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Creativity Corner

Creative Writing Contest for Non-Native Speakers

By Daria Radler

When I entered a cre­ative writ­ing con­test for non-native speak­ers of Eng­lish, the 2014 Dani­il Pashkoff Prize, I nev­er imag­ined I would win 3rd prize in the cat­e­go­ry for “Prose — 20 and Over.” Par­tic­i­pat­ing in this con­test has been an intrigu­ing and chal­leng­ing expe­ri­ence that has helped me to grow on a lit­er­ary as well as on a per­son­al lev­el – an expe­ri­ence that I would rec­om­mend to any lit­er­ary enthu­si­ast out there. The next prize will be award­ed in two years: A new con­test, a new oppor­tu­ni­ty to become part of an inspir­ing and cre­ative lit­er­ary cir­cle, and a new expe­ri­ence of cre­ative sto­ry writ­ing that I wouldn’t want to miss.

PortraitMy short sto­ry “Coloured Des­per­a­tion” tells of the strug­gles that a young moth­er expe­ri­ences in the trou­bled rela­tion­ship with her autis­tic son. Torn between her desire for a peace­ful state of mind, her yearn­ing for a bet­ter life, and her respon­si­bil­i­ties as a car­ing moth­er, Lib­by is con­front­ed with every­day chal­lenges and a sit­u­a­tion that might turn out to be the turn­ing point in her life.

Inter­est­ed? Click here to read the full story!

Best Books & Fabulous Films

Only Lovers Left Alive – A Stroll Down Eternal Lovers’ Lane

By Maryann Henck

only_lovers_left_alive_posterAfter a three-year respite, icon­ic inde­pen­dent film­mak­er Jim Jar­musch is back with a qui­et­ly intrigu­ing new film: Only Lovers Left Alive – a tale of two lovers and of two cities. Although lovers Adam and Eve (Tom Hid­dle­ston and Til­da Swin­ton) – not the bib­li­cal cou­ple but nev­er­the­less, a cou­ple in the bib­li­cal sense – live in cities con­ti­nents apart, they have been togeth­er for­ev­er. Lit­er­al­ly for­ev­er since both of them hap­pen to be vampires.

Yet, they’re not the type of vam­pires you might be expect­ing for they have lit­tle in com­mon with either the shape-shift­ing, black-caped Drac­u­la types or the momen­tar­i­ly in vogue vam­pires from the likes of Twi­light, The Vam­pire Diaries, and True Blood. This is, after all, the quirky cin­e­mat­ic world accord­ing to Jar­musch who is known for his refusal to cater to any one spe­cif­ic audi­ence. His pri­ma­ry objec­tive is to make films that “tell sto­ries, but some­how in a new way, not in a pre­dictable form, not in the usu­al manip­u­la­tive way.”

Read more »

Access America

Obama’s Clean Air Act

An Interview with David Goldfield

The Ger­man dai­ly news­pa­per, Der Tagesspiegel, recent­ly fea­tured an arti­cle on Pres­i­dent Obama’s pol­i­cy for lim­it­ing green­house gas emis­sions. Pres­i­dent Obama’s envi­ron­men­tal stance was a con­tribut­ing fac­tor to his elec­tion and re-elec­tion cam­paigns. Nonethe­less, he has faced dif­fi­cul­ties in imple­ment­ing his reforms. We inter­viewed David Gold­field, Pro­fes­sor of His­to­ry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na at Char­lotte, to dis­cuss the President’s plans. Read more »

Access America, , , , , ,

How Do Americans Really Talk?

By Grant Helle

We know that not all Amer­i­can Eng­lish is the same: South­ern­ers love to talk about sip­ping ‘coke’ while drink­ing a sprite; New York­ers talk about their pie while eat­ing at a pizze­ria; and Bosto­ni­ans love talk­ing about plen­ty, but no one has under­stood them since the 1800s.

Sure­ly these are the only three dialects in Amer­i­ca, right?
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Not quite.

Even though these dialects might not be as dis­tinct as those of the British Isles, Amer­i­can Eng­lish still has plen­ty of dif­fer­ences that are – as with almost every lan­guage – increas­ing. In fact, these vari­a­tions are not always notice­able right away. An Iowan might not real­ize that news­cast­ers are from some­where else until they keep refer­ring to ‘law-yers’ and not ‘loy-yers’.

So how do Amer­i­cans real­ly talk? In 2002, Pro­fes­sors Bert Vaux and Scott Gold­er set out to answer this ques­tion and devel­oped a sur­vey of over 120 ques­tions in order to deter­mine who pro­nounces what, how, and where.

But why just read about it? Take The New York Times’ dialect chal­lenge yourself.

About Us

New Kids on the Blog

By Maryann Henck

As the lat­est edi­tion to the ‘ASJ fam­i­ly,’ we would like to take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to intro­duce our­selves to cur­rent as well as new fol­low­ers of the Amer­i­can Stud­ies Jour­nal:

Maryann Henck, M.A., Prof. (apl.) Dr. Maria Moss, Prof. Dr. Tor­ben Schmidt, Dr. Sab­ri­na Völz (Amer­i­can Stud­ies Blog edi­to­r­i­al board at Leuphana Uni­ver­si­ty Lüneburg)

Han­nah Quinque (edi­to­r­i­al sup­port and writer)

Hen­rike Kat­toll (edi­to­r­i­al and tech­ni­cal support)

We are tru­ly delight­ed that we now have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate this blog and fill it with a vari­ety of zeit­geisty top­ics in the fol­low­ing categories:

- Access Amer­i­ca (Pop­u­lar Cul­ture, His­to­ry, and Cur­rent Events)
— Best Books & Fab­u­lous Films (Reviews and More)
— Cre­ativ­i­ty Cor­ner (All About the Arts)
— Teach­ing Tools (Tips, Tricks, and Tools of the Trade)

So now, dear read­ers, it is up to you to delve into our new blog with­out fur­ther ado. Hap­py reading!