrated on earlier periods. While it is true that Late Modern English is more accessible to us than, say, Early Modern English (just compare the language of Jane Austen or Charles Dickens to that of Shakespeare), the structure of Late Modern English has seen quite a few, and in some cases sweeping, changes. Some of these are still ongoing today. In this course we will examine these changes in front of the backdrop of social changes outlined above.

Credit: Graded: Regular attendance, active participation in discussions and in-class tasks, in-class presentation and a final exam or term paper (tba). Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in discussions and in-class tasks, in-class presentation.
Final exam: 09.02.2026
Term paper submission according to the department-wide deadline: 31.03.2026

This class focuses on the field of pragmatics, i.e. the study of meaning in context. After review of the basic concepts and key terms, which you will be familiar with from your introductory course, we will dive deeper into various pragmatic phenomena, including implicature, reference, speech acts, etc. We will also consider broader social and cultural aspects that go into the study of pragmatics.

Exam Date: Feb. 11, 2026
or Term Paper: March 31, 2026

Sociolinguistics is the study of the relationship between language use and society. By examining how different people use language in different social settings, sociolinguists can learn about how language works, how social relationships work in a community, and how social identities can be conveyed and constructed through language use. In this seminar, students will learn about the factors that determine the different forms of a language by focusing on regional, social, and functional variation of English. They will also take a closer look at the role of social factors in speech perception.

Reading: Reading material will be made available for download via Stud.IP (students receive access code during the first seminar session).

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, active participation in class, completion of weekly reading and/or exercises, assignment, oral presentation.

Graded credit: In addition to the above, a final exam.

Exam period: Final exam on the 9th February 2026.

The study of text linguistics involves going beyond the level of the sentence, which we have previously viewed as the largest linguistic structure. Text linguistic study not only considers the structural aspects of texts, i.e. spoken and written texts, but also dives into the overriding social contexts, in which these texts are constructed. In this vein, this class also will focus on discourse analysis and its methodologies.

Exam Date: Feb. 12, 2026
or Term Paper: March 31, 2026

“English is a highly diversified language that appears in a multitude of varieties across the globe. These varieties may differ extensively in their structural properties.”
(Siemund 2013, back cover)

The term ‘World Englishes’ typically refers to non-native or second language varieties of English (also called ‘New Englishes’) part of what Kachru (1985) classified as ‘outer circle’ varieties of English; yet it could also encompass the ‘expanding circle’ varieties or even the ‘inner circle’ varieties (Filppula et al. 2017; Meshrie & Bhatt 2008; Wolf & Polzenhagen 2009). Typically, the plural form ‘Englishes’ is used to highlight the (systematic) diversity found in the uses of this language across the world (Meshrie & Bhatti 2008: 3). The two most prominent inner circle Englishes are British and American English. However, these are not the varieties we will focus on in this course. Instead, we will investigate outer circle (such as Indian or Nigerian English) or expanding circle varieties (for example English spoken in Korea or Japan). Advances in corpus linguistics as well as the availability of corpora including samples of naturally occurring language use other than of native Englishes allow for substantial investigations of world Englishes.

The aim of this course is to acquire an understanding of (i) the central models describing the evolution of varieties of English and (ii) patterns of development of selected World Englishes, and (iii) to empirically investigate structures/patterns/grammatical features with the help of corpora.

In order to successfully follow and complete the course it is necessary that you have taken and passed the course Introduction to English Linguistics.

Reading: Reading material will be made available for download via Stud.IP [students receive access code during the first seminar session].

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, active participation in class, completion of weekly reading and/or exercise assignments, project presentation.

Graded credit: In addition to the above, a final exam or a term paper.

Exam period: Final exam on 10 February 2026; deadline for term paper submission on 15 March 2026.

Epicentres in World Englishes are regional varieties of English that exhibit structural influences on neighbouring Englishes, i.e. it has – for instance – repeatedly been shown that Indian English can be regarded as influencing other varieties in South Asia such as Sri Lankan or Pakistani English. Epicentral configurations can consequently be found in South Asia, but also in Southeast Asia as well as in Australia and potentially in other parts of the world. The regional focus of this class is thus on Australasia and the notion of linguistic epicentres provides the framework against which the regional varieties are going to be presented.

In the course of this class, we will introduce central models describing the evolution of postcolonial/non-native varieties of English (e.g. Moag 1982; Kachru 1985; Schneider 2003, 2007) and discuss the notion of a linguistic epicentre in the World Englishes paradigm. Against this background and on the basis of structural and sociohistorical evidence, we will discuss the development and present-day structure-related as well as sociolinguistic profile of a selection of varieties in Australasia. Methodologically, we will explore different ways of a) empirically studying the structures and usage patterns that profile each of these Australasian Englishes in a unique way and b) trying to delineate epicentral configurations.

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

Reading: Reading material will be provided on closed reserve in the department library or will be made available for download via Stud.IP.

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, completion of reading and homework assignments, active participation in class and an oral presentation, which may involve group activities and class discussions, or a written report.
Graded credit: In addition to the above, a final exam or a term paper.

Exam period: Final exam on 11 February 2026; deadline for term paper submission: 15 March 2026.

In this seminar, we will focus on phonological variation in English. We will study methods of accent analysis and apply this knowledge in a practical approach: you will conduct your own research and get the opportunity to work with authentic data. In the course of the semester, you will learn to prepare, conduct, and record a sociolinguistic interview and to transcribe, code and analyze spoken language. The project work will be closely supervized and each step will be carefully guided in class.

Examination: Exam on February 12, 2026 or a project report due on March 31, 2026

“Corpus linguistics is a research approach that facilitates empirical investigations of language variation and use, resulting in research findings that have much greater generalizability and validity than would otherwise be feasible.”
(Biber & Reppen 2015: 1)

Corpus linguistics as a tool can be used in many areas of linguistics, such as variation studies, contrastive and comparative linguistics, translation studies, and it can also play an important role in applied linguistics, for instance in language teaching.

In this seminar, students will (i) learn about the field of corpus linguistics, (ii) get to know a number of important (English) corpora, (iii) learn about tools and programs that facilitate the use of corpora and the analysis of corpus data (AntConc, Excel, R Studio), and (iv) start working on their own empirical corpus study (either in pairs/small groups or individually). This research project will be the basis for the term paper.

In order to analyze variation in English, for instance based on different foreign language learners of English, by comparing different varieties of English, genres or modes, students should have an understanding of the relevant terms and concepts of the different fields of linguistics (i.e., morphology, syntax, semantics, …). Furthermore, this is a learning-by-doing course introducing statistical methods based on topical linguistic problems. Ideally, students should have an interest in quantitative data analysis (and statistics). Prior knowledge is an asset but not a pre-requisite to successfully complete this course.

Reading: Reading material will be made available for download via Stud.IP [students receive access code during the first seminar session].

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, active participation in class, completion of weekly reading and/or exercise assignments, project presentation.

Graded credit: In addition to the above, a final exam or a term paper.

Exam period: Final exam on 10 February 2026; deadline for term paper submission on 15 March 2026.

Building on the overview of the internal (linguistic) and external (socio-political and cultural) history of the English language dealt with in the introductory lectures, this course will introduce you to Late Modern English. This period, spanning the 18th and 19th centuries, is the forerunner of Present Day English. It was characterised by drastic social changes due to the Industrial Revolution, increased social and geographical mobility, urbanisation, continuing British overseas expansion and colonisation, growing literacy, the rise of new genres like the novel and the newspaper, to name but a few. Nevertheless, Late Modern English has been called the “Cinderella of historical linguistics” because the common assumption was that by 1700 English had essentially already reached the present-day stage. This is why historical linguists for a long time concentrated on earlier periods. While it is true that Late Modern English is more accessible to us than, say, Early Modern English (just compare the language of Jane Austen or Charles Dickens to that of Shakespeare), the structure of Late Modern English has seen quite a few, and in some cases sweeping, changes. Some of these are still ongoing today. In this course we will examine these changes in front of the backdrop of social changes outlined above.

Credit: Graded: Regular attendance, active participation in discussions and in-class tasks, in-class presentation and a final exam or term paper (tba). Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in discussions and in-class tasks, in-class presentation.
Final exam: 09.02.2026
Term paper submission according to the department-wide deadline: 31.03.2026

This class focuses on the field of pragmatics, i.e. the study of meaning in context. After review of the basic concepts and key terms, which you will be familiar with from your introductory course, we will dive deeper into various pragmatic phenomena, including implicature, reference, speech acts, etc. We will also consider broader social and cultural aspects that go into the study of pragmatics.

Exam Date: Feb. 11, 2026
or Term Paper: March 31, 2026

Sociolinguistics is the study of the relationship between language use and society. By examining how different people use language in different social settings, sociolinguists can learn about how language works, how social relationships work in a community, and how social identities can be conveyed and constructed through language use. In this seminar, students will learn about the factors that determine the different forms of a language by focusing on regional, social, and functional variation of English. They will also take a closer look at the role of social factors in speech perception.

Reading: Reading material will be made available for download via Stud.IP (students receive access code during the first seminar session).

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, active participation in class, completion of weekly reading and/or exercises, assignment, oral presentation.

Graded credit: In addition to the above, a final exam.

Exam period: Final exam on the 9th February 2026.

The study of text linguistics involves going beyond the level of the sentence, which we have previously viewed as the largest linguistic structure. Text linguistic study not only considers the structural aspects of texts, i.e. spoken and written texts, but also dives into the overriding social contexts, in which these texts are constructed. In this vein, this class also will focus on discourse analysis and its methodologies.

Exam Date: Feb. 12, 2026
or Term Paper: March 31, 2026

“English is a highly diversified language that appears in a multitude of varieties across the globe. These varieties may differ extensively in their structural properties.”
(Siemund 2013, back cover)

The term ‘World Englishes’ typically refers to non-native or second language varieties of English (also called ‘New Englishes’) part of what Kachru (1985) classified as ‘outer circle’ varieties of English; yet it could also encompass the ‘expanding circle’ varieties or even the ‘inner circle’ varieties (Filppula et al. 2017; Meshrie & Bhatt 2008; Wolf & Polzenhagen 2009). Typically, the plural form ‘Englishes’ is used to highlight the (systematic) diversity found in the uses of this language across the world (Meshrie & Bhatti 2008: 3). The two most prominent inner circle Englishes are British and American English. However, these are not the varieties we will focus on in this course. Instead, we will investigate outer circle (such as Indian or Nigerian English) or expanding circle varieties (for example English spoken in Korea or Japan). Advances in corpus linguistics as well as the availability of corpora including samples of naturally occurring language use other than of native Englishes allow for substantial investigations of world Englishes.

The aim of this course is to acquire an understanding of (i) the central models describing the evolution of varieties of English and (ii) patterns of development of selected World Englishes, and (iii) to empirically investigate structures/patterns/grammatical features with the help of corpora.

In order to successfully follow and complete the course it is necessary that you have taken and passed the course Introduction to English Linguistics.

Reading: Reading material will be made available for download via Stud.IP [students receive access code during the first seminar session].

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, active participation in class, completion of weekly reading and/or exercise assignments, project presentation.

Graded credit: In addition to the above, a final exam or a term paper.

Exam period: Final exam on 10 February 2026; deadline for term paper submission on 15 March 2026.

Welcome! When Todorov coined the French term 'narratologie' in 1969, he used the word in analogy to disciplines such as biology and sociology to convey the idea of a science of narrative. This lecture begins by zooming in on the development of classical structuralist narratology, which was, for instance, influenced by Russian formalism. In a second step, we will then focus on recent debates within the field of postclassical narratology. Among other things, we will look at new developments in the area of ethical and postcolonial narratology (compared to the 'older' rhetorical theory of narrative); crucial differences between first- and second-generation cognitive narratologists; the role of cognitive parameters vis-à-vis unnatural narratives; new approaches in the areas of feminist, queer, and transmedial narratologies; recent work on oral storytelling, small stories, and online storytelling; the narrativity of music, paintings, and dance performances; as well as the role of empirical studies. We will also discuss the question of what to do with these approaches, i.e., how to apply the theoretical frameworks to literary texts.

The lecture provides an overview of the development of Gothic literature from the late eighteenth- to the early twenty-first century, focusing predominantly (though not exclusively) on the Gothic novel. It pursues three key objectives: firstly, to familiarize attendees with major forms and subgenres of Gothic literature; secondly, to introduce key periods of literary history (as refracted through a Gothic lens); and, thirdly, to read Gothic texts as responses to cultural contexts and social anxieties. Each lecture will first introduce salient contexts for the topic at hand, then move on to a close reading of a sample text, and conclude with a brief summary and perspectives for further research. While the lecture mainly charts the evolution of Gothic literature in England, it will touch upon US-American and include postcolonial contexts the further we proceed diachronically.

In the twenty-first century, British theatre remains an artistic force to be reckoned with. Not only do new productions continue to be performed on national and international stages. The theatre also provides other creative industries with stage-trained actors, and some of the most celebrated screenwriters of our time (from Martin McDonagh and Lucy Prebble to Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Richard Gadd) have been socialized in the cultural environment of British theatre.

The seminar surveys some of the key forms, themes, and developments that have shaped British theatrical culture since the 1990s. Beginning with the impact of ‘in-yer-face theatre’, we are going to explore negotiations of mental health on the stage, responses to #metoo in legal drama, and the legacy of theatrical storytelling in recent TV series.

Participants are kindly asked to buy two plays: Martin McDonagh's The Beauty Queen of Leenane (1996) and Suzie Miller's Prima Facie (2019). All other course material is available on Stud.IP.

Please note that contemporary theatre often confronts audiences with highly uncomfortable and traumatic experiences, and that this applies – in different ways – to all of the productions we are going to discuss. It is paramount that we practice a form of communication which is attuned to the subject matter and mindful of the diversity of experiences assembled in our group.

This course explores the various adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe's seminal short story "The Fall of the House of Usher". We will analyze how different mediums, cultures, and time periods have interpreted and reimagined Poe's classic tale, examining the themes of decay, madness, and the supernatural that permeate the story.

T. S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf were almost exact contemporaries and are today seen as two leading figures of literary modernism. Even though Woolf critically observed in her diary „how sharp, narrow, & much of a stick Eliot has come to be, since he took to disliking me", they were also close friends and both readers and critics of each other's work. This seminar will trace correspondences and differences in their respective writings, looking at Eliot’s poetry, specifically the Four Quartets, and his critical work, the essays and autobiographical writings of Virginia Woolf and her novel To the Lighthouse (any edition is fine).

This course offers an introduction to the critical theory of Posthumanism and it uses it as a lens to analyze the representation of migration in contemporary literature. The course’s objective is to equip students with posthumanist critical tools to understand the phenomenon of migration through cultural practices. The Blockseminar will follow a trajectory that begins with the most pressing theoretical and conceptual concerns and ends with an opening onto the most creative and affirmative ways of thinking about migration through posthumanism. Each class focuses on a specific thematic thread. The first class will introduce migration and posthumanism. The final four intensive classes will be each focuses on the following topics:
1) Technology and Migration
2) Mastery (Dehumanism) and Migration
3) Nonhuman Migration
4) Other Forms of Migration
The course is heavily focused on critical theory and close reading exercises. We will study the primary texts closely with narratological rigor and paying specific attention to the formal aspects of the text.
By the end of the course, the students should be able to employ posthumanist thinking in their understanding of migration phenomena. More information is provided in the Syllabus document.

Since the mid-1990s, a peculiar trend has taken hold of US cinema. Films began telling stories in looping, reversible, fragmented, or parallel times, introduced impossible worlds that coexist, followed an opaque logic – or simply make it difficult to make sense of them. Collectively known as puzzle films, these productions introduce variations to classical storytelling, challenge Hollywood conventions, and pose questions that confuse viewers. In this course, we take a closer look at the phenomenon of puzzle films, how they work, what their effects are on viewers, and why they continue to be popular. The course requires students to watch one film per week, including key examples such as Christopher Nolan’s Memento and Inception, and more recent representatives such as Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things. We will also consider the trend beyond Hollywood to look at its origins in European art cinema, such as in Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane and Alain Resnais’ L’Année Dernière à Marienbad, as well as its spillover into television, as seen in Noah Hawley's Legion or Sam Esmail's Mr. Robot. By the end of the course, participants will be able to identify different forms of narrative complexity and film-specific strategies that challenge viewers’ understanding, possible reasons for the trend and its appeal, and how we can cope with these films, both while watching and when analyzing them.

This seminar will concentrate on the work of Thomas Hardy. We will explore Hardy's thematic concerns, literary techniques, and examine the engagement with social issues inherent in his real-and-imagined worldmaking of "Wessex". A reader with all texts will be available through StudIP from the beginning of term, students will be asked to buy one of his novels.

In the twenty-first century, British theatre remains an artistic force to be reckoned with. Not only do new productions continue to be performed on national and international stages. The theatre also provides other creative industries with stage-trained actors, and some of the most celebrated screenwriters of our time (from Martin McDonagh and Lucy Prebble to Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Richard Gadd) have been socialized in the cultural environment of British theatre.

The seminar surveys some of the key forms, themes, and developments that have shaped British theatrical culture since the 1990s. Beginning with the impact of ‘in-yer-face theatre’, we are going to explore negotiations of mental health on the stage, responses to #metoo in legal drama, and the legacy of theatrical storytelling in recent TV series.

Participants are kindly asked to buy two plays: Martin McDonagh's The Beauty Queen of Leenane (1996) and Suzie Miller's Prima Facie (2019). All other course material is available on Stud.IP.

Please note that contemporary theatre often confronts audiences with highly uncomfortable and traumatic experiences, and that this applies – in different ways – to all of the productions we are going to discuss. It is paramount that we practice a form of communication which is attuned to the subject matter and mindful of the diversity of experiences assembled in our group.

This course explores the various adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe's seminal short story "The Fall of the House of Usher". We will analyze how different mediums, cultures, and time periods have interpreted and reimagined Poe's classic tale, examining the themes of decay, madness, and the supernatural that permeate the story.

T. S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf were almost exact contemporaries and are today seen as two leading figures of literary modernism. Even though Woolf critically observed in her diary „how sharp, narrow, & much of a stick Eliot has come to be, since he took to disliking me", they were also close friends and both readers and critics of each other's work. This seminar will trace correspondences and differences in their respective writings, looking at Eliot’s poetry, specifically the Four Quartets, and his critical work, the essays and autobiographical writings of Virginia Woolf and her novel To the Lighthouse (any edition is fine).

This course offers an introduction to the critical theory of Posthumanism and it uses it as a lens to analyze the representation of migration in contemporary literature. The course’s objective is to equip students with posthumanist critical tools to understand the phenomenon of migration through cultural practices. The Blockseminar will follow a trajectory that begins with the most pressing theoretical and conceptual concerns and ends with an opening onto the most creative and affirmative ways of thinking about migration through posthumanism. Each class focuses on a specific thematic thread. The first class will introduce migration and posthumanism. The final four intensive classes will be each focuses on the following topics:
1) Technology and Migration
2) Mastery (Dehumanism) and Migration
3) Nonhuman Migration
4) Other Forms of Migration
The course is heavily focused on critical theory and close reading exercises. We will study the primary texts closely with narratological rigor and paying specific attention to the formal aspects of the text.
By the end of the course, the students should be able to employ posthumanist thinking in their understanding of migration phenomena. More information is provided in the Syllabus document.

Since the mid-1990s, a peculiar trend has taken hold of US cinema. Films began telling stories in looping, reversible, fragmented, or parallel times, introduced impossible worlds that coexist, followed an opaque logic – or simply make it difficult to make sense of them. Collectively known as puzzle films, these productions introduce variations to classical storytelling, challenge Hollywood conventions, and pose questions that confuse viewers. In this course, we take a closer look at the phenomenon of puzzle films, how they work, what their effects are on viewers, and why they continue to be popular. The course requires students to watch one film per week, including key examples such as Christopher Nolan’s Memento and Inception, and more recent representatives such as Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things. We will also consider the trend beyond Hollywood to look at its origins in European art cinema, such as in Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane and Alain Resnais’ L’Année Dernière à Marienbad, as well as its spillover into television, as seen in Noah Hawley's Legion or Sam Esmail's Mr. Robot. By the end of the course, participants will be able to identify different forms of narrative complexity and film-specific strategies that challenge viewers’ understanding, possible reasons for the trend and its appeal, and how we can cope with these films, both while watching and when analyzing them.

This seminar will concentrate on the work of Thomas Hardy. We will explore Hardy's thematic concerns, literary techniques, and examine the engagement with social issues inherent in his real-and-imagined worldmaking of "Wessex". A reader with all texts will be available through StudIP from the beginning of term, students will be asked to buy one of his novels.

This seminar will explore British poetry from the mid-20th century to the present day, focusing on the works of Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, George Mackay Brown, Simon Armitage, Liz Berry, Alice Oswald and others. Through close readings, critical analysis, and contextual studies, students will engage with the thematic, stylistic, and historical developments that have shaped British poetry over the past six decades. The course will emphasize the interplay between poetry and society, the relationship of poetry to the natural world, the role of the poet in contemporary society, and the evolution of poetic forms and techniques.

In the twenty-first century, British theatre remains an artistic force to be reckoned with. Not only do new productions continue to be performed on national and international stages. The theatre also provides other creative industries with stage-trained actors, and some of the most celebrated screenwriters of our time (from Martin McDonagh and Lucy Prebble to Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Richard Gadd) have been socialized in the cultural environment of British theatre.

The seminar surveys some of the key forms, themes, and developments that have shaped British theatrical culture since the 1990s. Beginning with the impact of ‘in-yer-face theatre’, we are going to explore negotiations of mental health on the stage, responses to #metoo in legal drama, and the legacy of theatrical storytelling in recent TV series.

Participants are kindly asked to buy two plays: Martin McDonagh's The Beauty Queen of Leenane (1996) and Suzie Miller's Prima Facie (2019). All other course material is available on Stud.IP.

Please note that contemporary theatre often confronts audiences with highly uncomfortable and traumatic experiences, and that this applies – in different ways – to all of the productions we are going to discuss. It is paramount that we practice a form of communication which is attuned to the subject matter and mindful of the diversity of experiences assembled in our group.

This course examines the cultural significance of dinosaurs from their scientific discovery to their portrayal in modern media. Students will explore how dinosaurs have been depicted in literature, film, art, and popular culture, and how these depictions reflect and influence societal attitudes towards science, nature, and the past.

This course explores the intersection of fashion and storytelling, examining how fashion communicates narratives, shapes identities, and influences culture.

T. S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf were almost exact contemporaries and are today seen as two leading figures of literary modernism. Even though Woolf critically observed in her diary „how sharp, narrow, & much of a stick Eliot has come to be, since he took to disliking me", they were also close friends and both readers and critics of each other's work. This seminar will trace correspondences and differences in their respective writings, looking at Eliot’s poetry, specifically the Four Quartets, and his critical work, the essays and autobiographical writings of Virginia Woolf and her novel To the Lighthouse (any edition is fine).

Since the mid-1990s, a peculiar trend has taken hold of US cinema. Films began telling stories in looping, reversible, fragmented, or parallel times, introduced impossible worlds that coexist, followed an opaque logic – or simply make it difficult to make sense of them. Collectively known as puzzle films, these productions introduce variations to classical storytelling, challenge Hollywood conventions, and pose questions that confuse viewers. In this course, we take a closer look at the phenomenon of puzzle films, how they work, what their effects are on viewers, and why they continue to be popular. The course requires students to watch one film per week, including key examples such as Christopher Nolan’s Memento and Inception, and more recent representatives such as Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things. We will also consider the trend beyond Hollywood to look at its origins in European art cinema, such as in Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane and Alain Resnais’ L’Année Dernière à Marienbad, as well as its spillover into television, as seen in Noah Hawley's Legion or Sam Esmail's Mr. Robot. By the end of the course, participants will be able to identify different forms of narrative complexity and film-specific strategies that challenge viewers’ understanding, possible reasons for the trend and its appeal, and how we can cope with these films, both while watching and when analyzing them.

This seminar will explore British poetry from the mid-20th century to the present day, focusing on the works of Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, George Mackay Brown, Simon Armitage, Liz Berry, Alice Oswald and others. Through close readings, critical analysis, and contextual studies, students will engage with the thematic, stylistic, and historical developments that have shaped British poetry over the past six decades. The course will emphasize the interplay between poetry and society, the relationship of poetry to the natural world, the role of the poet in contemporary society, and the evolution of poetic forms and techniques.

In the twenty-first century, British theatre remains an artistic force to be reckoned with. Not only do new productions continue to be performed on national and international stages. The theatre also provides other creative industries with stage-trained actors, and some of the most celebrated screenwriters of our time (from Martin McDonagh and Lucy Prebble to Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Richard Gadd) have been socialized in the cultural environment of British theatre.

The seminar surveys some of the key forms, themes, and developments that have shaped British theatrical culture since the 1990s. Beginning with the impact of ‘in-yer-face theatre’, we are going to explore negotiations of mental health on the stage, responses to #metoo in legal drama, and the legacy of theatrical storytelling in recent TV series.

Participants are kindly asked to buy two plays: Martin McDonagh's The Beauty Queen of Leenane (1996) and Suzie Miller's Prima Facie (2019). All other course material is available on Stud.IP.

Please note that contemporary theatre often confronts audiences with highly uncomfortable and traumatic experiences, and that this applies – in different ways – to all of the productions we are going to discuss. It is paramount that we practice a form of communication which is attuned to the subject matter and mindful of the diversity of experiences assembled in our group.

This course examines the cultural significance of dinosaurs from their scientific discovery to their portrayal in modern media. Students will explore how dinosaurs have been depicted in literature, film, art, and popular culture, and how these depictions reflect and influence societal attitudes towards science, nature, and the past.

This course explores the intersection of fashion and storytelling, examining how fashion communicates narratives, shapes identities, and influences culture.

T. S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf were almost exact contemporaries and are today seen as two leading figures of literary modernism. Even though Woolf critically observed in her diary „how sharp, narrow, & much of a stick Eliot has come to be, since he took to disliking me", they were also close friends and both readers and critics of each other's work. This seminar will trace correspondences and differences in their respective writings, looking at Eliot’s poetry, specifically the Four Quartets, and his critical work, the essays and autobiographical writings of Virginia Woolf and her novel To the Lighthouse (any edition is fine).

Since the mid-1990s, a peculiar trend has taken hold of US cinema. Films began telling stories in looping, reversible, fragmented, or parallel times, introduced impossible worlds that coexist, followed an opaque logic – or simply make it difficult to make sense of them. Collectively known as puzzle films, these productions introduce variations to classical storytelling, challenge Hollywood conventions, and pose questions that confuse viewers. In this course, we take a closer look at the phenomenon of puzzle films, how they work, what their effects are on viewers, and why they continue to be popular. The course requires students to watch one film per week, including key examples such as Christopher Nolan’s Memento and Inception, and more recent representatives such as Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things. We will also consider the trend beyond Hollywood to look at its origins in European art cinema, such as in Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane and Alain Resnais’ L’Année Dernière à Marienbad, as well as its spillover into television, as seen in Noah Hawley's Legion or Sam Esmail's Mr. Robot. By the end of the course, participants will be able to identify different forms of narrative complexity and film-specific strategies that challenge viewers’ understanding, possible reasons for the trend and its appeal, and how we can cope with these films, both while watching and when analyzing them.

The aim of Business English I is to familiarise students with various forms of communication in business settings, with an aim to hone students’ competence in effective, audience-oriented and professional English-language communication. Beginning with basic principles of communication and message planning, this course confronts students with various business and academic settings, for which students will learn to use specific forms of communication to achieve practical goals.
In the course of the semester, students should manage to complete an oral portfolio of individual and group oral presentations and an individual portfolio of written work, focusing on various communication goals (informative, persuasive, etc.) and using various communicative approaches (direct vs. indirect, routine vs. non-routine, informative, persuasive, bad news, etc.), registers (formal vs. informal, familiar vs. unfamiliar, etc.), types (written, spoken, verbal, nonverbal), and channels/communication technologies (meetings, letters, memos, emails, blogs, IMs, etc.) for various audiences (internal vs. external, top-down vs. bottom-up directionality, etc.). As the objective is to prepare students for careers in international contexts, intercultural aspects of professional communication are also addressed in the course and students will be able to analyse and discuss situations, discussing widely adopted models of intercultural dimensions. While style of communication is the central focus, students will also learn to format documents professionally. Finally, there is a large focus on constructive and supportive feedback-giving, as students learn to formulate their feedback in situation-appropriate ways.
Furthermore, students will improve their listening comprehension and be able to understand and discuss excerpts from dialogues, meetings and presentations that occur on a daily basis in business settings.
By the end of the course, students will be able to analyse and produce various genres of professional speaking and writing that they will encounter in their future careers in international settings (e.g. request letters, informative emails, bad news memos, digital service encounters, process presentations, persuasive sales presentations, constructive feedback).
In additional to the written, listening and oral tasks during this class, students will complete a final written exam at the end of the semester in which they are given a set of assignments to apply the concepts learned during the semester.

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

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Graded credit: Oral portfolio (40%), written portfolio (pass/fail), final exam (60%).

Exam period: Final exam on the 10th February 2026.

The aim of Business English I is to familiarize students with various forms of communication in business settings, with an aim to hone students’ competence in effective, audience-oriented and professional English-language communication. Beginning with basic principles of communication and message planning, this course confronts students with various business and academic settings, for which students will learn to use specific forms of communication to achieve practical goals.
In the course of the semester, students should manage to complete an oral portfolio of individual and group oral presentations and an individual portfolio of written work, focusing on various communication goals (informative, persuasive, etc.) and using various communicative approaches (direct vs. indirect, routine vs. non-routine, informative, persuasive, bad news, etc.), registers (formal vs. informal, familiar vs. unfamiliar, etc.), types (written, spoken, verbal, nonverbal), and channels/communication technologies (meetings, letters, memos, emails, blogs, IMs, etc.) for various audiences (internal vs. external, top-down vs. bottom-up directionality, etc.). As the objective is to prepare students for careers in international contexts, intercultural aspects of professional communication are also addressed in the course and students will be able to analyse and discuss situations, discussing widely adopted models of intercultural dimensions. While style of communication is the central focus, students will also learn to format documents professionally. Finally, there is a large focus on constructive and supportive feedback-giving, as students learn to formulate their feedback in situation-appropriate ways.
Furthermore, students will improve their listening comprehension and be able to understand and discuss excerpts from dialogues, meetings and presentations that occur on a daily basis in business settings.
By the end of the course, students will be able to analyse and produce various genres of professional speaking and writing that they will encounter in their future careers in international settings (e.g. request letters, informative emails, bad news memos, digital service encounters, process presentations, persuasive sales presentations, constructive feedback).
In additional to the written, listening and oral tasks during this class, students will complete a final written exam at the end of the semester in which they are given a set of assignments to apply the concepts learned during the semester.

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

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Graded credit: Oral portfolio (40%), written portfolio (pass/fail), final exam (60%)

Exam period: Final exam on the 10th February 2026.

The aim of Business English II is to familiarise students with the language of fundamental business concepts such as entrepreneurship, management and corporate culture, production, business strategy, marketing, finances, and a relationship with major stakeholders. Thus, this course will revolve around a central project, which will require that students form groups and develop their own business plan based on their own business ideas. Students will also “pitch” their business proposals in a persuasive oral presentation. Finally, students will listen to their classmates’ presentations and act as mock potential investors.

By the end of the course, students will have produced an abbreviated business plan, which will include such subcomponents as the executive summary, the mission statement, a simplified budget/cashflow chart, a SWOT analysis, as well as descriptions of the target market and marketing strategies.

Furthermore, students will have learned to deliver a persuasive presentation in which they will effectively convey key elements of their business plan using appropriate subject-related vocabulary and expressions, and other components of a business presentation (graphs and charts, statistics, organisational structures, etc.).


Reading: Reading material will be made available for download via Stud.IP (students will receive access code during the first seminar session).

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Graded credit: Regular attendance, active participation in class, completion of weekly reading and/or exercise assignments, business pitch – oral presentation (40%), a written business plan (pass/fail), and a final exam (60%).

Exam period: Final exam on February 12, 2026.

The aim of Business English II is to familiarise students with the language of fundamental business concepts such as entrepreneurship, management and corporate culture, production, business strategy, marketing, finances, and a relationship with major stakeholders. Thus, this course will revolve around a central project, which will require that students form groups and develop their own business plan based on their own business ideas. Students will also “pitch” their business proposals in a persuasive oral presentation. Finally, students will listen to their classmates’ presentations and act as mock potential investors.

By the end of the course, students will have produced an abbreviated business plan, which will include such subcomponents as the executive summary, the mission statement, a simplified budget/cashflow chart, a SWOT analysis, as well as descriptions of the target market and marketing strategies.

Furthermore, students will have learned to deliver a persuasive presentation in which they will effectively convey key elements of their business plan using appropriate subject-related vocabulary and expressions, and other components of a business presentation (graphs and charts, statistics, organisational structures, etc.).


Reading: Reading material will be made available for download via Stud.IP (students will receive access code during the first seminar session).

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Graded credit: Regular attendance, active participation in class, completion of weekly reading and/or exercise assignments, business pitch – oral presentation (40%), a written business plan (pass/fail), and a final exam (60%).

Exam period: Final exam on February 12, 2026.

This seminar will explore British poetry from the mid-20th century to the present day, focusing on the works of Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, George Mackay Brown, Simon Armitage, Liz Berry, Alice Oswald and others. Through close readings, critical analysis, and contextual studies, students will engage with the thematic, stylistic, and historical developments that have shaped British poetry over the past six decades. The course will emphasize the interplay between poetry and society, the relationship of poetry to the natural world, the role of the poet in contemporary society, and the evolution of poetic forms and techniques.

In the twenty-first century, British theatre remains an artistic force to be reckoned with. Not only do new productions continue to be performed on national and international stages. The theatre also provides other creative industries with stage-trained actors, and some of the most celebrated screenwriters of our time (from Martin McDonagh and Lucy Prebble to Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Richard Gadd) have been socialized in the cultural environment of British theatre.

The seminar surveys some of the key forms, themes, and developments that have shaped British theatrical culture since the 1990s. Beginning with the impact of ‘in-yer-face theatre’, we are going to explore negotiations of mental health on the stage, responses to #metoo in legal drama, and the legacy of theatrical storytelling in recent TV series.

Participants are kindly asked to buy two plays: Martin McDonagh's The Beauty Queen of Leenane (1996) and Suzie Miller's Prima Facie (2019). All other course material is available on Stud.IP.

Please note that contemporary theatre often confronts audiences with highly uncomfortable and traumatic experiences, and that this applies – in different ways – to all of the productions we are going to discuss. It is paramount that we practice a form of communication which is attuned to the subject matter and mindful of the diversity of experiences assembled in our group.

This course explores the intersection of fashion and storytelling, examining how fashion communicates narratives, shapes identities, and influences culture.

This course explores the various adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe's seminal short story "The Fall of the House of Usher". We will analyze how different mediums, cultures, and time periods have interpreted and reimagined Poe's classic tale, examining the themes of decay, madness, and the supernatural that permeate the story.

T. S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf were almost exact contemporaries and are today seen as two leading figures of literary modernism. Even though Woolf critically observed in her diary „how sharp, narrow, & much of a stick Eliot has come to be, since he took to disliking me", they were also close friends and both readers and critics of each other's work. This seminar will trace correspondences and differences in their respective writings, looking at Eliot’s poetry, specifically the Four Quartets, and his critical work, the essays and autobiographical writings of Virginia Woolf and her novel To the Lighthouse (any edition is fine).

Welcome!
This course introduces first-year students to the multicultural dimensions of Elizabethan drama. We will explore how playwrights such as William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and George Peele reflected the era’s expanding global awareness, often influenced by travel writings. Through literary analysis and close reading, we will examine how drama engaged with cultural encounters and exchanges, and why these works continue to be meaningful today.

This seminar will concentrate on the work of Thomas Hardy. We will explore Hardy's thematic concerns, literary techniques, and examine the engagement with social issues inherent in his real-and-imagined worldmaking of "Wessex". A reader with all texts will be available through StudIP from the beginning of term, students will be asked to buy one of his novels.

This seminar will explore British poetry from the mid-20th century to the present day, focusing on the works of Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, George Mackay Brown, Simon Armitage, Liz Berry, Alice Oswald and others. Through close readings, critical analysis, and contextual studies, students will engage with the thematic, stylistic, and historical developments that have shaped British poetry over the past six decades. The course will emphasize the interplay between poetry and society, the relationship of poetry to the natural world, the role of the poet in contemporary society, and the evolution of poetic forms and techniques.

In the twenty-first century, British theatre remains an artistic force to be reckoned with. Not only do new productions continue to be performed on national and international stages. The theatre also provides other creative industries with stage-trained actors, and some of the most celebrated screenwriters of our time (from Martin McDonagh and Lucy Prebble to Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Richard Gadd) have been socialized in the cultural environment of British theatre.

The seminar surveys some of the key forms, themes, and developments that have shaped British theatrical culture since the 1990s. Beginning with the impact of ‘in-yer-face theatre’, we are going to explore negotiations of mental health on the stage, responses to #metoo in legal drama, and the legacy of theatrical storytelling in recent TV series.

Participants are kindly asked to buy two plays: Martin McDonagh's The Beauty Queen of Leenane (1996) and Suzie Miller's Prima Facie (2019). All other course material is available on Stud.IP.

Please note that contemporary theatre often confronts audiences with highly uncomfortable and traumatic experiences, and that this applies – in different ways – to all of the productions we are going to discuss. It is paramount that we practice a form of communication which is attuned to the subject matter and mindful of the diversity of experiences assembled in our group.

This course explores the intersection of fashion and storytelling, examining how fashion communicates narratives, shapes identities, and influences culture.

This course explores the various adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe's seminal short story "The Fall of the House of Usher". We will analyze how different mediums, cultures, and time periods have interpreted and reimagined Poe's classic tale, examining the themes of decay, madness, and the supernatural that permeate the story.

T. S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf were almost exact contemporaries and are today seen as two leading figures of literary modernism. Even though Woolf critically observed in her diary „how sharp, narrow, & much of a stick Eliot has come to be, since he took to disliking me", they were also close friends and both readers and critics of each other's work. This seminar will trace correspondences and differences in their respective writings, looking at Eliot’s poetry, specifically the Four Quartets, and his critical work, the essays and autobiographical writings of Virginia Woolf and her novel To the Lighthouse (any edition is fine).

Welcome!
This course introduces first-year students to the multicultural dimensions of Elizabethan drama. We will explore how playwrights such as William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and George Peele reflected the era’s expanding global awareness, often influenced by travel writings. Through literary analysis and close reading, we will examine how drama engaged with cultural encounters and exchanges, and why these works continue to be meaningful today.

This seminar will concentrate on the work of Thomas Hardy. We will explore Hardy's thematic concerns, literary techniques, and examine the engagement with social issues inherent in his real-and-imagined worldmaking of "Wessex". A reader with all texts will be available through StudIP from the beginning of term, students will be asked to buy one of his novels.

This seminar will explore British poetry from the mid-20th century to the present day, focusing on the works of Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, George Mackay Brown, Simon Armitage, Liz Berry, Alice Oswald and others. Through close readings, critical analysis, and contextual studies, students will engage with the thematic, stylistic, and historical developments that have shaped British poetry over the past six decades. The course will emphasize the interplay between poetry and society, the relationship of poetry to the natural world, the role of the poet in contemporary society, and the evolution of poetic forms and techniques.

This course examines the cultural significance of dinosaurs from their scientific discovery to their portrayal in modern media. Students will explore how dinosaurs have been depicted in literature, film, art, and popular culture, and how these depictions reflect and influence societal attitudes towards science, nature, and the past.

This course explores the intersection of fashion and storytelling, examining how fashion communicates narratives, shapes identities, and influences culture.

T. S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf were almost exact contemporaries and are today seen as two leading figures of literary modernism. Even though Woolf critically observed in her diary „how sharp, narrow, & much of a stick Eliot has come to be, since he took to disliking me", they were also close friends and both readers and critics of each other's work. This seminar will trace correspondences and differences in their respective writings, looking at Eliot’s poetry, specifically the Four Quartets, and his critical work, the essays and autobiographical writings of Virginia Woolf and her novel To the Lighthouse (any edition is fine).

Welcome!
This course introduces first-year students to the multicultural dimensions of Elizabethan drama. We will explore how playwrights such as William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and George Peele reflected the era’s expanding global awareness, often influenced by travel writings. Through literary analysis and close reading, we will examine how drama engaged with cultural encounters and exchanges, and why these works continue to be meaningful today.

This course offers an introduction to the critical theory of Posthumanism and it uses it as a lens to analyze the representation of migration in contemporary literature. The course’s objective is to equip students with posthumanist critical tools to understand the phenomenon of migration through cultural practices. The Blockseminar will follow a trajectory that begins with the most pressing theoretical and conceptual concerns and ends with an opening onto the most creative and affirmative ways of thinking about migration through posthumanism. Each class focuses on a specific thematic thread. The first class will introduce migration and posthumanism. The final four intensive classes will be each focuses on the following topics:
1) Technology and Migration
2) Mastery (Dehumanism) and Migration
3) Nonhuman Migration
4) Other Forms of Migration
The course is heavily focused on critical theory and close reading exercises. We will study the primary texts closely with narratological rigor and paying specific attention to the formal aspects of the text.
By the end of the course, the students should be able to employ posthumanist thinking in their understanding of migration phenomena. More information is provided in the Syllabus document.

Since the mid-1990s, a peculiar trend has taken hold of US cinema. Films began telling stories in looping, reversible, fragmented, or parallel times, introduced impossible worlds that coexist, followed an opaque logic – or simply make it difficult to make sense of them. Collectively known as puzzle films, these productions introduce variations to classical storytelling, challenge Hollywood conventions, and pose questions that confuse viewers. In this course, we take a closer look at the phenomenon of puzzle films, how they work, what their effects are on viewers, and why they continue to be popular. The course requires students to watch one film per week, including key examples such as Christopher Nolan’s Memento and Inception, and more recent representatives such as Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things. We will also consider the trend beyond Hollywood to look at its origins in European art cinema, such as in Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane and Alain Resnais’ L’Année Dernière à Marienbad, as well as its spillover into television, as seen in Noah Hawley's Legion or Sam Esmail's Mr. Robot. By the end of the course, participants will be able to identify different forms of narrative complexity and film-specific strategies that challenge viewers’ understanding, possible reasons for the trend and its appeal, and how we can cope with these films, both while watching and when analyzing them.

This seminar will explore British poetry from the mid-20th century to the present day, focusing on the works of Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, George Mackay Brown, Simon Armitage, Liz Berry, Alice Oswald and others. Through close readings, critical analysis, and contextual studies, students will engage with the thematic, stylistic, and historical developments that have shaped British poetry over the past six decades. The course will emphasize the interplay between poetry and society, the relationship of poetry to the natural world, the role of the poet in contemporary society, and the evolution of poetic forms and techniques.

This course examines the cultural significance of dinosaurs from their scientific discovery to their portrayal in modern media. Students will explore how dinosaurs have been depicted in literature, film, art, and popular culture, and how these depictions reflect and influence societal attitudes towards science, nature, and the past.

This course explores the intersection of fashion and storytelling, examining how fashion communicates narratives, shapes identities, and influences culture.

T. S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf were almost exact contemporaries and are today seen as two leading figures of literary modernism. Even though Woolf critically observed in her diary „how sharp, narrow, & much of a stick Eliot has come to be, since he took to disliking me", they were also close friends and both readers and critics of each other's work. This seminar will trace correspondences and differences in their respective writings, looking at Eliot’s poetry, specifically the Four Quartets, and his critical work, the essays and autobiographical writings of Virginia Woolf and her novel To the Lighthouse (any edition is fine).

Welcome!
This course introduces first-year students to the multicultural dimensions of Elizabethan drama. We will explore how playwrights such as William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and George Peele reflected the era’s expanding global awareness, often influenced by travel writings. Through literary analysis and close reading, we will examine how drama engaged with cultural encounters and exchanges, and why these works continue to be meaningful today.

This course offers an introduction to the critical theory of Posthumanism and it uses it as a lens to analyze the representation of migration in contemporary literature. The course’s objective is to equip students with posthumanist critical tools to understand the phenomenon of migration through cultural practices. The Blockseminar will follow a trajectory that begins with the most pressing theoretical and conceptual concerns and ends with an opening onto the most creative and affirmative ways of thinking about migration through posthumanism. Each class focuses on a specific thematic thread. The first class will introduce migration and posthumanism. The final four intensive classes will be each focuses on the following topics:
1) Technology and Migration
2) Mastery (Dehumanism) and Migration
3) Nonhuman Migration
4) Other Forms of Migration
The course is heavily focused on critical theory and close reading exercises. We will study the primary texts closely with narratological rigor and paying specific attention to the formal aspects of the text.
By the end of the course, the students should be able to employ posthumanist thinking in their understanding of migration phenomena. More information is provided in the Syllabus document.

Since the mid-1990s, a peculiar trend has taken hold of US cinema. Films began telling stories in looping, reversible, fragmented, or parallel times, introduced impossible worlds that coexist, followed an opaque logic – or simply make it difficult to make sense of them. Collectively known as puzzle films, these productions introduce variations to classical storytelling, challenge Hollywood conventions, and pose questions that confuse viewers. In this course, we take a closer look at the phenomenon of puzzle films, how they work, what their effects are on viewers, and why they continue to be popular. The course requires students to watch one film per week, including key examples such as Christopher Nolan’s Memento and Inception, and more recent representatives such as Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things. We will also consider the trend beyond Hollywood to look at its origins in European art cinema, such as in Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane and Alain Resnais’ L’Année Dernière à Marienbad, as well as its spillover into television, as seen in Noah Hawley's Legion or Sam Esmail's Mr. Robot. By the end of the course, participants will be able to identify different forms of narrative complexity and film-specific strategies that challenge viewers’ understanding, possible reasons for the trend and its appeal, and how we can cope with these films, both while watching and when analyzing them.

In the twenty-first century, British theatre remains an artistic force to be reckoned with. Not only do new productions continue to be performed on national and international stages. The theatre also provides other creative industries with stage-trained actors, and some of the most celebrated screenwriters of our time (from Martin McDonagh and Lucy Prebble to Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Richard Gadd) have been socialized in the cultural environment of British theatre.

The seminar surveys some of the key forms, themes, and developments that have shaped British theatrical culture since the 1990s. Beginning with the impact of ‘in-yer-face theatre’, we are going to explore negotiations of mental health on the stage, responses to #metoo in legal drama, and the legacy of theatrical storytelling in recent TV series.

Participants are kindly asked to buy two plays: Martin McDonagh's The Beauty Queen of Leenane (1996) and Suzie Miller's Prima Facie (2019). All other course material is available on Stud.IP.

Please note that contemporary theatre often confronts audiences with highly uncomfortable and traumatic experiences, and that this applies – in different ways – to all of the productions we are going to discuss. It is paramount that we practice a form of communication which is attuned to the subject matter and mindful of the diversity of experiences assembled in our group.

This course offers an introduction to the critical theory of Posthumanism and it uses it as a lens to analyze the representation of migration in contemporary literature. The course’s objective is to equip students with posthumanist critical tools to understand the phenomenon of migration through cultural practices. The Blockseminar will follow a trajectory that begins with the most pressing theoretical and conceptual concerns and ends with an opening onto the most creative and affirmative ways of thinking about migration through posthumanism. Each class focuses on a specific thematic thread. The first class will introduce migration and posthumanism. The final four intensive classes will be each focuses on the following topics:
1) Technology and Migration
2) Mastery (Dehumanism) and Migration
3) Nonhuman Migration
4) Other Forms of Migration
The course is heavily focused on critical theory and close reading exercises. We will study the primary texts closely with narratological rigor and paying specific attention to the formal aspects of the text.
By the end of the course, the students should be able to employ posthumanist thinking in their understanding of migration phenomena. More information is provided in the Syllabus document.

Since the mid-1990s, a peculiar trend has taken hold of US cinema. Films began telling stories in looping, reversible, fragmented, or parallel times, introduced impossible worlds that coexist, followed an opaque logic – or simply make it difficult to make sense of them. Collectively known as puzzle films, these productions introduce variations to classical storytelling, challenge Hollywood conventions, and pose questions that confuse viewers. In this course, we take a closer look at the phenomenon of puzzle films, how they work, what their effects are on viewers, and why they continue to be popular. The course requires students to watch one film per week, including key examples such as Christopher Nolan’s Memento and Inception, and more recent representatives such as Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things. We will also consider the trend beyond Hollywood to look at its origins in European art cinema, such as in Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane and Alain Resnais’ L’Année Dernière à Marienbad, as well as its spillover into television, as seen in Noah Hawley's Legion or Sam Esmail's Mr. Robot. By the end of the course, participants will be able to identify different forms of narrative complexity and film-specific strategies that challenge viewers’ understanding, possible reasons for the trend and its appeal, and how we can cope with these films, both while watching and when analyzing them.

In the twenty-first century, British theatre remains an artistic force to be reckoned with. Not only do new productions continue to be performed on national and international stages. The theatre also provides other creative industries with stage-trained actors, and some of the most celebrated screenwriters of our time (from Martin McDonagh and Lucy Prebble to Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Richard Gadd) have been socialized in the cultural environment of British theatre.

The seminar surveys some of the key forms, themes, and developments that have shaped British theatrical culture since the 1990s. Beginning with the impact of ‘in-yer-face theatre’, we are going to explore negotiations of mental health on the stage, responses to #metoo in legal drama, and the legacy of theatrical storytelling in recent TV series.

Participants are kindly asked to buy two plays: Martin McDonagh's The Beauty Queen of Leenane (1996) and Suzie Miller's Prima Facie (2019). All other course material is available on Stud.IP.

Please note that contemporary theatre often confronts audiences with highly uncomfortable and traumatic experiences, and that this applies – in different ways – to all of the productions we are going to discuss. It is paramount that we practice a form of communication which is attuned to the subject matter and mindful of the diversity of experiences assembled in our group.

This course offers an introduction to the critical theory of Posthumanism and it uses it as a lens to analyze the representation of migration in contemporary literature. The course’s objective is to equip students with posthumanist critical tools to understand the phenomenon of migration through cultural practices. The Blockseminar will follow a trajectory that begins with the most pressing theoretical and conceptual concerns and ends with an opening onto the most creative and affirmative ways of thinking about migration through posthumanism. Each class focuses on a specific thematic thread. The first class will introduce migration and posthumanism. The final four intensive classes will be each focuses on the following topics:
1) Technology and Migration
2) Mastery (Dehumanism) and Migration
3) Nonhuman Migration
4) Other Forms of Migration
The course is heavily focused on critical theory and close reading exercises. We will study the primary texts closely with narratological rigor and paying specific attention to the formal aspects of the text.
By the end of the course, the students should be able to employ posthumanist thinking in their understanding of migration phenomena. More information is provided in the Syllabus document.

Since the mid-1990s, a peculiar trend has taken hold of US cinema. Films began telling stories in looping, reversible, fragmented, or parallel times, introduced impossible worlds that coexist, followed an opaque logic – or simply make it difficult to make sense of them. Collectively known as puzzle films, these productions introduce variations to classical storytelling, challenge Hollywood conventions, and pose questions that confuse viewers. In this course, we take a closer look at the phenomenon of puzzle films, how they work, what their effects are on viewers, and why they continue to be popular. The course requires students to watch one film per week, including key examples such as Christopher Nolan’s Memento and Inception, and more recent representatives such as Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things. We will also consider the trend beyond Hollywood to look at its origins in European art cinema, such as in Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane and Alain Resnais’ L’Année Dernière à Marienbad, as well as its spillover into television, as seen in Noah Hawley's Legion or Sam Esmail's Mr. Robot. By the end of the course, participants will be able to identify different forms of narrative complexity and film-specific strategies that challenge viewers’ understanding, possible reasons for the trend and its appeal, and how we can cope with these films, both while watching and when analyzing them.

This seminar will explore British poetry from the mid-20th century to the present day, focusing on the works of Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, George Mackay Brown, Simon Armitage, Liz Berry, Alice Oswald and others. Through close readings, critical analysis, and contextual studies, students will engage with the thematic, stylistic, and historical developments that have shaped British poetry over the past six decades. The course will emphasize the interplay between poetry and society, the relationship of poetry to the natural world, the role of the poet in contemporary society, and the evolution of poetic forms and techniques.

Welcome! When Todorov coined the French term 'narratologie' in 1969, he used the word in analogy to disciplines such as biology and sociology to convey the idea of a science of narrative. This lecture begins by zooming in on the development of classical structuralist narratology, which was, for instance, influenced by Russian formalism. In a second step, we will then focus on recent debates within the field of postclassical narratology. Among other things, we will look at new developments in the area of ethical and postcolonial narratology (compared to the 'older' rhetorical theory of narrative); crucial differences between first- and second-generation cognitive narratologists; the role of cognitive parameters vis-à-vis unnatural narratives; new approaches in the areas of feminist, queer, and transmedial narratologies; recent work on oral storytelling, small stories, and online storytelling; the narrativity of music, paintings, and dance performances; as well as the role of empirical studies. We will also discuss the question of what to do with these approaches, i.e., how to apply the theoretical frameworks to literary texts.

The lecture provides an overview of the development of Gothic literature from the late eighteenth- to the early twenty-first century, focusing predominantly (though not exclusively) on the Gothic novel. It pursues three key objectives: firstly, to familiarize attendees with major forms and subgenres of Gothic literature; secondly, to introduce key periods of literary history (as refracted through a Gothic lens); and, thirdly, to read Gothic texts as responses to cultural contexts and social anxieties. Each lecture will first introduce salient contexts for the topic at hand, then move on to a close reading of a sample text, and conclude with a brief summary and perspectives for further research. While the lecture mainly charts the evolution of Gothic literature in England, it will touch upon US-American and include postcolonial contexts the further we proceed diachronically.

This seminar will explore British poetry from the mid-20th century to the present day, focusing on the works of Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, George Mackay Brown, Simon Armitage, Liz Berry, Alice Oswald and others. Through close readings, critical analysis, and contextual studies, students will engage with the thematic, stylistic, and historical developments that have shaped British poetry over the past six decades. The course will emphasize the interplay between poetry and society, the relationship of poetry to the natural world, the role of the poet in contemporary society, and the evolution of poetic forms and techniques.

In the twenty-first century, British theatre remains an artistic force to be reckoned with. Not only do new productions continue to be performed on national and international stages. The theatre also provides other creative industries with stage-trained actors, and some of the most celebrated screenwriters of our time (from Martin McDonagh and Lucy Prebble to Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Richard Gadd) have been socialized in the cultural environment of British theatre.

The seminar surveys some of the key forms, themes, and developments that have shaped British theatrical culture since the 1990s. Beginning with the impact of ‘in-yer-face theatre’, we are going to explore negotiations of mental health on the stage, responses to #metoo in legal drama, and the legacy of theatrical storytelling in recent TV series.

Participants are kindly asked to buy two plays: Martin McDonagh's The Beauty Queen of Leenane (1996) and Suzie Miller's Prima Facie (2019). All other course material is available on Stud.IP.

Please note that contemporary theatre often confronts audiences with highly uncomfortable and traumatic experiences, and that this applies – in different ways – to all of the productions we are going to discuss. It is paramount that we practice a form of communication which is attuned to the subject matter and mindful of the diversity of experiences assembled in our group.

This course explores the various adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe's seminal short story "The Fall of the House of Usher". We will analyze how different mediums, cultures, and time periods have interpreted and reimagined Poe's classic tale, examining the themes of decay, madness, and the supernatural that permeate the story.

This course offers an introduction to the critical theory of Posthumanism and it uses it as a lens to analyze the representation of migration in contemporary literature. The course’s objective is to equip students with posthumanist critical tools to understand the phenomenon of migration through cultural practices. The Blockseminar will follow a trajectory that begins with the most pressing theoretical and conceptual concerns and ends with an opening onto the most creative and affirmative ways of thinking about migration through posthumanism. Each class focuses on a specific thematic thread. The first class will introduce migration and posthumanism. The final four intensive classes will be each focuses on the following topics:
1) Technology and Migration
2) Mastery (Dehumanism) and Migration
3) Nonhuman Migration
4) Other Forms of Migration
The course is heavily focused on critical theory and close reading exercises. We will study the primary texts closely with narratological rigor and paying specific attention to the formal aspects of the text.
By the end of the course, the students should be able to employ posthumanist thinking in their understanding of migration phenomena. More information is provided in the Syllabus document.

Since the mid-1990s, a peculiar trend has taken hold of US cinema. Films began telling stories in looping, reversible, fragmented, or parallel times, introduced impossible worlds that coexist, followed an opaque logic – or simply make it difficult to make sense of them. Collectively known as puzzle films, these productions introduce variations to classical storytelling, challenge Hollywood conventions, and pose questions that confuse viewers. In this course, we take a closer look at the phenomenon of puzzle films, how they work, what their effects are on viewers, and why they continue to be popular. The course requires students to watch one film per week, including key examples such as Christopher Nolan’s Memento and Inception, and more recent representatives such as Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things. We will also consider the trend beyond Hollywood to look at its origins in European art cinema, such as in Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane and Alain Resnais’ L’Année Dernière à Marienbad, as well as its spillover into television, as seen in Noah Hawley's Legion or Sam Esmail's Mr. Robot. By the end of the course, participants will be able to identify different forms of narrative complexity and film-specific strategies that challenge viewers’ understanding, possible reasons for the trend and its appeal, and how we can cope with these films, both while watching and when analyzing them.

Just like any other living language, English is neither geographically nor socially homogeneous. More often than not there are many ways of saying the "same thing". For instance, in English there are different possibilities of forming negative interrogatives with do-support: "Did you not know that?", "Didn't you know that?" and some speakers would even accept "Did not you know that?" Variation has always been a fundamental characteristics of human language. It is the prerequisite for most language changes in that one variant in the variation (e.g. 1. "Did you not know that?", 2. "Didn't you know that?", 3. "Did not you know that?") may become preferred by language users and eventually replace one or more of the other variants.
In this lecture, we will have a closer look at selected sound, morphological and syntactic changes from pre-Old English to Present Day English.

No final exam; ungraded credit only.

In this seminar, we will focus on phonological variation in English. We will study methods of accent analysis and apply this knowledge in a practical approach: you will conduct your own research and get the opportunity to work with authentic data. In the course of the semester, you will learn to prepare, conduct, and record a sociolinguistic interview and to transcribe, code and analyze spoken language. The project work will be closely supervized and each step will be carefully guided in class.

Examination: Exam on February 12, 2026 or a project report due on March 31, 2026

Just like any other living language, English is neither geographically nor socially homogeneous. More often than not there are many ways of saying the "same thing". For instance, in English there are different possibilities of forming negative interrogatives with do-support: "Did you not know that?", "Didn't you know that?" and some speakers would even accept "Did not you know that?" Thus, variation is one of the fundamental characteristics of human language. Sociolinguistics, the study of language in society, investigates how social groups vary in their use of a language (for example, it is imaginable that "Did not you know that?" is used more by older speakers or more by women than by men) in different situations ("Didn't you know that?" is used much more in informal spoken than in formal written language), etc.
After reviewing basic principles and assumptions of synchronic sociolinguistics, this course will focus on historical sociolinguistics, i.e. the reconstruction and analysis of the sociolinguistic variation in earlier stages of English. We will familiarize ourselves with important databases and methods in historical sociolinguistics and look at some seminal studies. A substantial part of this course will be devoted to the practical analysis of historical English texts and text collections (corpora) from a historical sociolinguistic perspective.

Credit: Graded: Regular attendance, active participation in discussions and in-class tasks, in-class presentation and a final exam or term paper (tba). Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in discussions and in-class tasks, in-class presentation.
Final exam: 10.02.2026
Term paper submission according to the department-wide deadline: 31.03.2026

“Corpus linguistics is a research approach that facilitates empirical investigations of language variation and use, resulting in research findings that have much greater generalizability and validity than would otherwise be feasible.”
(Biber & Reppen 2015: 1)

Corpus linguistics as a tool can be used in many areas of linguistics, such as variation studies, contrastive and comparative linguistics, translation studies, and it can also play an important role in applied linguistics, for instance in language teaching.

In this seminar, students will (i) learn about the field of corpus linguistics, (ii) get to know a number of important (English) corpora, (iii) learn about tools and programs that facilitate the use of corpora and the analysis of corpus data (AntConc, Excel, R Studio), and (iv) start working on their own empirical corpus study (either in pairs/small groups or individually). This research project will be the basis for the term paper.

In order to analyze variation in English, for instance based on different foreign language learners of English, by comparing different varieties of English, genres or modes, students should have an understanding of the relevant terms and concepts of the different fields of linguistics (i.e., morphology, syntax, semantics, …). Furthermore, this is a learning-by-doing course introducing statistical methods based on topical linguistic problems. Ideally, students should have an interest in quantitative data analysis (and statistics). Prior knowledge is an asset but not a pre-requisite to successfully complete this course.

Reading: Reading material will be made available for download via Stud.IP [students receive access code during the first seminar session].

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, active participation in class, completion of weekly reading and/or exercise assignments, project presentation.

Graded credit: In addition to the above, a final exam or a term paper.

Exam period: Final exam on 10 February 2026; deadline for term paper submission on 15 March 2026.

This course is devoted to the exploration of the relationship between politics and language. We will critically discuss current political discourse in the Anglophone world surrounding topics such as the electoral politics, policies concerning immigration, health care, etc. In doing so, we will pay special attention to linguistic approaches to political discourse analysis, with an emphasis on those approaches closely aligned to Cognitive Linguistics (e.g., Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Moral Politics, Critical Discourse Analysis). We will also make use of corpus-based methodologies to analyze political speeches, (social) media-based discourse and political satire.

Exam: Feb. 12, 2026
or Term Paper: March 31, 2026

Building on the overview of the internal (linguistic) and external (socio-political and cultural) history of the English language dealt with in the introductory lectures, this course will introduce you to Late Modern English. This period, spanning the 18th and 19th centuries, is the forerunner of Present Day English. It was characterised by drastic social changes due to the Industrial Revolution, increased social and geographical mobility, urbanisation, continuing British overseas expansion and colonisation, growing literacy, the rise of new genres like the novel and the newspaper, to name but a few. Nevertheless, Late Modern English has been called the “Cinderella of historical linguistics” because the common assumption was that by 1700 English had essentially already reached the present-day stage. This is why historical linguists for a long time concentrated on earlier periods. While it is true that Late Modern English is more accessible to us than, say, Early Modern English (just compare the language of Jane Austen or Charles Dickens to that of Shakespeare), the structure of Late Modern English has seen quite a few, and in some cases sweeping, changes. Some of these are still ongoing today. In this course we will examine these changes in front of the backdrop of social changes outlined above.

Credit: Graded: Regular attendance, active participation in discussions and in-class tasks, in-class presentation and a final exam or term paper (tba). Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in discussions and in-class tasks, in-class presentation.
Final exam: 09.02.2026
Term paper submission according to the department-wide deadline: 31.03.2026

This class focuses on the field of pragmatics, i.e. the study of meaning in context. After review of the basic concepts and key terms, which you will be familiar with from your introductory course, we will dive deeper into various pragmatic phenomena, including implicature, reference, speech acts, etc. We will also consider broader social and cultural aspects that go into the study of pragmatics.

Exam Date: Feb. 11, 2026
or Term Paper: March 31, 2026

Sociolinguistics is the study of the relationship between language use and society. By examining how different people use language in different social settings, sociolinguists can learn about how language works, how social relationships work in a community, and how social identities can be conveyed and constructed through language use. In this seminar, students will learn about the factors that determine the different forms of a language by focusing on regional, social, and functional variation of English. They will also take a closer look at the role of social factors in speech perception.

Reading: Reading material will be made available for download via Stud.IP (students receive access code during the first seminar session).

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, active participation in class, completion of weekly reading and/or exercises, assignment, oral presentation.

Graded credit: In addition to the above, a final exam.

Exam period: Final exam on the 9th February 2026.

The study of text linguistics involves going beyond the level of the sentence, which we have previously viewed as the largest linguistic structure. Text linguistic study not only considers the structural aspects of texts, i.e. spoken and written texts, but also dives into the overriding social contexts, in which these texts are constructed. In this vein, this class also will focus on discourse analysis and its methodologies.

Exam Date: Feb. 12, 2026
or Term Paper: March 31, 2026

“English is a highly diversified language that appears in a multitude of varieties across the globe. These varieties may differ extensively in their structural properties.”
(Siemund 2013, back cover)

The term ‘World Englishes’ typically refers to non-native or second language varieties of English (also called ‘New Englishes’) part of what Kachru (1985) classified as ‘outer circle’ varieties of English; yet it could also encompass the ‘expanding circle’ varieties or even the ‘inner circle’ varieties (Filppula et al. 2017; Meshrie & Bhatt 2008; Wolf & Polzenhagen 2009). Typically, the plural form ‘Englishes’ is used to highlight the (systematic) diversity found in the uses of this language across the world (Meshrie & Bhatti 2008: 3). The two most prominent inner circle Englishes are British and American English. However, these are not the varieties we will focus on in this course. Instead, we will investigate outer circle (such as Indian or Nigerian English) or expanding circle varieties (for example English spoken in Korea or Japan). Advances in corpus linguistics as well as the availability of corpora including samples of naturally occurring language use other than of native Englishes allow for substantial investigations of world Englishes.

The aim of this course is to acquire an understanding of (i) the central models describing the evolution of varieties of English and (ii) patterns of development of selected World Englishes, and (iii) to empirically investigate structures/patterns/grammatical features with the help of corpora.

In order to successfully follow and complete the course it is necessary that you have taken and passed the course Introduction to English Linguistics.

Reading: Reading material will be made available for download via Stud.IP [students receive access code during the first seminar session].

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, active participation in class, completion of weekly reading and/or exercise assignments, project presentation.

Graded credit: In addition to the above, a final exam or a term paper.

Exam period: Final exam on 10 February 2026; deadline for term paper submission on 15 March 2026.

Epicentres in World Englishes are regional varieties of English that exhibit structural influences on neighbouring Englishes, i.e. it has – for instance – repeatedly been shown that Indian English can be regarded as influencing other varieties in South Asia such as Sri Lankan or Pakistani English. Epicentral configurations can consequently be found in South Asia, but also in Southeast Asia as well as in Australia and potentially in other parts of the world. The regional focus of this class is thus on Australasia and the notion of linguistic epicentres provides the framework against which the regional varieties are going to be presented.

In the course of this class, we will introduce central models describing the evolution of postcolonial/non-native varieties of English (e.g. Moag 1982; Kachru 1985; Schneider 2003, 2007) and discuss the notion of a linguistic epicentre in the World Englishes paradigm. Against this background and on the basis of structural and sociohistorical evidence, we will discuss the development and present-day structure-related as well as sociolinguistic profile of a selection of varieties in Australasia. Methodologically, we will explore different ways of a) empirically studying the structures and usage patterns that profile each of these Australasian Englishes in a unique way and b) trying to delineate epicentral configurations.

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

Reading: Reading material will be provided on closed reserve in the department library or will be made available for download via Stud.IP.

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, completion of reading and homework assignments, active participation in class and an oral presentation, which may involve group activities and class discussions, or a written report.
Graded credit: In addition to the above, a final exam or a term paper.

Exam period: Final exam on 11 February 2026; deadline for term paper submission: 15 March 2026.

In this seminar, we will focus on phonological variation in English. We will study methods of accent analysis and apply this knowledge in a practical approach: you will conduct your own research and get the opportunity to work with authentic data. In the course of the semester, you will learn to prepare, conduct, and record a sociolinguistic interview and to transcribe, code and analyze spoken language. The project work will be closely supervized and each step will be carefully guided in class.

Examination: Exam on February 12, 2026 or a project report due on March 31, 2026

Just like any other living language, English is neither geographically nor socially homogeneous. More often than not there are many ways of saying the "same thing". For instance, in English there are different possibilities of forming negative interrogatives with do-support: "Did you not know that?", "Didn't you know that?" and some speakers would even accept "Did not you know that?" Thus, variation is one of the fundamental characteristics of human language. Sociolinguistics, the study of language in society, investigates how social groups vary in their use of a language (for example, it is imaginable that "Did not you know that?" is used more by older speakers or more by women than by men) in different situations ("Didn't you know that?" is used much more in informal spoken than in formal written language), etc.
After reviewing basic principles and assumptions of synchronic sociolinguistics, this course will focus on historical sociolinguistics, i.e. the reconstruction and analysis of the sociolinguistic variation in earlier stages of English. We will familiarize ourselves with important databases and methods in historical sociolinguistics and look at some seminal studies. A substantial part of this course will be devoted to the practical analysis of historical English texts and text collections (corpora) from a historical sociolinguistic perspective.

Credit: Graded: Regular attendance, active participation in discussions and in-class tasks, in-class presentation and a final exam or term paper (tba). Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in discussions and in-class tasks, in-class presentation.
Final exam: 10.02.2026
Term paper submission according to the department-wide deadline: 31.03.2026

“Corpus linguistics is a research approach that facilitates empirical investigations of language variation and use, resulting in research findings that have much greater generalizability and validity than would otherwise be feasible.”
(Biber & Reppen 2015: 1)

Corpus linguistics as a tool can be used in many areas of linguistics, such as variation studies, contrastive and comparative linguistics, translation studies, and it can also play an important role in applied linguistics, for instance in language teaching.

In this seminar, students will (i) learn about the field of corpus linguistics, (ii) get to know a number of important (English) corpora, (iii) learn about tools and programs that facilitate the use of corpora and the analysis of corpus data (AntConc, Excel, R Studio), and (iv) start working on their own empirical corpus study (either in pairs/small groups or individually). This research project will be the basis for the term paper.

In order to analyze variation in English, for instance based on different foreign language learners of English, by comparing different varieties of English, genres or modes, students should have an understanding of the relevant terms and concepts of the different fields of linguistics (i.e., morphology, syntax, semantics, …). Furthermore, this is a learning-by-doing course introducing statistical methods based on topical linguistic problems. Ideally, students should have an interest in quantitative data analysis (and statistics). Prior knowledge is an asset but not a pre-requisite to successfully complete this course.

Reading: Reading material will be made available for download via Stud.IP [students receive access code during the first seminar session].

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, active participation in class, completion of weekly reading and/or exercise assignments, project presentation.

Graded credit: In addition to the above, a final exam or a term paper.

Exam period: Final exam on 10 February 2026; deadline for term paper submission on 15 March 2026.

This course is devoted to the exploration of the relationship between politics and language. We will critically discuss current political discourse in the Anglophone world surrounding topics such as the electoral politics, policies concerning immigration, health care, etc. In doing so, we will pay special attention to linguistic approaches to political discourse analysis, with an emphasis on those approaches closely aligned to Cognitive Linguistics (e.g., Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Moral Politics, Critical Discourse Analysis). We will also make use of corpus-based methodologies to analyze political speeches, (social) media-based discourse and political satire.

Exam: Feb. 12, 2026
or Term Paper: March 31, 2026

Building on the overview of the internal (linguistic) and external (socio-political and cultural) history of the English language dealt with in the introductory lectures, this course will introduce you to Late Modern English. This period, spanning the 18th and 19th centuries, is the forerunner of Present Day English. It was characterised by drastic social changes due to the Industrial Revolution, increased social and geographical mobility, urbanisation, continuing British overseas expansion and colonisation, growing literacy, the rise of new genres like the novel and the newspaper, to name but a few. Nevertheless, Late Modern English has been called the “Cinderella of historical linguistics” because the common assumption was that by 1700 English had essentially already reached the present-day stage. This is why historical linguists for a long time concentrated on earlier periods. While it is true that Late Modern English is more accessible to us than, say, Early Modern English (just compare the language of Jane Austen or Charles Dickens to that of Shakespeare), the structure of Late Modern English has seen quite a few, and in some cases sweeping, changes. Some of these are still ongoing today. In this course we will examine these changes in front of the backdrop of social changes outlined above.

Credit: Graded: Regular attendance, active participation in discussions and in-class tasks, in-class presentation and a final exam or term paper (tba). Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in discussions and in-class tasks, in-class presentation.
Final exam: 09.02.2026
Term paper submission according to the department-wide deadline: 31.03.2026

This class focuses on the field of pragmatics, i.e. the study of meaning in context. After review of the basic concepts and key terms, which you will be familiar with from your introductory course, we will dive deeper into various pragmatic phenomena, including implicature, reference, speech acts, etc. We will also consider broader social and cultural aspects that go into the study of pragmatics.

Exam Date: Feb. 11, 2026
or Term Paper: March 31, 2026

Sociolinguistics is the study of the relationship between language use and society. By examining how different people use language in different social settings, sociolinguists can learn about how language works, how social relationships work in a community, and how social identities can be conveyed and constructed through language use. In this seminar, students will learn about the factors that determine the different forms of a language by focusing on regional, social, and functional variation of English. They will also take a closer look at the role of social factors in speech perception.

Reading: Reading material will be made available for download via Stud.IP (students receive access code during the first seminar session).

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, active participation in class, completion of weekly reading and/or exercises, assignment, oral presentation.

Graded credit: In addition to the above, a final exam.

Exam period: Final exam on the 9th February 2026.

The study of text linguistics involves going beyond the level of the sentence, which we have previously viewed as the largest linguistic structure. Text linguistic study not only considers the structural aspects of texts, i.e. spoken and written texts, but also dives into the overriding social contexts, in which these texts are constructed. In this vein, this class also will focus on discourse analysis and its methodologies.

Exam Date: Feb. 12, 2026
or Term Paper: March 31, 2026

“English is a highly diversified language that appears in a multitude of varieties across the globe. These varieties may differ extensively in their structural properties.”
(Siemund 2013, back cover)

The term ‘World Englishes’ typically refers to non-native or second language varieties of English (also called ‘New Englishes’) part of what Kachru (1985) classified as ‘outer circle’ varieties of English; yet it could also encompass the ‘expanding circle’ varieties or even the ‘inner circle’ varieties (Filppula et al. 2017; Meshrie & Bhatt 2008; Wolf & Polzenhagen 2009). Typically, the plural form ‘Englishes’ is used to highlight the (systematic) diversity found in the uses of this language across the world (Meshrie & Bhatti 2008: 3). The two most prominent inner circle Englishes are British and American English. However, these are not the varieties we will focus on in this course. Instead, we will investigate outer circle (such as Indian or Nigerian English) or expanding circle varieties (for example English spoken in Korea or Japan). Advances in corpus linguistics as well as the availability of corpora including samples of naturally occurring language use other than of native Englishes allow for substantial investigations of world Englishes.

The aim of this course is to acquire an understanding of (i) the central models describing the evolution of varieties of English and (ii) patterns of development of selected World Englishes, and (iii) to empirically investigate structures/patterns/grammatical features with the help of corpora.

In order to successfully follow and complete the course it is necessary that you have taken and passed the course Introduction to English Linguistics.

Reading: Reading material will be made available for download via Stud.IP [students receive access code during the first seminar session].

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, active participation in class, completion of weekly reading and/or exercise assignments, project presentation.

Graded credit: In addition to the above, a final exam or a term paper.

Exam period: Final exam on 10 February 2026; deadline for term paper submission on 15 March 2026.

Epicentres in World Englishes are regional varieties of English that exhibit structural influences on neighbouring Englishes, i.e. it has – for instance – repeatedly been shown that Indian English can be regarded as influencing other varieties in South Asia such as Sri Lankan or Pakistani English. Epicentral configurations can consequently be found in South Asia, but also in Southeast Asia as well as in Australia and potentially in other parts of the world. The regional focus of this class is thus on Australasia and the notion of linguistic epicentres provides the framework against which the regional varieties are going to be presented.

In the course of this class, we will introduce central models describing the evolution of postcolonial/non-native varieties of English (e.g. Moag 1982; Kachru 1985; Schneider 2003, 2007) and discuss the notion of a linguistic epicentre in the World Englishes paradigm. Against this background and on the basis of structural and sociohistorical evidence, we will discuss the development and present-day structure-related as well as sociolinguistic profile of a selection of varieties in Australasia. Methodologically, we will explore different ways of a) empirically studying the structures and usage patterns that profile each of these Australasian Englishes in a unique way and b) trying to delineate epicentral configurations.

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

Reading: Reading material will be provided on closed reserve in the department library or will be made available for download via Stud.IP.

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, completion of reading and homework assignments, active participation in class and an oral presentation, which may involve group activities and class discussions, or a written report.
Graded credit: In addition to the above, a final exam or a term paper.

Exam period: Final exam on 11 February 2026; deadline for term paper submission: 15 March 2026.

In this seminar, we will focus on phonological variation in English. We will study methods of accent analysis and apply this knowledge in a practical approach: you will conduct your own research and get the opportunity to work with authentic data. In the course of the semester, you will learn to prepare, conduct, and record a sociolinguistic interview and to transcribe, code and analyze spoken language. The project work will be closely supervized and each step will be carefully guided in class.

Examination: Exam on February 12, 2026 or a project report due on March 31, 2026

Just like any other living language, English is neither geographically nor socially homogeneous. More often than not there are many ways of saying the "same thing". For instance, in English there are different possibilities of forming negative interrogatives with do-support: "Did you not know that?", "Didn't you know that?" and some speakers would even accept "Did not you know that?" Thus, variation is one of the fundamental characteristics of human language. Sociolinguistics, the study of language in society, investigates how social groups vary in their use of a language (for example, it is imaginable that "Did not you know that?" is used more by older speakers or more by women than by men) in different situations ("Didn't you know that?" is used much more in informal spoken than in formal written language), etc.
After reviewing basic principles and assumptions of synchronic sociolinguistics, this course will focus on historical sociolinguistics, i.e. the reconstruction and analysis of the sociolinguistic variation in earlier stages of English. We will familiarize ourselves with important databases and methods in historical sociolinguistics and look at some seminal studies. A substantial part of this course will be devoted to the practical analysis of historical English texts and text collections (corpora) from a historical sociolinguistic perspective.

Credit: Graded: Regular attendance, active participation in discussions and in-class tasks, in-class presentation and a final exam or term paper (tba). Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in discussions and in-class tasks, in-class presentation.
Final exam: 10.02.2026
Term paper submission according to the department-wide deadline: 31.03.2026

“Corpus linguistics is a research approach that facilitates empirical investigations of language variation and use, resulting in research findings that have much greater generalizability and validity than would otherwise be feasible.”
(Biber & Reppen 2015: 1)

Corpus linguistics as a tool can be used in many areas of linguistics, such as variation studies, contrastive and comparative linguistics, translation studies, and it can also play an important role in applied linguistics, for instance in language teaching.

In this seminar, students will (i) learn about the field of corpus linguistics, (ii) get to know a number of important (English) corpora, (iii) learn about tools and programs that facilitate the use of corpora and the analysis of corpus data (AntConc, Excel, R Studio), and (iv) start working on their own empirical corpus study (either in pairs/small groups or individually). This research project will be the basis for the term paper.

In order to analyze variation in English, for instance based on different foreign language learners of English, by comparing different varieties of English, genres or modes, students should have an understanding of the relevant terms and concepts of the different fields of linguistics (i.e., morphology, syntax, semantics, …). Furthermore, this is a learning-by-doing course introducing statistical methods based on topical linguistic problems. Ideally, students should have an interest in quantitative data analysis (and statistics). Prior knowledge is an asset but not a pre-requisite to successfully complete this course.

Reading: Reading material will be made available for download via Stud.IP [students receive access code during the first seminar session].

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, active participation in class, completion of weekly reading and/or exercise assignments, project presentation.

Graded credit: In addition to the above, a final exam or a term paper.

Exam period: Final exam on 10 February 2026; deadline for term paper submission on 15 March 2026.

This course is devoted to the exploration of the relationship between politics and language. We will critically discuss current political discourse in the Anglophone world surrounding topics such as the electoral politics, policies concerning immigration, health care, etc. In doing so, we will pay special attention to linguistic approaches to political discourse analysis, with an emphasis on those approaches closely aligned to Cognitive Linguistics (e.g., Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Moral Politics, Critical Discourse Analysis). We will also make use of corpus-based methodologies to analyze political speeches, (social) media-based discourse and political satire.

Exam: Feb. 12, 2026
or Term Paper: March 31, 2026

Building on the overview of the internal (linguistic) and external (socio-political and cultural) history of the English language dealt with in the introductory lectures, this course will introduce you to Late Modern English. This period, spanning the 18th and 19th centuries, is the forerunner of Present Day English. It was characterised by drastic social changes due to the Industrial Revolution, increased social and geographical mobility, urbanisation, continuing British overseas expansion and colonisation, growing literacy, the rise of new genres like the novel and the newspaper, to name but a few. Nevertheless, Late Modern English has been called the “Cinderella of historical linguistics” because the common assumption was that by 1700 English had essentially already reached the present-day stage. This is why historical linguists for a long time concentrated on earlier periods. While it is true that Late Modern English is more accessible to us than, say, Early Modern English (just compare the language of Jane Austen or Charles Dickens to that of Shakespeare), the structure of Late Modern English has seen quite a few, and in some cases sweeping, changes. Some of these are still ongoing today. In this course we will examine these changes in front of the backdrop of social changes outlined above.

Credit: Graded: Regular attendance, active participation in discussions and in-class tasks, in-class presentation and a final exam or term paper (tba). Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in discussions and in-class tasks, in-class presentation.
Final exam: 09.02.2026
Term paper submission according to the department-wide deadline: 31.03.2026

This class focuses on the field of pragmatics, i.e. the study of meaning in context. After review of the basic concepts and key terms, which you will be familiar with from your introductory course, we will dive deeper into various pragmatic phenomena, including implicature, reference, speech acts, etc. We will also consider broader social and cultural aspects that go into the study of pragmatics.

Exam Date: Feb. 11, 2026
or Term Paper: March 31, 2026

Sociolinguistics is the study of the relationship between language use and society. By examining how different people use language in different social settings, sociolinguists can learn about how language works, how social relationships work in a community, and how social identities can be conveyed and constructed through language use. In this seminar, students will learn about the factors that determine the different forms of a language by focusing on regional, social, and functional variation of English. They will also take a closer look at the role of social factors in speech perception.

Reading: Reading material will be made available for download via Stud.IP (students receive access code during the first seminar session).

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, active participation in class, completion of weekly reading and/or exercises, assignment, oral presentation.

Graded credit: In addition to the above, a final exam.

Exam period: Final exam on the 9th February 2026.

The study of text linguistics involves going beyond the level of the sentence, which we have previously viewed as the largest linguistic structure. Text linguistic study not only considers the structural aspects of texts, i.e. spoken and written texts, but also dives into the overriding social contexts, in which these texts are constructed. In this vein, this class also will focus on discourse analysis and its methodologies.

Exam Date: Feb. 12, 2026
or Term Paper: March 31, 2026

“English is a highly diversified language that appears in a multitude of varieties across the globe. These varieties may differ extensively in their structural properties.”
(Siemund 2013, back cover)

The term ‘World Englishes’ typically refers to non-native or second language varieties of English (also called ‘New Englishes’) part of what Kachru (1985) classified as ‘outer circle’ varieties of English; yet it could also encompass the ‘expanding circle’ varieties or even the ‘inner circle’ varieties (Filppula et al. 2017; Meshrie & Bhatt 2008; Wolf & Polzenhagen 2009). Typically, the plural form ‘Englishes’ is used to highlight the (systematic) diversity found in the uses of this language across the world (Meshrie & Bhatti 2008: 3). The two most prominent inner circle Englishes are British and American English. However, these are not the varieties we will focus on in this course. Instead, we will investigate outer circle (such as Indian or Nigerian English) or expanding circle varieties (for example English spoken in Korea or Japan). Advances in corpus linguistics as well as the availability of corpora including samples of naturally occurring language use other than of native Englishes allow for substantial investigations of world Englishes.

The aim of this course is to acquire an understanding of (i) the central models describing the evolution of varieties of English and (ii) patterns of development of selected World Englishes, and (iii) to empirically investigate structures/patterns/grammatical features with the help of corpora.

In order to successfully follow and complete the course it is necessary that you have taken and passed the course Introduction to English Linguistics.

Reading: Reading material will be made available for download via Stud.IP [students receive access code during the first seminar session].

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, active participation in class, completion of weekly reading and/or exercise assignments, project presentation.

Graded credit: In addition to the above, a final exam or a term paper.

Exam period: Final exam on 10 February 2026; deadline for term paper submission on 15 March 2026.