All MA students in English are required to complete this seminar where they discuss relevant approaches to theory and research, their own research projects, preparing to introduce their findings at conferences and whorkshops, in Iceland or abroad. Evaluation is by participation: 2 short assignments and a presentation of a paper related to the student's coursework or final essay.

This seminar engages with theories on culture, narrative, and mediation. Active class participation is required.

This course concerns the diverse connections between culture and language, as seen from the perspective of cultural history, social sciences and linguistics. Ancient and modern world languages will be introduced and their origins, influence and effects investigated. Written and spoken language will be discussed: what sorts of things are written, why and how? Rules and alternate perspectives on the nature of language will be considered, raising the question of how we understand man with respect to thought and language.

This is an overview course that introduces major theories of second language acquisition and how they influence language instruction. We will examine research on the cognitive, linguistic, individual, social and educational factors that affect the language learning process and language attainment. The role of input on language learning will be examined as well as the development of reading and writing skills in a second language. 

By 1945, the United States had emerged as the dominant global economic and military power. The American standard of living was the envy of the world and political leaders in the US were never more confident in the ideals and myths of the American system. Yet the twenty years after the war were marked by increasing paranoia, dissension, and divisions within the country. An irrational fear of communist infiltration created a police state atmosphere; civil rights’ movements were met with new forms of intolerance, persecution, and oppression; a counterculture movement challenged the very foundations of US society; and major rifts opened between numerous groups divided on intersectional, regional, and generational lines. From out of the turmoil of these years emerged a new generation of literary voices in America—authors who celebrated the potential of their culture even as they exposed and subverted its failings. This course will explore the interrelationship between the dynamics of postwar American society and literature written during this period.

The fascination with gambling manifested itself in the plots of plays and novels as characters take financial and personal risks, excited by the prospect of a potentially prosperous and beneficial new venture. Susanna Centlivre’s comedies The Gamester (1705) and The Basset Table (1705) dramatize the financial and personal risks of gambling and their consequences. The eighteenth century also witnessed the character of the female gambler held up as an example of vice. We will discuss the association between gambling, lotteries, and other forms of financial risk and how literature represented their impact on the family and on personal relationships in plays and novels, such as  Mary Pix’s The Beau Defeated (1700), Susanna Centlivre’s The Gamester (1705), Henry Fieldng’s The Lottery (1732), Edward Moore’s The Gamester (1753), Frances Brooke's The Excursion (1777), Thomas Holcroft’s The Road to Ruin (1792), and Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda (1801).  We will also consider personal risks taken by characters in the romance plots of stage comedies and the novel and to what extent these characters are rewarded or reformed.

An important tradition in linguistics proposes that the patterns in which the arguments of a verb appear in the syntax are partially conditioned by the semantics of the verb. For instance, agents are always subjects, and verbs of externally caused change of state in English generally allow both transitive and intransitive uses. This course evaluates the evidence for this position and the theoretical tools that linguistics have used to capture the relevant generalisations.

The course explores how Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, is represented in a variety of mediums, such as biography, literature and film. Students read selected works dealing with the life and reign of Mary Stuart, and watch films where she is a central and/or minor character. Aspects of historical, literary and cultural interpretations of Mary's role in history are explored, with emphasis on Scots-English relations, the Catholic-Protestant struggle, and the wider context of the Reformation in Europe. Students work on different types of assignments as part of the course assessment.

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 after the first week of classes will be offered to students on the waiting list. 

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 class will focus on film and television adaptations, with scripts derived from short stories, canonical works, popular and pulp fiction, as well as graphic novels and comics.

In this course we will focus on various literary works and corresponding adaptation theories relating to film adaptations and current television series. Key issues and concepts in this course  will be taught in relation to Modernism/Postmodernism and Origin/Intertextual play in Adaptation Theory and Cinema semiotics.

Course requirement:
Apart from the obligatory course text Adaptations and Appropriation by Julie Sanders, we will read significant articles on adaptation as well as selected short stories (provided by the tutor) that have undergone the transition process and been adapted to into films. Students are encouraged to participate in discussions in class.

This is an overview course that introduces major research methods in second language acquisition and teaching. Qualitative and quantitative research methods will be explored and their role in interpreting second language development. Student will examine real studies, develop a research plan, and conduct a pilot study. 

This course looks at the ways in which women of history (in a broad sense) have been rewritten in historical fiction, focusing on some key texts published since 2000. It examines various aspects of the project of (re-)making space for women in an otherwise mostly male-dominated history, and how this challenges stereotypical classifications of women such as angels, virgins, witches and whores. Theories and criticism relating to the topic will be studied alongside the set texts, with focus on readings of the historical novel as feminist, revisionist and postmodern counter-narratives that question and challenge written history.

NB. This is not formally a distance course but students interested in taking it without attending on-site classes are encouraged to contact the teacher regarding possible arrangements.

World renowned Canadian director David Cronenberg is commonly recognized as a cinematic pioneer of the body horror genre. However, much of Cronenberg’s work branches off from the horror genre, applying his auteurist imagery of body horror to other genres and stories. Cronenberg’s career, which began in the 1970s and continues to grow today, presents a large number of filmic adaptations of novels, short stories, and the lives of real life and historical figures.

In this course, we will examine four different films by Cronenberg, adapted from four different sources, to study the varying capacities of adaptation and adaptation theory, as well as auteur theory, in the attempt to understand how Cronenberg retells established narratives, which include his signature themes of body horror.

This course explores the subject of heritage and exile in late 19th and early 20th century Icelandic-North American literature. The course will explore the subject through a selection of poems by Helga Steinvör Baldvinsdóttir (1858 – 1942), who wrote her poetry under the pseudonym Undína; a selection of poems by Stephan G. Stephansson (1853 – 1927), and a selection of poems and plays by Guttormur J. Guttormsson (1878 – 1966). Ideas on exile in modern Western literature will also be explored, in the context of poetics of exile in the works of Undína, Stephan G., and Guttormur.

Recent years have seen an increased focus on data collection and statistical analysis within the humanities. This is particularly apparent in growing branches such as psycholinguistics, cognitive literary studies and experimental philosophy, to name a few. The push towards quantitative methods occurs at a time where the validity and reliability of well-established statistical methods are called into question in other fields, with increased demands of replicability and open access as well as data protection and responsibility. In this course, students explore the value of quantitative methods in their field while getting training in the collection and analysis of data. A diverse set of research methods will be introduced, ranging from surveys to corpus analysis and experiments in which participants’ response to stimuli (such as words, texts or audio-visual materials) is quantified. Basic concepts in statistics will be reviewed, enabling students to know the difference between descriptive and inferential statistics, understand statistical significance and interpret visual representations of data in graphs. The course will be largely practical and students are expected to apply their knowledge of data collection and analysis under the instructor’s guidance. Students will work on a project within their own discipline but will also explore the possibility of cross-disciplinary work. Open source tools such as R Studio will be used for all assignments but no prior knowledge of the software or statistics in general is required. The course is suitable for all students within the humanities who want to collect quantitative data to answer interesting questions and could therefore be a useful preparation for a BA or MA project.

The European intellectual tradition is characterized by the strong links between academia and society. Many of the most important European thinkers of the 19th and 20th Centuries worked outside of the universities – and many of those who did pursue an ordinary academic career also were public commentators frequently intervening in political discussion of the day and in some cases gaining considerable influence. In this course we present a selection of European thinkers who have been important both as scholars and as public intellectuals. We read and discuss samples of their work and look at critical discussion of their ideas. We also reflect on the time and place of the "European" – to what extent their work is quinessentially Eurocentric and to what extent awareness of cultural contingency emerges.

This course treats different aspects of English vocabulary: baby names, place names, the function of jargon, the value of slang words, and dialect humour. We will also learn how to estimate the size of our vocabulary and how languages interact. Finally, we will consider the history of words and how language changes. The central question is: Where do our words come from?

All MA students in English are required to complete this seminar where they discuss relevant approaches to theory and research, their own research projects, preparing to introduce their findings at conferences and whorkshops, in Iceland or abroad. Evaluation is by participation: 2 short assignments and a presentation of a paper related to the student's coursework or final essay.

This is an overview course that introduces major theories of second language acquisition and how they influence language instruction. We will examine research on the cognitive, linguistic, individual, social and educational factors that affect the language learning process and language attainment. The role of input on language learning will be examined as well as the development of reading and writing skills in a second language. 

By 1945, the United States had emerged as the dominant global economic and military power. The American standard of living was the envy of the world and political leaders in the US were never more confident in the ideals and myths of the American system. Yet the twenty years after the war were marked by increasing paranoia, dissension, and divisions within the country. An irrational fear of communist infiltration created a police state atmosphere; civil rights’ movements were met with new forms of intolerance, persecution, and oppression; a counterculture movement challenged the very foundations of US society; and major rifts opened between numerous groups divided on intersectional, regional, and generational lines. From out of the turmoil of these years emerged a new generation of literary voices in America—authors who celebrated the potential of their culture even as they exposed and subverted its failings. This course will explore the interrelationship between the dynamics of postwar American society and literature written during this period.

The fascination with gambling manifested itself in the plots of plays and novels as characters take financial and personal risks, excited by the prospect of a potentially prosperous and beneficial new venture. Susanna Centlivre’s comedies The Gamester (1705) and The Basset Table (1705) dramatize the financial and personal risks of gambling and their consequences. The eighteenth century also witnessed the character of the female gambler held up as an example of vice. We will discuss the association between gambling, lotteries, and other forms of financial risk and how literature represented their impact on the family and on personal relationships in plays and novels, such as  Mary Pix’s The Beau Defeated (1700), Susanna Centlivre’s The Gamester (1705), Henry Fieldng’s The Lottery (1732), Edward Moore’s The Gamester (1753), Frances Brooke's The Excursion (1777), Thomas Holcroft’s The Road to Ruin (1792), and Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda (1801).  We will also consider personal risks taken by characters in the romance plots of stage comedies and the novel and to what extent these characters are rewarded or reformed.

An important tradition in linguistics proposes that the patterns in which the arguments of a verb appear in the syntax are partially conditioned by the semantics of the verb. For instance, agents are always subjects, and verbs of externally caused change of state in English generally allow both transitive and intransitive uses. This course evaluates the evidence for this position and the theoretical tools that linguistics have used to capture the relevant generalisations.

The course explores how Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, is represented in a variety of mediums, such as biography, literature and film. Students read selected works dealing with the life and reign of Mary Stuart, and watch films where she is a central and/or minor character. Aspects of historical, literary and cultural interpretations of Mary's role in history are explored, with emphasis on Scots-English relations, the Catholic-Protestant struggle, and the wider context of the Reformation in Europe. Students work on different types of assignments as part of the course assessment.

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 after the first week of classes will be offered to students on the waiting list. 

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)

MA-thesis in English.

MA students are permitted to complete a total of 15 credits in supervised research projects. A project is selected in consultation with a teacher at the MA level, and the suppervisor of the course must approve the sudent's research plans before they are permitted to register for a study of this kind. Research projects should either be an extension of a course or courses that students have already completed in the MA program or be within their special field of interest.

This class will focus on film and television adaptations, with scripts derived from short stories, canonical works, popular and pulp fiction, as well as graphic novels and comics.

In this course we will focus on various literary works and corresponding adaptation theories relating to film adaptations and current television series. Key issues and concepts in this course  will be taught in relation to Modernism/Postmodernism and Origin/Intertextual play in Adaptation Theory and Cinema semiotics.

Course requirement:
Apart from the obligatory course text Adaptations and Appropriation by Julie Sanders, we will read significant articles on adaptation as well as selected short stories (provided by the tutor) that have undergone the transition process and been adapted to into films. Students are encouraged to participate in discussions in class.

This is an overview course that introduces major research methods in second language acquisition and teaching. Qualitative and quantitative research methods will be explored and their role in interpreting second language development. Student will examine real studies, develop a research plan, and conduct a pilot study. 

This course looks at the ways in which women of history (in a broad sense) have been rewritten in historical fiction, focusing on some key texts published since 2000. It examines various aspects of the project of (re-)making space for women in an otherwise mostly male-dominated history, and how this challenges stereotypical classifications of women such as angels, virgins, witches and whores. Theories and criticism relating to the topic will be studied alongside the set texts, with focus on readings of the historical novel as feminist, revisionist and postmodern counter-narratives that question and challenge written history.

NB. This is not formally a distance course but students interested in taking it without attending on-site classes are encouraged to contact the teacher regarding possible arrangements.

World renowned Canadian director David Cronenberg is commonly recognized as a cinematic pioneer of the body horror genre. However, much of Cronenberg’s work branches off from the horror genre, applying his auteurist imagery of body horror to other genres and stories. Cronenberg’s career, which began in the 1970s and continues to grow today, presents a large number of filmic adaptations of novels, short stories, and the lives of real life and historical figures.

In this course, we will examine four different films by Cronenberg, adapted from four different sources, to study the varying capacities of adaptation and adaptation theory, as well as auteur theory, in the attempt to understand how Cronenberg retells established narratives, which include his signature themes of body horror.

This course explores the subject of heritage and exile in late 19th and early 20th century Icelandic-North American literature. The course will explore the subject through a selection of poems by Helga Steinvör Baldvinsdóttir (1858 – 1942), who wrote her poetry under the pseudonym Undína; a selection of poems by Stephan G. Stephansson (1853 – 1927), and a selection of poems and plays by Guttormur J. Guttormsson (1878 – 1966). Ideas on exile in modern Western literature will also be explored, in the context of poetics of exile in the works of Undína, Stephan G., and Guttormur.

Recent years have seen an increased focus on data collection and statistical analysis within the humanities. This is particularly apparent in growing branches such as psycholinguistics, cognitive literary studies and experimental philosophy, to name a few. The push towards quantitative methods occurs at a time where the validity and reliability of well-established statistical methods are called into question in other fields, with increased demands of replicability and open access as well as data protection and responsibility. In this course, students explore the value of quantitative methods in their field while getting training in the collection and analysis of data. A diverse set of research methods will be introduced, ranging from surveys to corpus analysis and experiments in which participants’ response to stimuli (such as words, texts or audio-visual materials) is quantified. Basic concepts in statistics will be reviewed, enabling students to know the difference between descriptive and inferential statistics, understand statistical significance and interpret visual representations of data in graphs. The course will be largely practical and students are expected to apply their knowledge of data collection and analysis under the instructor’s guidance. Students will work on a project within their own discipline but will also explore the possibility of cross-disciplinary work. Open source tools such as R Studio will be used for all assignments but no prior knowledge of the software or statistics in general is required. The course is suitable for all students within the humanities who want to collect quantitative data to answer interesting questions and could therefore be a useful preparation for a BA or MA project.

The European intellectual tradition is characterized by the strong links between academia and society. Many of the most important European thinkers of the 19th and 20th Centuries worked outside of the universities – and many of those who did pursue an ordinary academic career also were public commentators frequently intervening in political discussion of the day and in some cases gaining considerable influence. In this course we present a selection of European thinkers who have been important both as scholars and as public intellectuals. We read and discuss samples of their work and look at critical discussion of their ideas. We also reflect on the time and place of the "European" – to what extent their work is quinessentially Eurocentric and to what extent awareness of cultural contingency emerges.

This course treats different aspects of English vocabulary: baby names, place names, the function of jargon, the value of slang words, and dialect humour. We will also learn how to estimate the size of our vocabulary and how languages interact. Finally, we will consider the history of words and how language changes. The central question is: Where do our words come from?

MA-thesis in English.

MA students are permitted to complete a total of 15 credits in supervised research projects. A project is selected in consultation with a teacher at the MA level, and the suppervisor of the course must approve the sudent's research plans before they are permitted to register for a study of this kind. Research projects should either be an extension of a course or courses that students have already completed in the MA program or be within their special field of interest.

All MA students in English are required to complete this seminar where they discuss relevant approaches to theory and research, their own research projects, preparing to introduce their findings at conferences and whorkshops, in Iceland or abroad. Evaluation is by participation: 2 short assignments and a presentation of a paper related to the student's coursework or final essay.

This seminar engages with theories on culture, narrative, and mediation. Active class participation is required.

This course concerns the diverse connections between culture and language, as seen from the perspective of cultural history, social sciences and linguistics. Ancient and modern world languages will be introduced and their origins, influence and effects investigated. Written and spoken language will be discussed: what sorts of things are written, why and how? Rules and alternate perspectives on the nature of language will be considered, raising the question of how we understand man with respect to thought and language.

This is an overview course that introduces major theories of second language acquisition and how they influence language instruction. We will examine research on the cognitive, linguistic, individual, social and educational factors that affect the language learning process and language attainment. The role of input on language learning will be examined as well as the development of reading and writing skills in a second language. 

By 1945, the United States had emerged as the dominant global economic and military power. The American standard of living was the envy of the world and political leaders in the US were never more confident in the ideals and myths of the American system. Yet the twenty years after the war were marked by increasing paranoia, dissension, and divisions within the country. An irrational fear of communist infiltration created a police state atmosphere; civil rights’ movements were met with new forms of intolerance, persecution, and oppression; a counterculture movement challenged the very foundations of US society; and major rifts opened between numerous groups divided on intersectional, regional, and generational lines. From out of the turmoil of these years emerged a new generation of literary voices in America—authors who celebrated the potential of their culture even as they exposed and subverted its failings. This course will explore the interrelationship between the dynamics of postwar American society and literature written during this period.

The fascination with gambling manifested itself in the plots of plays and novels as characters take financial and personal risks, excited by the prospect of a potentially prosperous and beneficial new venture. Susanna Centlivre’s comedies The Gamester (1705) and The Basset Table (1705) dramatize the financial and personal risks of gambling and their consequences. The eighteenth century also witnessed the character of the female gambler held up as an example of vice. We will discuss the association between gambling, lotteries, and other forms of financial risk and how literature represented their impact on the family and on personal relationships in plays and novels, such as  Mary Pix’s The Beau Defeated (1700), Susanna Centlivre’s The Gamester (1705), Henry Fieldng’s The Lottery (1732), Edward Moore’s The Gamester (1753), Frances Brooke's The Excursion (1777), Thomas Holcroft’s The Road to Ruin (1792), and Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda (1801).  We will also consider personal risks taken by characters in the romance plots of stage comedies and the novel and to what extent these characters are rewarded or reformed.

An important tradition in linguistics proposes that the patterns in which the arguments of a verb appear in the syntax are partially conditioned by the semantics of the verb. For instance, agents are always subjects, and verbs of externally caused change of state in English generally allow both transitive and intransitive uses. This course evaluates the evidence for this position and the theoretical tools that linguistics have used to capture the relevant generalisations.

The course explores how Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, is represented in a variety of mediums, such as biography, literature and film. Students read selected works dealing with the life and reign of Mary Stuart, and watch films where she is a central and/or minor character. Aspects of historical, literary and cultural interpretations of Mary's role in history are explored, with emphasis on Scots-English relations, the Catholic-Protestant struggle, and the wider context of the Reformation in Europe. Students work on different types of assignments as part of the course assessment.

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 after the first week of classes will be offered to students on the waiting list. 

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 class will focus on film and television adaptations, with scripts derived from short stories, canonical works, popular and pulp fiction, as well as graphic novels and comics.

In this course we will focus on various literary works and corresponding adaptation theories relating to film adaptations and current television series. Key issues and concepts in this course  will be taught in relation to Modernism/Postmodernism and Origin/Intertextual play in Adaptation Theory and Cinema semiotics.

Course requirement:
Apart from the obligatory course text Adaptations and Appropriation by Julie Sanders, we will read significant articles on adaptation as well as selected short stories (provided by the tutor) that have undergone the transition process and been adapted to into films. Students are encouraged to participate in discussions in class.

This is an overview course that introduces major research methods in second language acquisition and teaching. Qualitative and quantitative research methods will be explored and their role in interpreting second language development. Student will examine real studies, develop a research plan, and conduct a pilot study. 

This course looks at the ways in which women of history (in a broad sense) have been rewritten in historical fiction, focusing on some key texts published since 2000. It examines various aspects of the project of (re-)making space for women in an otherwise mostly male-dominated history, and how this challenges stereotypical classifications of women such as angels, virgins, witches and whores. Theories and criticism relating to the topic will be studied alongside the set texts, with focus on readings of the historical novel as feminist, revisionist and postmodern counter-narratives that question and challenge written history.

NB. This is not formally a distance course but students interested in taking it without attending on-site classes are encouraged to contact the teacher regarding possible arrangements.

World renowned Canadian director David Cronenberg is commonly recognized as a cinematic pioneer of the body horror genre. However, much of Cronenberg’s work branches off from the horror genre, applying his auteurist imagery of body horror to other genres and stories. Cronenberg’s career, which began in the 1970s and continues to grow today, presents a large number of filmic adaptations of novels, short stories, and the lives of real life and historical figures.

In this course, we will examine four different films by Cronenberg, adapted from four different sources, to study the varying capacities of adaptation and adaptation theory, as well as auteur theory, in the attempt to understand how Cronenberg retells established narratives, which include his signature themes of body horror.

This course explores the subject of heritage and exile in late 19th and early 20th century Icelandic-North American literature. The course will explore the subject through a selection of poems by Helga Steinvör Baldvinsdóttir (1858 – 1942), who wrote her poetry under the pseudonym Undína; a selection of poems by Stephan G. Stephansson (1853 – 1927), and a selection of poems and plays by Guttormur J. Guttormsson (1878 – 1966). Ideas on exile in modern Western literature will also be explored, in the context of poetics of exile in the works of Undína, Stephan G., and Guttormur.

Recent years have seen an increased focus on data collection and statistical analysis within the humanities. This is particularly apparent in growing branches such as psycholinguistics, cognitive literary studies and experimental philosophy, to name a few. The push towards quantitative methods occurs at a time where the validity and reliability of well-established statistical methods are called into question in other fields, with increased demands of replicability and open access as well as data protection and responsibility. In this course, students explore the value of quantitative methods in their field while getting training in the collection and analysis of data. A diverse set of research methods will be introduced, ranging from surveys to corpus analysis and experiments in which participants’ response to stimuli (such as words, texts or audio-visual materials) is quantified. Basic concepts in statistics will be reviewed, enabling students to know the difference between descriptive and inferential statistics, understand statistical significance and interpret visual representations of data in graphs. The course will be largely practical and students are expected to apply their knowledge of data collection and analysis under the instructor’s guidance. Students will work on a project within their own discipline but will also explore the possibility of cross-disciplinary work. Open source tools such as R Studio will be used for all assignments but no prior knowledge of the software or statistics in general is required. The course is suitable for all students within the humanities who want to collect quantitative data to answer interesting questions and could therefore be a useful preparation for a BA or MA project.

The European intellectual tradition is characterized by the strong links between academia and society. Many of the most important European thinkers of the 19th and 20th Centuries worked outside of the universities – and many of those who did pursue an ordinary academic career also were public commentators frequently intervening in political discussion of the day and in some cases gaining considerable influence. In this course we present a selection of European thinkers who have been important both as scholars and as public intellectuals. We read and discuss samples of their work and look at critical discussion of their ideas. We also reflect on the time and place of the "European" – to what extent their work is quinessentially Eurocentric and to what extent awareness of cultural contingency emerges.

This course treats different aspects of English vocabulary: baby names, place names, the function of jargon, the value of slang words, and dialect humour. We will also learn how to estimate the size of our vocabulary and how languages interact. Finally, we will consider the history of words and how language changes. The central question is: Where do our words come from?

All MA students in English are required to complete this seminar where they discuss relevant approaches to theory and research, their own research projects, preparing to introduce their findings at conferences and whorkshops, in Iceland or abroad. Evaluation is by participation: 2 short assignments and a presentation of a paper related to the student's coursework or final essay.

This is an overview course that introduces major theories of second language acquisition and how they influence language instruction. We will examine research on the cognitive, linguistic, individual, social and educational factors that affect the language learning process and language attainment. The role of input on language learning will be examined as well as the development of reading and writing skills in a second language. 

By 1945, the United States had emerged as the dominant global economic and military power. The American standard of living was the envy of the world and political leaders in the US were never more confident in the ideals and myths of the American system. Yet the twenty years after the war were marked by increasing paranoia, dissension, and divisions within the country. An irrational fear of communist infiltration created a police state atmosphere; civil rights’ movements were met with new forms of intolerance, persecution, and oppression; a counterculture movement challenged the very foundations of US society; and major rifts opened between numerous groups divided on intersectional, regional, and generational lines. From out of the turmoil of these years emerged a new generation of literary voices in America—authors who celebrated the potential of their culture even as they exposed and subverted its failings. This course will explore the interrelationship between the dynamics of postwar American society and literature written during this period.

The fascination with gambling manifested itself in the plots of plays and novels as characters take financial and personal risks, excited by the prospect of a potentially prosperous and beneficial new venture. Susanna Centlivre’s comedies The Gamester (1705) and The Basset Table (1705) dramatize the financial and personal risks of gambling and their consequences. The eighteenth century also witnessed the character of the female gambler held up as an example of vice. We will discuss the association between gambling, lotteries, and other forms of financial risk and how literature represented their impact on the family and on personal relationships in plays and novels, such as  Mary Pix’s The Beau Defeated (1700), Susanna Centlivre’s The Gamester (1705), Henry Fieldng’s The Lottery (1732), Edward Moore’s The Gamester (1753), Frances Brooke's The Excursion (1777), Thomas Holcroft’s The Road to Ruin (1792), and Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda (1801).  We will also consider personal risks taken by characters in the romance plots of stage comedies and the novel and to what extent these characters are rewarded or reformed.

An important tradition in linguistics proposes that the patterns in which the arguments of a verb appear in the syntax are partially conditioned by the semantics of the verb. For instance, agents are always subjects, and verbs of externally caused change of state in English generally allow both transitive and intransitive uses. This course evaluates the evidence for this position and the theoretical tools that linguistics have used to capture the relevant generalisations.

The course explores how Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, is represented in a variety of mediums, such as biography, literature and film. Students read selected works dealing with the life and reign of Mary Stuart, and watch films where she is a central and/or minor character. Aspects of historical, literary and cultural interpretations of Mary's role in history are explored, with emphasis on Scots-English relations, the Catholic-Protestant struggle, and the wider context of the Reformation in Europe. Students work on different types of assignments as part of the course assessment.

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 after the first week of classes will be offered to students on the waiting list. 

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)

MA-thesis in English.

MA students are permitted to complete a total of 15 credits in supervised research projects. A project is selected in consultation with a teacher at the MA level, and the suppervisor of the course must approve the sudent's research plans before they are permitted to register for a study of this kind. Research projects should either be an extension of a course or courses that students have already completed in the MA program or be within their special field of interest.

This class will focus on film and television adaptations, with scripts derived from short stories, canonical works, popular and pulp fiction, as well as graphic novels and comics.

In this course we will focus on various literary works and corresponding adaptation theories relating to film adaptations and current television series. Key issues and concepts in this course  will be taught in relation to Modernism/Postmodernism and Origin/Intertextual play in Adaptation Theory and Cinema semiotics.

Course requirement:
Apart from the obligatory course text Adaptations and Appropriation by Julie Sanders, we will read significant articles on adaptation as well as selected short stories (provided by the tutor) that have undergone the transition process and been adapted to into films. Students are encouraged to participate in discussions in class.

This is an overview course that introduces major research methods in second language acquisition and teaching. Qualitative and quantitative research methods will be explored and their role in interpreting second language development. Student will examine real studies, develop a research plan, and conduct a pilot study. 

This course looks at the ways in which women of history (in a broad sense) have been rewritten in historical fiction, focusing on some key texts published since 2000. It examines various aspects of the project of (re-)making space for women in an otherwise mostly male-dominated history, and how this challenges stereotypical classifications of women such as angels, virgins, witches and whores. Theories and criticism relating to the topic will be studied alongside the set texts, with focus on readings of the historical novel as feminist, revisionist and postmodern counter-narratives that question and challenge written history.

NB. This is not formally a distance course but students interested in taking it without attending on-site classes are encouraged to contact the teacher regarding possible arrangements.

World renowned Canadian director David Cronenberg is commonly recognized as a cinematic pioneer of the body horror genre. However, much of Cronenberg’s work branches off from the horror genre, applying his auteurist imagery of body horror to other genres and stories. Cronenberg’s career, which began in the 1970s and continues to grow today, presents a large number of filmic adaptations of novels, short stories, and the lives of real life and historical figures.

In this course, we will examine four different films by Cronenberg, adapted from four different sources, to study the varying capacities of adaptation and adaptation theory, as well as auteur theory, in the attempt to understand how Cronenberg retells established narratives, which include his signature themes of body horror.

This course explores the subject of heritage and exile in late 19th and early 20th century Icelandic-North American literature. The course will explore the subject through a selection of poems by Helga Steinvör Baldvinsdóttir (1858 – 1942), who wrote her poetry under the pseudonym Undína; a selection of poems by Stephan G. Stephansson (1853 – 1927), and a selection of poems and plays by Guttormur J. Guttormsson (1878 – 1966). Ideas on exile in modern Western literature will also be explored, in the context of poetics of exile in the works of Undína, Stephan G., and Guttormur.

Recent years have seen an increased focus on data collection and statistical analysis within the humanities. This is particularly apparent in growing branches such as psycholinguistics, cognitive literary studies and experimental philosophy, to name a few. The push towards quantitative methods occurs at a time where the validity and reliability of well-established statistical methods are called into question in other fields, with increased demands of replicability and open access as well as data protection and responsibility. In this course, students explore the value of quantitative methods in their field while getting training in the collection and analysis of data. A diverse set of research methods will be introduced, ranging from surveys to corpus analysis and experiments in which participants’ response to stimuli (such as words, texts or audio-visual materials) is quantified. Basic concepts in statistics will be reviewed, enabling students to know the difference between descriptive and inferential statistics, understand statistical significance and interpret visual representations of data in graphs. The course will be largely practical and students are expected to apply their knowledge of data collection and analysis under the instructor’s guidance. Students will work on a project within their own discipline but will also explore the possibility of cross-disciplinary work. Open source tools such as R Studio will be used for all assignments but no prior knowledge of the software or statistics in general is required. The course is suitable for all students within the humanities who want to collect quantitative data to answer interesting questions and could therefore be a useful preparation for a BA or MA project.

The European intellectual tradition is characterized by the strong links between academia and society. Many of the most important European thinkers of the 19th and 20th Centuries worked outside of the universities – and many of those who did pursue an ordinary academic career also were public commentators frequently intervening in political discussion of the day and in some cases gaining considerable influence. In this course we present a selection of European thinkers who have been important both as scholars and as public intellectuals. We read and discuss samples of their work and look at critical discussion of their ideas. We also reflect on the time and place of the "European" – to what extent their work is quinessentially Eurocentric and to what extent awareness of cultural contingency emerges.

This course treats different aspects of English vocabulary: baby names, place names, the function of jargon, the value of slang words, and dialect humour. We will also learn how to estimate the size of our vocabulary and how languages interact. Finally, we will consider the history of words and how language changes. The central question is: Where do our words come from?

MA-thesis in English.

MA students are permitted to complete a total of 15 credits in supervised research projects. A project is selected in consultation with a teacher at the MA level, and the suppervisor of the course must approve the sudent's research plans before they are permitted to register for a study of this kind. Research projects should either be an extension of a course or courses that students have already completed in the MA program or be within their special field of interest.