Master's programme in Teacher Education (120 cp)

• English Didactics for Primary Schools: Selected Topics

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  • 17475 Seminar
    Visions of the Future: Utopia and Dystopia in ELT (mit GS) (Katja Heim)
    Schedule: Do 16:00-18:00 (Class starts on: 2024-10-17)
    Location: J 32/102 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Comments

    Visions of the future highlight our wishes, fears, and views on the world. When it comes to literature, which portrays such visions, it also reflects societal trends at the time of writing, often coupled with references to historical recurrence. Analytical and creative approaches to engaging with such literature help to view society via different lenses and help to think through the potential consequences of societal trends and decision-making.

    In this course, we will choose together which dystopian novels we would like to look at more closely. Books that could be decided on are, for example, frequently read novels, such as The Handmaid’s Tale (Atwood), The Hunger Games (Collins), The Circle (Eggers), or The Giver (Lowry). We will read extracts from different books throughout the course and will also include multimodal sources, such as film and art works. In addition, each of you will engage with one chosen dystopian or utopian novel within a group and will, by the end of the course, have developed and presented a complex competence task for using the book in class. You will need to purchase this one chosen book. All other texts will be provided via Moodle. While the theme of this course is classically taught at higher secondary level, it is also relevant for younger learners. Future primary school teachers will also be able to work with future-related picturebooks and other, more easily understandable texts for younger learners. 

    Parts of this course will be taught online. Dates for on-site and online sessions will be announced in class. The first two sessions will be on-site.

  • 17476 Seminar
    Education for Democracy: Supporting Language Learners‘ Autonomy (Katja Heim)
    Schedule: Do 14:00-16:00 (Class starts on: 2024-10-17)
    Location: 023 Seminarraum (Fabeckstr. 35 )
    

    Comments

    What does it imply if we say that we want to support learners’ autonomy? A frequent association is a scene in which every learner works individually, without any help, any bonds and any obligations. That is not what is meant here. Supporting language learners’ autonomy is an aim formulated in the central European document on language learning, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. The concept of autonomy used here is not individualistic but considers learners as members of communities. The aim is thus to develop not only responsibility for learning at an individual level but also responsibility within groups of learners. This aims to enable learners to uphold a democratic Europe, in which citizens interact internationally and engage in peaceful discourse.  

    In this course, we will look at strategies for developing language learner autonomy within school-based English lessons and will consider important issues, such as the balance between structure and freedom, types of interactions in class, target language use, assessment, and inclusion.

    Throughout the course, we will connect theory and practice, will analyse lesson sequences, and will develop small-scale action research projects in preparation for your term papers.

    Parts of this course will be taught online. Dates for on-site and online sessions will be announced in class. The first two sessions will be on-site.

  • 17477 Seminar
    Digital Tools in English Language Teaching (Christian Ludwig)
    Schedule: Di 14:00-16:00 (Class starts on: 2024-10-15)
    Location: , J 27/14
    

    Comments

    Welcome to the Digital Age: Integrating Digital Technology and Artificial Intelligence in the EFL Classroom Since the 2000s, digital technology has emerged as a significant force in education, both embraced and resisted. This course delves into the untapped potential of technology tools in foreign language education through practical, hands-on activities and projects. It covers various topics including methodological approaches to technology, syllabus development, materials selection, and task design in technology-driven learning environments. Additionally, it critically examines artificial intelligence, particularly large language models, as a key technology for future foreign language learning. Lastly, it addresses often overlooked aspects such as reflection, evaluation, and assessment when incorporating technology in the foreign language classroom. Please make sure you acquire a copy of the following book before term begins: Ludwig, Christian (2022): Digital Englisch Unterrichten: Grundlagen, Impulse und Perspektiven. Friedrich.

  • 17478 Seminar
    Short and Sweet!? – Shorties in English Language Teaching (Christian Ludwig)
    Schedule: Do 12:00-14:00 (Class starts on: 2024-10-17)
    Location: 2.2059 Seminarraum (Fabeckstr. 23/25)
    

    Comments

    Short-form video content is becoming increasingly popular. Despite their widespread use in everyday life, they are not commonly integrated into foreign language classrooms. To address this issue, we will explore the benefits of using short texts in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) instruction. Additionally, we will examine various traditional and modern short formats, including fables, short stories, videos, weather reports, urban myths, proverbs, perverbs, as well as digital and multimodal texts like twitterature and Instagram stories.

• Specialization Module D3: Colonial and Postcolonial Literatures

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  • 17360 Advanced Seminar
    VS-Colonial and Postcolonial Literatures: Postcolonial London (Stephan Laqué)
    Schedule: Mi 12:00-14:00 (Class starts on: 2024-10-16)
    Location: KL 32/202 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Comments

    London is a dazzling amalgam of social, ethnic and national identities: always and ineluctably a plurality of cities. One important reason for its plurality is the fact that London is no less haunted by the rich and problematic legacy of Britain's colonial past than cities such as Mumbai or Melbourne, and this course will look at three novels which register this influence. Please purchase Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners, Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia, Zadie Smith, White Teeth. Please read Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners for week two of the semester.

  • 17361 Advanced Seminar
    VS-Colonial and Postcolonial Literatures: Narrating Ocean Worlds, The Indian Ocean (Lenka Filipova)
    Schedule: Fr 14:00-16:00 (Class starts on: 2024-10-18)
    Location: JK 27/106 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Comments

    This course will explore the Indian Ocean as a space of cultural exchange, migration, and storytelling, where centuries of human and ecological interaction have created a unique, interconnected world. We will investigate how writers, filmmakers, and artists have narrated the histories, ecologies, and diverse communities shaped by the Indian Ocean, while engaging with critical themes such as colonialism, global trade, forced and voluntary migration, and environmental transformation. From the movement of people—enslaved individuals, traders, refugees, and explorers—to the circulation of goods, ideas, and cultural practices, and the shifting ecologies that sustain and challenge these flows, we will explore how the Indian Ocean functions not merely as a passive backdrop but as an active force, shaping both human and non-human interactions across diverse temporal and spatial scales.

  • 17362 Advanced Seminar
    VS-Colonial and Postcolonial Literatures: Post-Mabo Australian Cinema (Jennifer Wawrzinek)
    Schedule: Termine siehe LV-Details (Class starts on: 2025-02-17)
    Location: KL 32/202 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Comments

    In 1992, the Australian High Court officially recognised native title and thus the occupation of the Australian continent by indigenous Australians prior to European settlement. This landmark decision, known as the Mabo decision, effectively overturned the precept of terra nullius (empty land belonging to no one) that grounded European colonial expansion on the continent, thus rewriting Australian colonial history as one of invasion, dispossession, genocide and deracination. Yet the retelling of Australian colonial history was not left uncontested. The years following the Mabo decision also witnessed the proliferation of tensions between ‘black Armband’ and ‘white Blindfold’ views of history as the Australian nation attempted to deal with the legacies of a traumatic and violent past. This course examines the ways in which various Australian filmmakers have attempted to negotiate relations between Aboriginal Australians and European settlers in the wake of Mabo. Over the course of the semester, students will critically interrogate a range of films by both black and white Australians in order to assess not only the ways in which the recognition of Aboriginal land rights and the revision of history has been negotiated in filmmaking at the turn of the new millennium, but similarly to consider the ways that these films attempt to forge a future that admits of difference and equality.

    
    
    

    Please Note: This course will be conducted as a block seminar over the course of one week (five days) immediately after the end of semester.

    
    
    

    Films will be made available for viewing on VBrick prior to the block seminar week..

    
    
    

    Set Texts:

    
    

    
    

    • Luhrmann, Baz, dir. Australia (2008)
    
    
    • Moffatt, Tracey, dir. bedevil (1993) )
    
    
    • Perkins, Rachel, dir. Bran Nue Dae (2010) )
    
    
    • Thornton, Wawrick, dir. Samson and Delilah (2011) )
    
    
    • Weir, Peter, dir. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1992) )
    
    
    
    

• Specialization Module D4: Culture - Gender - Media

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  • 17367 Advanced Seminar
    VS-Culture - Gender - Media: The Fin de Siecle (Stephan Karschay)
    Schedule: Mo 16:00-18:00 (Class starts on: 2024-10-14)
    Location: JK 27/106 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Comments

    The subject of our seminar will be the literature and culture of the Victorian fin de siècle(ca. 1880-1900) in Britain, a short, but central, period in British cultural history that marked the end of one epoch and hailed the beginning of another. Uncomfortably situated between two centuries, it was long regarded as being ‘lost in transition’, alternatively interpreted as the tail-end of the Victorian age or as a period foreshadowing the Modernist onslaughts of the early twentieth century. In line with these assumptions, late-nineteenth century cultural commentators can largely be divided into two camps: those that feared the prospect of a dying age, envisioning not only a fin de siècle, but an imminent fin du globe, and those that delightedly greeted the dawning century as an exhilarating time of new beginnings. Twenty-first-century critics have righty emphasised the period’s modernity by pointing to the many cultural configurations and developments that can be perceived as palpably novel at the fin de siècle: the ‘New Woman’ questioned traditional conceptions of femininity; ‘New Men’ (such as aesthetes and decadents) relished a lifestyle far removed from bourgeois notions of masculinity; developments in foreign policy and rebellions in select areas of the British Empire resulted in an aggressive ‘New Imperialism’; a sensational form of newspaper reportage came to be labelled the ‘New Journalism’; and literary reviews registered a ‘New Realism’ in fiction by George Gissing, Arthur Morrison and George Moore. In this seminar we will read a wide variety of texts (scientific, literary, visual and expository) to appreciate the sheer variety of cultural concerns at the Victorian fin de siècle. We will critically engage with the many intellectual issues (concerning race, gender, sexuality, technology, science and the arts) which challenged the ‘Victorian frame of mind’. Our approach will be of the textual-historicist variety: rather than summarising the cultural strands of the period through recourse to secondary material, students will be encouraged to analyse a large amount of primary texts by journalistic, scientific, political and imaginative writers as diverse as H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, W. T. Stead, Charles and William Booth, Arthur Symons, Sarah Grand, ‘Mona Caird’, Andrew Lang, Joseph Chamberlain, William Morris, T. H. Huxley, F. W. H. Myers, Havelock Ellis and Karl Pearson. Furthermore, we will read at least one full-length novel, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) and relate it to the rich cultural context provided by the fin de siècle. Students must own a copy of the following volume, around which this seminar is built: Ledger, Sally, and Roger Luckhurst, eds. The Fin de Siècle. A Reader in Cultural History, c. 1880-1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

     

    Voraussetzungen

     

    Erfolgreiche Absolvierung des Moduls „Introduction to Cultural Studies“. Regelmäßige und aktive Teilnahme, Lektüre aller im Seminar diskutierten Texte, seminarbegleitende Studienleistungen (wie z.B. response paper, Gruppenpräsentation, Expertengruppe), abschließende Seminararbeit (abhängig von Modulbelegung). Auch die ersten Wochen der Veranstaltung zählen zur regelmäßigen Teilnahme.

     

    Literaturhinweise

     

    Set Texts

    Ledger, Sally, and Roger Luckhurst, eds. The Fin de Siècle. A Reader in Cultural History, c. 1880-1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

    Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray [1891], ed. Robert Mighall (London: Penguin, 2003).

     

    Introductory Reading

    Ledger, Sally, and Roger Luckhurst. “Reading the ‘Fin de Siècle’”. Introduction. The Fin de Siècle: A Reader in Cultural History, c. 1880-1900, ed. S. L. & R. L. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. xiii-xxiii.

    Potolsky, Matthew. “Fin de Siècle.” Victorian Literature and Culture 46:3/4 (2018): 697-700.

     

  • 17368 Advanced Seminar
    VS-Culture - Gender - Media: Food Studies (Sabine Schülting)
    Schedule: Di 16:00-18:00 (Class starts on: 2024-10-15)
    Location: J 27/14 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Comments

    Food is not just essential for human survival, it is also a fundamental part of individual and cultural identities. Food preferences are shaped by national or regional traditions and religious dietary restrictions or other ethical criteria, by individual family rituals, by class and sometimes also by gender. Food from other parts of the world can serve as a means of cultural encounter and (imaginary) travel. In turn, together with people on the move, food also migrates and merges with other culinary traditions. Food therefore carries meaning and functions as a means of communication, but cooking and eating rituals also form the basis of fundamental cultural practices that establish community, hospitality and conviviality. The course will give an introduction to the transdisciplinary field of Food Studies, including theoretical approaches to thinking about food. Our discussion will then move on to representations and negotiations of food in a variety of literary and non-literary genres and media (poetry, short stories, essays, films, cookbooks) from different Anglophone countries.

    Texts will be uploaded on Blackboard.

    Assessment will be on the basis of regular attendance, active participation in class activities (such as response papers, short presentations, group work) and the submission of an essay (c. 4000 words).

• Specialization Module D5: Sociolinguistics and Varieties

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  • 17371 Advanced Seminar
    VS-Socioling. and Varieties of English: English for Specific Purposes (Antje Wilton)
    Schedule: Mi 10:00-12:00 (Class starts on: 2024-10-16)
    Location: J 32/102 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Comments

    This seminar introduces students to the field of ESP (English for Specific Purposes), commonly defined as the teaching of English to nonnative speakers in a specific professional domain. The seminar is based on the notion of English as an international language (EIL) with an important (and sometimes critical) role in professional communication. We will discuss the theoretical foundations of linguistic research into EIL, then move on to the particular requirements and challenges of teaching specialized English to adult professionals and finally explore the use of English in a number of professional fields, such as aviation, medicine, law, academia, tourism and others. Students will be required to design and participate in student-led thematic sessions.

• Specialization Module D6: Structure of English

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  • 17373 Advanced Seminar
    VS- Corpus-Based Approaches to Semantics: Grammatical Alternation (Anatol Stefanowitsch)
    Schedule: Mi 12:00-14:00 (Class starts on: 2024-10-16)
    Location: KL 29/208 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

• Specialization Module D8: Language Change

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  • 17381 Advanced Seminar
    VS-Language Change II (Kirsten Middeke)
    Schedule: Mo 10:00-12:00 (Class starts on: 2024-10-14)
    Location: KL 29/207 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

• Specialization Module D1: Modernity and Alterity in the Literatures of Medieval Britain

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  • 17350 Lecture
    V-Literatures of Medieval Britain: The Canterbury Tales (Andrew James Johnston)
    Schedule: Mi 16:00-18:00 (Class starts on: 2024-10-16)
    Location: J 27/14 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Comments

    The Canterbury Tales (c. 1387) is Geoffrey Chaucer’s best-known work – and perhaps the best-known literary work of the English Middle Ages. A collection of shorter narratives – almost all of them in verse – the Tales plays a major role in the development of what we nowadays consider the canon of English literature and – not least because of its obvious affinities with Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decamerone– simultaneously stakes a claim for English letters within the wider context of European literature.

    
     

    Yet for all its indisputable canonicity the Tales is far more than a mere showcase of medieval poetic and narrative styles and genres. It betrays a fascination with tension and conflict, with debate and self-questioning that undermines all facile attempts to install the work and its author in the straightforward position of the fons et origo of an uninterrupted, glorious tradition of English literature. On the contrary, the Canterbury Tales presents itself as a rigorous investigation into such diverse issues as the roles of tradition and history for literature, the problem of social conflict and its representation in literature, the tensions between religion and aesthetics, the power and limitations of ideology and the relationship between gender and authority, to name but a few.

    
    

    Since even in its unfinished form the Canterbury Tales is a vast and sprawling work, this course will be able to deal only with a selection of the tales.

    
    

    Students are expected to have acquired an edition of the complete text by the first session of the course. This edition must be in the original Middle English and possess a full-fledged critical apparatus. Texts not meeting these standards will not be accepted in class. I recommend either the Riverside Chaucer (Larry D. Benson, ed., Oxford UP, 1988/2008) or the Penguin Classics edition (Jill Mann, ed., Penguin, 2005).

    
    

  • 17351 Advanced Seminar
    VS-Literatures of Medieval Britain: Medieval English Dream Visions (Wolfram Keller)
    Schedule: Di 08:00-10:00 (Class starts on: 2024-10-15)
    Location: KL 29/208 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Comments

    Between the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries, dream poetry was one of the most popular insular genres. Besides longer allegorical dream visions, such as William Langland’s Piers Plowman, most late-medieval English poets (including Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, John Lydgate, Robert Henryson, Gavin Douglas, William Dunbar, John Skelton) penned dream poetry. Based loosely upon twelfth- and thirteenth-century continental models, medieval English dream poetry frequently offers sustained reflections both about meta-poetic and epistemological issues. Following a couple of sessions concerned with literary-historical and generic questions, we will discuss Chaucer’s dream poetry (Book of the Duchess, Parliament of Fowls, House of Fame, Prologue to the Legend of Good Women). In the second part of the semester, we shall then read fifteenth- and sixteenth-century dream poetry, especially with a view to how poets engage with the Chaucerian models. A detailed reading list will be available at the beginning of the semester.

• Specialization Module D2: Literary Studies: Periods - Genres - Concepts

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  • 17353 Lecture
    V-Periods - Genres - Concepts: Modern Poetry (Stephan Laqué)
    Schedule: Do 16:00-18:00 (Class starts on: 2024-10-17)
    Location: J 27/14 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Comments

    English poetry from the Georgian Poets through to the 1960s followed many different trajectories that were problematic and fascinating mixtures of tradition and renewal, of adaptation and rebellion. The pivotal process behind these currents is the rise and trajectory of modernism – a term which notoriously defies definition and invites debate. While this lecture aims to keep close to the text of the poems, due attention will be given to their wider philosophical and ideological background.

  • 17354 Advanced Seminar
    VS-Periods - Genres - Concepts: Scottish Hospitality (Cordula Lemke)
    Schedule: Mo 14:00-16:00 (Class starts on: 2024-10-14)
    Location: KL 29/110 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Comments

    Today's image of Scotland is still dominated by the myth of peaty and moss-covered Highlands and their tartan-wearing hospitable inhabitants who entertain weary travellers with tales of ghosts and murderers. These apparently authentic traditions can often be traced back to the need to invent a Scottish national identity that was and still is used to claim independence. Not only have these inventions found their way into the novels of the time, but writers like James Macpherson, Robert Burns and Walter Scott can indeed be seen as the source of this mythical image of Scotland. In this seminar we will look at the myths these writers employ and construct, at how these inventions affect the image of a Scottish nation and why these myths use concepts of hospitality.

    
    
    

    Texts:

    
    

    Most texts will be made available on Blackboard
    Please purchase Walter Scott’s Waverley (Penguin Classics)

    
    
    

  • 17356 Advanced Seminar
    VS-Periods - Genres - Concepts: Nineteenth-Century Realism: Theory and Practice (Stephan Karschay)
    Schedule: Di 12:00-14:00 (Class starts on: 2024-10-15)
    Location: KL 32/202 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Comments

    The term ‘realism’ refers to style of representation characterized by a particular set of conventions, all of which aim at the verisimilitude (‘resemblance to reality’, ‘appearance of truth’) of the artistic work. These conventions of realist aesthetics in literature include, among other things, a richly detailed depicted world, the logical plausibility of plot and action, the complex psychology of the characters, as well as the intellectual reflection on the scientific and material conditions of empirical reality. At the same time, Realism also refers to the dominant literary epoch of the nineteenth century, whose literature was shaped by these very writing conventions. However, the term ‘realism’ often glosses over significant and subtle differences between the national forms of Realism in France, England, America, Russia, and Germany. In this seminar, we will focus on realism as a general aesthetics and an epistemological programme, and then move on to illuminate English realism in the 19th century (which, unlike French or German – ‘bourgeois’ or ‘poetic’ – realism, is less often at the centre of literary-historical discussion). In addition to important voices of English realism (e.g. George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Anthony Trollope), we will engage with concepts that are central to any debate on realism (such as ‘mimesis’ and Roland Barthes’ ‘reality effect’) and can help distinguish realism from its later, more intensified form – naturalism.

    
    
    

    Voraussetzungen

    
    
    

    Erfolgreiche Absolvierung des Moduls „Surveying English Literatures“.

    Regelmäßige und aktive Teilnahme, Lektüre aller im Seminar diskutierten Texte, seminarbegleitende Studienleistungen (wie z.B. response paper, Gruppenpräsentation, Expertengruppe), abschließende Seminararbeit (abhängig von Modulbelegung).

    Auch die ersten Wochen der Veranstaltung zählen zur regelmäßigen Teilnahme.

    
    
    

    Literaturhinweise

    
    
    

    Introductory Reading

    
    

    Mahler, Andreas. “Uses of ‘Realism:’ A Term in History and the History of a Term,” in Realism: Aesthetics, Experiments, Politics, ed. Jens Elze (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), pp. 29-40.

    
    
    

    Set Texts

    
    

    Earnshaw, Steven. Beginning Realism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010).

    
    

    Eliot, George. Adam Bede [1895]. Penguin Classics or Oxford World’s Classics.

    
    

    Moore, George. Esther Waters [1894]. Ed. Stephen Regan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

    
    

• Specialization Module D3: Colonial and Postcolonial Literatures

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  • 17360 Advanced Seminar
    VS-Colonial and Postcolonial Literatures: Postcolonial London (Stephan Laqué)
    Schedule: Mi 12:00-14:00 (Class starts on: 2024-10-16)
    Location: KL 32/202 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Comments

    London is a dazzling amalgam of social, ethnic and national identities: always and ineluctably a plurality of cities. One important reason for its plurality is the fact that London is no less haunted by the rich and problematic legacy of Britain's colonial past than cities such as Mumbai or Melbourne, and this course will look at three novels which register this influence. Please purchase Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners, Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia, Zadie Smith, White Teeth. Please read Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners for week two of the semester.

  • 17361 Advanced Seminar
    VS-Colonial and Postcolonial Literatures: Narrating Ocean Worlds, The Indian Ocean (Lenka Filipova)
    Schedule: Fr 14:00-16:00 (Class starts on: 2024-10-18)
    Location: JK 27/106 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Comments

    This course will explore the Indian Ocean as a space of cultural exchange, migration, and storytelling, where centuries of human and ecological interaction have created a unique, interconnected world. We will investigate how writers, filmmakers, and artists have narrated the histories, ecologies, and diverse communities shaped by the Indian Ocean, while engaging with critical themes such as colonialism, global trade, forced and voluntary migration, and environmental transformation. From the movement of people—enslaved individuals, traders, refugees, and explorers—to the circulation of goods, ideas, and cultural practices, and the shifting ecologies that sustain and challenge these flows, we will explore how the Indian Ocean functions not merely as a passive backdrop but as an active force, shaping both human and non-human interactions across diverse temporal and spatial scales.

  • 17362 Advanced Seminar
    VS-Colonial and Postcolonial Literatures: Post-Mabo Australian Cinema (Jennifer Wawrzinek)
    Schedule: Termine siehe LV-Details (Class starts on: 2025-02-17)
    Location: KL 32/202 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Comments

    In 1992, the Australian High Court officially recognised native title and thus the occupation of the Australian continent by indigenous Australians prior to European settlement. This landmark decision, known as the Mabo decision, effectively overturned the precept of terra nullius (empty land belonging to no one) that grounded European colonial expansion on the continent, thus rewriting Australian colonial history as one of invasion, dispossession, genocide and deracination. Yet the retelling of Australian colonial history was not left uncontested. The years following the Mabo decision also witnessed the proliferation of tensions between ‘black Armband’ and ‘white Blindfold’ views of history as the Australian nation attempted to deal with the legacies of a traumatic and violent past. This course examines the ways in which various Australian filmmakers have attempted to negotiate relations between Aboriginal Australians and European settlers in the wake of Mabo. Over the course of the semester, students will critically interrogate a range of films by both black and white Australians in order to assess not only the ways in which the recognition of Aboriginal land rights and the revision of history has been negotiated in filmmaking at the turn of the new millennium, but similarly to consider the ways that these films attempt to forge a future that admits of difference and equality.

    
    
    

    Please Note: This course will be conducted as a block seminar over the course of one week (five days) immediately after the end of semester.

    
    
    

    Films will be made available for viewing on VBrick prior to the block seminar week..

    
    
    

    Set Texts:

    
    

    
    

    • Luhrmann, Baz, dir. Australia (2008)
    
    
    • Moffatt, Tracey, dir. bedevil (1993) )
    
    
    • Perkins, Rachel, dir. Bran Nue Dae (2010) )
    
    
    • Thornton, Wawrick, dir. Samson and Delilah (2011) )
    
    
    • Weir, Peter, dir. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1992) )
    
    
    
    

• Specialization Module D4: Culture - Gender - Media

  0546bA1.11
  • 17367 Advanced Seminar
    VS-Culture - Gender - Media: The Fin de Siecle (Stephan Karschay)
    Schedule: Mo 16:00-18:00 (Class starts on: 2024-10-14)
    Location: JK 27/106 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Comments

    The subject of our seminar will be the literature and culture of the Victorian fin de siècle(ca. 1880-1900) in Britain, a short, but central, period in British cultural history that marked the end of one epoch and hailed the beginning of another. Uncomfortably situated between two centuries, it was long regarded as being ‘lost in transition’, alternatively interpreted as the tail-end of the Victorian age or as a period foreshadowing the Modernist onslaughts of the early twentieth century. In line with these assumptions, late-nineteenth century cultural commentators can largely be divided into two camps: those that feared the prospect of a dying age, envisioning not only a fin de siècle, but an imminent fin du globe, and those that delightedly greeted the dawning century as an exhilarating time of new beginnings. Twenty-first-century critics have righty emphasised the period’s modernity by pointing to the many cultural configurations and developments that can be perceived as palpably novel at the fin de siècle: the ‘New Woman’ questioned traditional conceptions of femininity; ‘New Men’ (such as aesthetes and decadents) relished a lifestyle far removed from bourgeois notions of masculinity; developments in foreign policy and rebellions in select areas of the British Empire resulted in an aggressive ‘New Imperialism’; a sensational form of newspaper reportage came to be labelled the ‘New Journalism’; and literary reviews registered a ‘New Realism’ in fiction by George Gissing, Arthur Morrison and George Moore. In this seminar we will read a wide variety of texts (scientific, literary, visual and expository) to appreciate the sheer variety of cultural concerns at the Victorian fin de siècle. We will critically engage with the many intellectual issues (concerning race, gender, sexuality, technology, science and the arts) which challenged the ‘Victorian frame of mind’. Our approach will be of the textual-historicist variety: rather than summarising the cultural strands of the period through recourse to secondary material, students will be encouraged to analyse a large amount of primary texts by journalistic, scientific, political and imaginative writers as diverse as H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, W. T. Stead, Charles and William Booth, Arthur Symons, Sarah Grand, ‘Mona Caird’, Andrew Lang, Joseph Chamberlain, William Morris, T. H. Huxley, F. W. H. Myers, Havelock Ellis and Karl Pearson. Furthermore, we will read at least one full-length novel, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) and relate it to the rich cultural context provided by the fin de siècle. Students must own a copy of the following volume, around which this seminar is built: Ledger, Sally, and Roger Luckhurst, eds. The Fin de Siècle. A Reader in Cultural History, c. 1880-1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

     

    Voraussetzungen

     

    Erfolgreiche Absolvierung des Moduls „Introduction to Cultural Studies“. Regelmäßige und aktive Teilnahme, Lektüre aller im Seminar diskutierten Texte, seminarbegleitende Studienleistungen (wie z.B. response paper, Gruppenpräsentation, Expertengruppe), abschließende Seminararbeit (abhängig von Modulbelegung). Auch die ersten Wochen der Veranstaltung zählen zur regelmäßigen Teilnahme.

     

    Literaturhinweise

     

    Set Texts

    Ledger, Sally, and Roger Luckhurst, eds. The Fin de Siècle. A Reader in Cultural History, c. 1880-1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

    Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray [1891], ed. Robert Mighall (London: Penguin, 2003).

     

    Introductory Reading

    Ledger, Sally, and Roger Luckhurst. “Reading the ‘Fin de Siècle’”. Introduction. The Fin de Siècle: A Reader in Cultural History, c. 1880-1900, ed. S. L. & R. L. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. xiii-xxiii.

    Potolsky, Matthew. “Fin de Siècle.” Victorian Literature and Culture 46:3/4 (2018): 697-700.

     

  • 17368 Advanced Seminar
    VS-Culture - Gender - Media: Food Studies (Sabine Schülting)
    Schedule: Di 16:00-18:00 (Class starts on: 2024-10-15)
    Location: J 27/14 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Comments

    Food is not just essential for human survival, it is also a fundamental part of individual and cultural identities. Food preferences are shaped by national or regional traditions and religious dietary restrictions or other ethical criteria, by individual family rituals, by class and sometimes also by gender. Food from other parts of the world can serve as a means of cultural encounter and (imaginary) travel. In turn, together with people on the move, food also migrates and merges with other culinary traditions. Food therefore carries meaning and functions as a means of communication, but cooking and eating rituals also form the basis of fundamental cultural practices that establish community, hospitality and conviviality. The course will give an introduction to the transdisciplinary field of Food Studies, including theoretical approaches to thinking about food. Our discussion will then move on to representations and negotiations of food in a variety of literary and non-literary genres and media (poetry, short stories, essays, films, cookbooks) from different Anglophone countries.

    Texts will be uploaded on Blackboard.

    Assessment will be on the basis of regular attendance, active participation in class activities (such as response papers, short presentations, group work) and the submission of an essay (c. 4000 words).

• Specialization Module D5: Sociolinguistics and Varieties

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  • 17371 Advanced Seminar
    VS-Socioling. and Varieties of English: English for Specific Purposes (Antje Wilton)
    Schedule: Mi 10:00-12:00 (Class starts on: 2024-10-16)
    Location: J 32/102 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Comments

    This seminar introduces students to the field of ESP (English for Specific Purposes), commonly defined as the teaching of English to nonnative speakers in a specific professional domain. The seminar is based on the notion of English as an international language (EIL) with an important (and sometimes critical) role in professional communication. We will discuss the theoretical foundations of linguistic research into EIL, then move on to the particular requirements and challenges of teaching specialized English to adult professionals and finally explore the use of English in a number of professional fields, such as aviation, medicine, law, academia, tourism and others. Students will be required to design and participate in student-led thematic sessions.

• Specialization Module D6: Structure of English

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  • 17373 Advanced Seminar
    VS- Corpus-Based Approaches to Semantics: Grammatical Alternation (Anatol Stefanowitsch)
    Schedule: Mi 12:00-14:00 (Class starts on: 2024-10-16)
    Location: KL 29/208 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

• Specialization Module D8: Language Change

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  • 17381 Advanced Seminar
    VS-Language Change II (Kirsten Middeke)
    Schedule: Mo 10:00-12:00 (Class starts on: 2024-10-14)
    Location: KL 29/207 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

• Specialization Module D1: Modernity and Alterity in the Literatures of Medieval Britain

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  • 17350 Lecture
    V-Literatures of Medieval Britain: The Canterbury Tales (Andrew James Johnston)
    Schedule: Mi 16:00-18:00 (Class starts on: 2024-10-16)
    Location: J 27/14 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Comments

    The Canterbury Tales (c. 1387) is Geoffrey Chaucer’s best-known work – and perhaps the best-known literary work of the English Middle Ages. A collection of shorter narratives – almost all of them in verse – the Tales plays a major role in the development of what we nowadays consider the canon of English literature and – not least because of its obvious affinities with Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decamerone– simultaneously stakes a claim for English letters within the wider context of European literature.

    
     

    Yet for all its indisputable canonicity the Tales is far more than a mere showcase of medieval poetic and narrative styles and genres. It betrays a fascination with tension and conflict, with debate and self-questioning that undermines all facile attempts to install the work and its author in the straightforward position of the fons et origo of an uninterrupted, glorious tradition of English literature. On the contrary, the Canterbury Tales presents itself as a rigorous investigation into such diverse issues as the roles of tradition and history for literature, the problem of social conflict and its representation in literature, the tensions between religion and aesthetics, the power and limitations of ideology and the relationship between gender and authority, to name but a few.

    
    

    Since even in its unfinished form the Canterbury Tales is a vast and sprawling work, this course will be able to deal only with a selection of the tales.

    
    

    Students are expected to have acquired an edition of the complete text by the first session of the course. This edition must be in the original Middle English and possess a full-fledged critical apparatus. Texts not meeting these standards will not be accepted in class. I recommend either the Riverside Chaucer (Larry D. Benson, ed., Oxford UP, 1988/2008) or the Penguin Classics edition (Jill Mann, ed., Penguin, 2005).

    
    

  • 17351 Advanced Seminar
    VS-Literatures of Medieval Britain: Medieval English Dream Visions (Wolfram Keller)
    Schedule: Di 08:00-10:00 (Class starts on: 2024-10-15)
    Location: KL 29/208 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Comments

    Between the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries, dream poetry was one of the most popular insular genres. Besides longer allegorical dream visions, such as William Langland’s Piers Plowman, most late-medieval English poets (including Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, John Lydgate, Robert Henryson, Gavin Douglas, William Dunbar, John Skelton) penned dream poetry. Based loosely upon twelfth- and thirteenth-century continental models, medieval English dream poetry frequently offers sustained reflections both about meta-poetic and epistemological issues. Following a couple of sessions concerned with literary-historical and generic questions, we will discuss Chaucer’s dream poetry (Book of the Duchess, Parliament of Fowls, House of Fame, Prologue to the Legend of Good Women). In the second part of the semester, we shall then read fifteenth- and sixteenth-century dream poetry, especially with a view to how poets engage with the Chaucerian models. A detailed reading list will be available at the beginning of the semester.

• Specialization Module D2: Literary Studies: Periods - Genres - Concepts

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  • 17353 Lecture
    V-Periods - Genres - Concepts: Modern Poetry (Stephan Laqué)
    Schedule: Do 16:00-18:00 (Class starts on: 2024-10-17)
    Location: J 27/14 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Comments

    English poetry from the Georgian Poets through to the 1960s followed many different trajectories that were problematic and fascinating mixtures of tradition and renewal, of adaptation and rebellion. The pivotal process behind these currents is the rise and trajectory of modernism – a term which notoriously defies definition and invites debate. While this lecture aims to keep close to the text of the poems, due attention will be given to their wider philosophical and ideological background.

  • 17354 Advanced Seminar
    VS-Periods - Genres - Concepts: Scottish Hospitality (Cordula Lemke)
    Schedule: Mo 14:00-16:00 (Class starts on: 2024-10-14)
    Location: KL 29/110 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Comments

    Today's image of Scotland is still dominated by the myth of peaty and moss-covered Highlands and their tartan-wearing hospitable inhabitants who entertain weary travellers with tales of ghosts and murderers. These apparently authentic traditions can often be traced back to the need to invent a Scottish national identity that was and still is used to claim independence. Not only have these inventions found their way into the novels of the time, but writers like James Macpherson, Robert Burns and Walter Scott can indeed be seen as the source of this mythical image of Scotland. In this seminar we will look at the myths these writers employ and construct, at how these inventions affect the image of a Scottish nation and why these myths use concepts of hospitality.

    
    
    

    Texts:

    
    

    Most texts will be made available on Blackboard
    Please purchase Walter Scott’s Waverley (Penguin Classics)

    
    
    

  • 17356 Advanced Seminar
    VS-Periods - Genres - Concepts: Nineteenth-Century Realism: Theory and Practice (Stephan Karschay)
    Schedule: Di 12:00-14:00 (Class starts on: 2024-10-15)
    Location: KL 32/202 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Comments

    The term ‘realism’ refers to style of representation characterized by a particular set of conventions, all of which aim at the verisimilitude (‘resemblance to reality’, ‘appearance of truth’) of the artistic work. These conventions of realist aesthetics in literature include, among other things, a richly detailed depicted world, the logical plausibility of plot and action, the complex psychology of the characters, as well as the intellectual reflection on the scientific and material conditions of empirical reality. At the same time, Realism also refers to the dominant literary epoch of the nineteenth century, whose literature was shaped by these very writing conventions. However, the term ‘realism’ often glosses over significant and subtle differences between the national forms of Realism in France, England, America, Russia, and Germany. In this seminar, we will focus on realism as a general aesthetics and an epistemological programme, and then move on to illuminate English realism in the 19th century (which, unlike French or German – ‘bourgeois’ or ‘poetic’ – realism, is less often at the centre of literary-historical discussion). In addition to important voices of English realism (e.g. George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Anthony Trollope), we will engage with concepts that are central to any debate on realism (such as ‘mimesis’ and Roland Barthes’ ‘reality effect’) and can help distinguish realism from its later, more intensified form – naturalism.

    
    
    

    Voraussetzungen

    
    
    

    Erfolgreiche Absolvierung des Moduls „Surveying English Literatures“.

    Regelmäßige und aktive Teilnahme, Lektüre aller im Seminar diskutierten Texte, seminarbegleitende Studienleistungen (wie z.B. response paper, Gruppenpräsentation, Expertengruppe), abschließende Seminararbeit (abhängig von Modulbelegung).

    Auch die ersten Wochen der Veranstaltung zählen zur regelmäßigen Teilnahme.

    
    
    

    Literaturhinweise

    
    
    

    Introductory Reading

    
    

    Mahler, Andreas. “Uses of ‘Realism:’ A Term in History and the History of a Term,” in Realism: Aesthetics, Experiments, Politics, ed. Jens Elze (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), pp. 29-40.

    
    
    

    Set Texts

    
    

    Earnshaw, Steven. Beginning Realism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010).

    
    

    Eliot, George. Adam Bede [1895]. Penguin Classics or Oxford World’s Classics.

    
    

    Moore, George. Esther Waters [1894]. Ed. Stephen Regan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).