M.A. seminars 2022–2024 (Full-time programmes)

This page is now an archive; it does not show seminars available during the upcoming/current admissions cycle. Refer to this directory in search for the most up-to-date list.

What is this list?

This is a list of M.A. seminars we intend to launch in our full-time M.A. programmes whose first year of study is 2022; that is, the seminars are planned to start in 2022 and end in 2024, at the end of the two-year M.A. programme.

What about these seminars?

Part of the admissions procedure for selected full-time M.A. programmes is an interview. The interview you take part in is with a small committee of our teachers headed by your prospective M.A. thesis supervisor, the teacher whose seminar you intend to join upon becoming a student in the programme. At some point between your registration for the given programme—see the easy step-by-step instruction linked to here—and the day of the interview we may contact you to ask about your preferred M.A. seminar. Your task is easy: browse this list in search of seminars which are offered for the programme in which your are enroling 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 committee.

Please note: We do not guarantee that upon admission to the programme you will be able to join the preferred seminar. Enrolment into a particular seminar is subject to conditions such as the total number of candidates, the overall result of your enrolment process, and others.

How to navigate the list?

The list is sorted by the full-time M.A. programme to which the seminars apply. As you scroll the page down or click on the links in this paragraph, you will note headings with the names of the programmes:

Underneath each such heading you will find the seminars planned for the given programme, sorted by the name of its instructor, with a detailed description of each seminar.



English Philology

(Filologia angielska)

For description of the programme, follow this link.

and

Language and Communication in Healthcare

For description of the programme, follow this link.


American experimental film and video

dr Kornelia Boczkowska

Description

Produced outside 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. The post-war American experimental film deliberately opposed some Hollywood and independent feature productions and challenged dominant ideologies, continuously breaking the taboos and censorship of the mainstream (film) culture. Known for their inherently short, artisan and non-narrative format, experimental films and videos provide an alternative and unconventional viewing experience through their creative use of mise-en-scène, editing and montage, addressing issues such as landscape and movement, time and space, the body and the senses, race, gender and identity or the mechanics and materiality of the film medium.

In this seminar, we will discuss both critically acclaimed and some lesser known or rarely screened experimental films produced in traditional, digital and new (hybrid) media formats. Along the way, we will examine the key trends and movements in the history and present-day of experimental filmmaking, ranging from early psychodramas (Maya Deren, Sidney Peterson) or city (Hilary Harris, Godfrey Reggio), diary (Jonas Mekas, Lynne Sachs), structural (Hollis Frampton, Ernie Gehr) and underground beat films (Ron Rice, Jack Smith) to feminist (Gunvor Nelson, Joyce Wieland) and found footage films (Craig Baldwin, Bill Morrison), queer (Barbara Hammer, George & Mike Kuchar), slow (Peter Hutton, Sharon Lockhart) and ecocinema (James Benning, Fern Silva) or (multichannel) film installations.

For their MA project, students will study any aspect of the experimental film and video practice and conduct relevant research within scheduled timeframes. Those interested can also develop their own experimental film project as part of their thesis.

Prerequisites

Keen interest in and some basic knowledge of American film history and culture.

Selected references

Dixon, W. Wheeler and Gwendolyn A. Foster (eds.). 2002. Experimental Cinema: The Film Reader. New York: Routledge.
Lucia, Cynthia, Art Simon and Roy Grundmann (eds.). 2016. American Film History: Selected Readings, Origins to 1960. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Lucia, Cynthia, Art Simon and Roy Grundmann (eds.). 2016. American Film History: Selected Readings, 1960 to the Present. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
MacDonald, Scott. 1988-2006. A Critical Cinema 1-5: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers. Berkeley: University of California Press.
O’Pray, Michael. 2003. Avant-Garde Film: Forms, Themes and Passions. London: Wallflower.
Sitney, P. A. 2002. Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde, 1943-2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press.


Psycholinguistics and bilingual cognition

dr Katarzyna Jankowiak

Description

Bilingualism, recently being one of the most widely investigated research avenues in psycholinguistics, provides crucial insights into the interplay between language and cognition by showing how different languages interact with one another as well as how and to what extent language competence affects cognition. This MA course is aimed at students who are interested in learning how bilingualism affects not only native (L1) vs. non-native (L2) language processing but also our emotions, creativity, and high-level cognitive functions (e.g., working memory, decision making, or problem solving). In this MA course, we will discuss theoretical accounts and empirical evidence on language co-activation and executive control in bilingualism. We will also focus on experimental research showing how being bilingual modulates linguistic creativity, emotional responding, and the perception of social norms in L1 and L2. For the MA project, students are encouraged to conduct their own empirical study aimed to investigate different cognitive mechanisms underlying bilingualism.

Selected bibliography

Caldwell-Harris, C. L. (2014). Emotionality differences between a native and foreign language: Theoretical implications. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1–4.
Jankowiak, K. (2021). Current trends in electrophysiological research on bilingual language processing. Language and Linguistics Compass, 15(8), 1–17.
Jiao, L., Liu, C., de Bruin, A., & Chen, B. (2020). Effects of language context on executive control in unbalanced bilinguals: An ERPs study. Psychophysiology, 57(11), e13653.
Wu, Y. J., & Thierry, G. (2010). Chinese–English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese. Journal of Neuroscience, 30(22), 7646-7651.


The Transnational in American Literature

dr hab. Joseph Kuhn, prof. UAM

Description

Perhaps the major transformation in the study of American literature in the past two decades has been the ‘global turn’ in the subject. This MA seminar will examine familiar texts (for example, Hem-ingway’s The Sun Also Rises) and not-so-familiar texts (for example, Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood) in the American literary canon, but do so from a larger, more international perspective. At the centre of the seminar we will focus on the modernist period and on the centrality of literary travel to Europe between the two world wars. This migration of writers gave rise to a significant body of work that contains a ‘transatlantic’ element: a fusion of more local American influences with European literary experimentation, thematic material, and historical contexts (for example, that of Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Katherine Anne Porter, and Elizabeth Bishop).

This “transatlantic” element is more pronounced in the modernist period, but it has arguably been there in American literature from its very beginnings. It is hoped that this seminar will show how many of the central writings of American literature are in a vital sense located outside of America—that is, outside of a self-contained national space and outside of the Adamic or nativist conscious-ness that supposedly accompanies it. This concept of a ‘trans-national’ American literary imagination could be said to apply, for example, to the international narratives of Henry James, Edith Wharton and Stephen Crane; to the cosmopolitan literary sensibility of Kate Chopin; to modernist and Lost Generation reactions to Paris as the capital of the avant-garde or of sophisticated worldliness; to T.S. Eliot’s extraordinarily influential depiction (including in the United States) of post-World War I Europe as a haunting montage of neo-Symbolist images; and even to southern writers who saw the themes and figures of a ‘global’ South reflected in their travels abroad.

The seminar will concentrate on four particular areas:

  • the period around the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth (Henry James, Edith Wharton, Kate Chopin, Stephen Crane). This component of the seminar will examine the place of France and Italy in aesthetic rites of passage (James, Wharton). It will also examine Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw for its phantasmal representation of Britain at the centre of a debilitating Empire.
  • the influence of European modernism and the global spatial imaginary on interwar writings (Lost Generation writers: Fitzgerald, Hemingway; Eliot and modernist poetry; Elizabeth Bishop and Ger-trude Stein in Paris, Djuna Barnes.
  • representatives of the literature of the American South who had significant interactions with inter-war France, Germany and Poland (William Faulkner, Katherine Anne Porter, William Styron).
  • postmodern and existential writers, mainly in post-World War II Paris or literary London (Richard Wright, Sylvia Plath, Susan Sontag).

Requirements

Regular attendance is essential. Participants should also read and study the set texts due to be discussed in the seminar meeting. Participants will be asked to make one scholarly presentation per semester. There will be a schedule for the submitting of the proposed title, a thesis outline, and the various chapter drafts. It will be expected that participants will follow this schedule closely.

Reading list

Nineteenth century realism and the Gothic

1. Henry James, The Turn of the Screw, “The Beast in the Jungle”
2. Kate Chopin, The Awakening
3. Stephen Crane, “Death and the Child”
4. Edith Wharton, “Roman Fever”, The Age of Innocence

Classic Modernism


1. Katherine Anne Porter, “The Leaning Tower”; “Flowering Judas”; “The Grave” (also useful: “Pale Horse, Pale Rider”).
2. William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying, “Ad Astra” (also useful: A Fable)
3. Djuna Barnes, Nightwood
4. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night, “Babylon Revisited”
5. Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
6. T.S. Eliot, “Burbank with a Baedeker, Bleistein with a Cigar”; The Waste Land; “Burnt Norton” from Four Quartets.
7. Randolph Bourne, “Trans-national America”

The Middle Generation

1. Elizabeth Bishop, North and South (book of poems). "Paris 7 A.M.", "In a Room", "Sleeping Standing Up", "Roosters", and "The Armadillo”.
2. Robert Lowell, “Beyond the Alps”, “Waking Early Sunday Morning”
3. Robert Penn Warren, All the KIng’s Men, “Terror”, “Tiberius on Capri”
4. Flannery O’ Connor, “The Displaced Person”

Existential Fiction

1. Richard Wright, “The Man Who Lived Underground”
2. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

Confessional poetry/ The New York School

1. Sylvia Plath, Ariel (book of poetry)
2. John Ashbery, Selected Poems (“Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror”)

Postwar Paris


1. Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation (including “Notes on Camp”) (1966)
Postwar Southern Fiction
2. William Styron, Sophie’s Choice

Critical Works

1. Benstock, Shari. Women of the Left Bank (1986)
2. Brinkmeyer Jr, Robert H. The Fourth Ghost: White Southern Writers and European Fascism, 1930-1950 (2009).
3. Cowley, Malcolm. Exile’s Return: A Literary Odyssey of the 1920s (1951).
4. Dimock, Wai Chee. Through Other Continents: American Literature Across Deep Time (2006)
5. Dimock, Wai Chee and Lawrence Buell eds. Shades of the Planet: American Literature as World Literature (2007).
6. Giles, Paul. The Global Remapping of American Literature (2011).
7. --. Virtual Americas: Transnational Fictions and the Transatlantic Imaginary (2002).
8. Kaplan, Alice. Dreaming in French: The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Son-tag, and Angela Davis (U of Chicago P, 2012).
9. Kennedy, J. Gerald. Imagining Paris: Exile, Writing and American Identity (1993).
10. McMaster, Graham. “Henry James and India: A Historical Reading of The Turn of the Screw” (1988).


Tales of Roguery and Adventure – the emergence of popular fiction in eighteenth-century literature

prof. UAM dr hab. Joanna Maciulewicz

Description

The year 1695 witnessed the end of the Licensing Act which proved to be a powerful stimulus for the development of print market. Writing became a profession and attracted so many scribblers willing to try their hand in the business of literature that Samuel Johnson dubbed the contemporary period the Age of Authors. Publication became a profitable business and authors, in the endeavour of making a living by writing, sought for the themes and conventions of writing that would attract the great number of readers. It is no wonder then that the novel which originated in the midst of the print explosion would assimilate itself to the kinds of writing that excited widespread interest on the book market: adventure stories, pirate narratives, criminal biographies, whore narratives are only some of the examples of genres to which the early novels assimilated themselves. It is the aim of the seminar to trace the early novels fascination with the underworld and to explore the influence of the noncanonical genres of writing on its development. The study of the traces of popular kinds of writing in early novels will shed light on the aspects of the eighteenth century rarely portrayed in canonical literature: crime, sex trade, marvels or piracy. We will also look at the present-day representations of the eighteenth century in TV series, such as The Harlots or City of Vice, and contemporary historical novels.


Gender and language in the professional workplace

prof. UAM dr hab. Joanna Pawelczyk

Description

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 the MA 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 the first part of the seminar, students will be introduced to the fields of sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and conversation analysis and learn how to collect, transcribe and ultimately analyze data in view of the research aims and questions. 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 macroaggressions in professional communication, gender violence.

The material covered in class will guide and orient students to develop their own MA topics of interest in the area of language and gender.

Sample bibliography

Caldas-Coulthard, Carmen Rosa (ed.). 2020. Innovations and challenges: Women, language and sexism. London: Routledge.
Litosseliti, Lia and Jane Sunderland (eds.). 2002. Gender identity and discourse analysis. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
Sue, Derald Wing. 2010. Microaggressions in everyday life. Race, gender, and sexual orientation. Hoboken, NJ.: Wiley.


Indigeneity and diaspora: Literary voices of contemporary Canada

prof. UAM dr hab. Agnieszka Rzepa

Description

Contemporary Canada is a former settler colony, inhabited now by a richly diversified population that includes Indigenous peoples of the region (First Nations, Metis and Inuit) and various diasporas, i.e., groups of people who have arrived in Canada from other parts of the world. The seminar will focus on the diversity of literary voices incorporated in contemporary Canadian literature in English: voices that reflect particular ethnic traditions and histories they are rooted in, but also realities of life in Canada. Special focus will fall on prose texts, written in different forms, styles and genres, including emphasis on the different ways in which Indigenous and diasporic writers have been using autobiography, biography and other life-writing genres in their fiction writing, and the ways in which they have fictionalised auto/biographical texts. The seminar will also allow students to examine major changes in the critical discourse on Canadian literature. The course is reading-intensive.

Each student will be required to prepare an oral presentation on a selected topic, act as a discussion-leader, and write a research paper. Active participation in in-class discussions, as well as regular attendance, will also contribute to the final grade. Towards the end of the academic year the students will be asked to submit a tentative M.A. thesis project. All theses have to focus on problems related to Canadian literature, although topics based on comparative North American approaches will also be considered.

Successful candidates wishing to participate in the seminar should have thorough knowledge of the US and/or British literature at the undergraduate (B.A.) level, and an avid interest in literature that goes beyond basic undergraduate requirements.

At the selection stage, familiarity with Canadian literature is desirable, but not required.


The intercultural dimension in teaching English as a foreign language

dr hab. Aleksandra Wach, prof. UAM

Description

Preparing young people to successfully function socially and professionally in the current globalized world is among the aims of contemporary foreign language (L2) education. This requires the development of high levels of intercultural communicative competence (ICC), which is a complex ability to interact effectively and appropriately with members of another culture.

The primary aim of the seminar is to raise the students’ awareness of the complexity and importance of the notion of ICC and its place in teaching English as a foreign language, with a special focus on contemporary didactic options in the classroom. To this end, theoretical, empirical and pedagogical perspectives on ICC in L2 education will be explored. Moreover, as the participants of the seminar will conduct a small-scale study as part of their MA projects, selected issues in applied linguistics research methodology will also be discussed. Because of the pedagogy-oriented scope of the course, it will be helpful if the seminar candidates have finished the L2 teaching specialization, although this is not an absolute prerequisite.

The MA topics will be formulated by the students themselves in accordance with their own research interests under the guidance of the tutor. Sample MA topic areas include:

  • L2 learners’ ICC development through pop-culture media.
  • ICC in L2 teacher education.
  • Culture in L2 coursebooks.

Credit requirements: regular attendance, active participation, reading assignments, oral presentations


Words and Grammar

prof. UAM dr hab. Bartosz Wiland

Description

The seminar is directed to all students interested in a variety of topics related to words, grammar, and the relation between them. We are going to look at words and grammar from a few different angles, starting with basic description of facts in English and its comparison with some other more or less familiar languages (e.g. Polish, Czech, Italian, Bantu languages, etc.). We will also have a look at a few interesting (but competing!) theories about the relation between the lexicon (i.e. memorized word units) and grammar (i.e. construed structures), like Distributed Morphology and Nanosyntax. In connection to that, we will also have a look at what recent experimental work in neurolinguistics can contribute to our understanding of that relation.

Individual MA projects are welcome to include a variety of topics and perspectives – descriptive, analytical, theoretial, comparative, experimental, etc. – as long as it’s something related to words and/or grammar (syntax, meaning, phraseology, idioms, etc.).

With questions regarding this seminar, feel free to contact Bartosz Wiland at bwiland@amu.edu.pl.

Sample bibliography

Baunaz, L. & E. Lander (2018) Nanosyntax: the basics, Exploring Nanosyntax, eds, New York: Oxford University Press.
Bobaljik. J. (2017) Distributed Morphology, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, ed.  M. Aronoff.
Larson, R. (2010) Grammar as science, MIT Press.
Stockall, L. and A. Marantz (2006) A single route, full decomposition model of morphological complexity: MEG evidence, The Mental Lexicon 1.1.


History of the English language

prof. UAM dr hab. Matylda Włodarczyk

Description

Members of this seminar will be expected to specialise in and write their M.A. thesis on a selected topic related to the history of the English language. “History” in the name of the seminar is a very general concept and it is perfectly possible to write a thesis on very recent developments in English (say, over the last couple of decades or so). Within the team, they can choose from a variety of theoretical approaches and supervisors; in the 2022–2024 iteration they comprise:

  • Critical Metaphor Analysis, language of emotions, cognitive historical semantics, language contact - Dr. Anna Rogos-Hebda
  • verbal and visual communication in early texts, social contexts of linguistic changes, sources of vocabulary in the history of English, English orthography: from manuscript to print - Dr. Justyna Rogos-Hebda
  • historical sociolinguistics and sociopragmatics; standardisation, text and genre, visual pragmatics, historical orthography and typography - Dr. Hanna Rutkowska
  • historical sociopragmatics, historical multilingualism, specialised discourses, (im)politeness, multimodality - Dr. Matylda Włodarczyk
  • historical phonology, morphology, lexicon, language contact; historical sociolinguistics - Dr. Marcin Krygier


Language, Mind, Technology

For description of the programme, follow this link.


How do we make sense of what others mean

prof. UAM dr hab. Katarzyna Bromberek-Dyzman

Description

People share meanings by what they say (verbal code), how they say it (nonverbal code), or even by not saying (silence can tell a lot too). Meanings can come coded in voices, speech melodies, words, facial expressions (or emojis), gestures, postures, as well as degree of confidence or assertiveness. Streams of multimodal communicative cues carry complex configurations of potentially meaningful, but not obviously related communicative signs, comprehenders need to select, connect and make sense of. A big job. Yet, making sense of the rapidly unfolding flow of cues in communication seems effortless. It happens in no time (Van Berkum 2019). How come? What mechanisms gear the rapid meaning making? Are the mechanisms the same in the native and foreign language systems? Do they depend on whether the speaker and the hearer know each other?

This course offers to lay bare these mechanisms for you. It will take you for a journey of exploration that starts with the neurobiology of meaning making (Costa, 2020; Kemmerer, 2015). We will study how the senses inform the brain of the lexical and semantic contents of meaning (Kissler & Bromberek-Dyzman, 2021), and how the body, through the feeling states (physiology) contributes to somatic (embodied) meaning (Hertz et al. 2020; Matheson and Barsalou, 2018). On top of that, this course will equip you with experimental tools for testing hypotheses, and experimenting on meaning making, and will give you hands-on experience in gaining insight into the neuronal activities of the brain in real time (EEG).

Together, we will be tracking brain-to-brain dynamics when two individuals are engaged in verbal interactions in real time, i.e., while they are simultaneously connected to two independent EEG systems (hyperscanning; Czeszumski et al. 2020) to discover (i) the real time brain dynamics of meaning making in the native and foreign tongue; if (ii) bilinguals feel the meaning in their foreign language, or they merely understand it; (iii) if the meaning making processes are co-constructed by speaker-hearer relationship.

If you would like to learn more about the dynamics of meaning making in bilingual brain, and most importantly, you are keen on co-participating in exploring it – join the course!

Bibliography

Costa, A. (2020). The Bilingual Brain: And what it tells us about the science of language. New York: Penguin Random House.
Czeszumski et al. (2020). Hyperscanning: A Valid Method to Study Neural Inter-brain Underpinnings of Social Interaction. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2020.00039
Hertz et al. (2020). Overarching States of Mind. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Vol. 24, No. 3 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2019.12.015
Kemmerer, D. (2015). Cognitive Neuroscience of Language. New York: Psychology Press.
Kissler, J. & Bromberek-Dyzman, K. (2021). Mood induction effects on neural correlates of evaluative processing of emotional adjectives in L1 and L2. Frontiers in Psychology. Volume 11, Article 588902. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.588902
Van Berkum, J. (2019). Language comprehension and emotion: Where are the interfaces and who cares? In G. de Zubicaray and N. O. Schiller (Eds.). Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 736–766.



Creative and Specialized Translation

Tłumaczenie kreatywne i specjalistyczne

For description of the programme, follow this link (to our Polish-speaking website).

and

Polish-English Conference Interpreting

Tłumaczenie konferencyjne polsko-angielskie

For description of the programme, follow this link (to our Polish-speaking website).


How awesome is that? Conference interpreting explored

dr hab. Agnieszka Chmiel, prof. UAM

Note: this seminar is only open to candidates for Polish-English Conference Interpreting (Tłumaczenie konferencyjne polsko-angielskie) but not to candidates for Creative and Specialized Translation (Tłumaczenie kreatywne i specjalistyczne)

Description

Conference interpreting, and simultaneous interpreting performed by a conference interpreter in a booth in particular, is considered to belong to the most complex activities in language speaking. The interpreter has to juggle multiple tasks, such as listening to the source language text and expressing the same meaning in the target language by activating the right translation equivalents and inhibiting the less desired ones and monitoring one’s own output. The interpreter also engages in various types of interactions with technology, for instance during remote simultaneous interpreting or when using computer-assisted interpreting tools. The interpreters’ performance oftentimes sparks awe among their listeners who admire bilingual processing under extreme temporal constraints and extreme cognitive load. Participants of this M.A. seminar will be guided to conduct empirical studies to explore the multitasking involved in simultaneous and consecutive interpreting.


Translation and corpora

dr Marta Kajzer-Wietrzny

Description

Corpora are large collections of machine readable texts that have for decades now been used in translation research and translation practice. Practicing translators may use them to inform their language choices and researchers have turned to them to pursue linguistic enquiries to shed more light on the nature of translation and characteristics of the translated texts.

The aim of this seminar is to make its participants conversant with corpus linguistics methods to make them able to critically approach and evaluate the product of translation and to be able to create practical translation solutions applicable in the translation and language industry.

Candidates are expected to be eager to increase their digital literacy, willing to compile their own corpora and learn the basic methods of Natural Language Processing to process them in the course of their MA projects.

Credit requirements involve reading the assigned articles, submitting 3 reading reports in the course of the academic year, preparing presentations, working on small-scale interim projects both individually and in teams, submitting an MA research proposal by the end of the academic year.


The translator in a multimodal world

dr Iwona Mazur

Description

Today’s world is becoming increasingly multimodal: we watch videos on YouTube, create and consume content on Facebook, Instagram or TikTok, watch films and series on streaming platforms, such as Netflix, HBO Max, or Disney+. We play video games, experience 3D cinema and Virtual Reality, and take virtual tours using 360 degrees videos. In the above media, the visual, verbal and aural channels interact to create meaning. However, not always is this meaning clear or accessible to all interested parties. For instance, the verbal channel will not accessible to a person not knowing the source language of a film, the visual channel cannot be accessed by a person with sight loss, while the information conveyed through the aural channel will not be available to a person with hearing impairment. This is where audiovisual translation (AVT) and media accessibility (MA) come into play.

In the seminar we will look at the fundamentals of multimodal and film discourse analysis, followed by theoretical and experimental approaches to the main AVT and MA types: subtitling, dubbing, voice-over, audio description (AD) and subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing (SDHH). The master’s thesis will have a theoretical as well as an applicable practical component (e.g. AD or SDHH created to an online video, Polish voice-over or subtitles created to an educational video, a survey conducted among AVT or MA users, etc.). Although projects in AVT and MA will be encouraged, students will not be bound by the thematic scope of the seminar and will be free to choose their own topics in line with their translation-related interests.

Credit requirements include regular attendance, careful reading of assigned texts, active participation in class discussions, a passing mark on the end-of-semester test, a presentation on a selected topic, as well as systematic progress on the M.A. project. Students are expected to formulate the topics, tentative outlines and bibliographies of their M.A. theses by the end of the second semester and submit draft versions of the first chapters by October 30th, 2023.

Candidates should be proficient in both written and spoken English and should have a keen interest in translation and/or accessibility issues.

Selected bibliography

Adamowicz-Grzyb, G. 2013. Tłumaczenia filmowe w praktyce. Warszawa: Fortima.
Chmiel. A. i I. Mazur. 2014. Audiodeskrypcja. Wydział Anglistyki UAM
Diaz-Cintas, J. i A. Remael. 2021. Subtitling: Concepts and Practices. London: Routledge.
Tomaszkiewicz. T. 2006. Przekład audiowizualny. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN