Tag Archives: Leuphana

27 April 2022Best Books & Fabulous FilmsAdaptations, Alexandra Daddario, Annabeth Chase, Aunt May, Book Adaptations, Book Lover, Book-Alike, Books, Booksworm, Classics, Jane Eyre, Leuphana, Leuphana University, Look-Alike, Marisa Tomei, Michael Fassbender, Movies, Mr. Rochester, Percy Jackson, Percy Jackson & the Olympians, Spider-Man, Tom Holland, ZendayaHenrike Kattoll

How to Break a Bookworm’s Heart

By Sara Cepollina

Michael Fassbender, Marisa Tomei, and Alexandra Daddario: What do these three actors have in common?

You may not know all of them, but what you need to know is that they’ve all played a character from a book or a comic, and that they don’t look like their book-alikes at all! For some people, this may not be relevant, but for book fans, who’ve lived side-by side with their fictional characters, it’s highly important that an actor who somewhat resembles the protagonist in the book plays the role. I’m an avid reader, and whenever the rights to one of my favourite books are bought, I begin to think about the perfect actor who would best fit the role.

20 April 2022Access AmericaBioneers Conference, Botany, Braiding Sweetgrass, Climate Change, Earth Day, Environmental Biology, Human Rights, Indigenous, Indigenous Knowledge, Leuphana, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Natural World, Plant Science, Plants, Potawatomi Heritage, Potawatomi Nation, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Skywoman, SUNY, SUNY CollegeHenrike Kattoll

A World Where Science and Indigenous Wisdom Collide: Some Food for Thought on Earth Day

By Savita Joshi

Robin Wall Kimmerer’s presence is magnetic. Stepping out to the podium at the 2014 Bioneers Conference – an annual forum for topics like climate change and human rights – her silver hair hangs loosely, framing a pair of leather earrings decorated with small pink flowers. She greets the crowd with a large smile, and when she speaks, the room falls silent and the audience listens closely:

“Let us begin today with gratitude … of food to eat, of sweet air to breathe this morning, the preciousness of water, the companionship of clouds, and geese, and sugar maples. Gratitude for each other, for the privilege of our work together, and for the original peoples in whose homeland we meet, and for the more-than-human beings with whom we share the earth.”

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cumEQcRMY3c

Such poetic and tender, prayer-like words come as a surprise for some when they realize that these are the words of a scientist and professor.

13 April 2022Best Books & Fabulous FilmsAlienating, Art, David Lynch, Dream World, Freudian, Haunting, Human Experience, Inner Knowing, Lesbian Love Story, Leuphana, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Mulholland Drive, Mystery, New Formalism, Surrealism, ThrillerHenrike Kattoll

The Mesmerizing and Alienating Experience Called Mulholland Drive

By Mahsa Pakzad

Have you ever felt like not watching movies for a while just because you saw one that’s so damn good you knew watching anything else after it would just disappoint you? This is the spell that Mulholland Drive has cast on me.

David Lynch’s 2001 movie was chosen by a BBC poll as the best of the 21^st century, yet for me, it’s more than that. For me, it’s the definition of art. Maybe that makes me too much of a New Formalist, but I do believe that what counts in a work of art is not the ‘what’ but the ‘how’. Lynch takes what could simply be a lesbian love story and explores its other dimensions – jealousy, toxicity, rivalry, and betrayal – while at the same time intertwining it with a Hollywood dream. Though this is fascinating, it’s not what sets it apart. What ‘does’ set it apart is how Lynch tells this story in the form of an unnerving, haunting, surrealistic, Freudian mystery/thriller.

6 April 2022Access AmericaAutocrats, Berlin, Cal, Cali, California, Great Game, Leuphana, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Novel, Peace, The Great Game: Berlin-Warsaw Express and Other Stories, War, WarsawHenrike Kattoll

Taking Peace for Granted

By Michael Lederer

Photo Credit: Michael Lederer | Photo of Genia Chef’s “The Great Game,” oil on canvas, 2013 (fragment)

It’s so easy to take peace for granted, when we have it.

In my 2012 book, The Great Game: Berlin-Warsaw Express and Other Stories, the character Cal, an American writer living in Berlin, commits the sin of lamenting peace as dull. Boarding the train for Warsaw at Zoo station, looking out his window as the Reichstag and Brandenburg Gate slip by, he reflects on how “concrete, barbed wire and gun turrets had been replaced by a currywurst stand, shoe stores, and other unremarkable trappings of the everyday. Everything looked so normal, as if people had never argued let alone fought here. The graveyard of communism and fascism looked beautiful with its flowers and its river in the sunshine.”

But Cal – named for his safe, privileged, native California – was frustrated. “The banality of today’s prosperity be damned,” he thought. “‘Orson Welles was right about the cuckoo clocks.’ On this day, Cal was not interested in sunshine, flowers and rivers. He wanted shadows, smoke and bastards. He wanted danger.”

16 March 2022Access AmericaAnne Nelson, Bald Knob Banner, Berkshire Eagle, Democracy, Glennville Sentinel, Hernando Today, Joshua Darr, Journalism, Leuphana, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Local Newspapers, Midwest, News, News Desert, Newspapers, Public News Service, Report of America, Rhein-Zeitung, Rocky Mountain News, Small Town, The Desert Sun, U.S. local print newspapers, VindicatorHenrike Kattoll

News Deserts and the Challenge to Democracy

By Deborah Steinborn

What do Glennville, Georgia, and Youngstown, Ohio, have in common? The small town in the Deep South and the mid-sized Midwestern city both have lost their sole local newspapers in recent years.

For more information, see the UNC report “News Deserts and Ghost Newspapers” (or click the graphic)

2 March 2022Teaching ToolsAmerican Indian Digital History Project, Apache, Canada, Colonalization, Contemporary Indigenous Culture, DJ Shub, Emma Stevens, Geronimo, Indigenous History, Indigenous People, Invasion of America, Leuphana, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Native American, Robby Romeo and Red Thunder, Sisters, Smithsonian National Museum, Smithsonian National Museum of American Indian, Stereotypes, Supaman, Teaching Native History, Teaching Tools, United States, Unlearning StereotypesHenrike Kattoll

Teaching Native North America: A Continuing Challenge

By Christoph Strobel

Intellectual legacies of colonization play a powerful role in shaping how mainstream U.S. and global society has come to see Native Americans. Artwork from the 19^th and 20^th centuries – such as James Earle Fraser’s sculpture, “The End of the Trail” – have helped to create the image of Native Americans on horseback as representations most associated with Indigenous populations of North America. Type “Native American” into a search engine, and you’ll likely get many historical images of Great Plains Indians. In parts of Europe as well, the perception of Native Americans has been shaped in unique ways by authors like Karl May and the later movies based on his books. Without a doubt, our students’ perceptions about Native Americans are influenced by these fantasies and representations.