| 10-76-3-D1-04 | Key Topics in Linguistics: Contemporary English Usage (in English) This course provides a basic exploration of the forms, functions, and varieties of English in the contemporary world. It examines how English has evolved into multiple (…) This course provides a basic exploration of the forms, functions, and varieties of English in the contemporary world. It examines how English has evolved into multiple regional and functional varieties, reflecting diverse sociolinguistic, cultural, and technological influences. Students will engage with topics including World Englishes, stylistic and register variation, and the impact of globalisation and digital communication on modern English usage.
Objectives
By the end of the course, students should be able to:
1. explain the concept and scope of contemporary English.
2. identify and analyse major regional varieties of English across the world.
3. distinguish stylistic and register differences in professional and everyday contexts.
4. examine sociolinguistic and cultural factors influencing English usage globally.
5. demonstrate practical competence in using appropriate English varieties and registers for specific communicative contexts. | Dr. Folajimi Oyebola |
| 10-76-3-D1-02 | Key Topics in Linguistics: English in the Caribbean (in English) You can find course dates and further information in Stud.IP. | Nicole Hober, M.A. |
| 10-76-3-D1-01 | Key Topics in Linguistics: Sociolinguistics (in English) You can find course dates and further information in Stud.IP. | Dr. Inke Du Bois |
| 10-76-3-D1-03 | Key Topics in Linguistics: The language of capitalism (in English) Think capitalism only lives in boardrooms and balance sheets? Think again. It’s in the words we use, the stories we tell, and the meanings we don't even notice.
This (…) Think capitalism only lives in boardrooms and balance sheets? Think again. It’s in the words we use, the stories we tell, and the meanings we don't even notice.
This course invites students to explore how capitalist ideologies are woven into the very fabric of the English language. Through critical discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, and etymological inquiry, students will examine how everyday words, phrases, and narratives shape—and are shaped by—the socio-economic realities we inhabit. We will investigate how language does not merely reflect reality, but actively constructs it, uncovering how capitalist markers embed themselves in the meanings we take for granted. By the end of the course, students will be equipped to identify, analyze, and challenge the underlying stories capitalism tells through language—stories we all speak and live by.
Requirements
The usual: read the reading material, join class, participate in classroom discussions, hand in the assignments on time.
Studienleistung (D1a) three worksheets.
Prüfungsleistung (D1c) three worksheets and a ten-page term paper.
Please not that this class cannot be take for ‚Ersatzleistung für das Auslandssemester‘ or General Studies. Erasmus students are welcome.
References
Baker, Paul. 2024. Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. 2nd ed. Bloomsbury Academic. Available as ebook from the library.
Klein, Naomi. (2000) 2021. No Logo: An insightful examination of advertising’s impact on society and youth culture. Fourth estate.
Leary, John Patrick. 2019. Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism. Haymarket Books.
Sahner, Simon & Daniel Stähr. 2024. Die Sprache des Kapitalismus. S. Fischer. | Dr. Anke Schulz |
| 10-76-3-D1/WD1-06 | Key Topics in Literature and Culture: Intermedial Ecologies of Water and Wildlife in Postcolonial Poetry and Streaming Cultures (in English) Important: This class will take place as a block seminar later in the semester and not weekly as originally scheduled.
Course Description:
This course investigates the (…) Important: This class will take place as a block seminar later in the semester and not weekly as originally scheduled.
Course Description:
This course investigates the intersections of postcolonial ecologies, poetry, and streaming cultures, with a focus on South Asia. Through selected postcolonial poetry by South Asian authors (such as Agha Shahid Ali, Arundhathi Subramaniam, Keki Daruwallaa and Ranjit Hoskote) alongside films and documentaries streaming on Netflix such as (The White Tiger and The Elephant Whisperers), students will explore the ecological narrativization of water and wildlife across media. The course is guided by two central questions: What are the distinct and overlapping strategies through which literature and streaming cultures narrate water and wildlife to engage with the debates on the Anthropocene? How do ecological meanings seep across forms, from page to screen, and what narrativizing and representative politics emerge through these intermedial circulations? By combining theoretical discussions, close reading exercises, and film clip viewings and analysis, the course foregrounds the cultural politics of ecological storytelling and environmental justice in postcolonial South Asia. Please note that the course will be conducted through a combination of online and offline block sessions. | Jayana Mukeshkumar Jain |
| 10-76-3-D1/WD1-10 | Key Topics in Literature and Culture: Lighthouses in British Literature and Culture (in English) This seminar will unfold over five appointments across the semester (dates below). Together, we’ll step into the world of the lighthouse in British literature and (…) This seminar will unfold over five appointments across the semester (dates below). Together, we’ll step into the world of the lighthouse in British literature and culture.
We’ll begin with Virginia Woolf’s modernist masterpiece To the Lighthouse and continue with Jeanette Winterson’s Lighthousekeeping. Midway, we’ll briefly cross the Atlantic for an American perspective, watching and discussing Robert Eggers’ 2019 movie The Lighthouse (starring Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe). Our exploration then turns to Wilkie Collins’ compact drama The Lighthouse, before closing with a selection of poems, short prose, and paintings that shed further light on this enduring symbol.
Alongside these primary works, theoretical frameworks and critical perspectives will help illuminate the cultural, symbolic, and aesthetic significance of lighthouses across literature.
Though a more detailed syllabus and information will follow in the first week of November, please save the following dates.
• November 29, 10 a.m. – 3:30 p.m. (Woolf, To the Lighthouse)
• December 13, 10 a.m. – 3:30 p.m. (Winterson, Lighthousekeeping)
• January 10, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. (Eggers, The Lighthouse)
• February 3, 10 a.m. – 3:30 p.m. (Collins, The Lighthouse)
• February 5, 10 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. (various authors, short literary pieces)
Also, I kindly ask you to have these editions available:
• Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. Oxford UP, 2008. (ISBN: 978-0-19-953661-0)
• Winterson, Jeanette. Lighthousekeeping. HarperCollins, 2005. (ISBN: 978-0-00-718150-6)
All other texts will be provided online.
Please make sure to read Woolf’s To the Lighthouse prior to our first session.
I look forward to seeing you in a few weeks and embarking on this lighthouse journey with you! | Kevin Christopher Wolf, M.A., M.Ed. |
| 10-76-3-D1/WD1-09 | Key Topics in Literature and Culture: Satires of Travel (in English) Satirical takes on the hardships, ennui and folly accompanying the undertaking of travel have been specifically poignant in exposing the Western practice of modern (…) Satirical takes on the hardships, ennui and folly accompanying the undertaking of travel have been specifically poignant in exposing the Western practice of modern expeditions. The goal of this seminar is to familiarise students with the expedition as a cultural formation, the connections between Euro-American travel and the book market, and the space for self-criticism provided by satire. We will analyse the forms and functions of humour and irony in travel writing from the eighteenth century in the context of Captain James Cook’s Pacific Voyages, to the Heroic Era of Polar Exploration around Captain Robert Falcon Scott, to more recent mountaineering and environmental expeditions. In order to compose a conceptual toolbox and prepare for a historically grounded analysis of satirical travel writing, we will start by comparing Monty Python’s 1970s sketch (which reimagines the national myth of “Scott of the Antarctic” into a “Scott of the Sahara”) with Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story “Sur” (1982) about a fictional female-led expedition to Antarctica. We will read and discuss one of the earliest satires of travel in the English language, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), again in dialogue with historical and theoretical contexts. In order to probe the affordances and limits of satire and its critique of the ‘topoi of exploration’, we will then compare and contrast our previous observations with two salient twentieth-century satires of travel: W.E. Bowman’s The Ascent of Rum Doodle (1956) and J.G. Ballard’s Rushing to Paradise (1994).
Please, buy and read:
- Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (1726), ideally in a critical edition, e.g., The Essential Writing of Jonathan Swift, ed. Claude Rawson and Ian Higgins. London and New York: Norton, 2010.
- W.E. Bowman. The Ascent of Rum Doodle [1956]. Introd. by Bill Bryson. London: Vintage Books, 2010. ISBN: 978-0-09-953038-1
- J.G. Ballard. Rushing to Paradise [1994]. London and New York: Liveright, 2013. ISBN: 978-0-87140-337-7 | Anna Auguscik |
| 10-76-3-D1/WD1-04 | Key Topics in Literature and Culture: The Gothic and Sensation in Nineteenth-Century British Literature and Culture (in English) Course description:
Even though the gothic originates in the eighteenth century, with Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764) as the first text to call itself “A (…) Course description:
Even though the gothic originates in the eighteenth century, with Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764) as the first text to call itself “A Gothic Story” in its subtitle, it is around the turn of the nineteenth century that the gothic suddenly gains in popularity, above all with a female readership. Even though it was criticised, looked down upon, and satirised for its sensationalism, the gothic remained an influential genre throughout the century and well until today. In the course of the nineteenth century, it significantly influenced the main Victorian genre, realism, and many realist novels, such as Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and different novels by Charles Dickens contain gothic elements and scenes. Towards the mid-century, the gothic developed into a new genre, sensation fiction, but re-asserted itself in more clearly gothic form in the 1890s. It remains a profoundly influential mode in contemporary literature, film, and culture more generally.
In this seminar, we will explore the evolution of the gothic across the nineteenth century. We will focus on three central texts in order to tease out continuities and developments: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret (1862), and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). Together, we will consider several questions, such as whether there is a specific gothic/sensation aesthetics, why the gothic and sensation might have been so attractive for female readers and authors, why these modes were frowned upon, what role specific landscapes and environments play for the gothic and sensation fiction, and how ‘the other’ and the exotic feature in the gothic.
Reading: Please buy the following texts, which have been ordered by the university bookshop deinunibuch.
Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley’s Secret (1862)
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818)
Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897)
Preferred editions are Penguin Classics, Oxford World’s Classics, and Norton Critical Editions. In any case, please buy an edition that contains an introduction and explanatory notes. No digital editions, please. Copies have been ordered by the Universitätsbuchhandlung Bremen, on campus.
Important note on course preparation: As is normally the case with nineteenth-century literature, the texts are relatively long, so please plan enough time for reading. We will read the texts in this order: Shelley – Braddon – Stoker. This means that all students should have read Frankenstein by the time the course starts, though knowledge of all texts at this stage will, of course, be an advantage. | Ursula Kluwick-Kälin |
| 10-76-3-D1/WD1-07 | Key Topics in Literature: Modernism in Scotland - The Scottish Literary Renaissance (in English) This course explores the Scottish Renaissance, a literary and cultural movement emerging in the first half of the twentieth century and now recognised as the Scottish (…) This course explores the Scottish Renaissance, a literary and cultural movement emerging in the first half of the twentieth century and now recognised as the Scottish version of European Modernism. As its name suggests, the aim of the Scottish Renaissance was not so much to “make it new” but instead centred around a cultural revival of Scotland’s literary and cultural identity which was thought to be inherently fragmented and in urgent need of reinvention. In this course, we will look at the different ways through which the Renaissance movement aimed to establish Scotland’s status within the literary world and to create its own distinct modern identity. For this purpose, we will take a look at the poetry, essays and fiction published by Scottish writers such as Hugh MacDiarmid, Nan Shepherd and Lewis Grassic Gibbon. We will consider Scottish modernism in relation to its European counterpart and examine how writers explored literary traditions, which avant-garde strategies they adopted, and how they managed to merge artistic innovation with the exploration of national identity and social change in relation to topics such as gender, subjectivity, cosmopolitanism or trauma.
Please acquire a copy of the following books:
• Shepherd, Nan. 2016. The Weatherhouse. Edinburgh: Canongate.
• Muir, Willa. 1988. Imagined Corners. Edinburgh: Canongate.
• Gibbon, Lewis Grassic. 2020. Sunset Song. Edinburgh: Canongate.
Shorter readings will be provided. Please be aware that this is a reading-intensive course. | Dr. Julia Ditter |
| 10-76-3-D1/WD1-05 | Key Topics in Literature: The American Short Story from Poe to Mukherjee (in English) Edgar Allan Poe is considered the father of the American short story and modern detective story. In a review of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s tales he outlined what we now (…) Edgar Allan Poe is considered the father of the American short story and modern detective story. In a review of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s tales he outlined what we now take as his ‘theory’ of the short story. We will discuss this ‘theory’ as well as Joseph Urgo’s take on the American short story upon which we will base the readings of some of the finest examples of American short stories from the Romantic period to the present. They will include classics by Poe, Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Kate Chopin as well as stories by African American, Native American, Hispanic and Asian American authors.
Class requirements are regular attendance, in-depth knowledge of reading material, and active class discussion. Reading the texts is mandatory. | Prof. Dr. Kerstin Knopf |
| 10-76-3-D1/WD1-08 | Key Topics in Literature: Women Writing the North (in English) This course takes a closer look at the literary north of England as portrayed in contemporary women's writing. Northern England is often treated as an internal 'other' (…) This course takes a closer look at the literary north of England as portrayed in contemporary women's writing. Northern England is often treated as an internal 'other' within English national consciousness and political history and subjected to stereotypes many of which are traceable to the region's industrial history, working-class and neglect during the Thatcher era. In this course, we will attempt to locate 'the North' geographically, conceptually and imaginatively by considering its representation in a range of literary works ranging from psychogeographical poetry to gothic fiction. Taking into account the complex histories and current political debates in the region, we will discuss literary representations of gender, sexuality, working-class culture and race, national identity and environmental politics and examine the role literary form and genre play in contemporary women writers' constructions of the North.
Please acquire a copy of the following books:
* Sarah Hall, The Wolf Border (2015)
* Sarah Moss, Ghost Wall (2018)
* Anita Sethi, I Belong Here (2022)
Shorter readings will be provided. Please be aware that this is a reading-intensive course. | Dr. Julia Ditter |
