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

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

This course welcomes students who wish to complete the following modules:
M.A. E-SC: OrMO (Orientierungsmodul 1. Semester)
Zertifikatsstudium Grundlagen Digitaler Medien in pädagogischen Kontexten > Digitale Medien in Lernumgebungen

We are thoroughly surrounded by media on a daily basis, living, so to speak, in a “mediatized” society (Voigts-Virchow, 2005: 5), where the majority of information and knowledge is not perceived through a first-hand experience, i.e. somatically, but information that came to us via a medium, in other words, symbolically (Ott and Mack, 2010: 1). According to a number of critical textbooks in Media studies in English, a course on media aesthetics can supply the basis for media literacy by examining the meaning of visual images for use in film and electronic media. Delineating from a quintessential understanding of media aesthetics as a study in sensory perception, as a study in value, and a study in the stylistic and formal properties of artistic products, the course will maintain a more philosophically minded orientation in the first half of the course by providing students with an extensive overview of the field of old, new and hybrid forms of media (print, painting, and photography, broadcast, radio play, TV, film, graphic novels and digital art). The sessions on film analysis (narratological and dramatic composition) will however incorporate some aspects of applied media aesthetics by exploring major aesthetic image elements including light, colour and sound in greater detail.

We will meet in weekly online ZOOM seminar sessions, but students will also have access to weekly study units. Since some of the participants are required to submit a research-based term paper, we will use parts of our seminar discussions to the development of topics, the formulation of a thesis statement, as well as considerations about the methodological approaches of writing such a paper. A reader with selected secondary text materials will be made available for download on Stud. IP. You will need access to Stud.IP and a laptop or tablet with sound and audio capabilities. You may wish to check the sections "Information" and "Schedule" further details such as requirements, weekly schedule, select bibliography and modes of assessment.

Requirements and Assessment
• Interest in the topic discussed and ideally a regular attendance and informed participation in class discussion (not part of your formal assessment);
• in-depth knowledge of the selected reading material,
• homework assignments,
• Portfolio presentation or research-based term paper.
The requirements as formulated above may vary depending on your module choices and your overall degree program.

This class will introduce students to the field of postcolonial studies and will lay the basis for classes with topics relating to postcolonial phenomena, literatures, films, and media. Students who wish to continue their studies in the field of postcolonial anglophone literatures and cultures are strongly advised to take this class.
Through a rather dense reading program and some documentary films we will learn about colonial histories, neocolonial relations in the globalized world, and key concepts in Postcolonial Studies, such as alterity, hybridity, transculturality, manicheanism, dichotomy, colonial discourse, colonized mind, creolization, hegemony, exoticism, orientalism, essentialism, and syncretism. We will read the writings of the foremost thinkers of postcolonial and transcultural theories, including Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, Edouard Glissant, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Stuart Hall, Homi Bhabha, Walter Mignolo, Edward Said, Wolfgang Welsh, Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin.
The class will be held in English. All texts will be provided electronically or through Stud IP. Requirements are regular attendance, participation in discussions, and in-depth knowledge of reading materials. Please note that prior enrollment via Stud.IP is mandatory.

More than a hundred years after Horace Walpole established horror tropes in his Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto (1764), the genre flourished and diversified in the nineteenth century. In the late Victorian age, three chilling tales particularly captured the public imagination: J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s serialized novella Carmilla (1872), a lesbian vampire romp that was essential in popularizing the vampire as a staple in horror fiction; Oscar Wilde’s aestheticist fancy The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), a novel about forbidden desire so scandalous that it was used as evidence in a trial to send Wilde to jail; and Bram Stoker’s infamous vampire classic Dracula (1897), a novel that arguably became the best-known vampire tale of all time and spawned countless imitations. In the prim and proper Victorian era, these shocking texts dared to explore the ugly underbelly of human nature which slumbers just beneath the polished surface of civilization: violence, corruption, carnal desire, and (literal) blood thirst.

In this course, we will examine these influential horror texts as well their contexts. What can they tell us about Victorian attititudes towards gender, sexuality, race, and class? Which roles do religion, science, and art play on a textual as well as contextual level? Does the fact that all three authors were born in Ireland affect the content or reception of their novels? And which contemporary anxieties are reflected in the tales of bloodsucking aristocrats and immortal dandies? To investigate these and other questions, we will combine a thorough historical contextualization with close readings of the selected texts. Taken together, this will allow us to explore the novels’ impact on contemporary Victorian readers and public discourses, as well as their lasting impact on the horror genre at large.

Primary texts:

Le Fanu, J. Sheridan. Carmilla. Pushkin Press, 2021.
Stoker, Bram. Dracula. Second edition. Edited by John Edgar Browning and David J. Skal. W.W. Norton Company, 2021.
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Third edition. Edited by Michael Patrick Gillespie. W.W. Norton Company, 2019.

Please obtain a copy of these novels prior to the start of class. Try to get the exact edition listed above (previous editions work as well). I will inform the university book shop on campus to keep a few copies in store, as they usually offer excellent deals on English-language books. Support your local bookstore! That said, feel free to use another edition if you already have one at home or buy second-hand.

Requirements:
• Regular attendance
• Active participation in class
• In-depth knowledge of the reading materials
• Final assessment according to module choice

Please note that prior enrollment via Stud. IP is mandatory.

In the last decades, the research paradigm of World Englishes has experienced a proliferation of detailed studies of different aspects of Englishes across the world. These descriptions have largely focused on phonological, lexical, morphosyntactic, and, more recently, also pragmatic and cultural-cognitive aspects of World Englishes. In this seminar we will review recent trends and current research topics and methods in the field (e.g. model formation, lexico-grammatical variation and innovation, pragmatics, and metaphor and idioms). Students will then develop and work on corpus-based empirical research projects in which they examine selected aspects of World Englishes.

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 talk about 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 and collecting existing plurilingual teaching and learning approaches, methods, and task that can be used in the language learning classroom
• Conducting a qualitative data analysis with already existing data about plurilingual teaching and learning approaches
• Learning how to use Citavi (or another reference management software)
• ...

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, …

For the ungraded “Seminarleistung” (SL) you will be required to give an engaging presentation of a homework task you chose, or any topic in the area of plurilingualism that you are interested in. You are invited to be creative! Examples: Poster presentations, podcast, interview, role plays, Pecha Kucha, blog article, video, collage, …). 5–7 minutes (per person), individual work or in groups up to three people

For the graded “Prüfungsleistung” you will—additionally to the presentation—complete a portfolio. The portfolio consists of three homework tasks:
1. Mock research project using a mixed methods approach
2. Comparison of two articles
3. Your choice of one homework task

This four-hour course will take place on campus.

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

This four-hour course will take place on campus.
The course is designed to develop academic writing skills at a professional level. We will review the fundamental aspects of academic writing at the structural level, including thesis statements, paragraphing, developing cohesion etc. as we explore different text types that you will be expected to use in your academic studies. In addition, emphasis will be placed on further developing the language skills necessary to express complex concepts in both written and spoken form as you move forward in developing critical thinking and writing skills.

This lecture series is open to the university public, to general studies (1CP), the M.A. E-SC SusStu Module (1CP), and three specific B.A. E-SC classes taught by Kerstin Knopf, Paula von Gleich and Corina Wieser-Cox.
The lecture series ties together ideas and knowledges in the new burgeoning field of Blue Humanities, now also established at FB 10, U Bremen. This new research field studies oceans, rivers, and coastal areas in terms of (colonial) histories and modernities, migration and travel, sustainability and ecological issues, circulation of people and ideas, marine and Indigenous knowledges, literature and cultures, new geographies, extractivism, energy and economic issues, among others.
For this lecture series we invite experts in this field who will give talks on postcolonial sea fiction, Arab Blue Humanities, refugee literature, environmental destruction, lack of water, digital Black Atlantic, legal status of rivers, marine anthropology and more.

Ever wanted to just talk about your favourite movies? E-SC presents to you our filmclub! Be it critically acclaimed prize-contenders, trashy B-movies, or superhero flicks - we want to offer you a place to critically discuss pictures. The course does, however, come with a tiny prerequisite: you need to be able to watch movies on either Netflix, Prime, etc.
The Filmclub meetings will take place on campus on Friday 2-4 pm every second week.
For questions please reach out to the tutors.

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

Meetings of the book club take place on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 4-6 pm every second week. Please register for the book club beforehand on Stud.IP and select one of the groups (either Tuesday or Thursday). Please contact one of the tutors (i.e.: klugeam@uni-bremen.de (Tuesday group) or helmsdar@uni-bremen.de (Thursday group) if you require more information.

* Please contact the tutors (helmsdar@uni-bremen.de, esraa@uni-bremen.de) if you have any questions or need more information. *
Welcome to the English-Speaking Cultures Animeclub! Get ready to dive into the colorful and captivating world of anime with us this semester. We're all about exploring the fantastic realms of Japanese animation and sharing our love for all things anime.
In this club, we'll be doing what we love the most: watching a handpicked selection of diverse and exciting anime. But it's not just about watching! Our gatherings will be buzzing with lively discussions, where we'll unravel the layers of the shows we're watching, analyze the multifaceted characters, and dissect those jaw-dropping plot twists that keep us glued to the screen.
Whether you're a die-hard fan of shonen, slice of life, or just dipping your toes into the world of anime, this club welcomes everyone with open arms.
Participate actively in our group discussions and present an anime-related topic of your choice, and you could earn up to two credit points!
Our meetings are scheduled for Fridays, from 4 to 6 p.m. Before you dive into the world of anime with us, please register for the club on Stud.IP.

This class will be completely taught in presence and is open to PhD students and MA students from the E-SC Master Program at U Bremen, who plan to write their MA Thesis in the Summer Semester 2024. All reading and information material will be made available through the U Bremen teaching and learning platform Stud.IP; hence prior enrollment via Stud.IP is mandatory.

In this class students will learn how to develop a research topic, collect bibliographical material, develop a theoretical background and formulate research questions. They will then individually develop the research topic for their master’s thesis. Finally, students will write research proposals and individually present these in class for peer-review.
Class requirements are regular attendance, developing theoretical and historical backgrounds of topic, reading secondary sources at home, and active class participation.

This course is for all Master's students (as well as advanced BA and doctoral candidates) who are planning a research project in the general area of multimodality and/or multimodal linguistics. This includes all media, film, TV, comics, dance, music, spoken language, social media and combinations, as well as particularly experimental or corpus-based methods. Basic research methods will be reviewed for investigating combinations of forms of expression, such as image-text, image-music, and so on, as well as the use of corpus-techniques and methods for evaluating data. Attendees will be expected to develop their own ideas for projects reflecting the international state of the art in multimodal semiotics and to explore further the methods and literature relevant, reporting back regularly to the group as a whole for maximal synergies. The result of participation for the E-SC MA should be a detailed workplan that can then be carried out for the final MA thesis or as submission for a thesis plan and for the MA Language Sciences either a completed project or detailed plan for a Masters thesis. Basic reading covering all areas of multimodality that can be used for preparation is the textbook (available in English and German):

Bateman/Wildfeuer/Hiippala (2017): Multimodality: Foundations, Research and Analysis – A Problem-Oriented Introduction. Mouton de Gruyter.

Wildfeuer/Bateman/Hiippala (2020): Multimodalität: Grundlagen, Forschung und Analyse – Eine problemorientierte Einführung. Mouton de Gruyter.

Introductory online seminars to the scientific study of multimodality can be found here:

https://ml.zmml.uni-bremen.de/video/5f994e43d42f1ca1278b4569 (Bateman)

and here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM7Ui7BBWcU (Wildfeuer)

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

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

In this class, students will learn about English in the Caribbean covering arrange of topics:
• general considerations of the spread of English to the Caribbean
• language identity and language policy in the Caribbean
• grammatical variation in Caribbean Englishes
• lexical variation in Caribbean Englishes

In the course of the class, students will also investigate selected aspects of Caribbean Englishes using online databases and dictionaries.

This seminar will explore variationist and cognitive sociolinguistic
dimensions of the use of English in multilingual Southern Africa. The
main focus will be on English(es) in the Republic of South Africa
(i.e. Black South African English, White South African English,
Afrikaans English, Cape Flats English and South African Indian
English). However, varieties of English in Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho
and Eswatini will also feature in the course.
Reading: will be made available at the beginning of the term.

This seminar will explore variationist and cognitive sociolinguistic
dimensions of the use of English in multilingual Southern Africa. The
main focus will be on English(es) in the Republic of South Africa
(i.e. Black South African English, White South African English,
Afrikaans English, Cape Flats English and South African Indian
English). However, varieties of English in Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho
and Eswatini will also feature in the course.
Reading: will be made available at the beginning of the term.

The aim of this course is to read and analyse Margaret Atwood's famous dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale (1985) as an early warning against the far-reaching consequences of an environmental breakdown. Set in a totalitarian New England of the near future, this key text of contemporary utopian fiction foregrounds a repressive society that deprives women of their rights. One major focus of the seminar will be devoted to identifying the various means by which the heroine creates a niche of individualism and independence in what turns out to be a neo-Puritan dictatorship.

requirements:
• active participation
• in-depth knowledge of the reading material
• presentation and/or final research-based paper

Please note that prior enrolment via Stud.IP is mandatory. The enrolment period ends on 10 September 2023.

text:
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale. New York: Knopf Doubleday, 1998.

In view of various research approaches that have emerged out of Harold Garfinkel’s writings on Ethnomethodology (EM) and Harvey Sacks and colleagues’ conceptions of conversation analysis (CA), the course aims to provide a starting point to discover Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis. Main topics of the course are the nature and origin of associated research approaches, research methodology, and application possibilities in applied linguistics. The course introduces students to basic conversational analytic methods and techniques, focussing on the analysis of some fundamental structures of conversation – e.g. action formation, turn-taking, sequence organization, preference and repair – but also extending the scope to selected topics in EMCA research that have contributed to a better understanding of how social order is achieved and reproduced, e.g., embodied interaction, or epistemic practices. Starting with a brief introduction to the theoretical underpinnings, students are encouraged to collect conversational data among themselves – serving both as material for training purposes during the course, and empirical data to be examined for completing course achievements.

Detailed schedule following soon.

Learning outcomes
• Understand theoretical foundations of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis
• Gather experience on transcription conventions, and software applications, appropriate for the analysis of social interaction
• Become acquainted with fundamental structures of conversation from an interdisciplinary research perspective
• Analyse phenomena of social interaction in naturally-occurring conversations

This specialized course responds to the United Nations' emphasis on sustainable development, revealing that sustainability encompasses various dimensions beyond the environment, notably gender equality. It recognizes the need for equitable, inclusive societies and the elimination of gender disparities, aligning these goals with the literary realm of Arab-American fiction. We explore narratives authored by Arab-American women, who play a pivotal role in offering unique perspectives on the intersection of gender, culture, identity, and environmental issues. By focusing on these diverse voices, the course delves into rich portrayals of women's experiences and resilience, emphasizing the importance of diversity within the global dialogue on sustainability and gender equality.

This seminar will give you an understanding of the sociolinguistic situation in pidgin and creole-speaking countries and then give you a comprehensive introduction into West African Pidgin English - one of the major languages spoken in Africa. In the course of the semester, we will discuss and analyse authentic data produced in English-based pidgins and creoles.

This class will be conducted within the theme teaching year on SUSTAINABILITY and within the research area Blue Humanities. Blue Humanities studies oceans, rivers, and coastal areas in terms of (colonial) histories, migration and travel, sustainability and ecological issues, circulation of people and ideas, marine and Indigenous knowledges, literature and cultures, new geographies, extractivism, energy and economic issues, among others.

Please note that the course will be conducted in connection with a lecture series in the Blue Humanities, which takes place Wednesdays 18.15-19.45 at the Cartesium on campus. You are cordially invited to come and listen to all lectures; however 4 lectures are mandatory for you to attend, which ones will be specified at the start of the course, the first one on 25 Oct.

As well, on 26 October we will do a short study excursion to the MARKK Museum in Hamburg and their exhibition “Wasserbotschaften” with a guided tour: https://markk-hamburg.de/veranstaltungen/wasser-botschaften-9/.
We will leave on a train around 11.30 and have the guided tour in the afternoon. After that you can explore the museum on your own. You will use your semester ticket to use regional trains to go to Hamburg and back for free. This study excursion is not mandatory. And yet all students are invited to join us; there is limited capacity for the tour. Those who wish to go to Hamburg, pls register on the Etherpad here on StudIP with your full name and email address by 3 October.

After discussing sustainability and the sustainable development goals of the UN in the class, we will read and discuss short stories from the collection The Imperiled Ocean: Human Stories from a Changing Sea by Laura Trethewey and the novel People of the Whale by Linda Hogan. The novel is ready for purchase at the University bookstore at the beginning of the semester: People of the Whale (17,50 €). The short story and other texts will be uploaded on StudIP.
Pls note that regular attendance and class participation and preparation are mandatory. You must register on StudIP for this class.