Nov. 9, 1989: I was lying in bed when I thought I heard the phone ring. The next morning, there was in fact a message on my answering machine from about 3 a.m. “Hi Marlena! You won’t believe where I am. (Pause) I’m in the West, at my Aunt’s house in West Berlin! It’s just unbelievable!”
In honor of the 30thanniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the American Studies Blog will remember this spectacular event in history through the eyes of people from around the world during the next few weeks.
When Everything Changed
“Your friend Jörg called. There’s something going on at the border.” “What border, the Hungarian?” I was taking off my coat thinking of the pictures I’d seen of Hungarian border patrols cutting the wire fence and letting East Germans through only a few months before. “He said you should turn on the TV.” And so I did, and there they were, the celebrating Berliners climbing on top of the wall, welcoming stunned East Berliners, joined in delirious joy for the first time in four decades. And here I was, almost 7,000 kilometers away in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I’d been teaching for the last four years.
On behalf of the American Studies Blog, we would like to extend our sincerest congratulations to Pune Karimi whose winning entry in the 2019 ASB contest in the category “Access America” can be read below. Although the American Studies Blog does not usually print political pieces, we felt that the winning blog voices a point of view largely absent from American politics and media, and, therefore, deserves to be heard. We hope it gives you some food for thought.
Presidential Elections 2020 – Still No Country for Indigenous People
While Republicans have made it abundantly clear that they have little desire to improve the lives of people of color or marginalized groups, Democrats have often prided themselves on fighting for the disadvantaged. Still – hardly ever have the rights of Indigenous people been a topic during the U.S. presidential elections, and it seems unlikely that this is going to change any time soon. At least that’s what it looked like during the first Democratic debates.
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”
It goes without saying that the Germans’ unrivalled fascination with the Native people of North America is not exactly a well-kept secret. Case in point: the annual Karl May Festivals in Bad Segeberg and Elspe. But I’ve always wondered whether this fascination might be mutual. Spoiler alert: It is.
In 2017, Anishnawbe writer Drew Hayden Taylor set out in search of Winnetou. What he found ranged from the amusing to the unsettling. In other words, the perfect material for his documentary film, Searching for Winnetou, where the fine line between appropriation and appreciation becomes a bit blurred. Curious about the making of? Then click on our exclusive interview with the writer. Read more
As we all know, more and more adults are reading less and less in their free time. That’s not a judgment, just a fact. Budding bookworms might even be considered an endangered species, so a few years ago, I started looking for a different approach to teaching literature to students of all majors and backgrounds. While looking for inspiration, I came across the literature circle, an approach that might just engage even the most skeptical university student who’d rather be writing code for an app or starting his or her own business. While it has become an integral part of the English classroom from elementary school upwards in the United States, this student-centered activity is relatively unknown in Germany. At least it was to me. During my research, I found out that literature circles come in all shapes and sizes and can be structured in many different ways, so there’s no one “right” way of doing it. That very fact appealed to me and led me to explore unchartered territory.
In a nutshell, a literature circle is made up of a small group of individuals who read the same text. Together they explore the text’s content and style while reflecting, asking questions, and sharing feelings, just as any literature circle would do. Sounds simple, right? It is and that’s exactly the point. When I first started adapting the literature circle to fit my university’s curriculum, I didn’t realize how this method would revolutionize my classroom – at least for a day.
