North-American Culture Studies

Eligibility Criteria

This fee-paying degree program is open to:

1. Those holding a Bachelor's degree in a field related to programs taught at faculties of arts, faculties of social studies, faculties of education and faculties of economics, and those with knowledge of English and French/Spanish. Knowledge of English must be at the C1 level.
2. Those holding Bachelor's degrees in other disciplines within the humanities, liberal arts or social sciences from colleges or universities located in English-speaking countries (i.e. the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand) may also be considered for admission on an individual basis. Those in this category should contact the Department of English and American Studies prior to applying: admission@phil.muni.cz.

You do not have to come to Brno personally to take the entrance exam. The result of the admission process depends on the quality of the documents that you provide. Those will be assessed by the admission committee and you will be notified about the results via e-mail.

Terms of Admission

1. Meet the eligibility criteria set out in the paragraph above.
2. Submission of an electronic application in the Masaryk University Information System.
3. Submission of two letters of recommendation, one of which must be from a teacher.
4. Submission of a Statement of Purpose (750 words maximum) in English, explaining why the applicant wishes to study in this degree program accredited in English and why the applicant wishes to study in this Department.
5. Submission of a copy of the applicant's Bachelor's thesis or its equivalent (Honour's Thesis, Senior Thesis, etc.) or 15 pages of the applicant's original academic paper.
6. Submission of a CV (Curriculum Vitae) detailing the candidate's professional/academic experience.
7. Submission of a transcript of university/college studies, which must include: dates you attended the institution, titles of courses and examinations you completed, and the marks received.
8. Demonstrate English-language skills at the C1 level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Language by submitting one of the following certificates (not more than one year old at the time of the submission of the application). Accepted certificates:
   • IELTS Academic (minimum acceptable score: 7.0),
   • Certificate of Cambridge Proficiency in English with a mark of A or B,
   • TOEFL iBT score of 95 or higher,
   • Graduates of colleges or universities located in English-speaking (i.e. the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand) need not submit test scores.
9. Demonstrate French-language/Spanish-language skills at the B1 level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Language by submitting one of the following certificates (not more than one-year-old at the time of the submission of the application):
   • French: DALF at the B1 level
   • Spanish: DELE at the B1 level

Entrance exam

The evaluation of the applications will be done in two steps:

1. Evaluation of the submitted documents.
2. An oral interview (via Skype on request if step 1 is passed).

Admission to study program will be offered to those applicants selected by the Department's Entrance Exam Committee, based on a complex evaluation of the applicant's language skills, academic record, recommendations, and motivation.

Application Deadlines

1 January - 30 April for the enrollment in the Fall semester
1 July - 31 October for the enrollment in the Spring semester

Documents set out above in the Terms of Admission are required to be provided in digital form and attached to the online application by April 30th or October 31st.

Contact

admission@phil.muni.cz

The programme combines literary and linguistic instruction and provides a broader cultural overview of the countries in North America, combining both Anglophone and Francophone and Spanish-speaking regions, from Canada to the United States through Mexico and the Caribbean. The programme is designed so that the students gain an overview of each of the two cultural areas at the same time and are instructed on their mutual linguistic, literary, and cultural influences. For this reason, the programme is structured in a modular manner. The mandatory part of the curriculum consists of core courses that have a methodological section in which students learn the basic theoretical approaches toward the concept of identity of oneself, of the other, and of various social groups, and focus on the concept and its various manifestations in literature, linguistics, and culture. The core section is followed by a variety of in-depth courses in which students gain an orientation in the specific cultural phenomena in the Anglophone, Francophone, and Hispanophone worlds.

The advantage of the North American study programme lies in the fact that it offers excellent material for the study of some highly topical issues of today’s world: otherness, migration, immigration, and cultural and linguistic phenomena associated with integration in areas where different ethnic groups, languages, and cultures interact. In this respect, North America represents a model laboratory allowing us to study the processes that increasingly confront European and Czech society.

After successfully completing his/her studies the graduate is able to:

• have practical language and cultural knowledge relevant to the English-speaking culture of North America;
• have practical language and cultural knowledge relevant to the French-speaking and/or Spanish speaking cultures of North America;
• have the basic theoretical tools to critically analyze the cultures in question
• have the basic theoretical tools to critically analyze the languages in question
• gain a comprehensive understanding of the linguistic, literary and cultural phenomena at the intersection of two North American Cultures North America;

Graduates can work wherever good bilingual skills and critical thinking are needed and where attention is paid to issues of cultural relations, such as the issues of otherness, social and cultural exclusion, migration, and immigration.

The programme includes no compulsory internship.

A minimum scope of a Master's thesis is no less than 125,000 characters including footnotes, annotations and references (excluding title pages, contents, acknowledgements and appendices). A Master's thesis has the character of an independent empirical research. Students can work with already published texts and data accessible for secondary analysis. The aim a Master's thesis is to demonstrate the student's ability to work critically with professional texts, process the concepts and theories discovered there, and find relevant answers to the given research question.

After completing the Master’s degree study programme, it is possible to continue further studies in a doctoral degree study programme in English Language, Literature in English, Romance Literatures, or Comparative Literatures.