Englischsprachige Lehrveranstaltungen

This course introduces students to various interesting questions in comparative constitutional law through selected constitutional instruments from various European jurisdictions. It provides not only an introduction but also a comprehensive overview of European constitutional law. The course aims to equip students with the knowledge and skills necessary to apply prevailing comparative legal methods in the development, interpretation, and evaluation of constitutional norms, institutions, and systems.

The course offers an overview of the European constitutional order at both the domestic and international levels. The relationship between European constitutional standards and national constitutions is a central focus. We will briefly examine European developments in both the European Union and the Council of Europe to better understand the constitutional landscapes of individual European countries. Additionally, we will explore the question of constitutional change, with a focus on how constitutions are amended and how new constitutions are written.

vgl. Aushang

The course offers an introduction to the field of peace and conflict studies. After discussing basic concepts, the course will deal with topics including Peacebuilding; Rebel Governance; Transitional Justice and Human Rights; Gender and Interdectionality; Natural Resources and Environmental Peacebuilding as well as Education and Peace Building.

The seminar focuses on the multiple forms of feminist activism and knowledge production emerging in different locations of the Global South, with a particular emphasis on Latin America. It connects the political activities and discussions taking place in these contexts around women’s and LGBTQ+ rights with the fields of transitional justice and peace building, which seek to address conflicts and political violence around the world.

Students will approach various feminist currents focusing for instance on armed conflict and human rights violations, antiracist and decolonial praxis, environmental justice, and sexual and reproductive rights. The seminar also provides a conceptual background on key elements of feminist and queer theorization such as gender, intersectionality, sexual orientation/gender identity, patriarchy, structural racism, coloniality, ethnicity, care and many others.

The course explores the language of law through comparative studies, focusing on the legal systems of Poland and Germany. It examines how legal concepts, terminology, and interpretation differ and interact in these systems. The course highlights the challenges of multilingual legal frameworks, the influence of EU law on member states, and the role of legal language in shaping jurisprudence and governance. The course will address the following topics:
- Introduction to Comparative Law (Comparative law: objectives and methods);
- Characteristics of Polish, German, and EU legal systems;
- Legal Terminology and Translation Challenges: Comparing key legal terms in Polish, German, and EU law. Inc. case study: The concept of “good faith” in Polish (dobra wiara), German (Treu und Glauben);
- Harmonization and Divergence in EU Law: The principle of supremacy of EU law and its impact on national systems, direct effect and the implementation of EU directives in Poland and Germany;
- The language of judicial opinions: Comparing the Polish Constitutional Tribunal, the German Federal Constitutional Court, and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). Inc. the interpretative role of the CJEU;
- Multicentricity of law and multilingualism in EU Law;
- Legal design and Legal Culture Impact
The tandem seminar is part of the project “Ukraine digital: Ukraine in its transcultural and transnational context” of the Justus Liebig University of Giessen (JLU) together with the National University of “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy” (NaUKMA). The project is supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), funding provided by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

Der Erwerb eines Fremdsprachenscheins ist möglich.
The Law of Indian Tribes seminar provides students with a comprehensive understanding of the legal systems and principles governing Indigenous communities and Nations. Through an exploration of historical, cultural, and contemporary perspectives, students will delve into the unique legal frameworks that shape tribal communities’ lives.
The course begins by examining the historical foundations of tribal law, including the impact of colonialism and the subsequent development of tribal legal systems. Students will gain insights into the diverse cultural and spiritual traditional that underpin tribal law, fostering an appreciation for the interconnectedness between law, culture, and identity. Building upon this foundation course delves into the core principles and concepts of tribal law. Students will explore the sources of law within Indigenous communities, including tribal constitutions, written and unwritten laws. Students will analyze the role of tribal governments, tribal courts, and traditional decision-making processes in resolving disputes and maintaining governance.
The course also addresses critical issues in tribal law, such as tribal sovereignty, jurisdictional challenges, and the relationship between tribal law and federal and state legal systems. Students will examine landmark legal cases that have shaped the interpretation and application of tribal law, fostering a deeper understanding of the complexities and evolving nature of Indigenous legal systems.
Throughout the course, students will engage in comparative analyses of tribal legal systems form various Midwest tribal Nations, highlighting the diversity and richness of Indigenous legal traditions. Students will explore the unique challenges faced by Indigenous communities in areas such as land rights, natural resources management, environmental protection, and cultural preservation, as well as business, and human resources issues.

Der Erwerb eines Fremdsprachenscheins ist möglich.
Course Description: This course is designed to give students an overview of the legal issues associated with wrongful convictions. There have been over 3,600 cases of wrongful convictions documented in the United States. This course is taught by a clinical law professor who has spent her career as a criminal defense attorney and codirects the Wisconsin Innocence Project. It is designed to provide students with an overview of the issues and case law related to wrongful convictions through readings, lectures, case studies, and classroom discussion.
Learning Outcomes: By the end of the course, students should: Be able to state the basic procedural process for litigating a wrongful conviction; Learn the factors that contribute to wrongful convictions; Debate the policy issues behind police investigation procedures; Have an understanding of the importance of evaluating facts with an open mind, viewing claims and statements of facts and law with healthy skepticism; and Be able to develop a strategy to evaluate and investigate a claim of innocence.
Your grade will be based on a final exam that will be given at the end of class.
Reading materials will be provided electronically before the class begins. Class reading assignments will be notated.

Module codes: 02-BWL/VWL:MSc-B11-Extra2
Course format: Lecture (6 CP)
Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Nicolas Pröllochs (BWL XI)
Term: Summer semester
Language: English
Grading: oral examination (presentation)

The course will consist of a blend of in-person and digital sessions ("Präsenz mit digitalen Anteilen")

***Course description***
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming businesses by unlocking new opportunities for efficiency and data-driven decision-making. The master’s course on “Applied AI” provides students with an overview of the field of AI with a focus on real-world applications. Students will learn the end-to-end process of preparing data, implementing machine learning models, and evaluating their performance. The course will provide hands-on coding examples, equipping students with the necessary skills to implement these techniques independently. At the end of the course, participants will be familiar with the most important concepts, principles, algorithms, and challenges in applied AI.

The main objectives of this course are to:
1) Understand the basic concepts of AI and machine learning and their relevance in business contexts
2) Obtain an overview of different methods, algorithms, and software tools for applied AI
3) Learn how to train and evaluate AI methods on real-world datasets
4) Understand limits and challenges associated with contemporary AI methods, including ethical considerations and biases

***Term project & grading***
Grading will be based on an oral presentation, which will report on the results of a term project conducted throughout the semester. The assignments will consist of a specific problem from applied AI (e.g., applying a machine learning method on a given dataset). Students will be provided with an assignment at the beginning of the semester and may work on their projects individually or in small groups. Assignments will be tailored to students’ interests and expertise. Basic experience in computer programming (e.g., in R, Python) is desirable but not mandatory.

***Registration***
The number of participants is limited to a maximum number of 24 students. Please register for the course by sending an e-mail to datascience@wirtschaft.uni-giessen.de. Please attach your current transcript of records (FlexNow printout) and a short (max 50 – 100 words) motivational statement (optional). If more than 24 students apply, participants will be selected based on their previous grades and/or their motivational statement. The application deadline is 14th April 2025.

For further information, please check the course information on the chair's website: https://www.uni-giessen.de/de/fbz/fb02/fb/professuren/bwl/data-science-digitalisierung/lehre

________
Information vom Prüfungsamt:
Das Modul kann in folgende Bereiche eingebracht werden:
MASTER BWL/VWL:
☒ Business Administration, ☒ Economics, ☒ Management, ☒ Finance and Accounting, ☒ Datenökonomie, ☒ Minor.
MASTER AFS:
☒ Major, ☒ Minor.
MASTER EGR:
☒ Major, ☒ Minor.

Struktur: Vorlesung + Übung
Turnus: Sommersemester
Credits: 6 CP
Sprache: Englisch
Prüfungsform: Klausur
Die Veranstaltung findet in Präsenz statt.

Die Veranstaltung ist für alle Studierende im Master VWL, EGR, BWL und AFS geöffnet und besteht aus einer wöchentlichen Vorlesung und Übung.

Der Kurs basiert auf dem Buch Causal Inference von Scott Cunningham, sowie den Büchern Mostly Harmless Econometrics und Mastering Metrics von Joshua Angrist und Jörn-Steffen Pischke.

Many of the big questions in the social sciences (and economics) deal with cause and effect. How does immigration affect pay and employment levels? How does a longer education affect someone's future income? These questions are difficult to answer because we have nothing to use as a comparison. We do not know what would have happened if there had been less immigration or if that person had not continued studying.

However, last years Laureates of the Nobel Prize in Economics - David Card, Joshua Angrist, and Guido Imbens - have shown that it is possible to answer these and similar questions using natural experiments. The key is to use situations in which chance events or policy changes result in groups of people being treated differently, in a way that resembles clinical trials in medicine.

If you are curious about how economists can draw plausible conclusions about cause and effect I invite you to join this course. The course covers core methods and seminal applications (discussed in the lecture and replicated in the exercise) dealing with causal inference.

Preliminary schedule:
- Randomized Controlled Trials
- Linear Regression and Matching
- Difference-in-Differences
- Regression Discontinuity Designs
- Instrumental Variables

Struktur: Vorlesung + Übung
Turnus: Sommersemester
Credits: 6 CP
Sprache: Englisch
Prüfungsform: Klausur
Die Veranstaltung findet in Präsenz statt.

Die Veranstaltung ist für alle Studierende im Master VWL, EGR, BWL und AFS geöffnet und besteht aus einer wöchentlichen Vorlesung und Übung.

Der Kurs basiert auf dem Buch Causal Inference von Scott Cunningham, sowie den Büchern Mostly Harmless Econometrics und Mastering Metrics von Joshua Angrist und Jörn-Steffen Pischke.

Many of the big questions in the social sciences (and economics) deal with cause and effect. How does immigration affect pay and employment levels? How does a longer education affect someone's future income? These questions are difficult to answer because we have nothing to use as a comparison. We do not know what would have happened if there had been less immigration or if that person had not continued studying.

However, last years Laureates of the Nobel Prize in Economics - David Card, Joshua Angrist, and Guido Imbens - have shown that it is possible to answer these and similar questions using natural experiments. The key is to use situations in which chance events or policy changes result in groups of people being treated differently, in a way that resembles clinical trials in medicine.

If you are curious about how economists can draw plausible conclusions about cause and effect I invite you to join this course. The course covers core methods and seminal applications (discussed in the lecture and replicated in the exercise) dealing with causal inference.

Preliminary schedule:
- Randomized Controlled Trials
- Linear Regression and Matching
- Difference-in-Differences
- Regression Discontinuity Designs
- Instrumental Variables

Type: tutorial, in-person

Frequency: summer and winter semesters

Credits: 6 CP

Teaching language: English (German at B2 level is required)

Assessement: examination, presentation

Type: tutorial

Frequency: summer and winter semesters

Credits: 6 CP

Teaching language: English (German at B2 level is required)

Assessement: examination, presentation

Struktur: Vorlesung + Übung
Turnus: Sommersemester
Credits: 6 CP
Sprache: Englisch
Prüfungsform: Klausur

We study the small open economies and their interaction with global financial markets. After an introduction to the balance of payments, we introduce the intertemporal model of the current account. We use the model in order to understand consumption, capital flows and sovereign default. In the second half, we introduce real and nominal exchange rates and discuss the main models of exchange rate determination.

Struktur: Seminar
Prüfungsform: Hausarbeit & Präsentation. Details zu Struktur und Prüfungsform werden in der Kickoff-Veranstaltung erläutert.
Credits: 6 CP
Sprache: Englisch
Inhalte: Hauptseminar zu Themen aus den Bereichen Organisation, Personalmanagement und Organizational Behavior. Details zu den allgemeinen Zielsetzungen und Inhalten finden sich in der offiziellen Modulbeschreibung.
Format: Die Veranstaltung findet in Präsenz statt.

Struktur: Vorlesung + Übung
Turnus: Sommersemester
Credits: 6 CP
Sprache: Deutsch
Prüfungsform: Klausur

Wir behandeln die Makroökonomie in der langen Frist. Ausgangspunkt ist eine Betrachtung des langfristigen Wirtschaftswachstums anhand des Solow-Wachstumsmodells. Anschließend beleuchten wir den Arbeitsmarkt, die Rolle von Geld und Preisen in der langen Frist sowie die Diskussion der Phillipskurve. Ein Blick auf intertemporale Modelle der Makroökonomik rundet die Veranstaltung ab.

Structure: Lecture + Tutorial
Rhythm: Summer semester
Credits: 6 CP
Course code: 02-VWL:MSc-V1-3
Language: English
Required work: Final exam (80 %) + Assignments (10 %) + Participation (5%) + Group paper and presentation (5 %)
Lecturers: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Georg Götz
Possible Major: Economics, Management

Course Description:
This course gives an overview over the economic study of innovation and the production of new goods and services. Students will learn about the importance of the research and development activities of firms and how they are influenced by public policy in general and by the patent system in particular. The course introduces patent races, the economics of licensing, and the study of adoption and diffusion of new technology. A further topic concerns R&D cooperation with a focus on the working of Research Joint Ventures. Throughout the course we will discuss the Schumpeterian themes of the relation between market structure, firm size and innovation. The course will also evaluate current technology policy as implemented in various countries. A seminar-like part will conclude the course with various case studies of firms’ research and development activities and innovations with a special focus on the pharmaceutical sector. We will have industry experts discussing their experience.

o get a first impression on what the course is about, you might want to look at the introductory chapter of William M. Baumol's book "The free market innovation machine" - to be found at http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s7310.pdf . For a starting point in the management literature see the collection on Top 10 Lessons on the New Business of Innovation from the MIT-Sloan Management Review 2011 (available within JLU network).

The preliminary schedule can be found under Ablaufplan. The slides for the respective lectures are available in the Download section (Dateien).

The recordings of the lecture from the past SS 2021 can be found on the chairs Youtube channel Economics2Go https://www.youtube.com/c/Economics2Go in the playlist Economics of Innovation https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaMyPT8Jkw7nrmy-E7dSA2WrrE__4P2dv .

Required work:
Final Exam
Assignments
Group paper and presentation

Literature:
Baumol, W. The Free Market Innovation Machine – Analyzing the Growth Miracle of Capitalism, 2002, Princeton University Press
Pepall, Richard, and Norman (PRN): Industrial Organization: Contemporary theory and practice South Western, 3rd edition. 2005, chapters 22-24.
Tirole, J.: The Theory of Industrial Organizatio,MIT Press 1988, ch.10
Stoneman, P. (ed.): Handbook of the Economics of Innovation and Technological Change ch. 1, 4, 5, 7, 11, 12.
Brownwyn Hall, Nathan Rosenberg (eds.) Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, Vol 1 and Vol. 2

This course will be held in English and in presence.

Structure: Lecture + Tutorial
Rhythm: Summer semester
Credits: 6 CP
Course Code: 02-VWL:MSc-V1-1
Language: English
Required work: Final exam (85%) + Assignments (10%) + Participation (5%)
Lecturers: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Georg Götz
Possible Major: Economics, Economics of Global Risk

Course Description:
You can find the most recent information to this course here. The recordings of the lecture from the summer term 2020 can be found on the chairs Youtube channel Economics2Go; in the playlist Economics of Regulation:https://www.youtube.com/c/Economics2Go

This course deals with network industries like electricity, gas and water supply as well as with the telecommunication sector and how to regulate them. A special focus is laid on the consequences of the asymmetric distribution of information among the agents active in these sectors. Here, one might think of product markets characterized by uncertainty about qualities and prices as well as labor markets, insurance markets, or financial markets. These markets are characterized by endogenous information that is generated by some market participants; behavior affecting other market participants; behavior. As a consequence, the market mechanism may be distorted or even fail.

Literature:
Paul Joskow: Regulation of Natural Monopolies August 2006, mimeo, MIT, a review article published in the Handbook of Law and Economics, 2007.

Recent developments in the theory of regulation, published in the Handbook of Industrial Organization (Vol. III), edited by M. Armstrong and R. Porter. This article provides an in-depth treatment of the theory of regulation under asymmetric information.

Regulation, Competition, and Liberalization. Journal of Economic Literature Vol. XLIV (June 2006), pp. 325–366. This article offers insights into the regulatory practice and discusses if and how effective competition can be created in sectors, which are at least partly natural monopolies.

K. Viscusi, J. Harrington, J. Vernon, Economics of regulation and antitrust. 4th. ed. MIT Press 2005;
Borrmann, J. und Finsinger, J., Markt und Regulierung. Verlag Vahlen 1999.

David Newbery, 1999, Privatization, Restructuring, and Regulation of Network Industries, MIT Press offers an excellent combination of theoretical insights and specific case studies, in particular with respect to the liberalization process.

Pepall, Richard, and Norman (PRN): Industrial Organization: Contemporary theory and practice, South Western, 3rd edition. 2005. Introduction to Economic Analysis by R. Preston McAfee.

This course will be held in presence and in English.

This module is no longer offered; instead we recommend visiting "Data Driven Innovation (02-BWL:MSc-B10-Extra2)"

This module is no longer offered; instead we recommend visiting "Data Driven Innovation (02-BWL:MSc-B10-Extra2)"

Struktur: Vorlesung + Übung
Turnus: Unregelmäßig
Credits: 6 CP
Sprache: Englisch (Regelfall) bzw. Deutsch (Ausnahmefall)
Prüfungsform: Klausur und Hausarbeit mit Präsentation

Qualifikationsziele:
• Beschreibung und Verständnis der Digitalisierung und ihrer Auswirkungen auf wirtschaftliche
Prozesse
• Kenntnis von theoretischen Konzepten und empirischen Methoden zur Messung der Digitalisierung
und zur Analyse ihrer Auswirkungen
• Beschreibung, Interpretation und Bewertung empirischer Ergebnisse
• Kritische Diskussion der ökonomischen und sozialen Auswirkungen der Digitalisierung
•
Inhalte:
• Informations- Kommunikationstechnologien als Querschnittstechnologie
• Auswirkungen der Digitalisierung auf Unternehmen
• Auswirkungen der Digitalisierung auf Beschäftigte
• Digitale Märkte und Plattformen


Für die Teilnahme an der Veranstaltung ist der erfolgreiche Abschluss von Kursen in Industrieökonomik und Ökonometrie sehr empfehlenswert. Weitere Informationen dazu finden Sie auch auf der Homepage.

Die Veranstaltung findet in Präsenz statt.

Link zu JLU-Maps:
https://www.uni-giessen.de/JLUmaps/?id=167813&lang=de

Struktur: Vorlesung + Übung
Turnus: Unregelmäßig
Credits: 6 CP
Sprache: Englisch (Regelfall) bzw. Deutsch (Ausnahmefall)
Prüfungsform: Klausur und Hausarbeit mit Präsentation

Qualifikationsziele:
• Beschreibung und Verständnis der Digitalisierung und ihrer Auswirkungen auf wirtschaftliche
Prozesse
• Kenntnis von theoretischen Konzepten und empirischen Methoden zur Messung der Digitalisierung
und zur Analyse ihrer Auswirkungen
• Beschreibung, Interpretation und Bewertung empirischer Ergebnisse
• Kritische Diskussion der ökonomischen und sozialen Auswirkungen der Digitalisierung
•
Inhalte:
• Informations- Kommunikationstechnologien als Querschnittstechnologie
• Auswirkungen der Digitalisierung auf Unternehmen
• Auswirkungen der Digitalisierung auf Beschäftigte
• Digitale Märkte und Plattformen


Für die Teilnahme an der Veranstaltung ist der erfolgreiche Abschluss von Kursen in Industrieökonomik und Ökonometrie sehr empfehlenswert. Weitere Informationen dazu finden Sie auch auf der Homepage.

Die Veranstaltung findet in Präsenz statt.

Link zu JLU-Maps:
https://www.uni-giessen.de/JLUmaps/?id=167813&lang=de

Type: tutorial, in-person

Frequency: summer and winter semesters

Credits: 6 CP

Teaching language: English

Assessement: take-home assignments, oral examination

Type: tutorial, in-person

Frequency: summer semesters only

Credits: 6 CP

Teaching language: English

Assessement: take-home assignment, presentation

Ab dem Sommersemester 2018 wird die 6 ECTS-Bachelor-Veranstaltung “Sales Strategy and Execution” von der Professur für Marketing und Verkaufsmanagement angeboten. Diese Veranstaltung ist zulassungsbeschränkt mit einer maximalen Teilnehmerzahl von 20 Studierenden.

In dieser Veranstaltung wird ein umfassender Überblick über die Konzeption und Umsetzung von Verkaufsstrategien vermittelt. Am Beispiel von Verkaufsstrategien lernen die Studierenden im Rahmen dieses Moduls, welche Entscheidungen für die Konzeption von Strategien relevant sind, wie man eine schlüssige Strategie entwickelt und worauf es beim Umsetzen von Strategien zu achten gilt. Weitere Inhalte dieses Moduls sind die Analyse und Steuerung des Verkaufsprozesses sowie erfolgreiches Verhandeln alleine oder im Team.

Structure: two parts, each by a JLU professor or a UWM professor
Turnus: summer term
Credits: 6 CP
Language: Englisch
Examination form: exam, homework, presentation

This Summer School is aimed at
- the participants of the exchange program in economics between the JLU Giessen and the UWM
- master students of the economics program (VWL) at JLU

There are two classes given by a JLU professor and an UWM professor each. Further information concerning the start of the summer school and the dates of classes etc. can be downloaded or found here: https://www.uni-giessen.de/de/fbz/fb02/international/summerschool/programm-aktuell/summer-school-2025
Please note that the information about the Summer School is preliminary and still subject to change.

Dear Students,

In the upcoming summer term 2025, the Chair of Financial Services (BWLV) offers the course
"Sustainable Portfolio Management” (former Applied Portfolio Management and Sustainability)
(6CP) for Master students.

Students will improve their understanding of the key concepts of asset pricing and sustainable
investment management while being able to empirically implement these theoretical concepts
using data sets and programming skills. Module content consists of, but is not limited to:

Multifactor models
Cross-sectional anomalies
Quantitative investment strategies
ESG integration
Performance evaluation of professional asset managers

At the end of the term, the students will present their results to one of the leading asset
managers for sustainability. We also welcome applications from Economics students as the
course will also cover causal inference topics and theoretical models.

Since we can only accept a limited number of participants, please send me a meaningful
performance record (and bachelor’s degree certificate, Flex Now Master and CV, if applicable)
by 04/06/2024 to paul.eubel@wirtschaft.uni-giessen.de with the keyword "ESG 2025". You will be notified by 04/13/2024 whether you have been accepted for the course.

Grading is based on a research paper and a presentation.

Best regards from
BWL V

The lecture for this module will not take place in person in the summer semester 2024. In this semester, we will provide a recorded lecture via ILIAS, which will be uploaded at the scheduled time. The exercise sessions will take place in person as usual.
---
Struktur: Vorlesung + Übung;

Turnus: Sommersemester

Credits: 6 CP

Sprache: Englisch (Regelfall) bzw. Deutsch (im Ausnahmefall)

Prüfungsform: Klausur

Bei dieser Veranstaltung handelt es sich um die Übung zur Vorlesung "Technology and Innovation Management". In der Übung werden Inhalte aus der Vorlesung diskutiert und angewendet. Ferner ist die Klausurvorbereitung wesentlicher Bestandteil der Übung.

Detaillierte Informationen entnehmen Sie bitte der Lehrveranstaltung.

Die Veranstaltung findet in Präsenz statt.

The lecture for this module will not take place in person in the summer semester 2024. In this semester, we will provide a recorded lecture via ILIAS, which will be uploaded at the scheduled time. The exercise sessions will take place in person as usual.
---
Struktur: Vorlesung + Übung

Turnus: Sommersemester

Credits: 6 CP

Sprache: Englisch (Regelfall) bzw. Deutsch (im Ausnahmefall)

Prüfungsform: Klausur

Diese Veranstaltung ist in zwei Teile gegliedert. Im ersten Teil geht es um Grundlagen des Technologiemanagements. Hier werden Konzepte zum Verständnis von Technologiestrategien etc. vorgestellt. Im zweiten Teil erfolgt eine Auseinandersetzung mit zentralen strategischen Konzepten des Innovationsmanagements. Danach werden spezifische Aspekte des Innovationsmanagements, wie z.B. die einzelnen Stufen des Innovationsprozesses, betrachtet.

Detaillierte Informationen über die Konkretisierung der Modulinhalte entnehmen Sie bitte der Lehrveranstaltung.

Die Veranstaltung findet in Präsenz statt.

Structure: Lecture + Tutorial
Rhythm: Summer semester
Credits: 6 CP
Course code: 02-VWL:MSc-V3-2
Language: English

The module 'Trade Policy and International Factor Movements' is part of the Master of Science major 'Economics of Global Risk' and 'Economics'. It is structured as a lecture with integrated tutorials and takes place every winter semester. The course is held in English. Moreover, it is recommended to have already completed the module 'International Economic Relations'.



Module content includes aspects from the following areas of foreign trade theory and policy:

Gains from trade
Trade policy and market structures
Political economy of trade policy
Factor movements and direct investments

Structure: Lecture + Tutorial
Rhythm: Summer semester
Credits: 6 CP
Course code: 02-VWL:MSc-V1-3
Language: English
Required work: Final exam (80 %) + Assignments (10 %) + Participation (5%) + Group paper and presentation (5 %)
Lecturers: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Georg Götz
Possible Major: Economics, Management

Course Description:
This course gives an overview over the economic study of innovation and the production of new goods and services. Students will learn about the importance of the research and development activities of firms and how they are influenced by public policy in general and by the patent system in particular. The course introduces patent races, the economics of licensing, and the study of adoption and diffusion of new technology. A further topic concerns R&D cooperation with a focus on the working of Research Joint Ventures. Throughout the course we will discuss the Schumpeterian themes of the relation between market structure, firm size and innovation. The course will also evaluate current technology policy as implemented in various countries. A seminar-like part will conclude the course with various case studies of firms’ research and development activities and innovations with a special focus on the pharmaceutical sector. We will have industry experts discussing their experience.

o get a first impression on what the course is about, you might want to look at the introductory chapter of William M. Baumol's book "The free market innovation machine" - to be found at http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s7310.pdf . For a starting point in the management literature see the collection on Top 10 Lessons on the New Business of Innovation from the MIT-Sloan Management Review 2011 (available within JLU network).

The preliminary schedule can be found under Ablaufplan. The slides for the respective lectures are available in the Download section (Dateien).

The recordings of the lecture from the past SS 2021 can be found on the chairs Youtube channel Economics2Go https://www.youtube.com/c/Economics2Go in the playlist Economics of Innovation https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaMyPT8Jkw7nrmy-E7dSA2WrrE__4P2dv .

Required work:
Final Exam
Assignments
Group paper and presentation

Literature:
Baumol, W. The Free Market Innovation Machine – Analyzing the Growth Miracle of Capitalism, 2002, Princeton University Press
Pepall, Richard, and Norman (PRN): Industrial Organization: Contemporary theory and practice South Western, 3rd edition. 2005, chapters 22-24.
Tirole, J.: The Theory of Industrial Organizatio,MIT Press 1988, ch.10
Stoneman, P. (ed.): Handbook of the Economics of Innovation and Technological Change ch. 1, 4, 5, 7, 11, 12.
Brownwyn Hall, Nathan Rosenberg (eds.) Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, Vol 1 and Vol. 2

This course will be held in English and in presence.

Structure: Lecture + Tutorial
Rhythm: Summer semester
Credits: 6 CP
Course Code: 02-VWL:MSc-V1-1
Language: English
Required work: Final exam (85%) + Assignments (10%) + Participation (5%)
Lecturers: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Georg Götz
Possible Major: Economics, Economics of Global Risk

Course Description:
You can find the most recent information to this course here. The recordings of the lecture from the summer term 2020 can be found on the chairs Youtube channel Economics2Go; in the playlist Economics of Regulation:https://www.youtube.com/c/Economics2Go

This course deals with network industries like electricity, gas and water supply as well as with the telecommunication sector and how to regulate them. A special focus is laid on the consequences of the asymmetric distribution of information among the agents active in these sectors. Here, one might think of product markets characterized by uncertainty about qualities and prices as well as labor markets, insurance markets, or financial markets. These markets are characterized by endogenous information that is generated by some market participants; behavior affecting other market participants; behavior. As a consequence, the market mechanism may be distorted or even fail.

Literature:
Paul Joskow: Regulation of Natural Monopolies August 2006, mimeo, MIT, a review article published in the Handbook of Law and Economics, 2007.

Recent developments in the theory of regulation, published in the Handbook of Industrial Organization (Vol. III), edited by M. Armstrong and R. Porter. This article provides an in-depth treatment of the theory of regulation under asymmetric information.

Regulation, Competition, and Liberalization. Journal of Economic Literature Vol. XLIV (June 2006), pp. 325–366. This article offers insights into the regulatory practice and discusses if and how effective competition can be created in sectors, which are at least partly natural monopolies.

K. Viscusi, J. Harrington, J. Vernon, Economics of regulation and antitrust. 4th. ed. MIT Press 2005;
Borrmann, J. und Finsinger, J., Markt und Regulierung. Verlag Vahlen 1999.

David Newbery, 1999, Privatization, Restructuring, and Regulation of Network Industries, MIT Press offers an excellent combination of theoretical insights and specific case studies, in particular with respect to the liberalization process.

Pepall, Richard, and Norman (PRN): Industrial Organization: Contemporary theory and practice, South Western, 3rd edition. 2005. Introduction to Economic Analysis by R. Preston McAfee.

This course will be held in presence and in English.

Module description:

Profound knowledge of game theory with special applications in the field of finance and capital market theory
ability to interpret models from relevant literature and to critically discuss their explanatory potential
ability to deal with applicable policy proposals based on relevant theory and empirical findings
formulation, argumentative defense and critical dispute of subject-related viewpoints and problem solving



The module covers:

Part 1 (lecture): Debt: Game Theory Applications (pre-recorded videos)
Basics of game theory
Applications in the context of finance and capital market theory

Part 2 (seminar): Fiscal and Monetary Policy in Sovereign Debt Crises (virtual live event)
Fiscal policy in crisis situations
Conventional and unconventional monetary policy in crises

Type: tutorial, in-person

Frequency: summer and winter semesters

Credits: 6 CP

Teaching language: English

Assessement: take-home assignments, presentation

Type: tutorial, in-person

Frequency: summer and winter semesters

Credits: 6 CP

Teaching language: English

Assessement: take-home assignments, examination, presentation

The seminar explores current conflicts about climate change and about the measures implemented to mitigate its acceleration and effects. We will examine such conflicts with regards to different arenas and actors – ranging from the transnational to the local – as well as with respect to different forms of conflicts – ranging from litigation and parliamentary debates to protests and online disputes.

This seminar will introduce participants to emerging concerns and criticisms about entrepreneurship, or more generally, to what is known as de-mystifying entrepreneurship. Given the diversity of perspectives through which entrepreneurship has been challenged in recent years, the seminar covers various topics such as entrepreneurship and slavery, business propaganda, and institutional aspects of the issue. The seminar aims to navigate participants to further explore its subjects in economic sociology, management critical studies, or entrepreneurship critical studies. The main teaching references will be a combination of seminal papers and book chapters, moreover, multimodal content (e.g., videos) will also be utilized to improve audiences’ learning quality and sensory engagement.

This seminar centers on the analysis of populism and offers the students the chance to learn the basics of democracy, Authoritarianism, and populism. Furthermore, using current examples for analysis, this seminar aims at answering the following questions: What is the role of perception in politics? Can an electorate be manipulated? What is the role of the media? Moreover, can our democracies (and political systems) survive the new digital age of populism? Keywords: Democracy ideals/Health, Populism Theories, Authoritarianism. Examination Method: Group Presentation (Individually graded) + 1 small written assignment (4 pages total). Online consultation hours: Every Wednesday with prior registration.

The course is split into two sections: while the first weeks are dedicated to in-depth literature work on sociological classics of social interaction and communication, the second half uses their main concepts as a basis for the discussion of topics on natural relations and sustainability.

International organisations are a central element of world politics. They structure international relations in many respects. Their character and their fields of work are very different. The central aim of this seminar is to provide an in-depth introduction to the field of international security organisations. In a first step, the concepts and theories of international organisations will be explained in more detail. In the further course of the seminar, selected security organisations will be analysed in more detail. These are in particular the UN, NATO, the EU, the OSCE, but also selected security organisations from other regions of the world. Methodologically, the seminar is based on joint text discussions, group work and a weekly news corner.

This course examines memory as a cultural practice from a postmigration perspective. Empirical materials of the course have a particular focus on young generations in Germany with a family migration history from Turkey. Drawing upon the definition of cultural memory as “the interplay of present and past in socio-cultural contexts” (Erll 2010), the course aims to open a space for a collective scrutinization of how younger generations deal with their migration history in relation to their current experiences in society through different media, spaces and forms of cultural practices such as online archival projects, films, biographies, music etc. The course will provide an introductory theoretical discussion of concepts such as cultural memory, collective memory, acts of memory as well as postmigration as a new perspective in analyzing the current complexities of immigration societies. Examples such as collective memory projects, autosociobiographical texts and documentaries will be used as course materials for a deeper exploration of configurations of cultural memory in postmigrant settings.

Sustainability is one of the key concepts of our times. The UN SDG17 agenda sets the ambitious goal for sustainable development worldwide in 17 different fields ranging from the erasure of hunger to the improvement of education to the protection of the environment. Contemporary debates on the transformation of societies decisively focus on issues of sustainability. As sustainability is as much a societal agenda as a concept in sociology and political sciences, it is worth to reflect on how the concept is designed, communicated, and debated.

This course helps educators build collaboration and teamwork skills to work effectively with diverse teams. It focuses on integrating technology into teaching to enhance education quality and support lifelong learning. Participants will gain future skills to adapt to the evolving educational landscape and confidently use advanced tools to drive positive change in their institutions, fostering student engagement and improving the learning experience.

Note: The course will be taught in English. You need a B1 level of English proficiency to pass the course.

Exploring Digital Pedagogy: Integrating Technology in Schools
+ + + + + + + +
This course explores digital pedagogy, equipping participants with the skills to integrate technology effectively in the classroom. It combines theoretical foundations with practical applications, focusing on enhancing teaching methods, supporting diverse learning styles, and promoting engagement. Participants will gain hands-on experience with AI tools, digital assessment methods, and strategies for fostering digital literacy, all while aligning technology use with pedagogical goals. By the end of the course, educators will be able to design tech-enhanced lessons, adapt teaching practices, and evaluate the impact of Technology on the learning of Students.

Note: The course will be taught in English. You need a B1 level of English proficiency to pass the course.

Current political events can leave individuals feeling depressed and disengaged. This seminar discusses methods for supporting democracy, and texts that can help people to maintain hope and resist autocratic developments, while also actively working to take care of mental health.

‘There may be no more fundamental question in literary studies than
what a work means, whose thought it is voicing, what it is really saying’

– Timothy Bewes, Free Indirect (2022: 3)

This is a heavily theoretical class is designed for MA-level students with a foundation in literary studies who are interested in thinking reflexively about how we, as a discipline, read and write about literary texts. How conscious are we of the various methods in the discipline and assumptions that guide our interpretations as students and aspiring scholars of literature? In her influential 2015 monograph, Rita Felski argued that the dominant mode of interpretation in literary studies was critique and that this could be aligned with what Paul Ricoeur called ‘a hermeneutics of suspicion’. If, as Felski suggests, critique is ‘a style of interpretation driven by a spirit of disenchantment’ (2015: 2), what other ways are there of reading and interpreting literary texts? As Helen Small writes, ‘the work of the humanities is frequently descriptive, or appreciative, or imaginative, or provocative, or speculative, more than it is critical’ (2013: 26). How might you incorporate these modes in your own analyses?

In this seminar, we will incorporate various writing exercises to inhabit different modes of interpretation alongside the reading of short stories by a diverse range of contemporary writers such as Lydia Davis, Junot Díaz, Lorrie Moore, Carmen Maria Machado, Roberto Bolaño, Teju Cole, and Ben Lerner.

The year 1925 marked a significant juncture in the development of literary modernism. This seminar explores the role played by publishing houses and their editors who lastly curated and promoted a new literary culture. By examining key figures such as Virginia and Leonard Woolf at the Hogarth Press and T.S. Eliot at Faber and Faber, we delve into the strategic decisions and creative processes that fostered an era of experimental writing. Reading some of the seminal publications of 1925, we will explore how they challenge traditional narrative forms, experiment with language, and define modernist literature. From Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway to T.S. Eliot's poetry, we aim to understand not only their aesthetic impact but also their cultural significance, shedding light on how they reflected and shaped the social, political, and intellectual climate of the 1920s. A reader with texts will be available through StudIP from the beginning of term, students are asked to buy Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (any edition).

This course will be taught in cooperation with Bonn University and there will be a joint component on the weekend of June 27th/28th where students must take part in a intensive weekend session / student conference (please keep these dates free).

The individuals participating in this course are likely interested in becoming EFL teachers in the future. What does that entail? Who should we be? What values should we harbor? What skills should we acquire? The activities within this course represent an exploration into what language teachers can and should be. Given the futural dimension of current students turning into EFL practitioners, an anticipatory, if not utopian, perspective is to be adopted, hinging to some extent on technological projections. Chief among them are the various prospective instantiations of what is today known as “Artificial Intelligence”. To document the discussions, the instructor and all students in the course will co-author an academic article with the working title “An exploration into what language teachers can and should be”. If the end product meets certain quality standards, it is conceivable that the article will be submitted to a scientific journal in the field.

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

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

Credit:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in class
Graded: Regular attendance, active participation in class; term paper

Exam period:
Term paper must be handed in until 15th September 2025.

Registration: Flex-Now

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 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 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 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 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!

What does ‘authentic’ even mean when it comes to teaching English as a foreign language? In this seminar students are introduced to the different concepts of authenticity. Most agree that learning materials are authentic when they have not been produced for the express purpose of language instruction. However, questions of authenticity are by no means confined to TEFL materials. The course content will range from the philosophical to the practical, spanning issues of learner autonomy, motivation, and materials, to name but a few.

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

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

Credit:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in class
Graded: Regular attendance, active participation in class; term paper

Exam period:
Term paper must be handed in until 15th September 2025.

Registration: Flex-Now

Corpus linguistics has become an increasingly popular method of linguistic analysis in the past 30 years. A linguistic corpus is a large collection of computerized texts, sampled to be representative of a certain variety of language and used for linguistic studies. The advantage of such corpora is that they can be electronically searched and analyzed, usually with the help of special corpus software. Because corpora are usually very large (often consisting of several million words), they ideally lend themselves to the quatitative study of language variation and change.
This course is intended as an introduction to the methods of corpus linguistics and their application to the study of English. We will familiarize ourselves with important synchronic and diachronic corpora, such as those in the so-called ICAME collection. There will also be a section on the different ways that such text collections can be compiled and used (including an introduction to corpus analysis software such as AntConc and statistical methods to test the validity of one's results).

Requirements for un/graded credit tba in the course.

This seminar offers insights into different statistical methods that can be applied to linguistic corpus data. We will start with basic descriptive analysis techniques and then go over different multifactorial methods.

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.
Prerequisites: This seminar is designed for students who have already taken at least one other Corpus Linguistics class and know how to extract and annotate linguistic data.
Credit: Exam (23 July 2025) or Term Paper (by 15 September 2025)

Variation is an essential part of human language, and English accordingly varies on all descriptive levels. This course will focus on the study of morphological and syntactic variation in New Englishes, that is, standard varieties of English around the world. We will revise the basic principles of the study of World Englishes and investigate variation in L1 (first language) and L2 (second language) national varieties, using corpus linguistic methods. Corpus linguistics is the study of language through large collections of representative texts with the help of specialized corpus software, so all participants need basic computer literacy and the willingness to familiarize themselves, and work with corpus linguistic software. Our databases will be corpora such as different national components of the International Corpus of English (ICE).

Credit: Regular attendance, active participation in discussions, in-class tasks and study projects. Details tba at the beginning of the course

World Englishes as used in first-language territories such as the United States, Australia and South Africa, but also in second-language countries like Singapore, India or Nigeria have been described from various linguistic angles – be they phonological, lexical or syntactic. Still, it is exactly at the interface between lexis and grammar, namely the lexicogrammatical level of language organisation, that variety-specific structures of a given world English first emerge.

In the course of this class, we will investigate the English language as it is used world-wide from a strictly empirical perspective. Relying on a vast set of corpus-linguistic resources, we will explore various lexicogrammatical features of world Englishes. Students will work on individual projects throughout this class with regular lecturer input and project feedback.

Ungraded Credit: Regular attendance and participation in class.
Graded: The above and a term paper (due on September 15 2025).

Course Description: ICC is one of the key competencies in modern EFL classes. In this course we will examine aspects of teaching ICC for different anglophone countries and their cultures, such as the UK and the Republic of Ireland, the U.S.A., Canada, Australia and New Zealand as well as South Africa and India and work out the crucial aspects the learners need to acquire. Students will create readers including teaching material and essential information which they will be able to use in their subsequent teaching career, and explore the possibilities of including different skills by planning relevant and motivating tasks for the EFLC.

Prerequisites:
Successful completion of Module TEFL I.

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

Credit:
Regular attendance, active participation in class; term paper

Exam period:
Term paper must be handed in until 15th September 2025.

Registration: Flex-Now

This tutorial accompanies the course "Why Popular Culture and Social Media Matter: An Introduction to Cultural and Media Studies" by Prof. Greta Olson. It is designed to provide students with the resources they need to deepen their knowledge of the topics covered in the course and to practice the theories and concepts presented.

This tutorial accompanies the course "Why Popular Culture and Social Media Matter: An Introduction to Cultural and Media Studies" by Prof. Greta Olson. It is designed to provide students with the resources they need to deepen their knowledge of the topics covered in the course and to practice the theories and concepts presented.

In the current age of globalization, migration and internet communication, intercultural communicative competence is a key requirement in many professions and has become a priority aim in school and university education. This course focuses on fundamental aspects of intercultural communication and approaches to developing intercultural/transcultural competence and understanding, placing special emphasis on culture and language integrated education in institutional settings such as high schools, universities, etc.

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


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

Credit:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in class, team presentation, knowledge of recommended literature
Graded: in addition to the above, a term paper

Exam Period:
The term paper to be submitted by September 15, 2025.
Exam candidates are advised to submit their term papers by August 15, 2025.

Registration: Flex-Now

At the center of this seminar is a historical approach to studying and researching the English language with the aid of linguistic corpora. We will start with a review of the essential concepts, theories and metholodogies attributable to diachronic linguistics and corpus linguistics. We will then turn our focus to case study work more specific to the diachronic corpus linguistic field.

Term Paper Deadline: Sept. 30, 2025

This course focuses on the rationale, goals, and principles of differentiated instruction in the EFL classroom. Participants will learn a) how to examine and recognize individual differences in learning, student’s preferences for learning, their needs and interests, their learning styles, multiple intelligences and identities, as well as b) how to create learning environments that will maximize the potential for successful learning. At the end of this course participants will possess a repertoire of strategies for differentiating instruction that will allow them to respond flexibly to the diverse needs and abilities of all students in the EFL classroom.
Please note that this course will be conducted in an asynchronous, computer-mediated virtual format predominantly. Since asynchronous online courses are not conducted live and in-person, participants are not required to be logged in at the same time as everyone else, for instance, to attend virtual lectures or participate in video conferences and chat sessions. Instead, the instructor will distribute coursework through a virtual learning management system (i.e. StudIP, usually at the beginning of each week). Participants can complete the provided writing assignments and tasks at their own paces, adhering to the deadlines requested by the instructor (usually at the end of each week). This means that they can log on whenever they want, completing the coursework as they would like during each weekly block of learning.
This is a TEFLhybrid Course: http://www.uni-giessen.de/faculties/f05/engl/tefl/teflhybrid

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

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

Credit:
Ungraded: weekly assignments and learning logs, active participation (online forum), knowledge of recommended literature
Graded: in addition to the above, a term paper

Exam Period:
The term paper to be submitted by September 15, 2025.
Exam candidates are advised to submit their term papers by August 15, 2025.

Registration: Flex-Now

In this course we will discuss the period of English known as "Early Modern English" in depth. We will not only put a focus on social and cultural developments of the period, but also take a closer look at its distinguishing linguistic features and highlight prominent research devoted to this period, in particular from the diachronic corpus linguistic view.

Exam: July 23, 2025
or Term Paper: Sept. 30, 2025

What do teachers want at the end of the day? To do their jobs and go back home with a little bit of their sanity intact. In this seminar we will try to explore ways to manage and create a classroom environment that is ideal, or, maybe, just allows for students and teachers to co- exist and work well with each other. We will be investigating topics such as language, behavior, discipline, challenging students, anger, rules and social forms and focus on providing solutions or just insight into some pressing classroom issues. Just be aware: there is no single magic solution. Establishing yourself as a teacher is something that comes with experience, self-reflection and developing a thicker skin. Students will be expected to actively participate, read the texts, reflect and share their thoughts and ideas. Throughout the seminar they will also be expected to work together to complete mini projects that would complement practically the deeper understanding of the different topics. The participants will have to use the knowledge acquired in the first sessions to create their own instruction processes and a manual to be used alongside these, for all the tasks and activities. Finally, to further benefit from that experience students would record their impressions and learning journey on a log that would be reviewed by the lecturer.

Prerequisites:
Successful completion of Module TEFL I.

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

Credit:
Regular attendance, active participation in class; term paper

Exam period:
Term paper must be handed in until 15th September 2025.

Registration: Flex-Now

Was the will really written by the deceased or is it more likely that one of the family members faked it? Were the WhatsApp messages really sent by Jackson's runaway girlfriend or was she murdered and the messages were sent by her murderer? Do the protocols of a murder confession represent exactly what the alleged murderer said or may the protocols have been tampered with by a police officer? Was this person drunk when they gave the interview?
All these questions stem from the very heart of forensic linguistics, i.e. the usage of linguistic concepts and methods in legal contexts. In forensic linguistics, two areas are generally differentiated: the forensic linguist describing the language of law and the forensic linguist producing objective evidence based on the structures found in particular text for legal purposes.
In the course of the seminar, we will familiarise ourselves with different types of linguistic evidence (phonetic, lexical, syntactic, stylistic) in the context of legal examinations and seek to critically establish what role this type of linguistic evidence can and may be allowed to play in legal matters.

Prerequisites: Successful completion of the "Introduction to English Linguistics" course.
Reading: Reading material will be provided via Stud.IP.
Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, completion of reading and homework assignments and active participation in class.
Graded credit: In addition to the above, a final exam (22 July 2025) or a term paper (by 15 September 2025).

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, and non-finite constructions—this course is designed to help students solidify and extend their understanding of core areas of English grammar as they transition from the upper-intermediate level to the lower-advanced level (B2 to C1). This transition not only requires a firm grasp of essential structures—those already covered in school but often forgotten or never fully mastered—but also the acquisition of finer grammatical points necessary for achieving advanced language competence.

Focusing on the grammar of the English verb phrase—tense and aspect, modality, and non-finite constructions—this course is designed to help students solidify and extend their understanding of core areas of English grammar as they transition from the upper-intermediate level to the lower-advanced level (B2 to C1). This transition not only requires a firm grasp of essential structures—those already covered in school but often forgotten or never fully mastered—but also the acquisition of finer grammatical points necessary for achieving 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 exlores the captivating intersection of historical narratives and visual storytelling in graphic novels. We will discuss how they depict pivotal moments from the past and analyse how artists bring historical events to life through dynamic illustrations and powerful narratives. Students will critically examine graphic novels that offer fresh perspectives on history and challenge traditional historiography.

Graphic Novels use two codes to interact with the reader: pictures and text. Their inherent multimodality and educational potential for teaching and learning a foreign language will be of interest throughout the semester. Regarding the interaction of pictures and texts, their complementary as well as contradictory relation, we will analyse graphic novels for different age groups. The seminar is designed to then apply theoretical aspects as well as literary elements to classroom contexts, incorporating aspects of planning, structuring, and evaluating teaching units.


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

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

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

Exam period:
Term paper must be handed in until 15th September 2025.

Registration: FlexNow
Graded: Regular attendance, active participation, a short teaching proposal, term paper

Exam period:
Term paper must be handed in until 15th September 2025.

Registration: FlexNow

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

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

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

“Inclusive education refers to the philosophy of embracing human diversity and valuing and supporting the full participation of all students as equal members of an educational community” (NSW Legislative Council, 2017: p.14). However, in a digital era, has inclusive education been able to adapt to the new challenges and make use of modern instructional tools?
Throughout the seminar, students will work in understanding the main principles and implications of working on environments that promote Inclusion, within teaching and methodology settings, as well as material and curricula. The implications and challenges of promoting this teaching and learning framework will also be explored, sparking, hopefully, interesting discussions on the current conditions of the inclusion and differentiation discourse in the German context. Students will be exposed to digital and AI educational tools and explore ways in which they can be integrated to create tasks, lessons and support both for the teacher as well as SEN students. The participants will have to use the knowledge acquired in the first sessions in order to create their own instruction processes and a manual to be used alongside those processes, tailored to their students’ individual needs.

The course is conceptualized as a hybrid learning course (HRZ e-learning label “e++ intensive”), which means:
- It combines face-to-face seminar sessions with online activities to transform and enhance participants’ learning experiences, competencies and skills. It is comprised of four introductory classroom sessions, followed by four weeks of student-regulated online learning, and three final sessions to give all participants the opportunity to present their materials.
- It is based on both print and digital media regarding the resources used, but also regarding the products to be created by the participants.
- It integrates theory-based input and thorough reflection with creative, hands-on experience in small groups and project-oriented workshops.
The course makes use of StudIP, Canva and BBB to provide flexible and intuitive online tools allowing for an interactive workflow throughout the semester.





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

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

Credit:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in class
Graded: Regular attendance, active participation in class; term paper

Exam period:
Term paper must be handed in until 15th September 2025.

Registration: Flex-Now

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

The internship module introduces students of the BA programme Anglophone Stduies to possible careers or fields of activity and their specific requirements. It promotes the applied relevance of the programme and serves as an orientation aid for the transition from study to work within and outside an academic work environment.
This course intends to prepare students for their internships (e.g. formalities, processes). A professional internship may be substituted for a hands-on project in English.

This course offers a very hands-on introduction to statistical methods for the descriptive analysis of linguistic data (observational/corpus and experimental). We begin by looking at a few basic notions such as variables and hypotheses. We then discuss the logic of quantitative studies in general and how to set up data subsequent statistical evaluation. In terms of analysis and evaluation, we explore a variety of descriptive graphs and statistics for frequency data, averages, dispersions, distributions, and correlations. This course uses the open source programming language R, and is based on the third edition of my book _Statistics for Linguistics with R_, which students need to have to read the relevant chapters and use its sample data, exercises, answer keys, etc.
NB: This course would also be sufficient preparation for the regression modeling course that is also offered as a block seminar and will use the same text book.
Deadline for graded assignments: 30.09.2025

Colloquium: Master Theses
This class is designed to help students write their Master theses. During the first two sessions, we will talk about the question of how to find academic (i.e., peer-reviewed) secondary literature here at JLU, how to quote correctly according to the Departmental Style Sheet, how to find your research question (or thesis), and how to structure your Master thesis. In the following sessions, the students will be asked to present their ideas re. their final theses (in about 20 minutes). We will discuss these ideas and give advice in the context of the group.

Lexicology is concerned with the study of words. Consequently, the notion of a word, its constituent parts and various word formation processes take centre stage in this linguistic subdiscipline, but this does not mean that lexicology is exclusively concerned with the internal structure of words. Lexicology is inextricably linked to structural and cognitive semantics to a) establish lexical categories in the form of lexical fields or cognitive domains respectively and b) profile meaning-related structures in the English lexicon. Words, their building blocks and their various spelling variants are also windows to the past – they show that Latin, Germanic dialects, French, Arabic, etc. were in contact with English; they reflect social and technological change and they provide insights into the motivation behind and the process of standardising English.

In the course of this class, we will thus revise the linguistic concepts related to the notion of a word and the word formation processes relevant to the English language. In addition to establishing and analysing lexical fields and cognitive domains, we will also learn how to evaluate spoken and written texts lexically on the basis of frequency-related measures such as type-token ratio, lexical density and degree of lexical innovation. Further, we will also develop skills to trace the historical roots of words and to understand the changes they have undergone and the reasons for these changes.

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

Reading: Reading material will be provided for download from Stud.IP.

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

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

Exam period: Final exam on 24 July 2025; deadline for term paper submission: 15 September 2025.

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

We will discuss texts such as Nick Hornby's High Fidelity (1995), Rachel Cohn and David Levithan's Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2006), John Darnielle's Master of Reality (2008), and Jennifer Egan's The Candy House (2022).

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

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

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

This course focuses on the mediation of approaches and techniques of scientific work within English linguistics and literary studies with regard to structural, stylistics, and content design of academic research papers. Additionally, the course provides ample opportunity to work with different (linguistic) tools and practices research skills. We will also place an emphasis on how to discuss and present empirical findings.

In this seminar you will be asked to fill in several worksheets and there is no final examination.

"Modernism, War, and the Mind" uses British literary testimonials to think about the profound impact of war on the modernist imagination, exploring how writers of this era grappled with the psychological aftermath of conflict. By analyzing texts characterized by fragmented narratives and philosophical introspection, we aim to uncover the complex ways in which writers navigated the psyche's response to war. We will look at selected texts, both poetry and selected prose responses, a reader with all set texts will be available through StudIP from the beginning of term.

Motivation is one of the most important keys to success in learning and teaching English as a foreign language. This seminar aims to provide a deeper understanding of ‘what motivation is’ and how it can be ‘supported, maintained and, perhaps, increased’ in different EFL classroom environments, ranging from traditional to modern. The general approach is interdisciplinary, which means that recent trends and developments in motivational and in educational psychology, in learning theory, in the fields of applied linguistics and TEFL will be examined and discussed. These insights will serve as the background against which the following aspects will be explored in more detail: the significance of a ‘motivating’ classroom setting; the role of the teacher in supporting learner motivation, motivational strategies and skills; motivating and standards-oriented teaching/testing, etc.; the question of how to maintain teacher motivation.

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

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

Credit:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in class, team presentation, knowledge of recommended literature
Graded: in addition to the above, a term paper

Exam Period:
The term paper to be submitted by September 15, 2025.
Exam candidates are advised to submit their term papers by August 15, 2025.

Registration: Flex-Now

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

During this course, Master's students participate in the doctoral colloquium of the International PhD Programme (IPP) "Literary and Cultural Studies." The colloquium provides an opportunity to gain insight into projects actively being pursued by doctoral students, to participate in advanced discussions in the field of literary and cultural studies, and, most importantly, to begin planning their own MA theses and receive feedback before moving forward.

At the end of the course, Master´s students will be asked to give a presentation on the outline of their MA thesis; given this type of requirement, this course is aimed at students in the final stages of their MA who are about to start writing their thesis
Sessions start on the 23rd of April. The other mandatory sessions will be 30th of April, 14th of May, 23rd of May, 18th of June, and 25th of June. The sessions on the 2nd and 9th of July will be entirely dedicated to the presentations of the theses´ outlines.

The sessions will run from 10.00-13.00 on the abovementioned dates (please note that the sessions start at 10.00 sharp).

In addition to registering via FlexNow, students are required to register with the IPP (via email to ipp@ggk.uni-giessen.de) in order to be added to the course´s StudIP, learn about the course requirements and receive the necessary materials.

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

This lecture will focus on Pidgin and Creole Englishes, varieties that have resulted from a special case of language contact. Pidgins emerge as a lingua franca ("Behelfssprache") when speech communities who do not share a common language have to communicate. That is, pidgins are nobody's first language and they are used for restricted purposes only (such as trading). They draw their word-stock mainly from one of the languages in contact but show a different, in many respects simplified grammar. When pidgins are acquired by children as their mother tongue, creolization takes place, which also leads to the structural evolvement of grammar. Pidgin and Creole Englishes came into existence through the contact of English with unrelated languages (e.g. in Africa), mainly in the age of British overseas expansion from the 17th century onwards.
The lecture will look at the theory, history, structure and sociolinguistics of Pidgins and Creoles. It will provide, among others, definitions of different kinds of contact languages, information on the sociohistorical contexts of their emergence, theories of Pidgin and Creole Genesis, as well as the continued development of creole languages. We will also look at the linguistic structure of Pidgin and Creole Englishes and compare them to their various input languages.

Ungraded credit only.

Political Narratives across Media
In this class, we will discuss political narratives across different media. We will begin by addressing the question of what exactly a story is, and how we can determine its political ramifications. We will then look at different narratives such as the novels Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell and The Circle (2013) by Dave Eggers; the films Blade Runner (1982) and Brazil (1985); selected episodes from the television series Black Mirror (2011-23) and The Handmaid's Tale (2017-); as well as conspiracy narratives (like QAnon) and other disruptive stories or forms of fake news that have to do with the world-wide rise of right-wing populism.

Post-Postmodernist Fictions of the Digital
This class looks at post-postmodernist fictions of the digital. We will begin by discussing what happens after the end of the playful self-reflexivity of postmodernism (including concepts such as "digimodernism," "metamodernism," "cosmodernism," and "post-postmodernism"). We will also analyze the use of the digital in multimodal novels (which combine prose texts with visually represented e-mails, text messages, Skype transcripts, online forums, tweets, and blogs), and transmedial novels (which take the reader beyond the printed text to additional material on related websites, apps, or social media platforms). Two of our four primary texts will be Maria Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette (2012) and Caleb Azumah Nelson's Open Water (2021).

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

This course offers a hands-on introduction to predictive modeling for linguists, social scientists, and digital humanists for both observational and experimental data. We will very briefly discuss the absolute basics of statistical analysis (but I recommend participants already have that knowledge and/or attend the block seminar before this one) and then proceed to discuss different kinds of regression modeling on numeric, binary, and - time permitting - multinomial data. We will discuss model selection, evaluation, diagnostics, and, especially important, model visualization. In addition, we will spend some time on classification and regression trees as well as random forests. This course uses the open source programming language R , and is based on the third edition of my book _Statistics for Linguistics with R_, which students need to have to read the relevant chapters and use its sample data, exercises, answer keys, etc.
NB: This course presupposes (!) basic knowledge in R and descriptive statistics of the kind that is available from either the Introduction to Statistics course I also offer as a block seminar here at the JLU or from having worked through (properly) through chapter 1 to 3 of my book.
Deadline for graded assignments: 30.09.2025

This seminar aims at introducing the main concepts, theories and methods of psycholinguistic and cognitive linguistic research and, in doing so, provides a broad overview of this particular linguistic field. Furthermore, this seminar will put a special focus on issues pertaining to L2 acquisition and teaching.

Exam: July 22, 2025
or Term Paper: Sept. 30, 2025

This course aims to develop students' communicative competence in reading and writing for academic purposes at the C1 level of the CEFR. Through engagement with discipline-specific topics, students will practice decoding primary and secondary sources and articulating their ideas in academic prose that is both formally and functionally appropriate for term papers. Special attention will be given to refining mediation skills (adapting and conveying complex information to suit a specific audience’s needs) and metacognitive skills (monitoring one’s own writing process).

This course aims to develop students’ communicative competence in reading and writing for academic purposes at the C1 level of the CEFR. Through engagement with discipline-specific topics, students will practice decoding primary and secondary sources and articulating their ideas in academic prose that is both formally and functionally appropriate for term papers. Special attention will be given to refining mediation skills (adapting and conveying complex information to suit a specific audience’s needs) and metacognitive skills (monitoring one’s own writing process).

This course aims to develop students’ communicative competence in reading and writing for academic purposes at the C1 level of the CEFR. Through engagement with discipline-specific topics, students will practice decoding primary and secondary sources and articulating their ideas in academic prose that is both formally and functionally appropriate for term papers. Special attention will be given to refining mediation skills (adapting and conveying complex information to suit a specific audience’s needs) and metacognitive skills (monitoring one’s own writing process).

This course aims to develop students’ communicative competence in reading and writing for academic purposes at the C1 level of the CEFR. Through engagement with discipline-specific topics, students will practice decoding primary and secondary sources and articulating their ideas in academic prose that is both formally and functionally appropriate for term papers. Special attention will be given to refining mediation skills (adapting and conveying complex information to suit a specific audience’s needs) and metacognitive skills (monitoring one’s own writing process).

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

This course will provide an introduction to the literary genre of science fiction, with a particular focus on how this literature deals with the nature of, and relationship between, the human and the nonhuman. We will discuss the features and history of the genre, and we will analyze texts by Isaac Asimov, Stanisław Lem, Arthur C. Clarke, Ursula K. Le Guin, James Tiptree Jr. (pseudonym of Alice Sheldon), Greg Egan, Ted Chiang, and Kim Bo-Young. By delving into some of the most important theoretical issues that animate the field of science fiction studies, such as the theory of cognitive estrangement (Darko Suvin) and the genre’s relationship with the scientific imagination, we will investigate the various ways in which science fiction is able to question, reconfigure, and generate new perspectives on the human, the alien, and everything in between.

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

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

Sociolinguistics studies the effects social factors have on language use and language structures.
In this seminar, students will learn about some of the regional, social, and functional factors that determine differences in language use on all linguistic levels.

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.
Credit: Final Exam (23 July 2025) or Term Paper (by 15 September 2025)

Building on Speaking and Listening I, this course aims to develop students’ communicative competence in speaking and listening for academic purposes at the C1 level of the CEFR. Engaging with discipline-specific topics in cultural studies, literary criticism, education, and/or linguistics, students will continue to practice decoding aural input and effectively communicating ideas orally in an academic setting.

This advanced-level course focuses on orally mediating information from complex academic sources—both spoken and written—with a strong emphasis on audience orientation. To achieve this, special attention will be given to features of complex oral texts that facilitate aural comprehension, including register and style, coherence and cohesion, introductions, and the explication of textual support.

Building on Speaking and Listening I, this course aims to develop students’ communicative competence in speaking and listening for academic purposes at the C1 level of the CEFR. Engaging with discipline-specific topics in cultural studies, literary criticism, education, and/or linguistics, students will continue to practice decoding aural input and effectively communicating ideas orally in an academic setting.

This advanced-level course focuses on orally mediating information from complex academic sources—both spoken and written—with a strong emphasis on audience orientation. To achieve this, special attention will be given to features of complex oral texts that facilitate aural comprehension, including register and style, coherence and cohesion, introductions, and the explication of textual support.

Building on Speaking and Listening I, this course aims to develop students’ communicative competence in speaking and listening for academic purposes at the C1 level of the CEFR. Engaging with discipline-specific topics in cultural studies, literary criticism, education, and/or linguistics, students will continue to practice decoding aural input and effectively communicating ideas orally in an academic setting.

This advanced-level course focuses on orally mediating information from complex academic sources—both spoken and written—with a strong emphasis on audience orientation. To achieve this, special attention will be given to features of complex oral texts that facilitate aural comprehension, including register and style, coherence and cohesion, introductions, and the explication of textual support.

In this seminar, we will examine Standard English from two different perspectives: in a diachronic approach, we will explore how it developed from Old English over time to become the variety we all know as Standard English today. Then, taking a synchronic approach, we will investigate different standards that have developed in the anglophone world. We will examine standardization processes on different structural levels (such as phonology, lexis, grammar, etc.), ongoing processes of normative (re)orientation and speakers' attitudes and perceptions toward their own and other standard varieties.

Exam date: July 25, 2025

Designed as a project seminar with practical teaching experience at Gesamtschule Gießen Ost, we will explore the potential of informal English learning opportunities through video streaming and their effects on the English medium digital selfhood of learners. Representations of anglophone cultures in series and films will be of interest, and we will analyse and interpret specific series to be used in the EFLC. While working with the students from Gesamtschule Gießen Ost, questions concerning learning English in the digital age will be of interest as well as the learners’ attitudes towards and experiences with English medium pop-culture.

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

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

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

Exam period:
Term paper must be handed in until 15th September 2025.

Registration: FlexNow
Graded: Regular attendance, active participation, a short teaching proposal, term paper

Exam period:
Term paper must be handed in until 15th September 2025.

Registration: FlexNow

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

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

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

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

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

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

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

Designed as a project seminar with practical teaching experience at Gesamtschule Gießen Ost, we will explore the educational potential of intercultural communicative competence, intercultural learning and literary learning in the English as a foreign language classroom. Throughout the semester, we will focus on the British culture(s) represented in many course books. By looking at literary texts, expository texts, cultural products and course book texts we will plan, structure as well as evaluate teaching units and lessons incorporating literary, cultural and language-related learning. The lesson proposals are then to be used for practical teaching with learners from Gesamtschule Gießen Ost.

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

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

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

Exam period:
Term paper must be handed in until 15th September 2025.

Registration: FlexNow

The seminar is designed to provide a didactic as well as methodological framework for teaching young learns in primary school. Throughout the semester, we will look at learner contributions to language learning, child-oriented approaches, and topics as well as materials suitable for teaching English in primary school. We will evaluate commercial teaching material, and plan, structure as well as reflect on teaching units and lessons designed for beginner learners in the EFLC.

Prerequisites:
Successful completion of Module TEFL I.

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

Credit:
Regular attendance, active participation in class; term paper

Exam period:
Term paper must be handed in until 15th September 2025.

Registration: Flex-Now

What if we no longer consider films in the ELF classroom as a stopgap, but rather as a multi-faceted opportunity to look for new ways of teaching and learning a foreign language? Films possess broad educational potential and are nowadays a very present, attractive, and popular medium for our pupils in everyday life. In this lecture, we want to find out together where this potential lies as well as to what extent the use of films can contribute to language acquisition in our English lesson. To this end, we will first look at different film genres and examine the central educational aspects of receptive film work with regard to the appropriate methodological approach. In a further step, we will look at interactive, production-oriented approaches to foster competences and we will then try out practical ways of implementing them in the classroom.

Prerequisites:
Successful completion of Module TEFL I.

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

Credit:
Regular attendance, active participation in class; term paper

Exam period:
Term paper must be handed in until 15th September 2025.

Registration: Flex-Now

Pointing out the importance of working on teaching skills is the purpose of most seminars, as instruction is the focus of the learning experience. One of the most challenging but also interesting skills to teach is Speaking. Throughout the seminar, students will work in understanding the main principles and implications of working on Speaking with primary school students. Swe will explore some of its most significant aspects, namely the fundamental principles of teaching Speaking, classrooms strategies and techniques, speaking tasks as well as practical classroom examples. Both the elements of instruction and assessment will be explored in both their theoretical and practical dimensions. The participants will have to use the knowledge acquired in the first sessions to create their own instruction and assessment processes and a manual to be used alongside these, for all the tasks and activities.


Prerequisites:
Successful completion of Module TEFL I.

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

Credit:
Regular attendance, active participation in class; term paper

Exam period:
Term paper must be handed in until 15th September 2025.

Registration: Flex-Now

Especially young learners show a lot of interest in writing. However, it can be frustrating when you have difficulties expressing yourself in a foreign language.
This course focuses not only on teaching writing to primary school but also more advanced students. We will also work on the general issue of motivating students. Furthermore, we will have a closer look at the transition of year 4 to 5. The aim is to develop material for lessons as well as projects including ideas for creative writing etc.

Prerequisites:
Successful completion of Module TEFL I.

Required Reading:
All texts will be made available on Stud.IP.

Credit:
Regular attendance, active participation in class; term paper

Exam period:
Term paper must be handed in until 15th September 2025.

Registration: Flex-Now

Help your pupils dive into the world of stories! Authentic literary texts can enrich with their broad potential the EFL classroom in various ways. By strongly engaging the personal-affective dimension of the learner, they foster linguistic-communicative, literary, intercultural and intertextual competences. In this course, we want to explore this potential by focusing on a literary genre which teens are very passionate about as well as by examining didactic-methodological principles of narrative literature in foreign language learning and teaching. Besides working with well-loved English literary works and providing motivating examples for learners at different levels, we will also look at the central role played by factors such as identity, personal growth, conflicts and values.

Prerequisites:
Successful completion of Module TEFL I.

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

Credit:
Regular attendance, active participation in class; term paper

Exam period:
Term paper must be handed in until 15th September 2025.

Registration: Flex-Now

Course Description
This seminar explores the development of Anglophone poetry from the Middle Ages to the present day. By engaging in close readings and contextual discussions, students will trace the evolution of poetic forms, themes, and functions. The course highlights how poetry has responded to and shaped cultural, historical, and political movements, from medieval manuscript culture to 17th century political revolutions, 18th century satire, Mid-19th century confessional poetry, to contemporary digital poetry in anglophone cultures. Students will develop analytical skills through textual interpretation and comparative discussion, considering how poetic voices across centuries resonate with or challenge one another. We will also discuss poetry’s ongoing relevance and explore together what differentiates reading poetry cognitively from engaging with other media, highlighting its unique stance as an art form. Finally, students willing to engage in creative practices will be invited to write their own poetry, as the seminar concludes with its very own Poetry Slam in the final session.

Learning Objectives
By the end of the course, students will:
- Understand the major periods, forms, and movements in Anglophone poetry.
- Analyze poetry in relation to historical and cultural contexts.
- Develop close reading and interpretive skills.
- Engage critically with poetic language, form, and aesthetics.
- Explore the role of poetry in articulating personal, national, and global identities.

This series of interactive lectures examines major developments in the United States since the beginning of the current millennium. Important events include the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the ensuing Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Abu Ghraib prisoner scandal, the financial crisis of 2007-2008, the Black Lives Matter movement, #MeToo, the COVID-19 pandemic, political polarization, and the legacy of Trumpism after the 2024 presidential elections.
Our focus is on how to historicize post-election political events by looking at how they were predated in the past. We review the separation of powers as outlined by the U.S. Constitution and American law’s denial of social and legal personhood to Blacks and Native Americans. We look at how early twentieth-century immigration bans and quotas relate to anti-immigration government initiatives now, and also rehearse the medial history of the U.S. presidency. In particular, the lecture examines the medial politics of anti-immigration and anti-diversity messages, understanding “diversity [as] democratic, and anti-diversity efforts as attempts to restrict democracy through fearmongering.” (Olson and Kreitler, 2024)

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

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

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

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

This seminar will provide insight into the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create or enhance EFL teaching materials for different educational contexts. Participants will first explore the fascinating field of AI in TEFL, considering its strengths and limitations. They will then examine the combination of generative AI with other digital technologies and tools to produce attractive and engaging EFL teaching and learning materials. Student learning in this course will be driven by theoretical discussions of materials development in TEFL and exploratory, project-based practice in small groups.

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

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

Credit:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in class, team presentation, knowledge of recommended literature
Graded: in addition to the above, a term paper

Exam Period:
The term paper to be submitted by September 15, 2025.
Exam candidates are advised to submit their term papers by August 15, 2025.

Registration: Flex-Now

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

World Englishes encapsulate first- and second-language varieties such as regional varieties in Africa, America, Asia, Australia, the Southern Pacific and various other places. Asian Englishes are generally divided into two geographical subgroups, i.e. South Asian Englishes and Southeast Asian Englishes. The South Asian Sprachraum comprising Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka constitutes a particularly intriguing case in the study of World Englishes since the respective regional varieties of English develop in linguistically complex contact scenarios with e.g. indigenous languages, but also the common core of English (cf. Quirk et al. 1985: 16). In a similar vein, language contact is also characteristic of and a driving factor behind the emergence of structurally distinct Southeast Asian Englishes (e.g. Hong Kong English, Malaysian English, Singapore English). America, Australian and South Pacific Englishes as well as others can be differentiated from Asian Englishes by the higher share of first-language users in the regions concerned while the influence of other (formerly local) languages on the respective varieties of English should not be underestimated.

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

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

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, completion of reading and homework assignments and active participation in class.

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

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

This seminar will cover the diversity of English found in North America from a sociolinguistic point of view. We will not only focus on regional varieties and major dialect areas, but also consider various other social factors that contribute to the linguistic landscape of North America. There will also be an opportunity to dive into various case studies and methodological approaches, in particular corpus linguistic approaches commonly used in variationist linguistics.

Exam: July 24, 2025
or Term Paper: Sept. 30, 2025

This course will investigate the power of Virtual Reality for teaching and learning English as a foreign language. Virtual Reality is an immersive and interactive computer-mediated simulation of a multidimensional environment with manipulations of the users' senses. During this practical course students will be given a head-mounted VR headset as we will explore ways of integrating VR into the EFLC. Here we will take a critical look at current research on VR as well as examine various VR-Apps to harness their potential for designing competence-oriented tasks for beginners to advanced learners. In person attendance in the seminar building in Giessen is mandatory.

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

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

Credit:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, active participation in class
Graded: Regular attendance, active participation in class; term paper

Exam period:
Term paper must be handed in until 15th September 2025.

Registration: Flex-Now

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

This series of interactive lectures demonstrates the centrality of popular culture and mass media to understanding the political present. We address topics such as how literary studies and philology came to embrace the analysis of phenomena relating to sports and fashion, as well as how media interpretation and theory have evolved into academic disciplines.
Central concepts and methods of cultural, media, and popular studies are introduced and illustrated through case studies about current political-cultural events. This analytical work leads to discussions of race, gender, sexuality, diversity, social hierarchies and how to decolonize knowledge.

The overarching topic of this course is (skeletal) muscle with some of its characteristics and properties that are of interest in biomechanics. In this context, we will also deal with lever arms, moments of force, and free body diagrams. Time-permitting, we will also look into muscle modelling.

In der Vorlesung „Spezifische Messverfahren“ erwerben die Studierenden grundlegende Kenntnisse über die in der biomechanisch-motorikwissenschaftlich ausgerichteten Bewegungsanalyse verwendeten Messverfahren. Besprochen werden (i) Messverfahren zur Erfassung von äußeren Kräften, Druckverteilungen und Beschleunigungen, (ii) optische Messverfahren (2D, 3D) zur Erfassung von Bewegungstrajektorien und kinematischer Parameter, (iii) Grundlagen der Oberflächen-Elektromyographie (Erfassung und Analyse von Muskelaktivitäten bei unterschiedlichen Bewegungsaufgaben) sowie (iv) Zeitmessverfahren zur Erfassung von Reaktions- und Bewegungszeiten.

Basic statistical knowledge will be extended and transferred to the analysis of movement related data. Specific requirements of such data sets will be elaborated. Matlab programs are used to deepen the understanding of the core concepts and to illustrate their practical application. Lecture and seminar on specific data analyses will be tightly coupled. The final modul exam requires the development of an analytical tool for a selected data set.

The general theme of this seminar is like the one of the associated lecture [in short: (skeletal) muscle with some of its characteristics and properties; lever arms, moments of force, and free body diagrams; time-permitting, muscle modelling]. However, the seminar has a more applied approach, with free body diagram problems, working with scientific papers, or hands-on time in the laboratory.