To the attention of students who are writing their theses with my supervision
BA courses
BTAN12000BA; BTAN18007BA British Civilization (first year – BA)
The course has a double aim. First, to introduce students to British history and civilization, that is, to basic cultural phenomena, and second, to improve the students' language skills. In each seminar a relatively short text is read and discussed which gives the students some idea of various aspects of life in modern Britain. The discussions are accompanied by comprehension questions and exercises on the vocabulary and grammar of the given texts. Newspaper articles selected by the seminar leader are also used. Texts to be read will include essays and other cultural narratives, for example pop songs and visual texts like films and iconic British television series.
BTAN10006BA Advanced Writing and Composition (first year – BA)
After the first term’s introductory course into writing, which focussed on paragraph writing and individual genres (rhetorical strategies, treatment of material), this course moves beyond, but relies on what has been covered in the first term’s material. Following an in-depth treatment of, and practice in, argumentation (supporting claims with evidence, being mindful of audience and purpose, strategies as well as fallacies of argumentation), a considerable amount of time is dedicated to revision. The third part of this course deals with the theory and practice of summary writing, a skill tested in the end-of-year EYE examination. The fourth major part of the course is the research paper, (library search, documenting sources, etc.). The nature of the course suggests that there will be weekly practical assignments along with in-class discussions. To help students master argumentation, selected chapters from the Opposing Viewpoints Series will be used, which will enhance their understanding of their own views by encouraging confrontation with opposing views.
BTAN22002BA Introduction to Literature and Visual Culture (second year – BA)
This is an introductory seminar to literary and cultural studies. The aim of this course is to introduce students to the basic skills and terminology of studying literary as well as visual texts and cultural phenomena. Texts to be read will include short stories and other cultural narratives, for example visual texts like advertisements and a film. The readings are selected so that each seminar is dedicated to the discussion of specific problems, introducing the students to some major and helpful critical concepts/terms (narrative, plot and story; character analysis; point of view and perspective; irony; symbols; tropes and figures of speech).
BTAN22004BA; BTAN1060MA British Literary Seminar (second year – BA)
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 Defoe, from Shakespeare via Dickens to the Brontës, 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.
BTAN22008BA; BTAN28004BA Modern British Literature and Culture Seminar 1 (second year – BA)
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 Englishness, colonisation, gender, the impact of the two world wars, the mid-war period and the Angry generation. Whereas the course will primarily rely on written texts, it will have visual components as well, both in the form of film viewing (Four Weddings and a Funeral), and by introducing complementary visual material too. Literary texts will include Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness, the War Poets (Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen), Pat Barker’s Regeneration, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Fay Weldon’s Life and Loves of a She Devil and John Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger.
BTAN22007BA Modern British Literature and Culture Seminar 2 (second year – BA)
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 first 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. Whereas the course will primarily rely on written texts, it will have visual components as well, both in the form of film viewing, and by introducing complementary visual material too. Literary texts will include Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, Llyod Jones’Mister Pip and Kate Atkinson’s Behind the Scenes at the Museum, films like Billy Elliot, The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill, But Came Down a Mountain, Dirty Pretty Things, Hunger, and the poems of Philip Larkin.
BTAN32004; Doctors and Disease in Literature (third year – BA)
The aim of the course is to introduce students to the interdisciplinary discourse of medical anthropology, gender studies, body studies and cultural studies by reading literary, visual, and cinematic texts on the representation of disease and epidemic in British cultural history. Topics to be discussed include visual images of health and disease in contemporary culture (posters of prevention campaigns), the culturally constructed notions of the normal and the pathological, plague as an Early Modern and modernist allegory of divine punishment and totalitarian regimes (excerpts from Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year, Albert Camus, The Plague), cholera and Victorian sanitary reforms, colonial vs. domestic notions of purity (the film version of Somerset Maugham’s The Painted Veil and Matthew Kneale’s novel Sweet Thames), and finally AIDS as a contemporary epidemic and the various kinds of stigmatization evoked by it, films (And the Band Played On, Philadelphia), poems (Thom Gunn’s volume The Man with Night Sweats), and Adam Mars-Jones’s collection of short stories (Monopolies of Loss) will be used to approach this issue from several points of view.
BTAN32004BA08; Food and Feasting in Popular Culture, Literature and Film (third year – BA)
The primary aim of the course is to introduce students to the interdisciplinary discourse of food studies within cultural studies by reading popcultural, visual, cinematic and literary texts on the representation of food and feasting (or fasting) in cultural history, with special attention to British cultural products and some iconic Hungarian works hardly known by today’s students (such as Zoltán Huszárik’s Szindbád). Topics and subject areas to be discussed include representations of cooking, eating, gastroception, "foodies" and consumerism in contemporary popular culture: literary gastro blogs, cookery shows and other diet and gastro shows, the culturally constructed notions of the normal and the pathological as well as eating habits and bodies with reference to 1st world food cult. The second part of the course deals with the representation of food on screen, that is, food movies, and it is divided into subsections based on genre (food documentaries: the cultural critique of the food industry) or typical Leitmotifs such as gastronomy as cultural translation and biography; food, perversion and the grotesque body; Asian food movies and the noodle western or films of heritage feasts. The third part of the course is called “food on paper” and is devoted to the literary representations of food, including one novel and short stories selected to illustrate such topics as food, drugs and artistic self-expression; hunger and gluttony, sin and atonement; and cannibalism.
Translation specialisation
BTAN20106; Magyar nyelvhelyesség I. (fordítói specializáció)
A tantárgy célja, hogy a fordító specializációban részt vevő hallgatók megszerezzék azokat a magyar nyelvhelyességi (és helyesírási) ismereteket, amelyeknek birtokában hitelesen végezhetnek szak- és műfordítói, illetve tolmácsolási munkát. Amellett, hogy a tantárgy végigjárja a nyelvhelyesség és helyesírás egyes problematikus csomópontjait, elsődleges célja a nyelvhelyességet és a nyelvhasználatot illető tudatosság megteremtése a hallgatókban: a tantárgy végeztével a hallgatóknak tisztában kell lenniük azzal, hogy „professzionális nyelvhasználóként” mekkora felelősségük lesz a magyar nyelv állapotának fenntartásában, javításában vagy romlásában. A tantárgy során tárgyalt témák között szerepelnek az alábbiak: a nyelvi változások és a nyelvhelyesség; frazeológiai egységek, lexikai hibák, divatszavak, idegen szavak, az egyes nyelvhasználati módokra (hivatalos nyelv, sajtónyelv) jellemző típushibák; egybe- és különírás; alanyi és tárgyas igeragozás; vonzatok és állandó határozók; igeidő-használat; az igekötők használata; terpeszkedő kifejezések; az igenevek, a létigés állapothatározói szerkezetek; idegen nevek toldalékolása; mondatszerkesztési hibák (szórend, téma-réma viszony, alanytévesztés, egyeztetés, zsúfolt szerkezetek; az írásjelek használata; a kötőszók, a vonatkozó mellékmondatok (ami/amely); a névelőhasználat kérdései.
A hallgatók teljesítményének értékelése az órai munka, az otthoni munkára kiadott feladatlapok, valamint a rendszeres írásbeli tesztek alapján történik. A hallgatók feladata lesz többek között nyelvhelyességi hibák gyűjtése az írott sajtóból. A tantárgy zárthelyi dolgozattal zárul, amely összefoglalja a félév anyagát.
BTAN20107BA; Magyar nyelvhelyesség II. (fordítói specializáció)
A tantárgy célja, hogy a fordító specializációban részt vevő hallgatók megszerezzék azokat a magyar stilisztikai, jelentéstani és nyelvhelyességi ismereteket, amelyeknek birtokában hitelesen végezhetnek szak- és műfordítói, illetve tolmácsolási munkát. Amellett, hogy a tantárgy végigjárja a stilisztika és a nyelvhelyesség egyes problematikus csomópontjait, elsődleges célja a stílust és a nyelvhasználatot illető tudatosság megteremtése a hallgatókban: a tantárgy végeztével a hallgatóknak tisztában kell lenniük azzal, hogy „professzionális nyelvhasználóként” mekkora felelősségük lesz a magyar nyelv állapotának fenntartásában, javításában vagy romlásában. A hallgatók teljesítményének értékelése az órai munka, az otthoni munkára kiadott feladatlapok, valamint a rendszeres írásbeli tesztek alapján történik. A hallgatók feladata lesz többek között nyelvhelyességi hibák gyűjtése az írott sajtóból és saját szövegek fogalmazása (például kritikaírás), alapvető retorikai ismeretek elsajátítása, illetve magyarul megjelent angol nyelvű szépirodalmi szövegek fordításának elemzése. A tantárgy zárthelyi dolgozattal zárul, amely összefoglalja a félév anyagát.
BTAN20111BA Translating Literature 2 (fordítói specializáció)
The second in a series of three, and largely based on the Translating Literature I course of the spring semester, this seminar will continue to introduce students to some of the basic skills of translating literature (more particularly, fiction). The course, conducted in Hungarian, will focus on the most frequent difficulties facing translators – it goes without saying that most of these difficulties crop up also in the translation of non-literary texts –, suggesting viable strategies of dealing with these difficulties. Issues to be addressed include differences between English and Hungarian word order, negative translation the handling of passive voice, past perfect and causative structures, the translation of comparisons, idioms, as well as more purely literary issues, like the difficulties attending the translation of free indirect speech. We are also going to address the basic strategies of translating culture-specific material (measurements, geographical names, titles, institutions, etc.). The course will also address questions of style and grammar in Hungarian. Although the emphasis will be on local issues and problems, we shall also look at some longer texts in order to address issues that can only be recognised and discussed if we consider the broader context.
MA courses
BTAN2108MA08 Ugliness in Literature and Film (MA)
The aim of the course is to provide an interdisciplinary framework for MA students to explore the historically changing meanings of “ugliness” and bodily “abnormality” in Western culture. The literary and filmic topics to be discussed rely on academic fields of study such as disability studies, biopolitics, as well as gender and body studies. By focusing on problems such as the dichotomy of beauty and ugliness in art history, popular culture, literature and film, the pre-modern carnivalistic body, the disfigured male villain and hero, the Victorian freak, images of female monstrosity, the diseased body, the disabled body, the transgender and the mutant body, the material to be covered systematically combines the aesthetic, the moral and the political discourses of what various cultural contexts have meant by the ugly in past.
BTAN1004MA Advanced Academic Writing (MA)
The purpose of the seminar is to improve students’ academic writing skills, focusing primarily on literary studies. In preparation for their MA thesis, students will learn to recognize and employ various critical writing strategies and argumentation techniques. The course structure is designed to deepen students’ awareness of what makes a skillfully written academic essay, develop their critical thinking, and refine their critical writing skills in practice. Having gained a certain level of MLA proficiency in the BA program, students will also be expected to become confident users of the MLA style by the end of the semester.
AN2108MA, MA course Care in Literature and Film
The aim of the course is to introduce students to the field of care ethics and its applicability in cultural studies, with special attention to literary and filmic analyses. The class discussions will focus on the history of care in Western culture (the genealogy of the notions of care and cure as well as caritas), the current crisis of care, religious, sociological, gender-based and biopolitical approaches to both home and institutional care. The course will also rely on the fields of ageing studies and disability studies, and thus will serve a general awareness-raising purpose as well.
PhD courses
BTP2BA_T_1_01 Presentation Skills (PhD course)
The aim of the course is to familiarise students with the technical skills of writing a successful conference abstract, creating an audience-friendly ppt presentation, and eventually delivering an engaging conference talk.
BTP2BA_T_9Academic Self-efficacy (PhD course)
This course is designed to help PhD students learn how to bring the very best out of themselves while working on their doctoral dissertations, both in terms of academic achievement and mental wellbeing. The first half of the course is devoted to four major blocks related to the practicalities of academic life: written genres (e.g. how to write a successful research plan when applying for a scholarship?), oral skills (e.g. how to make a good impression at an interview and other occasions?), IT know-how (e.g. how to use databases effectively for research?), and action planning (e.g. how to make long-term career plans?). The second half of the course is entirely focused on self-care and mental health (e.g. stress, conflict management, assertiveness, burn-out, etc.). The course is concluded by all students presenting their online academic profiles developed during the term.