By Isabell May

On Jan­u­ary 9, 2014, Berndt Osten­dorf, Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus of North Amer­i­can Cul­tur­al His­to­ry at the Ameri­ka-Insti­tut, Lud­wig-Max­i­m­il­ians-Uni­ver­sität München, gave a talk on “The Rise and Fall of Mul­ti­cul­tur­al The­o­ry and Prac­tice: The Ide­o­log­i­cal Con­tra­dic­tions of Belong­ing” in the Leuphana lec­ture series, “Maple Leaf & Stars and Stripes.”

Osten­dorf is a wide­ly pub­lished researcher on areas as diverse as the cul­tur­al his­to­ry of immi­gra­tion, the pol­i­tics of dif­fer­ence, mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, cre­oliza­tion and cir­cum­at­lantic dias­po­ras, Amer­i­can pop­u­lar cul­ture, the cul­ture indus­try, New Orleans, and Amer­i­can music. He is also a board mem­ber of the Rat für Migra­tion, a Ger­man migra­tion pol­i­cy think tank. Read more »

By Maria Moss

I first came across White House Ruin in Canyon de Chelly (pro­nounced dəˈʃeɪ or də·shā′) in N. Scott Momaday’s Pulitzer Prize win­ning nov­el, House Made of Dawn (1968). White House Ruin, he wrote, is the home of Talk­ing God, one of the most promi­nent Nava­jo deities. For years I thought that White House Ruin – much like Talk­ing God – belongs to the realm of Native Amer­i­can cre­ation myths: sig­nif­i­cant for under­stand­ing the work­ings of the oral tra­di­tion, but long devoid of any sig­nif­i­cance and thus incon­se­quen­tial for every­day life. Yet all of this changed when I first vis­it­ed Canyon de Chelly in Jan­u­ary 1994. Not only was White House Ruin one of the main attrac­tions of the stun­ning, inter­twined net­work of canyons at Canyon de Chelly, but the sun in the sky and the snow on the ground cre­at­ed an atmos­phere that felt almost mystical.

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As you may have heard, the results from this year’s mid-term elec­tions are quite clear: con­trol of both the Sen­ate and the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives will be in Repub­li­can hands for the com­ing term. The impli­ca­tions of the elec­tion for Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, how­ev­er, might not be so obvi­ous. William Chan­dler, Pro­fes­sor of Polit­i­cal Sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San Diego, deci­phers the results for us.

By Bobbie Kirkhart

Amer­i­cans have nev­er paid for gro­cery bags – paper or plas­tic. Mar­kets would even dou­ble-bag on request. No charge. Hence, we were slow to observe that killing trees for unnec­es­sary paper or mak­ing plas­tic just to pol­lute oceans or fill land­fills was a bad idea. The first time I took a can­vas bag to the gro­cery store, the bag­ger proud­ly informed me that she had care­ful­ly wrapped each item in plas­tic “to pro­tect your nice bag.” So much for the environment.

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By Daria Radler

It’s the time of the year for the undead to become alive again and for the liv­ing to be giv­en the creeps. It’s a time of the year that chil­dren have been look­ing for­ward to for months and that even adults get excit­ed about. The end of Octo­ber marks the time of Hal­loween: spooky cos­tumes, scary pump­kins, and pos­si­bly sev­er­al bags filled with sweets and candy.

Even though the tra­di­tion of Hal­loween is a fair­ly recent phe­nom­e­non in Ger­many, you’ll find frights and thrills aplen­ty. So in case you don’t have any­thing planned yet, here are some ideas for you:

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By Sabrina Völz

The two-semes­ter project, “Eth­nic Stud­ies and Eco-Crit­i­cism Meet Inter­cul­tur­al Exchange: A Study Trip to Las Vegas,” brought togeth­er stu­dents and fac­ul­ty from Leuphana Uni­ver­si­ty in Lüneb­urg and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Neva­da, Las Vegas (UNLV) as well as Jan­ice Har­ring­ton, the “Moth­er of Gospel Work­shops in Ger­many.” Apart from plan­ning all aspects of the inter­na­tion­al study trip, Leuphana stu­dents learned about financ­ing, spon­sor­ing, and orga­niz­ing a con­cert with Jan­ice Har­ring­ton and Friends ded­i­cat­ed to African Amer­i­can music in Ger­many. The pro­ceeds from the con­cert were used to defray excur­sion costs. Addi­tion­al­ly, par­tic­i­pants pre­pared their own research projects in which they learned about a wide range of top­ics: African Amer­i­can music and cul­ture; inter­dis­ci­pli­nary issues relat­ed to Las Vegas (Hoover Dam, Las Vegas’ sus­tain­abil­i­ty con­cept, nuclear test­ing); cul­ture and lifestyle of the Hopi and Nava­jo nations; and cul­tur­al her­itage sites (Grand Canyon, Canyon de Chel­ley, and Mon­u­ment Valley).

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