Grundständige Studiengänge (Bachelor, ...)

This course is designed to introduce the English language of c. 1500 – 1700 CE, the period in which writers like William Shakespeare, John Donne and John Milton wrote their works, and the influential "King James" Bible translation was made. It is also the period of the beginnings of the standardization of the English language.

Particular attention will be paid to the spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary, morphology and syntax of what contemporaries called the General Dialect, but also to variation across time, region and according to register and social conditions. Illustrative texts will be taken mainly from dramas, poetry, personal letters, and courtroom records.

The main course book is Nevalainen (2006).

Lexicology is a discipline that deals with the words of a language - but what is a word? For various reasons, the word "word" is hard to define.

In this course we will treat English words and phrases from a variety of perspectives, including 
- historical linguistics (a brief overview of the diachronic development of the English lexicon)
- computational / corpus linguistics (the study of words and phrases through the analysis of electronic text corpora)
- the interfaces between lexicology and other areas of linguistics (e.g. lexical semantics, derivational morphology,...)
- variation studies (the social or regional distribution of words and phrases)
- translation studies (how are idioms dealt with in translations?)
and possibly
- psycholinguistics (words and phrases in language acquisition).

Students are expected to work on their own empirical projects.

This lecture gives an overview of the development of the English language from its roots as a group of West Germanic dialects spoken in the British Isles from the fifth century CE, to its present state as a 'world language'. 
This includes a closer look at phonological, morphological, lexical and sociolinguistic features, as well as some exploration of the cultural and historical backgrounds to the linguistic development of English.

Beschreiben Sie kurz und prägnant, worum es in diesem Kurs geht.

Beschreiben Sie kurz und prägnant, worum es in diesem Kurs geht.

Once deemed lowbrow art, comics and other forms of graphic narration have not only sparked scholarly interest in recent years but have also been integrated into the canon, thus extending the definition of literature. This course serves as an introduction to the mechanics of graphic narration and the analysis of text-image relations. Exploring the stylistic vocabulary of the medium -- from simple black-and-white comics to elaborately crafted graphic novels -- this class will cover classics as well as genre-bending contemporary works. After an overview of the traditions of graphic narration in the US, we will take a close look at selected biographies, personal narratives, and collective histories in drawn-out form, exploring the narrative possibilities and limits of the medium. With a strong emphasis on academic writing, all thematic sessions will include hands-on writing techniques, exercises, and how-to guides providing students with the essential skills and resources for writing successful research papers.

Beschreiben Sie kurz und prägnant, worum es in diesem Kurs geht.

Beschreiben Sie kurz und prägnant, worum es in diesem Kurs geht.

Beschreiben Sie kurz und prägnant, worum es in diesem Kurs geht.

Beschreiben Sie kurz und prägnant, worum es in diesem Kurs geht.

Beschreiben Sie kurz und prägnant, worum es in diesem Kurs geht.

Beschreiben Sie kurz und prägnant, worum es in diesem Kurs geht.

Beschreiben Sie kurz und prägnant, worum es in diesem Kurs geht.

This seminar focuses on a genre of literature that deals with one of the most important and pressing issues of our time and our future: anthropogenic climate change. Climate Change Fiction is not only a field for environmental communication, it is also an aesthetic field of experimentation that incorporates various referential genres (utopia, dystopia, science fiction etc.). In doing so, it often takes unusual paths to talk about the present, to imagine a possible future, or to mediate between fact and fiction, concrete and abstract, reality and imagination. Moreover, Climate Change Fiction asks us to shift our perspective. Instead of world domination, it calls for world responsibility; instead of national or continental orders, it postulates global and planetary consciousness; instead of human-animal differences, it emphasizes ‘co-evolution’ and ‘companionship’ (Haraway). But more than that, Climate Change Fiction also asks how to think about the climate crisis and its nature: Is this a crisis of competing environments or a crisis of faith/dogma? In opening up these horizons of questioning and understanding, Climate Change Fiction points not least to ourselves, to our weighting of solidarity versus individuality, our readiness for emotional, intellectual, and social engagement, and our willingness to take responsibility in spatial and temporal dimensions. We will first familiarize ourselves with key theories in the field of Environmental Humanities and then use selected examples to explore how literature (e.g., with particular narratives of risk or disaster) responds to and negotiates climate change. Our reading list includes contemporary literature that reflects on climate change, particularly in the context of animal welfare and species extinction: Amitav Gosh: The Hungry Tide (2004), Jonathan Safran Foer: We Are the Weather! (2019), and Charlotte McConaghy: Migrations (2020).

Literature: Amitav Gosh: The Hungry Tide (London, 2004); Jonathan Safran Foer: We Are the Weather! (New York, 2019); Charlotte McConaghy: Migrations (New York, 2020).

Preparatory Reading: Ursula Heise: Imagining Extinction: The Cultural Meaning of Endangered Species (Chicago, 2016); Antonia Mehnert: Climate Change Fictions: Representations of Global Warming in American Literature (New York, 2016); Eva Horn: Zukunft als Katastrophe (Frankfurt am Main, 2020; Chapter 3: "Das Wetter von übermorgen: Imaginationsgeschichte der Klimakatastrophe").

Beschreiben Sie kurz und prägnant, worum es in diesem Kurs geht.

Beschreiben Sie kurz und prägnant, worum es in diesem Kurs geht.

Beschreiben Sie kurz und prägnant, worum es in diesem Kurs geht.

Beschreiben Sie kurz und prägnant, worum es in diesem Kurs geht.

Beschreiben Sie kurz und prägnant, worum es in diesem Kurs geht.

Beschreiben Sie kurz und prägnant, worum es in diesem Kurs geht.