This course is conceived as a step-by-step guide to academic research, preparing you to
write your first academic essay/term paper.
You will be introduced to the general form of an academic essay, to
major research tools and databases, and to the MLA citation style that
is required for term papers in English/American literary studies.
In addition to such methodological concerns, the seminar’s focus lies on
the application of some of the theoretical models you were introduced
to in the “Introduction to Literary and Cultural Studies” course – after
all, a central feature of academic essays is their theoretical frame.
Using the example of Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
(see the section "Literatur" for the edition you must buy for this
course), and reading and discussing a number of critical essays on that
work from various theoretical perspectives, you will:
a) learn how to approach a literary text that may, at first, seem to be
hard to assess (so that, hopefully, you will find that the novel is
actually great fun),
b) deepen your knowledge of possible interpretations of a canonical text,
c) be confronted with various models for academic writing,
d) learn about different interpretations of a literary text,
e) understand how these interpretations are informed by different theoretical approaches,
f) receive a solid enough foundation to write a term paper of your own
in which you can position yourself within the existing critical
discourse.
This course is taught as a four-hour unit: Given the broad range of
outcome this course is supposed to have, we are going to take the time
we will need for this endeavour. Students will have to take the course
in its full length of four hours (there is NO option to only to half of
the time). This also means that you can complete a full module with it
(i.e. you can do and obtain 2 SLs and a PL in this course).
No matter whether you do this course for an entire module or only part of it, the course must be taken as a four hour unit.
- Dozent/in: Anja Müller