The online registration for 2nd year BA students for BA seminars will commence on 10 May at 7 p.m. and will close on 12 May at 11.59 pm. Students register via usosweb.
There are limits to the number of students in each group. If the group of your choice is already full, please make an alternative choice.
Descriptions of courses:
dr Katarzyna Ojrzyńska, Encounters with the Other
In this course we will ask how various forms of Otherness (e.g., the female Other, the colonial Other, the disabled Other, the posthuman Other) have been constructed and represented in Western (mostly Anglophone) cultures. To this aim, we will study theoretical texts by Simone de Beauvoir, Hélène Cixous, Rosi Braidotti, Robert McRuer, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. We will also examine a selection of literary texts (from Shakespeare to contemporary writers, e.g., Kaite O’Reilly), films (e.g., Ex Machina, 2014, dir. Alex Garland), and performances (e.g., different varieties of Irish dance). The course will offer an opportunity to reflect on stereotyping and prejudice, as well as on cultural and biological diversity. We will investigate potential problems and tensions that encounters with the Other may pose, and opportunities that they can offer. Students will be encouraged to write their dissertations on contemporary literature (including drama) and/or visual and performing arts, and address topics related to the theoretical aspects of the seminar (i.e., disability studies, gender studies, postcolonialism, post/transhumanism, environmental humanities).
dr Agata Handley, The Work of Art as an Event, Intertextual Dialogue across Media
“Conceived as a force field, the work of art becomes a dynamic occurrence, a shifting and movable field of . . . forces capable of repeatedly and differently rupturing the social conditions of production and reception.” (Ziarek 2004: 20)
The seminar will take as its starting point an idea that a work of art can be seen as an “event” rather than as a static object: i.e., something happens each time it is encountered, and experienced in all its transformative power. We will focus, in particular, on the intertextual relationships between visual and literary/textual art forms. Through examining selected case studies, we will consider how artworks have often been appropriated by other artists, and transformed in ways that can be subversive, crossing boundaries, and destabilizing expectations. We will also look at what it means to read works intertextually, and experience intertextual/intermedial art across time and space. The programme will include the analysis of 20th and 21st century literary and visual sources, including poetry, music video, film, and photography, as well as an overview of key theoretical concepts and selected theoretical texts concerning the topic.
You can find examples of topics we may discuss in the first semester, below. We may also incorporate discussions on intertextual/intermedial work(s) you are interested in.
Example topics:·
- T.S. Eliot and Goya, in Farideh Lashai’s art installation, When I Count, There Are Only You… But When I Look, There is Only a Shadow.
- Entanglements between poetry, painting and photography, in Alison Watt’s and Don Paterson’s collaborative practice.
- Tableaux in photography (referencing painting and literature in feminist work of the Indian artist Pushpamala N.)
dr hab. Justyna Fruzińska, America in the 19th Century
The seminar will be devoted to discussing different aspects of American culture in the 19th century: literature, painting, philosophy, and history. It will combine discussion of literary and critical sources with watching and analyzing documentary films on various issues connected to 19th-century America.
• we will read works by Romantic as well as realist writers (e.g. Emerson, Hawthorne, Brockden Brown, Beecher Stowe, Twain, Henry James);
• we will see paintings by artists from Thomas Cole to John Singer Sargent;
• we will discuss major historical events of the 19th century: the war of 1812, slavery and abolitionism, the war with Mexico, the gold rush, the industrial revolution, Civil War and reconstruction of the South
Jarosław Milewski, Queer Literature and Theory
Queerness is notoriously difficult to define; the term does not offer a stable meaning, but rather contests and invites critical exploration of that which is not normative in the field of gender and sexuality. Students in this seminar will have an opportunity to explore the contemporary notion of queerness, both in critical theory and in literature, learning to apply the critical tools from queer theory into their reading practice. The reading list will involve reading a selection of major works by American queer writers and some seminal texts from the field of queer theory. While the main focus of seminar is queerness as such, BA projects involving other minority literatures, feminism, gender studies and the political dimensions of literature are accepted as well.
Łukasz Salski, Foreign language learning and teaching
In this class we will explore varied aspects of foreign and second language learning and teaching. Even though most class work will focus specifically on foreign language instruction, students will be encouraged to explore any topic relevant to their interests and experience within the field of foreign and/or second language acquisition, learning, teaching, or testing. Students will be directed in doing library research of their topic and supported in pursuing their own research projects using appropriate methodology.
dr hab. Paulina Pietrzak, Issues in Translation & Interpreting
The seminar addresses the latest theories, methodologies, and trends in non-literary translation and interpreting. Students will have the opportunity to investigate various concepts and typologies of translation theory and practice. Moreover, the seminar offers a grounding in research methods and provides an overview of basic and advanced concepts in linguistic analysis and translation studies.
The seminar is aimed at those who wish to write their BA dissertations on the topics involving:
▪ audiovisual translation
▪ interpreting
▪ strategies, methods and procedures in translation
▪ specialised translation
▪ terminology
▪ localisation
▪ translation quality assessment
▪ translation as a profession – trends, challenges and professional ethics
▪ revising and post-editing
▪ technology in translation
Aleksandra Majdzińska-Koczorowicz, Visual and linguistic analysis
In this seminar students will have the opportunity to investigate various verbal, visual, and verbo-visual forms of expression in different areas of expression, for example newspaper articles, advertisements, or comics, in order to discuss their communicative effectiveness. The course aims at offering an insight into various concepts concerning bimodal forms of expression: distribution of information, 'figurative language' (metaphor, metonymy, personification, etc.), framing, distribution of attention (e.g. perspective, figure and ground distinction), and chosen basic notions from the field of visual communication. The course will also highlight the variant nature of language and the possibility of alternate ways of expression.