BTAN32004BA-K3, BTAN3211OMA, Trends and Genres in Children’s and Young Adult Literature and Film
The primary aim of the course is to help students acquire a critical stance towards literary and filmic works for children and young adults, surveying the 19-21st centuries. During the term, we explore how various literary genres (e.g. Bildungsroman, fantasy), book formats (e.g. picture book, graphic novel) and genres of film (e.g. historical drama, teen flick) function for children and young adults and how they portray their target audience. By discussing these works in class, we keep a focus on the ever-changing figure of the child to grasp how it evolves in each era and genre from the perspective of gender, sexuality, morals, embodiment, and disability.
BTANL22004BA, BTAN3200OMA, British Literary Seminar
The purpose of this seminar course is to follow the lecture course on British literary history, and by reading key texts from the earliest periods of English literature to the twentieth century, the seminar aims to provide support to students in preparing for their end-of-the-term exam. Apart from this practical aspect, though, the seminar aims to give you the joy of reading some the greatest classics in English, ranging from Chaucer to Shakespeare, from the Brontë sisters to Thomas Hardy, and from the metaphysical poets via the English romantics like Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley and Keats to Victorians like Tennyson and Browning. In this way, this survey course in English literature aims at the impossible: to familiarise students with a literary heritage of 800 years, and, at the same time, provide the opportunity to discuss and express your opinion of these fascinating texts.
AN12000BA, AN18007BA, AN2200OMA, British Civilization
The course has a double aim. First, to introduce students to British cultural history and life in modern Britain, that is, to basic cultural phenomena, and second, to improve the students' language skills. In each seminar various images, newspaper articles, literary and visual texts (including films, comedy sketches, YouTube videos, and iconic British television series) and songs are discussed. The discussions are accompanied by comprehension questions and exercises on the topics, including popular images of Britishness vs. Englishness, national symbols, language, manners, gender roles, other “things English” (tea ceremony, the cult of the countryside, the Beatles, etc.), political institutions, the cultural geography of London, law, education, class, international relations, Euroscepticism, race relations, multiculturalism, religion, welfare and the media.