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

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

Do you enjoy scribbling down ideas that come to you in a moment on a napkin, playing with rhyme schemes until they fit your vision, contributing to your fandom through writing, or simply putting your original characters and worlds onto a page to bring them to life? Then you are in the right place!

At the English Speaking Creative Writing Club, we’ll be doing sprints and writing critiques, looking at genres, writing routines and strategies and if there’s interest, looking into calls for submissions etc.

You will be able to freely write and share your ideas to get feedback on your writing in a cozy atmosphere. If you feel stuck on your writing project, you might find some new inspiration and get started with the writing prompts that we will have for each month.

You’ll be able to gain up to two credits by being an active participant and either presenting or turning in a project.

Whatever genre of writing you enjoy, horror, romance, creative nonfiction or poetry, we’d love to see you there!

This online lecture series, organised and run by lecturers from the universities of Münster, Paderborn, Bielefeld, Passau and Bremen deals with Global Englishes Language Teaching (GELT; Selvi, Galloway and Rose 2023), an emerging paradigm shift in English Language Teaching to promote multilingualism and awareness of the diversity of Englishes around the world, to increase exposure to this diversity and to help teacher trainees develop awareness of pedagogical implications of global spread of English, also beyond school curricula.

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 brought about a change in the foundations of how English should be taught and learned. However, in English Language Teaching (ELT) in Germany there is still an exclusive exonormative orientation towards "Standard English", i.e. British and/or American English. But setting a monolingual, inner-circle native-speaker benchmark for todays' learners, including the corresponding cultural norms, does not correspond to the linguistic reality and is therefore no longer considered appropriate in many contexts.

Preparatory readings for the individual lectures can be downloaded from here:
https://uni-muenster.sciebo.de/s/zd6roDQmyajXDag (password: GELTLecture2025)

Suggested general reading: Selvi, A.F., Galloway, N. and Rose, H. (2023) Teaching English as an International Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/teaching-english-as-an-international-language/083B560D9D34A42B66B8F9DBBD2F63C4#

This class will be taught by Marla Allison, an Indigenous Laguna Pueblo artist from the US, who will be the INPUTS Artist in Residence in the summer semester. The course is a block course and will be taught wednesdays between 14 May and 2 July from 10-14 hours with a break.

The class will introduce to recent Native American publications of short stories and poetry by Max Early, Joy Harjo, and Leslie Marmon Silko. The class is an even flow of creation process and clarifies what the childhood experience of these writers and artists have had toward the making of poetry as well as artwork. Students will get explanation of the westernization influence to contemporary Native American Art with lecture about current artists and influence of modern life. The final goal is to make a piece of art and explore the personal experience through a written phrase found either with poem, story, or art piece for inspiration.

The seminar, "English-Based Pidgins and Creoles in Digital Media," is about the use of English-based pidgins and creoles—specifically Nigerian Pidgin and Jamaican Creole—in digital spaces such as social media, blogs, and online forums. We will specifically explore how these languages evolve in online communication, how speakers use them to express identity, solidarity, and creativity, and how attitudes toward them shift in digital contexts compared to formal settings. We will also analyse authentic data from platforms like Nairaland and significant sites like BBC Pidgin News to examine linguistic and cultural features in digital media, including memes, slangs, idioms, and proverbs.

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

In this seminar, we will investigate the historical and socio-political developments that have determined the formation of African varieties of English and we will also study the functions English serves in various African countries and speaker's attitudes towards this language.
Moreover, we will survey recent corpus-linguistic research on Africa Englishes that has provided detailed descriptions of the distinctive linguistic characteristics of particular varieties.

Depending on the assessment needed for their study program and module, students can opt for oral presentations based on extensive reading or corpus-based research projects on selected African Englishes.

Basic introductory reading:
Schneider, Edgar W. 2011/2020. English around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (chapters 5.2 and 6.1)

Forensic Linguistics is a branch of Applied Linguistics that involves the examination of spoken or written language evidence to aid in the resolution of legal disputes, criminal cases, and investigations. During this seminar, we will look at specimen of threatening communication from different historical and contemporary varieties of English, and we will focus on the question of how meaning and implied meaning are construed, how the effect of threatening is achieved and what kind of evidence may assist in the identification of suspects.

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

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

Physics has often been understood as the opposite of fiction: formulae vs narrative, reality vs constructedness, in short, fact vs fiction. This has not discouraged writers to take up the challenge of merging the two, as a long tradition of science fiction attests. However, the interest in representing physics, physicists and their work on the part of what is considered 'literary fiction' seems to be more recent. This interdisciplinary seminar, co-taught by a physicist and a literary scholar focuses on representations of physics specifically in contemporary fiction. In a rare setting with students from both the English and the Physics departments, as well as across the universities of Oldenburg and Bremen, we will read at least one full science novel and several other science-related short stories and poems. This term, our focus will be on the topic of space and specifically on literary representations of the International Space Station (ISS) programme. 

Please, buy and read the following novels:
• Ra Page, ed. Litmus: Short Stories from Modern Science. Manchester: Comma Press, 2011. [ISBN-13: 978-1-905583-33-1]
• Samantha Harvey. Orbital. London: Vermilion, 2024. [ISBN: 978-1-5299-2293-6]
In addition, we will read poetry written for, about and on the ISS by, among others, US poet laureate Ada Limón.

This seminar examines the close connection between narrative and risk on the basis of two novels by U.S. American author Megan Abbott. In particular, we shall discuss Abbott’s science novel ‘Give Me Your Hand’ (2018), as well as her earlier work on the competitive world of cheer: ‘Dare Me’ (2012). Both novels make use of similar narrative techniques and explore related themes: such as rivalries between characters, group dynamics versus the individual, teenage friendships, and queer desire.

Students will be familiarized with theories of risk and advanced methods of literary analysis. In our class exercises, we will practice applying a range of literary and sociological theories to Abbott’s novels. The seminar will further provide ample time for discussions and opportunities to ask questions.

To complete the seminar, you will be expected to:

- Actively participate in the class.
- Acquire and read both novels, as well as reading the secondary texts.
- Do a presentation and/or term paper (depending on your chosen module).

You may purchase the course novels in any edition and as a new, a used, or an e-book version. However, if you are able to support your local bookstore, you may consider ordering new print copies of Abbott’s works via the campus shop (“Unibuch”).

Link to course padlet: https://padlet.com/oevermco/risk-in-fiction-vunw1mpc8pvt64rr

The last decade has seen a virulent debate about what the novel can and cannot do. In 2016, Indian writer Amitav Ghosh prominently accused modern literature, and specifically the realist novel, as failing to adequately address the challenges surrounding climate change. Currently, despite growing media competition and frequent expressions of cultural pessimism, reading habits among young people, and especially an interest in genre fiction, seem to be on the rise. Indeed, like literature and the humanities, the novel has frequently been placed in a state of perpetual crisis. At the same time, it has often found ways to remodel, renew, and re-form. Now a century ago, modernist writers, such as Virginia Woolf or James Joyce, experimented with narration, focalization and characterization in order to tackle themes of political, social, and psychological transformations. This seminar aims to compare the status of the novel in the 1910s/20s with debates of the long narrative form in the 2010s/2020s. Apart from reading examples of novels in which writers take up the challenges of representation, we will focus especially on diverse perspectives on the novel, from modern theories of the novel to contemporary creative writing manuals.
Please, buy and read the following novels:
• Virginia Woolf. Mrs Dalloway. 1925. Oxford: OUP, 2008. [ISBN: 978-0199536009]
• Jaspreet Singh. Face: A Novel of the Anthropocene. Victoria, BC: Touchwood Editions, 2022. [ISBN: 978-1-927366-97-4]

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

This class will be conducted 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.

After discussing ocean literacy and the sustainable development goals of the UN on water, we will read and discuss short texts from the collection The Imperiled Ocean: Human Stories from a Changing Sea by Laura Trethewey and the two novels The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh and People of the Whale by Linda Hogan. The novels are ready for purchase at the University bookstore at the beginning of the semester: The Hungry Tide (13,50 €) and People of the Whale (19,00 €). Other primary and secondary texts will be uploaded on StudIP.
Pls note that regular attendance and class preparation and active class discussion are mandatory. You must register on StudIP for this class.

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

The seminar, "English-Based Pidgins and Creoles in Digital Media," is about the use of English-based pidgins and creoles—specifically Nigerian Pidgin and Jamaican Creole—in digital spaces such as social media, blogs, and online forums. We will specifically explore how these languages evolve in online communication, how speakers use them to express identity, solidarity, and creativity, and how attitudes toward them shift in digital contexts compared to formal settings. We will also analyse authentic data from platforms like Nairaland and significant sites like BBC Pidgin News to examine linguistic and cultural features in digital media, including memes, slangs, idioms, and proverbs.

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

In this seminar, we will investigate the historical and socio-political developments that have determined the formation of African varieties of English and we will also study the functions English serves in various African countries and speaker's attitudes towards this language.
Moreover, we will survey recent corpus-linguistic research on Africa Englishes that has provided detailed descriptions of the distinctive linguistic characteristics of particular varieties.

Depending on the assessment needed for their study program and module, students can opt for oral presentations based on extensive reading or corpus-based research projects on selected African Englishes.

Basic introductory reading:
Schneider, Edgar W. 2011/2020. English around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (chapters 5.2 and 6.1)

Forensic Linguistics is a branch of Applied Linguistics that involves the examination of spoken or written language evidence to aid in the resolution of legal disputes, criminal cases, and investigations. During this seminar, we will look at specimen of threatening communication from different historical and contemporary varieties of English, and we will focus on the question of how meaning and implied meaning are construed, how the effect of threatening is achieved and what kind of evidence may assist in the identification of suspects.

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

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

Physics has often been understood as the opposite of fiction: formulae vs narrative, reality vs constructedness, in short, fact vs fiction. This has not discouraged writers to take up the challenge of merging the two, as a long tradition of science fiction attests. However, the interest in representing physics, physicists and their work on the part of what is considered 'literary fiction' seems to be more recent. This interdisciplinary seminar, co-taught by a physicist and a literary scholar focuses on representations of physics specifically in contemporary fiction. In a rare setting with students from both the English and the Physics departments, as well as across the universities of Oldenburg and Bremen, we will read at least one full science novel and several other science-related short stories and poems. This term, our focus will be on the topic of space and specifically on literary representations of the International Space Station (ISS) programme. 

Please, buy and read the following novels:
• Ra Page, ed. Litmus: Short Stories from Modern Science. Manchester: Comma Press, 2011. [ISBN-13: 978-1-905583-33-1]
• Samantha Harvey. Orbital. London: Vermilion, 2024. [ISBN: 978-1-5299-2293-6]
In addition, we will read poetry written for, about and on the ISS by, among others, US poet laureate Ada Limón.

This seminar examines the close connection between narrative and risk on the basis of two novels by U.S. American author Megan Abbott. In particular, we shall discuss Abbott’s science novel ‘Give Me Your Hand’ (2018), as well as her earlier work on the competitive world of cheer: ‘Dare Me’ (2012). Both novels make use of similar narrative techniques and explore related themes: such as rivalries between characters, group dynamics versus the individual, teenage friendships, and queer desire.

Students will be familiarized with theories of risk and advanced methods of literary analysis. In our class exercises, we will practice applying a range of literary and sociological theories to Abbott’s novels. The seminar will further provide ample time for discussions and opportunities to ask questions.

To complete the seminar, you will be expected to:

- Actively participate in the class.
- Acquire and read both novels, as well as reading the secondary texts.
- Do a presentation and/or term paper (depending on your chosen module).

You may purchase the course novels in any edition and as a new, a used, or an e-book version. However, if you are able to support your local bookstore, you may consider ordering new print copies of Abbott’s works via the campus shop (“Unibuch”).

Link to course padlet: https://padlet.com/oevermco/risk-in-fiction-vunw1mpc8pvt64rr

The last decade has seen a virulent debate about what the novel can and cannot do. In 2016, Indian writer Amitav Ghosh prominently accused modern literature, and specifically the realist novel, as failing to adequately address the challenges surrounding climate change. Currently, despite growing media competition and frequent expressions of cultural pessimism, reading habits among young people, and especially an interest in genre fiction, seem to be on the rise. Indeed, like literature and the humanities, the novel has frequently been placed in a state of perpetual crisis. At the same time, it has often found ways to remodel, renew, and re-form. Now a century ago, modernist writers, such as Virginia Woolf or James Joyce, experimented with narration, focalization and characterization in order to tackle themes of political, social, and psychological transformations. This seminar aims to compare the status of the novel in the 1910s/20s with debates of the long narrative form in the 2010s/2020s. Apart from reading examples of novels in which writers take up the challenges of representation, we will focus especially on diverse perspectives on the novel, from modern theories of the novel to contemporary creative writing manuals.
Please, buy and read the following novels:
• Virginia Woolf. Mrs Dalloway. 1925. Oxford: OUP, 2008. [ISBN: 978-0199536009]
• Jaspreet Singh. Face: A Novel of the Anthropocene. Victoria, BC: Touchwood Editions, 2022. [ISBN: 978-1-927366-97-4]

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

This class will be conducted 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.

After discussing ocean literacy and the sustainable development goals of the UN on water, we will read and discuss short texts from the collection The Imperiled Ocean: Human Stories from a Changing Sea by Laura Trethewey and the two novels The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh and People of the Whale by Linda Hogan. The novels are ready for purchase at the University bookstore at the beginning of the semester: The Hungry Tide (13,50 €) and People of the Whale (19,00 €). Other primary and secondary texts will be uploaded on StudIP.
Pls note that regular attendance and class preparation and active class discussion are mandatory. You must register on StudIP for this class.

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

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

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

This is a research colloquium for MA students who are currently preparing or working on their final theses in the fields of Anthropological Linguistics, Cultural Linguistics, (Applied) English Linguistics and/or World Englishes.

This colloquium is designed for students who wish to write their B.A. or M.A. theses in the field of cultural studies of the English-Speaking world. Students will be given the opportunity to develop specific cultural studies research projects, including compelling research questions, a strong thesis statement, clear chapter outline, and a well-selected bibliography. Students will practice a number of strategies for planning, structuring and writing B.A./M.A. dissertations and also brush up their knowledge of formal requirements, such as format and layout as well as citation style etc. Students will work both individually and in smaller groups and will present work in progress in oral and written form. Module choices are Bachelor thesis module P or L and Master thesis module MA The respectively.
Prior enrolment via Stud.IP is mandatory.

This course is designed as a colloquium for young researchers writing their MA thesis. It is supposed to support students in the writing process of the thesis and potential problems that might arise. Depending on the participants and their research topics, all will present a written part of their thesis, the introduction, the theory chapter, or one analysis chapter, which we will discuss in class and students will receive constructive feedback in plenum discussions.
Pls register online through StudIP. Max number of participants: 10