Institut für Englische Philologie (WE 6)

• BM1-Introduction to Literary Studies

  0042fA1.1
  • 17300 Grundkurs
    GK-Introduction to Literary Studies: Basic Questions, Concepts and Methods (Lukas Lammers)
    Zeit: Di 16:00-18:00 (Erster Termin: 14.10.2025)
    Ort: Hs 1b Hörsaal (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    
  • 17301 Proseminar
    PS-Introduction to Literary Studies: Working with Literary Texts (Lukas Lammers)
    Zeit: Mi 12:00-14:00 (Erster Termin: 15.10.2025)
    Ort: KL 32/102 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    
  • 17302 Proseminar
    PS-Introduction to Literary Studies: Working with Literary Texts (Matilda Jones)
    Zeit: Mi 14:00-16:00 (Erster Termin: 15.10.2025)
    Ort: KL 32/202 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Kommentar

    This seminar is designed to be taken in conjunction with the lecture 17300, “GK Introduction to Literary Studies.” Please note that you must sign up for both courses separately. The lecture and seminar are closely connected and follow a similar structure. The seminar provides a space to explore in more detail concepts presented in the lecture and apply them by engaging with a variety of poetic, narrative, and dramatic texts. Additionally, students will read a small selection of critical texts that introduce them to some of the central theoretical frameworks in literary studies. The class also offers an introduction to academic writing and research techniques. Overall, the seminar aims to enable students to understand and contextualize a historically and generically diverse range of texts and to discuss and write about them in structured ways. This class will be conducted in English. Note the deadline for registration (below).
    
    Texts / Blackboard – Where do I find the readings for this course?
    Most of the readings as well as a full list of required texts and other important information will be made available through Blackboard.
    
    Courses for which you have signed up via Campus Management will show up in your Blackboard account automatically. Courses and materials often only become fully available shortly before (or in) the first week of term.
    
    Requirements and exam – What will I need to do to complete the course?
    To complete the module and receive full credits, students must attend regularly, participate in in-class discussions, and submit three short written assignments. Additionally, students must pass the final exam at the end of the term (90 minutes, with one part based on the lecture and one part based on the seminar).
    
    Registration (Campus Management) – How and when can I sign up for this course?
    There are several parallel seminars for this module (e.g., 17301, 17302, etc.), all covering the same questions and materials. Check which ones best fit your schedule.
    
    For this module, you cannot immediately enroll in your preferred seminar (platzbeschränkte Lehrveranstaltungen). Instead, you must select (three different) preferences. The system will then assign places based on your choices. Note that lecturers will not be able to enroll you in a seminar or help you swap places.
    
    Make sure to check which seminar you have been assigned to and attend the first session of that course. To resolve possible clashes please send a short email to studienbuero@geisteswissenschaften.fu-berlin.de, sketching the problem/clash.
    
    For deadlines, information for students with caring responsibilities, and further information on the process see here: https://www.fu-berlin.de/sites/campusmanagement/N3InfoStudenten/Anmeldezeitraum/index.html

  • 17303 Proseminar
    PS-Introduction to Literary Studies: Working with Literary Texts (Karoline-Rosina Strauch)
    Zeit: Mi 16:00-18:00 (Erster Termin: 15.10.2025)
    Ort: JK 27/106 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    
  • 17304 Proseminar
    PS-Introduction to Literary Studies: Working with Literary Texts (James Daniel Mellor)
    Zeit: Do 12:00-14:00 (Erster Termin: 16.10.2025)
    Ort: KL 32/202 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Kommentar

    This seminar is designed to be taken in conjunction with the lecture 17300, “GK Introduction to Literary Studies.” Please note that you must sign up for both courses separately. The lecture and seminar are closely connected and follow a similar structure. The seminar provides a space to explore in more detail concepts presented in the lecture and apply them by engaging with a variety of poetic, narrative, and dramatic texts. Additionally, students will read a small selection of critical texts that introduce them to some of the central theoretical frameworks in literary studies. The class also offers an introduction to academic writing and research techniques. Overall, the seminar aims to enable students to understand and contextualize a historically and generically diverse range of texts and to discuss and write about them in structured ways. This class will be conducted in English. Note the deadline for registration (below).
    
    Texts / Blackboard – Where do I find the readings for this course?
    Most of the readings as well as a full list of required texts and other important information will be made available through Blackboard.
    
    Courses for which you have signed up via Campus Management will show up in your Blackboard account automatically. Courses and materials often only become fully available shortly before (or in) the first week of term.
    
    Requirements and exam – What will I need to do to complete the course?
    To complete the module and receive full credits, students must attend regularly, participate in in-class discussions, and submit three short written assignments. Additionally, students must pass the final exam at the end of the term (90 minutes, with one part based on the lecture and one part based on the seminar).
    
    Registration (Campus Management) – How and when can I sign up for this course?
    There are several parallel seminars for this module (e.g., 17301, 17302, etc.), all covering the same questions and materials. Check which ones best fit your schedule.
    
    For this module, you cannot immediately enroll in your preferred seminar (platzbeschränkte Lehrveranstaltungen). Instead, you must select (three different) preferences. The system will then assign places based on your choices. Note that lecturers will not be able to enroll you in a seminar or help you swap places.
    
    Make sure to check which seminar you have been assigned to and attend the first session of that course. To resolve possible clashes please send a short email to studienbuero@geisteswissenschaften.fu-berlin.de, sketching the problem/clash.
    
    For deadlines, information for students with caring responsibilities, and further information on the process see here: https://www.fu-berlin.de/sites/campusmanagement/N3InfoStudenten/Anmeldezeitraum/index.html

  • 17305 Proseminar
    PS-Introduction to Literary Studies: Working with Literary Texts (Peter Löffelbein)
    Zeit: Do 14:00-16:00 (Erster Termin: 16.10.2025)
    Ort: JK 27/106 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Kommentar

    This seminar is designed to be taken in conjunction with the lecture 17300, “GK Introduction to Literary Studies.” Please note that you must sign up for both courses separately. The lecture and seminar are closely connected and follow a similar structure. The seminar provides a space to explore in more detail concepts presented in the lecture and apply them by engaging with a variety of poetic, narrative, and dramatic texts. Additionally, students will read a small selection of critical texts that introduce them to some of the central theoretical frameworks in literary studies. The class also offers an introduction to academic writing and research techniques. Overall, the seminar aims to enable students to understand and contextualize a historically and generically diverse range of texts and to discuss and write about them in structured ways. This class will be conducted in English. Note the deadline for registration (below).
    
    Texts / Blackboard – Where do I find the readings for this course?
    Most of the readings as well as a full list of required texts and other important information will be made available through Blackboard.
    
    Courses for which you have signed up via Campus Management will show up in your Blackboard account automatically. Courses and materials often only become fully available shortly before (or in) the first week of term.
    
    Requirements and exam – What will I need to do to complete the course?
    To complete the module and receive full credits, students must attend regularly, participate in in-class discussions, and submit three short written assignments. Additionally, students must pass the final exam at the end of the term (90 minutes, with one part based on the lecture and one part based on the seminar).
    
    Registration (Campus Management) – How and when can I sign up for this course?
    There are several parallel seminars for this module (e.g., 17301, 17302, etc.), all covering the same questions and materials. Check which ones best fit your schedule.
    
    For this module, you cannot immediately enroll in your preferred seminar (platzbeschränkte Lehrveranstaltungen). Instead, you must select (three different) preferences. The system will then assign places based on your choices. Note that lecturers will not be able to enroll you in a seminar or help you swap places.
    
    Make sure to check which seminar you have been assigned to and attend the first session of that course. To resolve possible clashes please send a short email to studienbuero@geisteswissenschaften.fu-berlin.de, sketching the problem/clash.
    
    For deadlines, information for students with caring responsibilities, and further information on the process see here: https://www.fu-berlin.de/sites/campusmanagement/N3InfoStudenten/Anmeldezeitraum/index.html

  • 17306 Proseminar
    PS-Introduction to Literary Studies: Working with Literary Texts (Lenka Filipova)
    Zeit: Fr 12:00-14:00 (Erster Termin: 17.10.2025)
    Ort: KL 32/102 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Kommentar

    This seminar is designed to be taken in conjunction with the lecture 17300, “GK Introduction to Literary Studies.” Please note that you must sign up for both courses separately. The lecture and seminar are closely connected and follow a similar structure. The seminar provides a space to explore in more detail concepts presented in the lecture and apply them by engaging with a variety of poetic, narrative, and dramatic texts. Additionally, students will read a small selection of critical texts that introduce them to some of the central theoretical frameworks in literary studies. The class also offers an introduction to academic writing and research techniques. Overall, the seminar aims to enable students to understand and contextualize a historically and generically diverse range of texts and to discuss and write about them in structured ways. This class will be conducted in English. Note the deadline for registration (below).
    
    Texts / Blackboard – Where do I find the readings for this course?
    Most of the readings as well as a full list of required texts and other important information will be made available through Blackboard.
    
    Courses for which you have signed up via Campus Management will show up in your Blackboard account automatically. Courses and materials often only become fully available shortly before (or in) the first week of term.
    
    Requirements and exam – What will I need to do to complete the course?
    To complete the module and receive full credits, students must attend regularly, participate in in-class discussions, and submit three short written assignments. Additionally, students must pass the final exam at the end of the term (90 minutes, with one part based on the lecture and one part based on the seminar).
    
    Registration (Campus Management) – How and when can I sign up for this course?
    There are several parallel seminars for this module (e.g., 17301, 17302, etc.), all covering the same questions and materials. Check which ones best fit your schedule.
    
    For this module, you cannot immediately enroll in your preferred seminar (platzbeschränkte Lehrveranstaltungen). Instead, you must select (three different) preferences. The system will then assign places based on your choices. Note that lecturers will not be able to enroll you in a seminar or help you swap places.
    
    Make sure to check which seminar you have been assigned to and attend the first session of that course. To resolve possible clashes please send a short email to studienbuero@geisteswissenschaften.fu-berlin.de, sketching the problem/clash.
    
    For deadlines, information for students with caring responsibilities, and further information on the process see here: https://www.fu-berlin.de/sites/campusmanagement/N3InfoStudenten/Anmeldezeitraum/index.html

  • 17307 Proseminar
    PS-Introduction to Literary Studies: Working with Literary Texts (Sophie Kriegel)
    Zeit: Do 18:00-20:00 (Erster Termin: 16.10.2025)
    Ort: KL 32/102 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

• BM2-Introduction to English Linguistics

  0042fA1.2
  • 17308 Vorlesung
    V-Introduction to English Linguistics: Survey of Language and Linguistics (Ferdinand von Mengden)
    Zeit: Mo 14:00-16:00 (Erster Termin: 13.10.2025)
    Ort: Hs 1a Hörsaal (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Kommentar

    As part of the module Introduction to English Linguistics, this lecture introduces and explains basic terms, concepts and theories of linguistics. In contrast to the seminar, the lecture will contextualize the basic concepts and assumptions in the historical development of linguistic thought. How and in which historical contexts did our modern understanding of language and of the underlying models of description emerge? How are they motivated? To an extent, this approach will give the lecture a chronological structure. The major part of the lecture will deal with the linguistics of the past one hundred years, this being the period when most of present-day linguistics was formed. The main aim of this lecture will be to familiarise students with the most important concepts and with the major subdisciplines of linguistics.
    
    Students who cannot attend the first class are kindly asked to notify me before the beginning of the lecture period.

  • 17309 Proseminar
    PS-Introduction to English Linguistics (Elif Kara)
    Zeit: Mo 10:00-12:00 (Erster Termin: 13.10.2025)
    Ort: KL 32/102 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    
  • 17310 Proseminar
    PS-Introduction to English Linguistics (Kirsten Middeke)
    Zeit: Mi 12:00-14:00 (Erster Termin: 15.10.2025)
    Ort: JK 27/106 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    
  • 17311 Proseminar
    PS-Introduction to English Linguistics (Arne Werfel)
    Zeit: Mo 16:00-18:00 (Erster Termin: 13.10.2025)
    Ort: KL 32/202 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    
  • 17312 Proseminar
    PS-Introduction to English Linguistics (Janel Zoske)
    Zeit: Mi 14:00-16:00 (Erster Termin: 15.10.2025)
    Ort: KL 29/208 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Hinweise für Studierende

    IMPORTANT INFORMATION: The first session (15.10.2025) of this seminar will be held online via Webex (https://fu-berlin.webex.com/meet/j.zoske).

    Kommentar

    Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The aims of linguistics are to understand human communication, cognition and psychology and the evolution of languages as communication systems.
    
    This course offers an introduction to the basic concepts and methods of linguistics on various levels of analysis (phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax), with English as our primary object of investigation. You will be equipped with the necessary skills and knowledge to read academic literature and to carry out linguistic analyses of your own in more advanced modules, and to pursue further studies in the discipline.
    
    The seminar will be completed by a written exam and is complemented by an obligatory lecture course.

  • 17313 Proseminar
    PS-Introduction to English Linguistics (Sofia Rüdiger)
    Zeit: Do 10:00-12:00 (Erster Termin: 16.10.2025)
    Ort: J 27/14 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Kommentar

    Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The aims of linguistics are to understand human communication, cognition and psychology, and the evolution of languages as communication systems. Language is fascinating to study for its own sake, but a knowledge of linguistics is also extremely helpful for a range of other activities, for instance language teaching or translating/interpreting.
    
    The seminar will introduce you to basic concepts and methods in linguistics. We will study phenomena on various levels of analysis (phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax), with English as our primary object of investigation and occasional glances at other languages. You will be equipped with the necessary skills and knowledge to read academic literature, to carry out linguistic analyses of your own in more advanced modules, and to pursue further studies in the discipline.
    
    The seminar is complemented by an obligatory lecture course and a tutorial.

  • 17314 Proseminar
    PS-Introduction to English Linguistics (Berit Johannsen)
    Zeit: Do 12:00-14:00 (Erster Termin: 16.10.2025)
    Ort: KL 29/208 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Kommentar

    Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The aims of linguistics are to understand human communication, cognition and psychology and the evolution of languages as communication systems. Language is fascinating to study for its own sake, but a knowledge of linguistics is also extremely helpful for a range of other activities, for instance language teaching or translating/interpreting.
    
    The seminars will introduce you to basic concepts and methods in linguistics. We will study phenomena on various levels of analysis (phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax), with English as our primary object of investigation and occasional glances at other languages. You will be equipped with the necessary skills and knowledge to read academic literature and to carry out linguistic analyses of your own in more advanced modules, and to pursue further studies in the discipline.
    
    Credit requirements are:
    

    • regular attendance
    • regular active participation in discussions, based on weekly reading assignments and homework
    • a written exam

    
    The seminar is complemented by an obligatory lecture course and a tutorial.

  • 17315 Proseminar
    PS-Introduction to English Linguistics (Alice Cesbron)
    Zeit: Di 10:00-12:00 (Erster Termin: 14.10.2025)
    Ort: JK 27/106 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

• AM1-Surveying English Literatures

  0042fB1.1
  • 17318 Proseminar
    PS-Surveying English Literatures: Early Modern City Comedy (Lukas Lammers)
    Zeit: Fr 12:00-14:00 (Erster Termin: 17.10.2025)
    Ort: JK 27/106 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    
  • 17319 Proseminar
    PS-Surveying English Literatures: The Beauty of Survival: Writing the Second World War (Andrew James Johnston)
    Zeit: Di 16:00-18:00 (Erster Termin: 14.10.2025)
    Ort: KL 29/208 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Kommentar

    As the generation which actively took part in the Second World War has all but died out, that most terrible of military conflicts is being subjected to ever-increasing scrutiny. For the British especially, the memory of the Second World War is fraught with ambivalence. On the one hand, it conjures up images of “their finest hour” (Winston Churchill, June 18^th 1940), on the other, its glories are tarnished by the supposedly shameful appeasement policies that led up to it, by the Allies’ relative inaction in the face of the Holocaust and by the systematic strategic bombing of Germany, directed primarily against the civilian population. Besides, the war crucially accelerated the decline of Britain as an empire.
    
    Yet it is precisely this ambivalence that provides the basis for complex literary attempts to re-fashion and interrogate the memory of the war. Thus, in literature written in English, the Second World War has become something of a perfect narrative theatre in which to stage issues of history and memory, identity and experience, story-telling and myth-making, and to cast these issues in terms of perspectives depending on the frequently conflicting dynamics of class, nation and gender.
    
    This course will seek to trace some of these narrative trajectories in the novels The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje, 1992) and Atonement (Ian McEwan, 2001). Students are presumed to have acquired copies of these novels and to have read them before the course starts. They will be given the opportunity to prove their familiarity with the texts in a series of short tests.

  • 17320 Proseminar
    PS-Surveying English Literatures: Emotion and the Narrative Mind in Neo-/Victorian Literature (Lenka Filipova)
    Zeit: Do 18:00-20:00 (Erster Termin: 16.10.2025)
    Ort: JK 27/106 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Kommentar

    How do stories shape the way we feel, think, and imagine the lives of others? Why do some stories grip us immediately and hold on, while others fade quickly, and some reveal their power only long after the last page? How are the emotions we encounter in literature bound to the historical and cultural worlds that produced them, even when they resonate with our own? And what can the Victorian world, with its defining role in the evolution of the novel and its emotional codes, reveal when contemporary writers return to it with present-day understandings of mind and feeling?
    
    This course brings together literary study, affect theory, and contemporary cognitive science to explore how Victorian and Neo-Victorian fiction represents the relationship between emotion, consciousness, and narrative form. Moving between nineteenth-century works and contemporary reimaginings of the period, we will consider how literary texts both depict and shape emotional life, and how these representations engage with changing understandings of the mind. Drawing on Lisa Feldman Barrett’s insights into the construction of emotion, Sara Ahmed’s work on the cultural and political life of emotion and affect, and Keith Oatley’s writing on fiction as a simulation of social experience, among others, we will examine how narrative both reflects and transforms the ways we feel and think. Primary works will be paired with critical and interdisciplinary readings to trace evolving conceptions of emotion and the narrative mind over time.

  • 17321 Proseminar
    PS-Surveying English Literatures: Gentle Women, Hard Work (Hendrikje Kaube)
    Zeit: Mo 14:00-16:00 (Erster Termin: 13.10.2025)
    Ort: JK 27/106 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Kommentar

    In the wake of the Industrial Revolution, the primary workplace shifted from homes to factories. While hitherto women had commonly participated in the family business, Victorian ideology favoured separate spheres for men and women, with the latter reigning over house and hearth. Though their working-class counterparts sought employment in agriculture and other industries, performing paid manual labour jeopardized the social status of middle-class women, leaving those without financial support with limited opportunities to make a living.
    
    This course will explore the few occupations for impoverished gentlewomen over the course of the long nineteenth century as portrayed in fact and fiction, and explore modern notions of gender and work. We are going to look at three novels which participants are expected to have read before the respective sessions as well as shorter texts to be provided during the semester.
    
    Texts:
    Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey
    Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge
    George Gissing, The Odd Women

• AM2-Introduction to Cultural Studies

  0042fB1.2
  • 17324 Grundkurs
    GK-Introduction to Cultural Studies (Sabine Schülting)
    Zeit: Mi 12:00-14:00 (Erster Termin: 15.10.2025)
    Ort: Hs 1a Hörsaal (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    
  • 17325 Proseminar
    PS-Introduction to Cultural Studies: Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Media (Cordula Lemke)
    Zeit: Fr 10:00-12:00 (Erster Termin: 17.10.2025)
    Ort: JK 27/106 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    
  • 17326 Proseminar
    PS-Introduction to Cultural Studies: Green and Pleasant: The Politics of the Countryside (Matilda Jones)
    Zeit: Do 16:00-18:00 (Erster Termin: 16.10.2025)
    Ort: KL 32/102 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Kommentar

    This module explores the construction of the UK countryside, examining how rural Britain has been idealised and contested from the Romantic period to the present day. Beginning with William Blake’s poetic vision of a ‘green and pleasant land’ (1808) up to Corinne Fowler’s theoretical Green Unpleasant Land (2021), the course interrogates the countryside not simply as a geographical space, but as a symbolic landscape deeply entwined with questions of race, class, colonialism and national identity. We will consider how the rural is constructed in opposition to the urban, and how representations of idyllic pre-industrial landscapes – complete with hedgerows, hay bales, and rolling hills – serve to naturalise particular conceptions of ‘Englishness’. Crucially, the module questions who is conventionally seen to ‘belong’ in countryside spaces, foregrounding the exclusionary politics that underpin nostalgic rural imaginaries.
    
    Topics include: the relationship between rural Britain and the colonial extractions of Empire; the construction of Englishness in contrast to the Celtic peripheries (Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Cornwall); the impact of enclosure and the loss of the commons; cultural revivals from 1970s pagan festivals to 1990s rave; and contemporary questions of environmental concern in the face of climate breakdown.
    
    In this way, through analysis of poetry, novels, televisual culture and theoretical texts, the module offers a critical framework for understanding the countryside as a politically charged and ideologically loaded space. Ultimately, students will become well-versed in central thematic and methodological aspects of Cultural Studies whilst honing key skills in close reading, analysis, argumentation, and academic writing.

  • 17327 Proseminar
    PS-Introduction to Cultural Studies: Queer Cities (Sophie Kriegel)
    Zeit: Do 14:00-16:00 (Erster Termin: 16.10.2025)
    Ort: J 27/14 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    
  • 17328 Proseminar
    PS-Introduction to Cultural Studies: Retelling Shakespeare (Claudia Lorraine Rumson)
    Zeit: Mi 14:00-16:00 (Erster Termin: 15.10.2025)
    Ort: J 27/14 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Kommentar

    When Taylor Swift said “You were Romeo, I was a scarlet letter”… we felt that. Shakespeare’s plays are among the most famous, most quoted, and most retold stories in the English canon, and people never grow tired of referring to them and retelling them in new, creative ways. But why? What do modern creators get out of retelling Shakespeare?
    
    In this course, we will be reading (watching, listening to, and looking at) unusual and unexpected adaptations of Shakespeare plays. From pop songs and erotic fanfiction to Victorian paintings and big-budget movies, we will study the relationships between these adaptations and the plays they are based on. We will ask why the adaptations made the choices (and changes) they made, why they refer to Shakespeare at all, and what these new takes can tell us both about the plays, and about the new takes’ contexts. You will learn to analyse adaptations beyond how accurate they are to the source material, and, as a bonus, you can impress your friends by telling them how their favourite TV show is actually an adaptation of Hamlet.
    
    Through the lens of Shakespeare, we will practice critical adaptation studies, close reading, and academic writing. Course material will be made available on Blackboard prior to the start of the course. Full credit can be obtained on the basis of regular participation in class discussions, informal writing assignments, a short presentation, and the eventual submission of a research paper of approximately 2000 words.

• AM3-Medieval English Literatures

  0042fB1.3
  • 17329 Proseminar
    PS-Medieval English Literatures: Runes and Riddles (Jan-Peer Hartmann)
    Zeit: Mo 12:00-14:00 (Erster Termin: 13.10.2025)
    Ort: JK 27/106 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    
  • 17330 Proseminar
    PS-Medieval English Literatures: Medieval Scottish Literature (Wolfram Keller)
    Zeit: Di 10:00-12:00 (Erster Termin: 14.10.2025)
    Ort: KL 32/202 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    
  • 17331 Proseminar
    PS-Medieval English Literatures: Medieval English Romance (Andrew James Johnston)
    Zeit: Mo 16:00-18:00 (Erster Termin: 13.10.2025)
    Ort: KL 29/208 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Kommentar

    Romance - broadly speaking: tales of magic and chivalry - is probably the medieval genre whose traditions have best survived into twenty-first century (popular) imagination. Figures such as Sir Perceval or Tristan and Iseult are known to a broad modern audience through different media such as opera and film, while King Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere remain even more famous, eternally locked as they are in their romantic triangle.
    
    For various reasons, most of England’s contribution to this body of literature is remarkably late, beginning only in the fourteenth century, and uneven in quality, especially if compared to the grand products of Old French and Middle High German literature written in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Only in the second half of the fifteenth century did an English author, Sir Thomas Malory, undertake to create a version of the Arthurian cycle whose ambition was to rival that of his French models.
    
    But what, from a conservative point of view, may look like a rather embarrassing feature of fourteenth-century (and earlier) Middle English romance, can also be seen as a peculiar advantage. Precisely because Middle English romance as a genre is so diverse, and in some cases even odd and – supposedly – naïve, does it give us a remarkable insight into the tastes and habits of thought of a broad segment of the late medieval English reading/listening public and, thus, into the various aesthetic, ideological and cultural uses to which Medieval literature could be put.
    
    The texts to be discussed in this course are:
    

    • Havelok the Dane (anonymous)
    • Sir Orfeo (anonymous)
    • The Franklin’s Tale (Geoffrey Chaucer)

    The primary texts will be made available to students on blackboard at the beginning of the semester.

• AM4-Levels of Linguistic Analysis

  0042fB1.4
  • 17335 Vorlesung
    V-Levels of Linguistic Analysis: Structures and Functions (Anatol Stefanowitsch)
    Zeit: Mi 10:00-12:00 (Erster Termin: 15.10.2025)
    Ort: J 32/102 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    
  • 17337 Proseminar
    PS-Levels of Linguistic Analysis: English Corpus Linguistics (Anatol Stefanowitsch)
    Zeit: Mi 12:00-14:00 (Erster Termin: 15.10.2025)
    Ort: KL 29/208 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    
  • 17338 Proseminar
    PS-Levels of Linguistic Analysis: English Corpus Linguistics (Rosa Hesse)
    Zeit: Mo 14:00-16:00 (Erster Termin: 13.10.2025)
    Ort: KL 29/208 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Kommentar

    In what ways does the use of adorare in Italian differ from the use of adore in English?, Which swear words are most common in the 2010s, and are these different from the 1990s?, What lexical, grammatical and pragmatic options exist in the Bathroom Formula (clauses and phrases expressing speakers’ need to leave any ongoing activity in order to go to the bathroom)?, Which functional changes did the suffix -ish undergo in the course of English language history?, ... 
    
    In this seminar, you will apply the concepts learned in Introduction to English Linguistics through the critical reading and evaluation of linguistic research papers that are concerned with questions such as the above ones. You will also conduct your own corpus linguistic research using authentic language data in the form of text corpora (sets of natural language data) to answer your own questions (Which euphemistic and dysphemistic expressions for menstruation are most common in English and German Web corpora?, How does gender, class and age of the speaker affect the frequency and choice of apologies?, ...). To do this, you will learn the basics of a formal query language and how to access databases and search for complex grammatical or lexical patterns. This methodological knowledge will enable you to carry out your own small-scale corpus study and design an academic poster to be presented at a poster session at the end of the semester. This will form the basis of your term paper.
    
    Please bring a laptop to class from week 1 onwards.

  • 17339 Proseminar
    PS-Levels of Linguistic Analysis: English Corpus Linguistics (Berit Johannsen)
    Zeit: Mo 10:00-12:00 (Erster Termin: 13.10.2025)
    Ort: JK 27/106 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Kommentar

    This seminar teaches you how to apply the terminological concepts learned in Introduction to English Linguistics to the analysis of linguistic usage patterns. You will learn how to analyse the forms and meanings of authentic linguistic data, as well as to model linguistic research. The module examination will be a collaborative project involving a small-scale empirical study on a linguistic topic of your choice, with a subsequent oral presentation plus a written component. At the end of the course, you will be equipped with the basic skillset required for scientific research in linguistics.
    
    This seminar is complemented by the module lecture and a tutorial.

  • 17340 Proseminar Abgesagt
    PS-Levels of Linguistic Analysis: English Corpus Linguistics (Ben Mohai)
    Zeit: Do 14:00-16:00 (Erster Termin: 16.10.2025)
    Ort: J 32/102 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

• AM5-History of English

  0042fB1.5
  • 17345 Proseminar
    PS-History of English: Synthetic and Analytic Constructions (Kirsten Middeke)
    Zeit: Do 10:00-12:00 (Erster Termin: 16.10.2025)
    Ort: KL 29/208 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    
  • 17346 Proseminar
    PS-History of English: Synthetic and Analytic Constructions (Kirsten Middeke)
    Zeit: Mi 10:00-12:00 (Erster Termin: 15.10.2025)
    Ort: J 27/14 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    
  • 17347 Proseminar
    PS-History of English: Speech Acts Through Time and Space (Sofia Rüdiger)
    Zeit: Mi 16:00-18:00 (Erster Termin: 15.10.2025)
    Ort: KL 29/208 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Kommentar

    This course combines diachronic and synchronic perspectives on speech acts, i.e., how speakers ‘do things with words.’ After a short introduction to speech act theory and historical pragmatics, we will turn our attention to several diachronic case studies, such as greetings, insults, and expressions of gratitude. In the second part of the course, we will then consider the realization of speech acts in different geographical varieties of English (with a focus on Outer and Expanding Circle Englishes).

  • 17348 Proseminar Abgesagt
    PS-History of English: The Evolution of English into a Global Lingua Franca (Chiara Migliore)
    Zeit: Di 10:00-12:00 (Erster Termin: 14.10.2025)
    Ort: KL 29/208 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

• Modernity and Alterity in the Literatures of Medieval Britain

  0042fB2.1
  • 17350 Vorlesung
    V-Literatures of Medieval Britain: Reimagining the Classics (Wolfram Keller)
    Zeit: Mo 14:00-16:00 (Erster Termin: 13.10.2025)
    Ort: J 32/102 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    
  • 17351 Vertiefungsseminar
    VS-Literatures of Medieval Britain: Abandoned Women (Wolfram Keller)
    Zeit: Di 08:00-10:00 (Erster Termin: 14.10.2025)
    Ort: KL 29/208 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    
  • 17352 Vertiefungsseminar
    VS-Literatures of Medieval Britain: Appropriating the Medieval Past: The Political Middle Ages in Literary and Cultural Discourse (Peter Löffelbein)
    Zeit: Mi 16:00-18:00 (Erster Termin: 15.10.2025)
    Ort: KL 32/202 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Kommentar

    The Middle Ages keep playing an important role in the cultural imagination of the modern (Western) world. Literary and cultural productions – from video games to TV series and fantasy literature – continue to return to the Middle Ages as modernity’s Other, alternately casting them as a ‘Dark Age’ of cruelty, ignorance and superstition, or as an idealized era of authenticity and social cohesion.
    
    Inevitably, these conceptions carry ideological implications concerning social identities, societal dynamics, and the body politic. Conversely, political discourse has long been using and abusing the Middle Ages and their representation in literature and culture: the most telling cases include the 19^th-century formation of national identities, the Chartist movement for social reform, fascist ideologies, and contemporary debates surrounding neo-feudalism and techno-feudalism.
    
    In this seminar, we will examine the political dimensions of the Middle Ages in literary and cultural discourse, including the appropriation of ‘the medieval’ in political discussions past and present. By discussing literary texts, select other forms of cultural production, and political analyses, students shall become familiar with historical and contemporary manifestations of medievalism and learn to analyse its incidental and strategic uses in various discursive fields.

• Literary Studies: Periods - Genres - Concepts

  0042fB2.2
  • 17353 Vorlesung
    V-Periods - Genres - Concepts: Romanticism and the Orient (Jennifer Wawrzinek)
    Zeit: Di 16:00-18:00 (Erster Termin: 14.10.2025)
    Ort: J 32/102 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Kommentar

    Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, East Asian imports into Britain (porcelain, silk, lacquerware, spices, saltpetre, tea and opium) all generated a fascination for the mysterious and faraway lands of the East. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the European vogue for chinoiserie (a decorative style inspired by East Asian and Chinese artistic traditions) was paralleled by a similar fascination for Oriental tales, pseudo-ethnographies, sexual fantasies and political satires. Yet this obsession with the East was more than mere exoticism. In recent years, some scholars have even argued that the emergence of Western modernity can be seen as an outcome of European contact with the East. They have suggested that the long eighteenth century, because prior to the development of imperialisms, was a period of genuine curiosity and admiration for other lands and cultures such as China. This lecture course will begin with several recent historical and cultural assessments of Europe’s relationship to the orient in the early eighteenth century, together with an overview of the ways in which the popular taste for oriental tales was marginalised by the rise of the novel as the quintessential British literary form. We will look at the vogue of chinoiserie and the rise of sentimentalism and the man of feeling, before turning to an examination of works by British Romantic writers who variously imagine, engage with and negotiate cultures, lands and peoples from the East. Through an analysis of Coleridge’s Eastern fables, Percy Shelley’s evocations of the Indian muse, Byron’s oriental romances, Mary Shelley’s depictions of otherness and De Quincey’s unsettling encounter with the Malay, students will interrogate the extent to which these tales, romances and musings are reflective of open engagement and productive influence, and to what extent they can be seen as attempts to control and subjugate an unsettling otherness.
    
    A course reader will be made available on Blackboard prior to semester.

  • 16199 Seminar
    Textanalyse mit R für die Geisteswissenschaften (Lisa Poggel)
    Zeit: Termine siehe LV-Details (Erster Termin: 14.10.2025)
    Ort: JK 26/101 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Kommentar

    Dieses Seminar vermittelt grundlegende praktische Kenntnisse der Textanalyse mit der Programmiersprache R. Der Fokus liegt auf der Verarbeitung und Analyse geisteswissenschaftlicher Daten. Das Seminar richtet sich insbesondere an Studierende ohne Programmiererfahrung und vermittelt neben Verfahren der Textanalyse und des Text Mining auch Grundlagen der Programmierung mit R. R kommt als besonders einstiegsfreundliche Programmiersprache vermehrt auch in geisteswissenschaftlichen Forschungsprojekten zur Anwendung, beispielsweise bei der quantitativen Textanalyse, in der digitalen Stilometrie, bei der Autorschaftserkennung oder zur Analyse und Visualisierung historischer Korrespondenznetzwerke. Das Seminar setzt keine Programmiererfahrung voraus. Es richtet sich explizit an Studierende aller Institute des Fachbereichs ›Philosophie und Geisteswissenschaften‹.

  • 17354 Vertiefungsseminar
    VS-Periods - Genres - Concepts: Shakespeare's Histories (Stephan Laqué)
    Zeit: Mi 12:00-14:00 (Erster Termin: 15.10.2025)
    Ort: J 27/14 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    
  • 17355 Vertiefungsseminar
    VS-Periods - Genres - Concepts: Odysseys (Wolfram Keller)
    Zeit: Mo 10:00-12:00 (Erster Termin: 13.10.2025)
    Ort: KL 29/208 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    
  • 17356 Vertiefungsseminar
    VS-Periods - Genres - Concepts: Literature and Ecology in the Early Modern World (Katrina Spadaro)
    Zeit: Do 14:00-16:00 (Erster Termin: 16.10.2025)
    Ort: KL 29/207 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

• Colonial and Postcolonial Literatures

  0042fB2.3
  • 17360 Vertiefungsseminar
    VS-Colonial and Postcolonial Literatures: Writing Abolition (Jennifer Wawrzinek)
    Zeit: Di 14:00-16:00 (Erster Termin: 14.10.2025)
    Ort: KL 29/208 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Kommentar

    Between 1700 and 1810 British merchants transported almost three million Africans across the Atlantic for the purposes of chattel slavery – a trade upon which the British economy eventually came to depend. Yet from the middle of the eighteenth century, various abolitionist movements began to speak out against this practice, which they saw as brutal and inhumane. The British had long seen themselves as a people devoted to liberty, and whose spirit was embodied in the rights of the Magna Carta. By the 1780s a wave of abolitionist fervour swept through Britain, led by the Quakers and the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, and by 1807 the slave trade had been abolished (although slavery itself was not made illegal in the British Empire until 1833). This course will examine the various discourses of human rights and humanitarian sympathy that emerged at the end of the long eighteenth century in relation to the abolitionist movement. Students will be asked to analyse and compare texts by British abolitionists with those of ex-slaves such as Olaudah Equiano and Mary Prince in order to examine debates over civil and religious liberties, forms of cultural exchange, the problem of geographical migration, and conceptions of British nationhood as a land of liberty and equality.
    
    Students are expected to acquire the following texts:
    

    • Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings. Any edition.
    • Prince, Mary. The History of Mary Prince. Any edition.

    A course reader will be made available on Blackboard at the beginning of semester.

  • 17361 Vertiefungsseminar
    VS-Colonial and Postcolonial Literatures: Narrating India (Stephan Laqué)
    Zeit: Do 16:00-18:00 (Erster Termin: 16.10.2025)
    Ort: JK 27/106 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    
  • 17362 Vertiefungsseminar
    VS-Colonial and Postcolonial Literatures: Empire and the Globalising Gothic around 1800 (Caroline Kögler)
    Zeit: Di 12:00-14:00 (Erster Termin: 14.10.2025)
    Ort: J 27/14 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Kommentar

    This course examines the Gothic as a literary mode emerging in tandem with the rapid expansion of European imperial power in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Far from being confined to the haunted castles of a fictionalised Europe, the Gothic became a globalising form, absorbing and refracting anxieties about colonial encounters, the Atlantic slave trade, revolution, and shifting ideas of race, gender, and national identity. We will explore how Gothic fiction negotiated the “otherness” of distant geographies, the fear and fascination of the exotic, and the violent realities of imperialism—often transforming imperial peripheries into the haunted landscapes of the imagination.
    
    Our intersectional readings will pair canonical Gothic works with novels and narratives shaped by the circulation of people, goods, and ideas across, primarily, the Atlantic and Mediterranean. We will investigate how this globalising Gothic contributed to, and at times critiqued, the cultural logics of empire, drawing on postcolonial theory, transnational literary history, and critical race studies.
    
    Primary texts include:
    

    • Anne Radcliffe, The Sicilian Romance (1790)
    • Matthew Lewis, The Monk (1796)
    • Leonora Sansay, Secret History; or, The Horrors of St. Domingo (1808)
    • Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (1814)
    • Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)

    Please note: Gothic novels tend to be long, nevertheless, for your “Aktive Teilnahme,” it is expected that you read all of the texts to be able to chair a discussion and actively participate in discussions.

• Culture - Gender - Media

  0042fB2.4
  • 17367 Vertiefungsseminar
    VS-Culture - Gender - Media: Enlightenment Cosmopolitans (Jennifer Wawrzinek)
    Zeit: Mo 16:00-18:00 (Erster Termin: 13.10.2025)
    Ort: J 32/102 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Kommentar

    The eighteenth century was a period in which the expansions of global trade networks and scientific exploration resulted not only in the emergence of modern capitalism, but similarly in the movement of people and cultural artefacts across national and international borders. It was an age in which Europeans developed a fascination for Chinese and East Asian artistic traditions, and in which the travel narrative emerged as the most popular genre of literature next to the novel. Philosophers resurrected the ancient Greek concept of the kosmopolites to refer to citizens of the world, with Christoph Martin Wieland using it in 1788 to define humanity as so many branches of a single tree, and Immanuel Kant proposing a cosmopolitan law as the treatment of individuals as human beings rather than as citizens of the state. At the core of these ideas is that we have obligations to others, and that we take seriously the value of human life, as well as the various practices and beliefs that give these lives significance. Yet whilst most of the English-language narratives of cross-cultural encounter during this period were written by British travellers and voyagers, it was also the case that those from other lands wrote of their experiences in contact with British subjects. This course will compare the writings of eighteenth-century British, Indian, and African cosmopolitans who either narrate an encounter with difference as intercultural exchange or situate that difference within British culture itself. Over the course of the semester, students will be asked to consider to what extent these writers reconceive a cosmopolitan existence as an obligation to human life, and to what extent they imagine and negotiate the various dimensions of intercultural contact, hospitality, globalisation and the emergence of modern capitalism.
    
    A course reader will be made available on Blackboard prior to the beginning of semester.
    
    Students are expected to acquire the following texts:
    

    • Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. The Turkish Embassy Letters. Any Edition.
    • Hamilton, Elizabeth. Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah. Any Edition.
    • Mahomet, Dean. The Travels of Dean Mahomet. Any Edition.
    • Sancho, Ignatius. Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African. Any Edition.

  • 17368 Vertiefungsseminar
    VS-Culture - Gender - Media: Shakespeare's Othello: Text, Stage, Screen (Sabine Schülting)
    Zeit: Di 10:00-12:00 (Erster Termin: 14.10.2025)
    Ort: J 27/14 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    
  • 17369 Vertiefungsseminar
    VS-Culture - Gender - Media: The British Empire in Film and Fiction (Lukas Lammers)
    Zeit: Fr 10:00-12:00 (Erster Termin: 17.10.2025)
    Ort: KL 29/208 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

• Sociolinguistics and Varieties of English

  0042fB3.1
  • 17371 Vertiefungsseminar
    VS-Socioling. and Varieties of English: Language and Tourism (Antje Wilton)
    Zeit: Di 10:00-12:00 (Erster Termin: 14.10.2025)
    Ort: JK 31/125 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Kommentar

    In this seminar, we will explore the relationship between (public) language use and the field of tourism. Tourism is a global societal domain in which language serves distinct purposes and manifests itself in a variety of genres and media. We will investigate, for instance, how language is used in transient linguistically and culturally mixed groups of people, how written interpretive infrastructure shapes the linguistic landscape of tourism sites, how language and visual semiotic elements structure gastronomic and medial promotion of touristic offers and how local languages are commodified as an economic resource in tourism. Students will engage more deeply with a topic of their choice in group student sessions, which they will plan and conduct themselves.
    
    One highlight of the course will be a short joint COIL project on historic tourism sites with students and their lecturer from the German department of the University of Minnesota, Duluth. More information about this specific form of virtual cooperation can be found here: https://becoil.de/.
    
    Please note that some knowledge of German is required for this course.

• Structure of English

  0042fB3.2
  • 17373 Vertiefungsseminar
    VS-Structure of English: Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (Anatol Stefanowitsch)
    Zeit: Mo 10:00-12:00 (Erster Termin: 13.10.2025)
    Ort: JK 31/125 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

• Semantics and Pragmatics

  0042fB3.3
  • 17375 Übung
    Ü-Semantics and Pragmatics (Sofia Rüdiger)
    Zeit: Mi 14:00-16:00 (Erster Termin: 15.10.2025)
    Ort: J 32/102 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Kommentar

    This course is concerned with meaning in language. First, we will consider semantics, as the study of word, phrase, and sentence meaning and investigate phenomena such as meaning relations among words (e.g., synonymy, polysemy, hyponomy), word meaning (e.g., connotation/denotation, intension/extension), conceptualization and categorization (e.g., fuzzy concepts, prototypes, metaphor), and meaning relations among sentences. The second part of the course is dedicated to meaning in context, i.e., pragmatics. There, we explore topics such as implicature, presupposition, reference, and speech acts.

  • 17376 Vertiefungsseminar
    VS-Semantics and Pragmatics: Meaning and Context (Ferdinand von Mengden)
    Zeit: Mo 16:00-18:00 (Erster Termin: 13.10.2025)
    Ort: J 27/14 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Kommentar

    That linguistic expressions (words, utterances) have a meaning seems to be a very natural thing to assume. How else would it be possible to communicate successfully by means of linguistic expressions? But what exactly is meaning? What does it mean for an expression to ‘have’ a meaning? And how do expressions actually acquire their meaning?
    
    We can argue that linguistic expressions must have some meaning prior to us speakers using them – otherwise, how could we use them reasonably if we didn’t know what a word can be used for? But this approach doesn’t explain where a word meaning comes from in the first place. We could also argue that we create the meaning of an expression the moment we use it. But how exactly does this work and how do we know which expressions we can or cannot use in a given situation?
    
    The main aim of this seminar will be to resolve this paradox. A crucial factor in determining the meaning of an expression will be the clues which the context provides in each specific communication. The class therefore focuses on the act of generating meaning during the interaction of people who communicate with each other. How do the speakers’ intentions, their assumptions, and the environment shape the semantic patterns? And how do these spread across a larger community of speakers?
    
    Students who wish to participate in the class but cannot come in the first week, are kindly asked to notify me via email before the start of the lecture period.

• Language Change

  0042fB3.4
  • 17380 Übung
    Ü-Language Change (Berit Johannsen)
    Zeit: Do 10:00-12:00 (Erster Termin: 16.10.2025)
    Ort: KL 29/207 Übungsraum (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Kommentar

    In this course, we will deal with the how, why and what of language change. In the first part of the course, you will be introduced to theories on how and why language changes. In the second part, we will look at some example studies to find out what can change (sounds, grammar, words, meaning) and how we can study it.
    
    You are expected to read accompanying texts and take part in in-class activities.

  • 17381 Vertiefungsseminar
    VS-Language Change: Emergent Grammar (Ferdinand von Mengden)
    Zeit: Fr 10:00-12:00 (Erster Termin: 17.10.2025)
    Ort: JK 31/124 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)
    

    Kommentar

    There have been various approaches for explaining how linguistic structures come about – how and why they vary and change. This class will approach this question from the perspective of system theory. The notion 'Emergent Grammar’ is derived from the idea that systems of any kind can be dynamic, fluid as well as open and adaptive. ‘Dynamic’ and ‘fluid’ means that they are never stable at any point and yet retain their functionality. ‘Open’ and ‘adaptive’ means that the system is in exchange with its environment, i.e. with factors and impulses that are themselves not part of the system.
    
    What exactly does this mean when we want to study and understand how human language functions? How do expressions, their meaning and the grammar behind them come into being, vary, disappear, and yet obviously show enough resilience for enabling communication across generations of people? Rather than looking at cognitive processes of individual speakers in isolation, this seminar will focus on social systems as models for understanding the dynamic systematicity of human language. What are the complex and subtle ways in which social conventions interact with individual needs in communication? How does the complex feedback loop work between individual behavior, social conventions and the environment in which we communicate with each other?
    
    Those who wish to participate but cannot come to the first class are kindly asked to notify me via email before the beginning of the lecture period.