MA National and Transnational Studies – Essay task for Winter Semester 2024/25

Literary form and the transnational

The study of literature and culture thrives on a deep understanding of the interplay between form (discours) and content (histoire). Indeed, whether in novels, narrative poetry, drama, film, television series, comics, graphic novels, or video games: stories are always already mediated through form. This is also true of texts we understand as transnational, as transcultural, or postcolonial. In your essay, draw upon a text*, a piece of artistic expression, or use an example from linguistics to explain and demonstrate how literary form inflects transnational, transcultural, or postcolonial cultural production. For instance, think about narrative levels, syntactic and semantic structures, narrative structures, composition, intertextuality, paratextual elements, language use, etc.

To give you an idea of what kinds of questions you might engage with: How does intertextuality facilitate and/or subvert postcolonial practices of “writing back”? How can the narrative structure of museum exhibits obscure or highlight the epistemic power and colonial legacies of museums as institutions? How does editing and framing in a film negotiate modes of transnational (un)belonging? In literary and multimedia forms, how can the use of English – in its many forms, varieties, and accents – challenge Western/Eurocentric conceptualizations of the nation and its citizens as monolingual? Please bear in mind that your analysis needs to be rooted in the field of literary and cultural studies, or linguistics, or book studies.

Your essays must be approximately 2,000 words and meet commonly accepted standards of academic writing with regard to both form and referencing. Essays containing plagiarism will be disqualified.

*As an English Department, we use ‘text’ in a wide sense here, encompassing but not limited to novels, drama, poetry, books as artefacts (book studies), museum exhibits, films, (new) media, video games, architecture, activist practices, music and music videos, etc. We encourage you to choose a text that allows you to draw on your own disciplinary knowledge acquired during your BA studies and connect it to transnational perspectives.

MA National and Transnational Studies – Application dates for academic year starting winter 2024/25

Relocating and planning your studies may take quite a while. To maximise the time successful applicants have to prepare, we offer two application phases. In this way, successful candidates have a maximum of time to apply for visas (which can be time-consuming) and to arrange funding, travel, and accommodation before the start of the MA NTS orientation week, likely in October 2024. Particularly applicants from outside the EU are strongly advised to apply as early as possible. The earlier you apply, the earlier you will be notified:

Application phase Application dates Notification
1 02 May 2024 – 10 May 2024 By late May 2024
2 11 May 2024 – 15 July 2024 By end of July 2024

 

PTTS: Postcolonial, Transnational and Transcultural Studies @ Uni Münster

With its research in Postcolonial, Transnational and Transcultural Studies (PTTS), the Chair of English, Postcolonial and Media Studies locates itself at the intersections of historical and contemporary debates in literary and cultural studies as well as diaspora and transnational studies. Its approach to cultural representation, historical contexts, and geographical spaces is deliberately transmedial and interdisciplinary, sketching the manifold border-crossings that are inherent to and affect cultural textualities and the discourses that shape them. The PTTS research is sparked by questions that emerge from postcolonial theory and contributes to a variety of international, third-party funded research groups, including the Afroeuropeans Network, and PIN – Postcolonial Intellectuals and their European Publics. Individual projects span across anglophone literatures of the Caribbean, Africa, and India, postcolonial ideologies, film and national identities, black and Asian British writing, audiovisual texts and British grime culture, British settler cultures, and contemporary anglophone Arab cultural production. Postcolonial, transnational and transcultural studies is part of the curriculum at the English Department, spanning various degree programmes and the collaborative Study India Certificate.

What is Postcolonial, Transnational and Transcultural Studies? The About PTTS page helps in answering this question, by providing a brief background about this field of study, along with a list of topics that can be covered within its domain. 


Website

The PTTS website provides information about relevant courses/teaching and events that are taking place at the department as well as elsewhere in the university. A list of staff members who comprise the PTTS team, along with the relevant research interests and projects can also be accessed here.

The News & Events section has the latest news related to events, publications and ideas revolving around the realm of PTTS in Münster and beyond. Information on guest lectures, conferences and readings, along with an archive of past events, can be accessed here.

Our Study area helps students with information for their studies. It provides a FAQ for research papers and exam preparations, gives additional information on research papers in a separate subsection and contains a download link for presentation guidelines. Additionally, this section covers research facilities, guidelines on how to use quotations and an anti-plagiarism form that needs to be attached to all essay submissions. It also includes PTTS resources, i.e. compiled lists of journals and organisations in the intersecting research fields of Postcolonial, Transnational, and Transcultural Studies. Information of publications, research journals and organizations related to PTTS within Germany as well as around the globe can also be found here. A reading list complemented with author profiles and visual aid can also be access here.

Find out what is trending, coming up, or taking place right now at the PTTS chair in our Now section. It showcases the most current event at a particular time, including guest lectures, conferences, or any other significant activity organised by the PTTS team.


MA programme: National and Transnational Studies (NTS)

The English Department offers two research-oriented MA programmes and some students apply to both of them at the same time which is fine. So what’s the difference between these two programmes, what do they share? And, what is specific to the MA NTS?

Both programmes are international in their outlook and student intake, and both MAs are well-established and successful. Thematically, the programmes overlap considerably and many of the classes offered in one programme will also be options in the sister programme. Both focus on book studies, on English linguistics, and on anglophone literatures and cultures from any of the over fifty nation states in which these are produced. In addition, the MA NTS focuses on questions of transnationalism and nationalism, and on globalisation and diaspora. These focal themes are also studied in inter- and transdisciplinary terms: the MA NTS accepts students with a wider range of undergraduate degrees than the MA BAPS does, and NTS students sometimes have the option to go beyond literary studies or linguistics, for example when it comes to their MA thesis.

You can find detailed information on the MA NTS, its contents, and admission requirements on the programme's website.