Note: This course compensates for the cancelled one in WiSe 24/25. Therefore, those students who were affected by the cancellation are prioritised when distributing the places. Those students who begin their studies in summer 2025 have to take the course another time.

The course is designed to develop academic writing skills at a professional level so as to prepare students for their work in the MA programme. We will review the fundamental aspects of academic writing at the structural level, including thesis statements, paragraphing, developing cohesion etc. We explore different text types that you will be expected to use in your academic studies. In addition, emphasis will be placed on further developing the language skills necessary to express complex concepts in both written and spoken form as you move forward in developing critical thinking and writing skills.

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.

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. 2011/2020. English around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (chapters 5.2 and 6.1)

This seminar introduces students to anglophone cultural theory that turns to water as a primary object of study (including oceans, lakes, rivers, and wetlands) and tries to think with/through/from liquid epistemologies. By studying key theoretical texts and case studies, students will familiarize themselves with influential theories and key concepts that, e.g., question the centering of dry land over wet environments, human over non-human perspectives, and the individual over interrelation. Exemplary cultural analyses of primary objects, such as film, literature, and art, will complement the study of theory and help students advance their skills in cultural analysis.
The class is open to M.A. E-SC students studying the Extension Module 1 and 2. International exchange students and students doing ‘Freiwillige Zusatzleistungen,’ general studies, or ‘Ersatzleistungen’ as well as students from the Master TnL (Profil- or Vertiefungsmodul) may also be admitted. Prior enrolment via Stud.IP is mandatory and admission is limited to a maximum of thirty-five students. Please check Stud.IP regularly for updates.
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.

Many of Shakespeare’s plays are set in the Mediterranean region; Italy, for instance, has been called Shakespeare’s “favourite imaginative haunt”. Padua, Rome, Sicily, Verona, Venice – these are just some of the Italian locations in which Shakespeare set one or several of his plays. Other Mediterranean settings include Alexandria, Athens, Marseilles, and Troy. Partly, the fact that Shakespeare chose Mediterranean settings for so many of his plays reflects a broader Elizabethan fascination with this region as a source of classical civilisation and a cultural archive. But Shakespeare’s Mediterranean plays frequently also comment on his contemporary England. We will consider how Shakespeare used the Mediterranean to examine the rise and fall of great empires and their leaders, as well as to explore the poetic language of love, which was, after all, modelled on Italian poets and verse forms.

Required Reading:
Shakespeare, William. Julius Caesar (c. 1599).
Shakespeare, William. Anthony and Cleopatra (c. 1606-7).
Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream (c. 1595).
Shakespeare, William. Troilus and Cressida (c. 1602).
Preferred edition: Arden Shakespeare, Third Series.

We will read Margaret Atwood's dystopian genre, "The Handmaid's Tale" and Toni Morrison's, bildungsroman, "The Bluest Eye", to engage with the question of freedom. Through close readings and critical discussions, we will examine how each novel explores the question of personal and collective freedom for young girls and women, vis-a-vis the nature of white supremacist and patriarchal systems of power that not only impacts their material life but also reaches or attempts to reach into their bodies and minds to control their perception of themselves in relation to the world.

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.

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. 2011/2020. English around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (chapters 5.2 and 6.1)

This seminar introduces students to anglophone cultural theory that turns to water as a primary object of study (including oceans, lakes, rivers, and wetlands) and tries to think with/through/from liquid epistemologies. By studying key theoretical texts and case studies, students will familiarize themselves with influential theories and key concepts that, e.g., question the centering of dry land over wet environments, human over non-human perspectives, and the individual over interrelation. Exemplary cultural analyses of primary objects, such as film, literature, and art, will complement the study of theory and help students advance their skills in cultural analysis.
The class is open to M.A. E-SC students studying the Extension Module 1 and 2. International exchange students and students doing ‘Freiwillige Zusatzleistungen,’ general studies, or ‘Ersatzleistungen’ as well as students from the Master TnL (Profil- or Vertiefungsmodul) may also be admitted. Prior enrolment via Stud.IP is mandatory and admission is limited to a maximum of thirty-five students. Please check Stud.IP regularly for updates.
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.

Many of Shakespeare’s plays are set in the Mediterranean region; Italy, for instance, has been called Shakespeare’s “favourite imaginative haunt”. Padua, Rome, Sicily, Verona, Venice – these are just some of the Italian locations in which Shakespeare set one or several of his plays. Other Mediterranean settings include Alexandria, Athens, Marseilles, and Troy. Partly, the fact that Shakespeare chose Mediterranean settings for so many of his plays reflects a broader Elizabethan fascination with this region as a source of classical civilisation and a cultural archive. But Shakespeare’s Mediterranean plays frequently also comment on his contemporary England. We will consider how Shakespeare used the Mediterranean to examine the rise and fall of great empires and their leaders, as well as to explore the poetic language of love, which was, after all, modelled on Italian poets and verse forms.

Required Reading:
Shakespeare, William. Julius Caesar (c. 1599).
Shakespeare, William. Anthony and Cleopatra (c. 1606-7).
Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream (c. 1595).
Shakespeare, William. Troilus and Cressida (c. 1602).
Preferred edition: Arden Shakespeare, Third Series.

We will read Margaret Atwood's dystopian genre, "The Handmaid's Tale" and Toni Morrison's, bildungsroman, "The Bluest Eye", to engage with the question of freedom. Through close readings and critical discussions, we will examine how each novel explores the question of personal and collective freedom for young girls and women, vis-a-vis the nature of white supremacist and patriarchal systems of power that not only impacts their material life but also reaches or attempts to reach into their bodies and minds to control their perception of themselves in relation to the world.

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. Students will be given the opportunity to develop specific cultural studies research projects, 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. Students will work both individually and in smaller groups and 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 is a research colloquium for MA and PhD students who are currently working on their final theses in the fields of (applied) English linguistics, World Englishes or SLA with me as their supervisor.

Colloquium: by invitation only: Colloquium for PhD / MA students who are currently pursuing their thesis with me (in Englisch) - Brief information