LFU:online

Department of English Department of English

ao. Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Helga Ramsey-Kurz, MA ao. Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Helga Ramsey-Kurz, MA, +43 512 507 41409

609683

Research and Master Thesis

KO 2

10

weekly

each semester

English

The aim of this course is to provide a forum for students already writing or about to write their diploma or doctoral thesis to discuss their work, ask questions especially about methodology, share their experience with people in similar situations and thereby become able to locate their own position within the writing process.

1) Questions of methodology: How does one find a topic? How does one begin working on one's topic? Which approach (e.g. comparative, contrastive, historical, structuralist, deconstructionist, feminist, postcolonial, ...) is best suited for which topic? Which key concepts must one incorporate in one's approach? Which theories should one base one's argument on and why? 2) Questions of presentation: What should a diploma thesis look like? What form of quotation is best suited? How does one deal with illustrations? How long should individual chapters be? To what extent can one place information in footnotes or endnotes? ... 3) Theoretical questions: What is literary representation? What is the role of the author in the text? What is the place of the literary text within certain contexts? What happens to a literary text in the process of its didactic application? How do fiction and historical truth correlate? What forms of identity can we identify in a literary text? What is the role of metafiction/metadrama/metapoetry? etc. 4) Questions pertaining to individual texts and topics

class discussion, presentations/introductory talks

continuous assessment on the basis of class participation

to be announced in class