Third-year of study B.A. proseminars (3BA PROSEM) for winter term 2024–2025 (Full-time programmes)

What is this list?

This is a list of proseminars we intend to launch in the winter term (October–February) in some of our full-time B.A. programmes whose third year of study is the academic year 2024–2025. This list is intended for:

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

Which proseminar is for whom?

The programmes in the list and their abbrieviations are:

  • English Philology (Filologia angielska) — FA
  • English Linguistics: Theories, Interfaces, Technologies — ELTIT
  • English Studies: Literature and Culture — ESLC

The programmes in English-Celtic Philology (Filologia angielsko-celtycka), English and Chinese Studies (Filologia angielsko-chińska), and Dutch Studies (Studia niderlandystyczne) are not covered by this list.

ESCL students are offered the choice of three proseminars from a list of six—these are provided in pairs: the choice of one proseminar in each pair precludes the selection of the other at the same time.

How to navigate the list?

The list is sorted first by the target programmes (FA and ELTIT precede ESCL), then by name of the teacher (for FA and ELTIT) or by seminar pairs (for ESLC). The format of each entry is the following: title of the proseminar, the name of the teacher, information on which programme(s) the proseminar is for, and the description of the proseminar.

Jazz In The 21st Century: It Might Surprise You

Stan L. Breckenridge, Ph.D.

Target programmes: FA, ELTIT

Blues, jazz, gospel, rhythm & blues, rock & roll, soul, funk, disco, hip-hop, neo-soul, that were initially developed by African Americans, are performed in numerous countries, and thus illustrate their worldwide appeal. Among these styles, blues, jazz, and hip-hop are most widely known, performed, and listened to. Among these three, jazz does not have such wide appeal among all audiences as much as blues and hip-hop seems to have, especially among younger audiences. This course reveals some new revelations of jazz in the 21st century that will probably surprise you. This phenomenon is partly due to new innovative approaches to jazz by younger musicians. Such musicians respectfully maintain the legacy of those jazz musicians who came before them and their extraordinary contributions, and now continue the spirit of jazz in their own creative ways. Through this exploration students will learn specific ways in which jazz in the 21st century is becoming more appealing to many audiences. Additionally, students will learn by reading about and listening to a number of works by innovative musicians of jazz in the 21st century. Finally, students will understand why jazz is an important genre that transcends time.

Some Basics to Creative Writing

mgr John Casale

Target programmes: FA, ELTIT

Open up the imaginative corridors of your mind through creative writing. Summon your creative energy by developing a skillset that opens up possibilities and allows you to put ideas into words. This course explores and analyzes basic approaches to creative writing and helps students utilize tools and develop techniques to hone creative modes of expression. Learn how to construct events and pace them; lay down dialogue; explore character interiority and exteriority; address points of view; develop themes; play with linear and non-linear narratives; explore genres. From epistolary memoirs, short stories and unique adaptations, the road to conjure up new worlds is there for the taking.

So You Think Gestures Are Non-Verbal? An Introduction to Gesture Studies

dr Tomasz Dyrmo

Target programmes: FA, ELTIT

When people speak, they gesture. Gesturing is so ingrained in our daily communication that we hardly ever notice it. Yet, when we start paying conscious attention to what happens to our hands when we speak, we can draw several interesting conclusions:

  • When we talk about time, we often use gestures that refer to space (Valenzuela & Alcaraz-Carrion, 2023).
  • There is a set of gestures that recurs across languages and cultural practices (Harrison & Ladewig, 2021).
  • In interactive situations, such as dialogues, communicative partners influence each other’s gestures (Kimbra, 2006).
  • People tend to gesture less robustly when addressing someone of higher social or occupational standing (Brown et al., 2022).
  • Gestures can refer to both real, tangible things and abstract concepts (Larsson & Stolpe, 2022).
  • People gesture less when they are not being observed (Hostetter & Potthoff, 2012).

Gesture scholars study these and many other phenomena to learn more about the relationship between gesture, language, and human cognition. If you would like to explore these topics further, join the seminar!

No prior experience with gesture studies or analysis is required, though some basic knowledge of linguistics is welcome.

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

mgr Kacper Łodzikowski

Target programmes: FA, ELTIT

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionising how we interact with computers and each other, challenging traditional notions of authorship, authenticity, and creativity. This introductory course will equip you with the knowledge and skills to navigate this AI-driven future.

We will explore key concepts and technologies in AI, including computer vision, natural language processing and generation, and reinforcement learning. You will gain hands-on experience using pretrained AI models and training your own models. No prior experience with programming or mathematics is needed; this course is designed with humanities students in mind.

You will not only gain a critical understanding of the role of AI in shaping the modern world but also develop skills essential for thriving in the AI-powered economy. This course also provides a solid foundation for those considering further studies in the field, such as the interdisciplinary MA-level programme Language, Mind, Technology.

Gender and language in the professional workplace

prof. UAM dr hab. Joanna Pawelczyk

Target programmes: FA, ELTIT + AMU-PIE

Gender shapes our lives and influences our behavior, including the way we use language and conduct our conversations, but few of us are aware of it. Gender is also built into how organizations function.

The aim of this seminar is to examine the relevance of gender as a social construct in the context of workplace communication and interactions. Gender will be approached from the sociolinguistic and (widely defined) discourse analytic perspectives. In this seminar we will look at how symbolic femininity and masculinity are reflected in language use and how they contribute to constructing professional identities. We will discuss how contemporary leadership has changed to include language practices symbolically linked to femininity and why. Other focuses include: gender ideologies, gender microaggressions in professional communication, gender violence.

Grading: active class participation based on assigned reading, in-class presentation.

Colloquial English

Stephen Smollin

Target programmes: FA, ELTIT

Welcome to Colloquial English. This intermediate level course is designed to enhance your knowledge of English through the study of currently used phrasal verbs, idiomatic expressions, and slang. The expressions studied in this course will help you very much in conversation with native speakers. They will also help you when you watch a movie or TV program in English because these are some of the expressions native speakers use when they speak with each other nearly every day in nearly every situation. In this course we will spend the majority of our time focusing on using the vocabulary we study in various speaking activities. Course grades will be determined based on quiz grades, class participation, and frequent homework assignments.

Languages and language speakers in comparative studies

prof. UAM dr hab. Elżbieta Wąsik

Target programmes: FA, ELTIT + AMU-PIE

The objective of the course is to familiarize its participants with the principles of investigating and categorizing languages in terms of similarities and differences between them. The implications and results of taking the descriptive and comparative points of view in the study of the languages in the world will be discussed in terms of three groups of interrelated issues. It will be demonstrated that, firstly, languages are classified into language families and groups (due to their origin) or language leagues due to affinity between them), and language types (due to similarities between them within their phonological, morphological, syntactic or semantic systems). Secondly, the structural diversity of languages in the world will be confronted with the anthropological, ethnic, political, social, cultural, and civilizational diversity of the world’s population. Finally, when it comes to the names of languages that are mostly equal to ethnonyms, that is, are derived from the words referring to their speakers in the native language or other languages, attention will be paid to the difficulties in identifying them in situations when languages have more than one name. Statements about linguistic and nonlinguistic facts will be exemplified with selected languages spoken in Europe and on other continents.

ESCL proseminar pair 1 — ESLC students may only choose one of the two

Shakespeare’s comedy

prof. UAM dr hab. Jacek Fabiszak

The aim of the course is to look at Shakespeare’s comedies (and read selected texts) in light of ancient and early modern theories of comedy but also from a contemporary perspective of both comedy theory and practice. Shakespeare wrote a whole array of different types of comedies popular in the early modern period, using and developing well-known motifs and conventions. He did, however, stay shy of other types (subgenres), such as satirical comedy. We will read a selection of plays typical of the types Shakespeare wrote on the one hand, and illustrating the historical development of Shakespearean comedy: The Taming of the Shrew (an early comedy, controversial today), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (a mature romantic comedy) and The Tempest (a tragicomedy and a late play) and analyse the comic potential and how it is combined with non-comedic conventions and themes.

Selected aspects of art in Britain in the twentieth century

dr hab. Dominika Buchowska-Greaves

In this seminar, we will study British art and its impact on cultural, social, and political life. We will discuss the innovative character of modernism, the reversal of conventions in postmodernism, and the criticism of both in neomodernist discourse. The proseminar will address different ideas, trends, and movements such as e.g. Vorticism, Cubism, Surrealism, and Conceptual art, allowing the students to discuss and interpret individual works of art.

ESCL proseminar pair 2 — ESLC students may only choose one of the two

‘The Age of Authors’ or the rise of popular literature in eighteenth-century print market

prof. UAM dr hab. Joanna Maciulewicz

The aim of this seminar is to look at the eighteenth-century literary texts that have been created in the conditions of the flourishing print market. The lapse of the Licensing Act in 1795 led to a rapid increase in the number of authors who tried to make their living by writing. We will analyse diverse ways in which literature responded to the explosion of print and the new conditions of literary creation. We will discuss the emergence of the new genres and conventions designed to attract attention of wide audience and the texts that mocked new authors’ unashamed pursuit of fame and profit. Among the texts we will explore there will be amatory novellas, prostitute narratives, popular moral tales, The Dunciad by Alexander Pope and Author’s Farce by Henry Fielding.

Sonnets and Sonnet Sequences in Modern Anglo-Irish Poetry

dr Jeremy Pomeroy

The proseminarium looks at how a poetic form deeply associated with the English literary tradition has been adopted and adapted by Anglo-Irish writers since the Irish Literary Revival. Overriding concerns include the possibilities and limitations of the constrictive sonnet format, how loosely or strictly a sonnet should be defined, as well as how Irish writers in English have connected with and/or departed from the English sonnet tradition. Exemplary sonnets by such writers as Yeats, Kavanaugh and Boland will first be considered, followed by a look at the possibilities of longer sonnet sequences on the basis of works by Michael Harnett, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon and Anthony Cronin.

Classes consist in a discussion of the assigned work(s), subsequent to a brief introductory lecture providing relevant biographical, historical and cultural context. Grades are awarded on the basis of preparedness for and participation in weekly discussions, a composition related to the course theme, and either a semester test or a presentation (according to the group's preference).

ESCL proseminar pair 3 — ESLC students may only choose one of the two

Current trends in American experimental film

dr Kornelia Boczkowska

Produced outside of the major commercial studios due to their lower budgets and non-commercial motivations and values, experimental film and video are recognized as a distinctive mode of filmmaking and art practice, which re-evaluates cinematic conventions and challenges dominant ideologies, continuously breaking the taboos and censorship of mainstream film culture. Known for their short non-narrative format, a personal mode and a strong articulation of auteurism, experimental films are extremely diverse in terms of filmmaking styles, representation and spectatorship. While addressing questions of time and space, landscape and movement, the body and the senses, race, gender and identity or the mechanics and materiality of the film medium, many experimental films provide an alternative, unconventional viewing experience through their creative use of mise-en-scène, editing and montage.

In this course, we will discuss both critically acclaimed and some lesser known or rarely screened experimental films produced in traditional, digital and new (hybrid) media formats with a special focus on the post-1980s American avant-garde film scene. Along the way, we will examine the current trends in contemporary experimental filmmaking, from women’s and feminist films, trash films, found footage films and experimental documentary films to slow cinema, ecocinema, ethnographic films, handmade films and animated films.

The language of inclusion and exclusion – an introduction to Critical Discourse Studies

dr Samuel Bennett

You have probably all seen hate speech language on TikTok, Facebook or IG, or seen it on the news, you have perhaps even experienced it yourself.

This pro-seminar is aimed at students who are interested in how language is used (and abused) in politics, society, the media and in our own private conversations.

It introduces students the field of Critical Discourse Studies. We start from a view that there is a relationship between language and society - each impacts upon the other – and that language use cannot be understood without looking at social inequalities (power inequalities, gender relations, race, class, etc.)

Students taking this pro-seminar will look at the relationship between language and inequalities and their consequences, including:

  • How people are constructed negatively or positively through language
  • How social media shapes current public debates and communication
  • How we justify and legitimise our arguments
  • Whose voices are heard, whose are silenced and how this can be challenged

During the course we delve into current issues in the UK, the US, Poland and the wider world, including: National identity, migration, climate change, the rise of the far-right, and LGBTQ rights.