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Dr. Paula Lee, the second participant in the Frank Freidel Scholar in Residence Program, has arrived in Leipzig. She will stay in Leipzig for six weeks to work on her current project "Finding Animals: Toward a Comparative History and Theory of Animals."

American Studies Leipzig is proud to announce the release of Ambivalent Americanizations: Popular and Consumer Culture in Central and Eastern Europe.

Due to illness of Anne Keyselt, the ASL Secretariat has special opening times for the week of March 31 - April 4.

Times are as follows:

Monday 9 am - 1 pm
Tuesday 10 am - 11:30 pm
Wednesday 9 am - 12.30 am
Thursday 10 am - 11:30 pm
Friday 9 am - 12 noon

Thank you for your understanding!

Historian and journalist Christoph von Marschall will read from his book Barack Obama: Der schwarze Kennedy on April 3, 2008, 7.30 pm in the Schaubühne Lindenfels Leipzig. Von Marschall, who has before worked for the Süddeutsche Zeitung and Deutschlandfunk, accompanied presidential hopeful Barack Obama during his campaign gaining much insight at close range.
Admission is free. For more details, please click here.

American Studies Leipzig looks forward to welcoming the Summer 2008 Picador Guest Professor for Literature Chuck Klosterman.

Klosterman is the author of Fargo Rock City (2001), Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs (2004), Killing yourself to Live (2006) and Chuck Klosterman IV (2007). His work has received wide and enthusiastic praise, with Stephen King lauding Klosterman’s debut Fargo Rock City: “Writing about pop culture doesn't get any better than this, or any funnier.” Kosterman is also known for his 2004 ESPN blog and numerous articles on sports, music, and popular culture.

The exam dates for the Summer Term 2008 are set. From Tuesday, 27 May through Friday, 6 June, students can sign up for oral exam slots in the secretariat from 1 pm - 3 pm. The dates and details can be found on our Degree Exams page.

Leo directed my attention to the attached video clip forwarded to him by a (indo-muslim) friend in the USA. The clip (originally posted at www.livesteez.com?) shows pro-Hillary democrats trying to argue why they would rather vote for McCain than support Obama.

While Leo highlighted the discursive contortions people go through to thinly veil their racism, I was struck by a couple of other aspects.

The College Democrats of America are unquestionably very tech savy as the generation of citizens they represent. They are present on every major social networking site online to reach out to and to organize their members. To determine who they should endorse, the president and vice-president of the College Democrats took a quite unconventional  survey of their members. They produced a youtube video asking for feedback from College Democrats nationwide. And here is the outcome:

Filmmaker and author Claus Bredenbrock (Bochum) will be in Leipzig as part of the series "History in Conversation" - a series of lectures organized by the History Department of the University. He will show his documentary "4 Tote in Ohio: Ein amerikanisches Trauma" followed by a lecture and discussion. The film is about an unprocessed American trauma: the shooting of four Kent State University students by the National Guard during an anti-war demonstration on May 4, 1970.