First-year of study M.A. subject seminars for summer term 2024–2025

What is this list?

This is a list of subject seminars (Polish: seminaria przedmiotowe) we intend to launch in the summer term (October–February) in our full-time M.A. programme in English philology (Filologia angielska) whose first 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 second term of the first year of their full-time M.A. programme: this is your reference point before your enrolment into subject seminars;
  2. Candidates for our full-time programmes: this list gives you a snapshot of what subject seminars were on offer for the study cycle that started in 2024.

How to navigate the list?

The list is sorted first by the discipline (literary studies precede linguistics) and then by the name of the teacher. The format of the entries is as follows: the title of the subject seminar, the name of the teacher, and the description of the subject seminar.

Each subject seminar = 30 hrs./4 ECTS. Choose two seminars from the lists below—60 hrs/8 ECTS in total (you can choose two seminars on linguistics or two seminars on literature or one on linguistics and one on literature)

Każde seminarium to 30 godz./4 ECTS. Należy wybrać dwa seminaria z całej puli na łączną sumę 60 godz./8 ECTS w dowolnej kombinacji (dwa językoznawcze lub dwa literaturoznawcze lub jedno językoznawcze i jedno literaturoznawcze).

Literary studies

Transnational America in Literature

prof. UAM dr hab. Wiesław Kuhn

Is American literature a home-grown phenomenon that gives voice to the uniqueness of American society and culture? Or is it, as many critics of the last twenty years have said, part of a global literary web that interacts with other societies in a back-and-forth flow of ideas and influences? For these more recent critics, American literature is a transnational literature and, in an essential sense, located outside of America. The course will introduce participants to this more recent notion of American literature: one in which writers fuse local influences with thematic material, literary experimentation and historical contexts from Europe, Latin and Central America, Africa and Asia. We will also consider how America as a “federation of cultures” (Randolph Bourne) is transnational even within its geographic borders and how Its literature is the outcome of a rich dialogue between its constituent peoples.

Among topics that the course will explore will be: Edgar Allan Poe and the hauntings of British Gothic; Kate Chopin and French creolization; the importance of literary travel in Lost Generation writers such as Hemingway and Fitzgerald; Cormac MacCarthy and writing of the Mexican borderlands; and Sylvia Plath and Celtic supernatural landscape.

Dark History of the Novel — the inglorious genealogy of the novel

prof. UAM dr hab. Joanna Maciulewicz

William Warner in his Licensing Entertainment draws attention to the fact that cultural memory is marked by violence. Every history is cleansed of undesired elements. The aim of this seminar is to trace the process of purgation in the early history of the novel, a genre that emerged as one of the many forms of literature stimulated by a rapidly expanding print market and that was shaped into its more respectable formula by burying the traces of its inglorious roots. We will look at the popular genres which from which the novel derived its themes and conventions, such as amatory novellas, prostitute narratives, picaresque fiction and Oriental tales to uncover the dark genealogy of the novel. We will also analyse how the neohistorical novels, such as The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock by Gowar or The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho by Joseph Paterson of today bring it to light in the way they describe the eighteenth century.

Canadian Prose: Trajectories of Change

prof. UAM dr hab. Agnieszka Rzepa

The seminar will familiarize students with Canadian literary tradition and major trajectories of change in Canadian literature from the second half of the 19th to the beginning of 21st century. Special focus will fall on multicultural post-WWII prose in its varied themes, forms and genres, including emphasis on the different ways in which Canadian 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. Cultural and social contexts will be crucial during our discussions as we try to find best ways of approaching each text. The seminar will also allow students to examine changes in the critical discourse on Canadian literature. Texts selected for discussion vary in style, subject-matter and focus, allowing students to appreciate the diversity of contemporary Canadian prose and literary criticism and theory.

Course work will include individual and group assignments, various (brief) written and oral activities, and—most importantly—active engagement with literary and critical texts in class.

Linguistics

Discourses of collective memory

prof. UAM dr hab. Małgorzata Fabiszak

When we attend history classes at school, we have an impression as if history is an account of things that happened in the past and how they happened. But this is not really the case. What we read in history textbooks is a selection of facts, told from a specific perspective by a specific teller, whose framing of the events may influence our understanding of what happened. The history-telling is therefore worthy of our critical reflection.

In this course we will focus on such issues as (1) the relationship between politics and history, (2) the commemoration of the past and its role in the present for the future, (3) guilt discourse and the memory of the perpetrators, (4) the discord between family memory and grand history (history and counter-history). In short we will look at how we use different linguistic strategies to create our socio-cultural world and define our identity and a sense of group-belonging.

To receive the credit for this course, the students are expected to: (1) read and understand the assigned material, (2) participate in class discussions and team work, (3) write short reports on team discussions during the class and post them on the moodle, (4) prepare a presentation on the basis of an academic article of their choice related to the topic of the seminar.

I can read it in your eyes — introduction to eye-tracking research in psycholinguistics

dr Agnieszka Lijewska

Curious about what our eyes reveal about language? Eye-tracking is an exciting, cutting-edge method used in fields like cognitive psychology, medicine, and even engineering to explore how our minds process information. This seminar is designed to introduce you to eye-tracking as a powerful tool for studying language comprehension and production.

In this hands-on course, you'll uncover the basics of human vision and dive into eye-tracking research to explore how language is processed in the brain. Discover the fascinating insights eye movements offer into the bilingual mind, speech recognition, and reading! You’ll learn to think like a researcher, analyse real data and ask questions that bridge psychology and linguistics.

Assessment will be based on attendance, engagement with readings, lively participation in discussions, presentations, and a final test—making this a great opportunity to dive into a rapidly evolving field with real-world applications. Join in to see what eye-tracking can reveal about the mind’s secrets.

Selected reading:

  • Conklin, Kathy, Ana Pellicer-Sánchez & Gareth Carrol. 2018. Eye-Tracking: A Guide for Applied Linguistics Research. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press.
  • Dussias, P. E. 2010. Uses of eye-tracking data in second language sentence processing research. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 30(1). 149–166.
  • Godfroid, Aline. 2019. Eye Tracking in Second Language Acquisition and Bilingualism: A Research Synthesis and Methodological Guide. 1st edn. Routledge. (external link)
  • Rayner, Keith, Elizabeth R. Schotter, Michael E. J. Masson, Mary C. Potter & Rebecca Treiman. 2016. So Much to Read, So Little Time: How Do We Read, and Can Speed Reading Help? Psychological Science in the Public Interest. SAGE Publications Inc 17(1). 4–34. (external link)
  • Schmidtke, Jens. 2018. Pupillometry in linguistic research - an introduction and review for second language researchers. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 40(3). 529–549. (external link)

Historical news discourse as source of fake news and representations

prof. UAM dr hab. Matylda Włodarczyk

The proseminar aims to develop an understanding of discourse structures and language devices used in the processes of opinion making (e.g. presentation of fake news) that characterise both historical and contemporary media. This involves issues of reliability of contents and representations created by periodical press from the 18th century onwards. The course introduces (socio)pragmatic approaches to historical news discourse, focusing on social identities, gender, culture, distribution of power, marginalised groups, etc. Specific genres of news to be covered include, among others, classified and commercial advertising, letters to the editor, crime reports. A transnational perspective on news circulation is adopted allowing for comparisons across Polish and English historical news.

Students will be responsible for the reading assigned for a given class and will be evaluated on the basis of oral and online written assignments. Following the introductory part of the course, the students will be asked to prepare individual (or group) presentations on a selected topic.