The Institute of English and American Studies offers a wide array of study options on both B.A.- and M.Ed./M.A.-Level. Students can choose courses in the fields of literary and cultural studies, linguistics, didactics and language practice to acquire a broad set of competences that turn them into experts for the Anglophone world. All study programs are based on the idea of student-centered and research-oriented learning and teaching, i.e. students will gather skills and expertise in learning environments which foster active participation, dialogic communi­cation, and early acquaintance with scholarly and scientific questions, skills, and methods. Whereas on the lower B.A.-level, students will be equipped with fundamental skills and knowledge in all sections of the Institute, the upper B.A. and M.Ed./M.A.-levels offer options for individual specialization. Here in particular, courses are closely connected to the research conducted in the Department’s sections: In literary and cultural studies, these include literature and the public sphere, the secular and/in modern literature, science and/in fiction, North and inter-American popular culture, forms, agents, and media of cultural mobility, and (historical and contemporary) participatory cultures. In the field of linguistics, research focuses on psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic phenomena, with internationally visible projects on bi- and multilingualism and studies on politeness and intercultural communica­tion. Research in the didactics-section revolves around subject-centered theories of learning and teaching and, in this context, develops a critical perspective on media and materials used in the EFL-classroom. Moreover, research in this section is concerned with non-institutional(ized) sites of learning and their significance for the development of intercultural competence.