Teaching method: We will meet in weekly online sessions, but students will also have access to weekly study units and worksheets. Since some of the participants are required to submit a research 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.
Course description: Travel writing is an increasingly popular genre in terms of text production and commercial success, encompassing a fascinating diversity of literary forms, modes and itineraries, which negate a forthright definition of the genre. As a repository for factual and fictional accounts of mobility and cross-cultural exchange, however, it has long been underestimated for its potential to contribute to a broad range of cultural, political and historical debates that seek to reassess the role of travel writing as a "vehicle for geographic, ethnographic and sociological knowledge." (Thompson 4). This seminar discusses diverse themes and characteristics of contemporary travel writing, postcolonial travel accounts and refugee writing and aims to map contemporary critical concepts regarding transnational and postcolonial perspectives in weekly readings of excerpts of selected travel accounts.

A reader with selected secondary text materials will be made available for download on Stud. IP. Please be aware that your registration on Stud. IP. is mandatory (deadline September 15th, 2020).
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 online attendance and informed participation in class discussion (not part of your formal assessment);
• in-depth knowledge of the selected reading material,
• homework assignments,
• research-based term paper.
The requirements as formulated above may vary depending on your overall degree program.

This class will be completely taught online and is open to MA students from the E-SC Master Program at U Bremen, as well as students who participate in exchange programs. All reading and information material (except the two novels) will be made available through the U Bremen teaching and learning platform Stud.IP; hence prior enrollment via Stud.IP is mandatory.

The class will focus on Canadian literature and introduce students to the topics of solidarity and migration; it is part of the theme semester “Solidarity”, organized by the Department of Anthropology and Cultural Research (FB 9). After discussing the concepts of ‘solidarity’ and ‘migration’ based on theoretical readings, we will look at how these are contextualized in Canadian prose, mainly shorter texts and two novels by an African Canadian and immigrant Canadian writer: Lawrence Hill’s The Illegal and Sharon Bala’s The Boat People.
Class requirements are regular attendance, in-depth knowledge of reading material, and active class discussion. Reading the primary and secondary texts is mandatory. Students are required to purchase and read Lawrence Hill’s The Illegal and Sharon Bala’s The Boat People. Ten copies of each are available at the university bookstore for 15€ (Hill) and 16€ (Bala) at the beginning of October. You can also order them via amazon.de, amazon.com and amazon.marketplace (check delivery times).

This course will run entirely online. In the course a detailed overview of the growing field of multimodality will be given, examining how different expressive resources (text, pictures, diagrams, layout, movement, sound, ...) combine productively for effective communication, and how problems and failures of communication can be analysed. The course will be example driven, looking at particular kinds of multimodal communication in order to introduce some of the basic theoretical and practical methods developed for state of the art multimodality research. The course is a prerequisite for taking up further more advanced studies of mixed mode communication forms later in the MA programme. Participants will engage with analytic methods from film theory, design theory, comics and sequential art, psychological approaches, rhetoric, advertising and more, all critically reassessed and extended through modern multimodality theory and method. A broad interdisciplinary textbook introducing the field is Bateman/Wildfeuer/Hiippala (2017, de Gruyter) "Multimodality: foundations, research and analysis. a problem-oriented introduction", available from the university library.

The seminar takes place ONLINE (via zoom) and combines synchronous (video lectures, discussions, group-work) and asynchronous (recordings, self-study time and group work) elements.

What defines the quality of a language test? How can you decide whether a test contains items of good, or poor quality? Which kind of procedures support fair and reliable ratings?

In the seminar, we approach the topic of language assessment by first exploring basic terminology and concepts in the field. Building upon this shared knowledge, we look deeper into relevant codes, standards and derived quality procedures, both in general as well as in specific phases of test development, administration and scoring. Against the backdrop of this theoretical basis, we critically analyze assessment instruments applied in both external and classroom-based language learning contexts and finally develop single assessment tasks and items ourselves.

The overall aims of the seminar are:
 to raise awareness for “the power of tests” (Shohamy, 2001)
 to develop knowledge and skills with regard to language assessment, focusing on aspects of quality and fairness
 to enhance “Language Assessment Literacy” (LAL), a competence which is critical for future teachers and other stakeholders in the educational context and helps to promote fair assessment.

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

The lecture will taught online via video podcasts by the academic staff of the English Speaking Cultures Department. This lecture series provides an overview of current research trends, theories and methods in the three profile areas of the MA programme (British, North American and Postcolonial Literatures; Linguistics: Varieties, Medialities, Applications; British, North American and Postcolonial Cultural History) by addressing the three interrelated areas of language, text, and media. In the lectures, we will first provide an overview on the approaches and methods of the three fields of study and in the second part of the series highlight the research topics and methods that feature prominent-ly in the current research and publications by the faculty members teaching in the programme. We will discuss the film BlacKkKlansman (2018) in the lectures featuring case studies from the perspectives of cultural history, linguistics, and literary studies.
Please watch the BlacKkKlansman and engage actively on the provided online tools here. Please note that prior enrollment via Stud.IP is mandatory.

A more in-depth introduction to further fields of specialisation is given in supporting overview seminars, which present a range of hands-on as well as theoretical and methodological case studies and foundational literature for the profile areas. Two overview seminars have to be chosen in addition to the lecture series in order to complete the Orientation Module.

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. The massive spread and diversification of the English language, its dominance as a second/foreign language and its use as a global lingua franca has also implications for the way English is learned and how it should be taught.

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, metaphor and idioms, as well as the implications of the global spread and diversification of the English language for English language teaching).

IMPORTANT NOTICE !!!

This seminar is also offered for M.Ed. students in their 3. semester who need a credit in either the LING or KULT modules. After half of the semester, for these students different topics will be covered, i.e. the socio-historical contexts of selected World Englishes as well as the sociolinguistic and pedagogical implications of the global spread of English.

MA students will develop and work on corpus-based empirical research projects in which they examine selected aspects of World Englishes.

Obligatory preparatory reading for this seminar: tba

What happens when a Shakespeare play is transferred into a different medium? What distinguishes the Elizabethan drama from contemporary forms of art like film, the comic or the graphic novel? How can we describe and analyse the characteristics of both Shakespeare’s plays and their adaptations? This seminar deals with the phenomenon of adapting Shakespeare and asks about the genre-specificities of each production while also considering their sociohistorical context. We will begin by looking at excerpts of selected Shakespeare plays and then move on to three primary ‘texts’ that significantly contributed to the emergence of the cinematic Shakespeare renaissance in the 1990s: Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Richard III (1995) and William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996). All three films are particularly suitable for a discussion of gender, which will serve as a leitmotif in this seminar.

Prerequisites for a successful participation:
• regular attendance and oral participation
• in-depth knowledge of the reading material
• online & offline assignments
• oral presentation
• term paper (optional)

Key texts/films to be purchased* by students as soon as possible:
Much Ado About Nothing. Dir. Kenneth Branagh. BBC Films. The Samuel Goldwyn Company. USA/GB: 1993. DVD.
Richard III. Dir. Richard Loncraine. Bayly/Paré Productions British Screen. United Artists Pictures. GB: 1995. DVD.
William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet. Dir. Baz Luhrmann. Bazmark Productions. 20th Century Fox. USA/GB: 1996. DVD.
*feel free to watch the films online, depending on your media services provider

Maximum number of participants: 20

Please note: Due to the pandemic, this seminar will in parts be taught virtually via ZOOM including a significant number of asynchronous tasks. Please also note: For a successful participation, it is essential that you join the very first zoom meeting (via StudIP). Make sure you are online at least 10 mins prior to the first session to ensure a timely start, thank you.

This course only takes place online; it combines elements which are in synch with the scheduled times and elements which are asynchronous.

This four-hour course is designed to give students an insight into academic writing at a professional level. We will not only discuss the fundamental aspects of academic writing (e.g. thesis statements, paragraphing etc.), but also look at various text types used in academia (abstract, summary, essay etc.). Apart from structural devices, we will furthermore focus on how to apply critical thinking/writing within those boundaries given by the text types.

As this is an online course, there will be video conferences for the students to attend.

Please note that this course is an online course. Students are asked to participate regularly in the video conferences (see course schedule).
This class is the first part of the UEP module and earns students 6CPs. The focus this semester will be on academic writing in English and the graded assignment ("exam") will be an abstract on some aspect of English-Speaking Cultures.

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 liveliest and most current forms of theater of today and ingrained in US popular culture. You will first learn the basic principles of improvisational theater and then apply them to improvised scenework. In the intensive part in the lecture-free period, we will choose one or two forms that we will develop and rehearse in order to perform in front of an audience. We will also reflect on the impact of improvisational theater on popular culture and explore its practical approaches to comedic as well as dramatic narrative structures.

There will be a regular meeting on Monday 4 - 6.15pm during the semester, in which we will cover the basics of improvisational theater, followed by an intensive in the lecture-free period from March 1 to March 12, in which we will work on a specific form and prepare for a performance. If you only want to participate in the intensive you need to have some experience, either from this or a previous semester. Depending on the situation we will have performances March 12 - 14. There is no obligation to be part of the performances. You can also support the performances by helping with the organization.

Diese Veranstaltung richtet sich besonders an Studierende, die in diesem Semester Hausarbeiten oder Abschlussarbeiten schreiben wollen. Die Studierenden werden in die Grundlagen des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens eingeführt. Sie werden selbständig für eigene größere und kleinere Arbeiten bibliographieren, Thesen und Fragestellungen entwickeln, strukturierte Gliederungen entwerfen etc. Gemeinsam werden wir die Projekte im Forum oder Stud.IPad diskutieren und voranbringen.

This research module is one of the colloquia designed for Master students writing their thesis in the field of literature or film studies. As of today, it might be organised as a hybrid seminar with digital and face-to-face elements.
This module will assist you in preparing your MA thesis in terms of both content and methodological approach. This includes identifying a research topic, formulating research questions, and providing the theoretical background for the thesis. The major objective of this colloquium is to plan the MA thesis by means of completing a research proposal that includes the underlying theoretical insights, a literature review, a methodological concept, and a bibliography.
In view of my expertise, I can offer to supervise MA-theses in the following areas:

British theatre and drama, including the work of William Shakespeare,
the literature of the 20th and 21st century,
and film.

Prior enrolment via Stud.IP is mandatory. Since no more than 10 students can participate in this research module, early registration is strongly recommended.

This class will be completely taught online and is open to MA students from the E-SC Master Program at U Bremen, who plan to write their MA Thesis in the Summer Semester 2021. 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 the 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 will run entirely online. The 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. 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, corpus-techniques and methods for evaluating data will be discussed. Attendees will be expected to develop their own ideas for projects and to explore the methods and literature relevant, reporting back regularly to the group as a whole for maximal synergies.

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

Teaching method: We will meet in weekly online sessions, but students will also have access to weekly study units and worksheets. Since some of the participants are required to submit a research 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.
Course description: Travel writing is an increasingly popular genre in terms of text production and commercial success, encompassing a fascinating diversity of literary forms, modes and itineraries, which negate a forthright definition of the genre. As a repository for factual and fictional accounts of mobility and cross-cultural exchange, however, it has long been underestimated for its potential to contribute to a broad range of cultural, political and historical debates that seek to reassess the role of travel writing as a "vehicle for geographic, ethnographic and sociological knowledge." (Thompson 4). This seminar discusses diverse themes and characteristics of contemporary travel writing, postcolonial travel accounts and refugee writing and aims to map contemporary critical concepts regarding transnational and postcolonial perspectives in weekly readings of excerpts of selected travel accounts.

A reader with selected secondary text materials will be made available for download on Stud. IP. Please be aware that your registration on Stud. IP. is mandatory (deadline September 15th, 2020).
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 online attendance and informed participation in class discussion (not part of your formal assessment);
• in-depth knowledge of the selected reading material,
• homework assignments,
• research-based term paper.
The requirements as formulated above may vary depending on your overall degree program.

This class will be completely taught online and is open to MA students from the E-SC Master Program at U Bremen, as well as students who participate in exchange programs. All reading and information material (except the two novels) will be made available through the U Bremen teaching and learning platform Stud.IP; hence prior enrollment via Stud.IP is mandatory.

The class will focus on Canadian literature and introduce students to the topics of solidarity and migration; it is part of the theme semester “Solidarity”, organized by the Department of Anthropology and Cultural Research (FB 9). After discussing the concepts of ‘solidarity’ and ‘migration’ based on theoretical readings, we will look at how these are contextualized in Canadian prose, mainly shorter texts and two novels by an African Canadian and immigrant Canadian writer: Lawrence Hill’s The Illegal and Sharon Bala’s The Boat People.
Class requirements are regular attendance, in-depth knowledge of reading material, and active class discussion. Reading the primary and secondary texts is mandatory. Students are required to purchase and read Lawrence Hill’s The Illegal and Sharon Bala’s The Boat People. Ten copies of each are available at the university bookstore for 15€ (Hill) and 16€ (Bala) at the beginning of October. You can also order them via amazon.de, amazon.com and amazon.marketplace (check delivery times).

What happens when a Shakespeare play is transferred into a different medium? What distinguishes the Elizabethan drama from contemporary forms of art like film, the comic or the graphic novel? How can we describe and analyse the characteristics of both Shakespeare’s plays and their adaptations? This seminar deals with the phenomenon of adapting Shakespeare and asks about the genre-specificities of each production while also considering their sociohistorical context. We will begin by looking at excerpts of selected Shakespeare plays and then move on to three primary ‘texts’ that significantly contributed to the emergence of the cinematic Shakespeare renaissance in the 1990s: Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Richard III (1995) and William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996). All three films are particularly suitable for a discussion of gender, which will serve as a leitmotif in this seminar.

Prerequisites for a successful participation:
• regular attendance and oral participation
• in-depth knowledge of the reading material
• online & offline assignments
• oral presentation
• term paper (optional)

Key texts/films to be purchased* by students as soon as possible:
Much Ado About Nothing. Dir. Kenneth Branagh. BBC Films. The Samuel Goldwyn Company. USA/GB: 1993. DVD.
Richard III. Dir. Richard Loncraine. Bayly/Paré Productions British Screen. United Artists Pictures. GB: 1995. DVD.
William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet. Dir. Baz Luhrmann. Bazmark Productions. 20th Century Fox. USA/GB: 1996. DVD.
*feel free to watch the films online, depending on your media services provider

Maximum number of participants: 20

Please note: Due to the pandemic, this seminar will in parts be taught virtually via ZOOM including a significant number of asynchronous tasks. Please also note: For a successful participation, it is essential that you join the very first zoom meeting (via StudIP). Make sure you are online at least 10 mins prior to the first session to ensure a timely start, thank you.

This class is a project oriented online class. We read recent texts about humor as a coping mechanism and Covid 19 communication. In the next step, we will use Maxqda Software to analyse and code multimodal data. You will write a project report about a self selected research project regarding Covid 19 and humor using your Maxqda data analyses.

The aim of this course is to introduce students to Shakespeare's only domestic tragedy. Set in Venice as well as Cyprus, Othello has become a key text in the debate about racism in early modern Europe. Since the play dramatises the social anxieties aroused by a black outsider taking centre stage, our analysis will include a discussion of the extent to which Shakespeare drew upon, contributed to, or modified notions of otherness dominating in his own day.
As of today, the seminar has to be organised as an asynchronous digital course. As far as requirements are concerned, the course will differentiate between assignments which in the absence of real meetings have to be completed by every participant and a specific task that directly corresponds with the respective module of your study programme. The design of the portfolio that you will have to hand in by March 15, 2021, will also make a difference between the work of students who need a grade (PL) and those who want to get a pass (SL). Portfolio is here generally understood as a collection of course work consisting of five short on-topic reviews, i.e. one for each act of the tragedy (obligatory for SL and PL), and one additional essay (obligatory for PL) when a grade is needed.

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

text:
Shakespeare, William. Othello. The Arden Shakespeare. London. Thomson Learning, 2004.

In the course of this seminar we shall analyse three contemporary films which highlight diverse aspects of the life and achievements of historical scientists. In Creation (2009), directed by Jon Amiel, a specific biographical reading is offered that foregrounds Charles Darwin's relationship to his wife Emma and their initial dispute on the nexus between science and religion. James Marsh's The Theory of Everything (2014) is a biopic on the famous theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking and his complex family life. Hidden Figures (2016), a film directed by Theodore Melfi, tells the fascinating story of Katherine Johnson who worked at NASA at the time of the space race.
The aim of this seminar is to have a close look at the way in which each film production ventures on a biographical reconstruction of an individual scientist or a group of scientists. And it will be interesting to see how the specific representations are based on the multimodal nature of the corpus under scrutiny.
As of today, the seminar has to be organised as an asynchronous digital course. As far as requirements are concerned, the course will differentiate between assignments which in the absence of real meetings have to be completed by every participant and a specific task that directly corresponds with the respective module of your study programme. The design of the portfolio that you will have to hand in by March 15, 2021, will also make a difference between the work of students who need a grade (PL) and those who want to get a pass (SL). Portfolio is here generally understood as a collection of course work consisting of terminological issues (obligatory for SL and PL), three on-topic reviews, i.e. one for each film (obligatory for SL and PL), and one additional essay (obligatory for PL) when a grade is needed.

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

You are kindly asked to stream, purchase or borrow the three films. If you want to buy them, the sum total will not exceed 25 Euro.

Dracula Goes Global. Vampire Narratives in Spanish, Mexican, Anglophone, and Chinese Film
Bram Stoker's Count Dracula is by no means the first, but surely one of the most famous vampires in the history of literature and, later, film history. The eerie aristocrat with his insatiable thirst for blood, especially the blood of young, innocent ladies, was taken up and analyzed early in academic research: e.g. as a metaphor for the suppressed sexuality of the Victorian bourgeoisie, as a figure of alterity symbolizing the fear of possible Eastern European invaders, or as a symbol of the suppression or 'sucking out' of the worker.
In the seminar, we will first look at Stoker's gothic horror novel and then deal with international film adaptations. Dracula's first appearance on screen in G. W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922) is as much a part of the portfolio as Tod Browning's no less famous film adaptation with Bela Lugosi as the main character, who achieved international fame in 1931 through his embodiment of the Count, and Francis Ford Coppola's multiple award-winning gothic horror film Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992). Less well known to the general public, however, is the Spanish version of Dracula, made parallel to Browning's 1931 adaptation of the novel, or the Mexican El vampiro of 1957, in which a woman actively finishes the vampire off in the end, or the Chinese 'answer' to Dracula, the Mr. Vampire horror series from the 1980s, in which we are dealing with Chinese jiangshi – hopping vampires.
We will first devote ourselves to the novel and then to the films, which will be analyzed regarding film aesthetics as well as theories from the fields of literary, cultural, and media studies. To this effect, we will try to find out what function the Dracula or vampire myth takes on in the respective historical, political, and social context and what conclusions can be drawn about contemporary socio-symbolic configurations.

Requirements:
The novel must be read in full by all participants by the beginning of the semester. Reading the novel is part of the course work (Studienleistung).
In addition, the course work consists of various smaller reading assignments (research articles, texts concerning historical contexts, handouts), the processing of guiding questions about the respective films, and a written assignment (approx. 6 pages) in which one of the films is analyzed using theories and secondary literature. The thesis paper serves as a basis for discussion in the respective session. The seminar concludes with a term paper (Prüfungsleistung).

Lehrveranstaltungskategorie C = Online-Modus