English

This course explores accounts centering on the movement and displacement of people in the French, German, and Spanish-speaking worlds. Beginning with an introductory guide to studying culture(s) in a Modern Languages' context, it then focus on experiences resulting from movement or displacement, whether forced or voluntary, and engages with themes such as alienation, belonging, difference, borders, and otherness. Its case studies are taken from a variety of media (including literature and film) and are considered in terms of their specific local and national relevance as well as their transnational implications. The course offers diverse perspectives on the issues arising from cultural encounters occasioned by, for example, diaspora, exile, migration, urbanization and colonialism. 

This course introduces major works of ancient Near Eastern, Hebrew, Greek, and Roman literature to explore the cultural and historical foundations of Western civilization. Texts such as the Hebrew Bible, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, and Virgil’s Aeneid, are read and analyzed with a focus on themes of heroism, divinity, and human experience. Emphasis is placed on close reading, literary analysis, and active participation through discussions, quizzes, written responses, and group presentations.

The course examines early modern narratives about creating artificial humans (the Golem, Frankenstein, Homunculus). Students discuss extracts from more recent literary texts that explore the relationship of humans and artificially created humanoids (Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot and Ian McEwan’s Machines Like Me), and examine well-known science fiction films that depict humanoid robots and/ or androids (Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, Alex MacGarland’s Ex Machina, and James Cameron’s The Terminator). Students analyze how fiction reflects real-world technological developments, human fears and desires, as well as gender roles and society’s relationship with technology more generally.

This seminar discusses how writers from different times and places have reacted to upheaval in different ways and examining the space where personal storytelling and political intent intertwine. It analyzes how the personal circumstances of those writers influence their respective writing, to gain clues as to how students' own individual conditions interact with their writing. Topics include how can fiction capture the turbulence of its times and can the world of fiction make sense of the complex causes of anger arising from sociopolitical change?

In this course students take a scientific approach to literature by applying ideas from linguistics and cognitive science to the analysis of literary texts. The course explores the textual and cognitive foundations for literary interpretations and aesthetic effects, and the underlying ideological and psychological implications of particular linguistic choices.

This lecture course begins with several recent historical and cultural assessments of Europe’s relationship to the orient in the early eighteenth century, together with an overview of the ways in which the popular taste for oriental tales was marginalized by the rise of the novel as the quintessential British literary form. Students examine the vogue of chinoiserie and the rise of sentimentalism and the man of feeling, before turning to an examination of works by British Romantic writers who variously imagine, engage with and negotiate cultures, lands and peoples from the East. Through an analysis of Coleridge’s Eastern fables, Percy Shelley’s evocations of the Indian muse, Byron’s oriental romances, Mary Shelley’s depictions of otherness and De Quincey’s encounter with the Malay, students interrogate the extent to which these tales, romances and musings are reflective of open engagement and productive influence, and to what extent they can be seen as attempts to control and subjugate an otherness.

This course, designed as a series of interactive workshops, offers an opportunity to write in English within the student's own discipline and to discuss writing with international peers. It also invites students to reflect on writing habits and writer identity. Students choose a research problem to investigate and follow the stages of researching and writing as two interlinked processes: focus the research question, find and review relevant literature, and collect the best evidence to argue for the importance of the research project. The course also provides an opportunity to read like a writer by analyzing model texts and sample texts written by peers to better understand rhetorical strategies and stylistic conventions of selected academic text types. Students also practice writing and giving feedback through drafting four sections of the research paper (an extended definition of a key concept, literature review, argumentative synthesis, and an introduction), discussing these drafts with peers and tutors. The semester of reading, writing, and exchanging ideas with international peers from various disciplines allow students to become better academic communicators.

Literature is a cultural and aesthetic phenomenon that takes on many different forms in different periods, regions, and languages. In all of these forms, literature reflects in one way or another the society from which it emerges. This course focuses on the complex relations between literature and society and to write and speak about them in an academic way. The course considers the characteristics of narrative, interpretation, poetics, and textuality, and place literary texts and analyses in specific historical and cultural contexts. In this course students consider key literary debates via the analysis of different texts from a number of different perspectives in literary studies. Students learn to see literature as a cultural phenomenon and are able to reflect academically on ethical and aesthetic aspects of literature; become familiar with different theoretical and critical movements; know a number of case studies, in which literary texts have influenced ethical debates; are able to write and speak about these kinds of issues in an academic way; acquire a supra-lingual perspective on literature.

This course develops presentation skills for speaking before academic audiences. Students practice writing to think through research and communicate thoughts by means of informative and appealing texts. This intensive course, designed as a series of interactive workshops, offers an opportunity to present and write in English within the student's own discipline and reflect on use of academic sources, AI literacy, presentation skills, writing habits, and writer identity. Students choose a research problem to investigate and follow the stages of researching and writing as two interlinked processes: focus the research question, conduct the literature review, collect the best evidence to argue for the importance of the research project. The course also provides an opportunity to read like a writer by analyzing model texts and sample texts written by peers to better understand rhetorical strategies and stylistic conventions of selected academic text types. Students practice presenting by preparing three 3-minute presentations based on secondary sources about the research question, delivered for a small group of peers. They also present for 7 minutes in front of the whole class to share their views, engage in a question-and-answer session, and hear feedback on their performance. Students also practice writing and giving feedback through drafting three sections of the research paper (extended definition of a key concept, literature review, introduction or discussion/conclusion), cite primary as well as secondary sources, and acknowledge collaboration with AI. Students exchange feedback on drafts with peers and receive comments from tutors in order to rewrite their texts for greater persuasiveness and clarity. The semester of reading, writing, presenting, and exchanging ideas with international peers from various disciplines allow students to become better academic communicators.

This course introduces students to the study of Comparative Literature through 19th-century novels from France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain, and the UK. All texts are read in English translation. Students are introduced to a representative and canonical range of fictional works, with focus on one literary genre - the novel - and one over-arching theme. Lecturers, seminar leaders, and secondary criticism all model a variety of comparative approaches for students and promote discussion of the discipline.