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

Due to the large-scale global transformations of the 20th century, migration literature has become a vibrant genre over the last decades. In these novels, issues of transcultural identity and belonging feature prominently. In this course, we will take a closer look at the ways in which the idea of family informs processes of identity construction among the second generation in particular. We will examine how the novels explore changing roles and meanings of the diasporic family as well as intergenerational family relations in a migration setting, and ask what the specific challenges, problems, and possibilities are that arise in this context.
This course offers an introduction to some areas of postcolonial theory as well as to ‘fictions of migration’ and Black and Asian British literature. The prism of the family and family relations also means that we engage with family research, which is a particularly interdisciplinary field of study. We will read theoretical texts and studies from subjects such as sociology, psychology, communication studies and memory studies in order to establish a conceptual framework to investigate synchronic and diachronic family constellations and connections.
We will read three novels in this class, and discuss some further examples (you are welcome to also make suggestions). Please get your own copy of these novels before the beginning of the term:
Andrea Levy, Fruit of the Lemon (1999)
Zadie Smith, White Teeth (2000)
Bernardine Evaristo, Lara (1997/2009 – please get the later edition of the novel)
Further reading will be made available during the semester.

“Literature for Social Change!”, “Changing the World – One Book at a Time!”, “The Power of the Pen.”

Bold claims have been made about the power literature has on societies. But what constitutes the relation between literature and society?
This interdisciplinary research seminar explores the intersection of literature and sociology in its various shapes and lines of thought. From the sociology of literature, to literary sociology, to theorising the social through literature – this research seminar provides students with an introduction to the literature’s dynamic relation to the social and social sciences. Students will engage with key figures and texts in the sociology of literature and social theory as well as closely read literary fiction and nonfiction in light of the theoretical concepts and approaches discussed. The course invites students to engage with sociological concepts such as social stratification and cultural hegemony, while analysing the ways in which literature both reflects and influences the social world. Readings will span historical periods and genres, including works from diverse cultural perspectives, encouraging students to think critically about the intersections of narrative form and social life.
This research seminar places special emphasis on literary representations of work (wage labour, care work, and artistic work), but also on the role of cultural productions in (re)producing the social and the economic.

Please note: Once registered on Flex.now you will be added to the Stud.IP course at the beginning of the lecture period.

This research seminar aims to collaboratively develop a theory of the monstrous based on literary and medial representations of the monstrous and select secondary readings. The monster is a recurring motif of embodied difference – be it of collective cultural anxieties of or obsessions with otherness. The monstrous transgresses boundaries of social normativity and morality, and straddles the liminal space of lure and repulsion. In contemporary literature, film, and other media, these transgressions raise question of queer body politics, but also work at the intersections of race and disability.
Departing from existing research on the monster in antiquity, the middles ages and early modernity, students in this seminar will explore the monstrous other and its various reincarnations in literature, film, and other media to develop a theory of the monstrous in contemporary fiction. Students will examine the recurrence of the monstrous and its adaptations in popular culture and investigate its various functions as expressions of, e.g., fear of contagion, racism, gender and sexuality.
Readings include: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Aliya Whiteley’s The Beauty, Sadia Quraeshi Shepard’s Monsters, and Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water.

Please note: Once registered on Flex.now you will be added to the Stud.IP course at the beginning of the lecture period.

This research seminar aims to collaboratively develop a theory of the monstrous based on literary and medial representations of the monstrous and select secondary readings. The monster is a recurring motif of embodied difference – be it of collective cultural anxieties of or obsessions with otherness. The monstrous transgresses boundaries of social normativity and morality, and straddles the liminal space of lure and repulsion. In contemporary literature, film, and other media, these transgressions raise question of queer body politics, but also work at the intersections of race and disability.
Departing from existing research on the monster in antiquity, the middles ages and early modernity, students in this seminar will explore the monstrous other and its various reincarnations in literature, film, and other media to develop a theory of the monstrous in contemporary fiction. Students will examine the recurrence of the monstrous and its adaptations in popular culture and investigate its various functions as expressions of, e.g., fear of contagion, racism, gender and sexuality.
Readings include: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Aliya Whiteley’s The Beauty, Sadia Quraeshi Shepard’s Monsters, and Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water.

Please note: Once registered on Flex.now you will be added to the Stud.IP course at the beginning of the lecture period.

Narratives fundamentally shape our lives – how we see ourselves, others, and the world. Not only do narratives help us make sense of past experience by giving them shape, they guide how we experience the present moment, and how we envision the future. In short, narrative structures inform our thinking and perception. In queer theory, however, the logic of narrative has caused a certain suspicion: narrative is seen as a normalising tool, a patriarchal instrument that defines and upholds traditional forms of masculinity and femininity. If narratives are inherently heteronormative, can there be such a thing as queer narrative?
In order to establish an understanding of this ‘antinarrative’ position in queer studies, we will take a closer look at what ‘narrative’ means, what it looks like in but also outside of literature, and how it functions as an interdisciplinary concept. We will examine the ways certain plot structures and character constellations convey heteronormative values, who is awarded a happy ending and who gets to tell the story. Perhaps the most interesting question, however, is whether narrative can be queered and what that can look like. Queer narratives can be expected to subvert conventional storylines and challenge traditional narrative forms, which makes them intriguing texts to read – and particularly fruitful subjects of analysis (which will give us ample opportunity to hone our reading skills!).
In this course, the queer critique of narrative will serve as a starting point to an introduction to narrative theory as well as queer theory and some of its key concepts. The concern with the normative aspects of narrative is not only relevant to a queer perspective, but can be extended to narrative’s functions in our society and culture more generally. Moreover, questions of queerness also frequently invite the engagement with other key concepts of cultural theory, such as postcolonialism and race. In particular, this course is interested in the varied and multifold potential of narratives for individuals and communities, as well as in the more specific potential of literature and other narrative media.
We will read two novels in this class, and discuss some further examples (you are welcome to also make suggestions). Please get your own copy of the two novels before the beginning of the term. Further reading will be made available during the semester.
Jackie Kay, Trumpet (1998)
Jordie Rosenberg, Confessions of the Fox (2018)
Content note: Kay’s Trumpet features deeply transphobic characters and their use of language. A confrontation with this can be avoided by reading only selected chapters of the novel. Please get in touch with me for more detailed instructions, if you want to make use of this option.

In this course, we will deal with a particularly exciting genre of Victorian literature, the sensation novel. In the 1860s, this quickly rising new genre caused more than just a stir in the literary scene. It came upon the Victorian literary landscape like an earthquake that shook and tumbled about its power structures, moralities and value system. Against this background, the genre of the sensation novel offers us a particularly interesting and insightful perspective into just that – Victorian society and the values at its core that kept the boundaries between class, gender, and race intact. In particular, we will look at the way these values shape the idea of femininity/masculinity and family as the social institutions that lie at the heart of Victorian society.
In this class, we will read a famous example of the Victorian sensation novel vis-à-vis a Neo- (or sometimes also called Retro-) Victorian novel that challenges the Victorian take on gender, sexuality, and morality. Comparing these two novels, we might be able to understand a bit better the allure of this genre, but also the danger that it emanated, which caused so many debates among Victorian critics. The course offers an introduction to the genre of the sensation novel, as well as a repetition of the most important tools and concepts of literary analysis, and will give you an opportunity to hone your narratological skills. It will also provide an introduction into feminist literary criticism and key concepts of gender studies.
We will read two novels in this class, and discuss some further examples (you are welcome to also make suggestions). Please get your own copy of these novels before the beginning of term.
Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley’s Secret (1865)
Sarah Waters, Fingersmith (2002)
Further reading will be made available during the semester.

This research seminar aims to collaboratively develop a theory of the monstrous based on literary and medial representations of the monstrous and select secondary readings. The monster is a recurring motif of embodied difference – be it of collective cultural anxieties of or obsessions with otherness. The monstrous transgresses boundaries of social normativity and morality, and straddles the liminal space of lure and repulsion. In contemporary literature, film, and other media, these transgressions raise question of queer body politics, but also work at the intersections of race and disability.
Departing from existing research on the monster in antiquity, the middles ages and early modernity, students in this seminar will explore the monstrous other and its various reincarnations in literature, film, and other media to develop a theory of the monstrous in contemporary fiction. Students will examine the recurrence of the monstrous and its adaptations in popular culture and investigate its various functions as expressions of, e.g., fear of contagion, racism, gender and sexuality.
Readings include: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Aliya Whiteley’s The Beauty, Sadia Quraeshi Shepard’s Monsters, and Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water.

Please note: Once registered on Flex.now you will be added to the Stud.IP course at the beginning of the lecture period.

Narratives fundamentally shape our lives – how we see ourselves, others, and the world. Not only do narratives help us make sense of past experience by giving them shape, they guide how we experience the present moment, and how we envision the future. In short, narrative structures inform our thinking and perception. In queer theory, however, the logic of narrative has caused a certain suspicion: narrative is seen as a normalising tool, a patriarchal instrument that defines and upholds traditional forms of masculinity and femininity. If narratives are inherently heteronormative, can there be such a thing as queer narrative?
In order to establish an understanding of this ‘antinarrative’ position in queer studies, we will take a closer look at what ‘narrative’ means, what it looks like in but also outside of literature, and how it functions as an interdisciplinary concept. We will examine the ways certain plot structures and character constellations convey heteronormative values, who is awarded a happy ending and who gets to tell the story. Perhaps the most interesting question, however, is whether narrative can be queered and what that can look like. Queer narratives can be expected to subvert conventional storylines and challenge traditional narrative forms, which makes them intriguing texts to read – and particularly fruitful subjects of analysis (which will give us ample opportunity to hone our reading skills!).
In this course, the queer critique of narrative will serve as a starting point to an introduction to narrative theory as well as queer theory and some of its key concepts. The concern with the normative aspects of narrative is not only relevant to a queer perspective, but can be extended to narrative’s functions in our society and culture more generally. Moreover, questions of queerness also frequently invite the engagement with other key concepts of cultural theory, such as postcolonialism and race. In particular, this course is interested in the varied and multifold potential of narratives for individuals and communities, as well as in the more specific potential of literature and other narrative media.
We will read two novels in this class, and discuss some further examples (you are welcome to also make suggestions). Please get your own copy of the two novels before the beginning of the term. Further reading will be made available during the semester.
Jackie Kay, Trumpet (1998)
Jordie Rosenberg, Confessions of the Fox (2018)
Content note: Kay’s Trumpet features deeply transphobic characters and their use of language. A confrontation with this can be avoided by reading only selected chapters of the novel. Please get in touch with me for more detailed instructions, if you want to make use of this option.

In this course, we will deal with a particularly exciting genre of Victorian literature, the sensation novel. In the 1860s, this quickly rising new genre caused more than just a stir in the literary scene. It came upon the Victorian literary landscape like an earthquake that shook and tumbled about its power structures, moralities and value system. Against this background, the genre of the sensation novel offers us a particularly interesting and insightful perspective into just that – Victorian society and the values at its core that kept the boundaries between class, gender, and race intact. In particular, we will look at the way these values shape the idea of femininity/masculinity and family as the social institutions that lie at the heart of Victorian society.
In this class, we will read a famous example of the Victorian sensation novel vis-à-vis a Neo- (or sometimes also called Retro-) Victorian novel that challenges the Victorian take on gender, sexuality, and morality. Comparing these two novels, we might be able to understand a bit better the allure of this genre, but also the danger that it emanated, which caused so many debates among Victorian critics. The course offers an introduction to the genre of the sensation novel, as well as a repetition of the most important tools and concepts of literary analysis, and will give you an opportunity to hone your narratological skills. It will also provide an introduction into feminist literary criticism and key concepts of gender studies.
We will read two novels in this class, and discuss some further examples (you are welcome to also make suggestions). Please get your own copy of these novels before the beginning of term.
Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley’s Secret (1865)
Sarah Waters, Fingersmith (2002)
Further reading will be made available during the semester.

Due to the large-scale global transformations of the 20th century, migration literature has become a vibrant genre over the last decades. In these novels, issues of transcultural identity and belonging feature prominently. In this course, we will take a closer look at the ways in which the idea of family informs processes of identity construction among the second generation in particular. We will examine how the novels explore changing roles and meanings of the diasporic family as well as intergenerational family relations in a migration setting, and ask what the specific challenges, problems, and possibilities are that arise in this context.
This course offers an introduction to some areas of postcolonial theory as well as to ‘fictions of migration’ and Black and Asian British literature. The prism of the family and family relations also means that we engage with family research, which is a particularly interdisciplinary field of study. We will read theoretical texts and studies from subjects such as sociology, psychology, communication studies and memory studies in order to establish a conceptual framework to investigate synchronic and diachronic family constellations and connections.
We will read three novels in this class, and discuss some further examples (you are welcome to also make suggestions). Please get your own copy of these novels before the beginning of the term:
Andrea Levy, Fruit of the Lemon (1999)
Zadie Smith, White Teeth (2000)
Bernardine Evaristo, Lara (1997/2009 – please get the later edition of the novel)
Further reading will be made available during the semester.

“Literature for Social Change!”, “Changing the World – One Book at a Time!”, “The Power of the Pen.”

Bold claims have been made about the power literature has on societies. But what constitutes the relation between literature and society?
This interdisciplinary research seminar explores the intersection of literature and sociology in its various shapes and lines of thought. From the sociology of literature, to literary sociology, to theorising the social through literature – this research seminar provides students with an introduction to the literature’s dynamic relation to the social and social sciences. Students will engage with key figures and texts in the sociology of literature and social theory as well as closely read literary fiction and nonfiction in light of the theoretical concepts and approaches discussed. The course invites students to engage with sociological concepts such as social stratification and cultural hegemony, while analysing the ways in which literature both reflects and influences the social world. Readings will span historical periods and genres, including works from diverse cultural perspectives, encouraging students to think critically about the intersections of narrative form and social life.
This research seminar places special emphasis on literary representations of work (wage labour, care work, and artistic work), but also on the role of cultural productions in (re)producing the social and the economic.

Please note: Once registered on Flex.now you will be added to the Stud.IP course at the beginning of the lecture period.

Narratives fundamentally shape our lives – how we see ourselves, others, and the world. Not only do narratives help us make sense of past experience by giving them shape, they guide how we experience the present moment, and how we envision the future. In short, narrative structures inform our thinking and perception. In queer theory, however, the logic of narrative has caused a certain suspicion: narrative is seen as a normalising tool, a patriarchal instrument that defines and upholds traditional forms of masculinity and femininity. If narratives are inherently heteronormative, can there be such a thing as queer narrative?
In order to establish an understanding of this ‘antinarrative’ position in queer studies, we will take a closer look at what ‘narrative’ means, what it looks like in but also outside of literature, and how it functions as an interdisciplinary concept. We will examine the ways certain plot structures and character constellations convey heteronormative values, who is awarded a happy ending and who gets to tell the story. Perhaps the most interesting question, however, is whether narrative can be queered and what that can look like. Queer narratives can be expected to subvert conventional storylines and challenge traditional narrative forms, which makes them intriguing texts to read – and particularly fruitful subjects of analysis (which will give us ample opportunity to hone our reading skills!).
In this course, the queer critique of narrative will serve as a starting point to an introduction to narrative theory as well as queer theory and some of its key concepts. The concern with the normative aspects of narrative is not only relevant to a queer perspective, but can be extended to narrative’s functions in our society and culture more generally. Moreover, questions of queerness also frequently invite the engagement with other key concepts of cultural theory, such as postcolonialism and race. In particular, this course is interested in the varied and multifold potential of narratives for individuals and communities, as well as in the more specific potential of literature and other narrative media.
We will read two novels in this class, and discuss some further examples (you are welcome to also make suggestions). Please get your own copy of the two novels before the beginning of the term. Further reading will be made available during the semester.
Jackie Kay, Trumpet (1998)
Jordie Rosenberg, Confessions of the Fox (2018)
Content note: Kay’s Trumpet features deeply transphobic characters and their use of language. A confrontation with this can be avoided by reading only selected chapters of the novel. Please get in touch with me for more detailed instructions, if you want to make use of this option.

Due to the large-scale global transformations of the 20th century, migration literature has become a vibrant genre over the last decades. In these novels, issues of transcultural identity and belonging feature prominently. In this course, we will take a closer look at the ways in which the idea of family informs processes of identity construction among the second generation in particular. We will examine how the novels explore changing roles and meanings of the diasporic family as well as intergenerational family relations in a migration setting, and ask what the specific challenges, problems, and possibilities are that arise in this context.
This course offers an introduction to some areas of postcolonial theory as well as to ‘fictions of migration’ and Black and Asian British literature. The prism of the family and family relations also means that we engage with family research, which is a particularly interdisciplinary field of study. We will read theoretical texts and studies from subjects such as sociology, psychology, communication studies and memory studies in order to establish a conceptual framework to investigate synchronic and diachronic family constellations and connections.
We will read three novels in this class, and discuss some further examples (you are welcome to also make suggestions). Please get your own copy of these novels before the beginning of the term:
Andrea Levy, Fruit of the Lemon (1999)
Zadie Smith, White Teeth (2000)
Bernardine Evaristo, Lara (1997/2009 – please get the later edition of the novel)
Further reading will be made available during the semester.

“Literature for Social Change!”, “Changing the World – One Book at a Time!”, “The Power of the Pen.”

Bold claims have been made about the power literature has on societies. But what constitutes the relation between literature and society?
This interdisciplinary research seminar explores the intersection of literature and sociology in its various shapes and lines of thought. From the sociology of literature, to literary sociology, to theorising the social through literature – this research seminar provides students with an introduction to the literature’s dynamic relation to the social and social sciences. Students will engage with key figures and texts in the sociology of literature and social theory as well as closely read literary fiction and nonfiction in light of the theoretical concepts and approaches discussed. The course invites students to engage with sociological concepts such as social stratification and cultural hegemony, while analysing the ways in which literature both reflects and influences the social world. Readings will span historical periods and genres, including works from diverse cultural perspectives, encouraging students to think critically about the intersections of narrative form and social life.
This research seminar places special emphasis on literary representations of work (wage labour, care work, and artistic work), but also on the role of cultural productions in (re)producing the social and the economic.

Please note: Once registered on Flex.now you will be added to the Stud.IP course at the beginning of the lecture period.

Narratives fundamentally shape our lives – how we see ourselves, others, and the world. Not only do narratives help us make sense of past experience by giving them shape, they guide how we experience the present moment, and how we envision the future. In short, narrative structures inform our thinking and perception. In queer theory, however, the logic of narrative has caused a certain suspicion: narrative is seen as a normalising tool, a patriarchal instrument that defines and upholds traditional forms of masculinity and femininity. If narratives are inherently heteronormative, can there be such a thing as queer narrative?
In order to establish an understanding of this ‘antinarrative’ position in queer studies, we will take a closer look at what ‘narrative’ means, what it looks like in but also outside of literature, and how it functions as an interdisciplinary concept. We will examine the ways certain plot structures and character constellations convey heteronormative values, who is awarded a happy ending and who gets to tell the story. Perhaps the most interesting question, however, is whether narrative can be queered and what that can look like. Queer narratives can be expected to subvert conventional storylines and challenge traditional narrative forms, which makes them intriguing texts to read – and particularly fruitful subjects of analysis (which will give us ample opportunity to hone our reading skills!).
In this course, the queer critique of narrative will serve as a starting point to an introduction to narrative theory as well as queer theory and some of its key concepts. The concern with the normative aspects of narrative is not only relevant to a queer perspective, but can be extended to narrative’s functions in our society and culture more generally. Moreover, questions of queerness also frequently invite the engagement with other key concepts of cultural theory, such as postcolonialism and race. In particular, this course is interested in the varied and multifold potential of narratives for individuals and communities, as well as in the more specific potential of literature and other narrative media.
We will read two novels in this class, and discuss some further examples (you are welcome to also make suggestions). Please get your own copy of the two novels before the beginning of the term. Further reading will be made available during the semester.
Jackie Kay, Trumpet (1998)
Jordie Rosenberg, Confessions of the Fox (2018)
Content note: Kay’s Trumpet features deeply transphobic characters and their use of language. A confrontation with this can be avoided by reading only selected chapters of the novel. Please get in touch with me for more detailed instructions, if you want to make use of this option.

Due to the large-scale global transformations of the 20th century, migration literature has become a vibrant genre over the last decades. In these novels, issues of transcultural identity and belonging feature prominently. In this course, we will take a closer look at the ways in which the idea of family informs processes of identity construction among the second generation in particular. We will examine how the novels explore changing roles and meanings of the diasporic family as well as intergenerational family relations in a migration setting, and ask what the specific challenges, problems, and possibilities are that arise in this context.
This course offers an introduction to some areas of postcolonial theory as well as to ‘fictions of migration’ and Black and Asian British literature. The prism of the family and family relations also means that we engage with family research, which is a particularly interdisciplinary field of study. We will read theoretical texts and studies from subjects such as sociology, psychology, communication studies and memory studies in order to establish a conceptual framework to investigate synchronic and diachronic family constellations and connections.
We will read three novels in this class, and discuss some further examples (you are welcome to also make suggestions). Please get your own copy of these novels before the beginning of the term:
Andrea Levy, Fruit of the Lemon (1999)
Zadie Smith, White Teeth (2000)
Bernardine Evaristo, Lara (1997/2009 – please get the later edition of the novel)
Further reading will be made available during the semester.

This research seminar aims to collaboratively develop a theory of the monstrous based on literary and medial representations of the monstrous and select secondary readings. The monster is a recurring motif of embodied difference – be it of collective cultural anxieties of or obsessions with otherness. The monstrous transgresses boundaries of social normativity and morality, and straddles the liminal space of lure and repulsion. In contemporary literature, film, and other media, these transgressions raise question of queer body politics, but also work at the intersections of race and disability.
Departing from existing research on the monster in antiquity, the middles ages and early modernity, students in this seminar will explore the monstrous other and its various reincarnations in literature, film, and other media to develop a theory of the monstrous in contemporary fiction. Students will examine the recurrence of the monstrous and its adaptations in popular culture and investigate its various functions as expressions of, e.g., fear of contagion, racism, gender and sexuality.
Readings include: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Aliya Whiteley’s The Beauty, Sadia Quraeshi Shepard’s Monsters, and Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water.

Please note: Once registered on Flex.now you will be added to the Stud.IP course at the beginning of the lecture period.

Narratives fundamentally shape our lives – how we see ourselves, others, and the world. Not only do narratives help us make sense of past experience by giving them shape, they guide how we experience the present moment, and how we envision the future. In short, narrative structures inform our thinking and perception. In queer theory, however, the logic of narrative has caused a certain suspicion: narrative is seen as a normalising tool, a patriarchal instrument that defines and upholds traditional forms of masculinity and femininity. If narratives are inherently heteronormative, can there be such a thing as queer narrative?
In order to establish an understanding of this ‘antinarrative’ position in queer studies, we will take a closer look at what ‘narrative’ means, what it looks like in but also outside of literature, and how it functions as an interdisciplinary concept. We will examine the ways certain plot structures and character constellations convey heteronormative values, who is awarded a happy ending and who gets to tell the story. Perhaps the most interesting question, however, is whether narrative can be queered and what that can look like. Queer narratives can be expected to subvert conventional storylines and challenge traditional narrative forms, which makes them intriguing texts to read – and particularly fruitful subjects of analysis (which will give us ample opportunity to hone our reading skills!).
In this course, the queer critique of narrative will serve as a starting point to an introduction to narrative theory as well as queer theory and some of its key concepts. The concern with the normative aspects of narrative is not only relevant to a queer perspective, but can be extended to narrative’s functions in our society and culture more generally. Moreover, questions of queerness also frequently invite the engagement with other key concepts of cultural theory, such as postcolonialism and race. In particular, this course is interested in the varied and multifold potential of narratives for individuals and communities, as well as in the more specific potential of literature and other narrative media.
We will read two novels in this class, and discuss some further examples (you are welcome to also make suggestions). Please get your own copy of the two novels before the beginning of the term. Further reading will be made available during the semester.
Jackie Kay, Trumpet (1998)
Jordie Rosenberg, Confessions of the Fox (2018)
Content note: Kay’s Trumpet features deeply transphobic characters and their use of language. A confrontation with this can be avoided by reading only selected chapters of the novel. Please get in touch with me for more detailed instructions, if you want to make use of this option.

Due to the large-scale global transformations of the 20th century, migration literature has become a vibrant genre over the last decades. In these novels, issues of transcultural identity and belonging feature prominently. In this course, we will take a closer look at the ways in which the idea of family informs processes of identity construction among the second generation in particular. We will examine how the novels explore changing roles and meanings of the diasporic family as well as intergenerational family relations in a migration setting, and ask what the specific challenges, problems, and possibilities are that arise in this context.
This course offers an introduction to some areas of postcolonial theory as well as to ‘fictions of migration’ and Black and Asian British literature. The prism of the family and family relations also means that we engage with family research, which is a particularly interdisciplinary field of study. We will read theoretical texts and studies from subjects such as sociology, psychology, communication studies and memory studies in order to establish a conceptual framework to investigate synchronic and diachronic family constellations and connections.
We will read three novels in this class, and discuss some further examples (you are welcome to also make suggestions). Please get your own copy of these novels before the beginning of the term:
Andrea Levy, Fruit of the Lemon (1999)
Zadie Smith, White Teeth (2000)
Bernardine Evaristo, Lara (1997/2009 – please get the later edition of the novel)
Further reading will be made available during the semester.

This research seminar aims to collaboratively develop a theory of the monstrous based on literary and medial representations of the monstrous and select secondary readings. The monster is a recurring motif of embodied difference – be it of collective cultural anxieties of or obsessions with otherness. The monstrous transgresses boundaries of social normativity and morality, and straddles the liminal space of lure and repulsion. In contemporary literature, film, and other media, these transgressions raise question of queer body politics, but also work at the intersections of race and disability.
Departing from existing research on the monster in antiquity, the middles ages and early modernity, students in this seminar will explore the monstrous other and its various reincarnations in literature, film, and other media to develop a theory of the monstrous in contemporary fiction. Students will examine the recurrence of the monstrous and its adaptations in popular culture and investigate its various functions as expressions of, e.g., fear of contagion, racism, gender and sexuality.
Readings include: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Aliya Whiteley’s The Beauty, Sadia Quraeshi Shepard’s Monsters, and Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water.

Please note: Once registered on Flex.now you will be added to the Stud.IP course at the beginning of the lecture period.

Narratives fundamentally shape our lives – how we see ourselves, others, and the world. Not only do narratives help us make sense of past experience by giving them shape, they guide how we experience the present moment, and how we envision the future. In short, narrative structures inform our thinking and perception. In queer theory, however, the logic of narrative has caused a certain suspicion: narrative is seen as a normalising tool, a patriarchal instrument that defines and upholds traditional forms of masculinity and femininity. If narratives are inherently heteronormative, can there be such a thing as queer narrative?
In order to establish an understanding of this ‘antinarrative’ position in queer studies, we will take a closer look at what ‘narrative’ means, what it looks like in but also outside of literature, and how it functions as an interdisciplinary concept. We will examine the ways certain plot structures and character constellations convey heteronormative values, who is awarded a happy ending and who gets to tell the story. Perhaps the most interesting question, however, is whether narrative can be queered and what that can look like. Queer narratives can be expected to subvert conventional storylines and challenge traditional narrative forms, which makes them intriguing texts to read – and particularly fruitful subjects of analysis (which will give us ample opportunity to hone our reading skills!).
In this course, the queer critique of narrative will serve as a starting point to an introduction to narrative theory as well as queer theory and some of its key concepts. The concern with the normative aspects of narrative is not only relevant to a queer perspective, but can be extended to narrative’s functions in our society and culture more generally. Moreover, questions of queerness also frequently invite the engagement with other key concepts of cultural theory, such as postcolonialism and race. In particular, this course is interested in the varied and multifold potential of narratives for individuals and communities, as well as in the more specific potential of literature and other narrative media.
We will read two novels in this class, and discuss some further examples (you are welcome to also make suggestions). Please get your own copy of the two novels before the beginning of the term. Further reading will be made available during the semester.
Jackie Kay, Trumpet (1998)
Jordie Rosenberg, Confessions of the Fox (2018)
Content note: Kay’s Trumpet features deeply transphobic characters and their use of language. A confrontation with this can be avoided by reading only selected chapters of the novel. Please get in touch with me for more detailed instructions, if you want to make use of this option.

Due to the large-scale global transformations of the 20th century, migration literature has become a vibrant genre over the last decades. In these novels, issues of transcultural identity and belonging feature prominently. In this course, we will take a closer look at the ways in which the idea of family informs processes of identity construction among the second generation in particular. We will examine how the novels explore changing roles and meanings of the diasporic family as well as intergenerational family relations in a migration setting, and ask what the specific challenges, problems, and possibilities are that arise in this context.
This course offers an introduction to some areas of postcolonial theory as well as to ‘fictions of migration’ and Black and Asian British literature. The prism of the family and family relations also means that we engage with family research, which is a particularly interdisciplinary field of study. We will read theoretical texts and studies from subjects such as sociology, psychology, communication studies and memory studies in order to establish a conceptual framework to investigate synchronic and diachronic family constellations and connections.
We will read three novels in this class, and discuss some further examples (you are welcome to also make suggestions). Please get your own copy of these novels before the beginning of the term:
Andrea Levy, Fruit of the Lemon (1999)
Zadie Smith, White Teeth (2000)
Bernardine Evaristo, Lara (1997/2009 – please get the later edition of the novel)
Further reading will be made available during the semester.

“Literature for Social Change!”, “Changing the World – One Book at a Time!”, “The Power of the Pen.”

Bold claims have been made about the power literature has on societies. But what constitutes the relation between literature and society?
This interdisciplinary research seminar explores the intersection of literature and sociology in its various shapes and lines of thought. From the sociology of literature, to literary sociology, to theorising the social through literature – this research seminar provides students with an introduction to the literature’s dynamic relation to the social and social sciences. Students will engage with key figures and texts in the sociology of literature and social theory as well as closely read literary fiction and nonfiction in light of the theoretical concepts and approaches discussed. The course invites students to engage with sociological concepts such as social stratification and cultural hegemony, while analysing the ways in which literature both reflects and influences the social world. Readings will span historical periods and genres, including works from diverse cultural perspectives, encouraging students to think critically about the intersections of narrative form and social life.
This research seminar places special emphasis on literary representations of work (wage labour, care work, and artistic work), but also on the role of cultural productions in (re)producing the social and the economic.

Please note: Once registered on Flex.now you will be added to the Stud.IP course at the beginning of the lecture period.

In this course, we will deal with a particularly exciting genre of Victorian literature, the sensation novel. In the 1860s, this quickly rising new genre caused more than just a stir in the literary scene. It came upon the Victorian literary landscape like an earthquake that shook and tumbled about its power structures, moralities and value system. Against this background, the genre of the sensation novel offers us a particularly interesting and insightful perspective into just that – Victorian society and the values at its core that kept the boundaries between class, gender, and race intact. In particular, we will look at the way these values shape the idea of femininity/masculinity and family as the social institutions that lie at the heart of Victorian society.
In this class, we will read a famous example of the Victorian sensation novel vis-à-vis a Neo- (or sometimes also called Retro-) Victorian novel that challenges the Victorian take on gender, sexuality, and morality. Comparing these two novels, we might be able to understand a bit better the allure of this genre, but also the danger that it emanated, which caused so many debates among Victorian critics. The course offers an introduction to the genre of the sensation novel, as well as a repetition of the most important tools and concepts of literary analysis, and will give you an opportunity to hone your narratological skills. It will also provide an introduction into feminist literary criticism and key concepts of gender studies.
We will read two novels in this class, and discuss some further examples (you are welcome to also make suggestions). Please get your own copy of these novels before the beginning of term.
Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley’s Secret (1865)
Sarah Waters, Fingersmith (2002)
Further reading will be made available during the semester.

In this course, we will deal with a particularly exciting genre of Victorian literature, the sensation novel. In the 1860s, this quickly rising new genre caused more than just a stir in the literary scene. It came upon the Victorian literary landscape like an earthquake that shook and tumbled about its power structures, moralities and value system. Against this background, the genre of the sensation novel offers us a particularly interesting and insightful perspective into just that – Victorian society and the values at its core that kept the boundaries between class, gender, and race intact. In particular, we will look at the way these values shape the idea of femininity/masculinity and family as the social institutions that lie at the heart of Victorian society.
In this class, we will read a famous example of the Victorian sensation novel vis-à-vis a Neo- (or sometimes also called Retro-) Victorian novel that challenges the Victorian take on gender, sexuality, and morality. Comparing these two novels, we might be able to understand a bit better the allure of this genre, but also the danger that it emanated, which caused so many debates among Victorian critics. The course offers an introduction to the genre of the sensation novel, as well as a repetition of the most important tools and concepts of literary analysis, and will give you an opportunity to hone your narratological skills. It will also provide an introduction into feminist literary criticism and key concepts of gender studies.
We will read two novels in this class, and discuss some further examples (you are welcome to also make suggestions). Please get your own copy of these novels before the beginning of term.
Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley’s Secret (1865)
Sarah Waters, Fingersmith (2002)
Further reading will be made available during the semester.

This class is devoted to the study of conceptual metaphor, which is a foundational phenomenon in the field of cognitive lingusitics. We will place a special emphasis in this class on corpus-based approaches to studying metaphor, which go beyond the intuition-based approaches that characterized early metaphor studies. We will focus primarily on how linguistic metaphors, which we can gleen from corpus-based data, reflect conceptual metaphors in various case studies. Furthermore, we will also consider other modalities, such as visual metaphors.

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, active participation in class and an oral presentation, which may involve group activities and class discussions, or a written report.

Graded credit: A term paper

Term Paper Deadline: March 31, 2025

Postcolonial Englishes, i.e. those Englishes originating from colonial forces, are gaining in importance both in terms of their rapidly growing speaker numbers and sociopolitically. Consequently, they are included more and more often in (large-scale) empirical studies exploring all levels of the English language. In this class, we will first explore concepts related to Postcolonial Englishes before students will undertake an in-class project with lecturer feedback.

Reading: Reading material will be made available on Stud.IP [password will be distributed in first session].
Registration: FlexNow
Graded credit: Term Paper

Term Paper Deadline: 31 March 2025

IMPORTANT: PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS COURSE ONLY STARTS IN THE SECOND WEEK OF THE SEMESTER, I.E., ON 23 OCTOBER 2024.

English is arguable the most important language around the globe, spoken and used by billions of people. In some countries, it is the official language and speakers grow up with English as a native language. In others, it is taught as a second language in school and has an official status. There are also speakers for whom English is considered a foreign language and who use it to communicate with interlocutors who do not share their mother tongue. In these latter contexts, English is used as a lingua franca. The label World Englishes is a cover term for all these different uses. The plural of English indicates that there are different, so-called varieties of English, depending on the location, its speakers, and the speech situations. With the help of corpus linguistics, we can investigate such variation and identify existing patterns.

Corpus linguistics can be understood as a tool that is used in many areas of linguistics, such as variation studies, contrastive and comparative linguistics, translation studies, or applied linguistics.

In this seminar we will focus on global English and we will learn how World Englishes can be studied with the help of corpora, i.e., electronic collections of spoken and/or written language. The advantage of such an approach is that we can process large quantities of language use which we would otherwise, i.e., without corpus-linguistic methods, not be able to do.

First, this course introduces students to corpus-linguistic methods and provides an overview of theories and practices of analyzing World Englishes. Second, students will learn about tools and programs that facilitate the use of corpora and the analysis of corpus data (AntConc, Excel, R Studio). Third, students are expected to work independently on small corpus projects and to investigate different (grammatical) features in different English varieties, employing corpora, corpus methods, and statistics. In order to successfully follow this course, students should have prior knowledge of linguistics as well as an interest in statistical analyses.

Reading: The main resource will be the book Corpus linguistics for World Englishes. A guide for research, by C. Lange and S. Leuckert (2020). This book and all other reading materials will be made available for download via Stud.IP [students receive access code during the first seminar session].

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, completion of reading and homework assignments, active participation in class and an oral presentation, which may involve group activities and class discussions, or a written report.

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

Exam period: Final exam on 12 February 2025; deadline for term paper submission: 15 March 2025.

The necessity for effective crisis communication is greater than ever. In this course, we will therefore focus on key elements of crisis communication and crisis management before, during and after a crisis. Students will learn how to use crisis communication to help prevent conflict from turning into a crisis, how to plan for potential crises and how to deal with crises after they have become public. The course will also explain the role of a crisis communication team and spokesperson and teach students how to write a crisis communication plan. Emphasis will be placed on practical application of crisis communications theory by using real-life case studies. Some of the case studies illustrate a successful response to a crisis, others highlight how strategic planning helped to turn a potential crisis into a non-issue and again other case studies highlight instances were communication practices failed to adequately respond to the crisis on hand. The participation in this course will help students to build analytical skills for dealing with crisis in their professional lives.

Please note: This is an in-person seminar. Students will be equipped with the necessary knowledge in the first few weeks of the semester. It is therefore imperative that students attend the seminar from the first session onwards to be able to apply their newly gained knowledge in the following weeks.

Credit: Exam in the last session (13 February 2025)

Registration: You can only attend this course if you are registered with FlexNow. Registration with Stud.IP is for additional class material only and does not suffice for registration.

Reading: All reading will be provided on Stud.IP. Access to Stud.IP will be provided in the first session.

This seminar aims to provide students with the opportunity to explore the meaning of culture and communication in business and organisational contexts. Students will learn to understand intercultural communication processes, critically reflect on current models of culture and notions of group membership and identity, discuss generalizations and oversimplifications, improve self-awareness and communication in intercultural settings and develop skills in identifying analysing and solving intercultural communication challenges at work. Students will learn how intercultural awareness can benefit communication in workplace and organisational contexts.

Please note: This is an in-person seminar. Students will be equipped with the necessary knowledge in the first few weeks of the semester. It is therefore imperative that students attend the seminar from the first session onwards to be able to apply their newly gained knowledge in the following weeks.

Credit: Exam in the last session (13 February 2025)

Registration: You can only attend this course if you are registered with FlexNow. Registration with Stud.IP is for additional class material only and does not suffice for registration.

Reading: All reading will be provided on Stud.IP. Access to Stud.IP will be provided in the first session.

Empirical research into the English language frequently relies on the analysis of linguistic corpora. In corpus-linguistic work, three main areas of activity can be identified, i.e. text compilation to create a corpus, data extraction from the corpus and statistical analysis of the annotated corpus data.

In the course of this seminar, we will practise ways of completing these corpus-linguistic steps in the programming language R. As guidelines for how to implement these steps, we will mainly rely on the textbooks by Gries (2017) and Field et al. (2014).

Exam: 13 Feb 2025
Term paper: 15 Mar 2025

Field, A., J. Miles & Z. Field. 2014. Discovering Statistics Using R. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
Gries, S.Th. 2017. Quantitative Corpus Linguistics with R: A Practical Introduction. New York: Routledge.

This class is devoted to the study of conceptual metaphor, which is a foundational phenomenon in the field of cognitive lingusitics. We will place a special emphasis in this class on corpus-based approaches to studying metaphor, which go beyond the intuition-based approaches that characterized early metaphor studies. We will focus primarily on how linguistic metaphors, which we can gleen from corpus-based data, reflect conceptual metaphors in various case studies. Furthermore, we will also consider other modalities, such as visual metaphors.

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, active participation in class and an oral presentation, which may involve group activities and class discussions, or a written report.

Graded credit: A term paper

Term Paper Deadline: March 31, 2025

Postcolonial Englishes, i.e. those Englishes originating from colonial forces, are gaining in importance both in terms of their rapidly growing speaker numbers and sociopolitically. Consequently, they are included more and more often in (large-scale) empirical studies exploring all levels of the English language. In this class, we will first explore concepts related to Postcolonial Englishes before students will undertake an in-class project with lecturer feedback.

Reading: Reading material will be made available on Stud.IP [password will be distributed in first session].
Registration: FlexNow
Graded credit: Term Paper

Term Paper Deadline: 31 March 2025

IMPORTANT: PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS COURSE ONLY STARTS IN THE SECOND WEEK OF THE SEMESTER, I.E., ON 23 OCTOBER 2024.

English is arguable the most important language around the globe, spoken and used by billions of people. In some countries, it is the official language and speakers grow up with English as a native language. In others, it is taught as a second language in school and has an official status. There are also speakers for whom English is considered a foreign language and who use it to communicate with interlocutors who do not share their mother tongue. In these latter contexts, English is used as a lingua franca. The label World Englishes is a cover term for all these different uses. The plural of English indicates that there are different, so-called varieties of English, depending on the location, its speakers, and the speech situations. With the help of corpus linguistics, we can investigate such variation and identify existing patterns.

Corpus linguistics can be understood as a tool that is used in many areas of linguistics, such as variation studies, contrastive and comparative linguistics, translation studies, or applied linguistics.

In this seminar we will focus on global English and we will learn how World Englishes can be studied with the help of corpora, i.e., electronic collections of spoken and/or written language. The advantage of such an approach is that we can process large quantities of language use which we would otherwise, i.e., without corpus-linguistic methods, not be able to do.

First, this course introduces students to corpus-linguistic methods and provides an overview of theories and practices of analyzing World Englishes. Second, students will learn about tools and programs that facilitate the use of corpora and the analysis of corpus data (AntConc, Excel, R Studio). Third, students are expected to work independently on small corpus projects and to investigate different (grammatical) features in different English varieties, employing corpora, corpus methods, and statistics. In order to successfully follow this course, students should have prior knowledge of linguistics as well as an interest in statistical analyses.

Reading: The main resource will be the book Corpus linguistics for World Englishes. A guide for research, by C. Lange and S. Leuckert (2020). This book and all other reading materials will be made available for download via Stud.IP [students receive access code during the first seminar session].

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, completion of reading and homework assignments, active participation in class and an oral presentation, which may involve group activities and class discussions, or a written report.

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

Exam period: Final exam on 12 February 2025; deadline for term paper submission: 15 March 2025.

The necessity for effective crisis communication is greater than ever. In this course, we will therefore focus on key elements of crisis communication and crisis management before, during and after a crisis. Students will learn how to use crisis communication to help prevent conflict from turning into a crisis, how to plan for potential crises and how to deal with crises after they have become public. The course will also explain the role of a crisis communication team and spokesperson and teach students how to write a crisis communication plan. Emphasis will be placed on practical application of crisis communications theory by using real-life case studies. Some of the case studies illustrate a successful response to a crisis, others highlight how strategic planning helped to turn a potential crisis into a non-issue and again other case studies highlight instances were communication practices failed to adequately respond to the crisis on hand. The participation in this course will help students to build analytical skills for dealing with crisis in their professional lives.

Please note: This is an in-person seminar. Students will be equipped with the necessary knowledge in the first few weeks of the semester. It is therefore imperative that students attend the seminar from the first session onwards to be able to apply their newly gained knowledge in the following weeks.

Credit: Exam in the last session (13 February 2025)

Registration: You can only attend this course if you are registered with FlexNow. Registration with Stud.IP is for additional class material only and does not suffice for registration.

Reading: All reading will be provided on Stud.IP. Access to Stud.IP will be provided in the first session.

This seminar aims to provide students with the opportunity to explore the meaning of culture and communication in business and organisational contexts. Students will learn to understand intercultural communication processes, critically reflect on current models of culture and notions of group membership and identity, discuss generalizations and oversimplifications, improve self-awareness and communication in intercultural settings and develop skills in identifying analysing and solving intercultural communication challenges at work. Students will learn how intercultural awareness can benefit communication in workplace and organisational contexts.

Please note: This is an in-person seminar. Students will be equipped with the necessary knowledge in the first few weeks of the semester. It is therefore imperative that students attend the seminar from the first session onwards to be able to apply their newly gained knowledge in the following weeks.

Credit: Exam in the last session (13 February 2025)

Registration: You can only attend this course if you are registered with FlexNow. Registration with Stud.IP is for additional class material only and does not suffice for registration.

Reading: All reading will be provided on Stud.IP. Access to Stud.IP will be provided in the first session.

Empirical research into the English language frequently relies on the analysis of linguistic corpora. In corpus-linguistic work, three main areas of activity can be identified, i.e. text compilation to create a corpus, data extraction from the corpus and statistical analysis of the annotated corpus data.

In the course of this seminar, we will practise ways of completing these corpus-linguistic steps in the programming language R. As guidelines for how to implement these steps, we will mainly rely on the textbooks by Gries (2017) and Field et al. (2014).

Exam: 13 Feb 2025
Term paper: 15 Mar 2025

Field, A., J. Miles & Z. Field. 2014. Discovering Statistics Using R. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
Gries, S.Th. 2017. Quantitative Corpus Linguistics with R: A Practical Introduction. New York: Routledge.

The necessity for effective crisis communication is greater than ever. In this course, we will therefore focus on key elements of crisis communication and crisis management before, during and after a crisis. Students will learn how to use crisis communication to help prevent conflict from turning into a crisis, how to plan for potential crises and how to deal with crises after they have become public. The course will also explain the role of a crisis communication team and spokesperson and teach students how to write a crisis communication plan. Emphasis will be placed on practical application of crisis communications theory by using real-life case studies. Some of the case studies illustrate a successful response to a crisis, others highlight how strategic planning helped to turn a potential crisis into a non-issue and again other case studies highlight instances were communication practices failed to adequately respond to the crisis on hand. The participation in this course will help students to build analytical skills for dealing with crisis in their professional lives.

Please note: This is an in-person seminar. Students will be equipped with the necessary knowledge in the first few weeks of the semester. It is therefore imperative that students attend the seminar from the first session onwards to be able to apply their newly gained knowledge in the following weeks.

Credit: Exam in the last session (13 February 2025)

Registration: You can only attend this course if you are registered with FlexNow. Registration with Stud.IP is for additional class material only and does not suffice for registration.

Reading: All reading will be provided on Stud.IP. Access to Stud.IP will be provided in the first session.

This seminar aims to provide students with the opportunity to explore the meaning of culture and communication in business and organisational contexts. Students will learn to understand intercultural communication processes, critically reflect on current models of culture and notions of group membership and identity, discuss generalizations and oversimplifications, improve self-awareness and communication in intercultural settings and develop skills in identifying analysing and solving intercultural communication challenges at work. Students will learn how intercultural awareness can benefit communication in workplace and organisational contexts.

Please note: This is an in-person seminar. Students will be equipped with the necessary knowledge in the first few weeks of the semester. It is therefore imperative that students attend the seminar from the first session onwards to be able to apply their newly gained knowledge in the following weeks.

Credit: Exam in the last session (13 February 2025)

Registration: You can only attend this course if you are registered with FlexNow. Registration with Stud.IP is for additional class material only and does not suffice for registration.

Reading: All reading will be provided on Stud.IP. Access to Stud.IP will be provided in the first session.

The necessity for effective crisis communication is greater than ever. In this course, we will therefore focus on key elements of crisis communication and crisis management before, during and after a crisis. Students will learn how to use crisis communication to help prevent conflict from turning into a crisis, how to plan for potential crises and how to deal with crises after they have become public. The course will also explain the role of a crisis communication team and spokesperson and teach students how to write a crisis communication plan. Emphasis will be placed on practical application of crisis communications theory by using real-life case studies. Some of the case studies illustrate a successful response to a crisis, others highlight how strategic planning helped to turn a potential crisis into a non-issue and again other case studies highlight instances were communication practices failed to adequately respond to the crisis on hand. The participation in this course will help students to build analytical skills for dealing with crisis in their professional lives.

Please note: This is an in-person seminar. Students will be equipped with the necessary knowledge in the first few weeks of the semester. It is therefore imperative that students attend the seminar from the first session onwards to be able to apply their newly gained knowledge in the following weeks.

Credit: Exam in the last session (13 February 2025)

Registration: You can only attend this course if you are registered with FlexNow. Registration with Stud.IP is for additional class material only and does not suffice for registration.

Reading: All reading will be provided on Stud.IP. Access to Stud.IP will be provided in the first session.

This seminar aims to provide students with the opportunity to explore the meaning of culture and communication in business and organisational contexts. Students will learn to understand intercultural communication processes, critically reflect on current models of culture and notions of group membership and identity, discuss generalizations and oversimplifications, improve self-awareness and communication in intercultural settings and develop skills in identifying analysing and solving intercultural communication challenges at work. Students will learn how intercultural awareness can benefit communication in workplace and organisational contexts.

Please note: This is an in-person seminar. Students will be equipped with the necessary knowledge in the first few weeks of the semester. It is therefore imperative that students attend the seminar from the first session onwards to be able to apply their newly gained knowledge in the following weeks.

Credit: Exam in the last session (13 February 2025)

Registration: You can only attend this course if you are registered with FlexNow. Registration with Stud.IP is for additional class material only and does not suffice for registration.

Reading: All reading will be provided on Stud.IP. Access to Stud.IP will be provided in the first session.

This class is devoted to the study of conceptual metaphor, which is a foundational phenomenon in the field of cognitive lingusitics. We will place a special emphasis in this class on corpus-based approaches to studying metaphor, which go beyond the intuition-based approaches that characterized early metaphor studies. We will focus primarily on how linguistic metaphors, which we can gleen from corpus-based data, reflect conceptual metaphors in various case studies. Furthermore, we will also consider other modalities, such as visual metaphors.

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, active participation in class and an oral presentation, which may involve group activities and class discussions, or a written report.

Graded credit: A term paper

Term Paper Deadline: March 31, 2025

Postcolonial Englishes, i.e. those Englishes originating from colonial forces, are gaining in importance both in terms of their rapidly growing speaker numbers and sociopolitically. Consequently, they are included more and more often in (large-scale) empirical studies exploring all levels of the English language. In this class, we will first explore concepts related to Postcolonial Englishes before students will undertake an in-class project with lecturer feedback.

Reading: Reading material will be made available on Stud.IP [password will be distributed in first session].
Registration: FlexNow
Graded credit: Term Paper

Term Paper Deadline: 31 March 2025

IMPORTANT: PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS COURSE ONLY STARTS IN THE SECOND WEEK OF THE SEMESTER, I.E., ON 23 OCTOBER 2024.

English is arguable the most important language around the globe, spoken and used by billions of people. In some countries, it is the official language and speakers grow up with English as a native language. In others, it is taught as a second language in school and has an official status. There are also speakers for whom English is considered a foreign language and who use it to communicate with interlocutors who do not share their mother tongue. In these latter contexts, English is used as a lingua franca. The label World Englishes is a cover term for all these different uses. The plural of English indicates that there are different, so-called varieties of English, depending on the location, its speakers, and the speech situations. With the help of corpus linguistics, we can investigate such variation and identify existing patterns.

Corpus linguistics can be understood as a tool that is used in many areas of linguistics, such as variation studies, contrastive and comparative linguistics, translation studies, or applied linguistics.

In this seminar we will focus on global English and we will learn how World Englishes can be studied with the help of corpora, i.e., electronic collections of spoken and/or written language. The advantage of such an approach is that we can process large quantities of language use which we would otherwise, i.e., without corpus-linguistic methods, not be able to do.

First, this course introduces students to corpus-linguistic methods and provides an overview of theories and practices of analyzing World Englishes. Second, students will learn about tools and programs that facilitate the use of corpora and the analysis of corpus data (AntConc, Excel, R Studio). Third, students are expected to work independently on small corpus projects and to investigate different (grammatical) features in different English varieties, employing corpora, corpus methods, and statistics. In order to successfully follow this course, students should have prior knowledge of linguistics as well as an interest in statistical analyses.

Reading: The main resource will be the book Corpus linguistics for World Englishes. A guide for research, by C. Lange and S. Leuckert (2020). This book and all other reading materials will be made available for download via Stud.IP [students receive access code during the first seminar session].

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, completion of reading and homework assignments, active participation in class and an oral presentation, which may involve group activities and class discussions, or a written report.

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

Exam period: Final exam on 12 February 2025; deadline for term paper submission: 15 March 2025.

Empirical research into the English language frequently relies on the analysis of linguistic corpora. In corpus-linguistic work, three main areas of activity can be identified, i.e. text compilation to create a corpus, data extraction from the corpus and statistical analysis of the annotated corpus data.

In the course of this seminar, we will practise ways of completing these corpus-linguistic steps in the programming language R. As guidelines for how to implement these steps, we will mainly rely on the textbooks by Gries (2017) and Field et al. (2014).

Exam: 13 Feb 2025
Term paper: 15 Mar 2025

Field, A., J. Miles & Z. Field. 2014. Discovering Statistics Using R. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
Gries, S.Th. 2017. Quantitative Corpus Linguistics with R: A Practical Introduction. New York: Routledge.

This class is devoted to the study of conceptual metaphor, which is a foundational phenomenon in the field of cognitive lingusitics. We will place a special emphasis in this class on corpus-based approaches to studying metaphor, which go beyond the intuition-based approaches that characterized early metaphor studies. We will focus primarily on how linguistic metaphors, which we can gleen from corpus-based data, reflect conceptual metaphors in various case studies. Furthermore, we will also consider other modalities, such as visual metaphors.

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, active participation in class and an oral presentation, which may involve group activities and class discussions, or a written report.

Graded credit: A term paper

Term Paper Deadline: March 31, 2025

Postcolonial Englishes, i.e. those Englishes originating from colonial forces, are gaining in importance both in terms of their rapidly growing speaker numbers and sociopolitically. Consequently, they are included more and more often in (large-scale) empirical studies exploring all levels of the English language. In this class, we will first explore concepts related to Postcolonial Englishes before students will undertake an in-class project with lecturer feedback.

Reading: Reading material will be made available on Stud.IP [password will be distributed in first session].
Registration: FlexNow
Graded credit: Term Paper

Term Paper Deadline: 31 March 2025

IMPORTANT: PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS COURSE ONLY STARTS IN THE SECOND WEEK OF THE SEMESTER, I.E., ON 23 OCTOBER 2024.

English is arguable the most important language around the globe, spoken and used by billions of people. In some countries, it is the official language and speakers grow up with English as a native language. In others, it is taught as a second language in school and has an official status. There are also speakers for whom English is considered a foreign language and who use it to communicate with interlocutors who do not share their mother tongue. In these latter contexts, English is used as a lingua franca. The label World Englishes is a cover term for all these different uses. The plural of English indicates that there are different, so-called varieties of English, depending on the location, its speakers, and the speech situations. With the help of corpus linguistics, we can investigate such variation and identify existing patterns.

Corpus linguistics can be understood as a tool that is used in many areas of linguistics, such as variation studies, contrastive and comparative linguistics, translation studies, or applied linguistics.

In this seminar we will focus on global English and we will learn how World Englishes can be studied with the help of corpora, i.e., electronic collections of spoken and/or written language. The advantage of such an approach is that we can process large quantities of language use which we would otherwise, i.e., without corpus-linguistic methods, not be able to do.

First, this course introduces students to corpus-linguistic methods and provides an overview of theories and practices of analyzing World Englishes. Second, students will learn about tools and programs that facilitate the use of corpora and the analysis of corpus data (AntConc, Excel, R Studio). Third, students are expected to work independently on small corpus projects and to investigate different (grammatical) features in different English varieties, employing corpora, corpus methods, and statistics. In order to successfully follow this course, students should have prior knowledge of linguistics as well as an interest in statistical analyses.

Reading: The main resource will be the book Corpus linguistics for World Englishes. A guide for research, by C. Lange and S. Leuckert (2020). This book and all other reading materials will be made available for download via Stud.IP [students receive access code during the first seminar session].

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, completion of reading and homework assignments, active participation in class and an oral presentation, which may involve group activities and class discussions, or a written report.

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

Exam period: Final exam on 12 February 2025; deadline for term paper submission: 15 March 2025.

Empirical research into the English language frequently relies on the analysis of linguistic corpora. In corpus-linguistic work, three main areas of activity can be identified, i.e. text compilation to create a corpus, data extraction from the corpus and statistical analysis of the annotated corpus data.

In the course of this seminar, we will practise ways of completing these corpus-linguistic steps in the programming language R. As guidelines for how to implement these steps, we will mainly rely on the textbooks by Gries (2017) and Field et al. (2014).

Exam: 13 Feb 2025
Term paper: 15 Mar 2025

Field, A., J. Miles & Z. Field. 2014. Discovering Statistics Using R. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
Gries, S.Th. 2017. Quantitative Corpus Linguistics with R: A Practical Introduction. New York: Routledge.

This class is devoted to the study of conceptual metaphor, which is a foundational phenomenon in the field of cognitive lingusitics. We will place a special emphasis in this class on corpus-based approaches to studying metaphor, which go beyond the intuition-based approaches that characterized early metaphor studies. We will focus primarily on how linguistic metaphors, which we can gleen from corpus-based data, reflect conceptual metaphors in various case studies. Furthermore, we will also consider other modalities, such as visual metaphors.

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, active participation in class and an oral presentation, which may involve group activities and class discussions, or a written report.

Graded credit: A term paper

Term Paper Deadline: March 31, 2025

Postcolonial Englishes, i.e. those Englishes originating from colonial forces, are gaining in importance both in terms of their rapidly growing speaker numbers and sociopolitically. Consequently, they are included more and more often in (large-scale) empirical studies exploring all levels of the English language. In this class, we will first explore concepts related to Postcolonial Englishes before students will undertake an in-class project with lecturer feedback.

Reading: Reading material will be made available on Stud.IP [password will be distributed in first session].
Registration: FlexNow
Graded credit: Term Paper

Term Paper Deadline: 31 March 2025

IMPORTANT: PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS COURSE ONLY STARTS IN THE SECOND WEEK OF THE SEMESTER, I.E., ON 23 OCTOBER 2024.

English is arguable the most important language around the globe, spoken and used by billions of people. In some countries, it is the official language and speakers grow up with English as a native language. In others, it is taught as a second language in school and has an official status. There are also speakers for whom English is considered a foreign language and who use it to communicate with interlocutors who do not share their mother tongue. In these latter contexts, English is used as a lingua franca. The label World Englishes is a cover term for all these different uses. The plural of English indicates that there are different, so-called varieties of English, depending on the location, its speakers, and the speech situations. With the help of corpus linguistics, we can investigate such variation and identify existing patterns.

Corpus linguistics can be understood as a tool that is used in many areas of linguistics, such as variation studies, contrastive and comparative linguistics, translation studies, or applied linguistics.

In this seminar we will focus on global English and we will learn how World Englishes can be studied with the help of corpora, i.e., electronic collections of spoken and/or written language. The advantage of such an approach is that we can process large quantities of language use which we would otherwise, i.e., without corpus-linguistic methods, not be able to do.

First, this course introduces students to corpus-linguistic methods and provides an overview of theories and practices of analyzing World Englishes. Second, students will learn about tools and programs that facilitate the use of corpora and the analysis of corpus data (AntConc, Excel, R Studio). Third, students are expected to work independently on small corpus projects and to investigate different (grammatical) features in different English varieties, employing corpora, corpus methods, and statistics. In order to successfully follow this course, students should have prior knowledge of linguistics as well as an interest in statistical analyses.

Reading: The main resource will be the book Corpus linguistics for World Englishes. A guide for research, by C. Lange and S. Leuckert (2020). This book and all other reading materials will be made available for download via Stud.IP [students receive access code during the first seminar session].

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, completion of reading and homework assignments, active participation in class and an oral presentation, which may involve group activities and class discussions, or a written report.

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

Exam period: Final exam on 12 February 2025; deadline for term paper submission: 15 March 2025.

Empirical research into the English language frequently relies on the analysis of linguistic corpora. In corpus-linguistic work, three main areas of activity can be identified, i.e. text compilation to create a corpus, data extraction from the corpus and statistical analysis of the annotated corpus data.

In the course of this seminar, we will practise ways of completing these corpus-linguistic steps in the programming language R. As guidelines for how to implement these steps, we will mainly rely on the textbooks by Gries (2017) and Field et al. (2014).

Exam: 13 Feb 2025
Term paper: 15 Mar 2025

Field, A., J. Miles & Z. Field. 2014. Discovering Statistics Using R. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
Gries, S.Th. 2017. Quantitative Corpus Linguistics with R: A Practical Introduction. New York: Routledge.

This class is devoted to the study of conceptual metaphor, which is a foundational phenomenon in the field of cognitive lingusitics. We will place a special emphasis in this class on corpus-based approaches to studying metaphor, which go beyond the intuition-based approaches that characterized early metaphor studies. We will focus primarily on how linguistic metaphors, which we can gleen from corpus-based data, reflect conceptual metaphors in various case studies. Furthermore, we will also consider other modalities, such as visual metaphors.

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, active participation in class and an oral presentation, which may involve group activities and class discussions, or a written report.

Graded credit: A term paper

Term Paper Deadline: March 31, 2025

Postcolonial Englishes, i.e. those Englishes originating from colonial forces, are gaining in importance both in terms of their rapidly growing speaker numbers and sociopolitically. Consequently, they are included more and more often in (large-scale) empirical studies exploring all levels of the English language. In this class, we will first explore concepts related to Postcolonial Englishes before students will undertake an in-class project with lecturer feedback.

Reading: Reading material will be made available on Stud.IP [password will be distributed in first session].
Registration: FlexNow
Graded credit: Term Paper

Term Paper Deadline: 31 March 2025

IMPORTANT: PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS COURSE ONLY STARTS IN THE SECOND WEEK OF THE SEMESTER, I.E., ON 23 OCTOBER 2024.

English is arguable the most important language around the globe, spoken and used by billions of people. In some countries, it is the official language and speakers grow up with English as a native language. In others, it is taught as a second language in school and has an official status. There are also speakers for whom English is considered a foreign language and who use it to communicate with interlocutors who do not share their mother tongue. In these latter contexts, English is used as a lingua franca. The label World Englishes is a cover term for all these different uses. The plural of English indicates that there are different, so-called varieties of English, depending on the location, its speakers, and the speech situations. With the help of corpus linguistics, we can investigate such variation and identify existing patterns.

Corpus linguistics can be understood as a tool that is used in many areas of linguistics, such as variation studies, contrastive and comparative linguistics, translation studies, or applied linguistics.

In this seminar we will focus on global English and we will learn how World Englishes can be studied with the help of corpora, i.e., electronic collections of spoken and/or written language. The advantage of such an approach is that we can process large quantities of language use which we would otherwise, i.e., without corpus-linguistic methods, not be able to do.

First, this course introduces students to corpus-linguistic methods and provides an overview of theories and practices of analyzing World Englishes. Second, students will learn about tools and programs that facilitate the use of corpora and the analysis of corpus data (AntConc, Excel, R Studio). Third, students are expected to work independently on small corpus projects and to investigate different (grammatical) features in different English varieties, employing corpora, corpus methods, and statistics. In order to successfully follow this course, students should have prior knowledge of linguistics as well as an interest in statistical analyses.

Reading: The main resource will be the book Corpus linguistics for World Englishes. A guide for research, by C. Lange and S. Leuckert (2020). This book and all other reading materials will be made available for download via Stud.IP [students receive access code during the first seminar session].

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, completion of reading and homework assignments, active participation in class and an oral presentation, which may involve group activities and class discussions, or a written report.

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

Exam period: Final exam on 12 February 2025; deadline for term paper submission: 15 March 2025.

Empirical research into the English language frequently relies on the analysis of linguistic corpora. In corpus-linguistic work, three main areas of activity can be identified, i.e. text compilation to create a corpus, data extraction from the corpus and statistical analysis of the annotated corpus data.

In the course of this seminar, we will practise ways of completing these corpus-linguistic steps in the programming language R. As guidelines for how to implement these steps, we will mainly rely on the textbooks by Gries (2017) and Field et al. (2014).

Exam: 13 Feb 2025
Term paper: 15 Mar 2025

Field, A., J. Miles & Z. Field. 2014. Discovering Statistics Using R. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
Gries, S.Th. 2017. Quantitative Corpus Linguistics with R: A Practical Introduction. New York: Routledge.

This class is devoted to the study of conceptual metaphor, which is a foundational phenomenon in the field of cognitive lingusitics. We will place a special emphasis in this class on corpus-based approaches to studying metaphor, which go beyond the intuition-based approaches that characterized early metaphor studies. We will focus primarily on how linguistic metaphors, which we can gleen from corpus-based data, reflect conceptual metaphors in various case studies. Furthermore, we will also consider other modalities, such as visual metaphors.

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, active participation in class and an oral presentation, which may involve group activities and class discussions, or a written report.

Graded credit: A term paper

Term Paper Deadline: March 31, 2025

Postcolonial Englishes, i.e. those Englishes originating from colonial forces, are gaining in importance both in terms of their rapidly growing speaker numbers and sociopolitically. Consequently, they are included more and more often in (large-scale) empirical studies exploring all levels of the English language. In this class, we will first explore concepts related to Postcolonial Englishes before students will undertake an in-class project with lecturer feedback.

Reading: Reading material will be made available on Stud.IP [password will be distributed in first session].
Registration: FlexNow
Graded credit: Term Paper

Term Paper Deadline: 31 March 2025

IMPORTANT: PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS COURSE ONLY STARTS IN THE SECOND WEEK OF THE SEMESTER, I.E., ON 23 OCTOBER 2024.

English is arguable the most important language around the globe, spoken and used by billions of people. In some countries, it is the official language and speakers grow up with English as a native language. In others, it is taught as a second language in school and has an official status. There are also speakers for whom English is considered a foreign language and who use it to communicate with interlocutors who do not share their mother tongue. In these latter contexts, English is used as a lingua franca. The label World Englishes is a cover term for all these different uses. The plural of English indicates that there are different, so-called varieties of English, depending on the location, its speakers, and the speech situations. With the help of corpus linguistics, we can investigate such variation and identify existing patterns.

Corpus linguistics can be understood as a tool that is used in many areas of linguistics, such as variation studies, contrastive and comparative linguistics, translation studies, or applied linguistics.

In this seminar we will focus on global English and we will learn how World Englishes can be studied with the help of corpora, i.e., electronic collections of spoken and/or written language. The advantage of such an approach is that we can process large quantities of language use which we would otherwise, i.e., without corpus-linguistic methods, not be able to do.

First, this course introduces students to corpus-linguistic methods and provides an overview of theories and practices of analyzing World Englishes. Second, students will learn about tools and programs that facilitate the use of corpora and the analysis of corpus data (AntConc, Excel, R Studio). Third, students are expected to work independently on small corpus projects and to investigate different (grammatical) features in different English varieties, employing corpora, corpus methods, and statistics. In order to successfully follow this course, students should have prior knowledge of linguistics as well as an interest in statistical analyses.

Reading: The main resource will be the book Corpus linguistics for World Englishes. A guide for research, by C. Lange and S. Leuckert (2020). This book and all other reading materials will be made available for download via Stud.IP [students receive access code during the first seminar session].

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, completion of reading and homework assignments, active participation in class and an oral presentation, which may involve group activities and class discussions, or a written report.

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

Exam period: Final exam on 12 February 2025; deadline for term paper submission: 15 March 2025.

Empirical research into the English language frequently relies on the analysis of linguistic corpora. In corpus-linguistic work, three main areas of activity can be identified, i.e. text compilation to create a corpus, data extraction from the corpus and statistical analysis of the annotated corpus data.

In the course of this seminar, we will practise ways of completing these corpus-linguistic steps in the programming language R. As guidelines for how to implement these steps, we will mainly rely on the textbooks by Gries (2017) and Field et al. (2014).

Exam: 13 Feb 2025
Term paper: 15 Mar 2025

Field, A., J. Miles & Z. Field. 2014. Discovering Statistics Using R. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
Gries, S.Th. 2017. Quantitative Corpus Linguistics with R: A Practical Introduction. New York: Routledge.

This class is devoted to the study of conceptual metaphor, which is a foundational phenomenon in the field of cognitive lingusitics. We will place a special emphasis in this class on corpus-based approaches to studying metaphor, which go beyond the intuition-based approaches that characterized early metaphor studies. We will focus primarily on how linguistic metaphors, which we can gleen from corpus-based data, reflect conceptual metaphors in various case studies. Furthermore, we will also consider other modalities, such as visual metaphors.

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, active participation in class and an oral presentation, which may involve group activities and class discussions, or a written report.

Graded credit: A term paper

Term Paper Deadline: March 31, 2025

Postcolonial Englishes, i.e. those Englishes originating from colonial forces, are gaining in importance both in terms of their rapidly growing speaker numbers and sociopolitically. Consequently, they are included more and more often in (large-scale) empirical studies exploring all levels of the English language. In this class, we will first explore concepts related to Postcolonial Englishes before students will undertake an in-class project with lecturer feedback.

Reading: Reading material will be made available on Stud.IP [password will be distributed in first session].
Registration: FlexNow
Graded credit: Term Paper

Term Paper Deadline: 31 March 2025

IMPORTANT: PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS COURSE ONLY STARTS IN THE SECOND WEEK OF THE SEMESTER, I.E., ON 23 OCTOBER 2024.

English is arguable the most important language around the globe, spoken and used by billions of people. In some countries, it is the official language and speakers grow up with English as a native language. In others, it is taught as a second language in school and has an official status. There are also speakers for whom English is considered a foreign language and who use it to communicate with interlocutors who do not share their mother tongue. In these latter contexts, English is used as a lingua franca. The label World Englishes is a cover term for all these different uses. The plural of English indicates that there are different, so-called varieties of English, depending on the location, its speakers, and the speech situations. With the help of corpus linguistics, we can investigate such variation and identify existing patterns.

Corpus linguistics can be understood as a tool that is used in many areas of linguistics, such as variation studies, contrastive and comparative linguistics, translation studies, or applied linguistics.

In this seminar we will focus on global English and we will learn how World Englishes can be studied with the help of corpora, i.e., electronic collections of spoken and/or written language. The advantage of such an approach is that we can process large quantities of language use which we would otherwise, i.e., without corpus-linguistic methods, not be able to do.

First, this course introduces students to corpus-linguistic methods and provides an overview of theories and practices of analyzing World Englishes. Second, students will learn about tools and programs that facilitate the use of corpora and the analysis of corpus data (AntConc, Excel, R Studio). Third, students are expected to work independently on small corpus projects and to investigate different (grammatical) features in different English varieties, employing corpora, corpus methods, and statistics. In order to successfully follow this course, students should have prior knowledge of linguistics as well as an interest in statistical analyses.

Reading: The main resource will be the book Corpus linguistics for World Englishes. A guide for research, by C. Lange and S. Leuckert (2020). This book and all other reading materials will be made available for download via Stud.IP [students receive access code during the first seminar session].

Registration: Please register with FlexNow.

Ungraded credit: Regular attendance, completion of reading and homework assignments, active participation in class and an oral presentation, which may involve group activities and class discussions, or a written report.

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

Exam period: Final exam on 12 February 2025; deadline for term paper submission: 15 March 2025.

Empirical research into the English language frequently relies on the analysis of linguistic corpora. In corpus-linguistic work, three main areas of activity can be identified, i.e. text compilation to create a corpus, data extraction from the corpus and statistical analysis of the annotated corpus data.

In the course of this seminar, we will practise ways of completing these corpus-linguistic steps in the programming language R. As guidelines for how to implement these steps, we will mainly rely on the textbooks by Gries (2017) and Field et al. (2014).

Exam: 13 Feb 2025
Term paper: 15 Mar 2025

Field, A., J. Miles & Z. Field. 2014. Discovering Statistics Using R. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
Gries, S.Th. 2017. Quantitative Corpus Linguistics with R: A Practical Introduction. New York: Routledge.

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

First semester MA students are required to take part in an online orientation session prior to the semester start. Please contact Nadine.Traughber@anglistik.uni-giessen.de for registration.

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; written exam

Exam period:
Written exam: February 10, 2025

Registration: Flex-Now

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

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

First semester MA students are required to take part in an online orientation session prior to the semester start. Please contact Nadine.Traughber@anglistik.uni-giessen.de for registration.

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; written exam

Exam period:
Written exam: February 11, 2025

Registration: Flex-Now

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


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

First semester MA students are required to take part in an online orientation session prior to the semester start. Please contact Nadine.Traughber@anglistik.uni-giessen.de for registration.

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; written exam

Exam period:
Written exam: February 10, 2025

Registration: Flex-Now

Teaching Anglophone Cultures: Focus on Texas

The study of culture and intercultural communication are central points of interest of teaching English as a foreign language. Throughout the semester, we will focus on the anglophone cultures relevant for the EFL classroom and represented in many course books. By looking at literary texts (print and audio-visual), 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. We will also engage in project work together with students from university of Klagenfurt (A) and high school students for us to put theoretical insights into practice.

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

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


Credit:
Teacher Education Programme:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, a teaching proposal
Graded: Regular attendance, written exam
Anglophone Studies MA Programme:
Regular attendance, written exam

Exam period: tba

Registration: Flex-Now

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

First semester MA students are required to take part in an online orientation session prior to the semester start. Please contact Nadine.Traughber@anglistik.uni-giessen.de for registration.

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; written exam

Exam period: Written exam: February 13, 2025

Registration: Flex-Now

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

First semester MA students are required to take part in an online orientation session prior to the semester start. Please contact Nadine.Traughber@anglistik.uni-giessen.de for registration.

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; written exam

Exam period: Written exam: February 13, 2025

Registration: Flex-Now

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

First semester MA students are required to take part in an online orientation session prior to the semester start. Please contact Nadine.Traughber@anglistik.uni-giessen.de for registration.

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; written exam

Exam period:
Written exam: February 10, 2025

Registration: Flex-Now

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

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

First semester MA students are required to take part in an online orientation session prior to the semester start. Please contact Nadine.Traughber@anglistik.uni-giessen.de for registration.

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; written exam

Exam period:
Written exam: February 11, 2025

Registration: Flex-Now

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


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

First semester MA students are required to take part in an online orientation session prior to the semester start. Please contact Nadine.Traughber@anglistik.uni-giessen.de for registration.

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; written exam

Exam period:
Written exam: February 10, 2025

Registration: Flex-Now

Teaching Anglophone Cultures: Focus on Texas

The study of culture and intercultural communication are central points of interest of teaching English as a foreign language. Throughout the semester, we will focus on the anglophone cultures relevant for the EFL classroom and represented in many course books. By looking at literary texts (print and audio-visual), 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. We will also engage in project work together with students from university of Klagenfurt (A) and high school students for us to put theoretical insights into practice.

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

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


Credit:
Teacher Education Programme:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, a teaching proposal
Graded: Regular attendance, written exam
Anglophone Studies MA Programme:
Regular attendance, written exam

Exam period: tba

Registration: Flex-Now

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

First semester MA students are required to take part in an online orientation session prior to the semester start. Please contact Nadine.Traughber@anglistik.uni-giessen.de for registration.

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; written exam

Exam period: Written exam: February 13, 2025

Registration: Flex-Now

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

First semester MA students are required to take part in an online orientation session prior to the semester start. Please contact Nadine.Traughber@anglistik.uni-giessen.de for registration.

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; written exam

Exam period: Written exam: February 13, 2025

Registration: Flex-Now

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

First semester MA students are required to take part in an online orientation session prior to the semester start. Please contact Nadine.Traughber@anglistik.uni-giessen.de for registration.

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; written exam

Exam period: Written exam: February 13, 2025

Registration: Flex-Now

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

First semester MA students are required to take part in an online orientation session prior to the semester start. Please contact Nadine.Traughber@anglistik.uni-giessen.de for registration.

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; written exam

Exam period: Written exam: February 13, 2025

Registration: Flex-Now

In many EFL classrooms in Germany, teachers use textbooks complemented by electronic materials and media to promote student learning and achievement. Adopting a communicative language teaching perspective, this course focuses on developing competencies and skills essential to evaluating, adapting, creating and – ultimately – using English language learning and teaching resources.


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

First semester MA students are required to take part in an online orientation session prior to the semester start. Please contact Nadine.Traughber@anglistik.uni-giessen.de for registration.

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; written exam

Exam period:
Written exam: February 10, 2025

Registration: Flex-Now

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

First semester MA students are required to take part in an online orientation session prior to the semester start. Please contact Nadine.Traughber@anglistik.uni-giessen.de for registration.

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; written exam

Exam period: Written exam: February 13, 2025

Registration: Flex-Now

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

First semester MA students are required to take part in an online orientation session prior to the semester start. Please contact Nadine.Traughber@anglistik.uni-giessen.de for registration.

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; written exam

Exam period: Written exam: February 13, 2025

Registration: Flex-Now

In many EFL classrooms in Germany, teachers use textbooks complemented by electronic materials and media to promote student learning and achievement. Adopting a communicative language teaching perspective, this course focuses on developing competencies and skills essential to evaluating, adapting, creating and – ultimately – using English language learning and teaching resources.


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

First semester MA students are required to take part in an online orientation session prior to the semester start. Please contact Nadine.Traughber@anglistik.uni-giessen.de for registration.

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; written exam

Exam period:
Written exam: February 10, 2025

Registration: Flex-Now

What contribution can English language education make to the aspirational and ambitious project of education for sustainability and global citizenship? This seminar provides space to explore the intersection of sustainability education, global citizenship education, and the English language classroom. Against the background of what constitutes quality education according to the UN and SDG4.7, it will touch on questions of, among others, socio-environmental justice, human rights and peace, cultural diversity, and their respective education. We will discuss how critical, cosmopolitan, hopeful pedagogy may be implemented in the language classroom to not only develop communicative competences, but also empower learners as change agents and global citizens.

Dates:
18.10.2024: 10a.m.-2p.m. (on-site session)
3 online modules
07.02.2025: 10a.m.-4p.m. (on-site session)

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

First semester MA students are required to take part in an online orientation session prior to the semester start. Please contact Nadine.Traughber@anglistik.uni-giessen.de for registration.

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; written exam

Exam period:
Written exam: tbc

Registration: Flex-Now

Sustainability and the EFL Classroom: Teaching Climate Fiction

Sustainability has to be regarded as one of the key terms in educational contexts and finds representation in the learning objectives of education for sustainable development goals published by the UNESCO. In the context of global challenges, foreign language learning plays a pivotal role: Not only in terms of communication, but also in form of education for peace, inter-/transcultural learning and personal growth of the learners. Literary texts in general and fictional texts in particular offer learning opportunities that meet the objectives of sustainable development. The seminar is thus designed to introduce principles and models that promote critical thinking, meaning-making and language proficiency of learners working with climate fiction in the EFLC.

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

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


Credit:
Teacher Education Programme:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, a teaching proposal
Graded: Regular attendance, written exam
Anglophone Studies MA Programme:
Regular attendance, written exam

Exam period: tba

Registration: Flex-Now

Teaching Anglophone Cultures: Focus on Texas

The study of culture and intercultural communication are central points of interest of teaching English as a foreign language. Throughout the semester, we will focus on the anglophone cultures relevant for the EFL classroom and represented in many course books. By looking at literary texts (print and audio-visual), 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. We will also engage in project work together with students from university of Klagenfurt (A) and high school students for us to put theoretical insights into practice.

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

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


Credit:
Teacher Education Programme:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, a teaching proposal
Graded: Regular attendance, written exam
Anglophone Studies MA Programme:
Regular attendance, written exam

Exam period: tba

Registration: Flex-Now

Teaching Short Stories

Working with authentic literature in the English as a foreign language classroom fosters inter-/transcultural, communicative as well as literary competences of learners of all age groups. In order to explore this potential, the seminar is designed to provide an overview of didactic and methodological principles of literature in foreign language learning and teaching. In addition to working with suitable text types and designing tasks and activities accordingly, communicative meaning-making, personal growth of learners and language proficiency in the EFLC will be of interest.

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

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


Credit:
Teacher Education Programme:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, a teaching proposal
Graded: Regular attendance, written exam
Anglophone Studies MA Programme:
Regular attendance, written exam

Exam period: tba

Registration: Flex-Now

In many EFL classrooms in Germany, teachers use textbooks complemented by electronic materials and media to promote student learning and achievement. Adopting a communicative language teaching perspective, this course focuses on developing competencies and skills essential to evaluating, adapting, creating and – ultimately – using English language learning and teaching resources.


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

First semester MA students are required to take part in an online orientation session prior to the semester start. Please contact Nadine.Traughber@anglistik.uni-giessen.de for registration.

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; written exam

Exam period:
Written exam: February 10, 2025

Registration: Flex-Now

What contribution can English language education make to the aspirational and ambitious project of education for sustainability and global citizenship? This seminar provides space to explore the intersection of sustainability education, global citizenship education, and the English language classroom. Against the background of what constitutes quality education according to the UN and SDG4.7, it will touch on questions of, among others, socio-environmental justice, human rights and peace, cultural diversity, and their respective education. We will discuss how critical, cosmopolitan, hopeful pedagogy may be implemented in the language classroom to not only develop communicative competences, but also empower learners as change agents and global citizens.

Dates:
18.10.2024: 10a.m.-2p.m. (on-site session)
3 online modules
07.02.2025: 10a.m.-4p.m. (on-site session)

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

First semester MA students are required to take part in an online orientation session prior to the semester start. Please contact Nadine.Traughber@anglistik.uni-giessen.de for registration.

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; written exam

Exam period:
Written exam: tbc

Registration: Flex-Now

Sustainability and the EFL Classroom: Teaching Climate Fiction

Sustainability has to be regarded as one of the key terms in educational contexts and finds representation in the learning objectives of education for sustainable development goals published by the UNESCO. In the context of global challenges, foreign language learning plays a pivotal role: Not only in terms of communication, but also in form of education for peace, inter-/transcultural learning and personal growth of the learners. Literary texts in general and fictional texts in particular offer learning opportunities that meet the objectives of sustainable development. The seminar is thus designed to introduce principles and models that promote critical thinking, meaning-making and language proficiency of learners working with climate fiction in the EFLC.

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

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


Credit:
Teacher Education Programme:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, a teaching proposal
Graded: Regular attendance, written exam
Anglophone Studies MA Programme:
Regular attendance, written exam

Exam period: tba

Registration: Flex-Now

Teaching Anglophone Cultures: Focus on Texas

The study of culture and intercultural communication are central points of interest of teaching English as a foreign language. Throughout the semester, we will focus on the anglophone cultures relevant for the EFL classroom and represented in many course books. By looking at literary texts (print and audio-visual), 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. We will also engage in project work together with students from university of Klagenfurt (A) and high school students for us to put theoretical insights into practice.

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

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


Credit:
Teacher Education Programme:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, a teaching proposal
Graded: Regular attendance, written exam
Anglophone Studies MA Programme:
Regular attendance, written exam

Exam period: tba

Registration: Flex-Now

Teaching Short Stories

Working with authentic literature in the English as a foreign language classroom fosters inter-/transcultural, communicative as well as literary competences of learners of all age groups. In order to explore this potential, the seminar is designed to provide an overview of didactic and methodological principles of literature in foreign language learning and teaching. In addition to working with suitable text types and designing tasks and activities accordingly, communicative meaning-making, personal growth of learners and language proficiency in the EFLC will be of interest.

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

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


Credit:
Teacher Education Programme:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, a teaching proposal
Graded: Regular attendance, written exam
Anglophone Studies MA Programme:
Regular attendance, written exam

Exam period: tba

Registration: Flex-Now

In many EFL classrooms in Germany, teachers use textbooks complemented by electronic materials and media to promote student learning and achievement. Adopting a communicative language teaching perspective, this course focuses on developing competencies and skills essential to evaluating, adapting, creating and – ultimately – using English language learning and teaching resources.


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

First semester MA students are required to take part in an online orientation session prior to the semester start. Please contact Nadine.Traughber@anglistik.uni-giessen.de for registration.

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; written exam

Exam period:
Written exam: February 10, 2025

Registration: Flex-Now

What contribution can English language education make to the aspirational and ambitious project of education for sustainability and global citizenship? This seminar provides space to explore the intersection of sustainability education, global citizenship education, and the English language classroom. Against the background of what constitutes quality education according to the UN and SDG4.7, it will touch on questions of, among others, socio-environmental justice, human rights and peace, cultural diversity, and their respective education. We will discuss how critical, cosmopolitan, hopeful pedagogy may be implemented in the language classroom to not only develop communicative competences, but also empower learners as change agents and global citizens.

Dates:
18.10.2024: 10a.m.-2p.m. (on-site session)
3 online modules
07.02.2025: 10a.m.-4p.m. (on-site session)

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

First semester MA students are required to take part in an online orientation session prior to the semester start. Please contact Nadine.Traughber@anglistik.uni-giessen.de for registration.

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; written exam

Exam period:
Written exam: tbc

Registration: Flex-Now

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

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

First semester MA students are required to take part in an online orientation session prior to the semester start. Please contact Nadine.Traughber@anglistik.uni-giessen.de for registration.

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; written exam

Exam period:
Written exam: February 11, 2025

Registration: Flex-Now

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

First semester MA students are required to take part in an online orientation session prior to the semester start. Please contact Nadine.Traughber@anglistik.uni-giessen.de for registration.

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; written exam

Exam period:
Written exam: February 10, 2025

Registration: Flex-Now

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


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

First semester MA students are required to take part in an online orientation session prior to the semester start. Please contact Nadine.Traughber@anglistik.uni-giessen.de for registration.

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; written exam

Exam period:
Written exam: February 10, 2025

Registration: Flex-Now

Project-oriented learning refers to communicative classroom settings which are enquiry-, discovery-, task- and solution-oriented. It is also associated with authentic ‘real-life’ encounters with English speakers from around the world (oral or written, face-to-face or virtual, etc.). In this seminar, specific attention is given to the central theoretical and practical aspects of conceptualizing and implementing sustainability education in project-oriented EFL settings. Student learning and work in this course will itself be informed by project-based principles, such as the development of differentiated task learning, learning with course-external relevance, task- and project-based assessment, etc. All participants will be required to develop a sustainability project of their choice in teams and present it toward the end of this course.
Please note that this course will be conducted in an asynchronous, computer-mediated virtual format predominantly. Since asynchronous online courses are not conducted live and in-person, participants are not required to be logged in at the same time as everyone else, for instance, to attend virtual lectures or participate in video conferences and chat sessions. Instead, the instructor will distribute coursework through a virtual learning management system (i.e. StudIP, usually at the beginning of each week). Participants can complete the provided writing assignments and tasks at their own paces, adhering to the deadlines requested by the instructor (usually at the end of each week). This means that they can log on whenever they want, completing the coursework as they would like during each weekly block of learning.
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

First semester MA students are required to take part in an online orientation session prior to the semester start. Please contact Nadine.Traughber@anglistik.uni-giessen.de for registration.

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; written exam

Exam period:
Written exam: February 7, 2025

Registration: Flex-Now

Sustainability and the EFL Classroom: Teaching Climate Fiction

Sustainability has to be regarded as one of the key terms in educational contexts and finds representation in the learning objectives of education for sustainable development goals published by the UNESCO. In the context of global challenges, foreign language learning plays a pivotal role: Not only in terms of communication, but also in form of education for peace, inter-/transcultural learning and personal growth of the learners. Literary texts in general and fictional texts in particular offer learning opportunities that meet the objectives of sustainable development. The seminar is thus designed to introduce principles and models that promote critical thinking, meaning-making and language proficiency of learners working with climate fiction in the EFLC.

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

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


Credit:
Teacher Education Programme:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, a teaching proposal
Graded: Regular attendance, written exam
Anglophone Studies MA Programme:
Regular attendance, written exam

Exam period: tba

Registration: Flex-Now

Teaching Short Stories

Working with authentic literature in the English as a foreign language classroom fosters inter-/transcultural, communicative as well as literary competences of learners of all age groups. In order to explore this potential, the seminar is designed to provide an overview of didactic and methodological principles of literature in foreign language learning and teaching. In addition to working with suitable text types and designing tasks and activities accordingly, communicative meaning-making, personal growth of learners and language proficiency in the EFLC will be of interest.

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

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


Credit:
Teacher Education Programme:
Ungraded: Regular attendance, a teaching proposal
Graded: Regular attendance, written exam
Anglophone Studies MA Programme:
Regular attendance, written exam

Exam period: tba

Registration: Flex-Now

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

First semester MA students are required to take part in an online orientation session prior to the semester start. Please contact Nadine.Traughber@anglistik.uni-giessen.de for registration.

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; written exam

Exam period: Written exam: February 13, 2025

Registration: Flex-Now

In many EFL classrooms in Germany, teachers use textbooks complemented by electronic materials and media to promote student learning and achievement. Adopting a communicative language teaching perspective, this course focuses on developing competencies and skills essential to evaluating, adapting, creating and – ultimately – using English language learning and teaching resources.


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

First semester MA students are required to take part in an online orientation session prior to the semester start. Please contact Nadine.Traughber@anglistik.uni-giessen.de for registration.

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; written exam

Exam period:
Written exam: February 10, 2025

Registration: Flex-Now

What contribution can English language education make to the aspirational and ambitious project of education for sustainability and global citizenship? This seminar provides space to explore the intersection of sustainability education, global citizenship education, and the English language classroom. Against the background of what constitutes quality education according to the UN and SDG4.7, it will touch on questions of, among others, socio-environmental justice, human rights and peace, cultural diversity, and their respective education. We will discuss how critical, cosmopolitan, hopeful pedagogy may be implemented in the language classroom to not only develop communicative competences, but also empower learners as change agents and global citizens.

Dates:
18.10.2024: 10a.m.-2p.m. (on-site session)
3 online modules
07.02.2025: 10a.m.-4p.m. (on-site session)

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

First semester MA students are required to take part in an online orientation session prior to the semester start. Please contact Nadine.Traughber@anglistik.uni-giessen.de for registration.

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; written exam

Exam period:
Written exam: tbc

Registration: Flex-Now