M.A. programme in English Philology: Second year of study: Subject seminars — summer term 2025–2026

What is this list?

This is a list of subject seminars (Polish: seminaria przedmiotowe) we intend to launch in the summer term (February–June) in our full-time M.A. programme in English philology (Filologia angielska) whose second year of study is the academic year 2025–2026. This list is intended for:

  1. Students at the Faculty of English who are about to enter the second term of the second 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 October 2024.

How to navigate the list?

The list is sorted first by the discipline (linguistics precedes literary studies) 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.

Linguistics

TBA

TBA

tba

TBA

TBA

tba

TBA

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Literary studies

Anglo-Caribbean Fiction: Socio-Cultural Contexts

dr Marta Frątczak-Dąbrowska

This seminar explores Anglo-Caribbean fiction with a focus on understanding the complex cultural, social, racial, and economic backgrounds that shape the region’s literature. Students will engage deeply with texts that illuminate the legacies of slavery, identity struggles, postcolonial realities, and economic migrations, examining how these forces inform both individual and collective experiences. Through intensive reading and active discussion, participants will critically analyse narrative techniques, thematic concerns, and character development in works by prominent authors such as Andrea Levy, David Dabydeen, and Caryl Phillips. By the end of the seminar, students will be equipped not only to interpret Anglo-Caribbean literature with sensitivity to its cultural and historical dimensions but also to articulate informed perspectives on broader issues of identity, migration, and social justice.

Irish short story

dr Joanna Jarząb-Napierała

This seminar is devoted to the development of the short story genre in Irish literature. Since the short story, as a modern genre in Irish literature, symbolically begins with the publication of George Moore’s The Untilled Field in 1903, the aim of the course is to familiarize students with the most significant representatives of Irish short story writing from the twentieth century to the most recent publications of this millennium. Bearing in mind that Irish literature is represented in two languages — English and Irish — the scope of the analysis will be limited to those Irish short story writers who chose to publish their works in English or whose Irish-language works have been translated into English.

During the seminar, we will try to answer the following questions: To what extent does the Irish short story draw on the Irish storytelling tradition, or should we treat it as a modern genre that emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century? Is the short story a response to the Irish ‘anxiety about the novel’? Is the Irish short story undergoing a crisis in contemporary times, or does it remain a relevant form of expression today?

These and other questions aim to familiarize students not only with the history of the Irish short story but also with the distinctive features of the genre in the Irish context.

Interpretation in the humanities and social sciences: Selected issues

prof. UAM dr hab. Janusz Kaźmierczak

The course aims to discuss and clarify the various uses of interpretation in the humanities and social sciences. In particular, it will look at those conceptualizations of interpretation that can be used for student MA projects in the study of literature, cultural studies and media studies. Where applicable, within particular frameworks, it will attempt to draw boundaries between the related terms of interpretation, hermeneutics, understanding, meaning and significance. In the second part of the course students will be asked to prepare presentations on a cultural phenomenon of interest, interpreted with the use of a theoretical framework discussed earlier in the course. Assessment in the course will be based on the quality of participation in class discussions, as well as the presentation.

Selected bibliography

  • Carey, James W. [1989] 1992. Communication as culture: Essays on media and society. New York: Routledge.
  • Deacon, David, Michael Pickering, Peter Golding and Graham Murdock (eds.). 2021. Researching communications: A practical guide to methods in media and cultural analysis. (3rd edition.) London: Bloomsbury.
  • Geertz, Clifford. [1973] 2009. The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays. New York: Basic Books.
  • Hirsch, Eric D. 1979. Validity in interpretation. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Stories on the Move Across Borders and Cultures

dr Katarzyna Macedulska

This seminar examines how contemporary authors writing in English articulate identities and complexities of belonging within shifting cultural landscapes and geopolitical contexts. The focus is on how they navigate and portray their changing social and natural environments shaped by the complex intersections of identity, history, power relations, and migration, within transnational and transcultural contexts.

Reading the works of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Zadie Smith, Joy Harjo, Kao Kalia Yang, Yaa Gyasi, Miriam Toews, Tanya Talaga, Ocean Vuong, Laila Lalami, and others, we will analyze how identities are constructed, reexamined, and reshaped in response to contemporary events; how individual and collective legacies endure and inform lived experience; and how historical inheritances continue to shape interpersonal relationships. We will explore how these authors engage with the uncertainties of everyday life within the social, cultural, and linguistic spaces they inhabit, challenge, and make visible.

Considering an array of diverse literary voices, this seminar invites critical reflection on transculturalism as both an evolving theoretical concept and a lived reality. Throughout we will discuss why and how storytelling is a vital act of cultural negotiation and identity formation in our interconnected world.

Credits will be awarded based on students’ attendance, active participation, and completion of assignments.