Teaching

Our seminars and lectures span the full historical range of British literature from Shakespeare to Sarah Kane, Thomas Nashe to Zadie Smith, and from George Herbert to T.S. Eliot.

Coming from such a broad base, we are able offer a range of seminars from the epoch-​specific ("Early Modern Tragedy", "Contemporary Drama", for example) to the trans-​historic ("Logics of the Plot", "Concepts of Realism", among others) in order to offer students both a solid grounding in various stages of development of English Literature and to allow them the opportunity to see potential connections and chasms across different genres.

In addition to traditional (text based) material, our seminars also embrace other media and explore, for example, the relationship between text and image, film adaptations and television series.

An important aspect of teaching is not losing sight of the relevance of English Studies with respect to the wider world of academia and beyond; therefore, we engage in continuous interdisciplinary dialogue with contemporary cultural theories. By relating given texts and topics to current debates concerning technology, science, politics, and globalization, for example, we aim to build up students' knowledge of English literature but also to demonstrate the importance of close reading and critical reflection, among other skills, in relation to the wider world.

You can find a summary of the classes we offer this semester below. Please visit the online curriculum HIS-LSF for detailed information.