UEP 2 is the second part of the UEP module in the Master's programme English-Speaking Cultures. Therefore, only MA students from this particular programme are eligible to take this class.

This course focusses on further developing competence in communication and speaking skills within the academic context. Students are given the opportunity to develop and explore ideas which they will be required to discuss, justify and defend. The argumentative strategies established in UEP 1 are incorporated into the communication process.

The content of this course deals with game changers within the history of English-speaking cultures. These game changers can be found in history, politics, the Arts, science etc. Students will explore the significant effects of these game changers and elaborate on the reasons for which they have received this accolade and their importance today.

Credit points are obtained by the completion of a written assignment, an in-class panel discussion session as well as a panel discussion with two examiners where students will explore in more depth a further aspect of their chosen game changer. Materials are provided via StudIP.

NOTE: This course is only open for students in the MA E-SC, BA-ESC and MA TnL programmes. It is not open for any other courses of studies.

This class focuses on the practice of analysing films in the academic context. We will look into different genres and discuss topics significant to the cinematic sphere.

Materials are provided via StudIP.

This seminar examines the largely under-researched social, legal, and cultural status of musicians of sub-Saharan African descent in early modern Europe. Through case studies, we explore Black musicians at the courts of Portugal and Spain, Black trumpeters and kettledrummers in the Holy Roman Empire, Black singers in seventeenth-century Florence, and Black composers and performers in the urban musical cultures of France and England. The course also analyzes musical constructions of Blackness in different musical genres, such as the villancicos de negros from early modern Iberia and its colonies, and the figure of Monostatos in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Magic Flute.
Situating these examples within broader histories of race-making, enslavement and freedom, mobility, and labor, we consider musical performance as both exploitation and potential agency within courtly and colonial power structures. Drawing on key English-language works on critical race, postcolonial, and court studies, students learn to interpret the biographies and sonic practices of Black musicians as part of Europe’s entangled histories of music/sound, power, race, and empire.

The course uses English in pop music to explore language varieties and global culture. Topics covered include phonology and accent, lexical variation and slang, grammar and syntax, code switching and multilingualism, and cultural and global context.
The course is only open for BA ESC, MA ESC and MA TnL!

The course uses English in pop music to explore language varieties and global culture. Topics covered include phonology and accent, lexical variation and slang, grammar and syntax, code switching and multilingualism, and cultural and global context.
The course is only open for BA ESC, MA ESC and MA TnL!

In this course, we will work in small groups to produce mini podcasts. From concept to broadcast, Radio Bla-Bla will introduce you to the hard skills and the soft skills involved in producing a group podcast, such as editing, interview techniques, scheduling, voice usage and, of course, teamwork. Creativity, imagination and regular attendance are required.

Recent work in sensory history has highlighted how sound and listening shape human experience and historical change. Rather than treating music and sound as mere background, this seminar approaches them as active forces that structure power relations, social hierarchies, and cultural practices. We examine how “sonic spaces” emerge not only from architecture and acoustics but also from political, religious, gendered, and racialized contexts, as well as listening conventions and programming choices.
Through case studies, we will explore churches as sites reflecting cosmic order, courts and gardens as acoustic technologies of princely power, women’s convents and salons as spaces of musical agency, and the military, epistemological, and extractive uses of sound in colonial settings. By analyzing the interplay between space, sound, and practice, the course invites us to rethink early modern history through a sensory and spatial lens and to understand how power was embodied, performed, and contested through sound.

NOTE: This course is only open for the students of the following programmes: BA E-SC, MA E-SC and MA TnL.

This course deals with the Gothic genre in (almost) all its facets. We will look into the roots of the genre in the 18th century as well as contemporary iterations of Gothic tropes thus tracking the evolution of what is "Gothic" across different media.

Materials will be provided via StudIP

In this workshop, we will explore and experiment with contemporary methods of improvisational theater, which is the art of making up theatrical moments on the spot, without a script. It is one of the most vibrant and current forms of theater of today and is deeply ingrained in US popular culture.

You will first learn the basic principles of improvisational theater and how to apply them to improvised scenework. Later, you will encounter a specific performance structure that will serve as our format for a public performance.

Through this work, you will build confidence in public speaking, explore practical approaches to collaborative creation, and gain insight into the production and marketing process of a theatre production. In addition, we will reflect on how these skills can be beneficial both in academic contexts as well as the professional world beyond academia.

There will be a regular class on Thursday 12.15-1.45pm during the semester, in which we will cover the basics of improvisational theater, followed by an intensive in the lecture-free period (31 August-3 September and 7 September - 10 September 2026, 10am-1.30pm), in which we will prepare for public performances on 11 and 12 September 2026. If you participate in the theatre workshop, you can participate as a performer or take on a behind-the-scenes role in production and marketing.

The trainings are designed to help you develop an awareness and sensitivity to intercultural issues that are relevant to academic life on campus as an MA student in the E-SC program. Through preparatory readings, classroom discussions, interactive exercises, and role-playing, the following topics will be covered:

• Understanding cultural aspects and lived realities
• Identity and (self-)awareness
• Acculturation
• Understanding assumptions, prejudices, stereotypes, discrimination, and exclusion
• Learning to consciously mitigate these mechanisms through self-reflection, curiosity, and perspective-taking.

The trainings are designed to help you develop an awareness and sensitivity to intercultural issues that are relevant to academic life on campus as an MA student in the E-SC program. Through preparatory readings, classroom discussions, interactive exercises, and role-playing, the following topics will be covered:

• Understanding cultural aspects and lived realities
• Identity and (self-)awareness
• Acculturation
• Understanding assumptions, prejudices, stereotypes, discrimination, and exclusion
• Learning to consciously mitigate these mechanisms through self-reflection, curiosity, and perspective-taking.

Multimodality is a stage of disciplinary development, i.e. one through which many fields naturally pass (Bateman, 2022). Indeed, linguistics is one of those disciplines that have entered into what Bateman calls “multimodal phases.” As observed by this scholar, “those expansions are beneficial for the respective field because they show how principles and explanations uncovered have broader application than originally believed” (p. 4). The term 'language' is extended to include, not just words and sentences, but all forms of symbolic interaction (gesture, sign language, art, architecture, dance, music, etc.). How do we produce and interpret multimodal language? By human brains. This means that for any enterprise that enhances human comprehension and knowledge, what goes on inside individuals’ heads must also be a prime concern.
In this course, we will draw on sights and tools from cognitive science and cognitive psychology to explore the links between multimodal language and cognitive, social and political action. Among the topics we will discuss are multimodal metaphor theory, multimodal blending, multimodal mental models, relevance theory, the discourse-knowledge interface, systems of the human mind, categorization, moral-political reasoning, cognitive grammar, contextualization, discourse (language use) and gender, power abuse and manipulation, and identity construction.

This seminar approaches Shakespeare’s writing from the perspective of the blue humanities. The blue humanities is a fairly recent literary and cultural theory that focuses on the representation of water. It asks how the world might appear from a perspective that foregrounds water rather than land, and how different concepts that structure the lives of many people (such as the nation state) are intricately bound up with a land-based view of this blue planet.
Historically, the blue humanities has partly evolved from early modern studies. The early modern period was shaped by shifting power balances as well as shifting conceptions of the world, and humanity’s relationship with the ocean was pivotal to these changes. In this seminar, students will familiarise themselves with key concepts and tenets of the blue humanities. We will apply these to Shakespeare’s writing and we will explore both the presence of and references to bodies of water (the sea, rivers, storms) in Shakespeare’s poetry and plays, as well as his use of water as an image and symbol.
We will also participate in the Long Night of the Sciences with a poster exhibition, which means that students will have the chance to communicate the outcomes of the course and the expertise they have acquired to a non-academic audience (for more information, please consult the syllabus).
Reading: Please buy the following texts, which have been ordered by the university bookshop (on campus):
William Shakspeare, Twelfth Night (c. 1601-02)
William Shakspeare, The Tempest (c. 1610-11)
William Shakspeare and George Wilkins, Pericles (c. 1609)

The preferred edition is the Arden edition (3rd series). Other editions that contain a good critical apparatus are also possible (for instance, The New Cambridge Shakespeare or The New Oxford Shakespeare, The Norton Shakespeare). No digital editions, please. Copies have been ordered by the Universitätsbuchhandlung Bremen, on campus.

Important note on course preparation: We will read the texts in this order: Twelfth Night – Pericles – The Tempest. As we will start with a theoretical introduction to the blue humanities, sessions on water in Shakespeare’s age and on the sonnets, students will have time to catch up at the beginning on the course, but you must all have read Twelfth Night by the time we begin to discuss it in class. Reading all plays early on is, of course, an advantage, as it will allow you to draw connections between the different texts from the start.

This seminar investigates how landscapes, waterscapes, and the human body functioned as contested sites of meaning and power in antebellum America. Building on work in cultural history, cultural and literary studies, and environmental humanities, we analyze how cultural texts and visual media—such as slave narratives, nature writing, landscape painting, maps, and early photography—intervened in discourses on freedom, property, belonging, and nationhood. Emphasis is placed on close readings of primary material and on engagement with key theoretical frameworks (e.g., Black Studies, blue humanities, ecocriticism).

The class is open to M.A. E-SC students studying Extension Module 1 and 2. Master TnL (Profil- or Vertiefungsmodul) may also be admitted.

Requirements
• active participation in weekly in-person meetings,
• in-depth study of the primary and secondary material (including extensive weekly reading assignments) in preparation for each session,
• graded term paper or ungraded assignment in accordance with the respective module requirements.

In the course of this seminar, we will take a cultural linguistic
approach to a number of World Englishes, including Aboriginal English,
American English, Hong Kong English, South African English and West
African Englishes. The main focus will be to identify cognitive
processes that come to light in patterns of language use as well as to
find evidence for coherent cultural metaphors and underlying cultural
conceptualisations that are both unique to each of these varieties of
English and yet to some extent also universally shared between them."

Reading: will be made available at the beginning of the term

Forensic Linguistics is a branch of Applied Linguistics that involves the examination of spoken or written language evidence to aid in the resolution of legal disputes, criminal cases, and investigations. During this seminar, we will look at specimen of threatening communication from different historical and contemporary varieties of English, and we will focus on the question of how meaning and implied meaning are construed, how the effect of threatening is achieved and what kind of evidence may assist in the identification of suspects.

In the context of increasing migration, language learning is gaining momentum, as acquiring the target language is widely understood as one means to enable newly arrived migrants’ integration and participation. Moreover, the European Council acknowledges the importance of plurilingual and pluricultural competences. In this seminar, we will examine recent research and practical projects to enhance our understanding of the role language proficiency and plurilingual/cultural competences can play in the process of integration. We will also explore “best practice” examples to understand the conditions under which languages in immigration contexts can successfully be taught and acquired.
Within the realm of language teaching and learning, language tests are coming under scrutiny, as they are used and abused as gate keeping devices and as policy instruments to regulate entry and access. We will critically discuss ethical implications of different kinds of language test use. By reviewing recent research projects and studies, we will deepen our understanding of the purposes language tests could and should serve in integration and migration contexts in order to ensure fairness, justice and ethical values.

This block seminar provides an overview of some of the central topics pertaining to language variation and change. During the seminar, we discuss a range of studies that approach linguistic variation from cognitive, sociolinguistic and contact-based perspectives. Important questions to explore include, for example: i) how is language change constrained and guided by our general cognitive processes, ii) what kinds of social and contextual factors affect language variation and change, and iii) how does language contact, or lack thereof, influence language change. The focus of the seminar will be on Late Modern English, but we will occasionally study earlier forms of English as well. The course is aimed at master’s students in (English) linguistics with at least some prior experience in linguistic analysis.

UPDATE (March 24, 2026)

This seminar contains a mix of forms of student-lecturer interaction:

1) two asynchronous video lectures, the first one of which will be made available from Monday, April 27, the second from Monday, May 11.

2) a live remote video lecture (via Zoom) on Thursday, May 21, from 10:15–11:45

3) classroom meetings (10:15–12:30 and 14:15–15:45) in person on the following days:
Monday 1 June
Wednesday 3 June
Friday 5 June
Monday 8 June
Tuesday 9 June (10:15-11.45 only)


Requirements
Students can complete the seminar either as a graded 6 ECTS course or an ungraded 3 ECTS course.

For the graded 6 ECTS option, you are expected to:
- Participate actively in teaching and classroom activities
- Read the required background material (articles, book chapters)
- Give a c. 20 min. oral (group) presentation in class based on a research article assigned by the teacher
- Write a short research report of c. 1,500 words (assigned by the teacher)

For the ungraded 3 ECTS option, you are expected to:
- Participate actively in teaching and classroom activities
- Read the required background material (articles, book chapters)
- Give a short oral (group) presentation in class based on a research article assigned by the teacher

In the 19th century, the fields of literature and science have undergone substantial professionalization. In effect, they have been variously discussed as opposites, or even rivals. Poetry, however, has often been used as a way to capture and communicate the insights and aesthetics of scientific endeavour by both scientists and poets.

In this seminar, we will first focus on 19th-century poetry and its representation of different scientific fields, theories and practices, before venturing further into the 20th and 21st century to examine the specific imprint of mathematics, physics, biology, geology and the climate sciences in verse. We will use media-specific poetry analysis or 'close reading' as a method and learn more about this technique of 'zooming in', not least by contextualizing it with other approaches of 'zooming out' - from New Historicism to distant reading.

I recommend buying the following anthology (there are several second-hand copies via e.g., medimops):
Laura Otis (ed. and introd.) Literature and Science in the Nineteenth Century: An Anthology. Oxford World's Classics. Oxford UP, 2002.

In this seminar, we will explore the possibility of "postanthropocentric fiction". We will take both a historical and theoretical approach to probe the term's affordance in parallel with terms such as 'postcolonial' and 'postmodern'.
Historically, we will relate the term to the Anthropocene. Although a proposal to name a new geological epoch following the Holocene as ‘the Anthropocene’ has recently been rejected by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) and the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), the term continues to be used both in public discussions as well as across a wide range of disciplines in the sciences and the humanities to describe human impact on the Earth system. The goal of this seminar is to familiarize students with the concept of the Anthropocene, its discursive relevance and specific use in relation to literary and cultural representations.
Theoretically, we will focus especially on literary negotiations of binary oppositions such as nature and culture, human and other-than-human, globe and planet, as well as the positionality of climate knowledge production, and related concepts such as the Capitalocene, the Plantationocene, or the Chthulucene.
The course comprises in-presence meetings with group presentations, reading weeks and online research. Please, buy and read the following novels:
• Jeff VanderMeer. Annihilation. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014. [ISBN-13: 978-0-374-10409-2 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]
• Jaspreet Singh. Face: A Novel of the Anthropocene. Victoria, BC: Touchwood Editions, 2022. [ISBN: 978-1-927366-97-4 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]
• Laline Paull. Pod. London: Little, Brown, 2023. [ISBN-13: 978-1-4721-5662-4 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]

COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course explores the literary and cultural significance of the Caribbean for the British Empire during the long eighteenth century (1688-1832). We will read works by British and Caribbean authors that range from travel narratives and memoirs to poetry and plays. The course is research-based: this means, the seminar will guide students in developing their own research projects. Recent scholarship in eighteenth-century studies, postcolonial studies and the environmental humanities will help us develop research questions to explore literature of the period and design a project focused on themes such as, for example, slavery, plantation ecologies, indentured labour systems, the "West Indian Georgic" and the Black Atlantic. Participants are expected to contribute to the Blue Humanities exhibition at the Long Night of the Sciences (27 June 2026) by presenting a research poster. Please note that this is a reading-intensive course.

COURSE MATERIAL
Please obtain a copy of the following editions:

• Aphra Behn. 1688. Oroonoko and Other Writings (Oxford World’s Classics, 2009)
• Olaudah Equiano. 1789. The Interesting Narrative (Oxford World’s Classics, 2018)
• Mary Prince. 1831. The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave (Penguin Classics, 2000)

The University Bookshop (opposite the library) holds a limited number of copies and is happy to order more copies in a timely fashion once they run out. Research projects will focus on one of these works, but you are expected to read all of them to contribute to class discussions. Additional and theoretical readings will be provided via Stud-IP.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
At the end of this semester, you will be able to:

• explain the cultural significance of Britain’s former Caribbean colonies with reference to literature of the period and recent scholarship
• outline central representational strategies used in eighteenth-century literature and critically comment upon issues relating to canon formation
• analyse issues related to race, gender, colonialism and ecology in eighteenth-century literature by making use of theoretical contexts and sociocultural background knowledge
• independently plan and develop an academic research project
• independently develop an argument for an academic term paper on a text of your choice
• curate exhibition material to make scholarly debates accessible to the public 

Multimodality is a stage of disciplinary development, i.e. one through which many fields naturally pass (Bateman, 2022). Indeed, linguistics is one of those disciplines that have entered into what Bateman calls “multimodal phases.” As observed by this scholar, “those expansions are beneficial for the respective field because they show how principles and explanations uncovered have broader application than originally believed” (p. 4). The term 'language' is extended to include, not just words and sentences, but all forms of symbolic interaction (gesture, sign language, art, architecture, dance, music, etc.). How do we produce and interpret multimodal language? By human brains. This means that for any enterprise that enhances human comprehension and knowledge, what goes on inside individuals’ heads must also be a prime concern.
In this course, we will draw on sights and tools from cognitive science and cognitive psychology to explore the links between multimodal language and cognitive, social and political action. Among the topics we will discuss are multimodal metaphor theory, multimodal blending, multimodal mental models, relevance theory, the discourse-knowledge interface, systems of the human mind, categorization, moral-political reasoning, cognitive grammar, contextualization, discourse (language use) and gender, power abuse and manipulation, and identity construction.

This seminar approaches Shakespeare’s writing from the perspective of the blue humanities. The blue humanities is a fairly recent literary and cultural theory that focuses on the representation of water. It asks how the world might appear from a perspective that foregrounds water rather than land, and how different concepts that structure the lives of many people (such as the nation state) are intricately bound up with a land-based view of this blue planet.
Historically, the blue humanities has partly evolved from early modern studies. The early modern period was shaped by shifting power balances as well as shifting conceptions of the world, and humanity’s relationship with the ocean was pivotal to these changes. In this seminar, students will familiarise themselves with key concepts and tenets of the blue humanities. We will apply these to Shakespeare’s writing and we will explore both the presence of and references to bodies of water (the sea, rivers, storms) in Shakespeare’s poetry and plays, as well as his use of water as an image and symbol.
We will also participate in the Long Night of the Sciences with a poster exhibition, which means that students will have the chance to communicate the outcomes of the course and the expertise they have acquired to a non-academic audience (for more information, please consult the syllabus).
Reading: Please buy the following texts, which have been ordered by the university bookshop (on campus):
William Shakspeare, Twelfth Night (c. 1601-02)
William Shakspeare, The Tempest (c. 1610-11)
William Shakspeare and George Wilkins, Pericles (c. 1609)

The preferred edition is the Arden edition (3rd series). Other editions that contain a good critical apparatus are also possible (for instance, The New Cambridge Shakespeare or The New Oxford Shakespeare, The Norton Shakespeare). No digital editions, please. Copies have been ordered by the Universitätsbuchhandlung Bremen, on campus.

Important note on course preparation: We will read the texts in this order: Twelfth Night – Pericles – The Tempest. As we will start with a theoretical introduction to the blue humanities, sessions on water in Shakespeare’s age and on the sonnets, students will have time to catch up at the beginning on the course, but you must all have read Twelfth Night by the time we begin to discuss it in class. Reading all plays early on is, of course, an advantage, as it will allow you to draw connections between the different texts from the start.

This seminar investigates how landscapes, waterscapes, and the human body functioned as contested sites of meaning and power in antebellum America. Building on work in cultural history, cultural and literary studies, and environmental humanities, we analyze how cultural texts and visual media—such as slave narratives, nature writing, landscape painting, maps, and early photography—intervened in discourses on freedom, property, belonging, and nationhood. Emphasis is placed on close readings of primary material and on engagement with key theoretical frameworks (e.g., Black Studies, blue humanities, ecocriticism).

The class is open to M.A. E-SC students studying Extension Module 1 and 2. Master TnL (Profil- or Vertiefungsmodul) may also be admitted.

Requirements
• active participation in weekly in-person meetings,
• in-depth study of the primary and secondary material (including extensive weekly reading assignments) in preparation for each session,
• graded term paper or ungraded assignment in accordance with the respective module requirements.

In the course of this seminar, we will take a cultural linguistic
approach to a number of World Englishes, including Aboriginal English,
American English, Hong Kong English, South African English and West
African Englishes. The main focus will be to identify cognitive
processes that come to light in patterns of language use as well as to
find evidence for coherent cultural metaphors and underlying cultural
conceptualisations that are both unique to each of these varieties of
English and yet to some extent also universally shared between them."

Reading: will be made available at the beginning of the term

Forensic Linguistics is a branch of Applied Linguistics that involves the examination of spoken or written language evidence to aid in the resolution of legal disputes, criminal cases, and investigations. During this seminar, we will look at specimen of threatening communication from different historical and contemporary varieties of English, and we will focus on the question of how meaning and implied meaning are construed, how the effect of threatening is achieved and what kind of evidence may assist in the identification of suspects.

In the context of increasing migration, language learning is gaining momentum, as acquiring the target language is widely understood as one means to enable newly arrived migrants’ integration and participation. Moreover, the European Council acknowledges the importance of plurilingual and pluricultural competences. In this seminar, we will examine recent research and practical projects to enhance our understanding of the role language proficiency and plurilingual/cultural competences can play in the process of integration. We will also explore “best practice” examples to understand the conditions under which languages in immigration contexts can successfully be taught and acquired.
Within the realm of language teaching and learning, language tests are coming under scrutiny, as they are used and abused as gate keeping devices and as policy instruments to regulate entry and access. We will critically discuss ethical implications of different kinds of language test use. By reviewing recent research projects and studies, we will deepen our understanding of the purposes language tests could and should serve in integration and migration contexts in order to ensure fairness, justice and ethical values.

This block seminar provides an overview of some of the central topics pertaining to language variation and change. During the seminar, we discuss a range of studies that approach linguistic variation from cognitive, sociolinguistic and contact-based perspectives. Important questions to explore include, for example: i) how is language change constrained and guided by our general cognitive processes, ii) what kinds of social and contextual factors affect language variation and change, and iii) how does language contact, or lack thereof, influence language change. The focus of the seminar will be on Late Modern English, but we will occasionally study earlier forms of English as well. The course is aimed at master’s students in (English) linguistics with at least some prior experience in linguistic analysis.

UPDATE (March 24, 2026)

This seminar contains a mix of forms of student-lecturer interaction:

1) two asynchronous video lectures, the first one of which will be made available from Monday, April 27, the second from Monday, May 11.

2) a live remote video lecture (via Zoom) on Thursday, May 21, from 10:15–11:45

3) classroom meetings (10:15–12:30 and 14:15–15:45) in person on the following days:
Monday 1 June
Wednesday 3 June
Friday 5 June
Monday 8 June
Tuesday 9 June (10:15-11.45 only)


Requirements
Students can complete the seminar either as a graded 6 ECTS course or an ungraded 3 ECTS course.

For the graded 6 ECTS option, you are expected to:
- Participate actively in teaching and classroom activities
- Read the required background material (articles, book chapters)
- Give a c. 20 min. oral (group) presentation in class based on a research article assigned by the teacher
- Write a short research report of c. 1,500 words (assigned by the teacher)

For the ungraded 3 ECTS option, you are expected to:
- Participate actively in teaching and classroom activities
- Read the required background material (articles, book chapters)
- Give a short oral (group) presentation in class based on a research article assigned by the teacher

In the 19th century, the fields of literature and science have undergone substantial professionalization. In effect, they have been variously discussed as opposites, or even rivals. Poetry, however, has often been used as a way to capture and communicate the insights and aesthetics of scientific endeavour by both scientists and poets.

In this seminar, we will first focus on 19th-century poetry and its representation of different scientific fields, theories and practices, before venturing further into the 20th and 21st century to examine the specific imprint of mathematics, physics, biology, geology and the climate sciences in verse. We will use media-specific poetry analysis or 'close reading' as a method and learn more about this technique of 'zooming in', not least by contextualizing it with other approaches of 'zooming out' - from New Historicism to distant reading.

I recommend buying the following anthology (there are several second-hand copies via e.g., medimops):
Laura Otis (ed. and introd.) Literature and Science in the Nineteenth Century: An Anthology. Oxford World's Classics. Oxford UP, 2002.

In this seminar, we will explore the possibility of "postanthropocentric fiction". We will take both a historical and theoretical approach to probe the term's affordance in parallel with terms such as 'postcolonial' and 'postmodern'.
Historically, we will relate the term to the Anthropocene. Although a proposal to name a new geological epoch following the Holocene as ‘the Anthropocene’ has recently been rejected by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) and the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), the term continues to be used both in public discussions as well as across a wide range of disciplines in the sciences and the humanities to describe human impact on the Earth system. The goal of this seminar is to familiarize students with the concept of the Anthropocene, its discursive relevance and specific use in relation to literary and cultural representations.
Theoretically, we will focus especially on literary negotiations of binary oppositions such as nature and culture, human and other-than-human, globe and planet, as well as the positionality of climate knowledge production, and related concepts such as the Capitalocene, the Plantationocene, or the Chthulucene.
The course comprises in-presence meetings with group presentations, reading weeks and online research. Please, buy and read the following novels:
• Jeff VanderMeer. Annihilation. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014. [ISBN-13: 978-0-374-10409-2 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]
• Jaspreet Singh. Face: A Novel of the Anthropocene. Victoria, BC: Touchwood Editions, 2022. [ISBN: 978-1-927366-97-4 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]
• Laline Paull. Pod. London: Little, Brown, 2023. [ISBN-13: 978-1-4721-5662-4 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]

COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course explores the literary and cultural significance of the Caribbean for the British Empire during the long eighteenth century (1688-1832). We will read works by British and Caribbean authors that range from travel narratives and memoirs to poetry and plays. The course is research-based: this means, the seminar will guide students in developing their own research projects. Recent scholarship in eighteenth-century studies, postcolonial studies and the environmental humanities will help us develop research questions to explore literature of the period and design a project focused on themes such as, for example, slavery, plantation ecologies, indentured labour systems, the "West Indian Georgic" and the Black Atlantic. Participants are expected to contribute to the Blue Humanities exhibition at the Long Night of the Sciences (27 June 2026) by presenting a research poster. Please note that this is a reading-intensive course.

COURSE MATERIAL
Please obtain a copy of the following editions:

• Aphra Behn. 1688. Oroonoko and Other Writings (Oxford World’s Classics, 2009)
• Olaudah Equiano. 1789. The Interesting Narrative (Oxford World’s Classics, 2018)
• Mary Prince. 1831. The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave (Penguin Classics, 2000)

The University Bookshop (opposite the library) holds a limited number of copies and is happy to order more copies in a timely fashion once they run out. Research projects will focus on one of these works, but you are expected to read all of them to contribute to class discussions. Additional and theoretical readings will be provided via Stud-IP.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
At the end of this semester, you will be able to:

• explain the cultural significance of Britain’s former Caribbean colonies with reference to literature of the period and recent scholarship
• outline central representational strategies used in eighteenth-century literature and critically comment upon issues relating to canon formation
• analyse issues related to race, gender, colonialism and ecology in eighteenth-century literature by making use of theoretical contexts and sociocultural background knowledge
• independently plan and develop an academic research project
• independently develop an argument for an academic term paper on a text of your choice
• curate exhibition material to make scholarly debates accessible to the public 

The trainings are designed to help you develop an awareness and sensitivity to intercultural issues that are relevant to academic life on campus as an MA student in the E-SC program. Through preparatory readings, classroom discussions, interactive exercises, and role-playing, the following topics will be covered:

• Understanding cultural aspects and lived realities
• Identity and (self-)awareness
• Acculturation
• Understanding assumptions, prejudices, stereotypes, discrimination, and exclusion
• Learning to consciously mitigate these mechanisms through self-reflection, curiosity, and perspective-taking.

The trainings are designed to help you develop an awareness and sensitivity to intercultural issues that are relevant to academic life on campus as an MA student in the E-SC program. Through preparatory readings, classroom discussions, interactive exercises, and role-playing, the following topics will be covered:

• Understanding cultural aspects and lived realities
• Identity and (self-)awareness
• Acculturation
• Understanding assumptions, prejudices, stereotypes, discrimination, and exclusion
• Learning to consciously mitigate these mechanisms through self-reflection, curiosity, and perspective-taking.

The trainings are designed to help you develop an awareness and sensitivity to intercultural issues that are relevant to academic life on campus as an MA student in the E-SC program. Through preparatory readings, classroom discussions, interactive exercises, and role-playing, the following topics will be covered:

• Understanding cultural aspects and lived realities
• Identity and (self-)awareness
• Acculturation
• Understanding assumptions, prejudices, stereotypes, discrimination, and exclusion
• Learning to consciously mitigate these mechanisms through self-reflection, curiosity, and perspective-taking.

The trainings are designed to help you develop an awareness and sensitivity to intercultural issues that are relevant to academic life on campus as an MA student in the E-SC program. Through preparatory readings, classroom discussions, interactive exercises, and role-playing, the following topics will be covered:

• Understanding cultural aspects and lived realities
• Identity and (self-)awareness
• Acculturation
• Understanding assumptions, prejudices, stereotypes, discrimination, and exclusion
• Learning to consciously mitigate these mechanisms through self-reflection, curiosity, and perspective-taking.

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This colloquium is designed for students who wish to write their B.A. or M.A. theses in the field of cultural studies of the English-Speaking world. The focus will be esp. on the analysis of non-fictional texts and film as well as other media in North America, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic. Students will be given the opportunity to develop specific cultural studies research projects in these and related areas, including compelling research questions, a strong thesis statement, clear chapter outline, and a well-selected bibliography. Students will practice a number of strategies for planning, structuring and writing B.A./M.A. dissertations and also brush up their knowledge of formal requirements, such as format and layout as well as citation style etc. You will work both individually and in smaller groups and you will present work in progress in oral and written form. Module choices are Bachelor thesis module P or L and Master thesis module MA The respectively.
Prior enrolment via Stud.IP is mandatory.

This colloquium is designed for students who wish to write their B.A. or M.A. theses in the field of cultural studies of the English-Speaking world. The focus will be esp. on the analysis of non-fictional texts and film as well as other media in North America, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic. Students will be given the opportunity to develop specific cultural studies research projects in these and related areas, including compelling research questions, a strong thesis statement, clear chapter outline, and a well-selected bibliography. Students will practice a number of strategies for planning, structuring and writing B.A./M.A. dissertations and also brush up their knowledge of formal requirements, such as format and layout as well as citation style etc. You will work both individually and in smaller groups and you will present work in progress in oral and written form. Module choices are Bachelor thesis module P or L and Master thesis module MA The respectively.
Prior enrolment via Stud.IP is mandatory.

This is a research colloquium for MA students who are currently preparing or working on their final theses in the fields of Anthropological Linguistics, Cultural Linguistics, (Applied) English Linguistics and/or World Englishes.

This course is designed as a colloquium for young researchers writing their MA thesis. It is supposed to support students in the writing process of the thesis and potential problems that might arise. Depending on the participants and their research topics, all will present a written part of their thesis, the introduction, the theory chapter, or one analysis chapter, which we will discuss in class and students will receive constructive feedback in plenum discussions.
Pls register online through StudIP. Max number of participants: 15