This course continues the general introduction to English Linguistics from last semester, focusing on how to do empirical work in linguistics. Students will be introduced to the different methods and tools to collect, process and analyze linguistic data. In this course, we focus on observation and diaries as well as corpus studies.

Coursework and assessment
You are expected to read and prepare selected texts for each session. The coursework will focus on real-life linguistic data and exercises which are designed to help you apply selected methods and tools and critically discuss their usefulness. By the end of the term, you are required to submit a portfolio comprising reading assignments, data-based tasks, and participation in linguistic experiments.

Literature
Rose, Heath & Jim McKinley & Jessica Briggs Baffoe-Djan. 2020. Data Collection Research Methods in Applied Linguistics. Bloomsbury Academic.
Wray, Alison & Aileen Bloomer. 2012. Projects in Linguistics and Language Studies. 3rd edition. London: Hodder Education.

This course continues the general introduction to English Linguistics from last semester, focusing on how to do empirical work in linguistics. Students will be introduced to the different ways, methods and tools to obtain, process and analyze linguistic data. The following topics will be covered: research methodology and design, types of data collection, experiments, corpus linguistics, online dictionaries, linguistic fieldwork, and transcription.

Coursework and assessment

You are expected to read and prepare selected texts for each session. The coursework will focus on real-life linguistic data and exercises which are designed to help you apply selected methods and tools and critically discuss their usefulness. You are required to submit a portfolio comprising different data-based tasks ("worksheets") and other assignments that will be worked on in the course of the semester.

Basic introductory textbooks

Sealey, A. (2010), Researching English Language. A resource book for students. London: Routledge.
Wray, A. & A. Bloomer (2012), Projects in Linguistics and Language Studies. 3rd edition. London: Hodder Education.

In this seminar, students get an introduction to the history of English, i.e. Old English, Middle English and Early Modern English. This class includes weekly discussions and tasks. In the second half of the seminar, we continue to study the historical events, current status of major varieties and differences of world varieties from North America, Australia to Africa and Asia with a focus on their structural and phonological features. We will follow the debates about English as a cause of language death, and talk about the place of English in language policies and language planning.

This is the second part of the foundation module. It provides an introduction to the history of the English language from Old English to Present-Day English, the spread and transplantation of English to other parts of the world as well as the subsequent diversification of the English language into World Englishes.

This is the second part of the foundation module. It provides an introduction to the history of the English language from Old English to Present-Day English, the spread and transplantation of English to other parts of the world as well as the subsequent diversification of the English language into World Englishes.

In this seminar, students get an introduction to the history of English, i.e. Old English, Middle English and Early Modern English. This class includes weekly discussions and tasks. In the second half of the seminar, we continue to study the historical events, current status of major varieties and differences of world varieties from North America, Australia to Africa and Asia with a focus on their structural and phonological features. We will follow the debates about English as a cause of language death, and talk about the place of English in language policies and language planning.

This is the second part of the foundation module. It provides an introduction to the history of the English language from Old English to Present-Day English, the spread and transplantation of English to other parts of the world as well as the subsequent diversification of the English language into World Englishes.

This class introduces students to the interdisciplinary study of water and culture, with a focus on the intersections of the blue humanities with social sciences, geography, literary and cultural studies, and the arts. The class consists of a mixture of seminar sessions and guest lectures by invited speakers. Scholars and teachers both from U Bremen and from elsewhere will deliver lectures on the theme “Making Waves: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Water and Culture.” In the sessions between the lectures, we will discuss corresponding theoretical and analytical texts as well as analyze primary material in accordance with the subject matter of the presentations and to critically reflect on their respective ideas and arguments. Students will obtain an overview of the interdisciplinary study of water and culture in the humanities and deepen their skills in cultural studies.

This class is open to BA E-SC students studying 4th semester modules. It is also open to a limited number of international exchange students and students doing ‘Freiwillige Zusatzleistungen,’ ‘Ersatzleistungen,’ and General Studies, including the sustainability certificate BRENA.

Prior enrolment via Stud.IP is mandatory and admission is limited to a maximum of thirty-five students. Further information will be made available on Stud.IP. Please check Stud.IP regularly for updates.
Requirements
• active participation in weekly in-person meetings,
• in-depth study of the primary and secondary material in preparation for each session,
• graded or ungraded assignment in accordance with the respective module requirements.

In October 2025, we “heard [her] calling on the megaphone”: Shakespeare’s Ophelia experienced a widely discussed revival in popular culture through Taylor Swift. This renewed attention invites us to ask again what the true fate of Ophelia might be. Why has this figure continued to fascinate artists, writers, and audiences for over four centuries?

With this question in mind, this seminar examines the figure of Ophelia throughout the ages. Together, we will read Shakespeare’s Hamlet and then trace Ophelia’s afterlives across paintings, theatre, stage and film adaptations, novels, lyrical texts, and pop culture more broadly. The seminar combines close reading with visual analysis and cultural discussion and encourages students to bring in their own observations and interests.

To receive credit for this course, you must
• have an excellent knowledge of the assigned readings and materials.
• actively participate in discussions and smaller group work.
• attend one mandatory library workshop (June 11, 2026, from 12:15 to 13:45).
• create an annotated bibliography for a potential research paper (due on June 17, 2026).
• make a meaningful contribution to our exhibition at the Day of Sciences on June 27, 2026 (more information will follow in our first session).

If you need a grade in this course, you additionally need to
• submit an abstract for your term paper (due on July 5, 2026 / 0% of final grade for BPO 2025, 20% of final grade for BPO 2011)
• write a term paper (24.000–28.000 characters: text without blanks, cover, table of contents, works cited, affidavit; due on September 15, 2026 / 100% of final grade for BPO 2025, 80% of final grade for BPO 2011).

We’ll deal with the Studienleistungen and exams in our first session as well.

Most of the works will be made accessible on Stud.IP. However, please purchase the following editions:
Klein, Lisa. Ophelia. Bloomsbury Academic, 2008. (ISBN: 9781599902289)
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Edited by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016. (ISBN: 9781472518385)

If you have any questions beforehand, please don’t hesitate to email me (wolfk@uni-bremen.de). In order to be finally accepted into this seminar, you have to show up at the first three sessions.

I’m looking forward to discovering, questioning, and rethinking Ophelia’s fate together with you!

All the best,
Kevin

COURSE DESCRIPTION
In this course, we will consider how democratic thought, social protest and civil disobedience are expressed, negotiated and/or advocated for in British literature. We will conceptualise what we mean when we speak about democracy and civic participation, discuss the value of democratic systems and what is at stake when they are threatened, and consider the role literature has played in these debates.
Our focus will be on contemporary writing (post-1945): we consider the democratic potential of a range of narratives and genres, from dystopian fiction, satire, drama and spoken word poetry to biopics, protest short fiction, videogames and the state-of-the-nation novel. The exact selection will be finalised in dialogue with the course participants.
This course includes a cooperation with the Bremer Kulturzentrum Schlachthof: we will be taking part in a Zine workshop and present the results in the form of an exhibition. Interested students are invited to contribute to an issue of the Kulturzentrum’s Z-Magazin.

COURSE MATERIAL
Please acquire a copy of the following books:

• George Orwell, 1984 (Penguin, 2008)
• Alan Moore, V for Vendetta (DC Comics, 2020)
• Ali Smith, Autumn (Penguin, 2017)

Shorter readings will be provided. Please note that this is a reading-intensive course.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
At the end of this semester, you will be able to:
− give an overview of the democratic potential and/or shortcomings of literature
− outline representational strategies tied to democratic thought across various genres
− analyse major themes relevant to the relationship between literature and democracy by making use of theoretical and sociocultural contexts to justify your analysis
− independently plan and develop an argument for an academic term paper on a text of your choice
− use your critical knowledge creatively by conceptualising and designing a Zine

In this seminar we will combine an interest in the history of scientific expeditions with an interest in the history of speculative fiction. Based on a dialogue between approaches from literary studies with other disciplines such as the history of science, human geography, as well as critical anthropology, we will ask: What is an expedition? What is an expedition narrative? Based on a reading of 20th and 21st century speculative fiction, from science fiction to the new weird, we will ask how they take up, twist and topple concepts such as "contact zone" or "colonial encounter".

Please, buy and read the following novel:

• Jeff VanderMeer, Annihiliation (2014) [e.g., 978-0008139100 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]

Two further texts - Ted Chiang's novella “Story of Your Life” (1998) and Naomi Mitchison's novel Memoirs of a Spacewoman (1962) - will be provided in class.

The Gothic is a genre that has spanned many years and many countries/cultures. This class questions whether there can be an Indigenous Gothic, considering the settler-colonial tropes and histories of the Gothic genre in the Americas. We will delve into various short stories from Shane Hawk’s edited collection Never Whistle At Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, as well as Jessica Johns' novel Bad Cree (2023) and Drew Hayden Taylor's graphic novel The Night Wanderer (2013), and compare them to 'traditional' North American Gothic literature. Through our readings and comparisons, we will critically analyze settler-colonialism in North America and question whether the histories of the North American Gothic genre can be enriched (or decolonized?) by Indigenous contributions to the form.

Requirements for this course are 1) active reading and participation and 2) term paper (PL) or in-class presentation (SL).

Please obtain Taylor's graphic novel and Jessica John's novel before the semester begins. The short stories from Hawk's edited collection will be provided on Stud.Ip. If you are unable to obtain the books for any reason, please send me an email.

This seminar approaches literature through its form – the formal language and structure that shape content and create their own meaning. Form and content, in this sense, are inseparable. Meaning takes shape in and through form, while form carries its own meaning(s). Forms have histories and develop through gradual refinement, cultural contact, challenges, and innovation. They also have specific affordances, which means that they tend to be suited to the engagement with some issues, questions and topics than others.
Poetic forms are a particularly good starting point for the study of form, because in poetry, formal aspects are so condensed. In the course of this seminar, we will encounter different poetic forms, such as the sonnet, the couplet, blank verse, the ode, and the ballad. Our main goal is to identify the basic characteristics and structures of these forms and to explore what they do particularly well. We will also explore these forms in a historical perspective and observe how they have evolved and changed. The focus on close textual analysis will also enable students to hone their formal reading skills and to broaden and apply their knowledge of rhetorical strategies. Paying close attention to specific texts and forms will also allow participants to explore broader questions about the relevance of form to the encounter with literature.

All compulsory reading (poems and theoretical literature) will be available on Stud.IP (see syllabus and file folders for the relevant session).

There is a strong 20th century tradition of science fiction short stories - both across North America and Great Britain. Indeed the SF short story celebrates something of a centenary as Amazing Stories, an American science fiction magazine, was first launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback. As part of this seminar, we will pay homage to this anniversary though we will mostly keep our eyes on the development of how science is represented in 21st century short fiction and how this is done across SF, speculative fiction but also, especially, historical and realist fiction.

This interdisciplinary seminar in 'blended learning format' (mostly online via Stud.IP/BBB, 1-2 offline meetings at Bremen University in June), co-taught by a physicist and a literary scholar focuses on representations of scientists, scientific methods and scientific practice in contemporary short fiction. In a rare setting with students across the universities of Oldenburg and Bremen, we will read a diverse range of science-related short stories from the Anglophone world. Thematically, our focus will vary from medical research, physics and space, to expeditionary practice and environmental concerns.

Please, buy and read ONE of the following short story anthologies and collections:
• Ra Page, ed. Litmus: Short Stories from Modern Science. Manchester: Comma Press, 2011. [ISBN: 978-1-905583-33-1 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]
• Ted Chiang. Stories of Your Life and Others. 2002. London: Picador, 2024.
• Pippa Goldschmidt. Schrödinger’s Wife (and Other Possibilities). London: Goldsmith Press, 2024. https://pippagoldschmidt.co.uk/books/schrodingers-wife-and-other-possibilities/
• Bruce Meyer, ed. Cli-Fi: Canadian Tales of Climate Change. Chicago, IL: Independent Publishers Group, 2017. [ISBN: 978-1-550966-70-1 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ] https://www.ipgbook.com/cli-fi-products-9781550966701.php

The sonnet is a short, ubiquitous poetic form of 14 lines that every student will have come across. In this seminar, we will use the history of the sonnet in English to discuss Anglophone literary and cultural history, as well as developments in themes, structure and subjectivity. Although this form has at times been called "a narrow room", "a panic closet", or even "a coffin", we will acquaint ourselves with the productiveness of this formal corset and its rich thematic scope, from Renaissance love sonnets to Victorian science sonnets, from World War I sonnets to contemporary sonnets about the experience of using dating apps. We will frame our study of the sonnet with an explicit interest in the history and productivity of "close reading", a literary studies technique first popularized by the New Critics in the US in the first half of the 20th century, but which has seen a renewed debate in the first decades of the 21st century.

This seminar introduces students to the study of cinema in the age of the climate crisis. Students will hone their skills in film analysis and expand their command of theoretical approaches to critically examine filmic representations of the environment, of natural disasters such as floods, and the relationship of various human communities to the non-human, or more-than-human, world. In doing so, students will not only engage with critical discourses around ecocinema and the blue humanities but also refine their academic reading, writing, and presentation skills as well as train their media literacy.

This class is open to BA E-SC students studying 4th semester modules. It is also open to a limited number of international exchange students and students doing ‘Freiwillige Zusatzleistungen,’ ‘Ersatzleistungen,’ and General Studies, including the sustainability certificate BRENA.

Prior enrolment via Stud.IP is mandatory and admission is limited to a maximum of thirty-five students. Further information will be made available on Stud.IP and during the first session.

Requirements
• active participation in weekly in-person meetings,
• in-depth study of the primary and secondary material in preparation for each session,
• graded or ungraded assignment in accordance with the respective module requirements (i.e. graded term paper or portfolio OR ungraded class contribution).

This class introduces students to the interdisciplinary study of water and culture, with a focus on the intersections of the blue humanities with social sciences, geography, literary and cultural studies, and the arts. The class consists of a mixture of seminar sessions and guest lectures by invited speakers. Scholars and teachers both from U Bremen and from elsewhere will deliver lectures on the theme “Making Waves: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Water and Culture.” In the sessions between the lectures, we will discuss corresponding theoretical and analytical texts as well as analyze primary material in accordance with the subject matter of the presentations and to critically reflect on their respective ideas and arguments. Students will obtain an overview of the interdisciplinary study of water and culture in the humanities and deepen their skills in cultural studies.

This class is open to BA E-SC students studying 4th semester modules. It is also open to a limited number of international exchange students and students doing ‘Freiwillige Zusatzleistungen,’ ‘Ersatzleistungen,’ and General Studies, including the sustainability certificate BRENA.

Prior enrolment via Stud.IP is mandatory and admission is limited to a maximum of thirty-five students. Further information will be made available on Stud.IP. Please check Stud.IP regularly for updates.
Requirements
• active participation in weekly in-person meetings,
• in-depth study of the primary and secondary material in preparation for each session,
• graded or ungraded assignment in accordance with the respective module requirements.

In October 2025, we “heard [her] calling on the megaphone”: Shakespeare’s Ophelia experienced a widely discussed revival in popular culture through Taylor Swift. This renewed attention invites us to ask again what the true fate of Ophelia might be. Why has this figure continued to fascinate artists, writers, and audiences for over four centuries?

With this question in mind, this seminar examines the figure of Ophelia throughout the ages. Together, we will read Shakespeare’s Hamlet and then trace Ophelia’s afterlives across paintings, theatre, stage and film adaptations, novels, lyrical texts, and pop culture more broadly. The seminar combines close reading with visual analysis and cultural discussion and encourages students to bring in their own observations and interests.

To receive credit for this course, you must
• have an excellent knowledge of the assigned readings and materials.
• actively participate in discussions and smaller group work.
• attend one mandatory library workshop (June 11, 2026, from 12:15 to 13:45).
• create an annotated bibliography for a potential research paper (due on June 17, 2026).
• make a meaningful contribution to our exhibition at the Day of Sciences on June 27, 2026 (more information will follow in our first session).

If you need a grade in this course, you additionally need to
• submit an abstract for your term paper (due on July 5, 2026 / 0% of final grade for BPO 2025, 20% of final grade for BPO 2011)
• write a term paper (24.000–28.000 characters: text without blanks, cover, table of contents, works cited, affidavit; due on September 15, 2026 / 100% of final grade for BPO 2025, 80% of final grade for BPO 2011).

We’ll deal with the Studienleistungen and exams in our first session as well.

Most of the works will be made accessible on Stud.IP. However, please purchase the following editions:
Klein, Lisa. Ophelia. Bloomsbury Academic, 2008. (ISBN: 9781599902289)
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Edited by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016. (ISBN: 9781472518385)

If you have any questions beforehand, please don’t hesitate to email me (wolfk@uni-bremen.de). In order to be finally accepted into this seminar, you have to show up at the first three sessions.

I’m looking forward to discovering, questioning, and rethinking Ophelia’s fate together with you!

All the best,
Kevin

COURSE DESCRIPTION
In this course, we will consider how democratic thought, social protest and civil disobedience are expressed, negotiated and/or advocated for in British literature. We will conceptualise what we mean when we speak about democracy and civic participation, discuss the value of democratic systems and what is at stake when they are threatened, and consider the role literature has played in these debates.
Our focus will be on contemporary writing (post-1945): we consider the democratic potential of a range of narratives and genres, from dystopian fiction, satire, drama and spoken word poetry to biopics, protest short fiction, videogames and the state-of-the-nation novel. The exact selection will be finalised in dialogue with the course participants.
This course includes a cooperation with the Bremer Kulturzentrum Schlachthof: we will be taking part in a Zine workshop and present the results in the form of an exhibition. Interested students are invited to contribute to an issue of the Kulturzentrum’s Z-Magazin.

COURSE MATERIAL
Please acquire a copy of the following books:

• George Orwell, 1984 (Penguin, 2008)
• Alan Moore, V for Vendetta (DC Comics, 2020)
• Ali Smith, Autumn (Penguin, 2017)

Shorter readings will be provided. Please note that this is a reading-intensive course.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
At the end of this semester, you will be able to:
− give an overview of the democratic potential and/or shortcomings of literature
− outline representational strategies tied to democratic thought across various genres
− analyse major themes relevant to the relationship between literature and democracy by making use of theoretical and sociocultural contexts to justify your analysis
− independently plan and develop an argument for an academic term paper on a text of your choice
− use your critical knowledge creatively by conceptualising and designing a Zine

In this seminar we will combine an interest in the history of scientific expeditions with an interest in the history of speculative fiction. Based on a dialogue between approaches from literary studies with other disciplines such as the history of science, human geography, as well as critical anthropology, we will ask: What is an expedition? What is an expedition narrative? Based on a reading of 20th and 21st century speculative fiction, from science fiction to the new weird, we will ask how they take up, twist and topple concepts such as "contact zone" or "colonial encounter".

Please, buy and read the following novel:

• Jeff VanderMeer, Annihiliation (2014) [e.g., 978-0008139100 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]

Two further texts - Ted Chiang's novella “Story of Your Life” (1998) and Naomi Mitchison's novel Memoirs of a Spacewoman (1962) - will be provided in class.

The Gothic is a genre that has spanned many years and many countries/cultures. This class questions whether there can be an Indigenous Gothic, considering the settler-colonial tropes and histories of the Gothic genre in the Americas. We will delve into various short stories from Shane Hawk’s edited collection Never Whistle At Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, as well as Jessica Johns' novel Bad Cree (2023) and Drew Hayden Taylor's graphic novel The Night Wanderer (2013), and compare them to 'traditional' North American Gothic literature. Through our readings and comparisons, we will critically analyze settler-colonialism in North America and question whether the histories of the North American Gothic genre can be enriched (or decolonized?) by Indigenous contributions to the form.

Requirements for this course are 1) active reading and participation and 2) term paper (PL) or in-class presentation (SL).

Please obtain Taylor's graphic novel and Jessica John's novel before the semester begins. The short stories from Hawk's edited collection will be provided on Stud.Ip. If you are unable to obtain the books for any reason, please send me an email.

This seminar approaches literature through its form – the formal language and structure that shape content and create their own meaning. Form and content, in this sense, are inseparable. Meaning takes shape in and through form, while form carries its own meaning(s). Forms have histories and develop through gradual refinement, cultural contact, challenges, and innovation. They also have specific affordances, which means that they tend to be suited to the engagement with some issues, questions and topics than others.
Poetic forms are a particularly good starting point for the study of form, because in poetry, formal aspects are so condensed. In the course of this seminar, we will encounter different poetic forms, such as the sonnet, the couplet, blank verse, the ode, and the ballad. Our main goal is to identify the basic characteristics and structures of these forms and to explore what they do particularly well. We will also explore these forms in a historical perspective and observe how they have evolved and changed. The focus on close textual analysis will also enable students to hone their formal reading skills and to broaden and apply their knowledge of rhetorical strategies. Paying close attention to specific texts and forms will also allow participants to explore broader questions about the relevance of form to the encounter with literature.

All compulsory reading (poems and theoretical literature) will be available on Stud.IP (see syllabus and file folders for the relevant session).

There is a strong 20th century tradition of science fiction short stories - both across North America and Great Britain. Indeed the SF short story celebrates something of a centenary as Amazing Stories, an American science fiction magazine, was first launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback. As part of this seminar, we will pay homage to this anniversary though we will mostly keep our eyes on the development of how science is represented in 21st century short fiction and how this is done across SF, speculative fiction but also, especially, historical and realist fiction.

This interdisciplinary seminar in 'blended learning format' (mostly online via Stud.IP/BBB, 1-2 offline meetings at Bremen University in June), co-taught by a physicist and a literary scholar focuses on representations of scientists, scientific methods and scientific practice in contemporary short fiction. In a rare setting with students across the universities of Oldenburg and Bremen, we will read a diverse range of science-related short stories from the Anglophone world. Thematically, our focus will vary from medical research, physics and space, to expeditionary practice and environmental concerns.

Please, buy and read ONE of the following short story anthologies and collections:
• Ra Page, ed. Litmus: Short Stories from Modern Science. Manchester: Comma Press, 2011. [ISBN: 978-1-905583-33-1 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]
• Ted Chiang. Stories of Your Life and Others. 2002. London: Picador, 2024.
• Pippa Goldschmidt. Schrödinger’s Wife (and Other Possibilities). London: Goldsmith Press, 2024. https://pippagoldschmidt.co.uk/books/schrodingers-wife-and-other-possibilities/
• Bruce Meyer, ed. Cli-Fi: Canadian Tales of Climate Change. Chicago, IL: Independent Publishers Group, 2017. [ISBN: 978-1-550966-70-1 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ] https://www.ipgbook.com/cli-fi-products-9781550966701.php

The sonnet is a short, ubiquitous poetic form of 14 lines that every student will have come across. In this seminar, we will use the history of the sonnet in English to discuss Anglophone literary and cultural history, as well as developments in themes, structure and subjectivity. Although this form has at times been called "a narrow room", "a panic closet", or even "a coffin", we will acquaint ourselves with the productiveness of this formal corset and its rich thematic scope, from Renaissance love sonnets to Victorian science sonnets, from World War I sonnets to contemporary sonnets about the experience of using dating apps. We will frame our study of the sonnet with an explicit interest in the history and productivity of "close reading", a literary studies technique first popularized by the New Critics in the US in the first half of the 20th century, but which has seen a renewed debate in the first decades of the 21st century.

This seminar introduces students to the study of cinema in the age of the climate crisis. Students will hone their skills in film analysis and expand their command of theoretical approaches to critically examine filmic representations of the environment, of natural disasters such as floods, and the relationship of various human communities to the non-human, or more-than-human, world. In doing so, students will not only engage with critical discourses around ecocinema and the blue humanities but also refine their academic reading, writing, and presentation skills as well as train their media literacy.

This class is open to BA E-SC students studying 4th semester modules. It is also open to a limited number of international exchange students and students doing ‘Freiwillige Zusatzleistungen,’ ‘Ersatzleistungen,’ and General Studies, including the sustainability certificate BRENA.

Prior enrolment via Stud.IP is mandatory and admission is limited to a maximum of thirty-five students. Further information will be made available on Stud.IP and during the first session.

Requirements
• active participation in weekly in-person meetings,
• in-depth study of the primary and secondary material in preparation for each session,
• graded or ungraded assignment in accordance with the respective module requirements (i.e. graded term paper or portfolio OR ungraded class contribution).

Corpus-assisted discourse analysis (CADA) is a “data-driven methodology [that] allows researchers to identify frequent and salient patterns of language use that often operate covertly beyond our conscious awareness but which provide a lens to the hegemonic belief systems of a community of language users.” Poole 2022: 17.
In this course, we will use corpus linguistic methods to study discourses, ranging from the language of capitalism to positive and negative news and the representation of animals in discourse, among others. We use a set of tools for investigating our own DIY corpora as well as corpora that are accessible on the internet.
While we do mostly quantitative analyses, e.g. of collocations or keywords, you will also learn to interpret the results and draw conclusions firmly based in critical or positive discourse analysis. For your assignments, you study a discourse of your own choice with the tool you find most suitable, to answer your own research question.

Literature
Baker, Paul. 2024. Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. 2nd ed. Bloomsbury Academic. Available as ebook from the library.

In this course we will explore the intersections between language, sexuality, and gender. Students will be equipped with knowledge of language use by and about LGBTQ+ people (Lavender Linguistics, LL) and discursive practices of (hetero)normativity in language (Queer Linguistics, QL). Students will read texts focusing on the theoretical foundations of QL, the history of LL, as well as research papers in applied QL/LL. In accordance with the latter, students will also be introduced to various methodologies and fields of research within QL/LL. Throughout the semester, they will conduct their own small-scale study.

Content notice: We might read papers that contain linguistic examples of sexual practices, body parts, or homo-/transphobia.

Requirements:
1) Active participation in class.
2) Participants must be willing to prepare readings on in-depth theory that may, at times, exceed the extent of other linguistics seminars. This is a necessity.

Assessment (depending on module & no of CP)

Prüfungsleistung (graded assessment) 6 CP:
1) Short presentation and critical excerpt of a research paper (ungraded)
2) Poster presentation of your own mini-study or term paper -> deadline 2 August 2026 (graded)

Prüfungsleistung (graded assessment) 3 CP:
1) Short presentation of a research paper (ungraded)
2) Poster presentation of your own mini-study (graded)

Studenleistung (ungraded assessment) 3 CP, pick one:
Short presentation and critical excerpt of a research paper
OR
Poster presentation of your own mini-study

Literature (no need to buy)

Introductions and monographs:

Edited volumes:

Language ideologies are “cultural conceptions about language, its nature, structure and use, and about the place of communicative behavior in social life” (Gal, 2006, p. 171). They also factor into the construction of an individual’s linguistically indexed identity, as language choices become “acts of identity” (Le Page & Tabouret-Keller, 1985).

In this class, we investigate language ideologies in the English-speaking world and within the context of multilingual and multicultural societies. Students also carry out small empirical projects using different methodological approaches to investigate language ideologies in Germany and beyond.

This seminar will examine different aspects of plurilingualism, as well as plurilingual teaching and learning in language classrooms. In the following, you find a list of topics we will discuss in the seminar:

• Defining and critically assessing terms that are used in the area of plurilingualism
• Analyzing the work done by the Council of Europe regarding plurilingualism (FREPA, CEFR descriptors, companion volume of the CEFR, European Language Portfolio
• Getting to know the importance of language awareness
• Exploring existing plurilingual teaching and learning approaches, methods, task, and activities that can be used in the language learning classroom
• Developing and implementing your own plurilingual activity within the seminar
• ...

The seminar links research to practice. The class work will consist of thematic as well as scientific work input, discussions, individual work, group work, reflection tasks, …

Corpus-assisted discourse analysis (CADA) is a “data-driven methodology [that] allows researchers to identify frequent and salient patterns of language use that often operate covertly beyond our conscious awareness but which provide a lens to the hegemonic belief systems of a community of language users.” Poole 2022: 17.
In this course, we will use corpus linguistic methods to study discourses, ranging from the language of capitalism to positive and negative news and the representation of animals in discourse, among others. We use a set of tools for investigating our own DIY corpora as well as corpora that are accessible on the internet.
While we do mostly quantitative analyses, e.g. of collocations or keywords, you will also learn to interpret the results and draw conclusions firmly based in critical or positive discourse analysis. For your assignments, you study a discourse of your own choice with the tool you find most suitable, to answer your own research question.

Literature
Baker, Paul. 2024. Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. 2nd ed. Bloomsbury Academic. Available as ebook from the library.

In this course we will explore the intersections between language, sexuality, and gender. Students will be equipped with knowledge of language use by and about LGBTQ+ people (Lavender Linguistics, LL) and discursive practices of (hetero)normativity in language (Queer Linguistics, QL). Students will read texts focusing on the theoretical foundations of QL, the history of LL, as well as research papers in applied QL/LL. In accordance with the latter, students will also be introduced to various methodologies and fields of research within QL/LL. Throughout the semester, they will conduct their own small-scale study.

Content notice: We might read papers that contain linguistic examples of sexual practices, body parts, or homo-/transphobia.

Requirements:
1) Active participation in class.
2) Participants must be willing to prepare readings on in-depth theory that may, at times, exceed the extent of other linguistics seminars. This is a necessity.

Assessment (depending on module & no of CP)

Prüfungsleistung (graded assessment) 6 CP:
1) Short presentation and critical excerpt of a research paper (ungraded)
2) Poster presentation of your own mini-study or term paper -> deadline 2 August 2026 (graded)

Prüfungsleistung (graded assessment) 3 CP:
1) Short presentation of a research paper (ungraded)
2) Poster presentation of your own mini-study (graded)

Studenleistung (ungraded assessment) 3 CP, pick one:
Short presentation and critical excerpt of a research paper
OR
Poster presentation of your own mini-study

Literature (no need to buy)

Introductions and monographs:

Edited volumes:

Language ideologies are “cultural conceptions about language, its nature, structure and use, and about the place of communicative behavior in social life” (Gal, 2006, p. 171). They also factor into the construction of an individual’s linguistically indexed identity, as language choices become “acts of identity” (Le Page & Tabouret-Keller, 1985).

In this class, we investigate language ideologies in the English-speaking world and within the context of multilingual and multicultural societies. Students also carry out small empirical projects using different methodological approaches to investigate language ideologies in Germany and beyond.

This seminar will examine different aspects of plurilingualism, as well as plurilingual teaching and learning in language classrooms. In the following, you find a list of topics we will discuss in the seminar:

• Defining and critically assessing terms that are used in the area of plurilingualism
• Analyzing the work done by the Council of Europe regarding plurilingualism (FREPA, CEFR descriptors, companion volume of the CEFR, European Language Portfolio
• Getting to know the importance of language awareness
• Exploring existing plurilingual teaching and learning approaches, methods, task, and activities that can be used in the language learning classroom
• Developing and implementing your own plurilingual activity within the seminar
• ...

The seminar links research to practice. The class work will consist of thematic as well as scientific work input, discussions, individual work, group work, reflection tasks, …

In October 2025, we “heard [her] calling on the megaphone”: Shakespeare’s Ophelia experienced a widely discussed revival in popular culture through Taylor Swift. This renewed attention invites us to ask again what the true fate of Ophelia might be. Why has this figure continued to fascinate artists, writers, and audiences for over four centuries?

With this question in mind, this seminar examines the figure of Ophelia throughout the ages. Together, we will read Shakespeare’s Hamlet and then trace Ophelia’s afterlives across paintings, theatre, stage and film adaptations, novels, lyrical texts, and pop culture more broadly. The seminar combines close reading with visual analysis and cultural discussion and encourages students to bring in their own observations and interests.

To receive credit for this course, you must
• have an excellent knowledge of the assigned readings and materials.
• actively participate in discussions and smaller group work.
• attend one mandatory library workshop (June 11, 2026, from 12:15 to 13:45).
• create an annotated bibliography for a potential research paper (due on June 17, 2026).
• make a meaningful contribution to our exhibition at the Day of Sciences on June 27, 2026 (more information will follow in our first session).

If you need a grade in this course, you additionally need to
• submit an abstract for your term paper (due on July 5, 2026 / 0% of final grade for BPO 2025, 20% of final grade for BPO 2011)
• write a term paper (24.000–28.000 characters: text without blanks, cover, table of contents, works cited, affidavit; due on September 15, 2026 / 100% of final grade for BPO 2025, 80% of final grade for BPO 2011).

We’ll deal with the Studienleistungen and exams in our first session as well.

Most of the works will be made accessible on Stud.IP. However, please purchase the following editions:
Klein, Lisa. Ophelia. Bloomsbury Academic, 2008. (ISBN: 9781599902289)
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Edited by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016. (ISBN: 9781472518385)

If you have any questions beforehand, please don’t hesitate to email me (wolfk@uni-bremen.de). In order to be finally accepted into this seminar, you have to show up at the first three sessions.

I’m looking forward to discovering, questioning, and rethinking Ophelia’s fate together with you!

All the best,
Kevin

This seminar introduces students to the study of cinema in the age of the climate crisis. Students will hone their skills in film analysis and expand their command of theoretical approaches to critically examine filmic representations of the environment, of natural disasters such as floods, and the relationship of various human communities to the non-human, or more-than-human, world. In doing so, students will not only engage with critical discourses around ecocinema and the blue humanities but also refine their academic reading, writing, and presentation skills as well as train their media literacy.

This class is open to BA E-SC students studying 4th semester modules. It is also open to a limited number of international exchange students and students doing ‘Freiwillige Zusatzleistungen,’ ‘Ersatzleistungen,’ and General Studies, including the sustainability certificate BRENA.

Prior enrolment via Stud.IP is mandatory and admission is limited to a maximum of thirty-five students. Further information will be made available on Stud.IP and during the first session.

Requirements
• active participation in weekly in-person meetings,
• in-depth study of the primary and secondary material in preparation for each session,
• graded or ungraded assignment in accordance with the respective module requirements (i.e. graded term paper or portfolio OR ungraded class contribution).

This seminar will introduce students to the genre of so-called walking simulators—story-driven exploration video games where walking around constitutes the primary gameplay mechanic—and the scholarly and public discussions surrounding it. Students will choose three primary texts from a list of walking simulators and are asked to play and engage critically with those games. The course will begin with a short introduction to the genre of walking simulators and an overview of how to analyze video games using the tools of transmedial narratology. While our first three sessions are dedicated to acquiring the vocabulary and analytical skills necessary for a scholarly discussion of video games more broadly and walking simulators in particular, the following sessions are loosely organized around recurring tropes and themes in those types of games. During those sessions, we will talk about selected secondary texts and reflect on how they could be made productive for an analysis of the students’ chosen primary texts. Ultimately, students will leave this course with a deeper insight into the genre of walking simulators and their affordances, the debates they inspire in both public and academic spaces, and the ability to develop research questions that can be made productive for an analysis of those types of video games.

In October 2025, we “heard [her] calling on the megaphone”: Shakespeare’s Ophelia experienced a widely discussed revival in popular culture through Taylor Swift. This renewed attention invites us to ask again what the true fate of Ophelia might be. Why has this figure continued to fascinate artists, writers, and audiences for over four centuries?

With this question in mind, this seminar examines the figure of Ophelia throughout the ages. Together, we will read Shakespeare’s Hamlet and then trace Ophelia’s afterlives across paintings, theatre, stage and film adaptations, novels, lyrical texts, and pop culture more broadly. The seminar combines close reading with visual analysis and cultural discussion and encourages students to bring in their own observations and interests.

To receive credit for this course, you must
• have an excellent knowledge of the assigned readings and materials.
• actively participate in discussions and smaller group work.
• attend one mandatory library workshop (June 11, 2026, from 12:15 to 13:45).
• create an annotated bibliography for a potential research paper (due on June 17, 2026).
• make a meaningful contribution to our exhibition at the Day of Sciences on June 27, 2026 (more information will follow in our first session).

If you need a grade in this course, you additionally need to
• submit an abstract for your term paper (due on July 5, 2026 / 0% of final grade for BPO 2025, 20% of final grade for BPO 2011)
• write a term paper (24.000–28.000 characters: text without blanks, cover, table of contents, works cited, affidavit; due on September 15, 2026 / 100% of final grade for BPO 2025, 80% of final grade for BPO 2011).

We’ll deal with the Studienleistungen and exams in our first session as well.

Most of the works will be made accessible on Stud.IP. However, please purchase the following editions:
Klein, Lisa. Ophelia. Bloomsbury Academic, 2008. (ISBN: 9781599902289)
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Edited by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016. (ISBN: 9781472518385)

If you have any questions beforehand, please don’t hesitate to email me (wolfk@uni-bremen.de). In order to be finally accepted into this seminar, you have to show up at the first three sessions.

I’m looking forward to discovering, questioning, and rethinking Ophelia’s fate together with you!

All the best,
Kevin

This seminar introduces students to the study of cinema in the age of the climate crisis. Students will hone their skills in film analysis and expand their command of theoretical approaches to critically examine filmic representations of the environment, of natural disasters such as floods, and the relationship of various human communities to the non-human, or more-than-human, world. In doing so, students will not only engage with critical discourses around ecocinema and the blue humanities but also refine their academic reading, writing, and presentation skills as well as train their media literacy.

This class is open to BA E-SC students studying 4th semester modules. It is also open to a limited number of international exchange students and students doing ‘Freiwillige Zusatzleistungen,’ ‘Ersatzleistungen,’ and General Studies, including the sustainability certificate BRENA.

Prior enrolment via Stud.IP is mandatory and admission is limited to a maximum of thirty-five students. Further information will be made available on Stud.IP and during the first session.

Requirements
• active participation in weekly in-person meetings,
• in-depth study of the primary and secondary material in preparation for each session,
• graded or ungraded assignment in accordance with the respective module requirements (i.e. graded term paper or portfolio OR ungraded class contribution).

This seminar will introduce students to the genre of so-called walking simulators—story-driven exploration video games where walking around constitutes the primary gameplay mechanic—and the scholarly and public discussions surrounding it. Students will choose three primary texts from a list of walking simulators and are asked to play and engage critically with those games. The course will begin with a short introduction to the genre of walking simulators and an overview of how to analyze video games using the tools of transmedial narratology. While our first three sessions are dedicated to acquiring the vocabulary and analytical skills necessary for a scholarly discussion of video games more broadly and walking simulators in particular, the following sessions are loosely organized around recurring tropes and themes in those types of games. During those sessions, we will talk about selected secondary texts and reflect on how they could be made productive for an analysis of the students’ chosen primary texts. Ultimately, students will leave this course with a deeper insight into the genre of walking simulators and their affordances, the debates they inspire in both public and academic spaces, and the ability to develop research questions that can be made productive for an analysis of those types of video games.

This class introduces students to the interdisciplinary study of water and culture, with a focus on the intersections of the blue humanities with social sciences, geography, literary and cultural studies, and the arts. The class consists of a mixture of seminar sessions and guest lectures by invited speakers. Scholars and teachers both from U Bremen and from elsewhere will deliver lectures on the theme “Making Waves: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Water and Culture.” In the sessions between the lectures, we will discuss corresponding theoretical and analytical texts as well as analyze primary material in accordance with the subject matter of the presentations and to critically reflect on their respective ideas and arguments. Students will obtain an overview of the interdisciplinary study of water and culture in the humanities and deepen their skills in cultural studies.

This class is open to BA E-SC students studying 4th semester modules. It is also open to a limited number of international exchange students and students doing ‘Freiwillige Zusatzleistungen,’ ‘Ersatzleistungen,’ and General Studies, including the sustainability certificate BRENA.

Prior enrolment via Stud.IP is mandatory and admission is limited to a maximum of thirty-five students. Further information will be made available on Stud.IP. Please check Stud.IP regularly for updates.
Requirements
• active participation in weekly in-person meetings,
• in-depth study of the primary and secondary material in preparation for each session,
• graded or ungraded assignment in accordance with the respective module requirements.

Corpus-assisted discourse analysis (CADA) is a “data-driven methodology [that] allows researchers to identify frequent and salient patterns of language use that often operate covertly beyond our conscious awareness but which provide a lens to the hegemonic belief systems of a community of language users.” Poole 2022: 17.
In this course, we will use corpus linguistic methods to study discourses, ranging from the language of capitalism to positive and negative news and the representation of animals in discourse, among others. We use a set of tools for investigating our own DIY corpora as well as corpora that are accessible on the internet.
While we do mostly quantitative analyses, e.g. of collocations or keywords, you will also learn to interpret the results and draw conclusions firmly based in critical or positive discourse analysis. For your assignments, you study a discourse of your own choice with the tool you find most suitable, to answer your own research question.

Literature
Baker, Paul. 2024. Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. 2nd ed. Bloomsbury Academic. Available as ebook from the library.

In this course we will explore the intersections between language, sexuality, and gender. Students will be equipped with knowledge of language use by and about LGBTQ+ people (Lavender Linguistics, LL) and discursive practices of (hetero)normativity in language (Queer Linguistics, QL). Students will read texts focusing on the theoretical foundations of QL, the history of LL, as well as research papers in applied QL/LL. In accordance with the latter, students will also be introduced to various methodologies and fields of research within QL/LL. Throughout the semester, they will conduct their own small-scale study.

Content notice: We might read papers that contain linguistic examples of sexual practices, body parts, or homo-/transphobia.

Requirements:
1) Active participation in class.
2) Participants must be willing to prepare readings on in-depth theory that may, at times, exceed the extent of other linguistics seminars. This is a necessity.

Assessment (depending on module & no of CP)

Prüfungsleistung (graded assessment) 6 CP:
1) Short presentation and critical excerpt of a research paper (ungraded)
2) Poster presentation of your own mini-study or term paper -> deadline 2 August 2026 (graded)

Prüfungsleistung (graded assessment) 3 CP:
1) Short presentation of a research paper (ungraded)
2) Poster presentation of your own mini-study (graded)

Studenleistung (ungraded assessment) 3 CP, pick one:
Short presentation and critical excerpt of a research paper
OR
Poster presentation of your own mini-study

Literature (no need to buy)

Introductions and monographs:

Edited volumes:

Language ideologies are “cultural conceptions about language, its nature, structure and use, and about the place of communicative behavior in social life” (Gal, 2006, p. 171). They also factor into the construction of an individual’s linguistically indexed identity, as language choices become “acts of identity” (Le Page & Tabouret-Keller, 1985).

In this class, we investigate language ideologies in the English-speaking world and within the context of multilingual and multicultural societies. Students also carry out small empirical projects using different methodological approaches to investigate language ideologies in Germany and beyond.

This seminar will examine different aspects of plurilingualism, as well as plurilingual teaching and learning in language classrooms. In the following, you find a list of topics we will discuss in the seminar:

• Defining and critically assessing terms that are used in the area of plurilingualism
• Analyzing the work done by the Council of Europe regarding plurilingualism (FREPA, CEFR descriptors, companion volume of the CEFR, European Language Portfolio
• Getting to know the importance of language awareness
• Exploring existing plurilingual teaching and learning approaches, methods, task, and activities that can be used in the language learning classroom
• Developing and implementing your own plurilingual activity within the seminar
• ...

The seminar links research to practice. The class work will consist of thematic as well as scientific work input, discussions, individual work, group work, reflection tasks, …

In October 2025, we “heard [her] calling on the megaphone”: Shakespeare’s Ophelia experienced a widely discussed revival in popular culture through Taylor Swift. This renewed attention invites us to ask again what the true fate of Ophelia might be. Why has this figure continued to fascinate artists, writers, and audiences for over four centuries?

With this question in mind, this seminar examines the figure of Ophelia throughout the ages. Together, we will read Shakespeare’s Hamlet and then trace Ophelia’s afterlives across paintings, theatre, stage and film adaptations, novels, lyrical texts, and pop culture more broadly. The seminar combines close reading with visual analysis and cultural discussion and encourages students to bring in their own observations and interests.

To receive credit for this course, you must
• have an excellent knowledge of the assigned readings and materials.
• actively participate in discussions and smaller group work.
• attend one mandatory library workshop (June 11, 2026, from 12:15 to 13:45).
• create an annotated bibliography for a potential research paper (due on June 17, 2026).
• make a meaningful contribution to our exhibition at the Day of Sciences on June 27, 2026 (more information will follow in our first session).

If you need a grade in this course, you additionally need to
• submit an abstract for your term paper (due on July 5, 2026 / 0% of final grade for BPO 2025, 20% of final grade for BPO 2011)
• write a term paper (24.000–28.000 characters: text without blanks, cover, table of contents, works cited, affidavit; due on September 15, 2026 / 100% of final grade for BPO 2025, 80% of final grade for BPO 2011).

We’ll deal with the Studienleistungen and exams in our first session as well.

Most of the works will be made accessible on Stud.IP. However, please purchase the following editions:
Klein, Lisa. Ophelia. Bloomsbury Academic, 2008. (ISBN: 9781599902289)
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Edited by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016. (ISBN: 9781472518385)

If you have any questions beforehand, please don’t hesitate to email me (wolfk@uni-bremen.de). In order to be finally accepted into this seminar, you have to show up at the first three sessions.

I’m looking forward to discovering, questioning, and rethinking Ophelia’s fate together with you!

All the best,
Kevin

COURSE DESCRIPTION
In this course, we will consider how democratic thought, social protest and civil disobedience are expressed, negotiated and/or advocated for in British literature. We will conceptualise what we mean when we speak about democracy and civic participation, discuss the value of democratic systems and what is at stake when they are threatened, and consider the role literature has played in these debates.
Our focus will be on contemporary writing (post-1945): we consider the democratic potential of a range of narratives and genres, from dystopian fiction, satire, drama and spoken word poetry to biopics, protest short fiction, videogames and the state-of-the-nation novel. The exact selection will be finalised in dialogue with the course participants.
This course includes a cooperation with the Bremer Kulturzentrum Schlachthof: we will be taking part in a Zine workshop and present the results in the form of an exhibition. Interested students are invited to contribute to an issue of the Kulturzentrum’s Z-Magazin.

COURSE MATERIAL
Please acquire a copy of the following books:

• George Orwell, 1984 (Penguin, 2008)
• Alan Moore, V for Vendetta (DC Comics, 2020)
• Ali Smith, Autumn (Penguin, 2017)

Shorter readings will be provided. Please note that this is a reading-intensive course.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
At the end of this semester, you will be able to:
− give an overview of the democratic potential and/or shortcomings of literature
− outline representational strategies tied to democratic thought across various genres
− analyse major themes relevant to the relationship between literature and democracy by making use of theoretical and sociocultural contexts to justify your analysis
− independently plan and develop an argument for an academic term paper on a text of your choice
− use your critical knowledge creatively by conceptualising and designing a Zine

In this seminar we will combine an interest in the history of scientific expeditions with an interest in the history of speculative fiction. Based on a dialogue between approaches from literary studies with other disciplines such as the history of science, human geography, as well as critical anthropology, we will ask: What is an expedition? What is an expedition narrative? Based on a reading of 20th and 21st century speculative fiction, from science fiction to the new weird, we will ask how they take up, twist and topple concepts such as "contact zone" or "colonial encounter".

Please, buy and read the following novel:

• Jeff VanderMeer, Annihiliation (2014) [e.g., 978-0008139100 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]

Two further texts - Ted Chiang's novella “Story of Your Life” (1998) and Naomi Mitchison's novel Memoirs of a Spacewoman (1962) - will be provided in class.

The Gothic is a genre that has spanned many years and many countries/cultures. This class questions whether there can be an Indigenous Gothic, considering the settler-colonial tropes and histories of the Gothic genre in the Americas. We will delve into various short stories from Shane Hawk’s edited collection Never Whistle At Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, as well as Jessica Johns' novel Bad Cree (2023) and Drew Hayden Taylor's graphic novel The Night Wanderer (2013), and compare them to 'traditional' North American Gothic literature. Through our readings and comparisons, we will critically analyze settler-colonialism in North America and question whether the histories of the North American Gothic genre can be enriched (or decolonized?) by Indigenous contributions to the form.

Requirements for this course are 1) active reading and participation and 2) term paper (PL) or in-class presentation (SL).

Please obtain Taylor's graphic novel and Jessica John's novel before the semester begins. The short stories from Hawk's edited collection will be provided on Stud.Ip. If you are unable to obtain the books for any reason, please send me an email.

This seminar approaches literature through its form – the formal language and structure that shape content and create their own meaning. Form and content, in this sense, are inseparable. Meaning takes shape in and through form, while form carries its own meaning(s). Forms have histories and develop through gradual refinement, cultural contact, challenges, and innovation. They also have specific affordances, which means that they tend to be suited to the engagement with some issues, questions and topics than others.
Poetic forms are a particularly good starting point for the study of form, because in poetry, formal aspects are so condensed. In the course of this seminar, we will encounter different poetic forms, such as the sonnet, the couplet, blank verse, the ode, and the ballad. Our main goal is to identify the basic characteristics and structures of these forms and to explore what they do particularly well. We will also explore these forms in a historical perspective and observe how they have evolved and changed. The focus on close textual analysis will also enable students to hone their formal reading skills and to broaden and apply their knowledge of rhetorical strategies. Paying close attention to specific texts and forms will also allow participants to explore broader questions about the relevance of form to the encounter with literature.

All compulsory reading (poems and theoretical literature) will be available on Stud.IP (see syllabus and file folders for the relevant session).

There is a strong 20th century tradition of science fiction short stories - both across North America and Great Britain. Indeed the SF short story celebrates something of a centenary as Amazing Stories, an American science fiction magazine, was first launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback. As part of this seminar, we will pay homage to this anniversary though we will mostly keep our eyes on the development of how science is represented in 21st century short fiction and how this is done across SF, speculative fiction but also, especially, historical and realist fiction.

This interdisciplinary seminar in 'blended learning format' (mostly online via Stud.IP/BBB, 1-2 offline meetings at Bremen University in June), co-taught by a physicist and a literary scholar focuses on representations of scientists, scientific methods and scientific practice in contemporary short fiction. In a rare setting with students across the universities of Oldenburg and Bremen, we will read a diverse range of science-related short stories from the Anglophone world. Thematically, our focus will vary from medical research, physics and space, to expeditionary practice and environmental concerns.

Please, buy and read ONE of the following short story anthologies and collections:
• Ra Page, ed. Litmus: Short Stories from Modern Science. Manchester: Comma Press, 2011. [ISBN: 978-1-905583-33-1 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]
• Ted Chiang. Stories of Your Life and Others. 2002. London: Picador, 2024.
• Pippa Goldschmidt. Schrödinger’s Wife (and Other Possibilities). London: Goldsmith Press, 2024. https://pippagoldschmidt.co.uk/books/schrodingers-wife-and-other-possibilities/
• Bruce Meyer, ed. Cli-Fi: Canadian Tales of Climate Change. Chicago, IL: Independent Publishers Group, 2017. [ISBN: 978-1-550966-70-1 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ] https://www.ipgbook.com/cli-fi-products-9781550966701.php

The sonnet is a short, ubiquitous poetic form of 14 lines that every student will have come across. In this seminar, we will use the history of the sonnet in English to discuss Anglophone literary and cultural history, as well as developments in themes, structure and subjectivity. Although this form has at times been called "a narrow room", "a panic closet", or even "a coffin", we will acquaint ourselves with the productiveness of this formal corset and its rich thematic scope, from Renaissance love sonnets to Victorian science sonnets, from World War I sonnets to contemporary sonnets about the experience of using dating apps. We will frame our study of the sonnet with an explicit interest in the history and productivity of "close reading", a literary studies technique first popularized by the New Critics in the US in the first half of the 20th century, but which has seen a renewed debate in the first decades of the 21st century.

This seminar introduces students to the study of cinema in the age of the climate crisis. Students will hone their skills in film analysis and expand their command of theoretical approaches to critically examine filmic representations of the environment, of natural disasters such as floods, and the relationship of various human communities to the non-human, or more-than-human, world. In doing so, students will not only engage with critical discourses around ecocinema and the blue humanities but also refine their academic reading, writing, and presentation skills as well as train their media literacy.

This class is open to BA E-SC students studying 4th semester modules. It is also open to a limited number of international exchange students and students doing ‘Freiwillige Zusatzleistungen,’ ‘Ersatzleistungen,’ and General Studies, including the sustainability certificate BRENA.

Prior enrolment via Stud.IP is mandatory and admission is limited to a maximum of thirty-five students. Further information will be made available on Stud.IP and during the first session.

Requirements
• active participation in weekly in-person meetings,
• in-depth study of the primary and secondary material in preparation for each session,
• graded or ungraded assignment in accordance with the respective module requirements (i.e. graded term paper or portfolio OR ungraded class contribution).

This seminar will introduce students to the genre of so-called walking simulators—story-driven exploration video games where walking around constitutes the primary gameplay mechanic—and the scholarly and public discussions surrounding it. Students will choose three primary texts from a list of walking simulators and are asked to play and engage critically with those games. The course will begin with a short introduction to the genre of walking simulators and an overview of how to analyze video games using the tools of transmedial narratology. While our first three sessions are dedicated to acquiring the vocabulary and analytical skills necessary for a scholarly discussion of video games more broadly and walking simulators in particular, the following sessions are loosely organized around recurring tropes and themes in those types of games. During those sessions, we will talk about selected secondary texts and reflect on how they could be made productive for an analysis of the students’ chosen primary texts. Ultimately, students will leave this course with a deeper insight into the genre of walking simulators and their affordances, the debates they inspire in both public and academic spaces, and the ability to develop research questions that can be made productive for an analysis of those types of video games.

This class introduces students to the interdisciplinary study of water and culture, with a focus on the intersections of the blue humanities with social sciences, geography, literary and cultural studies, and the arts. The class consists of a mixture of seminar sessions and guest lectures by invited speakers. Scholars and teachers both from U Bremen and from elsewhere will deliver lectures on the theme “Making Waves: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Water and Culture.” In the sessions between the lectures, we will discuss corresponding theoretical and analytical texts as well as analyze primary material in accordance with the subject matter of the presentations and to critically reflect on their respective ideas and arguments. Students will obtain an overview of the interdisciplinary study of water and culture in the humanities and deepen their skills in cultural studies.

This class is open to BA E-SC students studying 4th semester modules. It is also open to a limited number of international exchange students and students doing ‘Freiwillige Zusatzleistungen,’ ‘Ersatzleistungen,’ and General Studies, including the sustainability certificate BRENA.

Prior enrolment via Stud.IP is mandatory and admission is limited to a maximum of thirty-five students. Further information will be made available on Stud.IP. Please check Stud.IP regularly for updates.
Requirements
• active participation in weekly in-person meetings,
• in-depth study of the primary and secondary material in preparation for each session,
• graded or ungraded assignment in accordance with the respective module requirements.

Corpus-assisted discourse analysis (CADA) is a “data-driven methodology [that] allows researchers to identify frequent and salient patterns of language use that often operate covertly beyond our conscious awareness but which provide a lens to the hegemonic belief systems of a community of language users.” Poole 2022: 17.
In this course, we will use corpus linguistic methods to study discourses, ranging from the language of capitalism to positive and negative news and the representation of animals in discourse, among others. We use a set of tools for investigating our own DIY corpora as well as corpora that are accessible on the internet.
While we do mostly quantitative analyses, e.g. of collocations or keywords, you will also learn to interpret the results and draw conclusions firmly based in critical or positive discourse analysis. For your assignments, you study a discourse of your own choice with the tool you find most suitable, to answer your own research question.

Literature
Baker, Paul. 2024. Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. 2nd ed. Bloomsbury Academic. Available as ebook from the library.

In this course we will explore the intersections between language, sexuality, and gender. Students will be equipped with knowledge of language use by and about LGBTQ+ people (Lavender Linguistics, LL) and discursive practices of (hetero)normativity in language (Queer Linguistics, QL). Students will read texts focusing on the theoretical foundations of QL, the history of LL, as well as research papers in applied QL/LL. In accordance with the latter, students will also be introduced to various methodologies and fields of research within QL/LL. Throughout the semester, they will conduct their own small-scale study.

Content notice: We might read papers that contain linguistic examples of sexual practices, body parts, or homo-/transphobia.

Requirements:
1) Active participation in class.
2) Participants must be willing to prepare readings on in-depth theory that may, at times, exceed the extent of other linguistics seminars. This is a necessity.

Assessment (depending on module & no of CP)

Prüfungsleistung (graded assessment) 6 CP:
1) Short presentation and critical excerpt of a research paper (ungraded)
2) Poster presentation of your own mini-study or term paper -> deadline 2 August 2026 (graded)

Prüfungsleistung (graded assessment) 3 CP:
1) Short presentation of a research paper (ungraded)
2) Poster presentation of your own mini-study (graded)

Studenleistung (ungraded assessment) 3 CP, pick one:
Short presentation and critical excerpt of a research paper
OR
Poster presentation of your own mini-study

Literature (no need to buy)

Introductions and monographs:

Edited volumes:

Language ideologies are “cultural conceptions about language, its nature, structure and use, and about the place of communicative behavior in social life” (Gal, 2006, p. 171). They also factor into the construction of an individual’s linguistically indexed identity, as language choices become “acts of identity” (Le Page & Tabouret-Keller, 1985).

In this class, we investigate language ideologies in the English-speaking world and within the context of multilingual and multicultural societies. Students also carry out small empirical projects using different methodological approaches to investigate language ideologies in Germany and beyond.

This seminar will examine different aspects of plurilingualism, as well as plurilingual teaching and learning in language classrooms. In the following, you find a list of topics we will discuss in the seminar:

• Defining and critically assessing terms that are used in the area of plurilingualism
• Analyzing the work done by the Council of Europe regarding plurilingualism (FREPA, CEFR descriptors, companion volume of the CEFR, European Language Portfolio
• Getting to know the importance of language awareness
• Exploring existing plurilingual teaching and learning approaches, methods, task, and activities that can be used in the language learning classroom
• Developing and implementing your own plurilingual activity within the seminar
• ...

The seminar links research to practice. The class work will consist of thematic as well as scientific work input, discussions, individual work, group work, reflection tasks, …

In October 2025, we “heard [her] calling on the megaphone”: Shakespeare’s Ophelia experienced a widely discussed revival in popular culture through Taylor Swift. This renewed attention invites us to ask again what the true fate of Ophelia might be. Why has this figure continued to fascinate artists, writers, and audiences for over four centuries?

With this question in mind, this seminar examines the figure of Ophelia throughout the ages. Together, we will read Shakespeare’s Hamlet and then trace Ophelia’s afterlives across paintings, theatre, stage and film adaptations, novels, lyrical texts, and pop culture more broadly. The seminar combines close reading with visual analysis and cultural discussion and encourages students to bring in their own observations and interests.

To receive credit for this course, you must
• have an excellent knowledge of the assigned readings and materials.
• actively participate in discussions and smaller group work.
• attend one mandatory library workshop (June 11, 2026, from 12:15 to 13:45).
• create an annotated bibliography for a potential research paper (due on June 17, 2026).
• make a meaningful contribution to our exhibition at the Day of Sciences on June 27, 2026 (more information will follow in our first session).

If you need a grade in this course, you additionally need to
• submit an abstract for your term paper (due on July 5, 2026 / 0% of final grade for BPO 2025, 20% of final grade for BPO 2011)
• write a term paper (24.000–28.000 characters: text without blanks, cover, table of contents, works cited, affidavit; due on September 15, 2026 / 100% of final grade for BPO 2025, 80% of final grade for BPO 2011).

We’ll deal with the Studienleistungen and exams in our first session as well.

Most of the works will be made accessible on Stud.IP. However, please purchase the following editions:
Klein, Lisa. Ophelia. Bloomsbury Academic, 2008. (ISBN: 9781599902289)
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Edited by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016. (ISBN: 9781472518385)

If you have any questions beforehand, please don’t hesitate to email me (wolfk@uni-bremen.de). In order to be finally accepted into this seminar, you have to show up at the first three sessions.

I’m looking forward to discovering, questioning, and rethinking Ophelia’s fate together with you!

All the best,
Kevin

COURSE DESCRIPTION
In this course, we will consider how democratic thought, social protest and civil disobedience are expressed, negotiated and/or advocated for in British literature. We will conceptualise what we mean when we speak about democracy and civic participation, discuss the value of democratic systems and what is at stake when they are threatened, and consider the role literature has played in these debates.
Our focus will be on contemporary writing (post-1945): we consider the democratic potential of a range of narratives and genres, from dystopian fiction, satire, drama and spoken word poetry to biopics, protest short fiction, videogames and the state-of-the-nation novel. The exact selection will be finalised in dialogue with the course participants.
This course includes a cooperation with the Bremer Kulturzentrum Schlachthof: we will be taking part in a Zine workshop and present the results in the form of an exhibition. Interested students are invited to contribute to an issue of the Kulturzentrum’s Z-Magazin.

COURSE MATERIAL
Please acquire a copy of the following books:

• George Orwell, 1984 (Penguin, 2008)
• Alan Moore, V for Vendetta (DC Comics, 2020)
• Ali Smith, Autumn (Penguin, 2017)

Shorter readings will be provided. Please note that this is a reading-intensive course.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
At the end of this semester, you will be able to:
− give an overview of the democratic potential and/or shortcomings of literature
− outline representational strategies tied to democratic thought across various genres
− analyse major themes relevant to the relationship between literature and democracy by making use of theoretical and sociocultural contexts to justify your analysis
− independently plan and develop an argument for an academic term paper on a text of your choice
− use your critical knowledge creatively by conceptualising and designing a Zine

In this seminar we will combine an interest in the history of scientific expeditions with an interest in the history of speculative fiction. Based on a dialogue between approaches from literary studies with other disciplines such as the history of science, human geography, as well as critical anthropology, we will ask: What is an expedition? What is an expedition narrative? Based on a reading of 20th and 21st century speculative fiction, from science fiction to the new weird, we will ask how they take up, twist and topple concepts such as "contact zone" or "colonial encounter".

Please, buy and read the following novel:

• Jeff VanderMeer, Annihiliation (2014) [e.g., 978-0008139100 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]

Two further texts - Ted Chiang's novella “Story of Your Life” (1998) and Naomi Mitchison's novel Memoirs of a Spacewoman (1962) - will be provided in class.

The Gothic is a genre that has spanned many years and many countries/cultures. This class questions whether there can be an Indigenous Gothic, considering the settler-colonial tropes and histories of the Gothic genre in the Americas. We will delve into various short stories from Shane Hawk’s edited collection Never Whistle At Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, as well as Jessica Johns' novel Bad Cree (2023) and Drew Hayden Taylor's graphic novel The Night Wanderer (2013), and compare them to 'traditional' North American Gothic literature. Through our readings and comparisons, we will critically analyze settler-colonialism in North America and question whether the histories of the North American Gothic genre can be enriched (or decolonized?) by Indigenous contributions to the form.

Requirements for this course are 1) active reading and participation and 2) term paper (PL) or in-class presentation (SL).

Please obtain Taylor's graphic novel and Jessica John's novel before the semester begins. The short stories from Hawk's edited collection will be provided on Stud.Ip. If you are unable to obtain the books for any reason, please send me an email.

This seminar approaches literature through its form – the formal language and structure that shape content and create their own meaning. Form and content, in this sense, are inseparable. Meaning takes shape in and through form, while form carries its own meaning(s). Forms have histories and develop through gradual refinement, cultural contact, challenges, and innovation. They also have specific affordances, which means that they tend to be suited to the engagement with some issues, questions and topics than others.
Poetic forms are a particularly good starting point for the study of form, because in poetry, formal aspects are so condensed. In the course of this seminar, we will encounter different poetic forms, such as the sonnet, the couplet, blank verse, the ode, and the ballad. Our main goal is to identify the basic characteristics and structures of these forms and to explore what they do particularly well. We will also explore these forms in a historical perspective and observe how they have evolved and changed. The focus on close textual analysis will also enable students to hone their formal reading skills and to broaden and apply their knowledge of rhetorical strategies. Paying close attention to specific texts and forms will also allow participants to explore broader questions about the relevance of form to the encounter with literature.

All compulsory reading (poems and theoretical literature) will be available on Stud.IP (see syllabus and file folders for the relevant session).

There is a strong 20th century tradition of science fiction short stories - both across North America and Great Britain. Indeed the SF short story celebrates something of a centenary as Amazing Stories, an American science fiction magazine, was first launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback. As part of this seminar, we will pay homage to this anniversary though we will mostly keep our eyes on the development of how science is represented in 21st century short fiction and how this is done across SF, speculative fiction but also, especially, historical and realist fiction.

This interdisciplinary seminar in 'blended learning format' (mostly online via Stud.IP/BBB, 1-2 offline meetings at Bremen University in June), co-taught by a physicist and a literary scholar focuses on representations of scientists, scientific methods and scientific practice in contemporary short fiction. In a rare setting with students across the universities of Oldenburg and Bremen, we will read a diverse range of science-related short stories from the Anglophone world. Thematically, our focus will vary from medical research, physics and space, to expeditionary practice and environmental concerns.

Please, buy and read ONE of the following short story anthologies and collections:
• Ra Page, ed. Litmus: Short Stories from Modern Science. Manchester: Comma Press, 2011. [ISBN: 978-1-905583-33-1 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]
• Ted Chiang. Stories of Your Life and Others. 2002. London: Picador, 2024.
• Pippa Goldschmidt. Schrödinger’s Wife (and Other Possibilities). London: Goldsmith Press, 2024. https://pippagoldschmidt.co.uk/books/schrodingers-wife-and-other-possibilities/
• Bruce Meyer, ed. Cli-Fi: Canadian Tales of Climate Change. Chicago, IL: Independent Publishers Group, 2017. [ISBN: 978-1-550966-70-1 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ] https://www.ipgbook.com/cli-fi-products-9781550966701.php

The sonnet is a short, ubiquitous poetic form of 14 lines that every student will have come across. In this seminar, we will use the history of the sonnet in English to discuss Anglophone literary and cultural history, as well as developments in themes, structure and subjectivity. Although this form has at times been called "a narrow room", "a panic closet", or even "a coffin", we will acquaint ourselves with the productiveness of this formal corset and its rich thematic scope, from Renaissance love sonnets to Victorian science sonnets, from World War I sonnets to contemporary sonnets about the experience of using dating apps. We will frame our study of the sonnet with an explicit interest in the history and productivity of "close reading", a literary studies technique first popularized by the New Critics in the US in the first half of the 20th century, but which has seen a renewed debate in the first decades of the 21st century.

This seminar introduces students to the study of cinema in the age of the climate crisis. Students will hone their skills in film analysis and expand their command of theoretical approaches to critically examine filmic representations of the environment, of natural disasters such as floods, and the relationship of various human communities to the non-human, or more-than-human, world. In doing so, students will not only engage with critical discourses around ecocinema and the blue humanities but also refine their academic reading, writing, and presentation skills as well as train their media literacy.

This class is open to BA E-SC students studying 4th semester modules. It is also open to a limited number of international exchange students and students doing ‘Freiwillige Zusatzleistungen,’ ‘Ersatzleistungen,’ and General Studies, including the sustainability certificate BRENA.

Prior enrolment via Stud.IP is mandatory and admission is limited to a maximum of thirty-five students. Further information will be made available on Stud.IP and during the first session.

Requirements
• active participation in weekly in-person meetings,
• in-depth study of the primary and secondary material in preparation for each session,
• graded or ungraded assignment in accordance with the respective module requirements (i.e. graded term paper or portfolio OR ungraded class contribution).

This seminar will introduce students to the genre of so-called walking simulators—story-driven exploration video games where walking around constitutes the primary gameplay mechanic—and the scholarly and public discussions surrounding it. Students will choose three primary texts from a list of walking simulators and are asked to play and engage critically with those games. The course will begin with a short introduction to the genre of walking simulators and an overview of how to analyze video games using the tools of transmedial narratology. While our first three sessions are dedicated to acquiring the vocabulary and analytical skills necessary for a scholarly discussion of video games more broadly and walking simulators in particular, the following sessions are loosely organized around recurring tropes and themes in those types of games. During those sessions, we will talk about selected secondary texts and reflect on how they could be made productive for an analysis of the students’ chosen primary texts. Ultimately, students will leave this course with a deeper insight into the genre of walking simulators and their affordances, the debates they inspire in both public and academic spaces, and the ability to develop research questions that can be made productive for an analysis of those types of video games.

University Language Skills 2 (ULS 2) is a four-hour class. You have to attend the entire class. ULS 2 is the second half of the SP Foundation module. As such it builds on the basic knowledge of academic writing established in ULS 1.

While the focus during the winter semester is on the basic structure of an academic essay, during the summer semester you will be introduced to key rhetorical strategies. These strategies include essays of argumentation, cause & effect as well as comparison & contrast. Furthermore, grammatical structures needed for writing (e.g. syntax, passive voice, conditionals) will be part of the course’s syllabus.

Requirements:
• Regular and active participation
• Thorough preparation of each session
• Written assignments (approx. 2000 words)

Materials are provided via StudIP

University Language Skills 2 (ULS 2) is a four-hour class. You have to attend the entire class. ULS 2 is the second half of the SP Foundation module. As such it builds on the basic knowledge of academic writing established in ULS 1.

While the focus during the winter semester is on the basic structure of an academic essay, during the summer semester you will be introduced to key rhetorical strategies. These strategies include essays of argumentation, cause & effect as well as comparison & contrast. Furthermore, grammatical structures needed for writing (e.g. syntax, passive voice, conditionals) will be part of the course’s syllabus.

Requirements:
• Regular and active participation
• Thorough preparation of each session
• Written assignments (approx. 2000 words)

Materials are provided via StudIP

University Language Skills 2 (ULS 2) is a four-hour class. You have to attend the entire class. ULS 2 is the second half of the SP Foundation module. As such it builds on the basic knowledge of academic writing established in ULS 1.

While the focus during the winter semester is on the basic structure of an academic essay, during the summer semester you will be introduced to key rhetorical strategies. These strategies include essays of argumentation, cause & effect as well as comparison & contrast. Furthermore, grammatical structures needed for writing (e.g. syntax, passive voice, conditionals) will be part of the course’s syllabus.

Requirements:
• Regular and active participation
• Thorough preparation of each session
• Written assignments (approx. 2000 words)

Materials are provided via StudIP

University Language Skills 2 is the second part of the SP1 module and will earn you a total of 6CPs. It is a four-hour class with two consecutive time slots, both of which MUST be attended.
The following seminar will build on skills acquired in ULS1. We will review and further develop writing skills regarding the different phases in writing, essay structure and good writing style. In addition, we will explore and develop more complex writing strategies including problem/solution, argumentation, cause/effect, and comparison/contrast.
Emphasis will be placed on the ability to recognize individual errors and work on challenging aspects of language. You will therefore continue to work on grammar and lexis at an individual, needs-based level and will be able to access self-study material to work on independently according to your own requirements outside of the classroom. This is essential in developing an autonomous learning style which will subsequently enable you to critically assess and correct your own work.
You will be expected to attend class regularly and actively participate in group discussions and activities. Task assigned to be completed between sessions must also be completed on time as well as the graded assignments to be discussed in class.

The aim of the Culture & Communication classes is to help you to prepare for the module exam to be taken to complete the SP Proficiency module.

This particular class will look at different moments which have greatly influenced events within the English-speaking world. We will investigate the processes which led to a particular event, define the event itself and explore the long-term and short-term implications that came about as a consequence. You will be required to think critically and research a topic of your own choice in detail in order to prepare for the Proficiency Interview ⇐ oral exam) at the end of the semester during which you will explain how this moment has been defining. You will also work on presentation skills and familiarise yourselves with the situation of speaking in front of others.

Materials are provided via StudIP.

The aim of the Culture & Communication classes is to help you to prepare for the module exam to be taken to complete the SP-Proficiency module.

This particular class will look at different moments which have greatly influenced events within the English-speaking world. We will investigate the processes which led to a particular event, define the event itself and explore the long-term and short-term implications that came about as a consequence. You will be required to think critically and research a topic of your own choice in detail in order to prepare for the Proficiency Interview ⇐ oral exam) at the end of the semester during which you will explain how this moment has been defining. You will also work on presentation skills and familiarise yourselves with the situation of speaking in front of others.

Materials are provided via StudIP.

The aim of the Culture and Communication class is to help you prepare for the final SP2 module oral exam taken when you have completed the SP2 module. This class will deal with two different areas from which you will be able to develop ONE research project as the basis for your oral exam.
You will be looking at defining moments which have greatly influenced events within the English-speaking world. Your task will be to investigate the processes which led to a particular event, define the event itself and explore the long-term and short-term consequences. A critical analytic approach be will necessary as you explore the causes and implications of the topic of your choice.
In addition, we will work on improving important aspects of grammar, pronunciation, intonation as well as developing the confidence and fluency needed to successfully pass the exam. Whereas CBIS was more about collaboration and teamwork, Culture and Communication allows you to build upon the research skills developed last semester as you move forward with your own project.

The aim of the Culture and Communication class is to help you prepare for the final SP2 module oral exam taken when you have completed the SP2 module. This class will deal with two different areas from which you will be able to develop ONE research project as the basis for your oral exam.
You will be looking at defining moments which have greatly influenced events within the English-speaking world. Your task will be to investigate the processes which led to a particular event, define the event itself and explore the long-term and short-term consequences. A critical analytic approach be will necessary as you explore the causes and implications of the topic of your choice.
In addition, we will work on improving important aspects of grammar, pronunciation, intonation as well as developing the confidence and fluency needed to successfully pass the exam. Whereas CBIS was more about collaboration and teamwork, Culture and Communication allows you to build upon the research skills developed last semester as you move forward with your own project.

In this seminar we will combine an interest in the history of scientific expeditions with an interest in the history of speculative fiction. Based on a dialogue between approaches from literary studies with other disciplines such as the history of science, human geography, as well as critical anthropology, we will ask: What is an expedition? What is an expedition narrative? Based on a reading of 20th and 21st century speculative fiction, from science fiction to the new weird, we will ask how they take up, twist and topple concepts such as "contact zone" or "colonial encounter".

Please, buy and read the following novel:

• Jeff VanderMeer, Annihiliation (2014) [e.g., 978-0008139100 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]

Two further texts - Ted Chiang's novella “Story of Your Life” (1998) and Naomi Mitchison's novel Memoirs of a Spacewoman (1962) - will be provided in class.

There is a strong 20th century tradition of science fiction short stories - both across North America and Great Britain. Indeed the SF short story celebrates something of a centenary as Amazing Stories, an American science fiction magazine, was first launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback. As part of this seminar, we will pay homage to this anniversary though we will mostly keep our eyes on the development of how science is represented in 21st century short fiction and how this is done across SF, speculative fiction but also, especially, historical and realist fiction.

This interdisciplinary seminar in 'blended learning format' (mostly online via Stud.IP/BBB, 1-2 offline meetings at Bremen University in June), co-taught by a physicist and a literary scholar focuses on representations of scientists, scientific methods and scientific practice in contemporary short fiction. In a rare setting with students across the universities of Oldenburg and Bremen, we will read a diverse range of science-related short stories from the Anglophone world. Thematically, our focus will vary from medical research, physics and space, to expeditionary practice and environmental concerns.

Please, buy and read ONE of the following short story anthologies and collections:
• Ra Page, ed. Litmus: Short Stories from Modern Science. Manchester: Comma Press, 2011. [ISBN: 978-1-905583-33-1 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]
• Ted Chiang. Stories of Your Life and Others. 2002. London: Picador, 2024.
• Pippa Goldschmidt. Schrödinger’s Wife (and Other Possibilities). London: Goldsmith Press, 2024. https://pippagoldschmidt.co.uk/books/schrodingers-wife-and-other-possibilities/
• Bruce Meyer, ed. Cli-Fi: Canadian Tales of Climate Change. Chicago, IL: Independent Publishers Group, 2017. [ISBN: 978-1-550966-70-1 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ] https://www.ipgbook.com/cli-fi-products-9781550966701.php

The sonnet is a short, ubiquitous poetic form of 14 lines that every student will have come across. In this seminar, we will use the history of the sonnet in English to discuss Anglophone literary and cultural history, as well as developments in themes, structure and subjectivity. Although this form has at times been called "a narrow room", "a panic closet", or even "a coffin", we will acquaint ourselves with the productiveness of this formal corset and its rich thematic scope, from Renaissance love sonnets to Victorian science sonnets, from World War I sonnets to contemporary sonnets about the experience of using dating apps. We will frame our study of the sonnet with an explicit interest in the history and productivity of "close reading", a literary studies technique first popularized by the New Critics in the US in the first half of the 20th century, but which has seen a renewed debate in the first decades of the 21st century.

Corpus-assisted discourse analysis (CADA) is a “data-driven methodology [that] allows researchers to identify frequent and salient patterns of language use that often operate covertly beyond our conscious awareness but which provide a lens to the hegemonic belief systems of a community of language users.” Poole 2022: 17.
In this course, we will use corpus linguistic methods to study discourses, ranging from the language of capitalism to positive and negative news and the representation of animals in discourse, among others. We use a set of tools for investigating our own DIY corpora as well as corpora that are accessible on the internet.
While we do mostly quantitative analyses, e.g. of collocations or keywords, you will also learn to interpret the results and draw conclusions firmly based in critical or positive discourse analysis. For your assignments, you study a discourse of your own choice with the tool you find most suitable, to answer your own research question.

Literature
Baker, Paul. 2024. Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. 2nd ed. Bloomsbury Academic. Available as ebook from the library.

In this course we will explore the intersections between language, sexuality, and gender. Students will be equipped with knowledge of language use by and about LGBTQ+ people (Lavender Linguistics, LL) and discursive practices of (hetero)normativity in language (Queer Linguistics, QL). Students will read texts focusing on the theoretical foundations of QL, the history of LL, as well as research papers in applied QL/LL. In accordance with the latter, students will also be introduced to various methodologies and fields of research within QL/LL. Throughout the semester, they will conduct their own small-scale study.

Content notice: We might read papers that contain linguistic examples of sexual practices, body parts, or homo-/transphobia.

Requirements:
1) Active participation in class.
2) Participants must be willing to prepare readings on in-depth theory that may, at times, exceed the extent of other linguistics seminars. This is a necessity.

Assessment (depending on module & no of CP)

Prüfungsleistung (graded assessment) 6 CP:
1) Short presentation and critical excerpt of a research paper (ungraded)
2) Poster presentation of your own mini-study or term paper -> deadline 2 August 2026 (graded)

Prüfungsleistung (graded assessment) 3 CP:
1) Short presentation of a research paper (ungraded)
2) Poster presentation of your own mini-study (graded)

Studenleistung (ungraded assessment) 3 CP, pick one:
Short presentation and critical excerpt of a research paper
OR
Poster presentation of your own mini-study

Literature (no need to buy)

Introductions and monographs:

Edited volumes:

Language ideologies are “cultural conceptions about language, its nature, structure and use, and about the place of communicative behavior in social life” (Gal, 2006, p. 171). They also factor into the construction of an individual’s linguistically indexed identity, as language choices become “acts of identity” (Le Page & Tabouret-Keller, 1985).

In this class, we investigate language ideologies in the English-speaking world and within the context of multilingual and multicultural societies. Students also carry out small empirical projects using different methodological approaches to investigate language ideologies in Germany and beyond.

This seminar will examine different aspects of plurilingualism, as well as plurilingual teaching and learning in language classrooms. In the following, you find a list of topics we will discuss in the seminar:

• Defining and critically assessing terms that are used in the area of plurilingualism
• Analyzing the work done by the Council of Europe regarding plurilingualism (FREPA, CEFR descriptors, companion volume of the CEFR, European Language Portfolio
• Getting to know the importance of language awareness
• Exploring existing plurilingual teaching and learning approaches, methods, task, and activities that can be used in the language learning classroom
• Developing and implementing your own plurilingual activity within the seminar
• ...

The seminar links research to practice. The class work will consist of thematic as well as scientific work input, discussions, individual work, group work, reflection tasks, …

Corpus-assisted discourse analysis (CADA) is a “data-driven methodology [that] allows researchers to identify frequent and salient patterns of language use that often operate covertly beyond our conscious awareness but which provide a lens to the hegemonic belief systems of a community of language users.” Poole 2022: 17.
In this course, we will use corpus linguistic methods to study discourses, ranging from the language of capitalism to positive and negative news and the representation of animals in discourse, among others. We use a set of tools for investigating our own DIY corpora as well as corpora that are accessible on the internet.
While we do mostly quantitative analyses, e.g. of collocations or keywords, you will also learn to interpret the results and draw conclusions firmly based in critical or positive discourse analysis. For your assignments, you study a discourse of your own choice with the tool you find most suitable, to answer your own research question.

Literature
Baker, Paul. 2024. Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. 2nd ed. Bloomsbury Academic. Available as ebook from the library.

In this course we will explore the intersections between language, sexuality, and gender. Students will be equipped with knowledge of language use by and about LGBTQ+ people (Lavender Linguistics, LL) and discursive practices of (hetero)normativity in language (Queer Linguistics, QL). Students will read texts focusing on the theoretical foundations of QL, the history of LL, as well as research papers in applied QL/LL. In accordance with the latter, students will also be introduced to various methodologies and fields of research within QL/LL. Throughout the semester, they will conduct their own small-scale study.

Content notice: We might read papers that contain linguistic examples of sexual practices, body parts, or homo-/transphobia.

Requirements:
1) Active participation in class.
2) Participants must be willing to prepare readings on in-depth theory that may, at times, exceed the extent of other linguistics seminars. This is a necessity.

Assessment (depending on module & no of CP)

Prüfungsleistung (graded assessment) 6 CP:
1) Short presentation and critical excerpt of a research paper (ungraded)
2) Poster presentation of your own mini-study or term paper -> deadline 2 August 2026 (graded)

Prüfungsleistung (graded assessment) 3 CP:
1) Short presentation of a research paper (ungraded)
2) Poster presentation of your own mini-study (graded)

Studenleistung (ungraded assessment) 3 CP, pick one:
Short presentation and critical excerpt of a research paper
OR
Poster presentation of your own mini-study

Literature (no need to buy)

Introductions and monographs:

Edited volumes:

Language ideologies are “cultural conceptions about language, its nature, structure and use, and about the place of communicative behavior in social life” (Gal, 2006, p. 171). They also factor into the construction of an individual’s linguistically indexed identity, as language choices become “acts of identity” (Le Page & Tabouret-Keller, 1985).

In this class, we investigate language ideologies in the English-speaking world and within the context of multilingual and multicultural societies. Students also carry out small empirical projects using different methodological approaches to investigate language ideologies in Germany and beyond.

This seminar will examine different aspects of plurilingualism, as well as plurilingual teaching and learning in language classrooms. In the following, you find a list of topics we will discuss in the seminar:

• Defining and critically assessing terms that are used in the area of plurilingualism
• Analyzing the work done by the Council of Europe regarding plurilingualism (FREPA, CEFR descriptors, companion volume of the CEFR, European Language Portfolio
• Getting to know the importance of language awareness
• Exploring existing plurilingual teaching and learning approaches, methods, task, and activities that can be used in the language learning classroom
• Developing and implementing your own plurilingual activity within the seminar
• ...

The seminar links research to practice. The class work will consist of thematic as well as scientific work input, discussions, individual work, group work, reflection tasks, …

In this seminar we will combine an interest in the history of scientific expeditions with an interest in the history of speculative fiction. Based on a dialogue between approaches from literary studies with other disciplines such as the history of science, human geography, as well as critical anthropology, we will ask: What is an expedition? What is an expedition narrative? Based on a reading of 20th and 21st century speculative fiction, from science fiction to the new weird, we will ask how they take up, twist and topple concepts such as "contact zone" or "colonial encounter".

Please, buy and read the following novel:

• Jeff VanderMeer, Annihiliation (2014) [e.g., 978-0008139100 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]

Two further texts - Ted Chiang's novella “Story of Your Life” (1998) and Naomi Mitchison's novel Memoirs of a Spacewoman (1962) - will be provided in class.

There is a strong 20th century tradition of science fiction short stories - both across North America and Great Britain. Indeed the SF short story celebrates something of a centenary as Amazing Stories, an American science fiction magazine, was first launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback. As part of this seminar, we will pay homage to this anniversary though we will mostly keep our eyes on the development of how science is represented in 21st century short fiction and how this is done across SF, speculative fiction but also, especially, historical and realist fiction.

This interdisciplinary seminar in 'blended learning format' (mostly online via Stud.IP/BBB, 1-2 offline meetings at Bremen University in June), co-taught by a physicist and a literary scholar focuses on representations of scientists, scientific methods and scientific practice in contemporary short fiction. In a rare setting with students across the universities of Oldenburg and Bremen, we will read a diverse range of science-related short stories from the Anglophone world. Thematically, our focus will vary from medical research, physics and space, to expeditionary practice and environmental concerns.

Please, buy and read ONE of the following short story anthologies and collections:
• Ra Page, ed. Litmus: Short Stories from Modern Science. Manchester: Comma Press, 2011. [ISBN: 978-1-905583-33-1 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]
• Ted Chiang. Stories of Your Life and Others. 2002. London: Picador, 2024.
• Pippa Goldschmidt. Schrödinger’s Wife (and Other Possibilities). London: Goldsmith Press, 2024. https://pippagoldschmidt.co.uk/books/schrodingers-wife-and-other-possibilities/
• Bruce Meyer, ed. Cli-Fi: Canadian Tales of Climate Change. Chicago, IL: Independent Publishers Group, 2017. [ISBN: 978-1-550966-70-1 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ] https://www.ipgbook.com/cli-fi-products-9781550966701.php

The sonnet is a short, ubiquitous poetic form of 14 lines that every student will have come across. In this seminar, we will use the history of the sonnet in English to discuss Anglophone literary and cultural history, as well as developments in themes, structure and subjectivity. Although this form has at times been called "a narrow room", "a panic closet", or even "a coffin", we will acquaint ourselves with the productiveness of this formal corset and its rich thematic scope, from Renaissance love sonnets to Victorian science sonnets, from World War I sonnets to contemporary sonnets about the experience of using dating apps. We will frame our study of the sonnet with an explicit interest in the history and productivity of "close reading", a literary studies technique first popularized by the New Critics in the US in the first half of the 20th century, but which has seen a renewed debate in the first decades of the 21st century.

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!

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.

This course continues the general introduction to English Linguistics from last semester, focusing on how to do empirical work in linguistics. Students will be introduced to the different methods and tools to collect, process and analyze linguistic data. In this course, we focus on observation and diaries as well as corpus studies.

Coursework and assessment
You are expected to read and prepare selected texts for each session. The coursework will focus on real-life linguistic data and exercises which are designed to help you apply selected methods and tools and critically discuss their usefulness. By the end of the term, you are required to submit a portfolio comprising reading assignments, data-based tasks, and participation in linguistic experiments.

Literature
Rose, Heath & Jim McKinley & Jessica Briggs Baffoe-Djan. 2020. Data Collection Research Methods in Applied Linguistics. Bloomsbury Academic.
Wray, Alison & Aileen Bloomer. 2012. Projects in Linguistics and Language Studies. 3rd edition. London: Hodder Education.

This course continues the general introduction to English Linguistics from last semester, focusing on how to do empirical work in linguistics. Students will be introduced to the different ways, methods and tools to obtain, process and analyze linguistic data. The following topics will be covered: research methodology and design, types of data collection, experiments, corpus linguistics, online dictionaries, linguistic fieldwork, and transcription.

Coursework and assessment

You are expected to read and prepare selected texts for each session. The coursework will focus on real-life linguistic data and exercises which are designed to help you apply selected methods and tools and critically discuss their usefulness. You are required to submit a portfolio comprising different data-based tasks ("worksheets") and other assignments that will be worked on in the course of the semester.

Basic introductory textbooks

Sealey, A. (2010), Researching English Language. A resource book for students. London: Routledge.
Wray, A. & A. Bloomer (2012), Projects in Linguistics and Language Studies. 3rd edition. London: Hodder Education.

In this seminar, students get an introduction to the history of English, i.e. Old English, Middle English and Early Modern English. This class includes weekly discussions and tasks. In the second half of the seminar, we continue to study the historical events, current status of major varieties and differences of world varieties from North America, Australia to Africa and Asia with a focus on their structural and phonological features. We will follow the debates about English as a cause of language death, and talk about the place of English in language policies and language planning.

This is the second part of the foundation module. It provides an introduction to the history of the English language from Old English to Present-Day English, the spread and transplantation of English to other parts of the world as well as the subsequent diversification of the English language into World Englishes.

This is the second part of the foundation module. It provides an introduction to the history of the English language from Old English to Present-Day English, the spread and transplantation of English to other parts of the world as well as the subsequent diversification of the English language into World Englishes.

In this seminar, students get an introduction to the history of English, i.e. Old English, Middle English and Early Modern English. This class includes weekly discussions and tasks. In the second half of the seminar, we continue to study the historical events, current status of major varieties and differences of world varieties from North America, Australia to Africa and Asia with a focus on their structural and phonological features. We will follow the debates about English as a cause of language death, and talk about the place of English in language policies and language planning.

This is the second part of the foundation module. It provides an introduction to the history of the English language from Old English to Present-Day English, the spread and transplantation of English to other parts of the world as well as the subsequent diversification of the English language into World Englishes.

This class introduces students to the interdisciplinary study of water and culture, with a focus on the intersections of the blue humanities with social sciences, geography, literary and cultural studies, and the arts. The class consists of a mixture of seminar sessions and guest lectures by invited speakers. Scholars and teachers both from U Bremen and from elsewhere will deliver lectures on the theme “Making Waves: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Water and Culture.” In the sessions between the lectures, we will discuss corresponding theoretical and analytical texts as well as analyze primary material in accordance with the subject matter of the presentations and to critically reflect on their respective ideas and arguments. Students will obtain an overview of the interdisciplinary study of water and culture in the humanities and deepen their skills in cultural studies.

This class is open to BA E-SC students studying 4th semester modules. It is also open to a limited number of international exchange students and students doing ‘Freiwillige Zusatzleistungen,’ ‘Ersatzleistungen,’ and General Studies, including the sustainability certificate BRENA.

Prior enrolment via Stud.IP is mandatory and admission is limited to a maximum of thirty-five students. Further information will be made available on Stud.IP. Please check Stud.IP regularly for updates.
Requirements
• active participation in weekly in-person meetings,
• in-depth study of the primary and secondary material in preparation for each session,
• graded or ungraded assignment in accordance with the respective module requirements.

In October 2025, we “heard [her] calling on the megaphone”: Shakespeare’s Ophelia experienced a widely discussed revival in popular culture through Taylor Swift. This renewed attention invites us to ask again what the true fate of Ophelia might be. Why has this figure continued to fascinate artists, writers, and audiences for over four centuries?

With this question in mind, this seminar examines the figure of Ophelia throughout the ages. Together, we will read Shakespeare’s Hamlet and then trace Ophelia’s afterlives across paintings, theatre, stage and film adaptations, novels, lyrical texts, and pop culture more broadly. The seminar combines close reading with visual analysis and cultural discussion and encourages students to bring in their own observations and interests.

To receive credit for this course, you must
• have an excellent knowledge of the assigned readings and materials.
• actively participate in discussions and smaller group work.
• attend one mandatory library workshop (June 11, 2026, from 12:15 to 13:45).
• create an annotated bibliography for a potential research paper (due on June 17, 2026).
• make a meaningful contribution to our exhibition at the Day of Sciences on June 27, 2026 (more information will follow in our first session).

If you need a grade in this course, you additionally need to
• submit an abstract for your term paper (due on July 5, 2026 / 0% of final grade for BPO 2025, 20% of final grade for BPO 2011)
• write a term paper (24.000–28.000 characters: text without blanks, cover, table of contents, works cited, affidavit; due on September 15, 2026 / 100% of final grade for BPO 2025, 80% of final grade for BPO 2011).

We’ll deal with the Studienleistungen and exams in our first session as well.

Most of the works will be made accessible on Stud.IP. However, please purchase the following editions:
Klein, Lisa. Ophelia. Bloomsbury Academic, 2008. (ISBN: 9781599902289)
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Edited by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016. (ISBN: 9781472518385)

If you have any questions beforehand, please don’t hesitate to email me (wolfk@uni-bremen.de). In order to be finally accepted into this seminar, you have to show up at the first three sessions.

I’m looking forward to discovering, questioning, and rethinking Ophelia’s fate together with you!

All the best,
Kevin

COURSE DESCRIPTION
In this course, we will consider how democratic thought, social protest and civil disobedience are expressed, negotiated and/or advocated for in British literature. We will conceptualise what we mean when we speak about democracy and civic participation, discuss the value of democratic systems and what is at stake when they are threatened, and consider the role literature has played in these debates.
Our focus will be on contemporary writing (post-1945): we consider the democratic potential of a range of narratives and genres, from dystopian fiction, satire, drama and spoken word poetry to biopics, protest short fiction, videogames and the state-of-the-nation novel. The exact selection will be finalised in dialogue with the course participants.
This course includes a cooperation with the Bremer Kulturzentrum Schlachthof: we will be taking part in a Zine workshop and present the results in the form of an exhibition. Interested students are invited to contribute to an issue of the Kulturzentrum’s Z-Magazin.

COURSE MATERIAL
Please acquire a copy of the following books:

• George Orwell, 1984 (Penguin, 2008)
• Alan Moore, V for Vendetta (DC Comics, 2020)
• Ali Smith, Autumn (Penguin, 2017)

Shorter readings will be provided. Please note that this is a reading-intensive course.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
At the end of this semester, you will be able to:
− give an overview of the democratic potential and/or shortcomings of literature
− outline representational strategies tied to democratic thought across various genres
− analyse major themes relevant to the relationship between literature and democracy by making use of theoretical and sociocultural contexts to justify your analysis
− independently plan and develop an argument for an academic term paper on a text of your choice
− use your critical knowledge creatively by conceptualising and designing a Zine

In this seminar we will combine an interest in the history of scientific expeditions with an interest in the history of speculative fiction. Based on a dialogue between approaches from literary studies with other disciplines such as the history of science, human geography, as well as critical anthropology, we will ask: What is an expedition? What is an expedition narrative? Based on a reading of 20th and 21st century speculative fiction, from science fiction to the new weird, we will ask how they take up, twist and topple concepts such as "contact zone" or "colonial encounter".

Please, buy and read the following novel:

• Jeff VanderMeer, Annihiliation (2014) [e.g., 978-0008139100 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]

Two further texts - Ted Chiang's novella “Story of Your Life” (1998) and Naomi Mitchison's novel Memoirs of a Spacewoman (1962) - will be provided in class.

The Gothic is a genre that has spanned many years and many countries/cultures. This class questions whether there can be an Indigenous Gothic, considering the settler-colonial tropes and histories of the Gothic genre in the Americas. We will delve into various short stories from Shane Hawk’s edited collection Never Whistle At Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, as well as Jessica Johns' novel Bad Cree (2023) and Drew Hayden Taylor's graphic novel The Night Wanderer (2013), and compare them to 'traditional' North American Gothic literature. Through our readings and comparisons, we will critically analyze settler-colonialism in North America and question whether the histories of the North American Gothic genre can be enriched (or decolonized?) by Indigenous contributions to the form.

Requirements for this course are 1) active reading and participation and 2) term paper (PL) or in-class presentation (SL).

Please obtain Taylor's graphic novel and Jessica John's novel before the semester begins. The short stories from Hawk's edited collection will be provided on Stud.Ip. If you are unable to obtain the books for any reason, please send me an email.

This seminar approaches literature through its form – the formal language and structure that shape content and create their own meaning. Form and content, in this sense, are inseparable. Meaning takes shape in and through form, while form carries its own meaning(s). Forms have histories and develop through gradual refinement, cultural contact, challenges, and innovation. They also have specific affordances, which means that they tend to be suited to the engagement with some issues, questions and topics than others.
Poetic forms are a particularly good starting point for the study of form, because in poetry, formal aspects are so condensed. In the course of this seminar, we will encounter different poetic forms, such as the sonnet, the couplet, blank verse, the ode, and the ballad. Our main goal is to identify the basic characteristics and structures of these forms and to explore what they do particularly well. We will also explore these forms in a historical perspective and observe how they have evolved and changed. The focus on close textual analysis will also enable students to hone their formal reading skills and to broaden and apply their knowledge of rhetorical strategies. Paying close attention to specific texts and forms will also allow participants to explore broader questions about the relevance of form to the encounter with literature.

All compulsory reading (poems and theoretical literature) will be available on Stud.IP (see syllabus and file folders for the relevant session).

There is a strong 20th century tradition of science fiction short stories - both across North America and Great Britain. Indeed the SF short story celebrates something of a centenary as Amazing Stories, an American science fiction magazine, was first launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback. As part of this seminar, we will pay homage to this anniversary though we will mostly keep our eyes on the development of how science is represented in 21st century short fiction and how this is done across SF, speculative fiction but also, especially, historical and realist fiction.

This interdisciplinary seminar in 'blended learning format' (mostly online via Stud.IP/BBB, 1-2 offline meetings at Bremen University in June), co-taught by a physicist and a literary scholar focuses on representations of scientists, scientific methods and scientific practice in contemporary short fiction. In a rare setting with students across the universities of Oldenburg and Bremen, we will read a diverse range of science-related short stories from the Anglophone world. Thematically, our focus will vary from medical research, physics and space, to expeditionary practice and environmental concerns.

Please, buy and read ONE of the following short story anthologies and collections:
• Ra Page, ed. Litmus: Short Stories from Modern Science. Manchester: Comma Press, 2011. [ISBN: 978-1-905583-33-1 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]
• Ted Chiang. Stories of Your Life and Others. 2002. London: Picador, 2024.
• Pippa Goldschmidt. Schrödinger’s Wife (and Other Possibilities). London: Goldsmith Press, 2024. https://pippagoldschmidt.co.uk/books/schrodingers-wife-and-other-possibilities/
• Bruce Meyer, ed. Cli-Fi: Canadian Tales of Climate Change. Chicago, IL: Independent Publishers Group, 2017. [ISBN: 978-1-550966-70-1 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ] https://www.ipgbook.com/cli-fi-products-9781550966701.php

The sonnet is a short, ubiquitous poetic form of 14 lines that every student will have come across. In this seminar, we will use the history of the sonnet in English to discuss Anglophone literary and cultural history, as well as developments in themes, structure and subjectivity. Although this form has at times been called "a narrow room", "a panic closet", or even "a coffin", we will acquaint ourselves with the productiveness of this formal corset and its rich thematic scope, from Renaissance love sonnets to Victorian science sonnets, from World War I sonnets to contemporary sonnets about the experience of using dating apps. We will frame our study of the sonnet with an explicit interest in the history and productivity of "close reading", a literary studies technique first popularized by the New Critics in the US in the first half of the 20th century, but which has seen a renewed debate in the first decades of the 21st century.

This seminar introduces students to the study of cinema in the age of the climate crisis. Students will hone their skills in film analysis and expand their command of theoretical approaches to critically examine filmic representations of the environment, of natural disasters such as floods, and the relationship of various human communities to the non-human, or more-than-human, world. In doing so, students will not only engage with critical discourses around ecocinema and the blue humanities but also refine their academic reading, writing, and presentation skills as well as train their media literacy.

This class is open to BA E-SC students studying 4th semester modules. It is also open to a limited number of international exchange students and students doing ‘Freiwillige Zusatzleistungen,’ ‘Ersatzleistungen,’ and General Studies, including the sustainability certificate BRENA.

Prior enrolment via Stud.IP is mandatory and admission is limited to a maximum of thirty-five students. Further information will be made available on Stud.IP and during the first session.

Requirements
• active participation in weekly in-person meetings,
• in-depth study of the primary and secondary material in preparation for each session,
• graded or ungraded assignment in accordance with the respective module requirements (i.e. graded term paper or portfolio OR ungraded class contribution).

This seminar will introduce students to the genre of so-called walking simulators—story-driven exploration video games where walking around constitutes the primary gameplay mechanic—and the scholarly and public discussions surrounding it. Students will choose three primary texts from a list of walking simulators and are asked to play and engage critically with those games. The course will begin with a short introduction to the genre of walking simulators and an overview of how to analyze video games using the tools of transmedial narratology. While our first three sessions are dedicated to acquiring the vocabulary and analytical skills necessary for a scholarly discussion of video games more broadly and walking simulators in particular, the following sessions are loosely organized around recurring tropes and themes in those types of games. During those sessions, we will talk about selected secondary texts and reflect on how they could be made productive for an analysis of the students’ chosen primary texts. Ultimately, students will leave this course with a deeper insight into the genre of walking simulators and their affordances, the debates they inspire in both public and academic spaces, and the ability to develop research questions that can be made productive for an analysis of those types of video games.

Corpus-assisted discourse analysis (CADA) is a “data-driven methodology [that] allows researchers to identify frequent and salient patterns of language use that often operate covertly beyond our conscious awareness but which provide a lens to the hegemonic belief systems of a community of language users.” Poole 2022: 17.
In this course, we will use corpus linguistic methods to study discourses, ranging from the language of capitalism to positive and negative news and the representation of animals in discourse, among others. We use a set of tools for investigating our own DIY corpora as well as corpora that are accessible on the internet.
While we do mostly quantitative analyses, e.g. of collocations or keywords, you will also learn to interpret the results and draw conclusions firmly based in critical or positive discourse analysis. For your assignments, you study a discourse of your own choice with the tool you find most suitable, to answer your own research question.

Literature
Baker, Paul. 2024. Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. 2nd ed. Bloomsbury Academic. Available as ebook from the library.

In this course we will explore the intersections between language, sexuality, and gender. Students will be equipped with knowledge of language use by and about LGBTQ+ people (Lavender Linguistics, LL) and discursive practices of (hetero)normativity in language (Queer Linguistics, QL). Students will read texts focusing on the theoretical foundations of QL, the history of LL, as well as research papers in applied QL/LL. In accordance with the latter, students will also be introduced to various methodologies and fields of research within QL/LL. Throughout the semester, they will conduct their own small-scale study.

Content notice: We might read papers that contain linguistic examples of sexual practices, body parts, or homo-/transphobia.

Requirements:
1) Active participation in class.
2) Participants must be willing to prepare readings on in-depth theory that may, at times, exceed the extent of other linguistics seminars. This is a necessity.

Assessment (depending on module & no of CP)

Prüfungsleistung (graded assessment) 6 CP:
1) Short presentation and critical excerpt of a research paper (ungraded)
2) Poster presentation of your own mini-study or term paper -> deadline 2 August 2026 (graded)

Prüfungsleistung (graded assessment) 3 CP:
1) Short presentation of a research paper (ungraded)
2) Poster presentation of your own mini-study (graded)

Studenleistung (ungraded assessment) 3 CP, pick one:
Short presentation and critical excerpt of a research paper
OR
Poster presentation of your own mini-study

Literature (no need to buy)

Introductions and monographs:

Edited volumes:

Language ideologies are “cultural conceptions about language, its nature, structure and use, and about the place of communicative behavior in social life” (Gal, 2006, p. 171). They also factor into the construction of an individual’s linguistically indexed identity, as language choices become “acts of identity” (Le Page & Tabouret-Keller, 1985).

In this class, we investigate language ideologies in the English-speaking world and within the context of multilingual and multicultural societies. Students also carry out small empirical projects using different methodological approaches to investigate language ideologies in Germany and beyond.

This seminar will examine different aspects of plurilingualism, as well as plurilingual teaching and learning in language classrooms. In the following, you find a list of topics we will discuss in the seminar:

• Defining and critically assessing terms that are used in the area of plurilingualism
• Analyzing the work done by the Council of Europe regarding plurilingualism (FREPA, CEFR descriptors, companion volume of the CEFR, European Language Portfolio
• Getting to know the importance of language awareness
• Exploring existing plurilingual teaching and learning approaches, methods, task, and activities that can be used in the language learning classroom
• Developing and implementing your own plurilingual activity within the seminar
• ...

The seminar links research to practice. The class work will consist of thematic as well as scientific work input, discussions, individual work, group work, reflection tasks, …

The Gothic is a genre that has spanned many years and many countries/cultures. This class questions whether there can be an Indigenous Gothic, considering the settler-colonial tropes and histories of the Gothic genre in the Americas. We will delve into various short stories from Shane Hawk’s edited collection Never Whistle At Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, as well as Jessica Johns' novel Bad Cree (2023) and Drew Hayden Taylor's graphic novel The Night Wanderer (2013), and compare them to 'traditional' North American Gothic literature. Through our readings and comparisons, we will critically analyze settler-colonialism in North America and question whether the histories of the North American Gothic genre can be enriched (or decolonized?) by Indigenous contributions to the form.

Requirements for this course are 1) active reading and participation and 2) term paper (PL) or in-class presentation (SL).

Please obtain Taylor's graphic novel and Jessica John's novel before the semester begins. The short stories from Hawk's edited collection will be provided on Stud.Ip. If you are unable to obtain the books for any reason, please send me an email.

University Language Skills 2 (ULS 2) is a four-hour class. You have to attend the entire class. ULS 2 is the second half of the SP Foundation module. As such it builds on the basic knowledge of academic writing established in ULS 1.

While the focus during the winter semester is on the basic structure of an academic essay, during the summer semester you will be introduced to key rhetorical strategies. These strategies include essays of argumentation, cause & effect as well as comparison & contrast. Furthermore, grammatical structures needed for writing (e.g. syntax, passive voice, conditionals) will be part of the course’s syllabus.

Requirements:
• Regular and active participation
• Thorough preparation of each session
• Written assignments (approx. 2000 words)

Materials are provided via StudIP

University Language Skills 2 (ULS 2) is a four-hour class. You have to attend the entire class. ULS 2 is the second half of the SP Foundation module. As such it builds on the basic knowledge of academic writing established in ULS 1.

While the focus during the winter semester is on the basic structure of an academic essay, during the summer semester you will be introduced to key rhetorical strategies. These strategies include essays of argumentation, cause & effect as well as comparison & contrast. Furthermore, grammatical structures needed for writing (e.g. syntax, passive voice, conditionals) will be part of the course’s syllabus.

Requirements:
• Regular and active participation
• Thorough preparation of each session
• Written assignments (approx. 2000 words)

Materials are provided via StudIP

University Language Skills 2 (ULS 2) is a four-hour class. You have to attend the entire class. ULS 2 is the second half of the SP Foundation module. As such it builds on the basic knowledge of academic writing established in ULS 1.

While the focus during the winter semester is on the basic structure of an academic essay, during the summer semester you will be introduced to key rhetorical strategies. These strategies include essays of argumentation, cause & effect as well as comparison & contrast. Furthermore, grammatical structures needed for writing (e.g. syntax, passive voice, conditionals) will be part of the course’s syllabus.

Requirements:
• Regular and active participation
• Thorough preparation of each session
• Written assignments (approx. 2000 words)

Materials are provided via StudIP

University Language Skills 2 is the second part of the SP1 module and will earn you a total of 6CPs. It is a four-hour class with two consecutive time slots, both of which MUST be attended.
The following seminar will build on skills acquired in ULS1. We will review and further develop writing skills regarding the different phases in writing, essay structure and good writing style. In addition, we will explore and develop more complex writing strategies including problem/solution, argumentation, cause/effect, and comparison/contrast.
Emphasis will be placed on the ability to recognize individual errors and work on challenging aspects of language. You will therefore continue to work on grammar and lexis at an individual, needs-based level and will be able to access self-study material to work on independently according to your own requirements outside of the classroom. This is essential in developing an autonomous learning style which will subsequently enable you to critically assess and correct your own work.
You will be expected to attend class regularly and actively participate in group discussions and activities. Task assigned to be completed between sessions must also be completed on time as well as the graded assignments to be discussed in class.

The aim of the Culture & Communication classes is to help you to prepare for the module exam to be taken to complete the SP Proficiency module.

This particular class will look at different moments which have greatly influenced events within the English-speaking world. We will investigate the processes which led to a particular event, define the event itself and explore the long-term and short-term implications that came about as a consequence. You will be required to think critically and research a topic of your own choice in detail in order to prepare for the Proficiency Interview ⇐ oral exam) at the end of the semester during which you will explain how this moment has been defining. You will also work on presentation skills and familiarise yourselves with the situation of speaking in front of others.

Materials are provided via StudIP.

The aim of the Culture & Communication classes is to help you to prepare for the module exam to be taken to complete the SP-Proficiency module.

This particular class will look at different moments which have greatly influenced events within the English-speaking world. We will investigate the processes which led to a particular event, define the event itself and explore the long-term and short-term implications that came about as a consequence. You will be required to think critically and research a topic of your own choice in detail in order to prepare for the Proficiency Interview ⇐ oral exam) at the end of the semester during which you will explain how this moment has been defining. You will also work on presentation skills and familiarise yourselves with the situation of speaking in front of others.

Materials are provided via StudIP.

The aim of the Culture and Communication class is to help you prepare for the final SP2 module oral exam taken when you have completed the SP2 module. This class will deal with two different areas from which you will be able to develop ONE research project as the basis for your oral exam.
You will be looking at defining moments which have greatly influenced events within the English-speaking world. Your task will be to investigate the processes which led to a particular event, define the event itself and explore the long-term and short-term consequences. A critical analytic approach be will necessary as you explore the causes and implications of the topic of your choice.
In addition, we will work on improving important aspects of grammar, pronunciation, intonation as well as developing the confidence and fluency needed to successfully pass the exam. Whereas CBIS was more about collaboration and teamwork, Culture and Communication allows you to build upon the research skills developed last semester as you move forward with your own project.

The aim of the Culture and Communication class is to help you prepare for the final SP2 module oral exam taken when you have completed the SP2 module. This class will deal with two different areas from which you will be able to develop ONE research project as the basis for your oral exam.
You will be looking at defining moments which have greatly influenced events within the English-speaking world. Your task will be to investigate the processes which led to a particular event, define the event itself and explore the long-term and short-term consequences. A critical analytic approach be will necessary as you explore the causes and implications of the topic of your choice.
In addition, we will work on improving important aspects of grammar, pronunciation, intonation as well as developing the confidence and fluency needed to successfully pass the exam. Whereas CBIS was more about collaboration and teamwork, Culture and Communication allows you to build upon the research skills developed last semester as you move forward with your own project.

In this seminar we will combine an interest in the history of scientific expeditions with an interest in the history of speculative fiction. Based on a dialogue between approaches from literary studies with other disciplines such as the history of science, human geography, as well as critical anthropology, we will ask: What is an expedition? What is an expedition narrative? Based on a reading of 20th and 21st century speculative fiction, from science fiction to the new weird, we will ask how they take up, twist and topple concepts such as "contact zone" or "colonial encounter".

Please, buy and read the following novel:

• Jeff VanderMeer, Annihiliation (2014) [e.g., 978-0008139100 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]

Two further texts - Ted Chiang's novella “Story of Your Life” (1998) and Naomi Mitchison's novel Memoirs of a Spacewoman (1962) - will be provided in class.

There is a strong 20th century tradition of science fiction short stories - both across North America and Great Britain. Indeed the SF short story celebrates something of a centenary as Amazing Stories, an American science fiction magazine, was first launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback. As part of this seminar, we will pay homage to this anniversary though we will mostly keep our eyes on the development of how science is represented in 21st century short fiction and how this is done across SF, speculative fiction but also, especially, historical and realist fiction.

This interdisciplinary seminar in 'blended learning format' (mostly online via Stud.IP/BBB, 1-2 offline meetings at Bremen University in June), co-taught by a physicist and a literary scholar focuses on representations of scientists, scientific methods and scientific practice in contemporary short fiction. In a rare setting with students across the universities of Oldenburg and Bremen, we will read a diverse range of science-related short stories from the Anglophone world. Thematically, our focus will vary from medical research, physics and space, to expeditionary practice and environmental concerns.

Please, buy and read ONE of the following short story anthologies and collections:
• Ra Page, ed. Litmus: Short Stories from Modern Science. Manchester: Comma Press, 2011. [ISBN: 978-1-905583-33-1 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]
• Ted Chiang. Stories of Your Life and Others. 2002. London: Picador, 2024.
• Pippa Goldschmidt. Schrödinger’s Wife (and Other Possibilities). London: Goldsmith Press, 2024. https://pippagoldschmidt.co.uk/books/schrodingers-wife-and-other-possibilities/
• Bruce Meyer, ed. Cli-Fi: Canadian Tales of Climate Change. Chicago, IL: Independent Publishers Group, 2017. [ISBN: 978-1-550966-70-1 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ] https://www.ipgbook.com/cli-fi-products-9781550966701.php

The sonnet is a short, ubiquitous poetic form of 14 lines that every student will have come across. In this seminar, we will use the history of the sonnet in English to discuss Anglophone literary and cultural history, as well as developments in themes, structure and subjectivity. Although this form has at times been called "a narrow room", "a panic closet", or even "a coffin", we will acquaint ourselves with the productiveness of this formal corset and its rich thematic scope, from Renaissance love sonnets to Victorian science sonnets, from World War I sonnets to contemporary sonnets about the experience of using dating apps. We will frame our study of the sonnet with an explicit interest in the history and productivity of "close reading", a literary studies technique first popularized by the New Critics in the US in the first half of the 20th century, but which has seen a renewed debate in the first decades of the 21st century.

Corpus-assisted discourse analysis (CADA) is a “data-driven methodology [that] allows researchers to identify frequent and salient patterns of language use that often operate covertly beyond our conscious awareness but which provide a lens to the hegemonic belief systems of a community of language users.” Poole 2022: 17.
In this course, we will use corpus linguistic methods to study discourses, ranging from the language of capitalism to positive and negative news and the representation of animals in discourse, among others. We use a set of tools for investigating our own DIY corpora as well as corpora that are accessible on the internet.
While we do mostly quantitative analyses, e.g. of collocations or keywords, you will also learn to interpret the results and draw conclusions firmly based in critical or positive discourse analysis. For your assignments, you study a discourse of your own choice with the tool you find most suitable, to answer your own research question.

Literature
Baker, Paul. 2024. Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. 2nd ed. Bloomsbury Academic. Available as ebook from the library.

In this course we will explore the intersections between language, sexuality, and gender. Students will be equipped with knowledge of language use by and about LGBTQ+ people (Lavender Linguistics, LL) and discursive practices of (hetero)normativity in language (Queer Linguistics, QL). Students will read texts focusing on the theoretical foundations of QL, the history of LL, as well as research papers in applied QL/LL. In accordance with the latter, students will also be introduced to various methodologies and fields of research within QL/LL. Throughout the semester, they will conduct their own small-scale study.

Content notice: We might read papers that contain linguistic examples of sexual practices, body parts, or homo-/transphobia.

Requirements:
1) Active participation in class.
2) Participants must be willing to prepare readings on in-depth theory that may, at times, exceed the extent of other linguistics seminars. This is a necessity.

Assessment (depending on module & no of CP)

Prüfungsleistung (graded assessment) 6 CP:
1) Short presentation and critical excerpt of a research paper (ungraded)
2) Poster presentation of your own mini-study or term paper -> deadline 2 August 2026 (graded)

Prüfungsleistung (graded assessment) 3 CP:
1) Short presentation of a research paper (ungraded)
2) Poster presentation of your own mini-study (graded)

Studenleistung (ungraded assessment) 3 CP, pick one:
Short presentation and critical excerpt of a research paper
OR
Poster presentation of your own mini-study

Literature (no need to buy)

Introductions and monographs:

Edited volumes:

Language ideologies are “cultural conceptions about language, its nature, structure and use, and about the place of communicative behavior in social life” (Gal, 2006, p. 171). They also factor into the construction of an individual’s linguistically indexed identity, as language choices become “acts of identity” (Le Page & Tabouret-Keller, 1985).

In this class, we investigate language ideologies in the English-speaking world and within the context of multilingual and multicultural societies. Students also carry out small empirical projects using different methodological approaches to investigate language ideologies in Germany and beyond.

This seminar will examine different aspects of plurilingualism, as well as plurilingual teaching and learning in language classrooms. In the following, you find a list of topics we will discuss in the seminar:

• Defining and critically assessing terms that are used in the area of plurilingualism
• Analyzing the work done by the Council of Europe regarding plurilingualism (FREPA, CEFR descriptors, companion volume of the CEFR, European Language Portfolio
• Getting to know the importance of language awareness
• Exploring existing plurilingual teaching and learning approaches, methods, task, and activities that can be used in the language learning classroom
• Developing and implementing your own plurilingual activity within the seminar
• ...

The seminar links research to practice. The class work will consist of thematic as well as scientific work input, discussions, individual work, group work, reflection tasks, …

Corpus-assisted discourse analysis (CADA) is a “data-driven methodology [that] allows researchers to identify frequent and salient patterns of language use that often operate covertly beyond our conscious awareness but which provide a lens to the hegemonic belief systems of a community of language users.” Poole 2022: 17.
In this course, we will use corpus linguistic methods to study discourses, ranging from the language of capitalism to positive and negative news and the representation of animals in discourse, among others. We use a set of tools for investigating our own DIY corpora as well as corpora that are accessible on the internet.
While we do mostly quantitative analyses, e.g. of collocations or keywords, you will also learn to interpret the results and draw conclusions firmly based in critical or positive discourse analysis. For your assignments, you study a discourse of your own choice with the tool you find most suitable, to answer your own research question.

Literature
Baker, Paul. 2024. Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. 2nd ed. Bloomsbury Academic. Available as ebook from the library.

In this course we will explore the intersections between language, sexuality, and gender. Students will be equipped with knowledge of language use by and about LGBTQ+ people (Lavender Linguistics, LL) and discursive practices of (hetero)normativity in language (Queer Linguistics, QL). Students will read texts focusing on the theoretical foundations of QL, the history of LL, as well as research papers in applied QL/LL. In accordance with the latter, students will also be introduced to various methodologies and fields of research within QL/LL. Throughout the semester, they will conduct their own small-scale study.

Content notice: We might read papers that contain linguistic examples of sexual practices, body parts, or homo-/transphobia.

Requirements:
1) Active participation in class.
2) Participants must be willing to prepare readings on in-depth theory that may, at times, exceed the extent of other linguistics seminars. This is a necessity.

Assessment (depending on module & no of CP)

Prüfungsleistung (graded assessment) 6 CP:
1) Short presentation and critical excerpt of a research paper (ungraded)
2) Poster presentation of your own mini-study or term paper -> deadline 2 August 2026 (graded)

Prüfungsleistung (graded assessment) 3 CP:
1) Short presentation of a research paper (ungraded)
2) Poster presentation of your own mini-study (graded)

Studenleistung (ungraded assessment) 3 CP, pick one:
Short presentation and critical excerpt of a research paper
OR
Poster presentation of your own mini-study

Literature (no need to buy)

Introductions and monographs:

Edited volumes:

Language ideologies are “cultural conceptions about language, its nature, structure and use, and about the place of communicative behavior in social life” (Gal, 2006, p. 171). They also factor into the construction of an individual’s linguistically indexed identity, as language choices become “acts of identity” (Le Page & Tabouret-Keller, 1985).

In this class, we investigate language ideologies in the English-speaking world and within the context of multilingual and multicultural societies. Students also carry out small empirical projects using different methodological approaches to investigate language ideologies in Germany and beyond.

This seminar will examine different aspects of plurilingualism, as well as plurilingual teaching and learning in language classrooms. In the following, you find a list of topics we will discuss in the seminar:

• Defining and critically assessing terms that are used in the area of plurilingualism
• Analyzing the work done by the Council of Europe regarding plurilingualism (FREPA, CEFR descriptors, companion volume of the CEFR, European Language Portfolio
• Getting to know the importance of language awareness
• Exploring existing plurilingual teaching and learning approaches, methods, task, and activities that can be used in the language learning classroom
• Developing and implementing your own plurilingual activity within the seminar
• ...

The seminar links research to practice. The class work will consist of thematic as well as scientific work input, discussions, individual work, group work, reflection tasks, …

In this seminar we will combine an interest in the history of scientific expeditions with an interest in the history of speculative fiction. Based on a dialogue between approaches from literary studies with other disciplines such as the history of science, human geography, as well as critical anthropology, we will ask: What is an expedition? What is an expedition narrative? Based on a reading of 20th and 21st century speculative fiction, from science fiction to the new weird, we will ask how they take up, twist and topple concepts such as "contact zone" or "colonial encounter".

Please, buy and read the following novel:

• Jeff VanderMeer, Annihiliation (2014) [e.g., 978-0008139100 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]

Two further texts - Ted Chiang's novella “Story of Your Life” (1998) and Naomi Mitchison's novel Memoirs of a Spacewoman (1962) - will be provided in class.

There is a strong 20th century tradition of science fiction short stories - both across North America and Great Britain. Indeed the SF short story celebrates something of a centenary as Amazing Stories, an American science fiction magazine, was first launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback. As part of this seminar, we will pay homage to this anniversary though we will mostly keep our eyes on the development of how science is represented in 21st century short fiction and how this is done across SF, speculative fiction but also, especially, historical and realist fiction.

This interdisciplinary seminar in 'blended learning format' (mostly online via Stud.IP/BBB, 1-2 offline meetings at Bremen University in June), co-taught by a physicist and a literary scholar focuses on representations of scientists, scientific methods and scientific practice in contemporary short fiction. In a rare setting with students across the universities of Oldenburg and Bremen, we will read a diverse range of science-related short stories from the Anglophone world. Thematically, our focus will vary from medical research, physics and space, to expeditionary practice and environmental concerns.

Please, buy and read ONE of the following short story anthologies and collections:
• Ra Page, ed. Litmus: Short Stories from Modern Science. Manchester: Comma Press, 2011. [ISBN: 978-1-905583-33-1 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]
• Ted Chiang. Stories of Your Life and Others. 2002. London: Picador, 2024.
• Pippa Goldschmidt. Schrödinger’s Wife (and Other Possibilities). London: Goldsmith Press, 2024. https://pippagoldschmidt.co.uk/books/schrodingers-wife-and-other-possibilities/
• Bruce Meyer, ed. Cli-Fi: Canadian Tales of Climate Change. Chicago, IL: Independent Publishers Group, 2017. [ISBN: 978-1-550966-70-1 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ] https://www.ipgbook.com/cli-fi-products-9781550966701.php

The sonnet is a short, ubiquitous poetic form of 14 lines that every student will have come across. In this seminar, we will use the history of the sonnet in English to discuss Anglophone literary and cultural history, as well as developments in themes, structure and subjectivity. Although this form has at times been called "a narrow room", "a panic closet", or even "a coffin", we will acquaint ourselves with the productiveness of this formal corset and its rich thematic scope, from Renaissance love sonnets to Victorian science sonnets, from World War I sonnets to contemporary sonnets about the experience of using dating apps. We will frame our study of the sonnet with an explicit interest in the history and productivity of "close reading", a literary studies technique first popularized by the New Critics in the US in the first half of the 20th century, but which has seen a renewed debate in the first decades of the 21st century.

This is the second part of the foundation module. It provides an introduction to the history of the English language from Old English to Present-Day English, the spread and transplantation of English to other parts of the world as well as the subsequent diversification of the English language into World Englishes.

In this seminar, students get an introduction to the history of English, i.e. Old English, Middle English and Early Modern English. This class includes weekly discussions and tasks. In the second half of the seminar, we continue to study the historical events, current status of major varieties and differences of world varieties from North America, Australia to Africa and Asia with a focus on their structural and phonological features. We will follow the debates about English as a cause of language death, and talk about the place of English in language policies and language planning.

This is the second part of the foundation module. It provides an introduction to the history of the English language from Old English to Present-Day English, the spread and transplantation of English to other parts of the world as well as the subsequent diversification of the English language into World Englishes.

This is the second part of the foundation module. It provides an introduction to the history of the English language from Old English to Present-Day English, the spread and transplantation of English to other parts of the world as well as the subsequent diversification of the English language into World Englishes.

The aim of the Culture & Communication classes is to help you to prepare for the module exam to be taken to complete the SP Proficiency module.

This particular class will look at different moments which have greatly influenced events within the English-speaking world. We will investigate the processes which led to a particular event, define the event itself and explore the long-term and short-term implications that came about as a consequence. You will be required to think critically and research a topic of your own choice in detail in order to prepare for the Proficiency Interview ⇐ oral exam) at the end of the semester during which you will explain how this moment has been defining. You will also work on presentation skills and familiarise yourselves with the situation of speaking in front of others.

Materials are provided via StudIP.

The aim of the Culture & Communication classes is to help you to prepare for the module exam to be taken to complete the SP-Proficiency module.

This particular class will look at different moments which have greatly influenced events within the English-speaking world. We will investigate the processes which led to a particular event, define the event itself and explore the long-term and short-term implications that came about as a consequence. You will be required to think critically and research a topic of your own choice in detail in order to prepare for the Proficiency Interview ⇐ oral exam) at the end of the semester during which you will explain how this moment has been defining. You will also work on presentation skills and familiarise yourselves with the situation of speaking in front of others.

Materials are provided via StudIP.

The aim of the Culture and Communication class is to help you prepare for the final SP2 module oral exam taken when you have completed the SP2 module. This class will deal with two different areas from which you will be able to develop ONE research project as the basis for your oral exam.
You will be looking at defining moments which have greatly influenced events within the English-speaking world. Your task will be to investigate the processes which led to a particular event, define the event itself and explore the long-term and short-term consequences. A critical analytic approach be will necessary as you explore the causes and implications of the topic of your choice.
In addition, we will work on improving important aspects of grammar, pronunciation, intonation as well as developing the confidence and fluency needed to successfully pass the exam. Whereas CBIS was more about collaboration and teamwork, Culture and Communication allows you to build upon the research skills developed last semester as you move forward with your own project.

The aim of the Culture and Communication class is to help you prepare for the final SP2 module oral exam taken when you have completed the SP2 module. This class will deal with two different areas from which you will be able to develop ONE research project as the basis for your oral exam.
You will be looking at defining moments which have greatly influenced events within the English-speaking world. Your task will be to investigate the processes which led to a particular event, define the event itself and explore the long-term and short-term consequences. A critical analytic approach be will necessary as you explore the causes and implications of the topic of your choice.
In addition, we will work on improving important aspects of grammar, pronunciation, intonation as well as developing the confidence and fluency needed to successfully pass the exam. Whereas CBIS was more about collaboration and teamwork, Culture and Communication allows you to build upon the research skills developed last semester as you move forward with your own project.

The aim of the Culture & Communication classes is to help you to prepare for the module exam to be taken to complete the SP Proficiency module.

This particular class will look at different moments which have greatly influenced events within the English-speaking world. We will investigate the processes which led to a particular event, define the event itself and explore the long-term and short-term implications that came about as a consequence. You will be required to think critically and research a topic of your own choice in detail in order to prepare for the Proficiency Interview ⇐ oral exam) at the end of the semester during which you will explain how this moment has been defining. You will also work on presentation skills and familiarise yourselves with the situation of speaking in front of others.

Materials are provided via StudIP.

The aim of the Culture & Communication classes is to help you to prepare for the module exam to be taken to complete the SP-Proficiency module.

This particular class will look at different moments which have greatly influenced events within the English-speaking world. We will investigate the processes which led to a particular event, define the event itself and explore the long-term and short-term implications that came about as a consequence. You will be required to think critically and research a topic of your own choice in detail in order to prepare for the Proficiency Interview ⇐ oral exam) at the end of the semester during which you will explain how this moment has been defining. You will also work on presentation skills and familiarise yourselves with the situation of speaking in front of others.

Materials are provided via StudIP.

The aim of the Culture and Communication class is to help you prepare for the final SP2 module oral exam taken when you have completed the SP2 module. This class will deal with two different areas from which you will be able to develop ONE research project as the basis for your oral exam.
You will be looking at defining moments which have greatly influenced events within the English-speaking world. Your task will be to investigate the processes which led to a particular event, define the event itself and explore the long-term and short-term consequences. A critical analytic approach be will necessary as you explore the causes and implications of the topic of your choice.
In addition, we will work on improving important aspects of grammar, pronunciation, intonation as well as developing the confidence and fluency needed to successfully pass the exam. Whereas CBIS was more about collaboration and teamwork, Culture and Communication allows you to build upon the research skills developed last semester as you move forward with your own project.

The aim of the Culture and Communication class is to help you prepare for the final SP2 module oral exam taken when you have completed the SP2 module. This class will deal with two different areas from which you will be able to develop ONE research project as the basis for your oral exam.
You will be looking at defining moments which have greatly influenced events within the English-speaking world. Your task will be to investigate the processes which led to a particular event, define the event itself and explore the long-term and short-term consequences. A critical analytic approach be will necessary as you explore the causes and implications of the topic of your choice.
In addition, we will work on improving important aspects of grammar, pronunciation, intonation as well as developing the confidence and fluency needed to successfully pass the exam. Whereas CBIS was more about collaboration and teamwork, Culture and Communication allows you to build upon the research skills developed last semester as you move forward with your own project.

This is the second part of the foundation module. It provides an introduction to the history of the English language from Old English to Present-Day English, the spread and transplantation of English to other parts of the world as well as the subsequent diversification of the English language into World Englishes.

In this seminar, students get an introduction to the history of English, i.e. Old English, Middle English and Early Modern English. This class includes weekly discussions and tasks. In the second half of the seminar, we continue to study the historical events, current status of major varieties and differences of world varieties from North America, Australia to Africa and Asia with a focus on their structural and phonological features. We will follow the debates about English as a cause of language death, and talk about the place of English in language policies and language planning.

This is the second part of the foundation module. It provides an introduction to the history of the English language from Old English to Present-Day English, the spread and transplantation of English to other parts of the world as well as the subsequent diversification of the English language into World Englishes.

This is the second part of the foundation module. It provides an introduction to the history of the English language from Old English to Present-Day English, the spread and transplantation of English to other parts of the world as well as the subsequent diversification of the English language into World Englishes.

The aim of the Culture & Communication classes is to help you to prepare for the module exam to be taken to complete the SP Proficiency module.

This particular class will look at different moments which have greatly influenced events within the English-speaking world. We will investigate the processes which led to a particular event, define the event itself and explore the long-term and short-term implications that came about as a consequence. You will be required to think critically and research a topic of your own choice in detail in order to prepare for the Proficiency Interview ⇐ oral exam) at the end of the semester during which you will explain how this moment has been defining. You will also work on presentation skills and familiarise yourselves with the situation of speaking in front of others.

Materials are provided via StudIP.

The aim of the Culture & Communication classes is to help you to prepare for the module exam to be taken to complete the SP-Proficiency module.

This particular class will look at different moments which have greatly influenced events within the English-speaking world. We will investigate the processes which led to a particular event, define the event itself and explore the long-term and short-term implications that came about as a consequence. You will be required to think critically and research a topic of your own choice in detail in order to prepare for the Proficiency Interview ⇐ oral exam) at the end of the semester during which you will explain how this moment has been defining. You will also work on presentation skills and familiarise yourselves with the situation of speaking in front of others.

Materials are provided via StudIP.

The aim of the Culture and Communication class is to help you prepare for the final SP2 module oral exam taken when you have completed the SP2 module. This class will deal with two different areas from which you will be able to develop ONE research project as the basis for your oral exam.
You will be looking at defining moments which have greatly influenced events within the English-speaking world. Your task will be to investigate the processes which led to a particular event, define the event itself and explore the long-term and short-term consequences. A critical analytic approach be will necessary as you explore the causes and implications of the topic of your choice.
In addition, we will work on improving important aspects of grammar, pronunciation, intonation as well as developing the confidence and fluency needed to successfully pass the exam. Whereas CBIS was more about collaboration and teamwork, Culture and Communication allows you to build upon the research skills developed last semester as you move forward with your own project.

The aim of the Culture and Communication class is to help you prepare for the final SP2 module oral exam taken when you have completed the SP2 module. This class will deal with two different areas from which you will be able to develop ONE research project as the basis for your oral exam.
You will be looking at defining moments which have greatly influenced events within the English-speaking world. Your task will be to investigate the processes which led to a particular event, define the event itself and explore the long-term and short-term consequences. A critical analytic approach be will necessary as you explore the causes and implications of the topic of your choice.
In addition, we will work on improving important aspects of grammar, pronunciation, intonation as well as developing the confidence and fluency needed to successfully pass the exam. Whereas CBIS was more about collaboration and teamwork, Culture and Communication allows you to build upon the research skills developed last semester as you move forward with your own project.

T

This colloquium is for all students who plan to write their BA thesis in Linguistics in the summer term. Together we will find a topic for you and go through all the steps towards your final thesis: search for literature in the library catalogue and linguistic databases, find or collect the data for the analysis, choose an appropriate method of analysis, and do the actual research. You will learn how to plan your time realistically (and stick to the plan), how to structure your BA thesis, and you can finish your thesis this semester.

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 the second part of the foundation module. It provides an introduction to the history of the English language from Old English to Present-Day English, the spread and transplantation of English to other parts of the world as well as the subsequent diversification of the English language into World Englishes.

In this seminar, students get an introduction to the history of English, i.e. Old English, Middle English and Early Modern English. This class includes weekly discussions and tasks. In the second half of the seminar, we continue to study the historical events, current status of major varieties and differences of world varieties from North America, Australia to Africa and Asia with a focus on their structural and phonological features. We will follow the debates about English as a cause of language death, and talk about the place of English in language policies and language planning.

This is the second part of the foundation module. It provides an introduction to the history of the English language from Old English to Present-Day English, the spread and transplantation of English to other parts of the world as well as the subsequent diversification of the English language into World Englishes.

This is the second part of the foundation module. It provides an introduction to the history of the English language from Old English to Present-Day English, the spread and transplantation of English to other parts of the world as well as the subsequent diversification of the English language into World Englishes.

The aim of the Culture & Communication classes is to help you to prepare for the module exam to be taken to complete the SP Proficiency module.

This particular class will look at different moments which have greatly influenced events within the English-speaking world. We will investigate the processes which led to a particular event, define the event itself and explore the long-term and short-term implications that came about as a consequence. You will be required to think critically and research a topic of your own choice in detail in order to prepare for the Proficiency Interview ⇐ oral exam) at the end of the semester during which you will explain how this moment has been defining. You will also work on presentation skills and familiarise yourselves with the situation of speaking in front of others.

Materials are provided via StudIP.

The aim of the Culture & Communication classes is to help you to prepare for the module exam to be taken to complete the SP-Proficiency module.

This particular class will look at different moments which have greatly influenced events within the English-speaking world. We will investigate the processes which led to a particular event, define the event itself and explore the long-term and short-term implications that came about as a consequence. You will be required to think critically and research a topic of your own choice in detail in order to prepare for the Proficiency Interview ⇐ oral exam) at the end of the semester during which you will explain how this moment has been defining. You will also work on presentation skills and familiarise yourselves with the situation of speaking in front of others.

Materials are provided via StudIP.

The aim of the Culture and Communication class is to help you prepare for the final SP2 module oral exam taken when you have completed the SP2 module. This class will deal with two different areas from which you will be able to develop ONE research project as the basis for your oral exam.
You will be looking at defining moments which have greatly influenced events within the English-speaking world. Your task will be to investigate the processes which led to a particular event, define the event itself and explore the long-term and short-term consequences. A critical analytic approach be will necessary as you explore the causes and implications of the topic of your choice.
In addition, we will work on improving important aspects of grammar, pronunciation, intonation as well as developing the confidence and fluency needed to successfully pass the exam. Whereas CBIS was more about collaboration and teamwork, Culture and Communication allows you to build upon the research skills developed last semester as you move forward with your own project.

The aim of the Culture and Communication class is to help you prepare for the final SP2 module oral exam taken when you have completed the SP2 module. This class will deal with two different areas from which you will be able to develop ONE research project as the basis for your oral exam.
You will be looking at defining moments which have greatly influenced events within the English-speaking world. Your task will be to investigate the processes which led to a particular event, define the event itself and explore the long-term and short-term consequences. A critical analytic approach be will necessary as you explore the causes and implications of the topic of your choice.
In addition, we will work on improving important aspects of grammar, pronunciation, intonation as well as developing the confidence and fluency needed to successfully pass the exam. Whereas CBIS was more about collaboration and teamwork, Culture and Communication allows you to build upon the research skills developed last semester as you move forward with your own project.

This is the second part of the foundation module. It provides an introduction to the history of the English language from Old English to Present-Day English, the spread and transplantation of English to other parts of the world as well as the subsequent diversification of the English language into World Englishes.

In this seminar, students get an introduction to the history of English, i.e. Old English, Middle English and Early Modern English. This class includes weekly discussions and tasks. In the second half of the seminar, we continue to study the historical events, current status of major varieties and differences of world varieties from North America, Australia to Africa and Asia with a focus on their structural and phonological features. We will follow the debates about English as a cause of language death, and talk about the place of English in language policies and language planning.

This is the second part of the foundation module. It provides an introduction to the history of the English language from Old English to Present-Day English, the spread and transplantation of English to other parts of the world as well as the subsequent diversification of the English language into World Englishes.

This is the second part of the foundation module. It provides an introduction to the history of the English language from Old English to Present-Day English, the spread and transplantation of English to other parts of the world as well as the subsequent diversification of the English language into World Englishes.

T

This colloquium is for all students who plan to write their BA thesis in Linguistics in the summer term. Together we will find a topic for you and go through all the steps towards your final thesis: search for literature in the library catalogue and linguistic databases, find or collect the data for the analysis, choose an appropriate method of analysis, and do the actual research. You will learn how to plan your time realistically (and stick to the plan), how to structure your BA thesis, and you can finish your thesis this semester.

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 course continues the general introduction to English Linguistics from last semester, focusing on how to do empirical work in linguistics. Students will be introduced to the different methods and tools to collect, process and analyze linguistic data. In this course, we focus on observation and diaries as well as corpus studies.

Coursework and assessment
You are expected to read and prepare selected texts for each session. The coursework will focus on real-life linguistic data and exercises which are designed to help you apply selected methods and tools and critically discuss their usefulness. By the end of the term, you are required to submit a portfolio comprising reading assignments, data-based tasks, and participation in linguistic experiments.

Literature
Rose, Heath & Jim McKinley & Jessica Briggs Baffoe-Djan. 2020. Data Collection Research Methods in Applied Linguistics. Bloomsbury Academic.
Wray, Alison & Aileen Bloomer. 2012. Projects in Linguistics and Language Studies. 3rd edition. London: Hodder Education.

This course continues the general introduction to English Linguistics from last semester, focusing on how to do empirical work in linguistics. Students will be introduced to the different ways, methods and tools to obtain, process and analyze linguistic data. The following topics will be covered: research methodology and design, types of data collection, experiments, corpus linguistics, online dictionaries, linguistic fieldwork, and transcription.

Coursework and assessment

You are expected to read and prepare selected texts for each session. The coursework will focus on real-life linguistic data and exercises which are designed to help you apply selected methods and tools and critically discuss their usefulness. You are required to submit a portfolio comprising different data-based tasks ("worksheets") and other assignments that will be worked on in the course of the semester.

Basic introductory textbooks

Sealey, A. (2010), Researching English Language. A resource book for students. London: Routledge.
Wray, A. & A. Bloomer (2012), Projects in Linguistics and Language Studies. 3rd edition. London: Hodder Education.

This is the second part of the foundation module. It provides an introduction to the history of the English language from Old English to Present-Day English, the spread and transplantation of English to other parts of the world as well as the subsequent diversification of the English language into World Englishes.

In this seminar, students get an introduction to the history of English, i.e. Old English, Middle English and Early Modern English. This class includes weekly discussions and tasks. In the second half of the seminar, we continue to study the historical events, current status of major varieties and differences of world varieties from North America, Australia to Africa and Asia with a focus on their structural and phonological features. We will follow the debates about English as a cause of language death, and talk about the place of English in language policies and language planning.

This is the second part of the foundation module. It provides an introduction to the history of the English language from Old English to Present-Day English, the spread and transplantation of English to other parts of the world as well as the subsequent diversification of the English language into World Englishes.

This is the second part of the foundation module. It provides an introduction to the history of the English language from Old English to Present-Day English, the spread and transplantation of English to other parts of the world as well as the subsequent diversification of the English language into World Englishes.

This class introduces students to the interdisciplinary study of water and culture, with a focus on the intersections of the blue humanities with social sciences, geography, literary and cultural studies, and the arts. The class consists of a mixture of seminar sessions and guest lectures by invited speakers. Scholars and teachers both from U Bremen and from elsewhere will deliver lectures on the theme “Making Waves: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Water and Culture.” In the sessions between the lectures, we will discuss corresponding theoretical and analytical texts as well as analyze primary material in accordance with the subject matter of the presentations and to critically reflect on their respective ideas and arguments. Students will obtain an overview of the interdisciplinary study of water and culture in the humanities and deepen their skills in cultural studies.

This class is open to BA E-SC students studying 4th semester modules. It is also open to a limited number of international exchange students and students doing ‘Freiwillige Zusatzleistungen,’ ‘Ersatzleistungen,’ and General Studies, including the sustainability certificate BRENA.

Prior enrolment via Stud.IP is mandatory and admission is limited to a maximum of thirty-five students. Further information will be made available on Stud.IP. Please check Stud.IP regularly for updates.
Requirements
• active participation in weekly in-person meetings,
• in-depth study of the primary and secondary material in preparation for each session,
• graded or ungraded assignment in accordance with the respective module requirements.

In October 2025, we “heard [her] calling on the megaphone”: Shakespeare’s Ophelia experienced a widely discussed revival in popular culture through Taylor Swift. This renewed attention invites us to ask again what the true fate of Ophelia might be. Why has this figure continued to fascinate artists, writers, and audiences for over four centuries?

With this question in mind, this seminar examines the figure of Ophelia throughout the ages. Together, we will read Shakespeare’s Hamlet and then trace Ophelia’s afterlives across paintings, theatre, stage and film adaptations, novels, lyrical texts, and pop culture more broadly. The seminar combines close reading with visual analysis and cultural discussion and encourages students to bring in their own observations and interests.

To receive credit for this course, you must
• have an excellent knowledge of the assigned readings and materials.
• actively participate in discussions and smaller group work.
• attend one mandatory library workshop (June 11, 2026, from 12:15 to 13:45).
• create an annotated bibliography for a potential research paper (due on June 17, 2026).
• make a meaningful contribution to our exhibition at the Day of Sciences on June 27, 2026 (more information will follow in our first session).

If you need a grade in this course, you additionally need to
• submit an abstract for your term paper (due on July 5, 2026 / 0% of final grade for BPO 2025, 20% of final grade for BPO 2011)
• write a term paper (24.000–28.000 characters: text without blanks, cover, table of contents, works cited, affidavit; due on September 15, 2026 / 100% of final grade for BPO 2025, 80% of final grade for BPO 2011).

We’ll deal with the Studienleistungen and exams in our first session as well.

Most of the works will be made accessible on Stud.IP. However, please purchase the following editions:
Klein, Lisa. Ophelia. Bloomsbury Academic, 2008. (ISBN: 9781599902289)
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Edited by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016. (ISBN: 9781472518385)

If you have any questions beforehand, please don’t hesitate to email me (wolfk@uni-bremen.de). In order to be finally accepted into this seminar, you have to show up at the first three sessions.

I’m looking forward to discovering, questioning, and rethinking Ophelia’s fate together with you!

All the best,
Kevin

This seminar introduces students to the study of cinema in the age of the climate crisis. Students will hone their skills in film analysis and expand their command of theoretical approaches to critically examine filmic representations of the environment, of natural disasters such as floods, and the relationship of various human communities to the non-human, or more-than-human, world. In doing so, students will not only engage with critical discourses around ecocinema and the blue humanities but also refine their academic reading, writing, and presentation skills as well as train their media literacy.

This class is open to BA E-SC students studying 4th semester modules. It is also open to a limited number of international exchange students and students doing ‘Freiwillige Zusatzleistungen,’ ‘Ersatzleistungen,’ and General Studies, including the sustainability certificate BRENA.

Prior enrolment via Stud.IP is mandatory and admission is limited to a maximum of thirty-five students. Further information will be made available on Stud.IP and during the first session.

Requirements
• active participation in weekly in-person meetings,
• in-depth study of the primary and secondary material in preparation for each session,
• graded or ungraded assignment in accordance with the respective module requirements (i.e. graded term paper or portfolio OR ungraded class contribution).

This seminar will introduce students to the genre of so-called walking simulators—story-driven exploration video games where walking around constitutes the primary gameplay mechanic—and the scholarly and public discussions surrounding it. Students will choose three primary texts from a list of walking simulators and are asked to play and engage critically with those games. The course will begin with a short introduction to the genre of walking simulators and an overview of how to analyze video games using the tools of transmedial narratology. While our first three sessions are dedicated to acquiring the vocabulary and analytical skills necessary for a scholarly discussion of video games more broadly and walking simulators in particular, the following sessions are loosely organized around recurring tropes and themes in those types of games. During those sessions, we will talk about selected secondary texts and reflect on how they could be made productive for an analysis of the students’ chosen primary texts. Ultimately, students will leave this course with a deeper insight into the genre of walking simulators and their affordances, the debates they inspire in both public and academic spaces, and the ability to develop research questions that can be made productive for an analysis of those types of video games.

Corpus-assisted discourse analysis (CADA) is a “data-driven methodology [that] allows researchers to identify frequent and salient patterns of language use that often operate covertly beyond our conscious awareness but which provide a lens to the hegemonic belief systems of a community of language users.” Poole 2022: 17.
In this course, we will use corpus linguistic methods to study discourses, ranging from the language of capitalism to positive and negative news and the representation of animals in discourse, among others. We use a set of tools for investigating our own DIY corpora as well as corpora that are accessible on the internet.
While we do mostly quantitative analyses, e.g. of collocations or keywords, you will also learn to interpret the results and draw conclusions firmly based in critical or positive discourse analysis. For your assignments, you study a discourse of your own choice with the tool you find most suitable, to answer your own research question.

Literature
Baker, Paul. 2024. Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. 2nd ed. Bloomsbury Academic. Available as ebook from the library.

In October 2025, we “heard [her] calling on the megaphone”: Shakespeare’s Ophelia experienced a widely discussed revival in popular culture through Taylor Swift. This renewed attention invites us to ask again what the true fate of Ophelia might be. Why has this figure continued to fascinate artists, writers, and audiences for over four centuries?

With this question in mind, this seminar examines the figure of Ophelia throughout the ages. Together, we will read Shakespeare’s Hamlet and then trace Ophelia’s afterlives across paintings, theatre, stage and film adaptations, novels, lyrical texts, and pop culture more broadly. The seminar combines close reading with visual analysis and cultural discussion and encourages students to bring in their own observations and interests.

To receive credit for this course, you must
• have an excellent knowledge of the assigned readings and materials.
• actively participate in discussions and smaller group work.
• attend one mandatory library workshop (June 11, 2026, from 12:15 to 13:45).
• create an annotated bibliography for a potential research paper (due on June 17, 2026).
• make a meaningful contribution to our exhibition at the Day of Sciences on June 27, 2026 (more information will follow in our first session).

If you need a grade in this course, you additionally need to
• submit an abstract for your term paper (due on July 5, 2026 / 0% of final grade for BPO 2025, 20% of final grade for BPO 2011)
• write a term paper (24.000–28.000 characters: text without blanks, cover, table of contents, works cited, affidavit; due on September 15, 2026 / 100% of final grade for BPO 2025, 80% of final grade for BPO 2011).

We’ll deal with the Studienleistungen and exams in our first session as well.

Most of the works will be made accessible on Stud.IP. However, please purchase the following editions:
Klein, Lisa. Ophelia. Bloomsbury Academic, 2008. (ISBN: 9781599902289)
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Edited by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016. (ISBN: 9781472518385)

If you have any questions beforehand, please don’t hesitate to email me (wolfk@uni-bremen.de). In order to be finally accepted into this seminar, you have to show up at the first three sessions.

I’m looking forward to discovering, questioning, and rethinking Ophelia’s fate together with you!

All the best,
Kevin

COURSE DESCRIPTION
In this course, we will consider how democratic thought, social protest and civil disobedience are expressed, negotiated and/or advocated for in British literature. We will conceptualise what we mean when we speak about democracy and civic participation, discuss the value of democratic systems and what is at stake when they are threatened, and consider the role literature has played in these debates.
Our focus will be on contemporary writing (post-1945): we consider the democratic potential of a range of narratives and genres, from dystopian fiction, satire, drama and spoken word poetry to biopics, protest short fiction, videogames and the state-of-the-nation novel. The exact selection will be finalised in dialogue with the course participants.
This course includes a cooperation with the Bremer Kulturzentrum Schlachthof: we will be taking part in a Zine workshop and present the results in the form of an exhibition. Interested students are invited to contribute to an issue of the Kulturzentrum’s Z-Magazin.

COURSE MATERIAL
Please acquire a copy of the following books:

• George Orwell, 1984 (Penguin, 2008)
• Alan Moore, V for Vendetta (DC Comics, 2020)
• Ali Smith, Autumn (Penguin, 2017)

Shorter readings will be provided. Please note that this is a reading-intensive course.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
At the end of this semester, you will be able to:
− give an overview of the democratic potential and/or shortcomings of literature
− outline representational strategies tied to democratic thought across various genres
− analyse major themes relevant to the relationship between literature and democracy by making use of theoretical and sociocultural contexts to justify your analysis
− independently plan and develop an argument for an academic term paper on a text of your choice
− use your critical knowledge creatively by conceptualising and designing a Zine

In this seminar we will combine an interest in the history of scientific expeditions with an interest in the history of speculative fiction. Based on a dialogue between approaches from literary studies with other disciplines such as the history of science, human geography, as well as critical anthropology, we will ask: What is an expedition? What is an expedition narrative? Based on a reading of 20th and 21st century speculative fiction, from science fiction to the new weird, we will ask how they take up, twist and topple concepts such as "contact zone" or "colonial encounter".

Please, buy and read the following novel:

• Jeff VanderMeer, Annihiliation (2014) [e.g., 978-0008139100 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]

Two further texts - Ted Chiang's novella “Story of Your Life” (1998) and Naomi Mitchison's novel Memoirs of a Spacewoman (1962) - will be provided in class.

The Gothic is a genre that has spanned many years and many countries/cultures. This class questions whether there can be an Indigenous Gothic, considering the settler-colonial tropes and histories of the Gothic genre in the Americas. We will delve into various short stories from Shane Hawk’s edited collection Never Whistle At Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, as well as Jessica Johns' novel Bad Cree (2023) and Drew Hayden Taylor's graphic novel The Night Wanderer (2013), and compare them to 'traditional' North American Gothic literature. Through our readings and comparisons, we will critically analyze settler-colonialism in North America and question whether the histories of the North American Gothic genre can be enriched (or decolonized?) by Indigenous contributions to the form.

Requirements for this course are 1) active reading and participation and 2) term paper (PL) or in-class presentation (SL).

Please obtain Taylor's graphic novel and Jessica John's novel before the semester begins. The short stories from Hawk's edited collection will be provided on Stud.Ip. If you are unable to obtain the books for any reason, please send me an email.

This seminar approaches literature through its form – the formal language and structure that shape content and create their own meaning. Form and content, in this sense, are inseparable. Meaning takes shape in and through form, while form carries its own meaning(s). Forms have histories and develop through gradual refinement, cultural contact, challenges, and innovation. They also have specific affordances, which means that they tend to be suited to the engagement with some issues, questions and topics than others.
Poetic forms are a particularly good starting point for the study of form, because in poetry, formal aspects are so condensed. In the course of this seminar, we will encounter different poetic forms, such as the sonnet, the couplet, blank verse, the ode, and the ballad. Our main goal is to identify the basic characteristics and structures of these forms and to explore what they do particularly well. We will also explore these forms in a historical perspective and observe how they have evolved and changed. The focus on close textual analysis will also enable students to hone their formal reading skills and to broaden and apply their knowledge of rhetorical strategies. Paying close attention to specific texts and forms will also allow participants to explore broader questions about the relevance of form to the encounter with literature.

All compulsory reading (poems and theoretical literature) will be available on Stud.IP (see syllabus and file folders for the relevant session).

There is a strong 20th century tradition of science fiction short stories - both across North America and Great Britain. Indeed the SF short story celebrates something of a centenary as Amazing Stories, an American science fiction magazine, was first launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback. As part of this seminar, we will pay homage to this anniversary though we will mostly keep our eyes on the development of how science is represented in 21st century short fiction and how this is done across SF, speculative fiction but also, especially, historical and realist fiction.

This interdisciplinary seminar in 'blended learning format' (mostly online via Stud.IP/BBB, 1-2 offline meetings at Bremen University in June), co-taught by a physicist and a literary scholar focuses on representations of scientists, scientific methods and scientific practice in contemporary short fiction. In a rare setting with students across the universities of Oldenburg and Bremen, we will read a diverse range of science-related short stories from the Anglophone world. Thematically, our focus will vary from medical research, physics and space, to expeditionary practice and environmental concerns.

Please, buy and read ONE of the following short story anthologies and collections:
• Ra Page, ed. Litmus: Short Stories from Modern Science. Manchester: Comma Press, 2011. [ISBN: 978-1-905583-33-1 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]
• Ted Chiang. Stories of Your Life and Others. 2002. London: Picador, 2024.
• Pippa Goldschmidt. Schrödinger’s Wife (and Other Possibilities). London: Goldsmith Press, 2024. https://pippagoldschmidt.co.uk/books/schrodingers-wife-and-other-possibilities/
• Bruce Meyer, ed. Cli-Fi: Canadian Tales of Climate Change. Chicago, IL: Independent Publishers Group, 2017. [ISBN: 978-1-550966-70-1 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ] https://www.ipgbook.com/cli-fi-products-9781550966701.php

The sonnet is a short, ubiquitous poetic form of 14 lines that every student will have come across. In this seminar, we will use the history of the sonnet in English to discuss Anglophone literary and cultural history, as well as developments in themes, structure and subjectivity. Although this form has at times been called "a narrow room", "a panic closet", or even "a coffin", we will acquaint ourselves with the productiveness of this formal corset and its rich thematic scope, from Renaissance love sonnets to Victorian science sonnets, from World War I sonnets to contemporary sonnets about the experience of using dating apps. We will frame our study of the sonnet with an explicit interest in the history and productivity of "close reading", a literary studies technique first popularized by the New Critics in the US in the first half of the 20th century, but which has seen a renewed debate in the first decades of the 21st century.

University Language Skills 2 (ULS 2) is a four-hour class. You have to attend the entire class. ULS 2 is the second half of the SP Foundation module. As such it builds on the basic knowledge of academic writing established in ULS 1.

While the focus during the winter semester is on the basic structure of an academic essay, during the summer semester you will be introduced to key rhetorical strategies. These strategies include essays of argumentation, cause & effect as well as comparison & contrast. Furthermore, grammatical structures needed for writing (e.g. syntax, passive voice, conditionals) will be part of the course’s syllabus.

Requirements:
• Regular and active participation
• Thorough preparation of each session
• Written assignments (approx. 2000 words)

Materials are provided via StudIP

University Language Skills 2 (ULS 2) is a four-hour class. You have to attend the entire class. ULS 2 is the second half of the SP Foundation module. As such it builds on the basic knowledge of academic writing established in ULS 1.

While the focus during the winter semester is on the basic structure of an academic essay, during the summer semester you will be introduced to key rhetorical strategies. These strategies include essays of argumentation, cause & effect as well as comparison & contrast. Furthermore, grammatical structures needed for writing (e.g. syntax, passive voice, conditionals) will be part of the course’s syllabus.

Requirements:
• Regular and active participation
• Thorough preparation of each session
• Written assignments (approx. 2000 words)

Materials are provided via StudIP

University Language Skills 2 (ULS 2) is a four-hour class. You have to attend the entire class. ULS 2 is the second half of the SP Foundation module. As such it builds on the basic knowledge of academic writing established in ULS 1.

While the focus during the winter semester is on the basic structure of an academic essay, during the summer semester you will be introduced to key rhetorical strategies. These strategies include essays of argumentation, cause & effect as well as comparison & contrast. Furthermore, grammatical structures needed for writing (e.g. syntax, passive voice, conditionals) will be part of the course’s syllabus.

Requirements:
• Regular and active participation
• Thorough preparation of each session
• Written assignments (approx. 2000 words)

Materials are provided via StudIP

University Language Skills 2 is the second part of the SP1 module and will earn you a total of 6CPs. It is a four-hour class with two consecutive time slots, both of which MUST be attended.
The following seminar will build on skills acquired in ULS1. We will review and further develop writing skills regarding the different phases in writing, essay structure and good writing style. In addition, we will explore and develop more complex writing strategies including problem/solution, argumentation, cause/effect, and comparison/contrast.
Emphasis will be placed on the ability to recognize individual errors and work on challenging aspects of language. You will therefore continue to work on grammar and lexis at an individual, needs-based level and will be able to access self-study material to work on independently according to your own requirements outside of the classroom. This is essential in developing an autonomous learning style which will subsequently enable you to critically assess and correct your own work.
You will be expected to attend class regularly and actively participate in group discussions and activities. Task assigned to be completed between sessions must also be completed on time as well as the graded assignments to be discussed in class.

The aim of the Culture & Communication classes is to help you to prepare for the module exam to be taken to complete the SP Proficiency module.

This particular class will look at different moments which have greatly influenced events within the English-speaking world. We will investigate the processes which led to a particular event, define the event itself and explore the long-term and short-term implications that came about as a consequence. You will be required to think critically and research a topic of your own choice in detail in order to prepare for the Proficiency Interview ⇐ oral exam) at the end of the semester during which you will explain how this moment has been defining. You will also work on presentation skills and familiarise yourselves with the situation of speaking in front of others.

Materials are provided via StudIP.

The aim of the Culture & Communication classes is to help you to prepare for the module exam to be taken to complete the SP-Proficiency module.

This particular class will look at different moments which have greatly influenced events within the English-speaking world. We will investigate the processes which led to a particular event, define the event itself and explore the long-term and short-term implications that came about as a consequence. You will be required to think critically and research a topic of your own choice in detail in order to prepare for the Proficiency Interview ⇐ oral exam) at the end of the semester during which you will explain how this moment has been defining. You will also work on presentation skills and familiarise yourselves with the situation of speaking in front of others.

Materials are provided via StudIP.

The aim of the Culture and Communication class is to help you prepare for the final SP2 module oral exam taken when you have completed the SP2 module. This class will deal with two different areas from which you will be able to develop ONE research project as the basis for your oral exam.
You will be looking at defining moments which have greatly influenced events within the English-speaking world. Your task will be to investigate the processes which led to a particular event, define the event itself and explore the long-term and short-term consequences. A critical analytic approach be will necessary as you explore the causes and implications of the topic of your choice.
In addition, we will work on improving important aspects of grammar, pronunciation, intonation as well as developing the confidence and fluency needed to successfully pass the exam. Whereas CBIS was more about collaboration and teamwork, Culture and Communication allows you to build upon the research skills developed last semester as you move forward with your own project.

The aim of the Culture and Communication class is to help you prepare for the final SP2 module oral exam taken when you have completed the SP2 module. This class will deal with two different areas from which you will be able to develop ONE research project as the basis for your oral exam.
You will be looking at defining moments which have greatly influenced events within the English-speaking world. Your task will be to investigate the processes which led to a particular event, define the event itself and explore the long-term and short-term consequences. A critical analytic approach be will necessary as you explore the causes and implications of the topic of your choice.
In addition, we will work on improving important aspects of grammar, pronunciation, intonation as well as developing the confidence and fluency needed to successfully pass the exam. Whereas CBIS was more about collaboration and teamwork, Culture and Communication allows you to build upon the research skills developed last semester as you move forward with your own project.

This course continues the general introduction to English Linguistics from last semester, focusing on how to do empirical work in linguistics. Students will be introduced to the different methods and tools to collect, process and analyze linguistic data. In this course, we focus on observation and diaries as well as corpus studies.

Coursework and assessment
You are expected to read and prepare selected texts for each session. The coursework will focus on real-life linguistic data and exercises which are designed to help you apply selected methods and tools and critically discuss their usefulness. By the end of the term, you are required to submit a portfolio comprising reading assignments, data-based tasks, and participation in linguistic experiments.

Literature
Rose, Heath & Jim McKinley & Jessica Briggs Baffoe-Djan. 2020. Data Collection Research Methods in Applied Linguistics. Bloomsbury Academic.
Wray, Alison & Aileen Bloomer. 2012. Projects in Linguistics and Language Studies. 3rd edition. London: Hodder Education.

This course continues the general introduction to English Linguistics from last semester, focusing on how to do empirical work in linguistics. Students will be introduced to the different ways, methods and tools to obtain, process and analyze linguistic data. The following topics will be covered: research methodology and design, types of data collection, experiments, corpus linguistics, online dictionaries, linguistic fieldwork, and transcription.

Coursework and assessment

You are expected to read and prepare selected texts for each session. The coursework will focus on real-life linguistic data and exercises which are designed to help you apply selected methods and tools and critically discuss their usefulness. You are required to submit a portfolio comprising different data-based tasks ("worksheets") and other assignments that will be worked on in the course of the semester.

Basic introductory textbooks

Sealey, A. (2010), Researching English Language. A resource book for students. London: Routledge.
Wray, A. & A. Bloomer (2012), Projects in Linguistics and Language Studies. 3rd edition. London: Hodder Education.

This is the second part of the foundation module. It provides an introduction to the history of the English language from Old English to Present-Day English, the spread and transplantation of English to other parts of the world as well as the subsequent diversification of the English language into World Englishes.

In this seminar, students get an introduction to the history of English, i.e. Old English, Middle English and Early Modern English. This class includes weekly discussions and tasks. In the second half of the seminar, we continue to study the historical events, current status of major varieties and differences of world varieties from North America, Australia to Africa and Asia with a focus on their structural and phonological features. We will follow the debates about English as a cause of language death, and talk about the place of English in language policies and language planning.

This is the second part of the foundation module. It provides an introduction to the history of the English language from Old English to Present-Day English, the spread and transplantation of English to other parts of the world as well as the subsequent diversification of the English language into World Englishes.

This is the second part of the foundation module. It provides an introduction to the history of the English language from Old English to Present-Day English, the spread and transplantation of English to other parts of the world as well as the subsequent diversification of the English language into World Englishes.

This class introduces students to the interdisciplinary study of water and culture, with a focus on the intersections of the blue humanities with social sciences, geography, literary and cultural studies, and the arts. The class consists of a mixture of seminar sessions and guest lectures by invited speakers. Scholars and teachers both from U Bremen and from elsewhere will deliver lectures on the theme “Making Waves: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Water and Culture.” In the sessions between the lectures, we will discuss corresponding theoretical and analytical texts as well as analyze primary material in accordance with the subject matter of the presentations and to critically reflect on their respective ideas and arguments. Students will obtain an overview of the interdisciplinary study of water and culture in the humanities and deepen their skills in cultural studies.

This class is open to BA E-SC students studying 4th semester modules. It is also open to a limited number of international exchange students and students doing ‘Freiwillige Zusatzleistungen,’ ‘Ersatzleistungen,’ and General Studies, including the sustainability certificate BRENA.

Prior enrolment via Stud.IP is mandatory and admission is limited to a maximum of thirty-five students. Further information will be made available on Stud.IP. Please check Stud.IP regularly for updates.
Requirements
• active participation in weekly in-person meetings,
• in-depth study of the primary and secondary material in preparation for each session,
• graded or ungraded assignment in accordance with the respective module requirements.

In October 2025, we “heard [her] calling on the megaphone”: Shakespeare’s Ophelia experienced a widely discussed revival in popular culture through Taylor Swift. This renewed attention invites us to ask again what the true fate of Ophelia might be. Why has this figure continued to fascinate artists, writers, and audiences for over four centuries?

With this question in mind, this seminar examines the figure of Ophelia throughout the ages. Together, we will read Shakespeare’s Hamlet and then trace Ophelia’s afterlives across paintings, theatre, stage and film adaptations, novels, lyrical texts, and pop culture more broadly. The seminar combines close reading with visual analysis and cultural discussion and encourages students to bring in their own observations and interests.

To receive credit for this course, you must
• have an excellent knowledge of the assigned readings and materials.
• actively participate in discussions and smaller group work.
• attend one mandatory library workshop (June 11, 2026, from 12:15 to 13:45).
• create an annotated bibliography for a potential research paper (due on June 17, 2026).
• make a meaningful contribution to our exhibition at the Day of Sciences on June 27, 2026 (more information will follow in our first session).

If you need a grade in this course, you additionally need to
• submit an abstract for your term paper (due on July 5, 2026 / 0% of final grade for BPO 2025, 20% of final grade for BPO 2011)
• write a term paper (24.000–28.000 characters: text without blanks, cover, table of contents, works cited, affidavit; due on September 15, 2026 / 100% of final grade for BPO 2025, 80% of final grade for BPO 2011).

We’ll deal with the Studienleistungen and exams in our first session as well.

Most of the works will be made accessible on Stud.IP. However, please purchase the following editions:
Klein, Lisa. Ophelia. Bloomsbury Academic, 2008. (ISBN: 9781599902289)
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Edited by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016. (ISBN: 9781472518385)

If you have any questions beforehand, please don’t hesitate to email me (wolfk@uni-bremen.de). In order to be finally accepted into this seminar, you have to show up at the first three sessions.

I’m looking forward to discovering, questioning, and rethinking Ophelia’s fate together with you!

All the best,
Kevin

This seminar introduces students to the study of cinema in the age of the climate crisis. Students will hone their skills in film analysis and expand their command of theoretical approaches to critically examine filmic representations of the environment, of natural disasters such as floods, and the relationship of various human communities to the non-human, or more-than-human, world. In doing so, students will not only engage with critical discourses around ecocinema and the blue humanities but also refine their academic reading, writing, and presentation skills as well as train their media literacy.

This class is open to BA E-SC students studying 4th semester modules. It is also open to a limited number of international exchange students and students doing ‘Freiwillige Zusatzleistungen,’ ‘Ersatzleistungen,’ and General Studies, including the sustainability certificate BRENA.

Prior enrolment via Stud.IP is mandatory and admission is limited to a maximum of thirty-five students. Further information will be made available on Stud.IP and during the first session.

Requirements
• active participation in weekly in-person meetings,
• in-depth study of the primary and secondary material in preparation for each session,
• graded or ungraded assignment in accordance with the respective module requirements (i.e. graded term paper or portfolio OR ungraded class contribution).

This seminar will introduce students to the genre of so-called walking simulators—story-driven exploration video games where walking around constitutes the primary gameplay mechanic—and the scholarly and public discussions surrounding it. Students will choose three primary texts from a list of walking simulators and are asked to play and engage critically with those games. The course will begin with a short introduction to the genre of walking simulators and an overview of how to analyze video games using the tools of transmedial narratology. While our first three sessions are dedicated to acquiring the vocabulary and analytical skills necessary for a scholarly discussion of video games more broadly and walking simulators in particular, the following sessions are loosely organized around recurring tropes and themes in those types of games. During those sessions, we will talk about selected secondary texts and reflect on how they could be made productive for an analysis of the students’ chosen primary texts. Ultimately, students will leave this course with a deeper insight into the genre of walking simulators and their affordances, the debates they inspire in both public and academic spaces, and the ability to develop research questions that can be made productive for an analysis of those types of video games.

Corpus-assisted discourse analysis (CADA) is a “data-driven methodology [that] allows researchers to identify frequent and salient patterns of language use that often operate covertly beyond our conscious awareness but which provide a lens to the hegemonic belief systems of a community of language users.” Poole 2022: 17.
In this course, we will use corpus linguistic methods to study discourses, ranging from the language of capitalism to positive and negative news and the representation of animals in discourse, among others. We use a set of tools for investigating our own DIY corpora as well as corpora that are accessible on the internet.
While we do mostly quantitative analyses, e.g. of collocations or keywords, you will also learn to interpret the results and draw conclusions firmly based in critical or positive discourse analysis. For your assignments, you study a discourse of your own choice with the tool you find most suitable, to answer your own research question.

Literature
Baker, Paul. 2024. Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. 2nd ed. Bloomsbury Academic. Available as ebook from the library.

In October 2025, we “heard [her] calling on the megaphone”: Shakespeare’s Ophelia experienced a widely discussed revival in popular culture through Taylor Swift. This renewed attention invites us to ask again what the true fate of Ophelia might be. Why has this figure continued to fascinate artists, writers, and audiences for over four centuries?

With this question in mind, this seminar examines the figure of Ophelia throughout the ages. Together, we will read Shakespeare’s Hamlet and then trace Ophelia’s afterlives across paintings, theatre, stage and film adaptations, novels, lyrical texts, and pop culture more broadly. The seminar combines close reading with visual analysis and cultural discussion and encourages students to bring in their own observations and interests.

To receive credit for this course, you must
• have an excellent knowledge of the assigned readings and materials.
• actively participate in discussions and smaller group work.
• attend one mandatory library workshop (June 11, 2026, from 12:15 to 13:45).
• create an annotated bibliography for a potential research paper (due on June 17, 2026).
• make a meaningful contribution to our exhibition at the Day of Sciences on June 27, 2026 (more information will follow in our first session).

If you need a grade in this course, you additionally need to
• submit an abstract for your term paper (due on July 5, 2026 / 0% of final grade for BPO 2025, 20% of final grade for BPO 2011)
• write a term paper (24.000–28.000 characters: text without blanks, cover, table of contents, works cited, affidavit; due on September 15, 2026 / 100% of final grade for BPO 2025, 80% of final grade for BPO 2011).

We’ll deal with the Studienleistungen and exams in our first session as well.

Most of the works will be made accessible on Stud.IP. However, please purchase the following editions:
Klein, Lisa. Ophelia. Bloomsbury Academic, 2008. (ISBN: 9781599902289)
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Edited by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016. (ISBN: 9781472518385)

If you have any questions beforehand, please don’t hesitate to email me (wolfk@uni-bremen.de). In order to be finally accepted into this seminar, you have to show up at the first three sessions.

I’m looking forward to discovering, questioning, and rethinking Ophelia’s fate together with you!

All the best,
Kevin

COURSE DESCRIPTION
In this course, we will consider how democratic thought, social protest and civil disobedience are expressed, negotiated and/or advocated for in British literature. We will conceptualise what we mean when we speak about democracy and civic participation, discuss the value of democratic systems and what is at stake when they are threatened, and consider the role literature has played in these debates.
Our focus will be on contemporary writing (post-1945): we consider the democratic potential of a range of narratives and genres, from dystopian fiction, satire, drama and spoken word poetry to biopics, protest short fiction, videogames and the state-of-the-nation novel. The exact selection will be finalised in dialogue with the course participants.
This course includes a cooperation with the Bremer Kulturzentrum Schlachthof: we will be taking part in a Zine workshop and present the results in the form of an exhibition. Interested students are invited to contribute to an issue of the Kulturzentrum’s Z-Magazin.

COURSE MATERIAL
Please acquire a copy of the following books:

• George Orwell, 1984 (Penguin, 2008)
• Alan Moore, V for Vendetta (DC Comics, 2020)
• Ali Smith, Autumn (Penguin, 2017)

Shorter readings will be provided. Please note that this is a reading-intensive course.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
At the end of this semester, you will be able to:
− give an overview of the democratic potential and/or shortcomings of literature
− outline representational strategies tied to democratic thought across various genres
− analyse major themes relevant to the relationship between literature and democracy by making use of theoretical and sociocultural contexts to justify your analysis
− independently plan and develop an argument for an academic term paper on a text of your choice
− use your critical knowledge creatively by conceptualising and designing a Zine

In this seminar we will combine an interest in the history of scientific expeditions with an interest in the history of speculative fiction. Based on a dialogue between approaches from literary studies with other disciplines such as the history of science, human geography, as well as critical anthropology, we will ask: What is an expedition? What is an expedition narrative? Based on a reading of 20th and 21st century speculative fiction, from science fiction to the new weird, we will ask how they take up, twist and topple concepts such as "contact zone" or "colonial encounter".

Please, buy and read the following novel:

• Jeff VanderMeer, Annihiliation (2014) [e.g., 978-0008139100 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]

Two further texts - Ted Chiang's novella “Story of Your Life” (1998) and Naomi Mitchison's novel Memoirs of a Spacewoman (1962) - will be provided in class.

The Gothic is a genre that has spanned many years and many countries/cultures. This class questions whether there can be an Indigenous Gothic, considering the settler-colonial tropes and histories of the Gothic genre in the Americas. We will delve into various short stories from Shane Hawk’s edited collection Never Whistle At Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, as well as Jessica Johns' novel Bad Cree (2023) and Drew Hayden Taylor's graphic novel The Night Wanderer (2013), and compare them to 'traditional' North American Gothic literature. Through our readings and comparisons, we will critically analyze settler-colonialism in North America and question whether the histories of the North American Gothic genre can be enriched (or decolonized?) by Indigenous contributions to the form.

Requirements for this course are 1) active reading and participation and 2) term paper (PL) or in-class presentation (SL).

Please obtain Taylor's graphic novel and Jessica John's novel before the semester begins. The short stories from Hawk's edited collection will be provided on Stud.Ip. If you are unable to obtain the books for any reason, please send me an email.

This seminar approaches literature through its form – the formal language and structure that shape content and create their own meaning. Form and content, in this sense, are inseparable. Meaning takes shape in and through form, while form carries its own meaning(s). Forms have histories and develop through gradual refinement, cultural contact, challenges, and innovation. They also have specific affordances, which means that they tend to be suited to the engagement with some issues, questions and topics than others.
Poetic forms are a particularly good starting point for the study of form, because in poetry, formal aspects are so condensed. In the course of this seminar, we will encounter different poetic forms, such as the sonnet, the couplet, blank verse, the ode, and the ballad. Our main goal is to identify the basic characteristics and structures of these forms and to explore what they do particularly well. We will also explore these forms in a historical perspective and observe how they have evolved and changed. The focus on close textual analysis will also enable students to hone their formal reading skills and to broaden and apply their knowledge of rhetorical strategies. Paying close attention to specific texts and forms will also allow participants to explore broader questions about the relevance of form to the encounter with literature.

All compulsory reading (poems and theoretical literature) will be available on Stud.IP (see syllabus and file folders for the relevant session).

There is a strong 20th century tradition of science fiction short stories - both across North America and Great Britain. Indeed the SF short story celebrates something of a centenary as Amazing Stories, an American science fiction magazine, was first launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback. As part of this seminar, we will pay homage to this anniversary though we will mostly keep our eyes on the development of how science is represented in 21st century short fiction and how this is done across SF, speculative fiction but also, especially, historical and realist fiction.

This interdisciplinary seminar in 'blended learning format' (mostly online via Stud.IP/BBB, 1-2 offline meetings at Bremen University in June), co-taught by a physicist and a literary scholar focuses on representations of scientists, scientific methods and scientific practice in contemporary short fiction. In a rare setting with students across the universities of Oldenburg and Bremen, we will read a diverse range of science-related short stories from the Anglophone world. Thematically, our focus will vary from medical research, physics and space, to expeditionary practice and environmental concerns.

Please, buy and read ONE of the following short story anthologies and collections:
• Ra Page, ed. Litmus: Short Stories from Modern Science. Manchester: Comma Press, 2011. [ISBN: 978-1-905583-33-1 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]
• Ted Chiang. Stories of Your Life and Others. 2002. London: Picador, 2024.
• Pippa Goldschmidt. Schrödinger’s Wife (and Other Possibilities). London: Goldsmith Press, 2024. https://pippagoldschmidt.co.uk/books/schrodingers-wife-and-other-possibilities/
• Bruce Meyer, ed. Cli-Fi: Canadian Tales of Climate Change. Chicago, IL: Independent Publishers Group, 2017. [ISBN: 978-1-550966-70-1 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ] https://www.ipgbook.com/cli-fi-products-9781550966701.php

The sonnet is a short, ubiquitous poetic form of 14 lines that every student will have come across. In this seminar, we will use the history of the sonnet in English to discuss Anglophone literary and cultural history, as well as developments in themes, structure and subjectivity. Although this form has at times been called "a narrow room", "a panic closet", or even "a coffin", we will acquaint ourselves with the productiveness of this formal corset and its rich thematic scope, from Renaissance love sonnets to Victorian science sonnets, from World War I sonnets to contemporary sonnets about the experience of using dating apps. We will frame our study of the sonnet with an explicit interest in the history and productivity of "close reading", a literary studies technique first popularized by the New Critics in the US in the first half of the 20th century, but which has seen a renewed debate in the first decades of the 21st century.

In this course we will explore the intersections between language, sexuality, and gender. Students will be equipped with knowledge of language use by and about LGBTQ+ people (Lavender Linguistics, LL) and discursive practices of (hetero)normativity in language (Queer Linguistics, QL). Students will read texts focusing on the theoretical foundations of QL, the history of LL, as well as research papers in applied QL/LL. In accordance with the latter, students will also be introduced to various methodologies and fields of research within QL/LL. Throughout the semester, they will conduct their own small-scale study.

Content notice: We might read papers that contain linguistic examples of sexual practices, body parts, or homo-/transphobia.

Requirements:
1) Active participation in class.
2) Participants must be willing to prepare readings on in-depth theory that may, at times, exceed the extent of other linguistics seminars. This is a necessity.

Assessment (depending on module & no of CP)

Prüfungsleistung (graded assessment) 6 CP:
1) Short presentation and critical excerpt of a research paper (ungraded)
2) Poster presentation of your own mini-study or term paper -> deadline 2 August 2026 (graded)

Prüfungsleistung (graded assessment) 3 CP:
1) Short presentation of a research paper (ungraded)
2) Poster presentation of your own mini-study (graded)

Studenleistung (ungraded assessment) 3 CP, pick one:
Short presentation and critical excerpt of a research paper
OR
Poster presentation of your own mini-study

Literature (no need to buy)

Introductions and monographs:

Edited volumes:

Language ideologies are “cultural conceptions about language, its nature, structure and use, and about the place of communicative behavior in social life” (Gal, 2006, p. 171). They also factor into the construction of an individual’s linguistically indexed identity, as language choices become “acts of identity” (Le Page & Tabouret-Keller, 1985).

In this class, we investigate language ideologies in the English-speaking world and within the context of multilingual and multicultural societies. Students also carry out small empirical projects using different methodological approaches to investigate language ideologies in Germany and beyond.

This seminar will examine different aspects of plurilingualism, as well as plurilingual teaching and learning in language classrooms. In the following, you find a list of topics we will discuss in the seminar:

• Defining and critically assessing terms that are used in the area of plurilingualism
• Analyzing the work done by the Council of Europe regarding plurilingualism (FREPA, CEFR descriptors, companion volume of the CEFR, European Language Portfolio
• Getting to know the importance of language awareness
• Exploring existing plurilingual teaching and learning approaches, methods, task, and activities that can be used in the language learning classroom
• Developing and implementing your own plurilingual activity within the seminar
• ...

The seminar links research to practice. The class work will consist of thematic as well as scientific work input, discussions, individual work, group work, reflection tasks, …

In October 2025, we “heard [her] calling on the megaphone”: Shakespeare’s Ophelia experienced a widely discussed revival in popular culture through Taylor Swift. This renewed attention invites us to ask again what the true fate of Ophelia might be. Why has this figure continued to fascinate artists, writers, and audiences for over four centuries?

With this question in mind, this seminar examines the figure of Ophelia throughout the ages. Together, we will read Shakespeare’s Hamlet and then trace Ophelia’s afterlives across paintings, theatre, stage and film adaptations, novels, lyrical texts, and pop culture more broadly. The seminar combines close reading with visual analysis and cultural discussion and encourages students to bring in their own observations and interests.

To receive credit for this course, you must
• have an excellent knowledge of the assigned readings and materials.
• actively participate in discussions and smaller group work.
• attend one mandatory library workshop (June 11, 2026, from 12:15 to 13:45).
• create an annotated bibliography for a potential research paper (due on June 17, 2026).
• make a meaningful contribution to our exhibition at the Day of Sciences on June 27, 2026 (more information will follow in our first session).

If you need a grade in this course, you additionally need to
• submit an abstract for your term paper (due on July 5, 2026 / 0% of final grade for BPO 2025, 20% of final grade for BPO 2011)
• write a term paper (24.000–28.000 characters: text without blanks, cover, table of contents, works cited, affidavit; due on September 15, 2026 / 100% of final grade for BPO 2025, 80% of final grade for BPO 2011).

We’ll deal with the Studienleistungen and exams in our first session as well.

Most of the works will be made accessible on Stud.IP. However, please purchase the following editions:
Klein, Lisa. Ophelia. Bloomsbury Academic, 2008. (ISBN: 9781599902289)
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Edited by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016. (ISBN: 9781472518385)

If you have any questions beforehand, please don’t hesitate to email me (wolfk@uni-bremen.de). In order to be finally accepted into this seminar, you have to show up at the first three sessions.

I’m looking forward to discovering, questioning, and rethinking Ophelia’s fate together with you!

All the best,
Kevin

COURSE DESCRIPTION
In this course, we will consider how democratic thought, social protest and civil disobedience are expressed, negotiated and/or advocated for in British literature. We will conceptualise what we mean when we speak about democracy and civic participation, discuss the value of democratic systems and what is at stake when they are threatened, and consider the role literature has played in these debates.
Our focus will be on contemporary writing (post-1945): we consider the democratic potential of a range of narratives and genres, from dystopian fiction, satire, drama and spoken word poetry to biopics, protest short fiction, videogames and the state-of-the-nation novel. The exact selection will be finalised in dialogue with the course participants.
This course includes a cooperation with the Bremer Kulturzentrum Schlachthof: we will be taking part in a Zine workshop and present the results in the form of an exhibition. Interested students are invited to contribute to an issue of the Kulturzentrum’s Z-Magazin.

COURSE MATERIAL
Please acquire a copy of the following books:

• George Orwell, 1984 (Penguin, 2008)
• Alan Moore, V for Vendetta (DC Comics, 2020)
• Ali Smith, Autumn (Penguin, 2017)

Shorter readings will be provided. Please note that this is a reading-intensive course.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
At the end of this semester, you will be able to:
− give an overview of the democratic potential and/or shortcomings of literature
− outline representational strategies tied to democratic thought across various genres
− analyse major themes relevant to the relationship between literature and democracy by making use of theoretical and sociocultural contexts to justify your analysis
− independently plan and develop an argument for an academic term paper on a text of your choice
− use your critical knowledge creatively by conceptualising and designing a Zine

In this seminar we will combine an interest in the history of scientific expeditions with an interest in the history of speculative fiction. Based on a dialogue between approaches from literary studies with other disciplines such as the history of science, human geography, as well as critical anthropology, we will ask: What is an expedition? What is an expedition narrative? Based on a reading of 20th and 21st century speculative fiction, from science fiction to the new weird, we will ask how they take up, twist and topple concepts such as "contact zone" or "colonial encounter".

Please, buy and read the following novel:

• Jeff VanderMeer, Annihiliation (2014) [e.g., 978-0008139100 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]

Two further texts - Ted Chiang's novella “Story of Your Life” (1998) and Naomi Mitchison's novel Memoirs of a Spacewoman (1962) - will be provided in class.

The Gothic is a genre that has spanned many years and many countries/cultures. This class questions whether there can be an Indigenous Gothic, considering the settler-colonial tropes and histories of the Gothic genre in the Americas. We will delve into various short stories from Shane Hawk’s edited collection Never Whistle At Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, as well as Jessica Johns' novel Bad Cree (2023) and Drew Hayden Taylor's graphic novel The Night Wanderer (2013), and compare them to 'traditional' North American Gothic literature. Through our readings and comparisons, we will critically analyze settler-colonialism in North America and question whether the histories of the North American Gothic genre can be enriched (or decolonized?) by Indigenous contributions to the form.

Requirements for this course are 1) active reading and participation and 2) term paper (PL) or in-class presentation (SL).

Please obtain Taylor's graphic novel and Jessica John's novel before the semester begins. The short stories from Hawk's edited collection will be provided on Stud.Ip. If you are unable to obtain the books for any reason, please send me an email.

This seminar approaches literature through its form – the formal language and structure that shape content and create their own meaning. Form and content, in this sense, are inseparable. Meaning takes shape in and through form, while form carries its own meaning(s). Forms have histories and develop through gradual refinement, cultural contact, challenges, and innovation. They also have specific affordances, which means that they tend to be suited to the engagement with some issues, questions and topics than others.
Poetic forms are a particularly good starting point for the study of form, because in poetry, formal aspects are so condensed. In the course of this seminar, we will encounter different poetic forms, such as the sonnet, the couplet, blank verse, the ode, and the ballad. Our main goal is to identify the basic characteristics and structures of these forms and to explore what they do particularly well. We will also explore these forms in a historical perspective and observe how they have evolved and changed. The focus on close textual analysis will also enable students to hone their formal reading skills and to broaden and apply their knowledge of rhetorical strategies. Paying close attention to specific texts and forms will also allow participants to explore broader questions about the relevance of form to the encounter with literature.

All compulsory reading (poems and theoretical literature) will be available on Stud.IP (see syllabus and file folders for the relevant session).

There is a strong 20th century tradition of science fiction short stories - both across North America and Great Britain. Indeed the SF short story celebrates something of a centenary as Amazing Stories, an American science fiction magazine, was first launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback. As part of this seminar, we will pay homage to this anniversary though we will mostly keep our eyes on the development of how science is represented in 21st century short fiction and how this is done across SF, speculative fiction but also, especially, historical and realist fiction.

This interdisciplinary seminar in 'blended learning format' (mostly online via Stud.IP/BBB, 1-2 offline meetings at Bremen University in June), co-taught by a physicist and a literary scholar focuses on representations of scientists, scientific methods and scientific practice in contemporary short fiction. In a rare setting with students across the universities of Oldenburg and Bremen, we will read a diverse range of science-related short stories from the Anglophone world. Thematically, our focus will vary from medical research, physics and space, to expeditionary practice and environmental concerns.

Please, buy and read ONE of the following short story anthologies and collections:
• Ra Page, ed. Litmus: Short Stories from Modern Science. Manchester: Comma Press, 2011. [ISBN: 978-1-905583-33-1 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]
• Ted Chiang. Stories of Your Life and Others. 2002. London: Picador, 2024.
• Pippa Goldschmidt. Schrödinger’s Wife (and Other Possibilities). London: Goldsmith Press, 2024. https://pippagoldschmidt.co.uk/books/schrodingers-wife-and-other-possibilities/
• Bruce Meyer, ed. Cli-Fi: Canadian Tales of Climate Change. Chicago, IL: Independent Publishers Group, 2017. [ISBN: 978-1-550966-70-1 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ] https://www.ipgbook.com/cli-fi-products-9781550966701.php

The sonnet is a short, ubiquitous poetic form of 14 lines that every student will have come across. In this seminar, we will use the history of the sonnet in English to discuss Anglophone literary and cultural history, as well as developments in themes, structure and subjectivity. Although this form has at times been called "a narrow room", "a panic closet", or even "a coffin", we will acquaint ourselves with the productiveness of this formal corset and its rich thematic scope, from Renaissance love sonnets to Victorian science sonnets, from World War I sonnets to contemporary sonnets about the experience of using dating apps. We will frame our study of the sonnet with an explicit interest in the history and productivity of "close reading", a literary studies technique first popularized by the New Critics in the US in the first half of the 20th century, but which has seen a renewed debate in the first decades of the 21st century.

This class introduces students to the interdisciplinary study of water and culture, with a focus on the intersections of the blue humanities with social sciences, geography, literary and cultural studies, and the arts. The class consists of a mixture of seminar sessions and guest lectures by invited speakers. Scholars and teachers both from U Bremen and from elsewhere will deliver lectures on the theme “Making Waves: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Water and Culture.” In the sessions between the lectures, we will discuss corresponding theoretical and analytical texts as well as analyze primary material in accordance with the subject matter of the presentations and to critically reflect on their respective ideas and arguments. Students will obtain an overview of the interdisciplinary study of water and culture in the humanities and deepen their skills in cultural studies.

This class is open to BA E-SC students studying 4th semester modules. It is also open to a limited number of international exchange students and students doing ‘Freiwillige Zusatzleistungen,’ ‘Ersatzleistungen,’ and General Studies, including the sustainability certificate BRENA.

Prior enrolment via Stud.IP is mandatory and admission is limited to a maximum of thirty-five students. Further information will be made available on Stud.IP. Please check Stud.IP regularly for updates.
Requirements
• active participation in weekly in-person meetings,
• in-depth study of the primary and secondary material in preparation for each session,
• graded or ungraded assignment in accordance with the respective module requirements.

COURSE DESCRIPTION
In this course, we will consider how democratic thought, social protest and civil disobedience are expressed, negotiated and/or advocated for in British literature. We will conceptualise what we mean when we speak about democracy and civic participation, discuss the value of democratic systems and what is at stake when they are threatened, and consider the role literature has played in these debates.
Our focus will be on contemporary writing (post-1945): we consider the democratic potential of a range of narratives and genres, from dystopian fiction, satire, drama and spoken word poetry to biopics, protest short fiction, videogames and the state-of-the-nation novel. The exact selection will be finalised in dialogue with the course participants.
This course includes a cooperation with the Bremer Kulturzentrum Schlachthof: we will be taking part in a Zine workshop and present the results in the form of an exhibition. Interested students are invited to contribute to an issue of the Kulturzentrum’s Z-Magazin.

COURSE MATERIAL
Please acquire a copy of the following books:

• George Orwell, 1984 (Penguin, 2008)
• Alan Moore, V for Vendetta (DC Comics, 2020)
• Ali Smith, Autumn (Penguin, 2017)

Shorter readings will be provided. Please note that this is a reading-intensive course.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
At the end of this semester, you will be able to:
− give an overview of the democratic potential and/or shortcomings of literature
− outline representational strategies tied to democratic thought across various genres
− analyse major themes relevant to the relationship between literature and democracy by making use of theoretical and sociocultural contexts to justify your analysis
− independently plan and develop an argument for an academic term paper on a text of your choice
− use your critical knowledge creatively by conceptualising and designing a Zine

In this seminar we will combine an interest in the history of scientific expeditions with an interest in the history of speculative fiction. Based on a dialogue between approaches from literary studies with other disciplines such as the history of science, human geography, as well as critical anthropology, we will ask: What is an expedition? What is an expedition narrative? Based on a reading of 20th and 21st century speculative fiction, from science fiction to the new weird, we will ask how they take up, twist and topple concepts such as "contact zone" or "colonial encounter".

Please, buy and read the following novel:

• Jeff VanderMeer, Annihiliation (2014) [e.g., 978-0008139100 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]

Two further texts - Ted Chiang's novella “Story of Your Life” (1998) and Naomi Mitchison's novel Memoirs of a Spacewoman (1962) - will be provided in class.

The Gothic is a genre that has spanned many years and many countries/cultures. This class questions whether there can be an Indigenous Gothic, considering the settler-colonial tropes and histories of the Gothic genre in the Americas. We will delve into various short stories from Shane Hawk’s edited collection Never Whistle At Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, as well as Jessica Johns' novel Bad Cree (2023) and Drew Hayden Taylor's graphic novel The Night Wanderer (2013), and compare them to 'traditional' North American Gothic literature. Through our readings and comparisons, we will critically analyze settler-colonialism in North America and question whether the histories of the North American Gothic genre can be enriched (or decolonized?) by Indigenous contributions to the form.

Requirements for this course are 1) active reading and participation and 2) term paper (PL) or in-class presentation (SL).

Please obtain Taylor's graphic novel and Jessica John's novel before the semester begins. The short stories from Hawk's edited collection will be provided on Stud.Ip. If you are unable to obtain the books for any reason, please send me an email.

This seminar approaches literature through its form – the formal language and structure that shape content and create their own meaning. Form and content, in this sense, are inseparable. Meaning takes shape in and through form, while form carries its own meaning(s). Forms have histories and develop through gradual refinement, cultural contact, challenges, and innovation. They also have specific affordances, which means that they tend to be suited to the engagement with some issues, questions and topics than others.
Poetic forms are a particularly good starting point for the study of form, because in poetry, formal aspects are so condensed. In the course of this seminar, we will encounter different poetic forms, such as the sonnet, the couplet, blank verse, the ode, and the ballad. Our main goal is to identify the basic characteristics and structures of these forms and to explore what they do particularly well. We will also explore these forms in a historical perspective and observe how they have evolved and changed. The focus on close textual analysis will also enable students to hone their formal reading skills and to broaden and apply their knowledge of rhetorical strategies. Paying close attention to specific texts and forms will also allow participants to explore broader questions about the relevance of form to the encounter with literature.

All compulsory reading (poems and theoretical literature) will be available on Stud.IP (see syllabus and file folders for the relevant session).

There is a strong 20th century tradition of science fiction short stories - both across North America and Great Britain. Indeed the SF short story celebrates something of a centenary as Amazing Stories, an American science fiction magazine, was first launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback. As part of this seminar, we will pay homage to this anniversary though we will mostly keep our eyes on the development of how science is represented in 21st century short fiction and how this is done across SF, speculative fiction but also, especially, historical and realist fiction.

This interdisciplinary seminar in 'blended learning format' (mostly online via Stud.IP/BBB, 1-2 offline meetings at Bremen University in June), co-taught by a physicist and a literary scholar focuses on representations of scientists, scientific methods and scientific practice in contemporary short fiction. In a rare setting with students across the universities of Oldenburg and Bremen, we will read a diverse range of science-related short stories from the Anglophone world. Thematically, our focus will vary from medical research, physics and space, to expeditionary practice and environmental concerns.

Please, buy and read ONE of the following short story anthologies and collections:
• Ra Page, ed. Litmus: Short Stories from Modern Science. Manchester: Comma Press, 2011. [ISBN: 978-1-905583-33-1 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ]
• Ted Chiang. Stories of Your Life and Others. 2002. London: Picador, 2024.
• Pippa Goldschmidt. Schrödinger’s Wife (and Other Possibilities). London: Goldsmith Press, 2024. https://pippagoldschmidt.co.uk/books/schrodingers-wife-and-other-possibilities/
• Bruce Meyer, ed. Cli-Fi: Canadian Tales of Climate Change. Chicago, IL: Independent Publishers Group, 2017. [ISBN: 978-1-550966-70-1 [Add to Citavi project by ISBN] ] https://www.ipgbook.com/cli-fi-products-9781550966701.php

The sonnet is a short, ubiquitous poetic form of 14 lines that every student will have come across. In this seminar, we will use the history of the sonnet in English to discuss Anglophone literary and cultural history, as well as developments in themes, structure and subjectivity. Although this form has at times been called "a narrow room", "a panic closet", or even "a coffin", we will acquaint ourselves with the productiveness of this formal corset and its rich thematic scope, from Renaissance love sonnets to Victorian science sonnets, from World War I sonnets to contemporary sonnets about the experience of using dating apps. We will frame our study of the sonnet with an explicit interest in the history and productivity of "close reading", a literary studies technique first popularized by the New Critics in the US in the first half of the 20th century, but which has seen a renewed debate in the first decades of the 21st century.

This seminar introduces students to the study of cinema in the age of the climate crisis. Students will hone their skills in film analysis and expand their command of theoretical approaches to critically examine filmic representations of the environment, of natural disasters such as floods, and the relationship of various human communities to the non-human, or more-than-human, world. In doing so, students will not only engage with critical discourses around ecocinema and the blue humanities but also refine their academic reading, writing, and presentation skills as well as train their media literacy.

This class is open to BA E-SC students studying 4th semester modules. It is also open to a limited number of international exchange students and students doing ‘Freiwillige Zusatzleistungen,’ ‘Ersatzleistungen,’ and General Studies, including the sustainability certificate BRENA.

Prior enrolment via Stud.IP is mandatory and admission is limited to a maximum of thirty-five students. Further information will be made available on Stud.IP and during the first session.

Requirements
• active participation in weekly in-person meetings,
• in-depth study of the primary and secondary material in preparation for each session,
• graded or ungraded assignment in accordance with the respective module requirements (i.e. graded term paper or portfolio OR ungraded class contribution).

This seminar will introduce students to the genre of so-called walking simulators—story-driven exploration video games where walking around constitutes the primary gameplay mechanic—and the scholarly and public discussions surrounding it. Students will choose three primary texts from a list of walking simulators and are asked to play and engage critically with those games. The course will begin with a short introduction to the genre of walking simulators and an overview of how to analyze video games using the tools of transmedial narratology. While our first three sessions are dedicated to acquiring the vocabulary and analytical skills necessary for a scholarly discussion of video games more broadly and walking simulators in particular, the following sessions are loosely organized around recurring tropes and themes in those types of games. During those sessions, we will talk about selected secondary texts and reflect on how they could be made productive for an analysis of the students’ chosen primary texts. Ultimately, students will leave this course with a deeper insight into the genre of walking simulators and their affordances, the debates they inspire in both public and academic spaces, and the ability to develop research questions that can be made productive for an analysis of those types of video games.

This class introduces students to the interdisciplinary study of water and culture, with a focus on the intersections of the blue humanities with social sciences, geography, literary and cultural studies, and the arts. The class consists of a mixture of seminar sessions and guest lectures by invited speakers. Scholars and teachers both from U Bremen and from elsewhere will deliver lectures on the theme “Making Waves: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Water and Culture.” In the sessions between the lectures, we will discuss corresponding theoretical and analytical texts as well as analyze primary material in accordance with the subject matter of the presentations and to critically reflect on their respective ideas and arguments. Students will obtain an overview of the interdisciplinary study of water and culture in the humanities and deepen their skills in cultural studies.

This class is open to BA E-SC students studying 4th semester modules. It is also open to a limited number of international exchange students and students doing ‘Freiwillige Zusatzleistungen,’ ‘Ersatzleistungen,’ and General Studies, including the sustainability certificate BRENA.

Prior enrolment via Stud.IP is mandatory and admission is limited to a maximum of thirty-five students. Further information will be made available on Stud.IP. Please check Stud.IP regularly for updates.
Requirements
• active participation in weekly in-person meetings,
• in-depth study of the primary and secondary material in preparation for each session,
• graded or ungraded assignment in accordance with the respective module requirements.

In this course we will explore the intersections between language, sexuality, and gender. Students will be equipped with knowledge of language use by and about LGBTQ+ people (Lavender Linguistics, LL) and discursive practices of (hetero)normativity in language (Queer Linguistics, QL). Students will read texts focusing on the theoretical foundations of QL, the history of LL, as well as research papers in applied QL/LL. In accordance with the latter, students will also be introduced to various methodologies and fields of research within QL/LL. Throughout the semester, they will conduct their own small-scale study.

Content notice: We might read papers that contain linguistic examples of sexual practices, body parts, or homo-/transphobia.

Requirements:
1) Active participation in class.
2) Participants must be willing to prepare readings on in-depth theory that may, at times, exceed the extent of other linguistics seminars. This is a necessity.

Assessment (depending on module & no of CP)

Prüfungsleistung (graded assessment) 6 CP:
1) Short presentation and critical excerpt of a research paper (ungraded)
2) Poster presentation of your own mini-study or term paper -> deadline 2 August 2026 (graded)

Prüfungsleistung (graded assessment) 3 CP:
1) Short presentation of a research paper (ungraded)
2) Poster presentation of your own mini-study (graded)

Studenleistung (ungraded assessment) 3 CP, pick one:
Short presentation and critical excerpt of a research paper
OR
Poster presentation of your own mini-study

Literature (no need to buy)

Introductions and monographs:

Edited volumes: