For the academic year, 2025-2026, this course will be focusing on "Language and Society", and it will unfold as follows:
(1) Emma-Louise Silva will provide students with an introduction to life course studies and age studies, based on research by Lorraine Green and Susan Pickard. Then she will delve into an article by Vanessa Joosen on intergenerational dialogues in children's literature studies. This theoretical background will form the basis for the students' active participation in supporting the organisation of the Belgian Association of Anglicists in Higher Education's (BAAHE) annual conference, which will be held at UNamur on 11 and 12 December. This two-day event features an interdisciplinary symposium "Lifelines: Language, memory, and the life course" and a themed conference "Language and literature across the lifespan". The students will thus gain hands-on experience on conference organisation, and they will co-host a range of researchers and authors.
(2) With Nathalie Borrelli, the students will study Shakespeare as a "living" author.The focus this semester will be on The Comedy of Errors and Macbeth. Together with the course teachers, the students will attend a performance of The Comedy of Errors by the Cambridge University European Theatre Group in Leuven on 10 December.
(3) With Lieven Vandelanotte,
The course as a whole will further develop the students' literary erudition, and further improve the students' knowledge of the English language in various stylistic forms, The course also aims to improve oral and written skills in English allowing students to competently present literary and linguistic pieces of academic argumentation (level C1 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages).
(1) Reading with comments of selected secondary sources on life course studies, age studies, and literary studies
(2) Reading of The Comedy of Errors and Macbeth
(3) Study of existing linguistic analyses of Internet memes, and application and extension to other cases.
Lorraine Greene, Understanding the Life Course (2017)
Susan Pickard, Age Studies (2016)
Vanessa Joosen, "Second Childhoods and Intergenerational Dialogues: How Children's Literature Studies and Age Studies Can Supplement Each Other" (2015)
The Comedy of Errors
Macbeth
The exercises are designed to assist students in their personal reading. For the Shakespeare component of the course, students should be able to provide a detailed paraphrase in modern English of key passages in the original text.
(1) Reading of (fragments from) the plays with comments by teacher. Dramatic reading exercises. Video fragments. Presentation of selected fragments by the students (coached by instructor). Attending a performance of the The Comedy of Errors. Personal reading.
(2) Reading of scholarly articles with the help of the teacher. Presentation of article contents by students, and presentation of their own analyses.
Taking part in any activities organised by the department (whether intra muros or extra muros) as part of this course is considered to be part and parcel of the learning experience and is obligatory.
(1) Continuous assessment. Test on Macbeth. Oral exam.
(2) Written exam and oral presentation(s)
Use of AI tools to produce texts or content in either the formative or summative assessment phases will not be tolerated, unless explicitly stated.
Weighting of the different course components:
(1) Editions of the plays studied.
(2) Scholarly articles.
| Training | Study programme | Block | Credits | Mandatory |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bachelor in Modern Languages and Literatures: German, Dutch and English | Standard | 0 | 5 | |
| Bachelor in Modern Languages and Literatures: German, Dutch and English | Standard | 3 | 5 |