ELL520Culture and Modern Civilization Seminar
2 credits
This course is designed to examine some of the most important events and trends in modern world history. Students will discuss themes related to the Rise of the West and globalization. They will select and discuss topics in human culture in the context of how humans, as historical beings, are shaped by the thoughts and actions of their predecessors and how they influence the lives of those who follow them. The course will examine culture as a distinct heritage of ideas, values, and artistic expressions that undergo continual adaptation due to social changes. Students will also study religions: Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
ELL524English Linguistics Seminar I
3 credits
The course provides an instructional framework and emphasizes the development of teacher competency related to curriculum design and teaching of English as a second/foreign language. During the course students will examine the development and implementation of effective researchbased curriculum design and instructional practices. They will explore theories, procedures, and instruments used for reforming language curricula and assessing English language skills for proficiency, placement and identification of special needs. They will be responsible for evaluating and designing a language syllabus and will explore formal/informal assessment strategies.
ELL525English Linguistics Seminar II
3 credits
This seminar helps students explore systemic functional grammar, a theory that aims to account for the use of language as a vehicle for communication between people in social and cultural contexts. During the seminar, students will experience the functions of language in representing situations and activities, in interaction and in creating discourse. They will be aware of how language users convey meaning through their choice of words and grammatical structures in specific situations. Students will analyze authentic texts and experience how to describe the lexical, grammatical and cohesive structures of texts and reflect on how the resources of the English language are employed in different types of discourse; and they will also learn why language users choose one wording over another to better reach their communicative goals.
ELL521English Literature I
3 credits
The aim of the seminar is to integrate the study of different 20th century literary theories and academic research writing. Students will examine the ways in which literary theories of the 20th century have been applied to canonic literary texts and have reshaped the reading and reception of those texts. They will look into the forms, the approaches and the structures employed. They will focus on selected writers, genres, issues, trends, or movements addressed in American, British, and/or world literatures from the Renaissance till now. The course includes reading primary and secondary sources related to poems, plays, and novels encompassing issues like race, gender, class, discourse and political power. Students will study writings that celebrate new freedoms and new ways of assessing the self and the world through literature and theory. Authors such as Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Hardy, Yeats, Joyce, Eliot, and others will be focused on. Students will explore diverse approaches, issues, and texts, and they will undertake an analysis of a text of their choice, using the references surveyed in addition to others, as part of their own chosen research project.
ELL522English Literature Seminar II
3 credits
This course examines the scope of colonialism/postcolonialism as a multidisciplinary, often cross disciplinary, reexamining the history and legacy of colonialism and incorporating the perspectives of the colonized with the purpose of relating this to English literature and postcolonial literature written in English. The aim of this course is to introduce students to a wide range of postcolonial criticism with the purpose of familiarizing them with the major contributors to the field and the significant arguments or counterarguments that each has espoused, by means of a close reading of seminal articles and class discussions on their basis. In addition to knowledge of postcolonial critics and their articles, students will develop an understanding of the postcolonial approach and method, so that they will acquire an ability to undertake a postcolonial reading and analysis of a text of their choice, using the references surveyed in addition to others, as part of their own chosen research project.
ELL526Literary Issues
3 credits
This course aims to help students explore a variety of selected literary topics. They will read and analyze literary works drawn from English speaking and nonEnglish speaking cultures. Through lectures and discussions, students will gain awareness of varied literary issues, including structure and technique, and a sense of the cultural backgrounds that inform those works. While reading and discussing literary topics, students will: demonstrate an understanding of literary terms, themes, strategies, and issues relevant to the works being studied; express their understanding of the relationship between literature and the historical/cultural contexts in which it was written; synthesize literature of nonEnglish speaking cultures in terms of historical literary values as they reveal esthetic, political, social, and historical relationships between countries and eras; and demonstrate the ability to choose and apply appropriate critical methods for analyzing and writing about literature.
ELL612Seminar: Applied Linguistics
3 credits
This seminar provides an overview of the field of applied linguistics, its history, branches and scope. It encourages research collaboration in language learning/teaching and language assessment. It also guides students to examine the different linguistic, social, and cultural factors in human communication through their looking at a variety of levels in language and how such variation constructs and is constructed by identity and culture. An exploration of attitudes and ideologies about these varieties will also be tackled. Moreover, the course offers students the opportunity to explore the research literature on a range of topics related to the study of language and society, including sociolinguistic theory and research methodology, the ethnography of speaking, the role of social variables (such as age, socioeconomic status and sex/gender) in language variation and change, bilingualism and language contact, and language policy and planning. Students will carry out an empirical analysis of a set of language data as part of their course project.
ELL610Seminar: Comparative Literature
3 credits
The seminar aims to explore with the students the field of comparative literature, contemporary theory, and modern approaches to literary texts. It is intended to help students develop an understanding of literature and culture, as well as technologies and esthetic forms of mediation and transmission of world views, values and critiques. During the seminar, students will discuss originals and works in translation, experience crosscultural comparisons, and the multilingual, pluralistic and global world. They will also compare literature to other arts, media and further modes of writing. The broad perspective of the seminar is to help students think critically and analytically about what literature is and does; how literature relates to other fields and kinds of writing; how literary texts produce their complex webs of meaning; and what the ethical relevance of literature is in a globalized world.
ELL623Seminar: English Language Acquisition
2 credits
The aim of this seminar is to help students explore the second language acquisition (SLA) theory and examine some of the latest research methodological tools in the field. Students will also study the complex variables underlying second language acquisition and the different perspectives of SLA theories. Among the topics tackled are: the effect of age at which a second language is learned, the learner’s rate of acquisition and attainment profile, the effects of language impairment and loss in second language grammars, the influence that first language exerts on the acquisition of a second language, and a number of psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic aspects of SLA. Students will also gain experience of second language research through a smallscale study they will conduct in an area of second language knowledge.
ELL621Seminar: English Literature
2 credits
The aim of this seminar is to enable students to consider how contemporary AngloAmerican literature reimagines social history, genre, politics and identity. The seminar will focus on influential works written since the beginning of the 20th century by writers such as George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, Maxine Hong Kingston, Margaret Atwood, Wole Soyinka, Carol Ann Duffy, John Fowles and Angela Carter, among others. Students will examine literary texts as examples of contemporary culture, focusing on issues such as postmodernism and multiculturalism. They will also tackle topics such as the representation of space and identity in depictions of the city, the small town and suburbia, fairy tale and gothic horror and new technologies and culture.