This course welcomes students who wish to complete the following modules:
M.A. E_SC ExMo 1 – Extension Module 1
M.A. E-SC ExMo 2 - Extension Module 2
M.A. TnL Profilmodul I: Literatur
B.A. E-SC “Key Topics in Literature”- D2-c; WD-2a and WD-2b
Academic Exchange Students

Teaching method: We will meet in weekly face to face sessions on campus. You will need access to Stud.IP. and a laptop or tablet with sound and audio capabilities. Please make sure to attend our first session if you wish a placement in this class.

This course seeks to familiarise students with a number of selected authors, poets and writers, in general, who have held lifelong connections with London, may it be historic or contemporary. We will aim to discuss their continued engagement with the city by exploring a selections of excerpts clustered around five major topic choices: Green London; Women Writers and London; London’s Imperial Past and Postcolonial Present; London Theatreland and the Shakespearean Stage; and London and Crime. By virtually tracing forgotten as well as prominent landmarks of the urban centre, we seek to connect the literary representations of the city with historical and cultural developments, present and past. Primary and secondary reading materials will be available for download on Stud.IP.

Please register on Stud. IP and explore the sections “Information” and “Schedule” on Stud. IP. for further details.

Requirements:
• Interest in the topics discussed and ideally a regular attendance and informed participation in class discussion (not part of your formal assessment);
• in-depth knowledge of the selected reading material and course materials,
• final exam according to module choice.

In this class we will learn about postcolonial literature and writing back, study tools to literary analysis of drama in self-study, and we will look at how we read texts specifically from a postcolonial perspective. We will read and discuss William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest and several rewrites: two plays: Aimé Césaire’s play A Tempest, Dev Virahsawmy’s play Toufann: A Mauritian Fantasy, and the movie by Julie Taymore’s The Tempest. We will also read a text by Marie Celie-Agnant, a Haitian Canadian writer who will be INPUTS Writer-in-Residence in the coming summer semester and give a reading/talk in our class. Furthermore, we will hear a lecture by Dr. Melba Boyd from Wayne State University, USA, about African American poetry and writing back.
Please purchase the following books at the university book store (on Universitätsboulevard): Shakespeare The Tempest Norton Critical Edition (12 €) and Aimé Césaire A Tempest. Translation by Richard Miller (16 €). All other texts are provided via StudIP.
Class requirements are regular attendance and active class discussion as well as in-depth knowledge of reading and viewing material. Reading the texts and watching the film is mandatory. Please note that prior enrollment through StudIP is mandatory. Maximum number of participants: 30.

In this class we will study Indigenous cultures and literatures in North America, i.e. cultures and literatures of the original inhabitants of Canada and the US. We will read novels and short stories by Indigenous authors, and watch a documentary and movie. Issues to be discussed through our critical readings are colonization and colonial conditions of Indigenous people, including miscegenation and identity, youth cultures, violence against Indigenous women, the residential school experience, hockey and others.
We will read Angeline Boulley’s, Firekeepter’s Daughter (2021) and Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse (2012). We will also watch the documentary We Were Children on the residential school system and the movie adaptation Indian Horse. As well we will read a Haida Manga.
Please purchase Angeline Boulley’s, Firekeepter’s Daughter (11,50 €) and Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse (16 €), both books are available at the Universitätsbuchhandlung close to the Mensa; they are available at the beginning of the semester, Indian HOres 3 weeks later.
All other primary and secondary texts will be provided electronically. Requirements beside regular attendance, in-depth knowledge of reading material, and active class discussion will be made known at the beginning of the class. Please note that prior enrollment via Stud.IP is necessary. Max. number of participants 30.

In the course of this seminar, we shall discuss two maths films in terms of their contributions to what is today known as scientific literacy. One will be John Madden's Proof (2005), a filmic adaptation of David Auburn's play of the same title, starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Anthony Hopkins, and Jake Gyllenhaal. It presents Catherine, a largely self-taught mathematician, against the backdrop of authorship issues, human attractions, relationships, and conflicts. The other example is Matthew Brown's biopic The Man Who Knew Infinity (2015) highlighting the special professional alliance between Srinivasa Ramanujan (Dev Patel), the mathematical genius from India, and a very prominent Cambridge professor, G. H. Hardy (Jeremy Irons).

requirements:

• active participation
• in-depth knowledge of the films and the reading material
• non-graded assessment: oral presentation (handout or PowerPoint presentation)
• graded assessment: research in progress (handout or PowerPoint presentation) and final paper, the latter is graded

Please note that prior enrolment via Stud.IP is mandatory. Given the capacity of the seminar room, which is especially designed for the presentation of films, the number of participants is limited to 15 students.

This class introduces students to the study of ‘writing women,’ i.e. to women writers and their representation in fiction, as well as to the issues and stylistic, formal, and cultural practices that are involved when girls and women are written or write themselves into the literary and cultural imagination in North America. With a focus on Canada and the United States in the twentieth century, students will study not only select narrative texts (short stories, full novels and excerpts) but also the diverse, intersecting histories of feminist movements (such as Black, Chicana, Indigenous, or eco feminisms) and their works of feminist literary criticism.

Please acquire copies (print or electronic) of the following book-length texts and start reading them as soon as possible:
• Munro, Alice. Lives of Girls and Women (1971)
• Cisneros, Sandra. The House on Mango Street (1984)
Our university book store on the boulevard has some copies available for purchase.

Further primary and secondary material and information will be made available on Stud.IP. Prior enrolment via Stud.IP is mandatory and admission is limited to a maximum of thirty students. The class is open to M.A. E-SC students studying the Extension Modules 1 and 2, students studying the Vertiefungs- or Profilmodul in the M.A. Transnationale Literaturwissenschaft as well as international exchange students. Please check Stud.IP regularly for updates.

Requirements
• active participation in weekly meetings,
• in-depth knowledge of the reading material,
• graded or ungraded assignment in accordance with the respective module requirements.

As a result of colonisation, English was transplanted to Africa and has spread over the entire African continent. It has become an official language in approximately one third of all African nations. The degree to which English is spoken as a first or second language variety in the various African countries depends mostly on the colonial history, linguistic situation, language policy and language planning programs of these countries.

In this seminar, we will investigate the historical and socio-political developments that have determined the formation of African varieties of English and we will also study the functions English serves in various African countries and speaker's attitudes towards this language.
Moreover, we will survey recent corpus-linguistic research on Africa Englishes that has provided detailed descriptions of the distinctive linguistic characteristics of particular varieties.
Depending on the assessment needed for their study program and module, students can opt for oral presentations based on extensive reading or corpus-based research projects on selected African Englishes.

Basic introductory reading:
Schneider, Edgar W. 2011. English around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (chapters 5.2 and 6.1)

In an internationalized Higher Education landscape, academic-linguistic competencies in English as lingua franca gain increasing importance. Students' linguistic preparedness is a known factor affecting academic success. To evaluate academic-linguistic preparedness of students, assessment tasks are required that integrate the skills of reading, listening, speaking, and writing, e.g.by asking for a summary (Cumming, 2013).
This seminar offers you a unique chance to get both theoretical knowledge about integrated academic assessment and practical insights from a large-scale research project.
In this hands-on seminar, we will develop our own integrated tasks, compete integrated tasks, and learn to assess written products. You will get to know the research project and learn to use instruments developed within it. You will also get familiarized with the construct of integrated writing and learn about existing integrated tasks and rating scales. Additionally, you will gain insights about methods for the research of rater cognition and rating strategies. Finally, we aim to develop and present own small-scale project at the end of the seminar.

• We will meet every two weeks on campus (check the schedule for details). You will need a laptop for work in class.

In this course empirical methods for the analysis of varied media will be introduced and then developed specifically in the context of selected audiovisual, visual and verbal media. A specific focus will be placed on examining to what extent such media products 'tell stories', either deliberately or by accident, and the consequences of such stories for their reception by audiences. One particular area of concern will be narratives that (either intentionally or unintentionally) 'disinform' their audiences by setting up narrative expectations of various kinds. These kinds of uses will be addressed empirically in concrete analysis. The course meshes broadly with an ongoing research project on 'fake narratives', whose progress can be followed at: https://fakenarratives.github.io/ Participants will be encouraged to engage with the method of analysis being developed in this project and so receive firsthand experience in research methods. The qualitative and quantitative methods introduced are, however, generally applicable to many research questions and media. Dedicated sessions will introduce several of the empirical quantitative methods that can be employed for improving the reliability and generalisability of qualitative studies regardless of research question.

‎“Although we may not all be as creative as the poets, each of us is a poet in his or her own right – ‎that is, we are all capable of exploiting the language system creatively” (Munat 2015: 92).‎

Since the beginning of the 17th century, new varieties of English have emerged all around the ‎world. The lexicon of these varieties has been influenced and shaped by the languages that they ‎have come into contact with and by speakers who use them. This course explores the different ‎word-formation processes that speakers exploit creatively to coin and manipulate lexical items and ‎expressions to adapt, expand, and change the lexicon of the different varieties of English. ‎

Students will carry out empirical research projects in which they examine selected ‎aspects of lexical creativity in World Englishes.‎ The results will also be presented at the 4th Bremen Student Conference in English Linguistics at the end of the semester.

In view of research approaches that have emerged out of Erving Goffman’s foundational work on interaction, Harold Garfinkel’s writings on Ethnomethodology (EM), and Harvey Sacks and colleagues’ conceptions of conversation analysis (CA), the course aims to provide a starting point to the investigation of talk-in-interaction. Main topics of the course are the nature and origin of associated research approaches, research methodology, and applications in light of immersive and institutional language learning.

The course introduces students to basic conversational analytic methods and techniques, focussing on fundamental structures of interaction (i.e. turn-taking, sequence organization, and turn design), also extending the scope to selected topics in CA research that have contributed to a better under-standing of how social order is achieved and reproduced (i.e. embodied interaction).

Starting with a hands-on introduction to CA phenomena, students are encouraged to collect conversational data among themselves – serving both as material for training purposes, and empirical data to be examined for completing course achievements.
Students are urged to participate in the 4th Bremen Student Conference in English Linguistics (July 2023, exact dates t.b.a.); participation in the conference (abstract & presentation) is part of the course achievement. Intensive guidance will be provided.

Learning outcomes:
• Understand theoretical foundations of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis
• Gather experience on fieldwork, transcription conventions, and software applications - appropri-ate for the analysis of talk-in-interaction
• Become acquainted with fundamental structures of conversation from an interdisciplinary research perspective
• Gather hands-on experience on the analysis of social interaction; potential approaches to investigate language learning in ordinary & institutional settings

List of topics covered:
1) Introduction to EMCA methodology: research design, fieldwork, audio and video recordings, transcription
2) Talk-in-interaction and its organization: turn-taking, adjacency pairs and preference, repair
3) The multimodal nature of interaction: role of gaze, gestures, use of artefacts and their interplay with talk
4) Mundane vs institutional interaction: selected settings (community of practice, classroom)

This course is split into two blocks: whereas the first block focuses on the theoretical foundation, the second block is all about hands-on analysis. All readings for the first block will be made available online.
In the first part of the seminar, we will look into persuasion from different theoretical perspectives and in a broad variety of media. Starting with a general introduction of persuasion, we'll first focus on visual examples, such as advertisements and (fake) news, and use these for an initial discussion of multimodal persuasion before we move on to audio-visual commercials and persuasion in film.
For the second block, every participant will work on an own project. Each week, we'll have one highlight topic which will guide through the project process. We'll build a corpus, discuss methodological approaches and appropriate tools for analysis, the actual analytical process and statistical options for results.

This part of the theatre workshop is based on our introductory work during the semester. Requirement is previous participation in the theatre workshop or some experience with long form improvisational theatre. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me.

The concept of this class is very simple: we will discuss and analyse adaptations based on fantasy literature. Not only will we try to determine what exactly is “fantasy”, but we will also look into the layers of meaning within this vast genre. The goal of this course is to give an overview of what the genre entails, how we can analyse it and what the viewer can take away from it. In order to accomplish this threefold goal, we will look into both the language of film and literary analysis to help us communicate our findings. Students are expected to participate in a presentation and have to submit a film review to receive their grade.

All materials are provided via StudIP.

En abril y mayo de 2022, el poeta, dramaturgo y actor guineoecuatoriano Recaredo Silebo Boturu estará en Bremen durante un periodo de 8 semanas como Artista en Residencia del Instituto de Estudios Poscoloniales y Transculturales (INPUTS) de la Universidad de Bremen. En este contexto dará un taller de creación dramática para estudiantes de la Universidad de Bremen que estén interesado/as en idear y realizar una obra de teatro. La clase será en español. Si están interesado/as, por favor, dirígense a Dr. Julia Borst (FB 10): borst@uni-bremen.de

Im April und Mai 2022 verweilt der äquatorialguineische Dichter, Theaterautor und Schauspieler aus Äquatorialguinea für 8 Wochen als Artist in Residence des Instituts für postkoloniale und transkulturelle Studien (INPUTS) an der Universität Bremen. In diesem Rahmen wird er einen Theater-Workshop als Blockseminar anbieten, der für Studierende der Universität Bremen geöffnet ist, die Lust darauf haben, selbst eine Performance zu konzipieren und dann auf die Bühne zu bringen. Boturu leitet den Kurs auf Spanisch, gute Spanischkenntnisse sind aber keine Teilnahmevoraussetzung. Bei Interesse melden Sie sich bitte bei Dr. Julia Borst (FB 10): borst@uni-bremen.de
Bitte melden Sie sich bei Interesse im Vorfeld über StudIP an, damit wir die Anzahl der Teilnehmer*innen abschätzen können.

Recaredo Silebo Boturu, the Equatorial Guinean poet, playwright, and artist will be in Bremen for 8 weeks, in April and May 2022, as the Artist in Residence of the Institute of Postcolonial and Transcultural Studies (INPUTS) at the University of Bremen. During this time, in collaboration with Boturu, we will organize a theatre workshop (compact course) for the students of the University of Bremen who are interested in conceptualizing and staging a theatre performance. The workshop will be conducted in Spanish, however, good knowledge of Spanish is not mandatory for participation in the workshop. If you are interested, please contact Dr. Julia Borst (FB 10): borst@uni-bremen.de
If interested, register for this workshop in StudIP so that we can estimate the number of participants.

The End is here!
Melting polar caps, heatwaves and wildfires - our planet is dying and nothing is done. 7 years until it’s all over; awareness seems to not be helping, as it’s the most powerful on Earth that are ignoring and/or straight-up opposing the change.
The apocalypse hasn’t happened yet, because it is happening right now.

In this seminar we will look at the end in books, film and video games. Why has Godzilla been described as the perfect symbol for climate change? What role does climate change play in Blade Runner 2049? And why does the climate change always seem to play second fiddle in stories?

You’ll be able to gain up to 2CP for General Studies (or the supplementary module for E-SC master)

Ever wanted to just talk about your favourite movies? E-SC presents to you our filmclub! Be it critically acclaimed prize-contenders, trashy B-movies, or superhero flicks - we want to offer you a place to critically discuss pictures. The course does, however, come with a tiny prerequisite: you need to be able to watch movies on either Netflix, Prime, etc.
The Filmclub meetings will take place on campus on Friday 4-6 pm every second week.
For questions please reach out to the tutors.

Du tauchst gerne in fantastische Zeilenwelten ab? Du gehst mit deinen Protagonist:innen auf
Abenteuerreisen? Oder du löst ab und zu einen Mordfall? Dann bist du hier genau richtig. Wir wollen gemeinsam Bücher lesen, ob Thriller, Fantasy oder doch den gute alten Liebesroman. Du entscheidest selber. Das Oktober-Thema wird uns in die Grusel-Welten (Horror, Thriller, Krimi, Fantasy etc.) entführen. Haltet für die erste Sitzung vor All Hallows Eve ein Buch bereit, vielleicht habt ihr es schon gelesen.

Eine Seminarübersicht mit allen Informationen gibt es in der ersten Sitzung 20.04.23. Unsere Treffen
sind 14-tägig donnerstags von 16-18 Uhr.

Studienleistungen
1 CP:
– aktive Teilnahme an sechs von sieben Terminen
– einen Buchtipp (200-300 Zeichen) und eine Challenge

2 CP

• aktive Teilnahme an sechs von sieben Terminen
• eine Rezension (2 Seiten DIN A4) schreiben und Challenges bearbeiten

Bei Fragen könnt ihr euch gerne über Stud.Ip bei den Tutorinnen Julia Rößner und Maite Wulff melden.

Do you like books and reading? If you do, the English-Speaking Cultures Bookclub is what you are looking for. Each month we will read a book in English, dealing with a specific topic (example: Black History Month). Those monthly choices are entirely up to you as long as they fit the theme. Once a semester we also do a Bookclub Buddy Read. You can gain up to two credit points by actively participating in group discussions and presenting your monthly read. Whether your favourite genre is fantasy, crime fiction or something else, all readers are welcome. The theme for April 2023 will be “Flash Fiction/Micro Fiction".

Meetings of the book club take place on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 4-6 pm every second week. Please register for the book club beforehand on Stud.IP and select one of the groups (either Tuesday or Thursday). Please get in touch with one of the tutors if you require more information.

Teaching method: We will meet in bi-weekly face to face sessions on campus. You will need access to Stud.IP. and a laptop or tablet with sound and audio capabilities. Please make sure to attend our first session if you wish a placement in this class.

This course is primarily offered to students who wish to join our excursion. CPs may be attained for the module General Studies (BA) and Supplementary Studies module (MA E-SC).

JOIN US FOR THE LONDON EXCURSION JULY 31ST - AUGUST 5TH, 2023
“London in Literature – Literary London” (Dr Jana Nittel with Nadine Schmidt und Darleen Helms)
This trip continues a longstanding tradition (since 2010) which has been established in faculty 10 in that it offers students a five-day excursion tour to London every second or third year. Having adjusted the focus of this trip around five major topic choices: Green London; Women Writers and London; London’s Imperial Past and Postcolonial Present; London and the Shakespearean Stage and London and Crime Fiction, this five-day excursion offers now a variety of research activities and experiential learning, promising this to be a yet another brilliant study experience.
Eligibility:
• All students registered in the following course programmes: M.A. E-SC; Master of Education Englisch and B.A. E-SC.;
• Non-German citizens need to enquire about visa regulations regarding their entry to the UK as we are unable to refund any payments.
• German citizens require a passport.
A first mandatory pre-departure meeting “General Studies course “London Excursion - Literary London – London in Literature (July 31st – August 5th, 2023)” is scheduled for April 17th, 2023 from 6.00 pm. to 09:00 p.m. following the seminar session “Literary London – London in Literature” VAK: 10-76-4-D2/WD2-01.
What would you need to pay for?
• €250,00 per student to be transferred until April 26th, 2023
• Flight to and from London and airport transfer (self-organised),
• Weekly Travel card 1-3 in London (optional)
• Food and Drink.
What do we offer?
• Financial support of faculty 10 = €350,00 per participant
• Accommodation in LSE Bankside Hostel in twin and triple rooms with shared bathroom facilities and breakfast included (5 nights);
• Entry fees to museums, tickets for theatre performances, guided museum tours, Globe Education Workshop, and heritage sites.
How do you apply?
Please send an email to Dr. Jana Nittel (jnittel@uni-bremen.de) and include the following information:
• Full name and the name of your study programme (B.A. or M.A. or M.Ed.);
• Written paragraph outlining your motivation to join the excursion (150 words max. in English).
• Deadline: April 18th, 2023
We look forward to an exciting trip!
All our best wishes,
Jana Nittel with Nadine Schmidt and Darleen Helms

NOTE: This class takes place on campus!

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 communication and conversation skills in the academic context. Students are given the opportunity to develop their own ideas, discuss them in the group and justify them. To that end, argumentative strategies established in UEP 1 are incorporated.

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 why they have received this accolade.

Credit points are obtained by conducting a tandem interview session and by submitting an individual postcast. Materials are provided via StudIP.

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 communication and conversation skills in the academic context. Students are given the opportunity to develop their own ideas, discuss them in the group and justify them. To that end, argumentative strategies established in UEP 1 are incorporated.

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

Credit points are obtained by conducting a panel discussion and by submitting an individual podcast. Materials are provided via StudIP.
This class takes place on campus

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 communication and conversation skills in the academic context. Students are given the opportunity to develop their own ideas, discuss them in the group and justify them. To that end, argumentative strategies established in UEP 1 are incorporated.

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

Credit points are obtained by conducting a panel discussion and by submitting an individual podcast. Materials are provided via StudIP.
This class takes place on campus

This course welcomes students who wish to complete the following modules:
M.A. E_SC ExMo 1 – Extension Module 1
M.A. E-SC ExMo 2 - Extension Module 2
M.A. TnL Profilmodul I: Literatur
B.A. E-SC “Key Topics in Literature”- D2-c; WD-2a and WD-2b
Academic Exchange Students

Teaching method: We will meet in weekly face to face sessions on campus. You will need access to Stud.IP. and a laptop or tablet with sound and audio capabilities. Please make sure to attend our first session if you wish a placement in this class.

This course seeks to familiarise students with a number of selected authors, poets and writers, in general, who have held lifelong connections with London, may it be historic or contemporary. We will aim to discuss their continued engagement with the city by exploring a selections of excerpts clustered around five major topic choices: Green London; Women Writers and London; London’s Imperial Past and Postcolonial Present; London Theatreland and the Shakespearean Stage; and London and Crime. By virtually tracing forgotten as well as prominent landmarks of the urban centre, we seek to connect the literary representations of the city with historical and cultural developments, present and past. Primary and secondary reading materials will be available for download on Stud.IP.

Please register on Stud. IP and explore the sections “Information” and “Schedule” on Stud. IP. for further details.

Requirements:
• Interest in the topics discussed and ideally a regular attendance and informed participation in class discussion (not part of your formal assessment);
• in-depth knowledge of the selected reading material and course materials,
• final exam according to module choice.

In this class we will learn about postcolonial literature and writing back, study tools to literary analysis of drama in self-study, and we will look at how we read texts specifically from a postcolonial perspective. We will read and discuss William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest and several rewrites: two plays: Aimé Césaire’s play A Tempest, Dev Virahsawmy’s play Toufann: A Mauritian Fantasy, and the movie by Julie Taymore’s The Tempest. We will also read a text by Marie Celie-Agnant, a Haitian Canadian writer who will be INPUTS Writer-in-Residence in the coming summer semester and give a reading/talk in our class. Furthermore, we will hear a lecture by Dr. Melba Boyd from Wayne State University, USA, about African American poetry and writing back.
Please purchase the following books at the university book store (on Universitätsboulevard): Shakespeare The Tempest Norton Critical Edition (12 €) and Aimé Césaire A Tempest. Translation by Richard Miller (16 €). All other texts are provided via StudIP.
Class requirements are regular attendance and active class discussion as well as in-depth knowledge of reading and viewing material. Reading the texts and watching the film is mandatory. Please note that prior enrollment through StudIP is mandatory. Maximum number of participants: 30.

In this class we will study Indigenous cultures and literatures in North America, i.e. cultures and literatures of the original inhabitants of Canada and the US. We will read novels and short stories by Indigenous authors, and watch a documentary and movie. Issues to be discussed through our critical readings are colonization and colonial conditions of Indigenous people, including miscegenation and identity, youth cultures, violence against Indigenous women, the residential school experience, hockey and others.
We will read Angeline Boulley’s, Firekeepter’s Daughter (2021) and Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse (2012). We will also watch the documentary We Were Children on the residential school system and the movie adaptation Indian Horse. As well we will read a Haida Manga.
Please purchase Angeline Boulley’s, Firekeepter’s Daughter (11,50 €) and Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse (16 €), both books are available at the Universitätsbuchhandlung close to the Mensa; they are available at the beginning of the semester, Indian HOres 3 weeks later.
All other primary and secondary texts will be provided electronically. Requirements beside regular attendance, in-depth knowledge of reading material, and active class discussion will be made known at the beginning of the class. Please note that prior enrollment via Stud.IP is necessary. Max. number of participants 30.

In the course of this seminar, we shall discuss two maths films in terms of their contributions to what is today known as scientific literacy. One will be John Madden's Proof (2005), a filmic adaptation of David Auburn's play of the same title, starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Anthony Hopkins, and Jake Gyllenhaal. It presents Catherine, a largely self-taught mathematician, against the backdrop of authorship issues, human attractions, relationships, and conflicts. The other example is Matthew Brown's biopic The Man Who Knew Infinity (2015) highlighting the special professional alliance between Srinivasa Ramanujan (Dev Patel), the mathematical genius from India, and a very prominent Cambridge professor, G. H. Hardy (Jeremy Irons).

requirements:

• active participation
• in-depth knowledge of the films and the reading material
• non-graded assessment: oral presentation (handout or PowerPoint presentation)
• graded assessment: research in progress (handout or PowerPoint presentation) and final paper, the latter is graded

Please note that prior enrolment via Stud.IP is mandatory. Given the capacity of the seminar room, which is especially designed for the presentation of films, the number of participants is limited to 15 students.

This class introduces students to the study of ‘writing women,’ i.e. to women writers and their representation in fiction, as well as to the issues and stylistic, formal, and cultural practices that are involved when girls and women are written or write themselves into the literary and cultural imagination in North America. With a focus on Canada and the United States in the twentieth century, students will study not only select narrative texts (short stories, full novels and excerpts) but also the diverse, intersecting histories of feminist movements (such as Black, Chicana, Indigenous, or eco feminisms) and their works of feminist literary criticism.

Please acquire copies (print or electronic) of the following book-length texts and start reading them as soon as possible:
• Munro, Alice. Lives of Girls and Women (1971)
• Cisneros, Sandra. The House on Mango Street (1984)
Our university book store on the boulevard has some copies available for purchase.

Further primary and secondary material and information will be made available on Stud.IP. Prior enrolment via Stud.IP is mandatory and admission is limited to a maximum of thirty students. The class is open to M.A. E-SC students studying the Extension Modules 1 and 2, students studying the Vertiefungs- or Profilmodul in the M.A. Transnationale Literaturwissenschaft as well as international exchange students. Please check Stud.IP regularly for updates.

Requirements
• active participation in weekly meetings,
• in-depth knowledge of the reading material,
• graded or ungraded assignment in accordance with the respective module requirements.

As a result of colonisation, English was transplanted to Africa and has spread over the entire African continent. It has become an official language in approximately one third of all African nations. The degree to which English is spoken as a first or second language variety in the various African countries depends mostly on the colonial history, linguistic situation, language policy and language planning programs of these countries.

In this seminar, we will investigate the historical and socio-political developments that have determined the formation of African varieties of English and we will also study the functions English serves in various African countries and speaker's attitudes towards this language.
Moreover, we will survey recent corpus-linguistic research on Africa Englishes that has provided detailed descriptions of the distinctive linguistic characteristics of particular varieties.
Depending on the assessment needed for their study program and module, students can opt for oral presentations based on extensive reading or corpus-based research projects on selected African Englishes.

Basic introductory reading:
Schneider, Edgar W. 2011. English around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (chapters 5.2 and 6.1)

In an internationalized Higher Education landscape, academic-linguistic competencies in English as lingua franca gain increasing importance. Students' linguistic preparedness is a known factor affecting academic success. To evaluate academic-linguistic preparedness of students, assessment tasks are required that integrate the skills of reading, listening, speaking, and writing, e.g.by asking for a summary (Cumming, 2013).
This seminar offers you a unique chance to get both theoretical knowledge about integrated academic assessment and practical insights from a large-scale research project.
In this hands-on seminar, we will develop our own integrated tasks, compete integrated tasks, and learn to assess written products. You will get to know the research project and learn to use instruments developed within it. You will also get familiarized with the construct of integrated writing and learn about existing integrated tasks and rating scales. Additionally, you will gain insights about methods for the research of rater cognition and rating strategies. Finally, we aim to develop and present own small-scale project at the end of the seminar.

• We will meet every two weeks on campus (check the schedule for details). You will need a laptop for work in class.

In this course empirical methods for the analysis of varied media will be introduced and then developed specifically in the context of selected audiovisual, visual and verbal media. A specific focus will be placed on examining to what extent such media products 'tell stories', either deliberately or by accident, and the consequences of such stories for their reception by audiences. One particular area of concern will be narratives that (either intentionally or unintentionally) 'disinform' their audiences by setting up narrative expectations of various kinds. These kinds of uses will be addressed empirically in concrete analysis. The course meshes broadly with an ongoing research project on 'fake narratives', whose progress can be followed at: https://fakenarratives.github.io/ Participants will be encouraged to engage with the method of analysis being developed in this project and so receive firsthand experience in research methods. The qualitative and quantitative methods introduced are, however, generally applicable to many research questions and media. Dedicated sessions will introduce several of the empirical quantitative methods that can be employed for improving the reliability and generalisability of qualitative studies regardless of research question.

‎“Although we may not all be as creative as the poets, each of us is a poet in his or her own right – ‎that is, we are all capable of exploiting the language system creatively” (Munat 2015: 92).‎

Since the beginning of the 17th century, new varieties of English have emerged all around the ‎world. The lexicon of these varieties has been influenced and shaped by the languages that they ‎have come into contact with and by speakers who use them. This course explores the different ‎word-formation processes that speakers exploit creatively to coin and manipulate lexical items and ‎expressions to adapt, expand, and change the lexicon of the different varieties of English. ‎

Students will carry out empirical research projects in which they examine selected ‎aspects of lexical creativity in World Englishes.‎ The results will also be presented at the 4th Bremen Student Conference in English Linguistics at the end of the semester.

In view of research approaches that have emerged out of Erving Goffman’s foundational work on interaction, Harold Garfinkel’s writings on Ethnomethodology (EM), and Harvey Sacks and colleagues’ conceptions of conversation analysis (CA), the course aims to provide a starting point to the investigation of talk-in-interaction. Main topics of the course are the nature and origin of associated research approaches, research methodology, and applications in light of immersive and institutional language learning.

The course introduces students to basic conversational analytic methods and techniques, focussing on fundamental structures of interaction (i.e. turn-taking, sequence organization, and turn design), also extending the scope to selected topics in CA research that have contributed to a better under-standing of how social order is achieved and reproduced (i.e. embodied interaction).

Starting with a hands-on introduction to CA phenomena, students are encouraged to collect conversational data among themselves – serving both as material for training purposes, and empirical data to be examined for completing course achievements.
Students are urged to participate in the 4th Bremen Student Conference in English Linguistics (July 2023, exact dates t.b.a.); participation in the conference (abstract & presentation) is part of the course achievement. Intensive guidance will be provided.

Learning outcomes:
• Understand theoretical foundations of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis
• Gather experience on fieldwork, transcription conventions, and software applications - appropri-ate for the analysis of talk-in-interaction
• Become acquainted with fundamental structures of conversation from an interdisciplinary research perspective
• Gather hands-on experience on the analysis of social interaction; potential approaches to investigate language learning in ordinary & institutional settings

List of topics covered:
1) Introduction to EMCA methodology: research design, fieldwork, audio and video recordings, transcription
2) Talk-in-interaction and its organization: turn-taking, adjacency pairs and preference, repair
3) The multimodal nature of interaction: role of gaze, gestures, use of artefacts and their interplay with talk
4) Mundane vs institutional interaction: selected settings (community of practice, classroom)

This course is split into two blocks: whereas the first block focuses on the theoretical foundation, the second block is all about hands-on analysis. All readings for the first block will be made available online.
In the first part of the seminar, we will look into persuasion from different theoretical perspectives and in a broad variety of media. Starting with a general introduction of persuasion, we'll first focus on visual examples, such as advertisements and (fake) news, and use these for an initial discussion of multimodal persuasion before we move on to audio-visual commercials and persuasion in film.
For the second block, every participant will work on an own project. Each week, we'll have one highlight topic which will guide through the project process. We'll build a corpus, discuss methodological approaches and appropriate tools for analysis, the actual analytical process and statistical options for results.

This course is one of the specific colloquia designed for students planning their final dissertation either on undergraduate or graduate level in the field of literary studies (Module choices: Bachelor thesis module P or Master thesis module MA The). We shall look at a number of strategies for planning, structuring and writing longer pieces of work and this course will include formal issues such as format and layout of the final assignment. Please register on Stud. IP and explore the sections “Information” and “Schedule” on Stud. IP. for further details.

All students, who are planning to write their final dissertations in the field of literary studies, are welcome to join my course. In addition, I am happy to take on the role of a supervisor or co-supervisor for projects that correspond to my research and teaching foci, in other words, students who have a supervisor or co-supervisor that is not me are also welcome to join this course.

This module is one of the specific colloquia designed for Master students writing their MA-thesis in the field of literature or film studies. On the basis of your research proposals, we shall look at a number of strategies for producing a longer piece of work, and this programme will also include formal issues such as format and layout of the final thesis.

In view of my expertise, I can offer to supervise MA-theses in the following areas:

• British theatre and drama, including the work of William Shakespeare,
• the literature of the 20th and 21st century,
• Australian literature,
• climate change novels,
• and film.

Prior enrolment via Stud.IP is mandatory. Since no more than 10 students can participate in the final course, early registration is strongly recommended.

This is a research colloquium for MA and PhD students who are planning on writing or are currently working on their final theses in the fields of (applied) English linguistics, World Englishes or SLA.

This colloquium is designed for all students planning to write their thesis in the fields of (i) multimodal linguistics and its application to treatments of mixed media artefacts or performances and (ii) for critical discourse analysis, particularly empirically based studies. Examples of media that might be targetted include: film, comics, graphic novels, advertisements and so on. Particularly of interest will be areas where language (spoken or written) works together with visual representations of any kind. We will discuss theoretical and methodological approaches for characterising combinations of language and visual information, consider practical methods for corpus work (particularly involving mixed media, but not only), develop outlines and structures of the thesis, and consider how to construct strong thesis statements in order to focus your search for information, to tackle your subject and to construct your argument. Students will be expected to present and discuss their project in various stages of progression both in class as well as in individual monitoring sessions as well as to give input to others. Standard styles of presenting work within linguistics will be discussed as well as ways of addressing and analysing data and showing that analyses are adequate.