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Picador Guest Professor John Haskell will read from his collection I Am Not Jackson Pollock on Thursday, January 24, 2008, 7pm in the GRASSI Ethnographic Museum. Admission is 2,00 Euro (for students, otherwise 4,00) and covers the exhibition Island People / Inselmenschen of works by the German Photographer Ulrich Mack. The reading will be bilingual in English and German and is co-sponsored by the United States Consulate in Leipzig.
Attached, please find the German announcement.

The Chronicle of Higher Education, America’s leading news magazine for higher education and read by close to a million educators in the United States and worldwide, ran a blog-forum on “American Studies Abroad” starting 17 January. American Studies Leipzig provided a contribution outlining the importance of American Studies programs for international students, including American students, and what makes ASL a special program.

Some 65 guests from the greater Leipzig community attended a lively roundtable on the presidential primaries and what they indicate so far as to whom could be the next president of the United States.

The roundtable consisted of Mark Wenig, Consul for Public Affairs at the U.S. Consulate in Leipzig, Fulbright-Leipzig Professor Ben Alpers, and Professor Crister Garrett from the Institute for American Studies.

Städtisches Kaufhaus Room 207
Wednesday, 16 January 2008
5-7 PM

The Presidential Election of 2008 is shaping up to be a highly important moment
for the United States and for international affairs. With major developments in
the fortunes of candidates for both parties after the caucus in Iowa and the
primary in New Hampshire, critical votes are days and weeks ahead
(‘Giga-Tuesday’ on 5 February) that could very well determine who will be the
two final candidates that will compete to become the next president of the

About fifty prospective students, and quite a few parents, visited ASL during its Open House on 10 January. The ASL Open House was part of the University’s general Open House known as “Tag der Offenen Tür”.

The Picador-Fulbright Roundtable on American film, literature, and society was attended by some forty students and members of the University of Leipzig community. The overwhelming response by participants was “When can we do that again?!”.

Picador Professor John Haskell and Fulbright-Leipzig Chair Ben Alpers joined students and colleagues to kick off the roundtable in the Villa Tillmanns over some pizza and beer (and sparkling water) to talk about film, literature, and American society.

ZDF Heute, and its on-line news organization, zdfheute.de, interviewed ASL today about the implications of the New Hampshire primary for the future course of the presidential election process. The internet news portal zdfheute.de is accessed by over a half million people each day both in Germany and worldwide.

MDR Info, the most listened to source for news in Mitteldeutschland (Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia), interviewed ASL for the afternoon news program regarding the visit by President Bush to the Middle East and America’s efforts to encourage a Middle East peace process.

Radio Berlin-Brandenburg (Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg), the largest radio news source for northeastern Germany, interviewed ASL live today about the presidential primaries.

Radio Mephisto, the main student-run radio station for the University of Leipzig and with a listenership of approximately thirty-thousand people in Leipzig and the surrounding region, interviewed ASL live in studio today about the presidential primaries and what the results in New Hampshire mean for the future course of the election season.