Archived Courses: Summer Semester 2023

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.

Content

Storytelling is an ancient form of entertainment and education – from the epics by the Greek poet Homer, the medieval sagas of gods 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 program 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 great forum for this task. It offers young viewers the opportunity to watch international, often independent films that would otherwise be unknown to a German audience. 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 160 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 international juries will be present throughout the festival.

Objectives

In this seminar, students will first be provided with theoretical texts related to children’s films as well as hands-on material with regard to film analysis techniques that will help them to deepen their understanding of films and support them in the creation of educational material for children. Secondly, students of this seminar will learn how to translate the subtitles of a film and be introduced to tasks that are required for the active participation in the film festival. Since the Chair of English Literatures cooperates with the "SCHLINGEL" Film Festival, students of this seminar will be requested to participate actively in support of the festival (23/09 – 30/09/23).

Requirements for credits

Active participation in every session of the class is expected. A presentation or partner or group work is also expected as part of the general course work. A final presentation with a poster is required for the course exam (SELAEn6); for the PVL, B_AA 6, StGenSS students can either do an oral presentation (approx. 20 minutes) or complete a written task (of altogether 1500-2000 words). The module 5.2 will be completed with an oral exam of 30 minutes (one topic from this seminar and one topic from the research colloquium).

Set texts/required reading

A reader with seminal material will also be available at the Copyshop Dietze (Reichenhainer Str. 55).

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 theoretical and primary texts, of discussions and presentations of students’ own writings (e.g. title, abstract, introduction). Each student will present an oral report about their thesis (approx. 15 minutes) (PVL).

Set texts/required reading

A reader with seminal material will also be available at the Copyshop Dietze (Reichenhainer Str. 55).

Content

This seminar focuses on the exploration of the Industrial Revolution through literature: The 1840s in Britain were a time of rapid urban and economic expansion and change, great social hardship and increased social tension, which resulted in strikes, violent clashes and the emergence of "the first working-class party", the Chartists. The term "industrial novel" refers to a group of literary works, also known as "social-problem novels" or "Condition-of-England novels", written by middle-class writers concerned about both the treatment of the working class and also the threat of social instability it seemed to pose. In this seminar we will be looking at the social, economic and political history of the mid-century: the technological breakthroughs in production and distribution; social distress in the Northern English industrial towns; and issues such as the rise of the trade union movement and Chartism.

Objectives

Our main questions are: How is the Industrial Revolution represented and depicted in literary texts? Which issues of the time do the writers engage in? And how did the "working-class problem" find expression? We will tackle these questions by reading two novels closely: Charles Dickens’ Hard Times (1853), which was the "master’s" excursion into the industrial North (his "Coketown" is based on Manchester and Preston), and Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton (1848), which was not just the most influential industrial novel of its time and still the best-known of the genre but also the first novel by an author who, as a vicar’s wife, was familiar with poverty in Manchester. How are these novels significant – aesthetically and ideologically – 160 years later? To broaden the scope, we will go on an excursion to the "Sächsisches Industriemuseum" in order to become familiar with the exhibits that pay tribute to the particular temporal setting of the two novels – thus enhancing the "cultural encounter". Brian Percival’s (dir. 2004) adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel North and South will round off this seminar. Students will also be required to attend the international conference “Making the City: Transformative Processes in (Post)Industrial Urban Spaces”, 29 June – 1 July 2023, convened by the Chair of English Literatures at TUC.

Prerequisites

Master-students need to have successfully completed their BA in English as well as the 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. 20 minutes), and chair a session or prepare questions for discussion (PVL). For the PL, students have to write a substantial seminar paper (15-20 pages).

Set texts

Charles Dickens (1994 [1853]): Hard Times. London: Penguin Popular Classics.

Elizabeth Gaskell (1997 [1948]): Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life. London: Penguin Classics.

Further recommended reading

Friedrich Engels (1845): The Condition of the Working Class in England.

Content

Among Canada’s First Nations there is the need for self-determination, to restore Aboriginal sensibility, and the need to consolidate and gain recognition for their contributions to writing and story-telling in Aboriginal languages and in the dominant languages (here English). Often, First Nations Canadians do not have access to their own cultures and their own communities because of colonisation, adoption into non-Aboriginal families, foster homes, assimilation, and lack of status. Nonetheless, many First Nations people recognise the power of stories among their peoples.

Objectives

Therefore, this seminar will look at a selection of life stories as-told-to, as-told-by or as-told-about First Nations Canadians. These stories will introduce seminar participants to the history, society, cultures, politics, and institutions of Canada as seen through the eyes and told through the words of First Nations people. Further, we will examine the genre of biography and autobiography, as well as the notion of storytelling and oral tradition. An excursion to the Grassi Museum für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig will be on the agenda.

Prerequisites

Masters students need to have successfully completed their BA in English.

Requirements for credits

Regular attendance as well as reading and preparing the set texts for discussions is required and part of the Credit Points allocation. The format of this seminar will consist of oral presentations and discussions. Each student will give an oral report (approx. 20 minutes), chair a session or prepare questions for a discussion (PVL) and write a final term paper (15-18 pages) (PL) for the module exam.

Set texts

Campbell, Maria. Halfbreed (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1973).

Culleton, Beatrice. In Search of April Raintree (Winnipeg: Pemmican Publishers, 1983).

Harper, Kenn. Give me my Father’s Body: The Life of Minik, The New York Eskimo. (Vermont: Steerforth Press, 1986/2000).

Seminal theoretical texts will be provided in the OPAL 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 (in cooperation with the Forschungsakademie TUC).

Prerequisites

Participants must have completed a Magister or Master thesis graded at least 2,0.

Content

The topic of borders has attracted interest across several disciplines for many years, ranging from literary to cultural studies, postcolonial to migration studies, or even affective to psychological approaches, due to its multiple implications for aesthetic, cultural, socio-political or mere spatial issues. Recent developments like the refugee crisis in Europe, the COVID-19 crisis, or the renewed tensions at the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland after Brexit exemplified the consistent relevance of borders – whether it is in the sense of the general “debordering” strategy in the EU or a “rebordering” (McCall 2012) of nation states in the face of illegal immigration, security or health threats. Based on these observations and imminent questions of how to conceptualise borders, this seminar seeks to illuminate how borders are “presented, marked, represented, medialized” (Schimanski/Wolfe 2007) by contemporary writers, such as Mohsin Hamid, Jan Carson, and others, as well as how current events influence the perception and depiction of borders.

Objectives

Students are made familiar with different conceptualisations of borders, for example, by Walter D. Mignolo, Thomas Nail, Johan Schimanski and others, to reflect on the different manifestations of borders and to develop a critical understanding of how borders function in diverse contexts. This will be enhanced by a discussion of selected literary works and their representation of associated themes, like flight, migration, ethnonational conflicts, anxiety, or xenophobia.

Prerequisites

Students must have successfully completed the Introduction to the Study of Literatures in English and the Kernmodul 2.3 English Literatures and Cultures I (does not apply to visiting students).

Requirements for credits

Close readings of primary, theoretical as well as secondary texts, discussions and oral presentations. For the PVL, each student can either do an oral presentation (approx. 20 minutes) or complete a written task (1500-2000 words), and write a substantial seminar paper (10-12 pages) for the PL.

Set texts

A reading list will be announced at the beginning of the semester.

A reader with secondary texts will also be available at the Copyshop Dietze (Reichenhainer Str. 55).

Content

“Genre” is a collective term for a sort of texts that have specific characteristics in common with regard to form, content, style, or even function. Apart from the major genres of poetry, fiction and drama, there are numerous subgenres (e.g. sonnets, short stories, comedies, etc.) or in-between genres (e.g. epic, dramatic monologue, novel in verse, dialogue novel, closet drama, etc.), but also other variations that escape clear-cut categories, because they challenge or reflect on generic conventions. The ambiguities of certain literary texts, especially from the twentieth century, are furthermore indicated by categories such as “metatheatre” (Lionel Abel) and “metafiction” (Linda Hutcheon), or self- reflexive literature in form of the “anti-novel”, the “anti-play” and experimental poetry. Therefore, this seminar deals with literary genres beyond the conventional classifications, in order to discuss the wide scope of literature’s reinvention in the twentieth century.

In addition to a survey of the main genres and their core features, we will focus on texts that deviate from them, as Samuel Beckett's shorter plays Act Without Words I & II, What Where, Angela Carter's longer fiction, or poetry by Edwin Morgan, Stevie Smith and others. These readings will be enhanced by relevant theoretical texts on different genres, narratology, postmodern writings, experimentalism, gender and more.

Objectives

This seminar seeks to re-evaluate the reliability of generic features of literary texts for a categorisation and analysis, thereby making students aware of the texts' playful engagement with common expectations towards genres. On top of that, various issues will be explored on the basis of theoretical/critical material, such as self-reflexiveness, experimental and subversive strategies.

Prerequisites

In order to participate, students of English and American Studies need to have completed the Kernmodul 2.3 English Literatures and Cultures I and 2.4 English Literatures and Cultures II successfully.

Requirements for credits

Close readings of primary, theoretical as well as secondary texts, discussions and oral presentations. For the PVL, each student can either do an oral presentation (approx. 20 minutes) or complete a written task (1500-2000 words).

The module 5.2 will be completed with an oral exam of 30 minutes (one topic from this seminar and one topic from the research colloquium).

Set texts

A reading list will be announced at the beginning of the semester.

A reader with secondary texts will also be available at the Copyshop Dietze (Reichenhainer Str. 55).

Content

This course provides an accessible introduction to the theories and methods in literary studies and its four pillars: author, text, reader, and context. We will engage in critical investigations of five influential theoretical approaches in our field: Marxism, Psychoanalysis, Gender and Queer Theory, New Criticism and Formalism, and Postcolonial Studies. For each of these five areas, there will be a discussion of a seminal theoretical text in the first week, followed by a hands-on session in the second week, in which we will use the theoretical/methodological framework to analyse a given literary text (a poem or a short story). In addition, the seminar will provide students with useful tools and methods to analyse literary texts.

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 study literature from different perspectives and with greater precision than before. In other words, we will put the “Wissenschaft” into “Literaturwissenschaft”.

Prerequisites

Successful completion of the lecture Introduction to the Study of Literatures in English. You are required to carefully study alternately a complex theoretical text and a short literary text (a poem, a collection of poems, a short story) from week to week, which results in a high reading load.

Requirements for credits

Active participation in every session of the class is expected (there will be regular in class reading quizzes).

PVL: Oral presentation (20 minutes) (see Studienordnung, p. 1349) or similar form of presentation.

PL (for B_AA 2): Term paper (10-12 pages) (see Studienordnung, p. 1349).

PL (for SELAEn6, B_Pä 4): Final exam (Klausur).

Set texts

A reader with seminal material will be available at the Copyshop Dietze (Reichenhainer Str. 55). at the beginning of the semester.

Tutorial

The seminar will be accompanied by a weekly tutorial. Time and venue will be announced at the first meeting.

Content

Postcolonial literature is abundantly influenced by the experiences of people’s movement in a world still carrying the legacies of colonialism and becoming increasingly globalised yet worryingly unequal. The concept of diaspora (meaning: “dispersal”) is productively used in relation to people’s movement across national borders – chosen or forced – which often seems to challenge the notion of a fixed national identity. In this course, we focus on literature emanating from different diasporas, that is groups o communities of migrants in North America and the UK. Reading key theoretical texts to understand such concepts as hybridity, cultural diversity and diasporic identity, we will explore fiction – short stories and novels – to understand how the literary productions have engaged with a range of concerns apropos of migration and diaspora, namely, legacies of colonialism; home and belonging; the post 9/11 volatile socio-political atmosphere; “emergency diasporas” emerging from the ongoing refugee crisis.

Objectives

The objectives of this course are to introduce students to a significant corpus of contemporary Anglophone literature on migration and diaspora. Students will read the creative texts in conjunction with key theoretical texts to define the conceptual tools of diaspora, hybridity, and multiculturalism. Students will be able to critically examine these concerns in relation to literary texts, analyse the texts’ narrative and aesthetic strategies and broaden their understanding of Anglophone literature across borders.

Prerequisites

Students must have successfully completed the Introduction to the Study of Literatures in English and the Kernmodul 2.3 English Literatures and Cultures I (does not apply to visiting students).

Requirements for credits

Active participation in every session of the class is expected (there will be regular in class reading quizzes).

PVL: Oral presentation (20 minutes) or similar form of presentation.

PL: Term paper (10-12 pages).

Set texts/required reading

Cole, Teju. Everyday is for the Thief. Lagos. Cassava Republic, 2007.

Khair, Tabish. Just Another Jihadi Jane. Reading: Periscope, 2016.

Kincaid, Jamaica, Lucy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990.

A Reader with seminar materials will also be available at available at the Copyshop Dietze (Reichenhainer Str. 55).