General Information
The Master's program Comparative Studies in English and American Language, Literature and Culture (MAComp) is a unique, interdisciplinary program aimed at providing graduate students with a professionally qualified education within the fields of English and American studies, literary and cultural studies and linguistics. It allows them to hone their academic as well as professional skills on an intercultural level, paving them the way into domestic and international job markets for both academic and non-academic careers.
In approaching literature and linguistics comparatively, students will engage with cultural phenomena within the changing contexts of history and globalization. Taking into consideration theories on such socio-cultural variables as class, gender, ethnicity, technology, or media, the MAComp curriculum relates to current research and also includes areas of studies beyond the philologies.
Students have ample opportunity to customize their course of study according to their own interests. They can combine modules or focus on one specific area from all courses offered in the six departments of the Institute for English and American Studies:
Fully taught in English, the four-semester program starts solely in the winter semester (October).
- Historical and comparative analysis of language, texts, literature (e.g. in terms of stylistic, generic, era-specific features) based on a corpus from the English-speaking world ranging from about 700 A.D. to the present day.
- Global and intercultural communication within conceptual frameworks such as 'World Englishes', 'World Literature', 'Transatlantic Negotiations', 'Post-Colonialism', and with regard to English as a lingua franca in culture and science.
- Cross-media approaches to nonverbal and/or hybrid cultural phenomena (image, sound, dance, song, film, music video, graphic novel, the internet).
- General functional theory of culture, language, text, and literature vis-à-vis particular contexts in intellectual, social, technological, and media history; or regarding cultural conflicts in the realm of class, gender, and ethnicity.
- Current theories and empirical research on many aspects of the mental lexicon and grammar (especially morphology), on language development (grammaticalization, English-based contact languages) and domain-specific language use (law, science, economy, the new media).
- Especially designed courses for oral presentations and academic writing, event management and organization and team work.
All courses for each semester can be viewed in the online course directory HIS-LSF.
If you want to know how to arrive to uni, click here.