Department of English Language and Literature
at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Sarajevo
The Department of English Language and Literature was founded in 1951, a year after the foundation of the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Sarajevo. In its heyday, in 1990, the Department had 24 professors and teaching assistants. This number was radically reduced during the war years in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and at one point the Department staff consisted of one man only, Professor Zvonimir Radeljković. However, the situation started to improve significantly in 1994 with Professor Srebren Dizdar joining the Department. When Professor Midhat Riđanović, and then Professor Snežana Bilbija, rejoined the Department in the post-war years, the English Department started to flourish again. Currently, out of twenty-two staff members at the Department fifteen are Ph.D. holders.
The English Department, together with all the other departments at the Faculty of Philosophy, started to implement the Bologna Process in the academic year 2005. The typical length of study is 3 years for a bachelor’s degree and 2 years for a master’s degree. In the first three years of study students are required to take obligatory core courses in English language and literature. The English Department offers its students 4 different master’s programmes: M.A. in Linguistics, M.A. in Literature, M.A. in Teaching English as a foreign language and M.A. in Translation studies. This diversity of master’s programmes is not only unique to the University of Sarajevo but to the entire higher education in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The M.A. programme in Linguistics offers different courses in both theoretical and applied linguistics (English Linguistics, Semantics and Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis, Generative Syntax, and many others).
The courses in the M.A. in Literature range from contemporary literary theories, through the British Modernism and American Postmodernism, to the Modern and Contemporary British and American Drama, and Literatures in the Postcolonial (Con)text, to name just a few.
As for the M.A. in Teaching English as a foreign language, this programme is designed to prepare future teachers of English to teach at pre-school and school levels alike. This programme is very modern in its design as it offers courses both in the methods of teaching English in the contemporary context and in pedagogy and psychology.
The M.A. programme in Translation studies offers a wide array of courses, such as Introduction to the Theory of Translation, Translation and Cultural studies, Translation Techniques. This programme also includes courses in linguistics, some of which are obligatory and some elective. In the future, this M.A. programme will be extended to cover Interpretation studies as well.
International Conference on English Language, Literature, Teaching and Translation Studies (CELLTTS) is intended to mark the metaphorical rebirth of the English Department, University of Sarajevo, as it will hopefully get to be known as the meeting point of cultural and scholarly encounters of friends and colleagues.