Czech Studies

Czech Language Beginners

You will gain the skills to speak Czech in everyday situations. We take an integrated approach to language learning, so you will develop all four language skills - speaking, listening, reading, writing - in your work in class and at home. Our emphasis is on communication and you are encouraged to use the language from day one.

Russian and Czech Cultures in the Age of Empire and Beyond

This module gives an overview of Russian and Czech cultures with a focus on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It will critically examine the concepts of statehood, empire, nationalism, totalitarianism and democracy by studying the two nations' different experiences through visual sources, literature and language usage. It thus introduces students to topics dealt with in greater depth in optional modules at Levels 2 and 3, and helps them to learn how to analyse cultural artefacts and sources of different kinds.

Comparative Visual Cultures

Visual literacy is a key skill and visual culture remains one of the most accessible and important modes through which we represent, understand and critique our world. This module provides an introduction to some of the major trends within visual cultures in European languages, and the development of visual media. Students will work on a selection of visual texts across national frameworks and historical periods to examine their conditions of production, distribution and reception and to explore how meaning is constructed and critiqued in visual culture. In seminars we will engage with detailed analysis of core texts and with critical materials. Students will be encouraged to consider country-specific, transnational and comparative trends through a critical lens.

Czech Language Intermediate

Prague at the Crossroads of East and West

The module examines iconic places in Prague as starting points for investigating the history, culture and society of the Czech lands and their relations with other European powers, especially Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Visual arts, architecture, historical documents and literature will be used to understand the sources and influences, both domestic and foreign, that define the Czech identity and how the Czechs negotiate a place for themselves between larger and more powerful neighbours.

Language and Society in Luxembourg and the French Borderlands

With a focus on the French borderlands, this course explores the status and function of the French language in relation to its speakers and to speakers of other languages. We will apply key theoretical insights to issues concerning linguistic minorities in the officially monolingual country of France, in addition to the bordering multilingual countries of Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland. In this way, we will investigate how language becomes the target of struggles and debates that are embedded in broader socio-political issues. More broadly, this module underlines the necessity of questioning the presupposed homogeneity conveyed by the use of labels such as the ‘French language’ and ‘French-speaking countries’, which potentially mask the social and linguistic complexity inherent to the social world.

Language at Work

This course provides the basis for understanding communication and communicating in multilingual (work) settings. After completing this module, students will - know the basic properties of language and communication and their relation to culture; - be able to characterise the relationship between English and their other languages; - be able to describe the difference between everyday language use and institutional language use; - be able to describe the differences between communication in monolingual and multilingual (intercultural) settings; - be able to differentiate between characteristics of communication involving native speakers of a language and communication involving non-native/foreign language speakers of a language; - use systematic methods to carry out simple investigations of language, communication and culture (and their implications for foreign language learning); - use digital technology to communicate academic work to non-specialist audiences.

Czech Advanced / Higher Advanced

What are the different styles and varieties of a language? You will explore, using a multimedia online course developed here at Sheffield, how to use and understand the different types of Czech they meet in everyday life. Real-life translation projects and regular conversation classes develop your language skills and transferable skills.

Dissertation or Project

You can explore an in-depth topic that you choose, define and research yourself, in the area of Czech language, literature, history or culture.

The Slavonic Languages: Structure, History and Variation

This module investigates the grammars and histories of two Slavonic languages, Russian and Czech, introducing students to the discipline of linguistics through the languages they study. Selected topics in the grammar of Slavonic languages highlight how structures of Russian and Czech have developed differently, how they are changing in the current world, and where they came from. Among the topics are case meaning and case forms; aspect; verb conjugation; animacy; and word order. Students learn how to design and implement their own linguistic research projects using corpora and experimental methods. Knowledge of EITHER Russian OR Czech is needed.

Comparative Critique of Consumer Culture

Critiques of consumer cultures are as old as capitalism itself. This module takes the long view, starting in the eighteenth century and tracing our conflicted identities as modern consumers into the present day. Especially applying German cultural theory to European cultural history, we shall ask what is meant by economic and social liberalism, and whether even culture owes a debt to consumer society. Consumerism can entail complicity in exploitative modes of production (causing poverty and displacement, and profiting from serfdom and slavery). It has been both celebrated and satirised for enabling hedonism and individual bad taste (or kitsch). And consumption has been nationalist, yet also cosmopolitan; today, it threatens our shared environment. Theory, the visual arts, and literature have all been critical of capitalism - but ironically, they can themselves be packaged as consumer goods. Examining a wide range of primary texts (including film and caricature) and critical reflections, you will translate and write a commentary on a historical source, and submit an essay on a topic of your choice.

Social Approaches to Multilingualism

This module provides students with an overview of key topics in multilingualism, with an emphasis on the ways in which issues of language are linked to broader socio-political practices and debates. It allows students to gain insights into how theories of nationalism and globalisation may be applied to the analysis of texts and images in multilingual settings - with a particular focus on those in which Romance and/or Germanic languages play a central role - and it shows how debates about language are bound up with struggles over social equality and reactions to social transformations.