B.A. seminars 2024–2025 in the extramural programme in English Philology

What is this list?

This is a list of B.A. seminars we intend to launch in our extramural B.A. programme in English Philology (filologia angielska) whose third year of study is the academic year 2024–2025; that is, the seminars are planned to start in 2024 and end in 2025, at the end of the three-year B.A. programme. This list is intended for:

  1. Students at the Faculty of English who are about to enter the third year of their extramural B.A. programme: this is your reference point before B.A. seminar interviews;
  2. Candidates for our full-time programmes: this list gives you a snapshot of what seminars were on offer for the study cycle that started two years earlier, that is in 2022.

What about these seminars?

Part of the third year of study at a B.A. programme is about preparing a B.A. paper (B.A. thesis, if you like) under the supervision of the teacher whose B.A. seminar you are in. Seminar groups are subject to formal limits as to the minimal and maximal number of students who can enrol in each seminar. As we cannot tailor the list of seminar to the exact needs of all the students—how could we know?—we may need to ask you to through an interview with your prospective B.A. thesis supervisor.

At some point before the start of the academic year you may be asked about your preferred B.A. seminar—please stay tuned to your e-mail inbox and the Faculty of English intranet. Your task is easy: browse this list in search of seminars which are offered for the programme in which you are a student and let us know, when asked, which seminar is your favourite. We will take note of it and ensure your interview is with the right teacher and their committee.

Please note: We do not guarantee that you will be able to join the preferred seminar. Enrolment into a particular seminar is subject to conditions such as the total number of students in the third year of study, the result of your interview, and others. In particular: if there are more students interested in a given seminar than the number of students the seminar can accept, your interview may decide if you enrol in the seminar you would prefer or are offered a seat in a different seminar.

How to navigate the list?

The list is sorted by the name of teacher. The format is the following: title of the seminar, the name of the teacher, and the description of the seminar.

Literature as a mirror of British and Irish cultural, socio-political and religious anxieties and aspirations

dr Katarzyna Bronk-Bacon

Description

In his Time Machine, H. G. Wells’ time traveller claims: “I came out of this age of ours, this ripe prime of the human race, when Fear does not paralyse and mystery has lost its terrors” (1998: 32). The traveller of Victorian England, living in a period which hoped that science had indeed explained, categorised and conquered everything that could threaten the Empire. A critical look at literature and paraliterary texts of culture of the nineteenth century indeed proves that fear was one of the most prevalent emotions felt by the British society, but it was not always verbalised or conscious.

While this fin-de-siecle example suggests that the phenomenon of fear belongs strictly to the gothic or sci-fi genres, it can also be expressed in more diverse literary and cultural ways. In her No go the bogeyman Marina Warner states that, historically, humanity has been dealing with fear by naming its sources, as well as embodying and representing it by means of artistic means of expression (2000: 17). Literature has participated in these cultural and therapeutic practices, but, importantly, it actually engendered the very debates on what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’, and, somewhat controversially, why the wrong is often more alluring and … necessary. We will therefore investigate how literature and other types of texts of culture mirrored cultural worries as well as aspirations across centuries. While our focus will be primarily on British and Irish literature, comparative studies across media (i.e. film adaptations) may be allowed.

This seminar is for students with an inquisitive mind and for those who enjoy reading for something more than escapism. It is for you if you (and not ChatGPt) enjoy writing about literature. Prior study of the history of British literature is welcome, but general knowledge of historical and cultural periods is equally beneficial.

Bibliography

  • Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome, ed. 1996. Monster Theory: Reading Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  • Creed, Barbara. 1986. “Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection”, Screen 27, 1: 44–71, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/27.1.44
  • Kristeva, Julia. 1982. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by Leon Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press.
  • Shildrick, Margaret. 2002. Embodying the Monster: Encounters with the Vulnerable Self. SAGE Publications Ltd.
  • Warner, Marina. 2000. No go the bogeyman. London: Vintage.
  • Wells, G. H. 1998. Time machine. (date of access: 7th June 2023)

Exploring the intersections of gender, sexuality, and race in contemporary literature in Canada

dr Marcin Markowicz

Description

In this seminar, you will be introduced to contemporary writing being produced in the lands known as Canada. The overview approach of the course will help you get a better understanding of the complexity and richness of literature in Canada, preparing you to explore your own research questions in your B.A. papers. In the course, we will be focusing primarily on works published in the late 20th and 21st century—short stories, novels, and memoirs—that explore the ways in which the intersections of gender, sexuality, and race (but not only) affect and determine the lives of human beings. You will also learn how to critically engage with scientific texts, how to construct a B.A. paper and work with sources, and how to analyze texts in light of a selected theoretical framework.

This course is reading intensive. As a participant, you will be expected to come to class prepared, be actively engaged in class discussions as well as write and submit your own responses to selected texts via Moodle. Most importantly, you will be expected to come up with your own research topic (by lateJanuary), submit and present your research objectives and texts selected for analysis (lateFebruary), and submit your B.A. paper by mid-June.

If you have a genuine interest in literature and are an avid and insightful reader interested in exploring new, exciting, and challenging writing, this seminar is for you. No prior knowledge of Canadian literature is necessary.

Selected reading (secondary sources)
  • Barrett, Paul. 2015. Blackening Canada: Diaspora, Race, Multiculturalism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
  • Demers, Patricia. 2019. Women’s Writing in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
  • Kamboureli, Smaro (ed.). 2006. Making a Difference: Canadian Multicultural Literatures in English. Revised edition. Toronto: Oxford University Press.
  • Morra, Linda M. 2023. The Routledge Introduction to Gender and Sexuality in Literature in Canada. New York: Routledge.
  • Moss, Laura and Cynthia Sugars. 2008. Canadian Literature in English: Texts and Contexts. Vol. 2. Toronto: Pearson Education Canada.

Empirical Translation Studies

dr Olga Witczak

Description

This seminar focuses on empirical approaches to researching written translation between Polish and English. Topics covered will include: general introduction into the field, empirical research on audiovisual translation (subtitling, voice-over, dubbing), reception of translated texts (e.g., literary, functional texts), machine translation (and post-editing), video game localization, among others.

Candidates are expected to have a keen interest in translation, especially in topics mentioned above. Students will be strongly encouraged to select their own BA topics.

At its core, this seminar will require extensive reading of academic papers and books about translation studies as well as choosing and compiling your own research materials (e.g., literary texts, multimedia content). Topics outside of the abovementioned selection will be accepted, but must fall within the scope of empirical translation studies.

Tentative BA project timeline
  1. 8 February 2025: Topic selection
  2. 1 March 2025: Thesis outline and bibliography
  3. 29 March 2025: First chapter
  4. 26 April 2025: Second chapter
  5. 30 May 2025: Third chapter
  6. 13 June 2025: Entire thesis, final version

Credit requirements: reading assigned texts, passing a semester test, report(s) on the researched topic, meeting deadlines for the BA milestones (1–6 above), following the rules of academic writing and WA style sheet guidelines in the BA thesis.

Selected reading
  • Arenas, Ana Guerberof and Antonio Toral. 2023. “To be or not to be: a translation reception study of a literary text translated into Dutch and Catalan using machine translation” (external link; date of access: 17 Jul. 2023).
  • Belczyk, Arkadiusz. 2023. Sztuka tłumaczenia filmów. Wrocław: Miasto Książek.
  • Biel, Łucja. 2021. “Postedycja tłumaczeń maszynowych”, Lingua Legis 1, 29.
  • Bogucki, Łukasz and Mikołaj Deckert (eds.). 2020. The Palgrave Handbook of Audiovisual Translation and Media Accessibility [external link]. Cham: Springer International Publishing. (date of access: 8 Oct. 2023).
  • Kotze, Haidee, Berit Janssen, Corina Koolen, Luka Van Der Plas and Gys-Walt Van Egdom. 2021. “Norms, affect and evaluation in the reception of literary translations in multilingual online reading communities: Deriving cognitive-evaluative templates from big data”,Translation, Cognition&Behavior 4, 2: 147-186.
  • Munday, Jeremy, Sara Ramos Pinto and Jacob Blakesley. 2022. Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and Applications [external link]. (5th edition.) London: Routledge. (date of access: 4 Jun. 2024).
  • O’Hagan, Minako (ed.). 2020. The Routledgehandbook of translation and technology. London; New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group.
  • Szarkowska, Agnieszka, Jorge Díaz Cintas and Olivia Gerber-Morón. 2021. “Quality is in the eye of the stakeholders: what do professional subtitlers and viewers think about subtitling?”,Universal Access in the Information Society 20, 4: 661-675.
  • Zeven, Katinka and Aletta G. Dorst. 2021. “A beautiful little fool? Retranslating Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby”, Perspectives 29, 5: 661-675.