Submitted by mjekiel on 4 June, 2021 - 09:53.
List of MA Seminars 2021-2023 sorted by teachers' surnames
prof. dr hab. Arleta Adamska-Sałaciak
dr hab. Paulina Ambroży, prof. UAM
dr hab. Dagmara Drewniak, prof. UAM
dr hab. Anna Ewert, prof. UAM
dr Anna Jelec
dr Marta Kajzer - Wietrzny
dr hab. Agnieszka Kiełkiewicz - Janowiak, prof. UAM
dr hab. Marcin Krygier
dr hab. Geoffrey Schwartz, prof. UAM
prof. zw. dr hab. Liliana Sikorska
dr hab. Bogusława Whyatt, prof. UAM
prof. dr hab. Jacek Witkoś
The focus of this seminar is word meaning as a reflection of culture. We will be looking at the lexicon from the point of view of lexicology (linguistic study of words), lexical semantics (study of word meanings), and lexicography (scientific study of dictionaries). After a general introduction to these three disciplines, we are going to concentrate on areas of culture-specificity in the English lexicon and on the way culture-bound meanings are explained in dictionaries. Another recurring theme will be the problems which dictionary writers encounter when faced with difficult entries, both culture-dependent ones as well as ones that, for whatever reason, appear ‘sensitive’.
Apart from the topics indicated above, individual MA projects may involve the semantics of phrases (collocations, idioms); relations between meaning and form (e.g. synonymy, polysemy); the rise of new (e.g. figurative) meanings, etc. All MA theses will incorporate a lexicographic component, examining dictionary treatments of the phenomena studied. The use of language corpora may be needed as well to support the author’s hypotheses and arguments with authentic data.
Candidates are expected to have some basic knowledge of linguistics. Previous exposure to semantics or lexicography is not obligatory. Interest in words and dictionaries is taken for granted.
Selected bibliography
Riemer, N. 2010. Introducing semantics. Cambridge University Press.
Wierzbicka, A. 2006. English: Meaning and culture. Oxford University Press.
American literature has always been haunted. From the beginnings of the nation’s history, the American Dream was co-scripted by the powers of darkness – that “imp of the perverse”, as Edgar Allan Poe had it, which lurks behind the surface of the rational and the familiar. Mythologized as a fertile paradise of promise and pastoral beauty, the American land has also exposed the darker side of human nature. The arch-American ideas of progress, pragmatism and self-reliance often concealed social as well as economic injustice, extreme violence, exclusion and the horrors of racial discrimination and slavery. The mythologies of the wilderness, the American Sublime and frontier expansionism were linked to the moral wilderness and depravity. It is no wonder that the American literary imagination has found a curiously hospitable home in the dark mode. American writers across ages have mastered the genre of the Gothic, exploring its aesthetic, psychological and sociopolitical potential.
The goal of the seminar is to familiarize students with the extent to which the gothic sensibility underlies the American mind and examine various forms and functions of the genre. Our readings and discussions will embrace both the Gothic canon and its contemporary adaptations as well as revisions. The syllabus traces the elements of the bizarre, the ghostly and the uncanny from early masters of the tale of horror (Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ambrose Bierce) through gothic ventures undertaken by virtuosos of psychological realism (Henry James, Charlotte Perkins Gillman and Edith Wharton), early 20th century gothicists (H. P. Lovecraft, William Faulkner, Shirley Jackson), practitioners of Southern Gothic (Flannery O’Connor, Carson McCullers and Cormac McCarthy), to contemporary writers of ghost narratives (Marilynne Robinson, Toni Morrison, Sandra Cisneros, Coleson Whitehead, Philip Roth, George Saunders). We will look at the classics and their 20th and 21st century continuators through contemporary lens of affect studies, psychoanalysis, ecocriticism, and sociocultural studies.
Credit requirements: Candidates should be proficient in both written and spoken English, have successfully completed courses in the history of American and British literature and should possess a comprehensive knowledge of the US literature at the B.A. level. Successful candidates will not be bound by the thematic scope of the seminar and will be able to choose their own research topics. Credit requirements include systematic progress on the research project, careful and annotated reading of the assigned texts, enthusiastic and active participation in class meetings and discussions, occasional short reports, group projects or presentations on the assigned topics, work-in-progress presentations based on M.A. projects. Students are expected to formulate the topics and tentative outlines of their M.A. theses by the end of the second term and submit draft versions of the first chapters by October 30th, 2022.
Selected bibliography
Crowe, Charles Earl. A Companion to American Gothic. Malden, MA and Oxford, UK: John Wiley and Sons Ltd, 2014.
Goddu, Theresa. Gothic America: Narrative, History, and Nation. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.
Hogle, Jerrod E. The Cambridge Companion to the Gothic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Lloyd-Smith, Allan. American Gothic Fiction: An Introduction. Continuum, 2004.
Savoy, Eric and Robert K. Martin (eds.) American Gothic: New Interventions in a National Narrative. Iowa: Iowa University Press, 1998.
Smith Andrew and William Hughes. EcoGothic. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013.
The aim of the seminar is to study contemporary migrant and diasporic literatures published in Canada with a special emphasis on the texts whose authors investigate the question of multiculturalism and the construction of the self primarily in the Canadian context. This M.A. seminar will offer an opportunity to discuss a range of recent texts of Canadian migrant and diasporic literature (novels, poetry, autobiographical narratives), published in this multicultural and cosmopolitan country within the context of diasporic and transcultural theories. Canada is a ‘laboratory’ of multiculturalism, and, thus, it is important to investigate the status of migrant literatures representing different ethnic backgrounds. Prospective participants will be invited to analyze various texts written by emigrants from Central and Eastern Europe as well as Asia and the Caribbean such as Eva Stachniak, Andrew J. Borkowski, Fred Wah and Dionne Brand among others. The analyses and discussions will be supplemented by the study of theory of diasporas, migration and life writing. Additionally, as many texts tackle the problem of memory, various approaches to pre/postmemory will be presented as they will also provide a certain background for our discussions and future master theses. Comparative approaches (Canada and the USA, Canada and the UK are also welcome).
The seminar will introduce students to the process of writing M.A. dissertations within the field of literature. We will address a range of issues ranging from the formal aspect of writing theses to methodology of research, gathering materials and developing a critical approach to the views of others.
Format: The requirements for the course will include a number of reading assignments devoted to the topic, oral presentations on selected topics, a thorough preparation for the class discussions, an active participation in them, and a regular attendance. Near the end of the first academic year students will be required to write a research paper, present a topic of their M.A. theses, compile a provisional bibliography and write a tentative outline of the projects.
Candidates wishing to participate in the seminar should have good knowledge of English and American literature at the undergraduate (B.A.) level, and an authentic interest in literature. At the selection stage, familiarity with Canadian literature is desirable, but not necessary.
Selected bibliography
Hammill, Faye. 2007. Canadian Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Kröller, Eva-Marie. 2004. The Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
New, W.H. 2003. A History of Canadian Literature. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Today’s world is becoming increasingly multilingual due to migration, language policies in education and the spread of digital communication. This has been reflected in a significant increase in research interest in bilingualism and multilingualism over the last few decades, as well as numerous international projects, including the TEAM project coordinated by our university:
http://team.amu.edu.pl/
Multilingualism is a lifetime experience, with speakers going into and out of languages as their circumstances change, with cycles of language growth and decline. In this seminar we will focus on bi-/multilingual language development, use and processing, attempting to see how the human mind handles more than one language. It is nowadays generally agreed that bilingualism rewires the brain in multiple ways. The experience of having more than one language in the same mind has also manifold cognitive consequences. It is a well-established fact that bilingualism confers an advantage to children in social communication tasks, in addition to the highly-disputed executive function advantage. Another area of human cognition affected by the use of multiple languages is the relationship between language and thought. Different languages categorize the reality differently and language affects perception at very early stages, with the brain being able to respond effectively even to newly-learned categories from another language.
This seminar welcomes students interested in various aspects of bi-/multilingual language use, development and processing and bilingual cognition.
Selected bibliography
Cook, Vivian and Benedetta Bassetti (eds). 2011. Language and bilingual cognition. New York: Psychology Press.
Cook, Vivian and Li Wei (eds). 2016. Cambridge handbook of linguistic multi-competence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
de Groot, Annette M.B. 2011. Language and cognition in bilinguals and multilinguals. New York: Psychology Press.
Hand and Mind: introduction to gesture studies
dr Anna Jelec
When people speak, they gesture. We shake our heads in disbelief, we shrug, we point towards the exit, demonstrate the size of an idea, wave goodbye, and brush off an imposition. Gesture is so important that if we prevent a speaker from moving their hands, they might start to stutter! From pantomime to spontaneous gesticulation, and from the “kopułka” to “gest Kozakiewicza” – people across languages and cultures have always communicated things with movements of their hands and arms. The field of gesture studies is relatively new, but it has already shown a tremendous potential. This MA course is aimed at students who are interested in learning how gesture works in communication and thought; how it can be used in teaching and learning; and how to apply gesture studies in social contexts, theatre, entertainment, gaming and film.
Students taking this MA course will learn to recognize gesture in communication, identify various types of gestures in recorded and spontaneous settings; finally, we will learn the basics of gesture analysis, transcription and annotation.
For the MA project, students are encouraged to build their own gesture studies, either using existing video material or obtaining their own in an empirical setting. Sample questions for gesture research:
- Do blind people gesture?
- What role do adaptor gestures play in thinking, communication and emotional regulation?
- Are there gestural clues to lying?
- Do gestures affect the perception of the speaker and their message?
- What can we learn from observing gesture in the classroom?
- How is gesture represented in virtual environments / gaming?
Selected bibliography
Goldin-Meadow, Susan. 2005. ‘The two faces of gesture: Language and thought’, Gesture 5, 1-2: 1–2.
Jelec, Anna. 2014. Are abstract concepts like dinosaur feathers? Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM.
Kendon, Adam. 2004. Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McNeil, David. 1996. Hand and Mind. What gestures reveal about thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Müller, Cornelia. 2008. ‘What gestures reveal about the nature of metaphor’, in: Alan J. Cienki and Cornelia Müller (eds.), Metaphor and gesture. Amsterdam, the Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing, 219–248.
Looking at the bigger picture – what can corpora tell us about translated and interpreted texts?
dr Marta Kajzer - Wietrzny
This seminar is intended for students who would like to engage in empirical research to discover recurring linguistic patterns in translated and interpreted texts.
The course introduces the students to a dynamically developing strand of empirical Translation and Interpreting Studies, which employs electronic language corpora as a major research tool. The students will learn about the key research problems currently examined in Translation and Interpreting Studies and how corpora may be applied in such investigations.
In their research projects the students will select target text features to be investigated in a quantitative and qualitative analysis of either translated or interpreted text or an intermodal comparison of both.
The successful completion of the course requires: REGULAR attendance, ACTIVE participation in discussions, TIMELY submission of all assignments, a PASS mark on the end-of-semester tests. Students will be expected to read the assigned articles, prepare at least two reading reports per semester, prepare presentations regarding selected research problems, work on small-scale interim projects both individually and in teams. As regards the M.A. projects, each student is required to decide on the topic of the MA project and submit a preliminary list of references by the end of the winter semester.
Selected bibliography
Ferraresi, A., Bernardini, S., Petrović, M., & Lefer, M. A. 2018. "Simplified or not simplified? The different guises of mediated English at the European Parliament", Meta: journal des traducteurs/Meta: Translators’ Journal, 63(3): 717-738.
Olohan, Maeve. 2004. Introducing corpora in translation studies. London: Routledge.
Shlesinger, Miriam.1998.“Corpus-based interpreting studies as an offshoot of corpus-based translation studies”, Meta: journal des traducteurs/Meta: Translators' Journal 43(4): 486-493.
The aim of this seminar is to broaden students’ interests and to extend their competences about language and communication in selected contexts of health/illness and human well-being. Students will develop an ability to read and write academic texts about communication in healthcare as well as to think critically and debate scholarly arguments.
Selected contexts of communication in healthcare and issues of exclusion will be addressed, for example:
- doctor – patient communication
- language of psychotherapy, coaching, helping
- specialist medical language vs. lay language
- narratives of health and illness
- communication with excluded speakers
- intergenerational communication about health
- healthcare communication across languages and cultures
- online communication about health
- health promotion
- popular media and health
Guided by the programme’s rich array of lectures and seminars, individual reading, personal experience and interest, each student will be invited to choose a specific healthcare context to study (see above). Having read about the relevant theory and practice, they will then design an MA thesis project: they will (1) identify important social problems, (2) pose research questions, (3) select adequate research methodology, (4) collect data, (5) conduct an analysis to (6) arrive at results and conclusions addressing important issues of health(care) and quality of life.
Prerequisites: good knowledge of English and passionate interest in human well-being.
Selected bibliography
Gwyn, Richard. 2001. Communicating health and illness. London: Sage.
Hamilton, Heidi and Wen-ying Sylvia Chou (eds.). 2014. The Routledge Handbook of Language and Health Communication. London: Routledge.
Harvey, Kevin and Neyla Koteyko. 2012. Exploring health communication. Language in action. London: Routledge.
Markides, Markos. 2011. "The importance of good communication between patient and health professionals", Journal of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology 33: 123-125.
Thompson, Teresa L., Roxanne Parrott and Jon F. Nussbaum (eds.). 2011. The Routledge Handbook of Health Communication (2nd edition.) London: Routledge.
Vermeir, P. 2015. "Communication in healthcare: A narrative review of the literature and practical recommendations", International Journal of Clinical Practice 69/11: 1257-1267.
Members of this seminar will be expected to specialise in and write their M.A. thesis on a selected topic related to the history of the English language. "History" in the name of the seminar is a very general concept and it is perfectly possible to write a thesis on very recent developments in English (say, over the last couple of decades or so). Within the team, they can choose from a variety of theoretical approaches and supervisors; in the 2021-2023 iteration they comprise:
- Critical Metaphor Analysis, language of emotions, cognitive historical semantics, language contact — Dr. Anna Rogos-Hebda
- verbal and visual communication in early texts, social contexts of linguistic changes, sources of vocabulary in the history of English, English orthography: from manuscript to print — Dr. Justyna Rogos-Hebda
- historical sociolinguistics and sociopragmatics; standardisation, text and genre, visual pragmatics, historical orthography and typography — Prof. Hanna Rutkowska
- historical (socio)pragmatics, historical multilingualism, specialised discourses, (im)politeness, multimodality — Prof. Matylda Włodarczyk
- historical phonology, morphology, lexicon, language contact; historical sociolinguistics — Dr. Marcin Krygier
Upon admission to the seminar its members will work with their selected supervisors. They will be expected to complete at least the thesis plan, bibliography, and introduction by June 2022, two chapters by January 2023, and the thesis by May/June 2023.
Selected bibliography
Alexander Bergs & Laurel J. Brinton, 2012, English Historical Linguistics: An International Handbook.
Merja Kÿto & Päivi Pahta (eds.), 2016, The Cambridge Handbook of English Historical Linguistics.
Lynda Mugglestone (ed.), 2012, The Oxford History of English.
- Is /d/ really the same sound in English and Polish?
- How can Polish have words like krtań but most other languages can’t?
- How do you know there are three sounds in the English word cat?
- Why does Polish turn /s/ into /z/ in Facebook [fejzbuk] but English doesn’t?
- How can Poles hear the difference between lecz and leć?
These are just a few of the types of questions we will address in this seminar, which will focus on the relationship between the physical properties of speech sounds and the categorical symbols that are used to represent them, and how this relationship may differ in L1 and L2. In the first two semesters, we will consider issues of phonological representation (Chomsky & Halle 1968, Harris 1994, Schwartz 2016), and relate them to specific problems in L2 pronunciation. The third and fourth semesters of the seminar will focus on students' thesis projects, which will combine theoretical considerations with a small-scale empirical study related to students’ declared area of interest. Students entering the seminar should have good marks in their BA-level phonetics and phonology courses.
Selected bibliography
Chomsky, N. & M. Halle (1968). The sound pattern of English. New York: Harper & Row.
Harris, J. (1994). English Sound Structure. Oxford: Blackwell.
Schwartz, G. (2016). "On the evolution of prosodic boundaries - parameter settings for Polish and English", Lingua 171: 37-73.
English and Irish Literature and Culture: Rewritings, Continuations and Adaptations
prof. zw. dr hab. Liliana Sikorska
In Richard Kearney’s view Irish and English cultures offer us a tale of “Siamese twins” always identifying themselves in opposition to each other. Although they share a long and troubled history of “hurt and hate”, to use Robert Welch’s expression, they also partake themes and motifs traversing national and temporal borders. Literatures and cultures can thus be seen as being in a constant state of flux, and rewritings and adaptations one of the properties of contemporary art, music, and literature. This seminar is devoted to the study of the two cultures recorded both in earlier as well as more contemporary texts. We will look at an array of genres such as travel narratives, literary essays, short stories, and novels to account for the medieval motifs travelling across time, as well as for more recent concerns, such as the presence of immigrants, (Post) Celtic Tiger Ireland and (Post)Brexit Britain.
Selected bibliography
Carter, Ronald and John McRae. 1997. The Routledge History of Literature in English. Britain and Ireland. London: Routledge.
Kearney, Richard. 2002. On Stories. London: Routledge.
Welch, Robert. 1997. Groundwork. A Novel. Belfast: The Blackstaff Press.
Cognitive Translation Studies is a vibrant area dedicated to empirical and experimental research into the nature of translation as a process. Here we ask fundamental questions about how translators make meaning from text in one language and re-express it in text in another language. Using modern technology such as key-logging and eye-tracking, we know more and more about how translators produce translated texts for readers from a different cultural background. What we still do not know much about is how the target readers read translated language and how their reading experience differs from reading a text originally written in their native language. In this seminar we will focus on translation as a process not only in a narrow cognitive sense, which starts with the translator reading the source text and ends with producing the target text, but also in a broad sense. The translation process then starts with a client’s commission sent to the translator and finishes with the end user (reader) reading and comprehending the translated text. There are several interesting questions which we can ask. For example, research has shown that translators tend to simplify texts, but is there any evidence that reading translated texts is easier than reading originally written texts? How is the reading affected by translation errors? Can we guess whether a translation was done by an experienced translator? What is the cognitive cost of trying to understand a translation done by Google Translate? The students who choose this MA seminar will be able to select a topic of their own interest, explore it and design a research project for their MA theses. Credit requirements, apart from genuine interest and open-mindedness include: ability to read and report on academic research, participation in in-class discussions and steady progress on the MA projects.
Selected bibliography
House, Juliane. 2008. “Beyond intervention: Universals in translation”, Trans-kom 1, 1: 6-19.
Jarodzka, Halszka and Saskia Brand‐Gruwel. 2017. “Tracking the reading eye: Towards a model of real‐world reading”, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 33, 3: 193-201.
Jiménez-Crespo, Miguel A. 2017. “Combining corpus and experimental studies: insights into the reception of translated medical texts”, The Journal of Specialised Translation 28: 2-22.
Kruger, Haidee and Jan-Louis Kruger. 2017. “Cognition and reception”, in: John W. Schwieter and Aline Ferreira (eds.), The Handbook of Translation and Cognition. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons, 71-89.
Whyatt, Bogusława et al. 2016. Tłumacz – praktyczne aspekty zawodu. Poznań: Wydawnictwo naukowe UAM. Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10593/24583
English is Polish, ain’t it? Similarities and differences in structure and function.
prof. dr hab. Jacek Witkoś
The aim of this four-term course is to assist participants in writing an M.A. thesis dealing with topics in English and comparative Polish-English syntax. A wide range of topics will be provided and the participants will have the opportunity to select the topic they feel most comfortable with. In the focal point of our interest lies a set of comparative studies on similarities and differences between the composition of the English and the Polish phrase and clause. Special attention will be devoted to topics in such widely discussed areas of comparative studies as: anaphoric relations, interrogative constructions, infinitive constructions, nominal phrases of different types and word order permutations (‘free’ word order phenomena). Seminar participants will be given patient and careful instruction, as well as concise reading assignments. Empirical studies (corpus-based as well as grammaticality judgment tasks) of narrowly defined topics are welcome.
Pre-requisites for the course: the successful candidate will be a B.A. diploma holder in English and will show keen interest in linguistics. Previous expertise in the field of morphology, syntax or semantics is welcome.
Selected bibliography
Greenbaum, G, and R. Quirk. 1970. A Student Grammar of English. Cambridge: CUP.
Ouhalla, J. 1995. Principles and Parameters. Oxford: Blackwell.
Wardhaugh, R. 1996. Understanding English Grammar. Oxford: Blackewll.
