What is the degree program about?

English Studies is a degree program with a strong research focus offering two areas of specialisation:

• Culture and Literature: this study path enables students to combine modules in literary and cultural history and theory with a broad range of interdisciplinary modules. Culture and Literature focuses on historical perspectives and involves two key areas of the humanities: the history of ideas and discourse analysis. Areas of expertise include:
  • Cultural Studies: focus on cultural history and popular culture with a particular emphasis on the intersections of culture with economics and politics. In addition to these areas, this focus concentrates on cultural and medial translation.
  • Literary Studies: relations between literature and other discourses such as philosophy, religion and politics.
• Linguistics and Applied Linguistics: this study path focuses on describing and analysing the English language in light of current linguistic theories and teaching approaches. The following topics are covered in the degree program:
  • the idiomatic element of language: construction grammar, valency theory, research on collocation and idiomaticity
  • foreign language teaching: lexicography, grammar, contrastive linguistics, speech perception and production, literacy development, bilingualism and bilingual education
  • first and second language acquisition and research on learner language
  • corpus linguistics: the English language: history and variation
  • advanced language modules

Students may study one of these specialisations exclusively to obtain a degree in ‘MA English Studies: Culture and Literature’ or in ‘MA English Studies: Linguistics and Applied Linguistics’, or they may choose to study a combination of the two fields to obtain the degree title of ‘MA English Studies’.