Uppsala University

The course examines how the English language varies in use according to contextual factors. By applying theories and analytical frameworks from the fields of pragmatics and sociolinguistics, students discover how speakers and writers use the English language to communicate meanings, carry out actions, signal membership in speech communities, and achieve styles in talk and writing. In the pragmatics portion of the course, the ways in which meaning is context-dependent and the ways in which speakers achieve goals using language are considered. In the sociolinguistics portion of the course, the linguistic resources with which speakers show their connection to a given community and express identity are analyzed. Students use primarily qualitative research methods to complete assignments and short research papers. Examination is done in the form of oral presentations, written assignments, and written final examinations.

This course provides a survey of Irish-language poetry composed during the twentieth century. Using Louis De Paor’s bilingual edition of poems from the period, Leabhar na hAthghabála | Poems of Repossession, the course discusses questions of thematic and stylistic continuity as well as evidence for evolution within the poetic tradition of the Irish. Common themes and conventions in the Irish language poetry of the 20th century as well as an understanding of how these themes underwent development and were re-articulated over the course of the century are acquired. Such themes include gender discourse, post-colonialism, and the politics of language. Introductory use of literary theories and secondary sources is also included.

The course illustrates the ecological, resource, social, and cultural conditions and foundations for a sustainable and just future economic system. This process combines systems thinking and an interdisciplinary understanding concerning how these conditions and foundations are connected and interact. The consequences of different future, sustainable economic systems are also investigated and analyzed. The many perspectives, questions, and discussions in the course give students a long list of areas to focus on in the project work that leads to a practical project.

The course gives an introduction to the modern ground- and space-based telescopes; astronomical coordinate systems; observational methods including direct imaging, photometry, spectroscopy, and interferometry; different telescope/instrumentation/detector configurations; and observational experiments, calibrations and data reductions, both on a theoretical level and experimentally with the Westerlund Telescope at the Ångström Laboratory in Uppsala, Sweden.

The course analyses selected American literary works from the mid-17th century to today. The texts include fiction, poetry, traditional autobiographies as well as hybrid forms. Discussions will focus on aspects such as "truth", gender, race, ethnicity and morals.

The course provides a general introduction to the psychology of learning and cognitive psychology. The main emphasis of the course is placed on cognitive psychology, which covers thinking and knowledge processes, with memory as a central component. Other areas that are covered include neuropsychology, knowledge representations, decision-making, visualization, language, and problem-solving. The part concerning the psychology of learning covers how behavior is developed in the interaction between the individual and the environment, with emphasis on classical and operant conditioning. The third part of the course covers applications of cognitive psychology and psychology of learning and considers how principles and models from these two areas can be applied, both in other areas of psychology and in areas outside of psychology.

The course analyzes selected English literary works with the emphasis on the 19th-century novel and various modernist genres. The influence and reflection of social developments in literature are addressed, as are the perspectives of cultural and literary history. Basic concepts and methods of literary criticism are applied.

The course examines the significance of cultural heritage and cultural memory in the United States in historical and contemporary perspectives. It centers on questions about identity, nationalism, politics, and commercialism, how history has been represented in for example monuments, museums, commemorations, political debates, and popular culture, as well as the conflicts that regularly occur in the United States around questions of cultural memory and heritage.

This course discusses similarities of concepts and methods in finance and physics in order to enhance cross-fertilization of these fields. The course contains portfolio theory and constrained optimization, relations between stochastic differential equations, regression models, time series and forecasting. Bubbles, crashes, and path integrals in physics and finance is also part of the course.

This course examines morphology and syntax in English texts from two time periods. While inflections played an important role in Old English grammar, present-day English relies primarily on structures where word order and function words are of central importance. Students thus investigate morphological and syntactic aspects of Old and present-day English texts. Through independent research projects, students also learn how to apply methods of morphosyntactic analysis to authentic texts in order to describe the structure of English.