English

The history of lyric poetry in English is deeply connected to the history of popular music. The earliest lyric poems were chanted or sung. Early modern plays, like Shakespeare’s, were full of songs. Dances often followed performances of these plays.
 

This course studies lyric poetry from its beginnings in the English language to the present day, showing how lyric poetry is the foundation of song lyrics. The course begins by learning the basics of English poetic form: metre (like musical rhythm) and rhyme. The class covers some of the most famous English poems from Shakespeare to Emily Dickinson and W. B. Yeats, while listening to and studying lyrics from the earliest English ballads to the songs of Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Run-DMC, The Beastie Boys, Amy Winehouse, Taylor Swift, Lizzo, and many others.

This course investigates key literary works from the 18th century to the present that mark turning points in English-language literature. Beginning with the emergence of the English novel and continuing through Romanticism, Gothic literature, Modernism, Postmodernism, and contemporary identity-driven and decolonial narratives, the course emphasizes how literature both reflects and shapes historical change. 

The course offers a study of 20th century United States literature. Topics include: Americans in Europe; literary responses to WWI; the Lost Generation and the Jazz Age; literary responses to the Great Depression; trends in American Drama; literary impact of the Civil Rights Movement; postmodernism; multiculturalism and the emergence of new voices.

The aim of the course is to train students to be good interpreters for government organizations, enterprises and institutions, enterprises with foreign capital, joint ventures and wholly foreign owned enterprises, foreign affairs offices etc. and to do primary simultaneous interpreting as well as consecutive interpreting. They can also be equal to interpreting for business negotiation, higher level conference, press conference, international symposium and so on.

The teaching materials cover students' interpreting techniques and skills in the fields of etiquette, economy, diplomacy, culture, education, society, environment, law, news, politics etc. After mastering the interpreting techniques and skills, the students who attend the class can do all kinds of interpreting such as everyday life interpreting, liaison interpreting, guide interpreting, conference interpreting, interpreting for foreign affairs, interpreting for negotiation, interpreting for foreign trade and so on.

This course provides an outline of developments in children’s literature in England and parts of Europe through the study of some essential, central texts as well as recent books for children. The uses of fantasy and the educational aspects of books for children is discussed, along with notions of childhood and the nature of children. Through close reading of set texts students engage in critical techniques applicable to most literature, for the best texts for children satisfy sensitive adult readers too.

This course introduces students to the rich diversity of poetry in English and equips them with the skills and knowledge to better understand, and better enjoy, that poetry. The poetry studied ranges throughout the history of English Literature, and tutorial work generally focuses on the close reading of poetic texts. Weekly lectures and tutorials study matters including: rhyme and meter; poetic imagery; a number of poetic forms such as the sonnet; a number of poetic genres such as epic or pastoral. There is also space for students to look at poetry from a variety of aesthetic and historical contexts and to consider poetry from diverse authorships.

This course examines together a group of major and minor 16th and 17th century plays which reflect the contemporary European witchcraft craze. Related phenonema like diabolic possession and ‘high’ magic, as represented in the theatre, are also included when they are relevant to the literary texts. The course challenges students to relate dramatic texts to history while retaining a primary literary focus. 

This course introduces students to the style, history, politics, and controversies of modernism. Students read central modernist texts, alongside a selection of modernist and modern writers, critics, journalists and intellectuals. Students explore how modernism developed in the 1910s and 20s, and examine a range of contexts for its stylistic experiments in narrative and point of view, in urban life, war, sexual emancipation, and psychology.

This course examines the main historical periods of the English language with particular emphasis on the medieval period (Old and Middle English). It discusses the main changes from Old English to Modern English in terms of phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexis. This course also explores the process of the standardization of English and the varieties of English that exist today.

This course examines works of fiction that explain or dismiss the supernatural. Topics include David Hume’s infamous and controversial take on miracles, Sigmund Freud’s “uncanny,” Tzvetan Todorov’s “fantastic,” Alejo Carpentier’s idea of the “marvelous real,” etc. The course focuses on the historical ways of thinking about certain texts and a terminology for doing so, exploring the tension between what is real and unreal, what is natural and supernatural, in a variety of ways: for the readerly pleasures of terror and suspense; as allegories of personal or political or social trauma; as problematic racist and misogynistic symbols of feared “otherness”; and also as a site from which oppressed and marginalized communities can resist.