Last updated by kprzemek on 2017-04-07. Originally submitted by saga on 2016-07-04.
dr Zuzanna Buchowska
Contemporary Issues in Native American Studies
Scope: English and American culture
The seminar will focus on social, cultural and political issues concerning the Native American population in the United States. Topics such as treaty rights, decolonization, cultural and language revitalization, tribal sovereignty, environmental sovereignty, identity negotiation, cultural resistance, tribal transnationalism, and global Indigenous rights will be discussed. We will start with a historical overview of colonizing events, policies, and underlying ideologies that have led to the current situation of the Indigenous community which still faces many political and socio-economic struggles today. We will also look at how Native Americans have been able to resist colonization and negotiate their cultures and identities in the face of forced removal to reservations, assimilation and decades of political hegemony. Although the focus will be on the Indigenous population in the US, in order to provide students with a better understanding of global Indigenous issues, comparisons will be drawn with Indigenous communities in other countries, especially Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Students will also be allowed to choose comparative topics for their theses. In the spirit of decolonization, the majority of the texts that will be used during the seminar are authored by Indigenous scholars.
Suggested reading:
Clifford, James. 1988. The predicament of culture: Twentieth-century ethnography, literature, and art. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Deloria, Vine, Jr. and Clifford M. Lytle. 1983. American Indians, American justice. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Hertzberg, Hazel W. 1971. The search for an American Indian identity: Modern pan-Indian Movements. USA: Syracuse University Press.
King, C. Richard (ed.). 2000. Postcolonial America. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Warrior, Robert Allen. 1995. Tribal secrets: Recovering American Indian intellectual traditions. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
dr hab. Janusz Kaźmierczak
Media, Culture and Society
scope: English and American culture
As the seminar’s title suggests, it will focus on the representations carried and the role played by the media in modern society, and in so doing it will introduce the students to media theory and research. The conceptual and methodological apparatus thus built will enable the students to complete their MA thesis projects that will involve studying the representations carried or the role played by the media in British or American culture, or investigating links between British, American and Polish culture as observed in the media. Accordingly, in addition to the theoretical input, the seminar will offer guidance in developing and applying research skills, including making library searches, assessing literature, as well as planning and writing MA theses. Candidates for the seminar should have a keen interest in the modern media and in media and cultural theory, as well as a good background knowledge of the British and American cultures. For the interview, they are also encouraged to acquaint themselves at least with parts of the books listed in the “Suggested reading” section.
Suggested reading:
Fiske, John. 1990. Introduction to communication studies. London: Routledge.
Thwaites, Tony, Lloyd Davis and Warwick Mules. 1994. Tools for cultural studies: An introduction. Melbourne: Macmillan.
Dr Dorota Nowacka
Communication training in the EFL classroom
scope: applied linguistics
As it will be shown throughout this seminar, communication strategies, which have received much attention in the past three decades, play an important role in the process of foreign language development. Their importance consists in the fact that they help interlocutors remain in a conversation, regardless of numerous limitations they may encounter. Additionally, communication strategies are perceived as a device helping to bridge the gap between formal (e.g. classroom) and informal (e.g. street) learning situations, thus contributing to the development of learners’ overall communicative competence. Having identified and classified communication strategies, the seminar will focus on their teachability. Training in the use of communication strategies has been found to facilitate foreign language learning and use, since it enables EFL students to choose strategies they find most suitable and overcome interaction disruptions. Such an approach to foreign language instruction seems to be a welcome alternative to traditional teaching methods, and it is believed that the implementation of communication training in foreign language education will result in a better development of the students’ communicative competence. Throughout the seminar an attempt will be made to establish a theoretical framework for the concepts of: communication, competence and strategies and to prepare and conduct a study aiming at the development of communicative and conversational competence.
Suggested reading:
Bialystok, E. 1990. Communication strategies. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Daly, A. and Wiemann, J. (eds). 1991. Communicating strategically: strategies for interpersonal communication. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Kasper, G. and Kellerman, E. (eds). 1997. Communication strategies. Psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic perspectives. London/New York: Longman.
Samovar, L and Porter, R. 1995. Communication between cultures. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
dr Justyna Rogos-Hebda
Texts and contexts: exploring the visuality of early English texts
scope: History of the English language
We see texts before we read them. When looking at the printed or digital page, we first perceive the shapes and sizes of the letters, the distances between words, the colours used, or the arrangement of text and image on the page. Those visual elements function like “hyperlinks”, referring us to meanings hidden beneath (or beyond) the textual layer: Why does the page look the way it does? What does the author expect from her/his readers? How does s/he evaluate her/his work? Those questions can be answered by approaching the page – printed or otherwise – from the perspective of visual pragmatics, i.e. the study of how such elements as letter shapes, sizes, colours or layout contribute to the meaning of the written text. This seminar, however, will spirit the students away from the familiarity of online texts and printed matter to the murky (and fascinating) past of handwritten and early printed books of medieval-to-Renaissance England in order to discover why books are rectangular in shape, who wrote “in all caps”, when tables of contents became a must‐have, and, most importantly: why do so many old volumes look like children’s colouring books? The students will work toward an M.A. thesis concerning a chosen aspect of visual pragmatics of early English texts and will complete mini-studies of selected visual elements of manuscripts or early printed books of their choice. Apart from completing their thesis, course requirements involve active participation in classes and timely submission of homework assignments, based on readings assigned to each meeting.
Suggested reading:
Carroll Ruth, Matti Peikola, Hanna Salmi, Mari¬‐Lisa Varila, Janne Skaffari, and Risto Hiltunen. 2013. “Pragmatics on the Page. Visual Text in Late Medieval English Books”. European Journal of English Studies 17(1): 54¬‐71.
Clemens, Raymond and Timothy Graham. 2007. Introduction to Manuscript Studies. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Jucker, Andreas H. and Irma Taavitsainen (eds.) 2010. Historical Pragmatics. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter Mouton.
Pahta, Päivi and Andreas H. Jucker (eds.) 2011. Communicating Early English Manuscripts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Prof. dr hab. Krystyna Droździał-Szelest
Teaching and learning in an EFL classroom: two sides of the same coin?
Scope: applied linguistics
The topic of the seminar is rather broad as it aspires to capture what happens when teachers and learners come together in a foreign language classroom in an attempt to achieve some pre-determined goals.
It is a well-known fact that “the field of language teaching is subject to rapid changes, both as the profession responds to new educational paradigms and trends and as institutions face new challenges as a result of changes in curriculum, national tests, and students’ needs” (Richards and Farrell 2005: vii) and that, accordingly, teachers constantly need to expand their roles and responsibilities. Thus, it is hardly surprising nowadays that very often what is expected of teachers goes beyond their traditionally conceived duties. The same can be said about learners – gone are the days when they were considered to be just passive recipients of the teachers’ endeavors. Nowadays they are perceived as important participants of the process of language education, who are capable of making valuable contributions to that process.
Accordingly, this seminar will introduce students to and sensitize them to a whole variety of factors being at play when teachers (try to) teach and students (attempt to) master a foreign language in the context of a classroom. Among others, students will get acquainted with the concept of teacher professionalism and its various meanings, autonomy of learners and teachers, roles of teachers and learners in the classrooms, the role of individual variation, and the like (some topics to be decided on together!). They will also be expected to become familiar with the results of available research in order to be able to prepare and conduct their own research projects in the area.
As the main objective of the seminar is to enable the students to complete an M.A. thesis and to pass the M.A. examination, it will (inevitably) focus on the development of the relevant skills and abilities such as:
- identifying areas for research (practical or theoretical problem areas) and developing methods for researching them;
- conducting research in a language classroom; gathering and interpreting data;
- reporting (in an appropriate style) on small-scale research projects (planning and
- organizing a research report following formal requirements);
- compiling an adequate bibliography, finding and making use of relevant materials.
