What do pornography, fake Indians, the climate crisis, and firefighters in New York City have in common? Well, these are all topics of this season’s lecture series “Maple Leaf & Stars and Stripes.”
As usual, the lecture series starts out with a bang: Award-winning documentary filmmaker and one of Canada’s leading writers, Drew Hayden Taylor, will present his new movie, The Pretendians. The film, which celebrates its German premiere at Leuphana University Lüneburg, asks the question why so many people in the public eye claim Native heritage. Taylor, himself an Anishnaabe and resident of Curve Lake First Nation reserve, is making his 5th trip to Lüneburg.
And if that’s not enough, we also feature Anne Nelson, American journalist, author, playwright, and lecturer at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. She’ll join us via Zoom to discuss her play, The Guys. Written shortly after 9/11, it features a firefighter who seeks the help of a writer to compose eulogies for his dead comrades.
Art and pornography are at the heart of Anne Breimaier’s talk, which will critically reconstruct a lecture of radical feminist Dorchen Leidholdt in 1980. Breimaier will relate Leidholdt’s critique of a commodification of violence against women in visual media of the 1980 to contemporary image cultures.
The lecture series wraps up with a talk by Johan Höglund, “An end to Eating? Future Food Imaginaries and the Climate Emergency.” Höglund will discuss how fiction set in a future transformed by climate change describes the act of ingesting food as “feeding” (what babies and animals do) rather than “eating” (what humans are typically understood to be doing and what counts as a social and cultural practice).
For the poster as well as the dates and times:
Tag Archives: Lecture Series
11 Years of “Maple Leaf & Stars and Stripes” at Leuphana University Lüneburg
We are pleased to announce that Darion Akins, the current U.S. Consul General from Hamburg, will open our lecture series with a talk on “Worth the Struggle: Why Democracy Matters” at 6:15 p.m. in the forum of Leuphana University Lüneburg’s central building (C40) on November 18, 2021. The coronavirus 3G rule (vaccinated, recovered, tested) applies to this event.
In addition to the lecture on campus, Julia Nitz (Universität Halle-Wittenberg), Christoph Strobel (University of Massachusetts, Lowell), and Fiona Tolan (Liverpool John Moores University) will also join us this semester via Zoom. As always, each lecture lasts roughly 1 hour and is either interactive or followed by a lively question-and-answer session. Please see the poster for further details.
Hope to see you at one or more of the talks.
Sabrina Völz, Maryann Henck, and Maria Moss
Maple Leaf & Stars and Stripes
Maple Leaf & Stars and Stripes
We’re in our ninth year of Maple Leaf & Stars and Stripes– if this lecture series were a child, it would be in third grade by now.
We’re especially proud to announce this year’s bilingual (German/English) kickoff talk by Peter Wortsman, New York author and translator of Austrian-Jewish descent. Interestingly, he’s the recipient of the Geertje Potash-Suhr Prosapreis. Citizens of Lüneburg will recognize this prestigious award, named after former Lüneburg resident Geertje Suhr.
On October 24, we will also be announcing the winner of the American Studies Blog contest in the Access America category. The writer of the winning blog, which will be posted on October 30, will be present.
Please join us for an exciting evening in building 12, room 013, from 18:15 to 19:45 at Leuphana University Lüneburg, Universitätsallee 1. Click here for the campus map.
All lectures are open to the public – and feel free to bring a friend!
Oct. 24
Peter Wortsman (writer and translator, New York), “Reading from Stimme und Atem. Out of Breath, Out of Mind”
Nov. 14
Michael Louis Moser (TU Dresden), “The Evolution of Political Moments on Network TV: Late Night from Steve Allen to Stephen Colbert”
Nov. 21
Andreas Hübner (Leuphana), “’Their motto is not liberty, but slavery’: Confederate Monuments, White Supremacy, and the Legacy of Jim Crow”
Dec. 12
Helga Bories-Sawala (Universität Bremen), “Indiens, Sauvages, Amérindiens, Premières Nations: Das Bild der Indigenen in den Geschichtsbüchern Québecs”
Jan. 9
Silke Hackenesch (Universität zu Köln), “Transracial Adoptions in Postwar America”
Jan. 23
Mieke Roscher (Universität Kassel), “Current Objectives of Historical Human-Animal Studies: Interspecies Societies after the Animal Turn”