National Forum for English Studies April 2019!

Malmö University – the Faculty of Education and Society, and the Faculty of Culture and Society – is proud to host the National Forum for English Studies 2019.

The schedule for the conference is available here and abstracts for the presentations are available as well. The conference begins with Robert O’Dowd’s plenary
‘Establishing the impact of virtual exchange in foreign language education’.

The conference will be held at the Faculty of Education and Society 10-12 April 2019. The conference welcome desk will be open from 10 AM on 10 April in the atrium of the education building, Nordenskiöldsgatan 10. The opening is at 1 o’clock in room D222. The conference closes Friday 12 April at noon.

The theme of the conference is “English in Transformation” thus highlighting, on the one hand, the dynamic nature of English literatures cultures and language, and on the other, the ongoing transformation of English as a school subject and an academic discipline.

Confirmed keynote speakers:

  • Robert O’Dowd (University of Léon): Establishing the Impact of Virtual Exchange in Foreign Language Education
  • Phil Nel (Kansas State University), Lissa Paul (Brock University), Nina
    Christensen (Aarhus University): Keywords for Children’s Literature: Mapping Meaning, Transforming Research
  • Otto Kruse and Christian Rapp (Zurich University): Recent Developments in Writing Technology

The keynote lectures are (among other things) intended to serve as inspiration for three parallel workshops.

Call for papers

We welcome presentations in all fields of English studies – linguistics, literature, culture, and language education – in the form of individual papers, panels, and posters.

  • Individual papers: 20-minute presentations followed by 10-minute discussions. Abstracts for papers should not exceed 250 words excluding session title, author names, affiliations, email addresses, reference list and 3-5 keywords.
  • Panels: 90-minute sessions consisting of 3-4 related papers. Abstracts for thematic paper sessions should include the rationale for the session and individual contribution abstracts, altogether not exceeding 1000 words excluding session title, author names, affiliations, email addresses, reference lists and 3-5 keywords.
  • Posters: The conference will hold a poster session. Abstracts for posters should not exceed 250 words excluding poster title, author names, affiliations, email addresses, reference list and 3-5 keywords.

Presentation proposals should be submitted by 31 January (extended deadline) to Björn Sundmark (bjorn.sundmark@mau.se or Anna Wärnsby (anna.warnsby@mau.se).

Conference registration

The registration fee is 1500 SEK, to be paid to bankgiro 5052-4958. Please mark the payment with your name and tag it “NFES 2019”. The registration fee should be received no later than 1 February 2019. Further information in the conference poster.

SWESSE award for best BA theses in English

In order to encourage and reward research in English, the Swedish Society for the Study of English awards a biennial prize for outstanding BA theses in English, in literature and linguistics respectively. Theses taking a didactic approach in either area will also be considered.

The rules and regulations are as follows:

Each Swedish University or other Institution of Higher Education offering courses in English at BA-level may nominate one BA-level thesis in literature and one in linguistics as their Best English Thesis of the two preceding academic years. Nominations should be preceded by a collegial decision at each department, and the student whose thesis is submitted should be informed of this.

We welcome now nominations for theses defended in 2015 and 2016. Nominations must include electronic copies of the theses nominated (as Word-files), and should be sent to the Chair of each respective awards committee, by Friday, February 10, 2017. The juries in each category will meet in March and reach a decision. The award will be presented at the National Forum for English Studies meeting in Jönköping, April 26-28, 2017.

Linguistic theses should be sent to Jean Hudson.
Literary theses should be sent to Magnus Ullén.

The decision of the awards committees cannot be appealed.

Please share this information with your students and colleagues. For further details, see the SWESSE homepage.

Inaugural BA Thesis prize winners

The inaugural SWESSE BA Thesis prizes were awarded last week at the National Forum for English Studies in Luleå. Two prize winners and two runners-up in both literature and linguistics were identified by the judges.

The Award for Best Thesis submitted in the field of English Literature was awarded to Charles Simmons for his thesis ‘Things in Blood Meridian: A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Look.’ The judges commended Viktor Pepponen Jonsson for his thesis entitled ‘A Poetics of Inconsistency: William Carlos Williams’ Spring and All and New Criticism.’

The Award for Best Thesis submitted in the field of English linguistics was awarded to Anne Blauenfeldt for her thesis ‘Violent rapists and depraved paedophiles: Linguistic representation of sex offenders in the British tabloid press.’ The judges commended Olov Aronson for his thesis entitled ‘Should I Use “I”?: A corpus-based study of first-person pronouns in scientific journals of different ranking.’

Details of the judges’ decisions appear below.

Theses submitted in the field of English Literature

Charles Simmons

The 2015 SWESSE Award for BA Thesis of the Year in English Literature is granted to Charles Simmons for his lively, engaging essay on Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. Simmons deploys a hermeneutic approach to the examination of the novel in order to reject Cartesian notions of fixed subject-object relations. By focusing on how things are “given an abode, come-forth, and presence”, Simmons highlights the hopefulness of the text and reconsiders the nature of ‘knowing’ that McCarthy proffers. In an illuminating reading of the novel, Simmons highlights the phenomenal world explored by McCarthy, and in his productive use of Heideggerian concepts, such as the unspoken and the Nothing, he focuses our attention on aspects of ‘seeing’ and ‘naming’ and opens up the text to the reader in new and imaginative ways.

The prize is granted on the following grounds:

  1. The language of the essay is lively, engaging and immerses the reader directly into the argument. Interest is maintained not only by the clarity of the argument, but also by the varied vocabulary and colourful metaphors.
  2. The paper is well-structured: the argument is convincing, well-paced and easy to follow. Each key point is illustrated with suitable citations, and connected to the thesis of the paper.
  3. The theoretical approach is clearly explicated and the essay demonstrates a broad knowledge base within phenomenology. The application of this approach to the literary text feels organic: the result is a deep and thorough insight into the novel.

Viktor Pepponen Jonsson

The 2015 SWESSE Highly Commended Award for a BA Thesis in the field of English Literature is granted to Viktor Pepponen Jonsson for an exceptionally engaging essay on William Carlos Williams’ Spring and All. Jonsson displays an impressive understanding of the context in which the poetry collection appears, as he relates the content and form of the poems to on-going debates within the New Critical literary debates of the day. The language of the essay is lively, engaging and immerses the reader directly into the argument. Interest is maintained not only by the clarity of the argument, but also by the varied vocabulary and colourful metaphors.

Judges Magnus Ullén, Irene Gilsenan Nordin, and Lydia Kokkola offer their congratulations to Charles and Viktor.

Theses submitted in the field of Linguistics

Anne Blauenfeldt

The 2015 SWESSE Award for BA Thesis of the Year in English Linguistics is granted to Anne Blauenfeldt for her investigation of the way rapists and paedophiles were represented in British tabloid newspapers from 2010-2013. Two corpora of roughly 70,000 words each were collected (one with articles on rapists and one on paedophiles) from the online newspaper database World Newsbank. Using a combination of corpus linguistics methods and a critical discourse analytic framework, Blauenfeldt demonstrates convincingly how the two discourses differ: paedophiles are represented as collectives of mentally disturbed and morally corrupt people, whereas rapists are represented as violent ‘animalistic’ attackers.

The prize is granted on the following grounds:

  1. The design of the study: an excellent combination of corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis, demonstrating very clearly both the similarities and the differences between the two discourses in British tabloid newspapers. Results are similar to those in previous studies, but this study makes use of a much larger corpus.
  2. Results and analysis: the two parts (‘keyness’ and ‘categories’) look at the data from two different perspectives, with similar results, which strengthens the analysis. The analyst demonstrates broad knowledge of linguistic methods, a keen eye for analyzing data, and a solid theoretical grounding.
  3. Language and structure: the presentation is easy to follow, with a good structure, clear arguments, and excellent language.

Olov Aronson

The 2015 SWESSE Highly Commended Award for a BA Thesis in the field of English Linguistics is granted to Olov Aronson for his detailed investigation of the frequency and function of first-person pronouns in academic publications within the social sciences. Overall frequencies, as well as frequencies for specific genre roles, are subjected to rigorous statistical testing. It concludes that authors published in highly ranked journals use first-person pronouns in a self-promoting way more frequently than authors in less highly ranked journals. The thesis has a clear aim, a solid methodology, and verifiable results, and it is well positioned in its field of research. The judges emphasize that the paper is exemplary in terms of structure and clarity of presentation.

Judges Jean Hudson, Solveig Granath, and Philip Shaw offer their congratulations to Olov and Anne.