Courses set in bold are taught in the current semester, 2022/2023 spring.
AN22008BA; AN28004BA; AN3202OMA
Modern British Literature and Culture 1
The purpose of this seminar is to introduce students to some aspects of 20th- and 21st-century British literature and culture. Since the fundamental cultural institutions are dealt with in a following course in the second term, besides discussing classic literary and filmic texts from a cultural studies point of view, the course will focus on investigating issues like Englishness, colonisation, gender, the impact of the two world wars, the mid-war period and the 1950s in culture.
AN22009BA/AN5200OMA
Modern British Literature and Culture 2
The purpose of this seminar course is to introduce students to some aspects and features of 20th-century British literature and culture. Since the fundamental cultural institutions are dealt with in a previous course, in the second term, besides discussing classic twentieth-century literary texts from a cultural studies point of view, the course will focus on investigating issues like the 60s, Thatcherism and the 1980s, postmodernism, multiculturalism, and heritage culture.
AN10000BA
Essay Writing and Research
Primarily the course aims at assisting students with research methodology and improving on writing skills with special focus on academic writing i. e. the production of essays and/or research papers. Students will get acquainted with the basic research skills such as the efficient utilisation of library facilities, search engines, electronic databases, error-free employment of the MLA style. The seminar also targets at getting students familiar and secure with the employment of the appropriate structure of an essay: how to formulate your thesis statement, the coherence of argumentation, the proper manner of citing your primary and secondary sources, how to integrate quotes into the body of your text, the essence of a good conclusion, and finally the common (thematic and stylistic) blunders one should avoid.
AN32005BA
Reading and Playing Video Games (together with dr. Zsófia Orosz-Réti)
The course is intended as a theoretical and practical introduction to the analysis of video games from a cultural studies perspective. Its objectives are threefold. First, it aims to make students acquainted with the vocabulary, methodology, theoretical foundations and primary research foci of ludology and game studies. Second, by exploring the intersections between old and new media – films and video games, non-linear texts and interactive films –, it intends to position the medium of video games within the broader field of cultural production, outlining its possible links to other media. Third, through the “close reading” of a few selected video games, the course seeks to demonstrate how the analysis of video games may contribute to and may be pursued within the broader field of cultural studies. By the end of the course, students should be in possession of a solid theoretical toolkit to think critically about video games within the field of cultural studies.
AN10003BA, AN18003BA, AN1002OMA
Skills Development: Writing and Composition
This course introduces the student to the skills and formats of academic writing in English, leading to the types of writing expected of university students. Students practice a variety of writing formats primarily in exposition, argumentation, and critical analysis, including the following 3 pieces of writing: descriptive, comparative and argumentative essays.The second part of the course will cover research skills and writing supported by research, as well as documentation and the MLA format. Students will practice techniques of invention, organization, and revision, and will undertake such composing activities as topic selection and development, audience analysis, organization and development of ideas in short essays, grammar, spelling, and mechanics in writing. The coursework relies heavily on cooperation between students, therefore peer-review will be required and its quality will also be assessed.
AN20112BA
Poetry in Translation
This course is designed to develop students’ skills in discussing, analyzing, and assessing the quality of poems in translation. These include 1. identifying genre and form; 2. metrical analysis; 3. stylistic analysis (identifying register and vocabulary); 4. identifying grammatical structures; 5. comparing different translations of the same poem; 6. comparing translations with the translator’s own poetry. Apart from discussing English and American poetry in Hungarian translation and Hungarian poetry in English translation, the course will also cover some critical texts about the general questions of translating poetry, such as the translatability of poetry, the techniques of bridging the gap between the source language and the target language, the difference between literary translation and calque, and translation as a part of culture. The language of the course is partly English, partly Hungarian.