The course is an introductory course in the Faculty of Languages and Cultures. Its aims and purpose include an introduction of basic concepts and terminology in the field, exploration of critical thinking to increase reading comprehension of academic texts, implementation of practical learning practices and academic procedures to facilitate successful academic studies, discussion on plagiarism and academic integrity, evaluation of academic standards, etc. Students receive practical training in critical evaluation of academic texts, basic argumentation analysis, identification of rhetorical patterns and text structure in various text types, review of acceptable references, and an introduction to analytical reading. Furthermore, students will gain insight into the importance of academic literacy to enhance understanding and writing of academic papers, presentation of research findings, etc.

The course is taught in English and is intended for students in:

1. The English BA program.
2.  Students of foreign languages (other than English)

 *Those students that need ECT credits as a result of changes in the MOM courses, as MOM102G used to be a 5-credit course, need to add an individual assignment (MOM001G, 1 ECT) within the MOM102G course.

• This individual assignment is only intended for students who finished MOM202G (before the school year 2024-2025) and are now enrolled in MOM102G, and have thus only gained 9 credits in the two mandatory MOM courses.
• Students who intend to increase their credits with a 6 ECT course, within their departments, are free to do so – and do thus not take this additional individual assignment (in MOM102G).

To sign up for the individual project you must talk to the teacher of MOM102G.

This course is the first of two introductory courses in linguistics.  It addresses such questions as: what kinds of sounds do humans make when using spoken language? How are those sounds organised within the sound system of a language? What is a word? If a sign is a combination of a form with a meaning, are words linguistic signs? Where do words come from? How are words put together?

The focus of the course is on English, though other languages will be discussed as relevant.

This course offers a survey of important domains of linguistics, especially those which emphasise the relation of human language to man in a broader context: sociolinguistics, dialect variation, first language acquisition, second language acquisition, language and the brain, historical comparative linguistics, and animal communication.  The focus of the course is on English and the course introduces students of English to areas of linguistics that they can explore in more detail later in their studies.

The aim of this course is to give students a good overview of the social and political backgrounds to Great Britain. In the process of doing that we will examine patterns of British culture, political and social institutions and ethnic minority groups. Assessment: a 2 hour final exam.

This is a survey course of British Literature from the beginnings of Romanticism to the early twentieth century. The required reading includes some poetry, a play, short stories, novellas, and a novel. Students will read and analyze works by major Romantics (including Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and Keats), Victorians (Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Gaskell, and Wilde) and modern authors (Yeats and Joyce). They will also be introduced to various literary terms and themes.

In a world increasingly awash in fake news, AI-generated deep fakes and denialism of scientific and historical facts, our ability to interpret politics, culture and society with critical discernment is more important than ever. 

Focusing on culture and linguistics, this course aims to give you the analytical tools you need as a student and citizen to critically interpret texts, visual culture and language. 

You will train your hermeneutical skills on short narratives, photographs and various characteristics of language, with help from selected readings in literary theory, cultural studies, visual culture(s) and linguistics. 

The emphasis in the class will be on critical thinking and group discussion,  allowing you to share your analytical discoveries with your fellow students and build interpretative communities.

Modules:

1. Deciphering texts
2. Understanding visual cultures
3. Figuring out language

An overview of the history and development of the English language.

This course is the second of two introductory courses in linguistics. It addresses such questions as: how are words put together to form sentences? how is the form of words affected by their place in a sentence? what other kinds of grammatical information influence the shape and use of words in a sentence? how are sentences related to each other? how can sentences be combined to form larger sentences? how do separate sentences relate to each other when strung together? what do words mean? what do sentences mean? what is discourse meaning?

The focus of the course is on English, though other languages will be discussed as relevant.

The ability to write well in English is a prerequisite for all other courses in the English department. The main aim of this course is to equip students to write in English for academic purposes. Course work will involve writing practice and composing essays based on primary and secondary research. There will be a strong emphasis on the organization of ideas as well as on style. The main goal is for students to gain an understanding of the writing process and develop their own voice in writing.

• This course aims at revisiting decisive moments of the history of the United States of America, from the early settlement to the present.
• Particular attention will be dedicated to the events surrounding the Independence of the country, the American Civil War and ensuing Reconstruction, as well as offering a broad overview of the 20^th and early 21^st centuries.
• There will also be an emphasis on the experiences of minorities and disenfranchised collectives (Native Americans, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans, the LGBTQ community, as well as the rights of women) in the history of the United States, from the settlement to present.

Authors representative of American Literature are read in historical context.

“Literature and Essay Writing” will expose students to exemplary texts in English across a range of historical periods and genres. It will prompt students to engage in imaginative and critical dialogues with works of literature  foregrounding close reading skills, poetic and critical thinking, scholarly and creative journaling, and analytical and research essay writing skills. The course is designed to increase proficiency in the generation and organization of ideas, in editing and research skills, and in the use of the MLA style of citation.

This course will expand student's capacity to enjoy, understand and write about language and linguistics. The aim of the module is to develop students' proficiency in process writing in English for academic purposes, with special attention given to increasing proficiency in organization, writing and revising, and on students developing their own voice in expository writing. Course work will include writing assignments and essays, as well as reading a variety of texts for critical reflection and analysis. Individual and peer feedback will be a major feature of this module. The course is also designed to strengthen skills in research and the use of APA style.

This course provides an introduction to the major principles of contemporary literary theory and criticism and to established methods and materials of literary research. Major theories include, structuralism, feminism, Queer Theory, postmodernism, marxism, post-colonial criticism, posthumanism, and eco-criticism. The objective of the course is to help you to develop your skills as a reader and critic.

Midterm Exam information:  
Midterm essay  of 1000-1,500 words. 35 percent (home assignment, file upload)

Final exams:
Exam (theory-focused) 25 percent (short answer questions onsite with inspera) 
Final Essay 40 percent (home assignment, file upload)

This course provides a survey of some of the best known and most influential literary texts in English from the early Middle Ages (Old English period) to the end of the Elizabethan era.

IMPORTANT: This course is the first half of ENS303G British Literature II (which has now been split into two separate courses, one for each term of the academic year). Students who have completed ENS303G are not eligible to take this course.

Disney has been a predominant force in media for exactly a century, profiting billions, manufacturing children’s dreams, and inspiring praise and condemnation alike in academics and audiences around the globe. Its creation and adaptation of children’s media is particularly significant for the way both children and adult audiences perceive and experience classic fairytales and folk tales.  By studying a number of Disney adaptations, such as Princess and the Frog (2009), Brave (2012), Frozen (2013), Moana (2016) and Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) the students will explore how Disney has managed to stay on top of the children’s media production, adapting to the ever-changing market demands by adapting timeless stories for the 21^st century audience.

A study of the English poetry of the seventeenth century (1603-1679). The period from the accession of James I through the Restoration witnessed multiple political, religious, scientific, and cultural revolutions. But it also produced some of the most formally, intellectually, and aesthetically innovative and challenging poetry in the English language. In this course we will closely read and vigorously debate erotic, philosophical, political, devotional, ecological, scientific, and elegiac poems by major authors (Jonson, Donne, Herbert, Carew, Lovelace, Herrick, Vaughn, Milton, Marvell, Cowley, Crashaw, Philips, Cavendish etc.). Our focus will be on how seventeenth-century poetry grapples with and responds to the trenchant questions of the age—ideas of political engagement, the place of God in the cosmic order, the new science, the new philosophical idea of mind and body, the rise of capitalism, professionalization of writing, changing attitudes to sexuality, the influence of classical learning etc.—by developing radical forms of material presence, language, imagery, lyric selfhood, and audience engagement, interrogating and reshaping the boundaries of lyric thinking.

“Angels in America" is a seminal work in American theatre. While beautifully written and telling a wonderful and intricate story, the play also serves as an excellent jumping off point to discuss American life and culture in the eighties and early nineties. The AIDS crisis, queer existence, The Cold War, Reaganism, the burgeoning climate crisis, faith and religion, all these are referenced within this masterful work. This course seeks to describe a point in time as it presented in this play, supplying students with a firm grasp of the politics of the past, and the influence they have on the future.

This course advances the student’s knowledge of the central areas of English meaning-carrying units in grammar: phonology, morphology, syntax and pragmatics. The most important aspects of these domains are covered, always with an eye to their semantics. Particular emphasis will be placed on different models of grammar and to socio-linguistic and historical variation, both within different varieties of British English and between British and American English. Aspects relevant to foreign language teaching receive particular attention.

The course introduces students to the development of the British historical novel up to the middle of the 20th century. Its origins will be traced back to what is seen as the first Gothic novel as well as examining in some detail Walter Scott’s Waverley, which generally is referred to as the first historical novel. The course then outlines the development of the historical novel up to the middle of the 20th century and students read selected texts from this time period. Within this framework, the course explores the way that history has been used by writers across a variety of genres, such as romance and adventure, and looks at relevant theories by both historians and cultural theorists.

This course aims to introduce students to the varied and rich world of science fiction, a genre that both incorporates and shapes cultural and cosmological inscriptions of space, the future, extraterrestrial worlds, and the possibilities of intergalactic travel. Our readings will include classic as well as obscure works of science fiction, with the goal of tracking developments in the genre over the past 100 years. So too, we will explore landmark science fiction films, paying attention to aesthetic and formal differences between visual media and prose. The course will consider works that cross cultural and national boundaries, but it will also interrogate how such works engage with contemporary sociopolitical concerns. Finally, we will situate works of science fiction in the context of ongoing developments in contemporary cosmology, a field that has undergone exponential growth over the past several decades.

A historical overview of principles, methods, and best practices of English language teaching. Introduction to the national curriculum of English, teaching materials, and resources. Focus on student-centered teaching, learner autonomy, teacher reflection, and developing a philosophy of teaching.

The National Curriculum Guide will be read and analyzed. Students will have an opportunity to observe and evaluate recorded teaching and they will practice reflecting on their own ideas about teaching and experience of language learning. 

Course work demands active participation and consists of reading, written assignments, discussion, group and individual work, and microteaching.

This course  draws on seminal and current research about effective teaching and learning of English as a foreign language.  Students will come to understand important theories that underpin EFL learning and second language acquisition, especially as it concerns teaching the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing). This is accomplished by considering relevant concepts related to language acquisition, learner autonomy, and language assessment in a self- reflective and analytical way. Essentially, this course examines the why behind language teaching through student‐led and teacher-supported seminars. It culminates in a research project considering how to practically apply this knowledge to EFL teaching in a way that benefits both teachers and learners.

Course work demands active participation and consists of reading, lectures, face-to-face and online discussions, student-driven presentations and a research project.

This course offers a unique perspective on syntax, drawing parallels between linguistic structures and phenomena such as bird flocking, the spread of information in social networks, and neural network dynamics. We will examine how language, like these systems, exhibits intricate, dynamic, and often non-linear properties. Throughout the semester, we will cover a variety of topics. These include the concept of recursion in syntax, drawing an analogy to iterative processes in complex systems, where simple rules can generate diverse and intricate patterns. We will explore the concept of phases in Minimalism, which is reminiscent of modularity in complex systems, where different stages entail specific processes or transformations. We will also examine derivational approaches to syntax, which emphasize a step-wise construction of sentences that mirrors processes in complex systems.

This course provides a survey of some of the best known and most influential poetry and prose in English from the early 17^th to the late 18^th century.

Long before contemporary analyses of human-induced environmental degradation, Indigenous and feminist authors wrote stories that resisted hierarchies of the human over other lifeworlds. This course will use the themes, "feminism" and "environment" to study the works of women writers such as Leslie Marmon Silko, bell hooks, Willa Cather, Maria Lugones and Muriel Rukeyser whose writings deepen and problematize both terms. 

Together we will ask, how have colonial histories impacted which authors are seen as "environmental" or "feminist"?  How does environmental protection materialize in the works of these authors? Further, what does environmental literature mean and how could debates in feminist theory help us answer such questions?

A favourite author of and inspiration to Jane Austen and keeper of the robes to Queen Charlotte, Frances Burney (1752-1840) was an eighteenth-century English novelist and playwright who is also known as Fanny Burney. Burney lived in France during the Napoleonic Wars and her French husband Alexander D’Arblay had supported the French Revolution, a political theme covered in her novel The Wanderer. Her novel Camilla (1796), sold as a subscription, earned her an incredibly large sum that enabled her to buy a house for her family. Throughout her life, Burney kept journals that serve as a record of her time in the eighteenth-century court, eighteenth-century artistic and intellectual high society, and of her time in France. Burney’s work engages with issues of class, inheritance, charity, and political struggles in France and Britain. We will read Burney’s novels and extracts from her letters and diaries. This course will cover the social, political, economic, and protofeminist commentary in Burney’s work, her narrative style, details of her life, and her influence on other novelists, such as Austen.

This course aims to introduce students to variety of English dialects spoken worldwide. The main emphasis will be on the variety of dialects spoken in Kachru‘s inner circle countries, such as England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Furthermore, students will be introduced to outer circle varieties, and expanding circle varieties, including Icelandic-accented English. In addition to introducing students to differences in dialect variation, they will also be introduced to common research methods in dialectal research, such as acoustic and auditory analysis.

A study of non-Shakespearean English drama circa 1580-1640. Although our idea of early modern drama is dominated by Shakespeare’s towering presence, a host of other playwrights helped transform the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries into the golden age of English theatre. This course will study a selection of six exciting plays by Shakespeare’s Elizabethan and Jacobean contemporaries, competitors, and sometimes collaborators, such as Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, John Webster, Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Heywood and others. Covering a range of genres (history play, revenge tragedy, domestic tragedy, tragicomedy, city comedy, comedy of humours), these fascinating dramas feature violence, revenge, love, sex, fraud, disguise, cross-dressing, magic and witchcraft, laughter, money and much more. Dark and hilarious in turns, they horrify, amuse, and stimulate our imagination as much as anything Shakespeare ever wrote. As we read these texts, we will be paying particular attention to their engagement of the physical realities of early modern theatre; their political, social, religious, economic, and cultural contexts; their original explorations of the pressing issues of power, gender, sexuality, class, and national identity; and the linguistic, poetic, and dramatic qualities of these plays.  The plays studied may include Marlowe’s Edward II, Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, Jonson’s The Alchemist, Middleton and Dekker’s The Roaring Girl, Middleton and Rowley’s The Changeling, Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness, Beaumont’s The Knight of Burning Pestle, and Ford’s Tis Pity She’s a Whore.

BA essay in English, 10 ECTS.

A formal departmental approval is required for a 20 credit essay (submission of a detailed proposal, a preliminary bibliography and the support of a supervisor, to the Chair of the English Department for voting at the next Department meeting).

The BA essay is no longer a requirement to complete the BA, though it is a requirement for entering the masters programme.

This course offers a general introduction to semantics, which deals with the nature of meaning in language.

This course provides an overview of the study of the interaction of language and society, language contact and language variation. We will examine how the way we speak is influenced by who is speaking to whom about what under what circumstances. We look how identities and cultures are conveyed through language and what the choice of language and registers reveals about language attitudes and how society is structured. We will examine the nature of national languages and language planning, regional and social dialects, familylects and idiolects, bilingualism, multilingualism and code switching and rules of discourse in different settings.

This course develops the view that a linguistic fact can usually be described in more than one way. To this end, a broad outline of various topics in English grammar – within phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics – will be given and the basic linguistic terminology will be introduced. The relevant linguistic facts will then be analyzed in considerable detail from various theoretical perspectives, illustrating how particular theories account for them.

Why are we terrified and fascinated by monsters? Why do they disgust us and at the same time excite our desire? What does monstrosity as the ultimate form of otherness teach us about human identity and society? How do cultural ideas about race, gender, sexuality, nationhood, and class spawn our notions of monstrosity? In this course we will grapple with these questions by looking at a sampling of grotesque, transgressive, hybridized, disfigured, and otherwise hideous forms of being in Middle English literature: monstrous races, werewolves, ghosts, giants, demons, gods, and fantastic beasts. We will read widely across genres, including chivalric romance, travel writing, fables, hagiography, religious texts, lyric poetry and more. Critical readings will be drawn from a variety of perspectives (deconstruction, post-humanism, psychoanalysis, gender criticism, ecocritical theory) to reflect the complex and multidisciplinary nature of the topic.

Following up on The British Historical Novel 1764-1950, this course (though also independent of the previous course) traces the development of the British historical novel from the latter part of the 20th century to the present day. It explores the way that history has been used by writers of the period across a variety of genres. Critical theory by historians and cultural theorists is also looked at in some detail, where relevant.

The course will look in depth at English teaching methods and principles aimed at young learners. Topics include characteristics of young learners, National Curriculum objectives, and teaching and assessment methods, especially those related to listening, speaking, reading, writing, games, songs and creative activities. Students will receive training in lesson planning and integrating English teaching with other subjects.
Course work consists of reading, oral and written assignments, discussions, group work and active participation. The course includes a teaching practice component at primary or middle school levels consisting of classroom observation, practice teaching and a written report. Student teachers will gain experience in creating lessons and activities that take into account young children’s needs and abilities. Students who are exempt from teaching practice (e.g. BA students) will complete an alternative assignment.

Optional course for students of the Faculty of Languages and Cultures, in their 2nd or 3rd year of the BA-programme. The students read and study a well-known play that has been translated into several languages. The students will read the text in the target language. The students choose scenes from the play for the production.

Teachers from the target languages will assist the students with pronunciation.

Maximum number of students in this course is 15.

Disney has been a predominant force in media for exactly a century, profiting billions, manufacturing children’s dreams, and inspiring praise and condemnation alike in academics and audiences around the globe. Its creation and adaptation of children’s media is particularly significant for the way both children and adult audiences perceive and experience classic fairytales and folk tales.  By studying a number of Disney adaptations, such as Princess and the Frog (2009), Brave (2012), Frozen (2013), Moana (2016) and Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) the students will explore how Disney has managed to stay on top of the children’s media production, adapting to the ever-changing market demands by adapting timeless stories for the 21^st century audience.

A study of the English poetry of the seventeenth century (1603-1679). The period from the accession of James I through the Restoration witnessed multiple political, religious, scientific, and cultural revolutions. But it also produced some of the most formally, intellectually, and aesthetically innovative and challenging poetry in the English language. In this course we will closely read and vigorously debate erotic, philosophical, political, devotional, ecological, scientific, and elegiac poems by major authors (Jonson, Donne, Herbert, Carew, Lovelace, Herrick, Vaughn, Milton, Marvell, Cowley, Crashaw, Philips, Cavendish etc.). Our focus will be on how seventeenth-century poetry grapples with and responds to the trenchant questions of the age—ideas of political engagement, the place of God in the cosmic order, the new science, the new philosophical idea of mind and body, the rise of capitalism, professionalization of writing, changing attitudes to sexuality, the influence of classical learning etc.—by developing radical forms of material presence, language, imagery, lyric selfhood, and audience engagement, interrogating and reshaping the boundaries of lyric thinking.

“Angels in America" is a seminal work in American theatre. While beautifully written and telling a wonderful and intricate story, the play also serves as an excellent jumping off point to discuss American life and culture in the eighties and early nineties. The AIDS crisis, queer existence, The Cold War, Reaganism, the burgeoning climate crisis, faith and religion, all these are referenced within this masterful work. This course seeks to describe a point in time as it presented in this play, supplying students with a firm grasp of the politics of the past, and the influence they have on the future.

This course advances the student’s knowledge of the central areas of English meaning-carrying units in grammar: phonology, morphology, syntax and pragmatics. The most important aspects of these domains are covered, always with an eye to their semantics. Particular emphasis will be placed on different models of grammar and to socio-linguistic and historical variation, both within different varieties of British English and between British and American English. Aspects relevant to foreign language teaching receive particular attention.

The course introduces students to the development of the British historical novel up to the middle of the 20th century. Its origins will be traced back to what is seen as the first Gothic novel as well as examining in some detail Walter Scott’s Waverley, which generally is referred to as the first historical novel. The course then outlines the development of the historical novel up to the middle of the 20th century and students read selected texts from this time period. Within this framework, the course explores the way that history has been used by writers across a variety of genres, such as romance and adventure, and looks at relevant theories by both historians and cultural theorists.

This course aims to introduce students to the varied and rich world of science fiction, a genre that both incorporates and shapes cultural and cosmological inscriptions of space, the future, extraterrestrial worlds, and the possibilities of intergalactic travel. Our readings will include classic as well as obscure works of science fiction, with the goal of tracking developments in the genre over the past 100 years. So too, we will explore landmark science fiction films, paying attention to aesthetic and formal differences between visual media and prose. The course will consider works that cross cultural and national boundaries, but it will also interrogate how such works engage with contemporary sociopolitical concerns. Finally, we will situate works of science fiction in the context of ongoing developments in contemporary cosmology, a field that has undergone exponential growth over the past several decades.

A historical overview of principles, methods, and best practices of English language teaching. Introduction to the national curriculum of English, teaching materials, and resources. Focus on student-centered teaching, learner autonomy, teacher reflection, and developing a philosophy of teaching.

The National Curriculum Guide will be read and analyzed. Students will have an opportunity to observe and evaluate recorded teaching and they will practice reflecting on their own ideas about teaching and experience of language learning. 

Course work demands active participation and consists of reading, written assignments, discussion, group and individual work, and microteaching.

This course  draws on seminal and current research about effective teaching and learning of English as a foreign language.  Students will come to understand important theories that underpin EFL learning and second language acquisition, especially as it concerns teaching the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing). This is accomplished by considering relevant concepts related to language acquisition, learner autonomy, and language assessment in a self- reflective and analytical way. Essentially, this course examines the why behind language teaching through student‐led and teacher-supported seminars. It culminates in a research project considering how to practically apply this knowledge to EFL teaching in a way that benefits both teachers and learners.

Course work demands active participation and consists of reading, lectures, face-to-face and online discussions, student-driven presentations and a research project.

This course offers a unique perspective on syntax, drawing parallels between linguistic structures and phenomena such as bird flocking, the spread of information in social networks, and neural network dynamics. We will examine how language, like these systems, exhibits intricate, dynamic, and often non-linear properties. Throughout the semester, we will cover a variety of topics. These include the concept of recursion in syntax, drawing an analogy to iterative processes in complex systems, where simple rules can generate diverse and intricate patterns. We will explore the concept of phases in Minimalism, which is reminiscent of modularity in complex systems, where different stages entail specific processes or transformations. We will also examine derivational approaches to syntax, which emphasize a step-wise construction of sentences that mirrors processes in complex systems.

This course will examine the ways in which medieval literature has influenced modern English Literature & Culture and how that influence is being adapted in the digital age. The course will focus on Norse Mythology and investigate how these narratives have become entwined in the fabric of modern western culture. From JRR Tolkien and Neil Gaiman to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 

The enchanted worlds that Scottish writer J. M. Barrie created for Peter Pan, “the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up,” have been variously transformed by the author and others – not least the Disney Company and translations into most of the world’s languages. In this course we will examine some of the changes that Barrie’s characters and places have undergone through the passage of time through the prism of basic ideas and terms from adaptation theory. This is an intensive 6-week course with continuous assessment.

BA essay. A formal departmental approval is required for a 20 credit essay (submission of a detailed proposal, a preliminary bibliography and the support of a supervisor, to the Chair of the English Department for voting at the next Department meeting).

The BA essay is no longer a requirement to complete the BA, though it is a requirement for entering the masters programme.

This course covers the nature of vocabulary acquisition: how vocabulary develops, is learned and taught. Various factors will be analyzed in detail, including, the role of pronunciation, word frequency, various learning strategies for vocabulary growth and considerable attention will be drawn to current research methodology in Vocabulary Acquisition. Students will review research as well as conduct a mini study.

Taught on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10 am (2. and 3. year students only)

This course is a review and examination of the developing field of ecocriticism in literary studies, and how ecocriticism itself as a way of examining environmental narration and imaginative literature is facing a crisis of its own.

We will look into the notion of “environment” and how literary texts portray and work with environments for narrative purposes.  We will consider environments in a  broadened sense, including not only  the purely physical, but also the digital environment and other non-physical environments such as  light, time, the human psyche and language itself.  How do writers navigate the relationship between narration and environment in its various manifestations.

We are likely to read fiction that allows us to explore the nature of storytelling in the midst of environmental crisis.  These works may include Elif Shafak’s The Island of Missing Trees; Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang; James Bradley’s Clade; as well as Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice; Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk; Memory of Water by Emmi Igtaranta; Oil on Water by Helon Habila; and Bangkok Wakes to Rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad.  We may also read essays in the anthology Solastalgia, edited by Paul Bogard; a collection of short creative works by thirty four writers on our emotions in the face of disappearing worlds.

We may also read some theory and philosophy now being written on the subject as applied to literature; books such as The Crisis of Narration by Byung-Chul Han; Facing Gaia by Bruno Latour; as well as tracts on the environmental crises such as The Darkness Manifesto by Johan Eklöf and A Forest Journey: The Role of Trees in The Fate of Civilization by John Perlin, as well as essays by theorists Donna Haraway and Hito Steyerl. 

The final reading list will be posted later.

What does Sunset Boulevard, double entendres, self-censorship, the Coen Brothers, and #metoo have in common? They all reveal that Hollywood is not quite the fantasy it poses to be.

A very real place and industry within Los Angeles, California, Hollywood has led in film production since the beginning of narrative film, yet its magic is created within the bland and sometimes devastating concrete lots, sound stages and offices of producers and agents.

This course aims to explore the reality of Hollywood and how it has functioned over time, to examine and critique its presentation and reputation through film and media. The course includes critical viewings of films that are based on both the myth and reality of Hollywood as well as critical readings on historical context, news/gossip, and the history of American narrative film.

Only 35 seats are available for ENS352M. Once the course is filled please contact Nikkita (nhp1@hi.is) to be added onto a waiting list in case a spot opens up.

You are the perfect candidate if you have a burning desire to write fiction or poetry, and enjoy reading good books.

Aims include:

1. To sharpen awareness and improve skills through exercises in writing, and especially through revision

2. To provide practical criticism of work-in-progress in a workshop setting, along with advice about revisions and improvisation.

In addition to invoking the muse, students will learn practical writing skills such as organization, structure, characterization and dialogue. The course will also involve the examination of the work of key novel and short story writers, and poets. Throughout the course, students will develop their own work as well as improving their critical skills. Students will complete a short story or a small collection of poems by the end of the course.

Attendance requirement is 100% - you must attend one 1-hour presentation and one 2-hour workshop session per week. Not suitable for distance students.

Students who fulfil the prerequisites will be signed up. Sign up is on first come first served bases and there are 6 seats reserved for MA students and 6 seats reserved for BA students. Any unfilled seats for the course on August 30th will be offered to students on the waiting list. 

Long before contemporary analyses of human-induced environmental degradation, Indigenous and feminist authors wrote stories that resisted hierarchies of the human over other lifeworlds. This course will use the themes, "feminism" and "environment" to study the works of women writers such as Leslie Marmon Silko, bell hooks, Willa Cather, Maria Lugones and Muriel Rukeyser whose writings deepen and problematize both terms. 

Together we will ask, how have colonial histories impacted which authors are seen as "environmental" or "feminist"?  How does environmental protection materialize in the works of these authors? Further, what does environmental literature mean and how could debates in feminist theory help us answer such questions?

A favourite author of and inspiration to Jane Austen and keeper of the robes to Queen Charlotte, Frances Burney (1752-1840) was an eighteenth-century English novelist and playwright who is also known as Fanny Burney. Burney lived in France during the Napoleonic Wars and her French husband Alexander D’Arblay had supported the French Revolution, a political theme covered in her novel The Wanderer. Her novel Camilla (1796), sold as a subscription, earned her an incredibly large sum that enabled her to buy a house for her family. Throughout her life, Burney kept journals that serve as a record of her time in the eighteenth-century court, eighteenth-century artistic and intellectual high society, and of her time in France. Burney’s work engages with issues of class, inheritance, charity, and political struggles in France and Britain. We will read Burney’s novels and extracts from her letters and diaries. This course will cover the social, political, economic, and protofeminist commentary in Burney’s work, her narrative style, details of her life, and her influence on other novelists, such as Austen.

This course aims to introduce students to variety of English dialects spoken worldwide. The main emphasis will be on the variety of dialects spoken in Kachru‘s inner circle countries, such as England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Furthermore, students will be introduced to outer circle varieties, and expanding circle varieties, including Icelandic-accented English. In addition to introducing students to differences in dialect variation, they will also be introduced to common research methods in dialectal research, such as acoustic and auditory analysis.

A study of non-Shakespearean English drama circa 1580-1640. Although our idea of early modern drama is dominated by Shakespeare’s towering presence, a host of other playwrights helped transform the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries into the golden age of English theatre. This course will study a selection of six exciting plays by Shakespeare’s Elizabethan and Jacobean contemporaries, competitors, and sometimes collaborators, such as Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, John Webster, Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Heywood and others. Covering a range of genres (history play, revenge tragedy, domestic tragedy, tragicomedy, city comedy, comedy of humours), these fascinating dramas feature violence, revenge, love, sex, fraud, disguise, cross-dressing, magic and witchcraft, laughter, money and much more. Dark and hilarious in turns, they horrify, amuse, and stimulate our imagination as much as anything Shakespeare ever wrote. As we read these texts, we will be paying particular attention to their engagement of the physical realities of early modern theatre; their political, social, religious, economic, and cultural contexts; their original explorations of the pressing issues of power, gender, sexuality, class, and national identity; and the linguistic, poetic, and dramatic qualities of these plays.  The plays studied may include Marlowe’s Edward II, Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, Jonson’s The Alchemist, Middleton and Dekker’s The Roaring Girl, Middleton and Rowley’s The Changeling, Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness, Beaumont’s The Knight of Burning Pestle, and Ford’s Tis Pity She’s a Whore.

BA essay in English, 10 ECTS.

A formal departmental approval is required for a 20 credit essay (submission of a detailed proposal, a preliminary bibliography and the support of a supervisor, to the Chair of the English Department for voting at the next Department meeting).

The BA essay is no longer a requirement to complete the BA, though it is a requirement for entering the masters programme.

This course offers a general introduction to semantics, which deals with the nature of meaning in language.

This course provides an overview of the study of the interaction of language and society, language contact and language variation. We will examine how the way we speak is influenced by who is speaking to whom about what under what circumstances. We look how identities and cultures are conveyed through language and what the choice of language and registers reveals about language attitudes and how society is structured. We will examine the nature of national languages and language planning, regional and social dialects, familylects and idiolects, bilingualism, multilingualism and code switching and rules of discourse in different settings.

This course develops the view that a linguistic fact can usually be described in more than one way. To this end, a broad outline of various topics in English grammar – within phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics – will be given and the basic linguistic terminology will be introduced. The relevant linguistic facts will then be analyzed in considerable detail from various theoretical perspectives, illustrating how particular theories account for them.

Why are we terrified and fascinated by monsters? Why do they disgust us and at the same time excite our desire? What does monstrosity as the ultimate form of otherness teach us about human identity and society? How do cultural ideas about race, gender, sexuality, nationhood, and class spawn our notions of monstrosity? In this course we will grapple with these questions by looking at a sampling of grotesque, transgressive, hybridized, disfigured, and otherwise hideous forms of being in Middle English literature: monstrous races, werewolves, ghosts, giants, demons, gods, and fantastic beasts. We will read widely across genres, including chivalric romance, travel writing, fables, hagiography, religious texts, lyric poetry and more. Critical readings will be drawn from a variety of perspectives (deconstruction, post-humanism, psychoanalysis, gender criticism, ecocritical theory) to reflect the complex and multidisciplinary nature of the topic.

Following up on The British Historical Novel 1764-1950, this course (though also independent of the previous course) traces the development of the British historical novel from the latter part of the 20th century to the present day. It explores the way that history has been used by writers of the period across a variety of genres. Critical theory by historians and cultural theorists is also looked at in some detail, where relevant.

The course will look in depth at English teaching methods and principles aimed at young learners. Topics include characteristics of young learners, National Curriculum objectives, and teaching and assessment methods, especially those related to listening, speaking, reading, writing, games, songs and creative activities. Students will receive training in lesson planning and integrating English teaching with other subjects.
Course work consists of reading, oral and written assignments, discussions, group work and active participation. The course includes a teaching practice component at primary or middle school levels consisting of classroom observation, practice teaching and a written report. Student teachers will gain experience in creating lessons and activities that take into account young children’s needs and abilities. Students who are exempt from teaching practice (e.g. BA students) will complete an alternative assignment.

Optional course for students of the Faculty of Languages and Cultures, in their 2nd or 3rd year of the BA-programme. The students read and study a well-known play that has been translated into several languages. The students will read the text in the target language. The students choose scenes from the play for the production.

Teachers from the target languages will assist the students with pronunciation.

Maximum number of students in this course is 15.

This course is a beginner’s course in Latin. No prior knowledge of Latin is assumed at the outset. It introduces the basics of Latin grammar and syntax. Chosen passages will be read in Latin, translated and thoroughly analysed. Teaching consists of 24 lectures on particular aspects of the Latin language and assigned readings.

This course is taught in Icelandic but students can get permission of the instructor to complete assignments and exams in English.

This course is a beginner’s course in Ancient Greek. It introduces the basics of grammar and syntax of the Attic dialect. No prior knowledge of Greek is assumed at the outset. Reading knowledge of Ancient Greek will be prioritized and chosen passages will be read in Greek, translated and thoroughly analysed. Teaching consists of both lectures on particular aspects of the Greek language and assigned readings. It is essential that students read the assigned materials before each lecture.

This course is taught in Icelandic but students can get permission of the instructor to complete assignments and exams in English.

Language can be considered a powerful tool for conveying culture and the classroom can be considered a critical social space that both shapes and influences the attitudes, values, and learning processes of teachers and students. Primary goals of multicultural education are to:

• foster human rights, promote social justice, and support educational equity
• acknowledge the value of cultural diversity and use it as a tool to support learning
• enhance respect for cultural differences (linguistic, ethnic, spiritual, gender and sexual orientation, socio-economic, etc.) and promote understanding of varying life choices and life experiences

The course includes 3 credits of practice teaching. Students receive practice in lesson planning and use of a variety of activities and materials which take into account students’ diverse needs and backgrounds. Students who are exempt from teaching practice (for example BA students) will do alternative assignments.

The students will develop competencies in the methodology of teaching English to students at lower secondary level based on the objectives of the National Curriculum for English. They will get practice in lesson planning, use of a variety of activities and materials, such as literature and film, and lesson evaluation. The course includes 3 credits of practice teaching. Students who are exempt from teaching practice (for example BA students) will do alternative assignments.

The course is an introductory course in the Faculty of Languages and Cultures. Its aims and purpose include an introduction of basic concepts and terminology in the field, exploration of critical thinking to increase reading comprehension of academic texts, implementation of practical learning practices and academic procedures to facilitate successful academic studies, discussion on plagiarism and academic integrity, evaluation of academic standards, etc. Students receive practical training in critical evaluation of academic texts, basic argumentation analysis, identification of rhetorical patterns and text structure in various text types, review of acceptable references, and an introduction to analytical reading. Furthermore, students will gain insight into the importance of academic literacy to enhance understanding and writing of academic papers, presentation of research findings, etc.

The course is taught in English and is intended for students in:

1. The English BA program.
2.  Students of foreign languages (other than English)

 *Those students that need ECT credits as a result of changes in the MOM courses, as MOM102G used to be a 5-credit course, need to add an individual assignment (MOM001G, 1 ECT) within the MOM102G course.

• This individual assignment is only intended for students who finished MOM202G (before the school year 2024-2025) and are now enrolled in MOM102G, and have thus only gained 9 credits in the two mandatory MOM courses.
• Students who intend to increase their credits with a 6 ECT course, within their departments, are free to do so – and do thus not take this additional individual assignment (in MOM102G).

To sign up for the individual project you must talk to the teacher of MOM102G.

This course is the first of two introductory courses in linguistics.  It addresses such questions as: what kinds of sounds do humans make when using spoken language? How are those sounds organised within the sound system of a language? What is a word? If a sign is a combination of a form with a meaning, are words linguistic signs? Where do words come from? How are words put together?

The focus of the course is on English, though other languages will be discussed as relevant.

This course offers a survey of important domains of linguistics, especially those which emphasise the relation of human language to man in a broader context: sociolinguistics, dialect variation, first language acquisition, second language acquisition, language and the brain, historical comparative linguistics, and animal communication.  The focus of the course is on English and the course introduces students of English to areas of linguistics that they can explore in more detail later in their studies.

The aim of this course is to give students a good overview of the social and political backgrounds to Great Britain. In the process of doing that we will examine patterns of British culture, political and social institutions and ethnic minority groups. Assessment: a 2 hour final exam.

This is a survey course of British Literature from the beginnings of Romanticism to the early twentieth century. The required reading includes some poetry, a play, short stories, novellas, and a novel. Students will read and analyze works by major Romantics (including Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and Keats), Victorians (Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Gaskell, and Wilde) and modern authors (Yeats and Joyce). They will also be introduced to various literary terms and themes.

In a world increasingly awash in fake news, AI-generated deep fakes and denialism of scientific and historical facts, our ability to interpret politics, culture and society with critical discernment is more important than ever. 

Focusing on culture and linguistics, this course aims to give you the analytical tools you need as a student and citizen to critically interpret texts, visual culture and language. 

You will train your hermeneutical skills on short narratives, photographs and various characteristics of language, with help from selected readings in literary theory, cultural studies, visual culture(s) and linguistics. 

The emphasis in the class will be on critical thinking and group discussion,  allowing you to share your analytical discoveries with your fellow students and build interpretative communities.

Modules:

1. Deciphering texts
2. Understanding visual cultures
3. Figuring out language

An overview of the history and development of the English language.

This course is the second of two introductory courses in linguistics. It addresses such questions as: how are words put together to form sentences? how is the form of words affected by their place in a sentence? what other kinds of grammatical information influence the shape and use of words in a sentence? how are sentences related to each other? how can sentences be combined to form larger sentences? how do separate sentences relate to each other when strung together? what do words mean? what do sentences mean? what is discourse meaning?

The focus of the course is on English, though other languages will be discussed as relevant.

The ability to write well in English is a prerequisite for all other courses in the English department. The main aim of this course is to equip students to write in English for academic purposes. Course work will involve writing practice and composing essays based on primary and secondary research. There will be a strong emphasis on the organization of ideas as well as on style. The main goal is for students to gain an understanding of the writing process and develop their own voice in writing.

• This course aims at revisiting decisive moments of the history of the United States of America, from the early settlement to the present.
• Particular attention will be dedicated to the events surrounding the Independence of the country, the American Civil War and ensuing Reconstruction, as well as offering a broad overview of the 20^th and early 21^st centuries.
• There will also be an emphasis on the experiences of minorities and disenfranchised collectives (Native Americans, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans, the LGBTQ community, as well as the rights of women) in the history of the United States, from the settlement to present.

Authors representative of American Literature are read in historical context.

“Literature and Essay Writing” will expose students to exemplary texts in English across a range of historical periods and genres. It will prompt students to engage in imaginative and critical dialogues with works of literature  foregrounding close reading skills, poetic and critical thinking, scholarly and creative journaling, and analytical and research essay writing skills. The course is designed to increase proficiency in the generation and organization of ideas, in editing and research skills, and in the use of the MLA style of citation.

This course will expand student's capacity to enjoy, understand and write about language and linguistics. The aim of the module is to develop students' proficiency in process writing in English for academic purposes, with special attention given to increasing proficiency in organization, writing and revising, and on students developing their own voice in expository writing. Course work will include writing assignments and essays, as well as reading a variety of texts for critical reflection and analysis. Individual and peer feedback will be a major feature of this module. The course is also designed to strengthen skills in research and the use of APA style.

This course provides an introduction to the major principles of contemporary literary theory and criticism and to established methods and materials of literary research. Major theories include, structuralism, feminism, Queer Theory, postmodernism, marxism, post-colonial criticism, posthumanism, and eco-criticism. The objective of the course is to help you to develop your skills as a reader and critic.

Midterm Exam information:  
Midterm essay  of 1000-1,500 words. 35 percent (home assignment, file upload)

Final exams:
Exam (theory-focused) 25 percent (short answer questions onsite with inspera) 
Final Essay 40 percent (home assignment, file upload)

This course provides a survey of some of the best known and most influential literary texts in English from the early Middle Ages (Old English period) to the end of the Elizabethan era.

IMPORTANT: This course is the first half of ENS303G British Literature II (which has now been split into two separate courses, one for each term of the academic year). Students who have completed ENS303G are not eligible to take this course.

Disney has been a predominant force in media for exactly a century, profiting billions, manufacturing children’s dreams, and inspiring praise and condemnation alike in academics and audiences around the globe. Its creation and adaptation of children’s media is particularly significant for the way both children and adult audiences perceive and experience classic fairytales and folk tales.  By studying a number of Disney adaptations, such as Princess and the Frog (2009), Brave (2012), Frozen (2013), Moana (2016) and Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) the students will explore how Disney has managed to stay on top of the children’s media production, adapting to the ever-changing market demands by adapting timeless stories for the 21^st century audience.

A study of the English poetry of the seventeenth century (1603-1679). The period from the accession of James I through the Restoration witnessed multiple political, religious, scientific, and cultural revolutions. But it also produced some of the most formally, intellectually, and aesthetically innovative and challenging poetry in the English language. In this course we will closely read and vigorously debate erotic, philosophical, political, devotional, ecological, scientific, and elegiac poems by major authors (Jonson, Donne, Herbert, Carew, Lovelace, Herrick, Vaughn, Milton, Marvell, Cowley, Crashaw, Philips, Cavendish etc.). Our focus will be on how seventeenth-century poetry grapples with and responds to the trenchant questions of the age—ideas of political engagement, the place of God in the cosmic order, the new science, the new philosophical idea of mind and body, the rise of capitalism, professionalization of writing, changing attitudes to sexuality, the influence of classical learning etc.—by developing radical forms of material presence, language, imagery, lyric selfhood, and audience engagement, interrogating and reshaping the boundaries of lyric thinking.

“Angels in America" is a seminal work in American theatre. While beautifully written and telling a wonderful and intricate story, the play also serves as an excellent jumping off point to discuss American life and culture in the eighties and early nineties. The AIDS crisis, queer existence, The Cold War, Reaganism, the burgeoning climate crisis, faith and religion, all these are referenced within this masterful work. This course seeks to describe a point in time as it presented in this play, supplying students with a firm grasp of the politics of the past, and the influence they have on the future.

This course advances the student’s knowledge of the central areas of English meaning-carrying units in grammar: phonology, morphology, syntax and pragmatics. The most important aspects of these domains are covered, always with an eye to their semantics. Particular emphasis will be placed on different models of grammar and to socio-linguistic and historical variation, both within different varieties of British English and between British and American English. Aspects relevant to foreign language teaching receive particular attention.

The course introduces students to the development of the British historical novel up to the middle of the 20th century. Its origins will be traced back to what is seen as the first Gothic novel as well as examining in some detail Walter Scott’s Waverley, which generally is referred to as the first historical novel. The course then outlines the development of the historical novel up to the middle of the 20th century and students read selected texts from this time period. Within this framework, the course explores the way that history has been used by writers across a variety of genres, such as romance and adventure, and looks at relevant theories by both historians and cultural theorists.

This course aims to introduce students to the varied and rich world of science fiction, a genre that both incorporates and shapes cultural and cosmological inscriptions of space, the future, extraterrestrial worlds, and the possibilities of intergalactic travel. Our readings will include classic as well as obscure works of science fiction, with the goal of tracking developments in the genre over the past 100 years. So too, we will explore landmark science fiction films, paying attention to aesthetic and formal differences between visual media and prose. The course will consider works that cross cultural and national boundaries, but it will also interrogate how such works engage with contemporary sociopolitical concerns. Finally, we will situate works of science fiction in the context of ongoing developments in contemporary cosmology, a field that has undergone exponential growth over the past several decades.

A historical overview of principles, methods, and best practices of English language teaching. Introduction to the national curriculum of English, teaching materials, and resources. Focus on student-centered teaching, learner autonomy, teacher reflection, and developing a philosophy of teaching.

The National Curriculum Guide will be read and analyzed. Students will have an opportunity to observe and evaluate recorded teaching and they will practice reflecting on their own ideas about teaching and experience of language learning. 

Course work demands active participation and consists of reading, written assignments, discussion, group and individual work, and microteaching.

This course  draws on seminal and current research about effective teaching and learning of English as a foreign language.  Students will come to understand important theories that underpin EFL learning and second language acquisition, especially as it concerns teaching the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing). This is accomplished by considering relevant concepts related to language acquisition, learner autonomy, and language assessment in a self- reflective and analytical way. Essentially, this course examines the why behind language teaching through student‐led and teacher-supported seminars. It culminates in a research project considering how to practically apply this knowledge to EFL teaching in a way that benefits both teachers and learners.

Course work demands active participation and consists of reading, lectures, face-to-face and online discussions, student-driven presentations and a research project.

This course offers a unique perspective on syntax, drawing parallels between linguistic structures and phenomena such as bird flocking, the spread of information in social networks, and neural network dynamics. We will examine how language, like these systems, exhibits intricate, dynamic, and often non-linear properties. Throughout the semester, we will cover a variety of topics. These include the concept of recursion in syntax, drawing an analogy to iterative processes in complex systems, where simple rules can generate diverse and intricate patterns. We will explore the concept of phases in Minimalism, which is reminiscent of modularity in complex systems, where different stages entail specific processes or transformations. We will also examine derivational approaches to syntax, which emphasize a step-wise construction of sentences that mirrors processes in complex systems.

This course provides a survey of some of the best known and most influential poetry and prose in English from the early 17^th to the late 18^th century.

Long before contemporary analyses of human-induced environmental degradation, Indigenous and feminist authors wrote stories that resisted hierarchies of the human over other lifeworlds. This course will use the themes, "feminism" and "environment" to study the works of women writers such as Leslie Marmon Silko, bell hooks, Willa Cather, Maria Lugones and Muriel Rukeyser whose writings deepen and problematize both terms. 

Together we will ask, how have colonial histories impacted which authors are seen as "environmental" or "feminist"?  How does environmental protection materialize in the works of these authors? Further, what does environmental literature mean and how could debates in feminist theory help us answer such questions?

A favourite author of and inspiration to Jane Austen and keeper of the robes to Queen Charlotte, Frances Burney (1752-1840) was an eighteenth-century English novelist and playwright who is also known as Fanny Burney. Burney lived in France during the Napoleonic Wars and her French husband Alexander D’Arblay had supported the French Revolution, a political theme covered in her novel The Wanderer. Her novel Camilla (1796), sold as a subscription, earned her an incredibly large sum that enabled her to buy a house for her family. Throughout her life, Burney kept journals that serve as a record of her time in the eighteenth-century court, eighteenth-century artistic and intellectual high society, and of her time in France. Burney’s work engages with issues of class, inheritance, charity, and political struggles in France and Britain. We will read Burney’s novels and extracts from her letters and diaries. This course will cover the social, political, economic, and protofeminist commentary in Burney’s work, her narrative style, details of her life, and her influence on other novelists, such as Austen.

This course aims to introduce students to variety of English dialects spoken worldwide. The main emphasis will be on the variety of dialects spoken in Kachru‘s inner circle countries, such as England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Furthermore, students will be introduced to outer circle varieties, and expanding circle varieties, including Icelandic-accented English. In addition to introducing students to differences in dialect variation, they will also be introduced to common research methods in dialectal research, such as acoustic and auditory analysis.

A study of non-Shakespearean English drama circa 1580-1640. Although our idea of early modern drama is dominated by Shakespeare’s towering presence, a host of other playwrights helped transform the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries into the golden age of English theatre. This course will study a selection of six exciting plays by Shakespeare’s Elizabethan and Jacobean contemporaries, competitors, and sometimes collaborators, such as Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, John Webster, Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Heywood and others. Covering a range of genres (history play, revenge tragedy, domestic tragedy, tragicomedy, city comedy, comedy of humours), these fascinating dramas feature violence, revenge, love, sex, fraud, disguise, cross-dressing, magic and witchcraft, laughter, money and much more. Dark and hilarious in turns, they horrify, amuse, and stimulate our imagination as much as anything Shakespeare ever wrote. As we read these texts, we will be paying particular attention to their engagement of the physical realities of early modern theatre; their political, social, religious, economic, and cultural contexts; their original explorations of the pressing issues of power, gender, sexuality, class, and national identity; and the linguistic, poetic, and dramatic qualities of these plays.  The plays studied may include Marlowe’s Edward II, Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, Jonson’s The Alchemist, Middleton and Dekker’s The Roaring Girl, Middleton and Rowley’s The Changeling, Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness, Beaumont’s The Knight of Burning Pestle, and Ford’s Tis Pity She’s a Whore.

BA essay in English, 10 ECTS.

A formal departmental approval is required for a 20 credit essay (submission of a detailed proposal, a preliminary bibliography and the support of a supervisor, to the Chair of the English Department for voting at the next Department meeting).

The BA essay is no longer a requirement to complete the BA, though it is a requirement for entering the masters programme.

This course offers a general introduction to semantics, which deals with the nature of meaning in language.

This course provides an overview of the study of the interaction of language and society, language contact and language variation. We will examine how the way we speak is influenced by who is speaking to whom about what under what circumstances. We look how identities and cultures are conveyed through language and what the choice of language and registers reveals about language attitudes and how society is structured. We will examine the nature of national languages and language planning, regional and social dialects, familylects and idiolects, bilingualism, multilingualism and code switching and rules of discourse in different settings.

This course develops the view that a linguistic fact can usually be described in more than one way. To this end, a broad outline of various topics in English grammar – within phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics – will be given and the basic linguistic terminology will be introduced. The relevant linguistic facts will then be analyzed in considerable detail from various theoretical perspectives, illustrating how particular theories account for them.

Why are we terrified and fascinated by monsters? Why do they disgust us and at the same time excite our desire? What does monstrosity as the ultimate form of otherness teach us about human identity and society? How do cultural ideas about race, gender, sexuality, nationhood, and class spawn our notions of monstrosity? In this course we will grapple with these questions by looking at a sampling of grotesque, transgressive, hybridized, disfigured, and otherwise hideous forms of being in Middle English literature: monstrous races, werewolves, ghosts, giants, demons, gods, and fantastic beasts. We will read widely across genres, including chivalric romance, travel writing, fables, hagiography, religious texts, lyric poetry and more. Critical readings will be drawn from a variety of perspectives (deconstruction, post-humanism, psychoanalysis, gender criticism, ecocritical theory) to reflect the complex and multidisciplinary nature of the topic.

Following up on The British Historical Novel 1764-1950, this course (though also independent of the previous course) traces the development of the British historical novel from the latter part of the 20th century to the present day. It explores the way that history has been used by writers of the period across a variety of genres. Critical theory by historians and cultural theorists is also looked at in some detail, where relevant.

The course will look in depth at English teaching methods and principles aimed at young learners. Topics include characteristics of young learners, National Curriculum objectives, and teaching and assessment methods, especially those related to listening, speaking, reading, writing, games, songs and creative activities. Students will receive training in lesson planning and integrating English teaching with other subjects.
Course work consists of reading, oral and written assignments, discussions, group work and active participation. The course includes a teaching practice component at primary or middle school levels consisting of classroom observation, practice teaching and a written report. Student teachers will gain experience in creating lessons and activities that take into account young children’s needs and abilities. Students who are exempt from teaching practice (e.g. BA students) will complete an alternative assignment.

Optional course for students of the Faculty of Languages and Cultures, in their 2nd or 3rd year of the BA-programme. The students read and study a well-known play that has been translated into several languages. The students will read the text in the target language. The students choose scenes from the play for the production.

Teachers from the target languages will assist the students with pronunciation.

Maximum number of students in this course is 15.

Disney has been a predominant force in media for exactly a century, profiting billions, manufacturing children’s dreams, and inspiring praise and condemnation alike in academics and audiences around the globe. Its creation and adaptation of children’s media is particularly significant for the way both children and adult audiences perceive and experience classic fairytales and folk tales.  By studying a number of Disney adaptations, such as Princess and the Frog (2009), Brave (2012), Frozen (2013), Moana (2016) and Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) the students will explore how Disney has managed to stay on top of the children’s media production, adapting to the ever-changing market demands by adapting timeless stories for the 21^st century audience.

A study of the English poetry of the seventeenth century (1603-1679). The period from the accession of James I through the Restoration witnessed multiple political, religious, scientific, and cultural revolutions. But it also produced some of the most formally, intellectually, and aesthetically innovative and challenging poetry in the English language. In this course we will closely read and vigorously debate erotic, philosophical, political, devotional, ecological, scientific, and elegiac poems by major authors (Jonson, Donne, Herbert, Carew, Lovelace, Herrick, Vaughn, Milton, Marvell, Cowley, Crashaw, Philips, Cavendish etc.). Our focus will be on how seventeenth-century poetry grapples with and responds to the trenchant questions of the age—ideas of political engagement, the place of God in the cosmic order, the new science, the new philosophical idea of mind and body, the rise of capitalism, professionalization of writing, changing attitudes to sexuality, the influence of classical learning etc.—by developing radical forms of material presence, language, imagery, lyric selfhood, and audience engagement, interrogating and reshaping the boundaries of lyric thinking.

“Angels in America" is a seminal work in American theatre. While beautifully written and telling a wonderful and intricate story, the play also serves as an excellent jumping off point to discuss American life and culture in the eighties and early nineties. The AIDS crisis, queer existence, The Cold War, Reaganism, the burgeoning climate crisis, faith and religion, all these are referenced within this masterful work. This course seeks to describe a point in time as it presented in this play, supplying students with a firm grasp of the politics of the past, and the influence they have on the future.

This course advances the student’s knowledge of the central areas of English meaning-carrying units in grammar: phonology, morphology, syntax and pragmatics. The most important aspects of these domains are covered, always with an eye to their semantics. Particular emphasis will be placed on different models of grammar and to socio-linguistic and historical variation, both within different varieties of British English and between British and American English. Aspects relevant to foreign language teaching receive particular attention.

The course introduces students to the development of the British historical novel up to the middle of the 20th century. Its origins will be traced back to what is seen as the first Gothic novel as well as examining in some detail Walter Scott’s Waverley, which generally is referred to as the first historical novel. The course then outlines the development of the historical novel up to the middle of the 20th century and students read selected texts from this time period. Within this framework, the course explores the way that history has been used by writers across a variety of genres, such as romance and adventure, and looks at relevant theories by both historians and cultural theorists.

This course aims to introduce students to the varied and rich world of science fiction, a genre that both incorporates and shapes cultural and cosmological inscriptions of space, the future, extraterrestrial worlds, and the possibilities of intergalactic travel. Our readings will include classic as well as obscure works of science fiction, with the goal of tracking developments in the genre over the past 100 years. So too, we will explore landmark science fiction films, paying attention to aesthetic and formal differences between visual media and prose. The course will consider works that cross cultural and national boundaries, but it will also interrogate how such works engage with contemporary sociopolitical concerns. Finally, we will situate works of science fiction in the context of ongoing developments in contemporary cosmology, a field that has undergone exponential growth over the past several decades.

A historical overview of principles, methods, and best practices of English language teaching. Introduction to the national curriculum of English, teaching materials, and resources. Focus on student-centered teaching, learner autonomy, teacher reflection, and developing a philosophy of teaching.

The National Curriculum Guide will be read and analyzed. Students will have an opportunity to observe and evaluate recorded teaching and they will practice reflecting on their own ideas about teaching and experience of language learning. 

Course work demands active participation and consists of reading, written assignments, discussion, group and individual work, and microteaching.

This course  draws on seminal and current research about effective teaching and learning of English as a foreign language.  Students will come to understand important theories that underpin EFL learning and second language acquisition, especially as it concerns teaching the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing). This is accomplished by considering relevant concepts related to language acquisition, learner autonomy, and language assessment in a self- reflective and analytical way. Essentially, this course examines the why behind language teaching through student‐led and teacher-supported seminars. It culminates in a research project considering how to practically apply this knowledge to EFL teaching in a way that benefits both teachers and learners.

Course work demands active participation and consists of reading, lectures, face-to-face and online discussions, student-driven presentations and a research project.

This course offers a unique perspective on syntax, drawing parallels between linguistic structures and phenomena such as bird flocking, the spread of information in social networks, and neural network dynamics. We will examine how language, like these systems, exhibits intricate, dynamic, and often non-linear properties. Throughout the semester, we will cover a variety of topics. These include the concept of recursion in syntax, drawing an analogy to iterative processes in complex systems, where simple rules can generate diverse and intricate patterns. We will explore the concept of phases in Minimalism, which is reminiscent of modularity in complex systems, where different stages entail specific processes or transformations. We will also examine derivational approaches to syntax, which emphasize a step-wise construction of sentences that mirrors processes in complex systems.

This course will examine the ways in which medieval literature has influenced modern English Literature & Culture and how that influence is being adapted in the digital age. The course will focus on Norse Mythology and investigate how these narratives have become entwined in the fabric of modern western culture. From JRR Tolkien and Neil Gaiman to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 

The enchanted worlds that Scottish writer J. M. Barrie created for Peter Pan, “the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up,” have been variously transformed by the author and others – not least the Disney Company and translations into most of the world’s languages. In this course we will examine some of the changes that Barrie’s characters and places have undergone through the passage of time through the prism of basic ideas and terms from adaptation theory. This is an intensive 6-week course with continuous assessment.

BA essay. A formal departmental approval is required for a 20 credit essay (submission of a detailed proposal, a preliminary bibliography and the support of a supervisor, to the Chair of the English Department for voting at the next Department meeting).

The BA essay is no longer a requirement to complete the BA, though it is a requirement for entering the masters programme.

This course covers the nature of vocabulary acquisition: how vocabulary develops, is learned and taught. Various factors will be analyzed in detail, including, the role of pronunciation, word frequency, various learning strategies for vocabulary growth and considerable attention will be drawn to current research methodology in Vocabulary Acquisition. Students will review research as well as conduct a mini study.

Taught on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10 am (2. and 3. year students only)

This course is a review and examination of the developing field of ecocriticism in literary studies, and how ecocriticism itself as a way of examining environmental narration and imaginative literature is facing a crisis of its own.

We will look into the notion of “environment” and how literary texts portray and work with environments for narrative purposes.  We will consider environments in a  broadened sense, including not only  the purely physical, but also the digital environment and other non-physical environments such as  light, time, the human psyche and language itself.  How do writers navigate the relationship between narration and environment in its various manifestations.

We are likely to read fiction that allows us to explore the nature of storytelling in the midst of environmental crisis.  These works may include Elif Shafak’s The Island of Missing Trees; Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang; James Bradley’s Clade; as well as Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice; Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk; Memory of Water by Emmi Igtaranta; Oil on Water by Helon Habila; and Bangkok Wakes to Rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad.  We may also read essays in the anthology Solastalgia, edited by Paul Bogard; a collection of short creative works by thirty four writers on our emotions in the face of disappearing worlds.

We may also read some theory and philosophy now being written on the subject as applied to literature; books such as The Crisis of Narration by Byung-Chul Han; Facing Gaia by Bruno Latour; as well as tracts on the environmental crises such as The Darkness Manifesto by Johan Eklöf and A Forest Journey: The Role of Trees in The Fate of Civilization by John Perlin, as well as essays by theorists Donna Haraway and Hito Steyerl. 

The final reading list will be posted later.

What does Sunset Boulevard, double entendres, self-censorship, the Coen Brothers, and #metoo have in common? They all reveal that Hollywood is not quite the fantasy it poses to be.

A very real place and industry within Los Angeles, California, Hollywood has led in film production since the beginning of narrative film, yet its magic is created within the bland and sometimes devastating concrete lots, sound stages and offices of producers and agents.

This course aims to explore the reality of Hollywood and how it has functioned over time, to examine and critique its presentation and reputation through film and media. The course includes critical viewings of films that are based on both the myth and reality of Hollywood as well as critical readings on historical context, news/gossip, and the history of American narrative film.

Only 35 seats are available for ENS352M. Once the course is filled please contact Nikkita (nhp1@hi.is) to be added onto a waiting list in case a spot opens up.

You are the perfect candidate if you have a burning desire to write fiction or poetry, and enjoy reading good books.

Aims include:

1. To sharpen awareness and improve skills through exercises in writing, and especially through revision

2. To provide practical criticism of work-in-progress in a workshop setting, along with advice about revisions and improvisation.

In addition to invoking the muse, students will learn practical writing skills such as organization, structure, characterization and dialogue. The course will also involve the examination of the work of key novel and short story writers, and poets. Throughout the course, students will develop their own work as well as improving their critical skills. Students will complete a short story or a small collection of poems by the end of the course.

Attendance requirement is 100% - you must attend one 1-hour presentation and one 2-hour workshop session per week. Not suitable for distance students.

Students who fulfil the prerequisites will be signed up. Sign up is on first come first served bases and there are 6 seats reserved for MA students and 6 seats reserved for BA students. Any unfilled seats for the course on August 30th will be offered to students on the waiting list. 

Long before contemporary analyses of human-induced environmental degradation, Indigenous and feminist authors wrote stories that resisted hierarchies of the human over other lifeworlds. This course will use the themes, "feminism" and "environment" to study the works of women writers such as Leslie Marmon Silko, bell hooks, Willa Cather, Maria Lugones and Muriel Rukeyser whose writings deepen and problematize both terms. 

Together we will ask, how have colonial histories impacted which authors are seen as "environmental" or "feminist"?  How does environmental protection materialize in the works of these authors? Further, what does environmental literature mean and how could debates in feminist theory help us answer such questions?

A favourite author of and inspiration to Jane Austen and keeper of the robes to Queen Charlotte, Frances Burney (1752-1840) was an eighteenth-century English novelist and playwright who is also known as Fanny Burney. Burney lived in France during the Napoleonic Wars and her French husband Alexander D’Arblay had supported the French Revolution, a political theme covered in her novel The Wanderer. Her novel Camilla (1796), sold as a subscription, earned her an incredibly large sum that enabled her to buy a house for her family. Throughout her life, Burney kept journals that serve as a record of her time in the eighteenth-century court, eighteenth-century artistic and intellectual high society, and of her time in France. Burney’s work engages with issues of class, inheritance, charity, and political struggles in France and Britain. We will read Burney’s novels and extracts from her letters and diaries. This course will cover the social, political, economic, and protofeminist commentary in Burney’s work, her narrative style, details of her life, and her influence on other novelists, such as Austen.

This course aims to introduce students to variety of English dialects spoken worldwide. The main emphasis will be on the variety of dialects spoken in Kachru‘s inner circle countries, such as England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Furthermore, students will be introduced to outer circle varieties, and expanding circle varieties, including Icelandic-accented English. In addition to introducing students to differences in dialect variation, they will also be introduced to common research methods in dialectal research, such as acoustic and auditory analysis.

A study of non-Shakespearean English drama circa 1580-1640. Although our idea of early modern drama is dominated by Shakespeare’s towering presence, a host of other playwrights helped transform the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries into the golden age of English theatre. This course will study a selection of six exciting plays by Shakespeare’s Elizabethan and Jacobean contemporaries, competitors, and sometimes collaborators, such as Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, John Webster, Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Heywood and others. Covering a range of genres (history play, revenge tragedy, domestic tragedy, tragicomedy, city comedy, comedy of humours), these fascinating dramas feature violence, revenge, love, sex, fraud, disguise, cross-dressing, magic and witchcraft, laughter, money and much more. Dark and hilarious in turns, they horrify, amuse, and stimulate our imagination as much as anything Shakespeare ever wrote. As we read these texts, we will be paying particular attention to their engagement of the physical realities of early modern theatre; their political, social, religious, economic, and cultural contexts; their original explorations of the pressing issues of power, gender, sexuality, class, and national identity; and the linguistic, poetic, and dramatic qualities of these plays.  The plays studied may include Marlowe’s Edward II, Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, Jonson’s The Alchemist, Middleton and Dekker’s The Roaring Girl, Middleton and Rowley’s The Changeling, Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness, Beaumont’s The Knight of Burning Pestle, and Ford’s Tis Pity She’s a Whore.

BA essay in English, 10 ECTS.

A formal departmental approval is required for a 20 credit essay (submission of a detailed proposal, a preliminary bibliography and the support of a supervisor, to the Chair of the English Department for voting at the next Department meeting).

The BA essay is no longer a requirement to complete the BA, though it is a requirement for entering the masters programme.

This course offers a general introduction to semantics, which deals with the nature of meaning in language.

This course provides an overview of the study of the interaction of language and society, language contact and language variation. We will examine how the way we speak is influenced by who is speaking to whom about what under what circumstances. We look how identities and cultures are conveyed through language and what the choice of language and registers reveals about language attitudes and how society is structured. We will examine the nature of national languages and language planning, regional and social dialects, familylects and idiolects, bilingualism, multilingualism and code switching and rules of discourse in different settings.

This course develops the view that a linguistic fact can usually be described in more than one way. To this end, a broad outline of various topics in English grammar – within phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics – will be given and the basic linguistic terminology will be introduced. The relevant linguistic facts will then be analyzed in considerable detail from various theoretical perspectives, illustrating how particular theories account for them.

Why are we terrified and fascinated by monsters? Why do they disgust us and at the same time excite our desire? What does monstrosity as the ultimate form of otherness teach us about human identity and society? How do cultural ideas about race, gender, sexuality, nationhood, and class spawn our notions of monstrosity? In this course we will grapple with these questions by looking at a sampling of grotesque, transgressive, hybridized, disfigured, and otherwise hideous forms of being in Middle English literature: monstrous races, werewolves, ghosts, giants, demons, gods, and fantastic beasts. We will read widely across genres, including chivalric romance, travel writing, fables, hagiography, religious texts, lyric poetry and more. Critical readings will be drawn from a variety of perspectives (deconstruction, post-humanism, psychoanalysis, gender criticism, ecocritical theory) to reflect the complex and multidisciplinary nature of the topic.

Following up on The British Historical Novel 1764-1950, this course (though also independent of the previous course) traces the development of the British historical novel from the latter part of the 20th century to the present day. It explores the way that history has been used by writers of the period across a variety of genres. Critical theory by historians and cultural theorists is also looked at in some detail, where relevant.

The course will look in depth at English teaching methods and principles aimed at young learners. Topics include characteristics of young learners, National Curriculum objectives, and teaching and assessment methods, especially those related to listening, speaking, reading, writing, games, songs and creative activities. Students will receive training in lesson planning and integrating English teaching with other subjects.
Course work consists of reading, oral and written assignments, discussions, group work and active participation. The course includes a teaching practice component at primary or middle school levels consisting of classroom observation, practice teaching and a written report. Student teachers will gain experience in creating lessons and activities that take into account young children’s needs and abilities. Students who are exempt from teaching practice (e.g. BA students) will complete an alternative assignment.

Optional course for students of the Faculty of Languages and Cultures, in their 2nd or 3rd year of the BA-programme. The students read and study a well-known play that has been translated into several languages. The students will read the text in the target language. The students choose scenes from the play for the production.

Teachers from the target languages will assist the students with pronunciation.

Maximum number of students in this course is 15.

This course is a beginner’s course in Latin. No prior knowledge of Latin is assumed at the outset. It introduces the basics of Latin grammar and syntax. Chosen passages will be read in Latin, translated and thoroughly analysed. Teaching consists of 24 lectures on particular aspects of the Latin language and assigned readings.

This course is taught in Icelandic but students can get permission of the instructor to complete assignments and exams in English.

This course is a beginner’s course in Ancient Greek. It introduces the basics of grammar and syntax of the Attic dialect. No prior knowledge of Greek is assumed at the outset. Reading knowledge of Ancient Greek will be prioritized and chosen passages will be read in Greek, translated and thoroughly analysed. Teaching consists of both lectures on particular aspects of the Greek language and assigned readings. It is essential that students read the assigned materials before each lecture.

This course is taught in Icelandic but students can get permission of the instructor to complete assignments and exams in English.

Language can be considered a powerful tool for conveying culture and the classroom can be considered a critical social space that both shapes and influences the attitudes, values, and learning processes of teachers and students. Primary goals of multicultural education are to:

• foster human rights, promote social justice, and support educational equity
• acknowledge the value of cultural diversity and use it as a tool to support learning
• enhance respect for cultural differences (linguistic, ethnic, spiritual, gender and sexual orientation, socio-economic, etc.) and promote understanding of varying life choices and life experiences

The course includes 3 credits of practice teaching. Students receive practice in lesson planning and use of a variety of activities and materials which take into account students’ diverse needs and backgrounds. Students who are exempt from teaching practice (for example BA students) will do alternative assignments.

The students will develop competencies in the methodology of teaching English to students at lower secondary level based on the objectives of the National Curriculum for English. They will get practice in lesson planning, use of a variety of activities and materials, such as literature and film, and lesson evaluation. The course includes 3 credits of practice teaching. Students who are exempt from teaching practice (for example BA students) will do alternative assignments.

The course is an introductory course in the Faculty of Languages and Cultures. Its aims and purpose include an introduction of basic concepts and terminology in the field, exploration of critical thinking to increase reading comprehension of academic texts, implementation of practical learning practices and academic procedures to facilitate successful academic studies, discussion on plagiarism and academic integrity, evaluation of academic standards, etc. Students receive practical training in critical evaluation of academic texts, basic argumentation analysis, identification of rhetorical patterns and text structure in various text types, review of acceptable references, and an introduction to analytical reading. Furthermore, students will gain insight into the importance of academic literacy to enhance understanding and writing of academic papers, presentation of research findings, etc.

The course is taught in English and is intended for students in:

1. The English BA program.
2.  Students of foreign languages (other than English)

 *Those students that need ECT credits as a result of changes in the MOM courses, as MOM102G used to be a 5-credit course, need to add an individual assignment (MOM001G, 1 ECT) within the MOM102G course.

• This individual assignment is only intended for students who finished MOM202G (before the school year 2024-2025) and are now enrolled in MOM102G, and have thus only gained 9 credits in the two mandatory MOM courses.
• Students who intend to increase their credits with a 6 ECT course, within their departments, are free to do so – and do thus not take this additional individual assignment (in MOM102G).

To sign up for the individual project you must talk to the teacher of MOM102G.

This course is the first of two introductory courses in linguistics.  It addresses such questions as: what kinds of sounds do humans make when using spoken language? How are those sounds organised within the sound system of a language? What is a word? If a sign is a combination of a form with a meaning, are words linguistic signs? Where do words come from? How are words put together?

The focus of the course is on English, though other languages will be discussed as relevant.

This course offers a survey of important domains of linguistics, especially those which emphasise the relation of human language to man in a broader context: sociolinguistics, dialect variation, first language acquisition, second language acquisition, language and the brain, historical comparative linguistics, and animal communication.  The focus of the course is on English and the course introduces students of English to areas of linguistics that they can explore in more detail later in their studies.

The aim of this course is to give students a good overview of the social and political backgrounds to Great Britain. In the process of doing that we will examine patterns of British culture, political and social institutions and ethnic minority groups. Assessment: a 2 hour final exam.

This is a survey course of British Literature from the beginnings of Romanticism to the early twentieth century. The required reading includes some poetry, a play, short stories, novellas, and a novel. Students will read and analyze works by major Romantics (including Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and Keats), Victorians (Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Gaskell, and Wilde) and modern authors (Yeats and Joyce). They will also be introduced to various literary terms and themes.

In a world increasingly awash in fake news, AI-generated deep fakes and denialism of scientific and historical facts, our ability to interpret politics, culture and society with critical discernment is more important than ever. 

Focusing on culture and linguistics, this course aims to give you the analytical tools you need as a student and citizen to critically interpret texts, visual culture and language. 

You will train your hermeneutical skills on short narratives, photographs and various characteristics of language, with help from selected readings in literary theory, cultural studies, visual culture(s) and linguistics. 

The emphasis in the class will be on critical thinking and group discussion,  allowing you to share your analytical discoveries with your fellow students and build interpretative communities.

Modules:

1. Deciphering texts
2. Understanding visual cultures
3. Figuring out language

An overview of the history and development of the English language.

This course is the second of two introductory courses in linguistics. It addresses such questions as: how are words put together to form sentences? how is the form of words affected by their place in a sentence? what other kinds of grammatical information influence the shape and use of words in a sentence? how are sentences related to each other? how can sentences be combined to form larger sentences? how do separate sentences relate to each other when strung together? what do words mean? what do sentences mean? what is discourse meaning?

The focus of the course is on English, though other languages will be discussed as relevant.

The ability to write well in English is a prerequisite for all other courses in the English department. The main aim of this course is to equip students to write in English for academic purposes. Course work will involve writing practice and composing essays based on primary and secondary research. There will be a strong emphasis on the organization of ideas as well as on style. The main goal is for students to gain an understanding of the writing process and develop their own voice in writing.

• This course aims at revisiting decisive moments of the history of the United States of America, from the early settlement to the present.
• Particular attention will be dedicated to the events surrounding the Independence of the country, the American Civil War and ensuing Reconstruction, as well as offering a broad overview of the 20^th and early 21^st centuries.
• There will also be an emphasis on the experiences of minorities and disenfranchised collectives (Native Americans, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans, the LGBTQ community, as well as the rights of women) in the history of the United States, from the settlement to present.

Authors representative of American Literature are read in historical context.

“Literature and Essay Writing” will expose students to exemplary texts in English across a range of historical periods and genres. It will prompt students to engage in imaginative and critical dialogues with works of literature  foregrounding close reading skills, poetic and critical thinking, scholarly and creative journaling, and analytical and research essay writing skills. The course is designed to increase proficiency in the generation and organization of ideas, in editing and research skills, and in the use of the MLA style of citation.

This course will expand student's capacity to enjoy, understand and write about language and linguistics. The aim of the module is to develop students' proficiency in process writing in English for academic purposes, with special attention given to increasing proficiency in organization, writing and revising, and on students developing their own voice in expository writing. Course work will include writing assignments and essays, as well as reading a variety of texts for critical reflection and analysis. Individual and peer feedback will be a major feature of this module. The course is also designed to strengthen skills in research and the use of APA style.

This course provides an introduction to the major principles of contemporary literary theory and criticism and to established methods and materials of literary research. Major theories include, structuralism, feminism, Queer Theory, postmodernism, marxism, post-colonial criticism, posthumanism, and eco-criticism. The objective of the course is to help you to develop your skills as a reader and critic.

Midterm Exam information:  
Midterm essay  of 1000-1,500 words. 35 percent (home assignment, file upload)

Final exams:
Exam (theory-focused) 25 percent (short answer questions onsite with inspera) 
Final Essay 40 percent (home assignment, file upload)

This course provides a survey of some of the best known and most influential literary texts in English from the early Middle Ages (Old English period) to the end of the Elizabethan era.

IMPORTANT: This course is the first half of ENS303G British Literature II (which has now been split into two separate courses, one for each term of the academic year). Students who have completed ENS303G are not eligible to take this course.

Disney has been a predominant force in media for exactly a century, profiting billions, manufacturing children’s dreams, and inspiring praise and condemnation alike in academics and audiences around the globe. Its creation and adaptation of children’s media is particularly significant for the way both children and adult audiences perceive and experience classic fairytales and folk tales.  By studying a number of Disney adaptations, such as Princess and the Frog (2009), Brave (2012), Frozen (2013), Moana (2016) and Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) the students will explore how Disney has managed to stay on top of the children’s media production, adapting to the ever-changing market demands by adapting timeless stories for the 21^st century audience.

A study of the English poetry of the seventeenth century (1603-1679). The period from the accession of James I through the Restoration witnessed multiple political, religious, scientific, and cultural revolutions. But it also produced some of the most formally, intellectually, and aesthetically innovative and challenging poetry in the English language. In this course we will closely read and vigorously debate erotic, philosophical, political, devotional, ecological, scientific, and elegiac poems by major authors (Jonson, Donne, Herbert, Carew, Lovelace, Herrick, Vaughn, Milton, Marvell, Cowley, Crashaw, Philips, Cavendish etc.). Our focus will be on how seventeenth-century poetry grapples with and responds to the trenchant questions of the age—ideas of political engagement, the place of God in the cosmic order, the new science, the new philosophical idea of mind and body, the rise of capitalism, professionalization of writing, changing attitudes to sexuality, the influence of classical learning etc.—by developing radical forms of material presence, language, imagery, lyric selfhood, and audience engagement, interrogating and reshaping the boundaries of lyric thinking.

“Angels in America" is a seminal work in American theatre. While beautifully written and telling a wonderful and intricate story, the play also serves as an excellent jumping off point to discuss American life and culture in the eighties and early nineties. The AIDS crisis, queer existence, The Cold War, Reaganism, the burgeoning climate crisis, faith and religion, all these are referenced within this masterful work. This course seeks to describe a point in time as it presented in this play, supplying students with a firm grasp of the politics of the past, and the influence they have on the future.

This course advances the student’s knowledge of the central areas of English meaning-carrying units in grammar: phonology, morphology, syntax and pragmatics. The most important aspects of these domains are covered, always with an eye to their semantics. Particular emphasis will be placed on different models of grammar and to socio-linguistic and historical variation, both within different varieties of British English and between British and American English. Aspects relevant to foreign language teaching receive particular attention.

The course introduces students to the development of the British historical novel up to the middle of the 20th century. Its origins will be traced back to what is seen as the first Gothic novel as well as examining in some detail Walter Scott’s Waverley, which generally is referred to as the first historical novel. The course then outlines the development of the historical novel up to the middle of the 20th century and students read selected texts from this time period. Within this framework, the course explores the way that history has been used by writers across a variety of genres, such as romance and adventure, and looks at relevant theories by both historians and cultural theorists.

This course aims to introduce students to the varied and rich world of science fiction, a genre that both incorporates and shapes cultural and cosmological inscriptions of space, the future, extraterrestrial worlds, and the possibilities of intergalactic travel. Our readings will include classic as well as obscure works of science fiction, with the goal of tracking developments in the genre over the past 100 years. So too, we will explore landmark science fiction films, paying attention to aesthetic and formal differences between visual media and prose. The course will consider works that cross cultural and national boundaries, but it will also interrogate how such works engage with contemporary sociopolitical concerns. Finally, we will situate works of science fiction in the context of ongoing developments in contemporary cosmology, a field that has undergone exponential growth over the past several decades.

A historical overview of principles, methods, and best practices of English language teaching. Introduction to the national curriculum of English, teaching materials, and resources. Focus on student-centered teaching, learner autonomy, teacher reflection, and developing a philosophy of teaching.

The National Curriculum Guide will be read and analyzed. Students will have an opportunity to observe and evaluate recorded teaching and they will practice reflecting on their own ideas about teaching and experience of language learning. 

Course work demands active participation and consists of reading, written assignments, discussion, group and individual work, and microteaching.

This course  draws on seminal and current research about effective teaching and learning of English as a foreign language.  Students will come to understand important theories that underpin EFL learning and second language acquisition, especially as it concerns teaching the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing). This is accomplished by considering relevant concepts related to language acquisition, learner autonomy, and language assessment in a self- reflective and analytical way. Essentially, this course examines the why behind language teaching through student‐led and teacher-supported seminars. It culminates in a research project considering how to practically apply this knowledge to EFL teaching in a way that benefits both teachers and learners.

Course work demands active participation and consists of reading, lectures, face-to-face and online discussions, student-driven presentations and a research project.

This course offers a unique perspective on syntax, drawing parallels between linguistic structures and phenomena such as bird flocking, the spread of information in social networks, and neural network dynamics. We will examine how language, like these systems, exhibits intricate, dynamic, and often non-linear properties. Throughout the semester, we will cover a variety of topics. These include the concept of recursion in syntax, drawing an analogy to iterative processes in complex systems, where simple rules can generate diverse and intricate patterns. We will explore the concept of phases in Minimalism, which is reminiscent of modularity in complex systems, where different stages entail specific processes or transformations. We will also examine derivational approaches to syntax, which emphasize a step-wise construction of sentences that mirrors processes in complex systems.

This course provides a survey of some of the best known and most influential poetry and prose in English from the early 17^th to the late 18^th century.

Long before contemporary analyses of human-induced environmental degradation, Indigenous and feminist authors wrote stories that resisted hierarchies of the human over other lifeworlds. This course will use the themes, "feminism" and "environment" to study the works of women writers such as Leslie Marmon Silko, bell hooks, Willa Cather, Maria Lugones and Muriel Rukeyser whose writings deepen and problematize both terms. 

Together we will ask, how have colonial histories impacted which authors are seen as "environmental" or "feminist"?  How does environmental protection materialize in the works of these authors? Further, what does environmental literature mean and how could debates in feminist theory help us answer such questions?

A favourite author of and inspiration to Jane Austen and keeper of the robes to Queen Charlotte, Frances Burney (1752-1840) was an eighteenth-century English novelist and playwright who is also known as Fanny Burney. Burney lived in France during the Napoleonic Wars and her French husband Alexander D’Arblay had supported the French Revolution, a political theme covered in her novel The Wanderer. Her novel Camilla (1796), sold as a subscription, earned her an incredibly large sum that enabled her to buy a house for her family. Throughout her life, Burney kept journals that serve as a record of her time in the eighteenth-century court, eighteenth-century artistic and intellectual high society, and of her time in France. Burney’s work engages with issues of class, inheritance, charity, and political struggles in France and Britain. We will read Burney’s novels and extracts from her letters and diaries. This course will cover the social, political, economic, and protofeminist commentary in Burney’s work, her narrative style, details of her life, and her influence on other novelists, such as Austen.

This course aims to introduce students to variety of English dialects spoken worldwide. The main emphasis will be on the variety of dialects spoken in Kachru‘s inner circle countries, such as England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Furthermore, students will be introduced to outer circle varieties, and expanding circle varieties, including Icelandic-accented English. In addition to introducing students to differences in dialect variation, they will also be introduced to common research methods in dialectal research, such as acoustic and auditory analysis.

A study of non-Shakespearean English drama circa 1580-1640. Although our idea of early modern drama is dominated by Shakespeare’s towering presence, a host of other playwrights helped transform the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries into the golden age of English theatre. This course will study a selection of six exciting plays by Shakespeare’s Elizabethan and Jacobean contemporaries, competitors, and sometimes collaborators, such as Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, John Webster, Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Heywood and others. Covering a range of genres (history play, revenge tragedy, domestic tragedy, tragicomedy, city comedy, comedy of humours), these fascinating dramas feature violence, revenge, love, sex, fraud, disguise, cross-dressing, magic and witchcraft, laughter, money and much more. Dark and hilarious in turns, they horrify, amuse, and stimulate our imagination as much as anything Shakespeare ever wrote. As we read these texts, we will be paying particular attention to their engagement of the physical realities of early modern theatre; their political, social, religious, economic, and cultural contexts; their original explorations of the pressing issues of power, gender, sexuality, class, and national identity; and the linguistic, poetic, and dramatic qualities of these plays.  The plays studied may include Marlowe’s Edward II, Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, Jonson’s The Alchemist, Middleton and Dekker’s The Roaring Girl, Middleton and Rowley’s The Changeling, Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness, Beaumont’s The Knight of Burning Pestle, and Ford’s Tis Pity She’s a Whore.

BA essay in English, 10 ECTS.

A formal departmental approval is required for a 20 credit essay (submission of a detailed proposal, a preliminary bibliography and the support of a supervisor, to the Chair of the English Department for voting at the next Department meeting).

The BA essay is no longer a requirement to complete the BA, though it is a requirement for entering the masters programme.

This course offers a general introduction to semantics, which deals with the nature of meaning in language.

This course provides an overview of the study of the interaction of language and society, language contact and language variation. We will examine how the way we speak is influenced by who is speaking to whom about what under what circumstances. We look how identities and cultures are conveyed through language and what the choice of language and registers reveals about language attitudes and how society is structured. We will examine the nature of national languages and language planning, regional and social dialects, familylects and idiolects, bilingualism, multilingualism and code switching and rules of discourse in different settings.

This course develops the view that a linguistic fact can usually be described in more than one way. To this end, a broad outline of various topics in English grammar – within phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics – will be given and the basic linguistic terminology will be introduced. The relevant linguistic facts will then be analyzed in considerable detail from various theoretical perspectives, illustrating how particular theories account for them.

Why are we terrified and fascinated by monsters? Why do they disgust us and at the same time excite our desire? What does monstrosity as the ultimate form of otherness teach us about human identity and society? How do cultural ideas about race, gender, sexuality, nationhood, and class spawn our notions of monstrosity? In this course we will grapple with these questions by looking at a sampling of grotesque, transgressive, hybridized, disfigured, and otherwise hideous forms of being in Middle English literature: monstrous races, werewolves, ghosts, giants, demons, gods, and fantastic beasts. We will read widely across genres, including chivalric romance, travel writing, fables, hagiography, religious texts, lyric poetry and more. Critical readings will be drawn from a variety of perspectives (deconstruction, post-humanism, psychoanalysis, gender criticism, ecocritical theory) to reflect the complex and multidisciplinary nature of the topic.

Following up on The British Historical Novel 1764-1950, this course (though also independent of the previous course) traces the development of the British historical novel from the latter part of the 20th century to the present day. It explores the way that history has been used by writers of the period across a variety of genres. Critical theory by historians and cultural theorists is also looked at in some detail, where relevant.

The course will look in depth at English teaching methods and principles aimed at young learners. Topics include characteristics of young learners, National Curriculum objectives, and teaching and assessment methods, especially those related to listening, speaking, reading, writing, games, songs and creative activities. Students will receive training in lesson planning and integrating English teaching with other subjects.
Course work consists of reading, oral and written assignments, discussions, group work and active participation. The course includes a teaching practice component at primary or middle school levels consisting of classroom observation, practice teaching and a written report. Student teachers will gain experience in creating lessons and activities that take into account young children’s needs and abilities. Students who are exempt from teaching practice (e.g. BA students) will complete an alternative assignment.

Optional course for students of the Faculty of Languages and Cultures, in their 2nd or 3rd year of the BA-programme. The students read and study a well-known play that has been translated into several languages. The students will read the text in the target language. The students choose scenes from the play for the production.

Teachers from the target languages will assist the students with pronunciation.

Maximum number of students in this course is 15.

Disney has been a predominant force in media for exactly a century, profiting billions, manufacturing children’s dreams, and inspiring praise and condemnation alike in academics and audiences around the globe. Its creation and adaptation of children’s media is particularly significant for the way both children and adult audiences perceive and experience classic fairytales and folk tales.  By studying a number of Disney adaptations, such as Princess and the Frog (2009), Brave (2012), Frozen (2013), Moana (2016) and Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) the students will explore how Disney has managed to stay on top of the children’s media production, adapting to the ever-changing market demands by adapting timeless stories for the 21^st century audience.

A study of the English poetry of the seventeenth century (1603-1679). The period from the accession of James I through the Restoration witnessed multiple political, religious, scientific, and cultural revolutions. But it also produced some of the most formally, intellectually, and aesthetically innovative and challenging poetry in the English language. In this course we will closely read and vigorously debate erotic, philosophical, political, devotional, ecological, scientific, and elegiac poems by major authors (Jonson, Donne, Herbert, Carew, Lovelace, Herrick, Vaughn, Milton, Marvell, Cowley, Crashaw, Philips, Cavendish etc.). Our focus will be on how seventeenth-century poetry grapples with and responds to the trenchant questions of the age—ideas of political engagement, the place of God in the cosmic order, the new science, the new philosophical idea of mind and body, the rise of capitalism, professionalization of writing, changing attitudes to sexuality, the influence of classical learning etc.—by developing radical forms of material presence, language, imagery, lyric selfhood, and audience engagement, interrogating and reshaping the boundaries of lyric thinking.

“Angels in America" is a seminal work in American theatre. While beautifully written and telling a wonderful and intricate story, the play also serves as an excellent jumping off point to discuss American life and culture in the eighties and early nineties. The AIDS crisis, queer existence, The Cold War, Reaganism, the burgeoning climate crisis, faith and religion, all these are referenced within this masterful work. This course seeks to describe a point in time as it presented in this play, supplying students with a firm grasp of the politics of the past, and the influence they have on the future.

This course advances the student’s knowledge of the central areas of English meaning-carrying units in grammar: phonology, morphology, syntax and pragmatics. The most important aspects of these domains are covered, always with an eye to their semantics. Particular emphasis will be placed on different models of grammar and to socio-linguistic and historical variation, both within different varieties of British English and between British and American English. Aspects relevant to foreign language teaching receive particular attention.

The course introduces students to the development of the British historical novel up to the middle of the 20th century. Its origins will be traced back to what is seen as the first Gothic novel as well as examining in some detail Walter Scott’s Waverley, which generally is referred to as the first historical novel. The course then outlines the development of the historical novel up to the middle of the 20th century and students read selected texts from this time period. Within this framework, the course explores the way that history has been used by writers across a variety of genres, such as romance and adventure, and looks at relevant theories by both historians and cultural theorists.

This course aims to introduce students to the varied and rich world of science fiction, a genre that both incorporates and shapes cultural and cosmological inscriptions of space, the future, extraterrestrial worlds, and the possibilities of intergalactic travel. Our readings will include classic as well as obscure works of science fiction, with the goal of tracking developments in the genre over the past 100 years. So too, we will explore landmark science fiction films, paying attention to aesthetic and formal differences between visual media and prose. The course will consider works that cross cultural and national boundaries, but it will also interrogate how such works engage with contemporary sociopolitical concerns. Finally, we will situate works of science fiction in the context of ongoing developments in contemporary cosmology, a field that has undergone exponential growth over the past several decades.

A historical overview of principles, methods, and best practices of English language teaching. Introduction to the national curriculum of English, teaching materials, and resources. Focus on student-centered teaching, learner autonomy, teacher reflection, and developing a philosophy of teaching.

The National Curriculum Guide will be read and analyzed. Students will have an opportunity to observe and evaluate recorded teaching and they will practice reflecting on their own ideas about teaching and experience of language learning. 

Course work demands active participation and consists of reading, written assignments, discussion, group and individual work, and microteaching.

This course  draws on seminal and current research about effective teaching and learning of English as a foreign language.  Students will come to understand important theories that underpin EFL learning and second language acquisition, especially as it concerns teaching the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing). This is accomplished by considering relevant concepts related to language acquisition, learner autonomy, and language assessment in a self- reflective and analytical way. Essentially, this course examines the why behind language teaching through student‐led and teacher-supported seminars. It culminates in a research project considering how to practically apply this knowledge to EFL teaching in a way that benefits both teachers and learners.

Course work demands active participation and consists of reading, lectures, face-to-face and online discussions, student-driven presentations and a research project.

This course offers a unique perspective on syntax, drawing parallels between linguistic structures and phenomena such as bird flocking, the spread of information in social networks, and neural network dynamics. We will examine how language, like these systems, exhibits intricate, dynamic, and often non-linear properties. Throughout the semester, we will cover a variety of topics. These include the concept of recursion in syntax, drawing an analogy to iterative processes in complex systems, where simple rules can generate diverse and intricate patterns. We will explore the concept of phases in Minimalism, which is reminiscent of modularity in complex systems, where different stages entail specific processes or transformations. We will also examine derivational approaches to syntax, which emphasize a step-wise construction of sentences that mirrors processes in complex systems.

This course will examine the ways in which medieval literature has influenced modern English Literature & Culture and how that influence is being adapted in the digital age. The course will focus on Norse Mythology and investigate how these narratives have become entwined in the fabric of modern western culture. From JRR Tolkien and Neil Gaiman to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 

The enchanted worlds that Scottish writer J. M. Barrie created for Peter Pan, “the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up,” have been variously transformed by the author and others – not least the Disney Company and translations into most of the world’s languages. In this course we will examine some of the changes that Barrie’s characters and places have undergone through the passage of time through the prism of basic ideas and terms from adaptation theory. This is an intensive 6-week course with continuous assessment.

BA essay. A formal departmental approval is required for a 20 credit essay (submission of a detailed proposal, a preliminary bibliography and the support of a supervisor, to the Chair of the English Department for voting at the next Department meeting).

The BA essay is no longer a requirement to complete the BA, though it is a requirement for entering the masters programme.

This course covers the nature of vocabulary acquisition: how vocabulary develops, is learned and taught. Various factors will be analyzed in detail, including, the role of pronunciation, word frequency, various learning strategies for vocabulary growth and considerable attention will be drawn to current research methodology in Vocabulary Acquisition. Students will review research as well as conduct a mini study.

Taught on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10 am (2. and 3. year students only)

This course is a review and examination of the developing field of ecocriticism in literary studies, and how ecocriticism itself as a way of examining environmental narration and imaginative literature is facing a crisis of its own.

We will look into the notion of “environment” and how literary texts portray and work with environments for narrative purposes.  We will consider environments in a  broadened sense, including not only  the purely physical, but also the digital environment and other non-physical environments such as  light, time, the human psyche and language itself.  How do writers navigate the relationship between narration and environment in its various manifestations.

We are likely to read fiction that allows us to explore the nature of storytelling in the midst of environmental crisis.  These works may include Elif Shafak’s The Island of Missing Trees; Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang; James Bradley’s Clade; as well as Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice; Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk; Memory of Water by Emmi Igtaranta; Oil on Water by Helon Habila; and Bangkok Wakes to Rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad.  We may also read essays in the anthology Solastalgia, edited by Paul Bogard; a collection of short creative works by thirty four writers on our emotions in the face of disappearing worlds.

We may also read some theory and philosophy now being written on the subject as applied to literature; books such as The Crisis of Narration by Byung-Chul Han; Facing Gaia by Bruno Latour; as well as tracts on the environmental crises such as The Darkness Manifesto by Johan Eklöf and A Forest Journey: The Role of Trees in The Fate of Civilization by John Perlin, as well as essays by theorists Donna Haraway and Hito Steyerl. 

The final reading list will be posted later.

What does Sunset Boulevard, double entendres, self-censorship, the Coen Brothers, and #metoo have in common? They all reveal that Hollywood is not quite the fantasy it poses to be.

A very real place and industry within Los Angeles, California, Hollywood has led in film production since the beginning of narrative film, yet its magic is created within the bland and sometimes devastating concrete lots, sound stages and offices of producers and agents.

This course aims to explore the reality of Hollywood and how it has functioned over time, to examine and critique its presentation and reputation through film and media. The course includes critical viewings of films that are based on both the myth and reality of Hollywood as well as critical readings on historical context, news/gossip, and the history of American narrative film.

Only 35 seats are available for ENS352M. Once the course is filled please contact Nikkita (nhp1@hi.is) to be added onto a waiting list in case a spot opens up.

You are the perfect candidate if you have a burning desire to write fiction or poetry, and enjoy reading good books.

Aims include:

1. To sharpen awareness and improve skills through exercises in writing, and especially through revision

2. To provide practical criticism of work-in-progress in a workshop setting, along with advice about revisions and improvisation.

In addition to invoking the muse, students will learn practical writing skills such as organization, structure, characterization and dialogue. The course will also involve the examination of the work of key novel and short story writers, and poets. Throughout the course, students will develop their own work as well as improving their critical skills. Students will complete a short story or a small collection of poems by the end of the course.

Attendance requirement is 100% - you must attend one 1-hour presentation and one 2-hour workshop session per week. Not suitable for distance students.

Students who fulfil the prerequisites will be signed up. Sign up is on first come first served bases and there are 6 seats reserved for MA students and 6 seats reserved for BA students. Any unfilled seats for the course on August 30th will be offered to students on the waiting list. 

Long before contemporary analyses of human-induced environmental degradation, Indigenous and feminist authors wrote stories that resisted hierarchies of the human over other lifeworlds. This course will use the themes, "feminism" and "environment" to study the works of women writers such as Leslie Marmon Silko, bell hooks, Willa Cather, Maria Lugones and Muriel Rukeyser whose writings deepen and problematize both terms. 

Together we will ask, how have colonial histories impacted which authors are seen as "environmental" or "feminist"?  How does environmental protection materialize in the works of these authors? Further, what does environmental literature mean and how could debates in feminist theory help us answer such questions?

A favourite author of and inspiration to Jane Austen and keeper of the robes to Queen Charlotte, Frances Burney (1752-1840) was an eighteenth-century English novelist and playwright who is also known as Fanny Burney. Burney lived in France during the Napoleonic Wars and her French husband Alexander D’Arblay had supported the French Revolution, a political theme covered in her novel The Wanderer. Her novel Camilla (1796), sold as a subscription, earned her an incredibly large sum that enabled her to buy a house for her family. Throughout her life, Burney kept journals that serve as a record of her time in the eighteenth-century court, eighteenth-century artistic and intellectual high society, and of her time in France. Burney’s work engages with issues of class, inheritance, charity, and political struggles in France and Britain. We will read Burney’s novels and extracts from her letters and diaries. This course will cover the social, political, economic, and protofeminist commentary in Burney’s work, her narrative style, details of her life, and her influence on other novelists, such as Austen.

This course aims to introduce students to variety of English dialects spoken worldwide. The main emphasis will be on the variety of dialects spoken in Kachru‘s inner circle countries, such as England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Furthermore, students will be introduced to outer circle varieties, and expanding circle varieties, including Icelandic-accented English. In addition to introducing students to differences in dialect variation, they will also be introduced to common research methods in dialectal research, such as acoustic and auditory analysis.

A study of non-Shakespearean English drama circa 1580-1640. Although our idea of early modern drama is dominated by Shakespeare’s towering presence, a host of other playwrights helped transform the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries into the golden age of English theatre. This course will study a selection of six exciting plays by Shakespeare’s Elizabethan and Jacobean contemporaries, competitors, and sometimes collaborators, such as Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, John Webster, Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Heywood and others. Covering a range of genres (history play, revenge tragedy, domestic tragedy, tragicomedy, city comedy, comedy of humours), these fascinating dramas feature violence, revenge, love, sex, fraud, disguise, cross-dressing, magic and witchcraft, laughter, money and much more. Dark and hilarious in turns, they horrify, amuse, and stimulate our imagination as much as anything Shakespeare ever wrote. As we read these texts, we will be paying particular attention to their engagement of the physical realities of early modern theatre; their political, social, religious, economic, and cultural contexts; their original explorations of the pressing issues of power, gender, sexuality, class, and national identity; and the linguistic, poetic, and dramatic qualities of these plays.  The plays studied may include Marlowe’s Edward II, Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, Jonson’s The Alchemist, Middleton and Dekker’s The Roaring Girl, Middleton and Rowley’s The Changeling, Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness, Beaumont’s The Knight of Burning Pestle, and Ford’s Tis Pity She’s a Whore.

BA essay in English, 10 ECTS.

A formal departmental approval is required for a 20 credit essay (submission of a detailed proposal, a preliminary bibliography and the support of a supervisor, to the Chair of the English Department for voting at the next Department meeting).

The BA essay is no longer a requirement to complete the BA, though it is a requirement for entering the masters programme.

This course offers a general introduction to semantics, which deals with the nature of meaning in language.

This course provides an overview of the study of the interaction of language and society, language contact and language variation. We will examine how the way we speak is influenced by who is speaking to whom about what under what circumstances. We look how identities and cultures are conveyed through language and what the choice of language and registers reveals about language attitudes and how society is structured. We will examine the nature of national languages and language planning, regional and social dialects, familylects and idiolects, bilingualism, multilingualism and code switching and rules of discourse in different settings.

This course develops the view that a linguistic fact can usually be described in more than one way. To this end, a broad outline of various topics in English grammar – within phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics – will be given and the basic linguistic terminology will be introduced. The relevant linguistic facts will then be analyzed in considerable detail from various theoretical perspectives, illustrating how particular theories account for them.

Why are we terrified and fascinated by monsters? Why do they disgust us and at the same time excite our desire? What does monstrosity as the ultimate form of otherness teach us about human identity and society? How do cultural ideas about race, gender, sexuality, nationhood, and class spawn our notions of monstrosity? In this course we will grapple with these questions by looking at a sampling of grotesque, transgressive, hybridized, disfigured, and otherwise hideous forms of being in Middle English literature: monstrous races, werewolves, ghosts, giants, demons, gods, and fantastic beasts. We will read widely across genres, including chivalric romance, travel writing, fables, hagiography, religious texts, lyric poetry and more. Critical readings will be drawn from a variety of perspectives (deconstruction, post-humanism, psychoanalysis, gender criticism, ecocritical theory) to reflect the complex and multidisciplinary nature of the topic.

Following up on The British Historical Novel 1764-1950, this course (though also independent of the previous course) traces the development of the British historical novel from the latter part of the 20th century to the present day. It explores the way that history has been used by writers of the period across a variety of genres. Critical theory by historians and cultural theorists is also looked at in some detail, where relevant.

The course will look in depth at English teaching methods and principles aimed at young learners. Topics include characteristics of young learners, National Curriculum objectives, and teaching and assessment methods, especially those related to listening, speaking, reading, writing, games, songs and creative activities. Students will receive training in lesson planning and integrating English teaching with other subjects.
Course work consists of reading, oral and written assignments, discussions, group work and active participation. The course includes a teaching practice component at primary or middle school levels consisting of classroom observation, practice teaching and a written report. Student teachers will gain experience in creating lessons and activities that take into account young children’s needs and abilities. Students who are exempt from teaching practice (e.g. BA students) will complete an alternative assignment.

Optional course for students of the Faculty of Languages and Cultures, in their 2nd or 3rd year of the BA-programme. The students read and study a well-known play that has been translated into several languages. The students will read the text in the target language. The students choose scenes from the play for the production.

Teachers from the target languages will assist the students with pronunciation.

Maximum number of students in this course is 15.

This course is a beginner’s course in Latin. No prior knowledge of Latin is assumed at the outset. It introduces the basics of Latin grammar and syntax. Chosen passages will be read in Latin, translated and thoroughly analysed. Teaching consists of 24 lectures on particular aspects of the Latin language and assigned readings.

This course is taught in Icelandic but students can get permission of the instructor to complete assignments and exams in English.

This course is a beginner’s course in Ancient Greek. It introduces the basics of grammar and syntax of the Attic dialect. No prior knowledge of Greek is assumed at the outset. Reading knowledge of Ancient Greek will be prioritized and chosen passages will be read in Greek, translated and thoroughly analysed. Teaching consists of both lectures on particular aspects of the Greek language and assigned readings. It is essential that students read the assigned materials before each lecture.

This course is taught in Icelandic but students can get permission of the instructor to complete assignments and exams in English.

Language can be considered a powerful tool for conveying culture and the classroom can be considered a critical social space that both shapes and influences the attitudes, values, and learning processes of teachers and students. Primary goals of multicultural education are to:

• foster human rights, promote social justice, and support educational equity
• acknowledge the value of cultural diversity and use it as a tool to support learning
• enhance respect for cultural differences (linguistic, ethnic, spiritual, gender and sexual orientation, socio-economic, etc.) and promote understanding of varying life choices and life experiences

The course includes 3 credits of practice teaching. Students receive practice in lesson planning and use of a variety of activities and materials which take into account students’ diverse needs and backgrounds. Students who are exempt from teaching practice (for example BA students) will do alternative assignments.

The students will develop competencies in the methodology of teaching English to students at lower secondary level based on the objectives of the National Curriculum for English. They will get practice in lesson planning, use of a variety of activities and materials, such as literature and film, and lesson evaluation. The course includes 3 credits of practice teaching. Students who are exempt from teaching practice (for example BA students) will do alternative assignments.

The course is an introductory course in the Faculty of Languages and Cultures. Its aims and purpose include an introduction of basic concepts and terminology in the field, exploration of critical thinking to increase reading comprehension of academic texts, implementation of practical learning practices and academic procedures to facilitate successful academic studies, discussion on plagiarism and academic integrity, evaluation of academic standards, etc. Students receive practical training in critical evaluation of academic texts, basic argumentation analysis, identification of rhetorical patterns and text structure in various text types, review of acceptable references, and an introduction to analytical reading. Furthermore, students will gain insight into the importance of academic literacy to enhance understanding and writing of academic papers, presentation of research findings, etc.

The course is taught in English and is intended for students in:

1. The English BA program.
2.  Students of foreign languages (other than English)

 *Those students that need ECT credits as a result of changes in the MOM courses, as MOM102G used to be a 5-credit course, need to add an individual assignment (MOM001G, 1 ECT) within the MOM102G course.

• This individual assignment is only intended for students who finished MOM202G (before the school year 2024-2025) and are now enrolled in MOM102G, and have thus only gained 9 credits in the two mandatory MOM courses.
• Students who intend to increase their credits with a 6 ECT course, within their departments, are free to do so – and do thus not take this additional individual assignment (in MOM102G).

To sign up for the individual project you must talk to the teacher of MOM102G.

This course is the first of two introductory courses in linguistics.  It addresses such questions as: what kinds of sounds do humans make when using spoken language? How are those sounds organised within the sound system of a language? What is a word? If a sign is a combination of a form with a meaning, are words linguistic signs? Where do words come from? How are words put together?

The focus of the course is on English, though other languages will be discussed as relevant.

This course offers a survey of important domains of linguistics, especially those which emphasise the relation of human language to man in a broader context: sociolinguistics, dialect variation, first language acquisition, second language acquisition, language and the brain, historical comparative linguistics, and animal communication.  The focus of the course is on English and the course introduces students of English to areas of linguistics that they can explore in more detail later in their studies.

The aim of this course is to give students a good overview of the social and political backgrounds to Great Britain. In the process of doing that we will examine patterns of British culture, political and social institutions and ethnic minority groups. Assessment: a 2 hour final exam.

This is a survey course of British Literature from the beginnings of Romanticism to the early twentieth century. The required reading includes some poetry, a play, short stories, novellas, and a novel. Students will read and analyze works by major Romantics (including Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and Keats), Victorians (Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Gaskell, and Wilde) and modern authors (Yeats and Joyce). They will also be introduced to various literary terms and themes.

In a world increasingly awash in fake news, AI-generated deep fakes and denialism of scientific and historical facts, our ability to interpret politics, culture and society with critical discernment is more important than ever. 

Focusing on culture and linguistics, this course aims to give you the analytical tools you need as a student and citizen to critically interpret texts, visual culture and language. 

You will train your hermeneutical skills on short narratives, photographs and various characteristics of language, with help from selected readings in literary theory, cultural studies, visual culture(s) and linguistics. 

The emphasis in the class will be on critical thinking and group discussion,  allowing you to share your analytical discoveries with your fellow students and build interpretative communities.

Modules:

1. Deciphering texts
2. Understanding visual cultures
3. Figuring out language

An overview of the history and development of the English language.

This course is the second of two introductory courses in linguistics. It addresses such questions as: how are words put together to form sentences? how is the form of words affected by their place in a sentence? what other kinds of grammatical information influence the shape and use of words in a sentence? how are sentences related to each other? how can sentences be combined to form larger sentences? how do separate sentences relate to each other when strung together? what do words mean? what do sentences mean? what is discourse meaning?

The focus of the course is on English, though other languages will be discussed as relevant.

The ability to write well in English is a prerequisite for all other courses in the English department. The main aim of this course is to equip students to write in English for academic purposes. Course work will involve writing practice and composing essays based on primary and secondary research. There will be a strong emphasis on the organization of ideas as well as on style. The main goal is for students to gain an understanding of the writing process and develop their own voice in writing.

• This course aims at revisiting decisive moments of the history of the United States of America, from the early settlement to the present.
• Particular attention will be dedicated to the events surrounding the Independence of the country, the American Civil War and ensuing Reconstruction, as well as offering a broad overview of the 20^th and early 21^st centuries.
• There will also be an emphasis on the experiences of minorities and disenfranchised collectives (Native Americans, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans, the LGBTQ community, as well as the rights of women) in the history of the United States, from the settlement to present.

Authors representative of American Literature are read in historical context.

“Literature and Essay Writing” will expose students to exemplary texts in English across a range of historical periods and genres. It will prompt students to engage in imaginative and critical dialogues with works of literature  foregrounding close reading skills, poetic and critical thinking, scholarly and creative journaling, and analytical and research essay writing skills. The course is designed to increase proficiency in the generation and organization of ideas, in editing and research skills, and in the use of the MLA style of citation.

This course will expand student's capacity to enjoy, understand and write about language and linguistics. The aim of the module is to develop students' proficiency in process writing in English for academic purposes, with special attention given to increasing proficiency in organization, writing and revising, and on students developing their own voice in expository writing. Course work will include writing assignments and essays, as well as reading a variety of texts for critical reflection and analysis. Individual and peer feedback will be a major feature of this module. The course is also designed to strengthen skills in research and the use of APA style.

This course provides an introduction to the major principles of contemporary literary theory and criticism and to established methods and materials of literary research. Major theories include, structuralism, feminism, Queer Theory, postmodernism, marxism, post-colonial criticism, posthumanism, and eco-criticism. The objective of the course is to help you to develop your skills as a reader and critic.

Midterm Exam information:  
Midterm essay  of 1000-1,500 words. 35 percent (home assignment, file upload)

Final exams:
Exam (theory-focused) 25 percent (short answer questions onsite with inspera) 
Final Essay 40 percent (home assignment, file upload)

This course provides a survey of some of the best known and most influential literary texts in English from the early Middle Ages (Old English period) to the end of the Elizabethan era.

IMPORTANT: This course is the first half of ENS303G British Literature II (which has now been split into two separate courses, one for each term of the academic year). Students who have completed ENS303G are not eligible to take this course.

Disney has been a predominant force in media for exactly a century, profiting billions, manufacturing children’s dreams, and inspiring praise and condemnation alike in academics and audiences around the globe. Its creation and adaptation of children’s media is particularly significant for the way both children and adult audiences perceive and experience classic fairytales and folk tales.  By studying a number of Disney adaptations, such as Princess and the Frog (2009), Brave (2012), Frozen (2013), Moana (2016) and Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) the students will explore how Disney has managed to stay on top of the children’s media production, adapting to the ever-changing market demands by adapting timeless stories for the 21^st century audience.

A study of the English poetry of the seventeenth century (1603-1679). The period from the accession of James I through the Restoration witnessed multiple political, religious, scientific, and cultural revolutions. But it also produced some of the most formally, intellectually, and aesthetically innovative and challenging poetry in the English language. In this course we will closely read and vigorously debate erotic, philosophical, political, devotional, ecological, scientific, and elegiac poems by major authors (Jonson, Donne, Herbert, Carew, Lovelace, Herrick, Vaughn, Milton, Marvell, Cowley, Crashaw, Philips, Cavendish etc.). Our focus will be on how seventeenth-century poetry grapples with and responds to the trenchant questions of the age—ideas of political engagement, the place of God in the cosmic order, the new science, the new philosophical idea of mind and body, the rise of capitalism, professionalization of writing, changing attitudes to sexuality, the influence of classical learning etc.—by developing radical forms of material presence, language, imagery, lyric selfhood, and audience engagement, interrogating and reshaping the boundaries of lyric thinking.

“Angels in America" is a seminal work in American theatre. While beautifully written and telling a wonderful and intricate story, the play also serves as an excellent jumping off point to discuss American life and culture in the eighties and early nineties. The AIDS crisis, queer existence, The Cold War, Reaganism, the burgeoning climate crisis, faith and religion, all these are referenced within this masterful work. This course seeks to describe a point in time as it presented in this play, supplying students with a firm grasp of the politics of the past, and the influence they have on the future.

This course advances the student’s knowledge of the central areas of English meaning-carrying units in grammar: phonology, morphology, syntax and pragmatics. The most important aspects of these domains are covered, always with an eye to their semantics. Particular emphasis will be placed on different models of grammar and to socio-linguistic and historical variation, both within different varieties of British English and between British and American English. Aspects relevant to foreign language teaching receive particular attention.

The course introduces students to the development of the British historical novel up to the middle of the 20th century. Its origins will be traced back to what is seen as the first Gothic novel as well as examining in some detail Walter Scott’s Waverley, which generally is referred to as the first historical novel. The course then outlines the development of the historical novel up to the middle of the 20th century and students read selected texts from this time period. Within this framework, the course explores the way that history has been used by writers across a variety of genres, such as romance and adventure, and looks at relevant theories by both historians and cultural theorists.

This course aims to introduce students to the varied and rich world of science fiction, a genre that both incorporates and shapes cultural and cosmological inscriptions of space, the future, extraterrestrial worlds, and the possibilities of intergalactic travel. Our readings will include classic as well as obscure works of science fiction, with the goal of tracking developments in the genre over the past 100 years. So too, we will explore landmark science fiction films, paying attention to aesthetic and formal differences between visual media and prose. The course will consider works that cross cultural and national boundaries, but it will also interrogate how such works engage with contemporary sociopolitical concerns. Finally, we will situate works of science fiction in the context of ongoing developments in contemporary cosmology, a field that has undergone exponential growth over the past several decades.

A historical overview of principles, methods, and best practices of English language teaching. Introduction to the national curriculum of English, teaching materials, and resources. Focus on student-centered teaching, learner autonomy, teacher reflection, and developing a philosophy of teaching.

The National Curriculum Guide will be read and analyzed. Students will have an opportunity to observe and evaluate recorded teaching and they will practice reflecting on their own ideas about teaching and experience of language learning. 

Course work demands active participation and consists of reading, written assignments, discussion, group and individual work, and microteaching.

This course  draws on seminal and current research about effective teaching and learning of English as a foreign language.  Students will come to understand important theories that underpin EFL learning and second language acquisition, especially as it concerns teaching the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing). This is accomplished by considering relevant concepts related to language acquisition, learner autonomy, and language assessment in a self- reflective and analytical way. Essentially, this course examines the why behind language teaching through student‐led and teacher-supported seminars. It culminates in a research project considering how to practically apply this knowledge to EFL teaching in a way that benefits both teachers and learners.

Course work demands active participation and consists of reading, lectures, face-to-face and online discussions, student-driven presentations and a research project.

This course offers a unique perspective on syntax, drawing parallels between linguistic structures and phenomena such as bird flocking, the spread of information in social networks, and neural network dynamics. We will examine how language, like these systems, exhibits intricate, dynamic, and often non-linear properties. Throughout the semester, we will cover a variety of topics. These include the concept of recursion in syntax, drawing an analogy to iterative processes in complex systems, where simple rules can generate diverse and intricate patterns. We will explore the concept of phases in Minimalism, which is reminiscent of modularity in complex systems, where different stages entail specific processes or transformations. We will also examine derivational approaches to syntax, which emphasize a step-wise construction of sentences that mirrors processes in complex systems.

This course provides a survey of some of the best known and most influential poetry and prose in English from the early 17^th to the late 18^th century.

Long before contemporary analyses of human-induced environmental degradation, Indigenous and feminist authors wrote stories that resisted hierarchies of the human over other lifeworlds. This course will use the themes, "feminism" and "environment" to study the works of women writers such as Leslie Marmon Silko, bell hooks, Willa Cather, Maria Lugones and Muriel Rukeyser whose writings deepen and problematize both terms. 

Together we will ask, how have colonial histories impacted which authors are seen as "environmental" or "feminist"?  How does environmental protection materialize in the works of these authors? Further, what does environmental literature mean and how could debates in feminist theory help us answer such questions?

A favourite author of and inspiration to Jane Austen and keeper of the robes to Queen Charlotte, Frances Burney (1752-1840) was an eighteenth-century English novelist and playwright who is also known as Fanny Burney. Burney lived in France during the Napoleonic Wars and her French husband Alexander D’Arblay had supported the French Revolution, a political theme covered in her novel The Wanderer. Her novel Camilla (1796), sold as a subscription, earned her an incredibly large sum that enabled her to buy a house for her family. Throughout her life, Burney kept journals that serve as a record of her time in the eighteenth-century court, eighteenth-century artistic and intellectual high society, and of her time in France. Burney’s work engages with issues of class, inheritance, charity, and political struggles in France and Britain. We will read Burney’s novels and extracts from her letters and diaries. This course will cover the social, political, economic, and protofeminist commentary in Burney’s work, her narrative style, details of her life, and her influence on other novelists, such as Austen.

This course aims to introduce students to variety of English dialects spoken worldwide. The main emphasis will be on the variety of dialects spoken in Kachru‘s inner circle countries, such as England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Furthermore, students will be introduced to outer circle varieties, and expanding circle varieties, including Icelandic-accented English. In addition to introducing students to differences in dialect variation, they will also be introduced to common research methods in dialectal research, such as acoustic and auditory analysis.

A study of non-Shakespearean English drama circa 1580-1640. Although our idea of early modern drama is dominated by Shakespeare’s towering presence, a host of other playwrights helped transform the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries into the golden age of English theatre. This course will study a selection of six exciting plays by Shakespeare’s Elizabethan and Jacobean contemporaries, competitors, and sometimes collaborators, such as Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, John Webster, Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Heywood and others. Covering a range of genres (history play, revenge tragedy, domestic tragedy, tragicomedy, city comedy, comedy of humours), these fascinating dramas feature violence, revenge, love, sex, fraud, disguise, cross-dressing, magic and witchcraft, laughter, money and much more. Dark and hilarious in turns, they horrify, amuse, and stimulate our imagination as much as anything Shakespeare ever wrote. As we read these texts, we will be paying particular attention to their engagement of the physical realities of early modern theatre; their political, social, religious, economic, and cultural contexts; their original explorations of the pressing issues of power, gender, sexuality, class, and national identity; and the linguistic, poetic, and dramatic qualities of these plays.  The plays studied may include Marlowe’s Edward II, Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, Jonson’s The Alchemist, Middleton and Dekker’s The Roaring Girl, Middleton and Rowley’s The Changeling, Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness, Beaumont’s The Knight of Burning Pestle, and Ford’s Tis Pity She’s a Whore.

BA essay in English, 10 ECTS.

A formal departmental approval is required for a 20 credit essay (submission of a detailed proposal, a preliminary bibliography and the support of a supervisor, to the Chair of the English Department for voting at the next Department meeting).

The BA essay is no longer a requirement to complete the BA, though it is a requirement for entering the masters programme.

This course offers a general introduction to semantics, which deals with the nature of meaning in language.

This course provides an overview of the study of the interaction of language and society, language contact and language variation. We will examine how the way we speak is influenced by who is speaking to whom about what under what circumstances. We look how identities and cultures are conveyed through language and what the choice of language and registers reveals about language attitudes and how society is structured. We will examine the nature of national languages and language planning, regional and social dialects, familylects and idiolects, bilingualism, multilingualism and code switching and rules of discourse in different settings.

This course develops the view that a linguistic fact can usually be described in more than one way. To this end, a broad outline of various topics in English grammar – within phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics – will be given and the basic linguistic terminology will be introduced. The relevant linguistic facts will then be analyzed in considerable detail from various theoretical perspectives, illustrating how particular theories account for them.

Why are we terrified and fascinated by monsters? Why do they disgust us and at the same time excite our desire? What does monstrosity as the ultimate form of otherness teach us about human identity and society? How do cultural ideas about race, gender, sexuality, nationhood, and class spawn our notions of monstrosity? In this course we will grapple with these questions by looking at a sampling of grotesque, transgressive, hybridized, disfigured, and otherwise hideous forms of being in Middle English literature: monstrous races, werewolves, ghosts, giants, demons, gods, and fantastic beasts. We will read widely across genres, including chivalric romance, travel writing, fables, hagiography, religious texts, lyric poetry and more. Critical readings will be drawn from a variety of perspectives (deconstruction, post-humanism, psychoanalysis, gender criticism, ecocritical theory) to reflect the complex and multidisciplinary nature of the topic.

Following up on The British Historical Novel 1764-1950, this course (though also independent of the previous course) traces the development of the British historical novel from the latter part of the 20th century to the present day. It explores the way that history has been used by writers of the period across a variety of genres. Critical theory by historians and cultural theorists is also looked at in some detail, where relevant.

The course will look in depth at English teaching methods and principles aimed at young learners. Topics include characteristics of young learners, National Curriculum objectives, and teaching and assessment methods, especially those related to listening, speaking, reading, writing, games, songs and creative activities. Students will receive training in lesson planning and integrating English teaching with other subjects.
Course work consists of reading, oral and written assignments, discussions, group work and active participation. The course includes a teaching practice component at primary or middle school levels consisting of classroom observation, practice teaching and a written report. Student teachers will gain experience in creating lessons and activities that take into account young children’s needs and abilities. Students who are exempt from teaching practice (e.g. BA students) will complete an alternative assignment.

Optional course for students of the Faculty of Languages and Cultures, in their 2nd or 3rd year of the BA-programme. The students read and study a well-known play that has been translated into several languages. The students will read the text in the target language. The students choose scenes from the play for the production.

Teachers from the target languages will assist the students with pronunciation.

Maximum number of students in this course is 15.

Disney has been a predominant force in media for exactly a century, profiting billions, manufacturing children’s dreams, and inspiring praise and condemnation alike in academics and audiences around the globe. Its creation and adaptation of children’s media is particularly significant for the way both children and adult audiences perceive and experience classic fairytales and folk tales.  By studying a number of Disney adaptations, such as Princess and the Frog (2009), Brave (2012), Frozen (2013), Moana (2016) and Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) the students will explore how Disney has managed to stay on top of the children’s media production, adapting to the ever-changing market demands by adapting timeless stories for the 21^st century audience.

A study of the English poetry of the seventeenth century (1603-1679). The period from the accession of James I through the Restoration witnessed multiple political, religious, scientific, and cultural revolutions. But it also produced some of the most formally, intellectually, and aesthetically innovative and challenging poetry in the English language. In this course we will closely read and vigorously debate erotic, philosophical, political, devotional, ecological, scientific, and elegiac poems by major authors (Jonson, Donne, Herbert, Carew, Lovelace, Herrick, Vaughn, Milton, Marvell, Cowley, Crashaw, Philips, Cavendish etc.). Our focus will be on how seventeenth-century poetry grapples with and responds to the trenchant questions of the age—ideas of political engagement, the place of God in the cosmic order, the new science, the new philosophical idea of mind and body, the rise of capitalism, professionalization of writing, changing attitudes to sexuality, the influence of classical learning etc.—by developing radical forms of material presence, language, imagery, lyric selfhood, and audience engagement, interrogating and reshaping the boundaries of lyric thinking.

“Angels in America" is a seminal work in American theatre. While beautifully written and telling a wonderful and intricate story, the play also serves as an excellent jumping off point to discuss American life and culture in the eighties and early nineties. The AIDS crisis, queer existence, The Cold War, Reaganism, the burgeoning climate crisis, faith and religion, all these are referenced within this masterful work. This course seeks to describe a point in time as it presented in this play, supplying students with a firm grasp of the politics of the past, and the influence they have on the future.

This course advances the student’s knowledge of the central areas of English meaning-carrying units in grammar: phonology, morphology, syntax and pragmatics. The most important aspects of these domains are covered, always with an eye to their semantics. Particular emphasis will be placed on different models of grammar and to socio-linguistic and historical variation, both within different varieties of British English and between British and American English. Aspects relevant to foreign language teaching receive particular attention.

The course introduces students to the development of the British historical novel up to the middle of the 20th century. Its origins will be traced back to what is seen as the first Gothic novel as well as examining in some detail Walter Scott’s Waverley, which generally is referred to as the first historical novel. The course then outlines the development of the historical novel up to the middle of the 20th century and students read selected texts from this time period. Within this framework, the course explores the way that history has been used by writers across a variety of genres, such as romance and adventure, and looks at relevant theories by both historians and cultural theorists.

This course aims to introduce students to the varied and rich world of science fiction, a genre that both incorporates and shapes cultural and cosmological inscriptions of space, the future, extraterrestrial worlds, and the possibilities of intergalactic travel. Our readings will include classic as well as obscure works of science fiction, with the goal of tracking developments in the genre over the past 100 years. So too, we will explore landmark science fiction films, paying attention to aesthetic and formal differences between visual media and prose. The course will consider works that cross cultural and national boundaries, but it will also interrogate how such works engage with contemporary sociopolitical concerns. Finally, we will situate works of science fiction in the context of ongoing developments in contemporary cosmology, a field that has undergone exponential growth over the past several decades.

A historical overview of principles, methods, and best practices of English language teaching. Introduction to the national curriculum of English, teaching materials, and resources. Focus on student-centered teaching, learner autonomy, teacher reflection, and developing a philosophy of teaching.

The National Curriculum Guide will be read and analyzed. Students will have an opportunity to observe and evaluate recorded teaching and they will practice reflecting on their own ideas about teaching and experience of language learning. 

Course work demands active participation and consists of reading, written assignments, discussion, group and individual work, and microteaching.

This course  draws on seminal and current research about effective teaching and learning of English as a foreign language.  Students will come to understand important theories that underpin EFL learning and second language acquisition, especially as it concerns teaching the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing). This is accomplished by considering relevant concepts related to language acquisition, learner autonomy, and language assessment in a self- reflective and analytical way. Essentially, this course examines the why behind language teaching through student‐led and teacher-supported seminars. It culminates in a research project considering how to practically apply this knowledge to EFL teaching in a way that benefits both teachers and learners.

Course work demands active participation and consists of reading, lectures, face-to-face and online discussions, student-driven presentations and a research project.

This course offers a unique perspective on syntax, drawing parallels between linguistic structures and phenomena such as bird flocking, the spread of information in social networks, and neural network dynamics. We will examine how language, like these systems, exhibits intricate, dynamic, and often non-linear properties. Throughout the semester, we will cover a variety of topics. These include the concept of recursion in syntax, drawing an analogy to iterative processes in complex systems, where simple rules can generate diverse and intricate patterns. We will explore the concept of phases in Minimalism, which is reminiscent of modularity in complex systems, where different stages entail specific processes or transformations. We will also examine derivational approaches to syntax, which emphasize a step-wise construction of sentences that mirrors processes in complex systems.

This course will examine the ways in which medieval literature has influenced modern English Literature & Culture and how that influence is being adapted in the digital age. The course will focus on Norse Mythology and investigate how these narratives have become entwined in the fabric of modern western culture. From JRR Tolkien and Neil Gaiman to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 

The enchanted worlds that Scottish writer J. M. Barrie created for Peter Pan, “the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up,” have been variously transformed by the author and others – not least the Disney Company and translations into most of the world’s languages. In this course we will examine some of the changes that Barrie’s characters and places have undergone through the passage of time through the prism of basic ideas and terms from adaptation theory. This is an intensive 6-week course with continuous assessment.

BA essay. A formal departmental approval is required for a 20 credit essay (submission of a detailed proposal, a preliminary bibliography and the support of a supervisor, to the Chair of the English Department for voting at the next Department meeting).

The BA essay is no longer a requirement to complete the BA, though it is a requirement for entering the masters programme.

This course covers the nature of vocabulary acquisition: how vocabulary develops, is learned and taught. Various factors will be analyzed in detail, including, the role of pronunciation, word frequency, various learning strategies for vocabulary growth and considerable attention will be drawn to current research methodology in Vocabulary Acquisition. Students will review research as well as conduct a mini study.

Taught on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10 am (2. and 3. year students only)

This course is a review and examination of the developing field of ecocriticism in literary studies, and how ecocriticism itself as a way of examining environmental narration and imaginative literature is facing a crisis of its own.

We will look into the notion of “environment” and how literary texts portray and work with environments for narrative purposes.  We will consider environments in a  broadened sense, including not only  the purely physical, but also the digital environment and other non-physical environments such as  light, time, the human psyche and language itself.  How do writers navigate the relationship between narration and environment in its various manifestations.

We are likely to read fiction that allows us to explore the nature of storytelling in the midst of environmental crisis.  These works may include Elif Shafak’s The Island of Missing Trees; Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang; James Bradley’s Clade; as well as Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice; Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk; Memory of Water by Emmi Igtaranta; Oil on Water by Helon Habila; and Bangkok Wakes to Rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad.  We may also read essays in the anthology Solastalgia, edited by Paul Bogard; a collection of short creative works by thirty four writers on our emotions in the face of disappearing worlds.