AJL15085, AJL25063
Richard Powers’ American Novels: Metafiction as Realism (Course Outline)
Richard T. Stock, Ph.D.
March 16, 23, 30, April 6,13; 12.00 – 13.40 and 14.00 – 15.40, G316

Course description:
Prisoner’s Dilemma and The Echo Maker, and many of Powers’ novels, use metafiction to be more realist than a conventional realist novel. In particular, the “game-playing” the reader needs to engage in to understand the story is not just fun and games, but rather a device to bring the reader closer to the meaning of the story and the emotional impact of the story’s characters. This is a somewhat paradoxical situation in the study of the novel, and through this specific lens, in the course we will gain a better understanding of realism, narrative innovation in novels, Powers and his contemporaries, and Powers’ novels. We will also encounter interesting problems related to literary periods and movements such as Realism, Postmodernism, narrative innovation, and storytelling convention, to the point where we will be both frustrated at and delighted by the fact that still today, well after the waning of the postmodern era, we do not yet have a dominant literary style or social era to define and delimit today’s contemporary fiction.

AJL18096, AJL28068, SAKS015
Major Issues in Canadian Society
Prof. Richard Nimijean
May 9 – 13, 2022, 10.00 – 11.40 and 16.00 – 17.40, G316

Course description:
This course examines contemporary debates in Canada as a way for students to deepen their understanding of the country. We examine five pressing issues that the country is debating that also reveal insights into the nature of the country and its national identity.

Issues explored:

• Reconciliation between Indigenous peoples and Canada. In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission proposed 94 calls to action to address the legacy of residential schools and promote reconciliation, and the Trudeau government promised to implement them. Six years later, many have not been implemented. The Yellowhead Institute stated, “With each passing year, Canada opts to perform reconciliation in an effort to shape a benevolent reputation rather than enact the substantial and structural changes that would rectify ongoing harms and change the course of our collective relationship.” Can Canada achieve reconciliation with Indigenous peoples?
• The politics of memory. Many Canadians have called for the renaming of schools and government buildings, as they were named after people whose values, beliefs and actions are out of step with contemporary Canada. This includes institutions named after Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald. Others argue that this is applying modern values to the past, and thus renaming should be resisted or only selectively done. Which approach is best?
• Energy, the environment, and climate change. Justin Trudeau promised in 2015 to improve poor Canada’s environmental record and do more in the fight against climate change. However, he has also been an ardent advocate of oil and gas production, which critics claim are polluting and undermine his government’s goal of promoting a greener and cleaner economy. Can Canada be a committed soldier in the fight against climate change while also being a major oil and gas producer?
• The “Freedom Convoy” and tensions and cracks in Canadian society. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that there is much more socioeconomic inequality and racial and ethnic discrimination than is often presumed, both by Canadians and non-Canadians alike. The truckers’ protest across Canada in the winter of 2022 raises questions about Canadian values and the spread of far right and white supremacist ideology. What does this say about Canada and how it is seen across the world?
• The future of Canadian sovereignty. Ongoing tensions between the United States and China, as well as a more nationalistic “America first” orientation in the USA, have had numerous repercussions for Canada. Since Canada is an international trading country that has also long relied on the United States as a security partner, can Canada carve out its own independent path?

Class format:

• Readings will be made available to students before the course begins. Students are expected to read the readings before our class meetings.
• Classes are 90 minutes long: Morning classes begin at 10 AM; afternoon classes begin at 4 PM.

AJL16077, AJL26073
20th & 21st century Irish Literature and Film: Place, History and Violence (2022)
Dr. Moonyoung Hong
February 7 – 11, 2022 / Monday to Friday, 10.00 – 11.40 and 14 – 15.40, Online (ZOOM)

Course description:
This course covers a range of major 20th- and 21st-century works by Irish writers, ranging from canonical figures such as W. B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett, and James Joyce to contemporary living writers like FeliSpeaks. We will also take the time to analyse films by Irish directors such as Neil Jordan and Lenny Abrahamson. The module traces common themes across adiversity of genres: it includes short stories, novels, poems, plays and films, and will consider their unique mediums of expression as well as their shared content. In addition to an in-depth reading of the texts and films, the course will engage with their socio-political contexts and the movements both within and outside
Ireland that inspired these works. From their active intervention in creating a national identity as a form of resistance against British colonial rule to their involvement in various avant-garde movements and the push for civil rights, Irish literature and art have successfully invented a national image and consciousness, while simultaneously working against such tropes. Writers, artists and directors who were born in or moved to Ireland have experimented relentlessly with form and content, breaking conventions and challenging our ethical, aesthetic, and political beliefs. We will discuss these texts through the key concepts of ‘place’, ‘history’ and ‘violence’, all of which present useful ways in to the Irish context. In the process, the course will explore what Irish literature and film can teach us about the (im)possibility of going beyond identity.

Course materials can be found in GD folder.

AJL17087, AJL27094
Metamodernism: The Art and Culture of the Twenty-first Century
Dr. Arya Aryan
Every week, Wednesdays 10:00 – 14:00, from February 16, Online

Course description:
This course is designed for the final year undergraduate students and presents students with an advanced study of the art and culture of the twenty-first century, also known as "metamodernism," to understand and critically investigate our contemporary zeitgeist and its cultural productions. The theoretical part includes the metamodernist manifesto, the tenets of metamodernism, globalisation, risk society, therapy culture, the New Sincerity, control society and new-surveillance (surveillance in an age of intelligent algorithms). The artistic works include J. M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello; Hilary Mantel's Beyond Black; Dave Egger's The Circle; Liz Magic Laser's Primal Speech; Person of Interest; Mr Robot.

AJL18094, AJL28067
Comprehending Canada
Jeffrey Ayres - St. Michael´s College (Burlington, U.S.A.), Magdalena Fiřtová - Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic), Denisa Krásná - Masaryk University (Brno, Czech Republic), Richard Nimijean - Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada), Tomáš Pospíšil - Masaryk University (Brno, Czech Republic)
13. - 17. 6. - online preparation, 20. - 24. 6. - online classes

Course description:
Students are introduced to the study of Canada and its society, identity, culture, economy, and politics. This course brings together an interdisciplinary team of experts in Canadian Studies whose insights will allow students to gain a better comprehension of Canada. By synthesizing these approaches, we develop a unique and more comprehensive understanding. We explore Canada by looking at its development, its evolving sense of national identity, and the challenges of Canada’s ongoing evolution and survival. We look at Canadian people and how they live in Canada. Subjects covered include:

• National identity, diversity in Canadian society, race, and ethnicity
• Indigenous Studies
• Canada-US relations and the border, Natural resources, the environment, and the economy Immigration and refugee policies
• Canadian narratives as seen in culture, film, and literature

​AJL17085, AJL27091
American Visual Art and Social and Political Commentary
Paul Von Blum
March 21 – 25, 2022 / Monday to Friday, 10.00 – 11.40 and 14 – 15.40, G316

Course description:
American visual artists have frequently sought to combine their creative talent with a deeper commitment to social and political criticism and change. This mini-course will explore some of the highlights of this powerful tradition of North American art. The class will include the early 20th century works of the “Ashcan” School, through the Depression, focusing on such iconic artists as Reginald Marsh, Grant Wood, Ben Shahn, William Gropper, Philip Evergood, and many others. Themes include labor strife, political corruption, poverty, economic devastation, and legal injustice. Celebrated photographers like Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine, Margaret Bourke-White, and Dorothea Lange will also be included in this brief survey. Post-World War II visual social commentary will also be featured. Such artists as George Tooker, Paul Cadmus, George Segal, Duane Hanson, Leon Golub, Barbara Kruger, Elizabeth Catlett, Charles White, Faith Ringgold, and others will be shown. Themes include the cold war, bureaucracy, racial injustice, sexism and patriarchy, social protest and agitation, and many related issues of the recent past and present. If time permits, examples from Mexico and Canada will also be presented. 

AJL17082, AJL27088
African American Art and Visual Culture
Prof. Paul Von Blum (University of California, Los Angeles)
September 20 – 24, 2021 / Monday to Friday, 10 – 11.40 and 16 – 17.40, G316

Course description:
Throughout U.S. history, African American artists have produced a remarkable body of
paintings, prints, sculpture, photography, murals, and other artistic forms. Many of these artists
have combined their creative talent with a vision of the struggles of their people for human
dignity and social justice. This course will highlight the accomplishments of several of these
men and women, many of whose powerful contributions to American art and culture generally
have been ignored in traditional educational, mass media, and art world institutions. A major
focus of the course will involve an inquiry into the works of 20th and 21st century African
American artists whose works provide insightful and critical commentary about major features
of American life and society, especially issues of race and gender. The close linkages between
race and gender will receive extensive attention, especially in the works of the numerous women
artists of African heritage.
1. INTRODUCTION AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND. This unit will provide an overview of
the African American tradition in the visual arts, from its slave craft heritage to the present. The
African roots of this tradition will be briefly presented. Students will also have the opportunity to
consider why African American art has been largely neglected in mainstream academic and art
world institutions.
2. THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE AND THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY.
3. MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY AFRICAN AMERICAN ARTISTS.
4. AFRICAN AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHY.
5. CONTEMPORARY 21st CENTURY AFRICAN AMERICAN ARTISTS.

AJL17084, AJL27090
Fear for Your Life: Evolution, Cognition, and Frightening Entertainment
Dr. Mathias Clasen (Aarhus University, Denmark)
October 18 – 22, 2021 / Monday to Friday, 10 – 11.40 and 14 – 15.40, G316

Course description:
Why is frightening entertainment so popular, how does it work, and what are its psychological
and social effects? This course introduces students to evolutionary and biocultural literary and
media theory, allowing students to develop a critical understanding of how evolutionary
psychology can inform humanities scholarship. The course focuses analytically on modern
American horror media (literature, film, video games, and haunted attractions) and discusses
how horror entertainment reflects salient sociocultural anxieties while targeting evolved
dispositions in human psychology. The textbook for the course is Mathias Clasen’s Why Horror
Seduces (OUP, 2017), but additional scholarly and scientific articles will be assigned. Moreover,
students will be required to familiarize themselves with a number of horror texts across media.
No prior knowledge of evolutionary or biocultural theory is necessary, but a certain tolerance for
frightening media is probably advisable.

AJL17086, AJL27092
Fiction as Therapy
Dr. Arya Aryan (University of Tuebingen, Germany)
The course will be taught online – exact dates TBA.

Course description:
This course, designed for the final year undergraduate students, presents students with an
advanced study of medical humanities and focuses on selected significant novels of the
twentieth and twenty-first century to understand and critically investigate experiences of health
and illness which are marginalised, difficult, unspeakable, unacknowledged or invisible as
presented in fiction. This module aims to examine fiction dealing with illness, disease, pain and
death to understand and appreciate creative writing as therapeutic in the face of traumas and
crises.

Primary Texts:
Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway (1925)
Samuel Beckett's The Unnamable (1953)
Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962)
Hilary Mantel's Beyond Black (2005)

AJLA25062, AJL15084, AJL25062
Postmodern Masterpiece: Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Richard T. Stock, Ph.D.

Monday, April 12; Thursday, April 15; Friday, April 16; Monday, April 19; Thursday, April 22
10 am to 12 noon and 3 pm to 5 pm

Course description:
Among other things, the postmodern period was known for questioning the standards by which we judge value. Postmodernism exhibited deep ambivalence for hierarchies of all kinds, wondering why we would say one thing is better than another. Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow is often cited as the best example of a postmodern novel. Published in 1973, it is firmly situated in the postmodern period historically and it deploys many of the literary devices that we have come to identify with postmodernism.

AJLA28066, AJL28066, SAKS015
Canada and Global Issues
Richard Nimijean, M.A.

Tuesday, 10:00 -11:40 AM
March 2, March 16, March 30; April 13, April 27; May 11; May 25.

Course description:
This course introduces students to the interdisciplinary study of Canada and Canadians as global actors, examining key global issues Canada is addressing: see https://www.international.gc.ca/world monde/issues_developmentenjeux_developpement/index.aspx?lang=eng ). We look at how Canada approaches global issues. We also reflect on how global issues affect Canada and Canadians. We examine the relationship between values Canadians embrace (national identity) and how they are expressed and acted upon - or not - on the global stage. By looking at global issues and examining their relationship with Canada, you will develop a more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of Canada. In so doing, the goal is not to celebrate or criticize Canada -rather, it is to explain Canada.

Comprehending Canada
AJL28067, AJLA28067, AJL18094
prof. Jeffrey Ayres, Magdalena Fiřtová, Ph.D., Mgr. Denisa Krásná, Richard Nimijean, M.A., doc. Tomáš Pospíšil

June 17 - June 30, 2021

Course description:
Students are introduced to the study of Canada and its society, identity, culture, economy, and politics. This course brings together an interdisciplinary team of experts in Canadian Studies whose insights will allow students to gain a better comprehension of Canada. By synthesizing these approaches, we develop a unique and more comprehensive understanding. We explore Canada by looking at its development, its evolving sense of national identity, and the challenges of Canada’s ongoing evolution and survival. We look at Canadian people and how they live in Canada. Subjects covered include: national identity, diversity in Canadian society, race, and ethnicity, Indigenous Studies, Canada-US relations and the border, natural resources, the environment, and the economy, immigration and refugee policies, Canadian narratives as seen in culture, film, and literature.

AJ17082 / AJL27087 / AJL27087
How Did it Come to This? An Intersectional Understanding of the Roots of Inequality in the United States and United Kingdom in the Age of Trump and Brexit
Dr. Sagar Deva (University of Leeds, UK)
The course will be taught online between November 2nd and 27th, 2-3 times a week.

Course description:
This course will seek to understand, through an intersectional analysis, the complex systems of discrimination that have underpinned and still underpin both the rising tide of nationalism in the West and the continued poverty and suffering of the Global South, suggesting a clear connection between the two. It will look at the multiple forms of discrimination on which these systems of prejudice and inequality rest, with a particular focus on racism, sexism, and the ‘intersectional’ relationship between these two forms of prejudice which impacts particularly on women of colour.

AJ18092 / AJL18092
Comprehending Canada I: Canadian Studies, History, and Geography
Dr. Richard Nimijean (Carleton University, Canada)
Wednesdays 14.00 – 15.00 (14 October - 25 November)

Course description:
This course examines various approaches to the study of Canada. Students will learn how interdisciplinary teaching and research differs from traditional academic disciplines and how interdisciplinary Canadian Studies produces a stronger and richer explanation of Canadian phenomena. This prepares you for advanced courses on Canada.

AJL28065 / SAKS015
Canada and the United States: Economy, Politics, and Culture
Dr. Richard Nimijean (Carleton University, Canada)
Tuesdays 14.00 – 15.00 (13 October - 1 December)

Course description:
This course examines the evolution of the Canada-US relationship. Students undertake a comparative, interdisciplinary examination of Canada and the United States. Following a historical examination of the relationship, we look at key policy issues that define the relationship, focusing on Canadian perspectives of the relationship. In the end, not only does looking beyond Canadian borders help students learn more about the United States; they will also learn more about Canada and Canadians.

AJL15082 / AJL25059
Beyond Postmodern Fiction: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Dr. Richard Stock, Ph.D.
The course will be taught online in November 23–27, with online classes Monday to Friday 10-12 and 14-16.

Course description:
This course will focus on one of the most important novels in the American tradition in the last two decades of the 20th century. This was a time when postmodernism seemed to have faded, but a consensus on what was to follow was lacking. This caused a particular type of cultural concern. This concern endures today; we don’t know whether to discuss the current period as postmodernism, “post-postmodernism”, or something else (or nothing else). After the turn of the millennium and September 11th, the cultural situation changed. Infinite Jest operates both as a force to bring culture beyond postmodernism and an example of that effort before September 11th and the advent of the 21st century.

AJ(L)17083 / AJ(L)27089
Anthropocene Now: Climate Change in American Literature and Media
Prof. Paweł Frelik (American Studies Center, University of Warsaw)
This course will be taught online, dates TBA

Course description:
Social, political, and economic issues have long provided both material for narratives across a range of media and interpretative frameworks for analyses of cultural texts. Arguably, in the late 20th and early 21st century all these concerns converge in, are intimately connected to, and stem from the central condition variously known as climate change, global warming, and Anthropocene. The phenomenon’s global nature, non-human temporality, and complexity make it difficult to even imagine its impact, but cultural texts have collectively done much to raise the awareness of its presence. The course will engage climate change as the most urgent challenge of our time. It will provide students with theoretical apparatuses necessary to discuss cultural representations of this global phenomenon and expose them to a selection of primary texts across media (novel, film, television, comics) that have foregrounded climate change.

Students of the English Department can also register 3 intensive courses offered by the Department of Czech Literature (all courses will be taught in English and online, most likely in November 16-20, more info will be coming after registration from Dr. Tereza Dědinová):
LMKB_a427 Game of Victims and Monsters: Representation of Sexual and Female Violence in A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones

LMKB_a428 Native Americans in Fantasy Fiction
LMKB_a431 Adaptation Studies (more information doc. Petr Bubeníček

AJ18072 / AJ27082 / AJL27082
How Did it Come to This? An Intersectional Understanding of the Roots of Inequality in
the United States and United Kingdom in the Age of Trump and Brexit
Dr. Sagar Deva (University of Leeds, UK)

Course description:
This course will seek to understand, through an intersectional analysis, the complex systems of
discrimination that have underpinned and still underpin both the rising tide of nationalism in the
West and the continued poverty and suffering of the Global South, suggesting a clear
connection between the two. It will look at the multiple forms of discrimination on which these
systems of prejudice and inequality rest, with a particular focus on racism, sexism, and the
‘intersectional’ relationship between these two forms of prejudice which impacts particularly on
women of colour.

AJL28063, AJ18090, SAKS015
Aboriginal Issues and Contemporary Politics in Canada
doc. Dr. Mitja Durnik (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia)

Course description:
This course will trace the history of the relationship between Aboriginal populations in Canada
and the settler nation. The issues and topics covered in the course will include the following:
Aboriginal history and the “first contact” problem; Historical aspects of Aboriginal economy and
politics; Colonial politics and fur trade: the decline of the Aboriginal “nation”; Aboriginal treaties
and land claims in Canada; Basics of Aboriginal self-government; Residential Schools, Truth
and Reconciliation; Federal government policy towards Aboriginal peoples; Aboriginal
citizenship politics; Aboriginal women and political power; Aboriginal languages in political
participation perspective; Metis political recognition; Contemporary Aboriginal economic
development; Quebec historical identity and Aboriginal question; and Hydroelectric policy in
Quebec and Manitoba: neoliberal policy against Aboriginal resistance.

AJL28064, AJ18091, AJ28064
Contemporary Canadian Art and Literature
Catherine Parayre (Brock University, Canada)

Course description:
Comparative study of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Canadian artworks and literary texts.
Focus on themes and motifs, cultural background, art and literary history. May include art by
Edward Burtynsky, Brian Jungen, Laura L. Letinsky and Jeff Wall, and texts by Margaret
Atwood, Adam Dickinson, Natasha Kanape Fontaine and Katherena Vermette.

AJL22103/AJ22103 Introduction to Terminology
Prof. Jean Quirion (University of Ottawa, Canada)

Course description:
The course provides an introduction into the linguistic study of terminology, outlining the
methodology of measuring terminology systems and usage.

AJL22104/AJ22104 Theoretical Pragmatics: Translation as a Hermeneutical Tool
Dr. Piotr Czajka (University of Wroclaw, Poland)

Course description:
The course deals with how meaning in constructed in contemporary hermeneutics, Speech
Act Theory, Stanley Fish's concept of interpretation, Ernst von Glasersfeld’s radical
constructivism and George Steiner's concept of translation as a hermeneutic motion.

AJ12082/AJ22105/AJL22105 Language, Mind, and Human Nature: An Introduction to
Linguistics in Cognitive Science
Dr. Mihailo Antovic (University of Niš, Serbia)

Course description:
This course provides an introduction to the study of cognitive linguistics.

AJ18014/AJ28046 Canadian Nationalism
SAKS015 Vybrané kapitoly z anglofonních lingvistických a kulturních studií SA
Prof. Richard Nimijean (Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada)

Course description:
This course questions whether a national identity is possible or even desirable within an
increasingly diverse and complex Canada. It examines the historical and contemporary
construction of Canadian identities, explores competing nationalisms within Canadian
borders, and engages in a critical evaluation of the role of nationalism.

UZAJ9515 Literature and culture in EFL classes / Literatura a kultura ve výuce angličtiny
Mgr. Michaela Čaňková
Course description:
The course is a lively, practical exploration of English cultures and literatures and how they interact. A wide range of activities and approaches to teaching this will be offered. Students will have an opportunity to try out different strategies of teaching literature in its context. The following sessions will be presented: USA history, highlights of 20th-century American literature, multicultural Britain, Ireland, Northern Ireland, contemporary British literature set in the city, Wales, Scotland, Africa in British and African writing, festivals in Britain.

AJ16176/AJ26274 Video Games: Culture, Texts, Issues
Prof. Pawel Frelik (University of Warsaw, Poland) February 11-15, 2019, room G31

Course description:
The course will provide a comprehensive introduction to video games, commercially and artistically one of the most vibrant among contemporary cultural forms. While the medium itself is truly global and transnational, the American contexts of its emergence and development are crucial for understanding its discourses and most readily exemplify a broad range of the medium’s cultural entanglements. In the course, the students will examine the history of video games as a medial form, study (play) selected games representative of various genres and forms, and engage a range of issues, including the medium’s position in contemporary American culture, games’ procedural rhetoric, representations of gender and race, the game industry’s complicity in cognitive capitalism, and audience-side practices.

AJ18089/AJ28062 Margaret Atwood: Transgressing Genre
Katarína Labudová, Ph.D. (Catholic University in Ružomberok, Slovakia)
February 18-22, 2019, room G316

Course description:
“What is genre? What is gender? These seem to remain open questions,” Margaret Atwood said in a 2014 talk on Genre and Gender at Penn University. This course offers to examine Margaret Atwood’s use of genre and gender. Special emphasis will be given to her major novels, beginning with autobiographical elements in Cat’s Eye, historiographic metafiction (Alias Grace, Blind Assassin, The Robber Bride) and ending with fairy tale echoes in her novels and short stories. The seminar will scrutinize the dystopian/utopian and speculative fiction/science fiction dilemmas negotiated in Atwood’s fiction and non-fiction (Maddaddam trilogy, The Handmaid’s Tale). We will discuss the literary usefulness (or lack of it) of genre and form labels, Atwood’s use of intertextuality and genre hybridity.

AJ16175 History of Rock Music: Part I - 1850-1990
Prof. Gene Terruso

Course description:
This course is a survey of the history, development and social resonance of rock and roll, from its roots in the late 19th and early 20th century up through the 1990s. The class will introduce the student to, and/or provide some depth of awareness about, a roster of major figures and trends in rock and roll. It will consider the art form as a still young and evolving means of expression. It will explore how it has influenced social and cultural environments and how it has been influenced by them. How the individual student relates to rock music will form an important component of the course and will be examined through ongoing discussion and project work.

AJ27085 Stephen Spielberg: His Life and Career
Prof. Gene Terruso

AJ14155/AJ24259 Local/Global Environments
Lenka Filipová (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany)

Course description:
The course will explore relations of particular places and global systems in environmentalism from the 1960s, i.e. the time of the emergence of the green movement, until the present. We will examine a variety of images and texts including novels, essays and cultural theory and discuss what different ‘cultures of nature’ can be discerned when working with different histories, genres and art forms from across the globe. While looking at how notions of both ‘nature’ and place are represented and dramatized in selected narratives, we will be concerned with some of the key theoretical and conceptual issues underpinning the field of both environmental and postcolonial studies. What, after all, do we mean when we speak of ‘nature’ and ‘the environment’? Whose environment, and who gets to speak? We will explore the often closely intertwined issues of environmental degradation and colonialism and look at how unstable notions of ‘ecology’ and ‘conservation’ can be engaged from the Global South. While discussing these issues, we will also consider what questions of slow violence, deep time and the non-human do to literary form. Reading will include (extracts from) work by Wendell Berry, Andrew McMurry, Gary Snyder, William Cronon, Ursula Heise, David Harvey, Rob Nixon, Amitav Ghosh, Kim Scott, Deborah Bird Rose, and Stephen Muecke.

AJ18088/AJ28059 Cultural Landscapes and Cultural Identity
Assoc. Prof. Peter Thompson (Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada)

Course description:
Landscape has always been a durable and important marker of Canadian cultural identity. While early proponents of the garrison thesis saw in Canadian culture a fear of the harsh and forbidding wilderness, romantic poets and artists viewed the landscape as a source of spiritual renewal. The relationship between Canadians and the land has also always been at least in part defined in economic terms: Canada’s natural resources fueled settlement and have positioned the country as an important exporter of things like oil, timber and fresh water. This course will examine the conflict between traditional views of the landscape – which oscillate between overly romanticized portrayals and economically driven assessments – and more recent approaches which argue that landscapes are socially constructed and serve ideological interests. This course will consider the impact of the environmental movement on Canadians’ perception of the landscape, the role of spatial identity theory on understanding physical landmass, the relationship between Canada’s heritage industry and cultural landscapes, and differences between rural, urban, and suburban landscapes.

AJ14068/AJ24092: J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings
Mgr. Janka Kaščáková, Ph.D. (Catholic Univeristy in Ružomberok, Slovakia)

Course description:
This course aims at discussing a selected number of topics from The Lord of the Rings, covering both some well-known issues underlying Tolkien's masterpiece as well as introducing some elements which are usually overlooked or neglected. The course will further enhance the students' skills of critical thinking and literary analysis.

AJ17076/AJ27082: ‘O say, can you smell?’: American Studies as Olfactory Studies
Dr. Thomas Clark (University of Frankfurt, Germany)

Course description:
Sensory Studies have grown to be an increasingly important, though ultimately still peripheral, field within American studies. More so than sight and sound, smell in particular has suffered academically from its long-standing devaluation and ambiguity, viewed as part
of the animalic, irrational, sexual realm diametrically opposed to rational inquiry. After a general introduction to sensory studies, we will focus in this seminar on various historical and cultural scent discourses, such as smell and race, smell and (im)migration, smell and
gender, perfume and food cultures. We will also conduct our own scent experiments to learn about scent identification, association and mapping spaces through smell.

AJ18014/AJ28046: Canadian Nationalism
Prof. Richard Nimijean (Carleton University, Canada)

Course description:
This course questions whether a national identity is possible or even desirable within an increasingly diverse and complex Canada. It examines the historical and contemporary construction of Canadian identities, explores competing nationalisms within Canadian
borders, and engages in a critical evaluation of the role of nationalism. The major goals of this course are to introduce you to different explanations of Canadian nationalism and to encourage you to think critically about the complex relationship between competing
articulations of Canadian nationalism and the Canadian identity.

AJ17078/AJ27084: Topics in Digital Research
Dr. Amy Earhart (Texas A&M University, USA)

Course description:
This course that will introduce graduate students to the digital humanities. A broad area of scholarly research, this course will focus on data analysis, digital textual studies, and cultural digital humanities, with a particular focus on race and gender. This course asks students to
grapple with these crucial issues by tracing the historical development, theoretical roots, and emergent trends of digital scholarship within literary studies. Reading broadly through a range of historical and contemporary digital literary texts, we will develop a working
definition of the field and reach an understanding of current scholarly areas of investigation. Students will examine several case studies and will complete a hands on project that emphasizes both applied and theoretical approaches to digital humanities. In addition, the
course will require students to write a traditional research paper.

AJ92111: Eye-movements and language, the most important paradigms
Prof. Kenneth Bo-Ingvar Holmqvist (Lund University, Sweden)

Course description:
The author of the essential book on the method of eye-tracking (Eye Tracking: A Comprehensive Guide to Methods and Measures, OUP 2015) comes to teach the basics of eye-tracking theory, and to demonstrate its practical use in research in the humanities. The
course will use the equipment of HUME Laboratory at the Faculty of Arts. Prof. Holqvist will look at Eye-Tracking applications, with emphasis on the research in reading and language. The basics of neurology and psychology of eye-movements will also be included.

AJ29088 Divadelní překlad a adaptace
doc. Mgr. Pavel Drábek, Ph.D.

AJ17075/AJ27081 Hollywood High School: A History of American Teen Films
Björn Sonnenberg-Schrank (Universitaet zu Koeln)

UZAJ9515 Metodika výuky literatury a kultury
Mgr. Michaela Čaňková

Course description:
Intensive Course in Methodology of Teaching Culture and Literature for Secondary Schools
A succession of practical interactive seminars that offer a wide choice of methodology approaches to teaching culture and literature to secondary school students.

AJ17074 Political Commentary and the American Media
Gene Terruso

AJ27080 European Masters and the Early American Cinema
Gene Terruso