By Kai-Arne Zimny

“Our sto­ry is about a town. A small town. And the peo­ple who live in that town” are the first words we hear on Riverdale (2017 – present). These words are spo­ken by a nar­ra­tor who turns out to be a sev­en­teen-year-old boy – with a beanie that looks sort of like a crown – sit­ting in a din­er booth, typ­ing away at his nov­el in the works.

His name is Jug­head Jones (Cole Sprouse), and the peo­ple liv­ing in the small town of Riverdale are Archie Andrews (KJ Apa), who’s torn between being a high school jock and a sen­si­tive musi­cian; the good girl Bet­ty Coop­er (Lili Rein­hart) as well as rich rebel Veron­i­ca Lodge (Cami­la Mendes). And, of course, all their friends, ene­mies, fren­e­mies, and parents.

These names may or may not ring a bell because Riverdale and its ensem­ble of char­ac­ters are based on the Archie Comics, which have been pub­lished since 1942 and have reached icon­ic fame in the USA. Since then, the char­ac­ters have appeared in sev­er­al shapes and forms, even as a vir­tu­al band called “The Archies” with their most pop­u­lar hit song “Sug­ar, Sug­ar” from 1969. Read more »

By Michaela Keck

On Fri­day, Octo­ber 16, our group of five – two mas­ter stu­dents, three bach­e­lor stu­dents, and I – set out from the Insti­tute of Eng­lish and Amer­i­can Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Old­en­burg for a four-day excur­sion to the eco­log­i­cal field sta­tion of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pots­dam in Gülpe. This small vil­lage is locat­ed approx­i­mate­ly 70 kilo­me­ters north­west of Pots­dam, or cir­ca 85 kilo­me­ters north­west of Berlin, along the east­ern bor­der of the Nature Park and Dark Sky Pre­serve West­havel­land. Here, we want­ed to study, debate, and direct­ly expe­ri­ence dark­ness in an area that still afford­ed a phe­nom­e­non that is increas­ing­ly lost to our bright­ly illu­mi­nat­ed Euro­pean con­ti­nent: dark night skies. The plan for this long week­end was to have the after­noons set aside for text dis­cus­sions and to ven­ture out into the dark after the moon had set. The morn­ings were free to either recov­er from our noc­tur­nal activ­i­ties or to explore the wet­lands of our imme­di­ate surroundings.

Includ­ed in our con­sid­er­able amount of lug­gage – the eco­log­i­cal field sta­tion requires self-cater­ing – were three sem­i­nal texts for our eco­crit­i­cal stud­ies of dark­ness: Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods: Sav­ing Our Chil­dren from Nature Deficit Dis­or­der (2005); Paul Bogard’s The End of Night: Search­ing for Nat­ur­al Dark­ness in an Age of Arti­fi­cial Light (2013); and the chap­ter enti­tled “Ridge” from Robert Macfarlane’s The Wild Places (2007). Although the titles of the first two books express a sense of loss and there­fore sug­gest a yearn­ing for an ear­li­er, bet­ter, more “nat­ur­al” life, Louv and Bog­a­rd both inves­ti­gate the Anthro­pocene with an atti­tude that com­bines curios­i­ty, fas­ci­na­tion, and prag­ma­tism rather than regres­sion, nos­tal­gia, and mor­al­iz­ing. Read more »

By Kai-Arne Zimny

“A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…”

The bright blue let­ters appear on the big black screen. Rev­er­ent silence fills the movie the­ater. Maybe you’ll hear the sound of cheer­ing some­where in the back, but most­ly you can feel the tense thrill of antic­i­pa­tion. After two years of wait­ing, STAR WARS – THE LAST JEDI, the eighth episode of the most beloved sci-fi fairy tale of all time and the sec­ond movie of the new tril­o­gy, is only sec­onds away … Read more »