Archived Courses
Courses - Summer Term 2018
Prof. Dr. Cecile Sandten
Content
The Research Colloquium is open to students who are preparing for their final oral and written exams. It is intended to give students a platform to present their projects and to raise questions and/or difficulties they may be facing at an early stage of their research. Further, students are encouraged to engage in critical discussions, and gain feedback from their peers concerning their research projects. We will also discuss a wide range of general topics and individual topics required for final exams.
Requirements for credits
The format of this seminar consists of a close reading of texts, of discussions and thesis presentations. Each student will present an oral report (approx. 15 minutes) (PVL).
Set Texts/Required Reading
A reader with seminal material will be provided at the beginning of the semester.
Registration
There will be a list at the door of my office (Rh 39, room 214). Please register there.
Content
In this seminar students will be engaged in canonical as well postcolonial English children’s and young adult fiction, ranging from (oral) tales, picture books and novels, e.g. Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, Enid Blyton’s Famous Five, Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories, to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter (The Philosopher’s Stone). The seminar provides participants with practical strategies for analyzing these texts focusing on issues such as narrative techniques, the child hero, his/her quests and adventures, gender roles, as well as colonial/postcolonial conceptions.
Objectives
Students will gain an insight into the various historical and contemporary representations of child heroes and young adults on their way to adulthood and recognition in a selection of texts and film adaptations. In addition, literary theories such as reception theory, postcolonial theory, or other relevant approaches will be learned and fruitfully applied.
Requirements for credits
The format of this seminar consists of a close reading of primary, theoretical as well as secondary texts, discussions and oral presentations. Each student will present an oral report (approx. 15 minutes), chair a session, prepare questions for a discussion, or work in groups and present the results (PVL). For BA_AA_6 students, the module 5.2 will be completed with an oral exam of 30 minutes (one topic has to be taken from the research colloquium (15 minutes) and one from this seminar (15 minutes)). LAGS-EN 4-students have to write a term paper of 10-12 pages (time allowance: 6 weeks).
Additionally, a workshop-day with school children will be organized. All students are expected to participate in this workshop-day.
Set Texts/Required Reading
J.M. Barrie. Peter Pan.
Lewis Carroll. Alice in Wonderland.
Enid Blyton. Famous Five: On a Treasure Island.
Salman Rushdie. Haroun and the Sea of Stories.
J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter (The Philosopher’s Stone).
Siobhan Dowd. Bog Child.
Registration
There will be a list on the door of my office (Rh 39, room 214). Please register there. BA-6 students who are interested in this seminar are kindly requested to ask permission with Prof. Dr. Cecile Sandten to participate.
Content
Storytelling is an ancient form of entertainment and education – from the epics by the Greek poet Homer, the medieval sagas of gos and heroes to orally transmitted folk tales in a broad range of countries. For more than 100 years cinema has been the continuation of this tradition – on celluloid. Therefore, an educational programme for children and young adults does not only include the studying of texts, but also films. Since 1996, the International Film Festival “Schlingel” has provided a fitting forum for this task. It offers young viewers the opportunity to watch films that would otherwise be unknown in German cinemas. The films, whose heroes are primarily children and young adults, tell exciting stories and convey profound messages that are both ‘universal’, and conversely, culturally specific. More than 130 films from a broad range of countries will be screened during the festival week. In addition, international guests (e.g. film directors, young actors) as well as an international jury will be present throughout the festival. This year, the festival is scheduled for 1.10. – 7.10.2018.
Objectives
Since the Chair of English Literatures has entered into a cooperation with the “Schlingel” Film Festival, students of this seminar will be required to participate actively in support of the festival also at times outside the regular teaching period. During the weekly seminar you will first be provided with hands-on material related to film analysis techniques that will help to deepen your understanding of films and support you in the creation of analysis and interpretation, but also regarding the creation of educational material for children during the festival week. Secondly, you will learn specific presentation techniques, such as voice-over, interview and/or other techniques that are required for the active participation in the film festival.
Prerequisites
Students should ideally have completed the first seminar pertaining to the MA-Modul 4 Cultural Encounters.
Requirements for credits
The format of this seminar will consist of oral presentations and discussions. Each student will give an oral presentation (approx. 15 minutes), chair a session or prepare questions for discussion (PVL). For the PL students have to participate in the Festival and will be engaged in hands-on activities before and during the “Schlingel” Film Festival (e.g. support and participate in the Festival, translate subtitles of a selection of films, write and present film reviews, introduce films to the audience, chair Q&A sessions, provide / speak the voice-over text, write festival reports, or create a short film).
Set Texts/Required Reading
A Reader with seminal material will be provided / made available on-line.
Registration
There will be a list on the door of my office (Rh 39, room 214). Please register there.
Content:
In this seminar, students will examine the representation of the body of the black subject, first in Western literature and art through the lenses of race/colour/ethnicity and sex/gender. They will analyse not only how, where, why and by whom the body of the black subject was represented, but also what the social and cultural impacts of the colonial legacy of racialized western representations were. In addition, students will explore the issue of the historically privileged white artistic access to and ‘gaze’ on the black body and the stereotypes and, often, derogatory conceptions that were created for these subjects (as exemplified in the representations of Sarah Baartman as the “Hottentot Venus”). In a second step, students will be introduced to contemporary black writers and artists who have worked against these representations and who have created ‘counter-narratives’ that challenge and seek to undo colonial/Western histories and epistemologies. In order to do so, students will be acquainted with key concepts and terminologies used in postcolonial theory that analyse the cultural legacies of colonialism and imperialism on contemporary individual and collective identities.
Objectives:
All this will not only help students to analyse the representation of the black body in Western literature and art, but they will also learn about race and how and why it has been (re)defined and (re)configured at specific times and places throughout history. To achieve these objectives, students will read and analyse texts such as Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello (1603/4), Aphra Behn’s novella Oronooko, or the Royal Slave (1688), Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), African-American playwright Susan Lori Parks’ Venus (1989), Caribbean-British Caryl Phillips’s novel The Nature of Blood (1997), or African-Canadian playwright Djanet Sears’s Harlem Duet (1997), apart from an engagement with shorter texts, art works and other performance forms.
Prerequisites:
Students should ideally have completed the first seminar in the MA-Modul 4 English Literatures.
Requirements for credits:
Active participation in every session of the class is expected as well as the reading of primary, theoretical as well as secondary texts. A presentation or partner or group presentation of 15 minutes (PVL) as well as a final term paper (15-18 pages) are required for the module exam.
Set Texts/Required Reading:
Shakespeare, William. Othello, the Tragedy of the Moor of Venice. E.A.J. Honigmann (ed.) Walton-on-Thames, Surrey: Arden, 1998 [1604].
Behn, Aphra. Oroonoko, the Royal Slave and Other Writings. Ed. with an introduction and notes by Paul Salzman. Oxford, New York: Oxford UP, 1998 [1688].
Beecher Stowe, Harriet. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Everyman: London, 1993 [1852].
Parks, Susan Lori. Venus. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1989.
Phillips, Caryl. The Nature of Blood. London: Faber and Faber, 1997.
Sears, Djanet. Harlem Duet. Winnipeg: Scirocco Drama, 1997.
A Reader with seminal material will be provided / made available on-line.
Registration
There will be a list on the door of my office (Rh 39, room 214). Please register there.
233 oder 022
Meetings will be arranged in due course.
Content:
This course aims to provide support for post-graduate students who are developing their dissertation ideas and first draft outlines. The focus of this seminar will be on research in English Literature (including close readings of secondary theoretical texts and primary texts, but also the students' own written work). Post-graduate candidates who engage in interdisciplinary approaches and topics beyond English Literature are most welcome to participate to enhance the group's interdisciplinary awareness.
Objectives:
This seminar will also offer special supervision through individual counseling. Moreover, the seminar will support doctoral and post-doctoral candidates on a professional level, especially with regard to topics such as scholarly writing for publication, pedagogic issues of teaching at university level, as well as information on how to apply for positions in the job market. In addition, support to present their work at (international) conferences will be given, as well as information on careers and funding support for scholarship applications and opportunities for gaining key supplementary qualifications.
Prerequisites:
Participants must have completed a Magister, Master or Doctoral thesis graded at least 2,0.
Dr. Eike Kronshage
Content:
This course provides an accessible introduction to the theories and methods in literary studies. After having found out what methods and theories actually are and what they are good for, we will engage in critical discussions about some of the most influential theoretical and methodological approaches in our field. We will ask ourselves how we understand texts (hermeneutics); how texts exist in the world (Marxism; Cultural Materialism), and what their social function is (sociological theory). We will examine the function of authors, texts, and readers (psychoanalysis; New Criticism; Distant Reading; Reader Response Theory), before we ask if these functions can be fulfilled at all (structuralism, post-structuralism). Questions of power and its influence on text production and reception will complete our discussion (discourse analysis, postcolonial theory, gender theory).
We will exercise our new theoretical and methodological toolbox by analyzing some short stories and novellas by canonical authors (Brontë, Dickens, Hardy, Conrad, and Woolf).
Objectives
Like all scientists, scholars of literature need methods in order to engage with their objects of study (i.e. literary texts). The methods and theories presented in this seminar will enable students to see things from more than just the handful of perspectives they have hitherto experienced.
Prerequisites
Successful completion of the “Introduction to the Study of Literatures in English” (does not apply to visiting students). You must be willing to study a complex theoretical text every week (of approximately 20 pages each, which means a considerable reading load for this seminar!). The advantage of this procedure is that you will become acquainted with a great variety of theories and methods; the disadvantage is that you must be mentally flexible enough to engage in a new thematic discussion from week to week. In addition, all students must study the short stories and novellas.
Requirements for credits
Active participation and regular attendance is expected; a 20-minute oral presentation (PVL) and a term paper (PL).
Set Texts/Required Reading
A reader with seminal material including the short fictional texts will be provided at the beginning of the semester.
Tutorial
The course will be accompanied by a 90-minute weekly tutorial. Attendance is strongly recommended. Time and venue will be announced at the first meeting.
Registration
By e-mail: eike.kronshage@phil.tu-chemnitz.de.
Required information: Name, semester, and status (e.g. ERASMUS).
Content
Studying excerpts from Karl Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, The German Ideology, Grundrisse, and Capital, we will ask if and how Marx (and Marxism) might enable us to understand Shakespeare (and literature in general) differently. Marx’s ardent admiration for Shakespeare is well-documented. This prompts the question if Marx not only considered the plays pleasurable and entertaining, but also found them enlightening with respect to early modern economics. To that end, we will analyze two (partly collaborative) plays by Shakespeare, one tragedy and one history play, where the one is a rather obvious choice for a Marxist reading (Timon of Athens), while the other isn’t (King John). We need to find out if these plays help us to establish Shakespeare as a Marxist avant la lettre (that is, if we agree that this is even a desirable enterprise), and if so (or if not so) what that tells us about the socio-economic function (another problematic term we will need to discuss) of literature.
Objectives
Students will not only learn more about Marxist thinking, about political economy, and the history of mercantilism in early modern England, but also about how to use that theoretical and historical knowledge to gain a new perspective on Shakespeare’s plays, to read them differently, and to inquire whether these four-centuries-old plays still have a value – to use another Marxean term – in the twenty-first century beyond its merely canonical value.
Requirements for credits
Students must read both plays and a large portion of texts by Marx as well as a smaller portion of texts about Marx. Students must also participate in classroom discussions. Oral exam according to study and examination regulations at the end of the semester.
Set Texts/Required Reading
Please obtain the two Shakespeare plays in the (inexpensive) editions mentioned below. No other editions allowed! Please use ISBN numbers to make sure to order the correct edition.
King John (in: King John and Henry VIII (The RSC Shakespeare) ISBN 978-0230361928
Timon of Athens (Arden Third) ISBN 978-1903436974
A reader with seminal material will be provided at the beginning of the semester. All texts by Marx are in the public domain and may be read either in the German original or in English translation.
Registration
By e-mail: eike.kronshage@phil.tu-chemnitz.de
N.B.: Please note that the seminar will take place as a block seminar. We will meet four times over the course of the semester (preferably on Fridays and/or Saturdays – therefore, you must make sure that both your class schedule, and your private obligations allow for some flexibility). We will set up a Doodle after the first, introductory meeting on Tuesday, 3 April, 9:15am.
Mandy Beck
Content
Romantic writing in the period of 1780-1835 is widely understood as a violent reaction against eighteenth-century Enlightenment, political revolutions in France and America, consumerism and the Industrial Revolution. Up until the rise of feminist criticism in the late twentieth century, the critical consensus mentioned primarily six male poets (Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats and Byron) who formed this literary and artistic movement called ‘Romanticism’. In contrast to this, the seminar offers an overview of Romantic women poets who have influenced this period with an aesthetic of ‘Romanticism’ that differs from their male peers. The fact that their writing was extremely popular and important, also for latter generations of women writers, accounts for the diversity of poems and poetic styles. Therefore, several women poets (including their work and personal living conditions) over the course of over 50 years will be discussed in the seminar. Among them are Anna Seward, Charlotte Smith, L.E.L., Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and others.
This course will discuss central concepts that are essential for an understanding of Romanticism, such as sensibility and the Gothic in the context of women writers. The stress on emotion and poetic manifestations of emotional responses to, for example, the natural world (i.e. sensibility) must not necessarily be understood as a female gendered property, but plays an important role among women poets of this period for various reasons. In addition, the seminar will make students aware of different poetic forms that women writers have adopted and reconstituted for their own purposes, such as the sonnet, elegy, song and ode.
Prerequisites
In order to participate, students of Anglistik/Amerikanistik need to have completed the lecture course “Introduction to the Study of Literatures in English” successfully (does not apply to visiting students).
Requirements for Credit
Close readings of primary, theoretical as well as secondary texts, discussions and oral presentations. Each student will do an oral presentation (approx. 15 minutes), chair a session or prepare questions for discussion (PVL) and write a substantial seminar paper (12-15 pages) (PL).
Set Texts
A reader with texts will be available at the beginning of the semester.
Registration
There will be a list on the door of my office (Rh 39, room 213). Please register there.
Content
This seminar turns towards the genre of short fiction and its wide scope that includes short stories, flash fiction, mini-sagas and six-word-stories. It will offer an overview of the beginnings and characteristics of short fiction in the English literary canon, origins and types of short stories, and the development of contemporary flash fiction and mini-sagas. Essential questions in this regard, such as “How short can a story be?” or “What does a story need in order to be a story?” will be discussed in the seminar in relation to different aspects (narrative techniques, literary periods, reader response, creative writing). The consideration of a mixture of texts, styles and forms seeks to illustrate the spectrum of short fiction.
Objectives
Students will become familiar with short fiction and deepen their knowledge about various aspects across different literary periods and countries (UK, Canada, New Zealand, etc.). Furthermore, students will engage in close readings and other methods of literary analysis. On the basis of a close engagement with the texts and lively discussions, students will also be encouraged to write their own texts and become acquainted with techniques of creative writing as an interpretation of and/or reaction to the texts they have read.
Prerequisites
In order to participate, students of Anglistik/Amerikanistik need to have completed the lecture course “Introduction to the Study of Literatures in English” successfully (does not apply to visiting students).
Requirements for Credit
Close readings of primary, theoretical as well as secondary texts, discussions and oral presentations. Each student will do an oral presentation (approx. 15 minutes), chair a session or prepare questions for discussion (PVL) and write a substantial seminar paper (12-15 pages) (PL).
Set Texts
A reader with texts will be available at the beginning of the semester.
Registration
There will be a list on the door of my office (Rh 39, room 213). Please register there.