Direct Exchange – Info Sessions 2025 for Programs in 2026/27 🗓

Direct Exchange – Info Sessions 2025 for Programs in 2026/27 🗓

Events, Exchange Programs, General, News, Opportunities

On Nov 13 the Obama Institute will hold an info session on its Direct Exchange programs. Please join us in room P 2 (Philosophicum) for more information about the exciting exchange opportunities!

Nov 13, 18:00-19:30
P 2 (Philosophicum)

Please find all details about the session on the flyer, which is available for download here and on the Exchange page, where you can also browse general information on the programs in order to get a headstart on what your options are and what an application would entail.

Looking forward to talking to you in person on Nov 13, when we will be happy to answer all your questions!

Anne Bull, Sandra Meerwein, Samira Deq, and Julia Velten

Nov 11 – Autorenlesung: Drew Hayden Taylor liest aus COLD 🗓

Nov 11 – Autorenlesung: Drew Hayden Taylor liest aus COLD 🗓

Events, News

Autorenlesung

Alles beginnt mit einem Flugzeugabsturz…

11. November 2025, 13:30, N.106, Campus Germersheim

Drew Hayden Taylor liest aus seinem Roman COLD.

Aus dem Englischen von Leo Strohm
ca. 445 Seiten
Erscheinungstermin: 30. Oktober 2025

 

Alles beginnt mit einem Flugzeugabsturz… Die einzigen Überlebenden – die Pilotin und eine Journalistin – hoffen in der eisigen Wüste Ontarios auf Rettung… Währenddessen versucht Elmore Trent, Professor für Indigene Literatur und Kultur, nach einer Affäre mit seiner studentischen Hilfskraft, verzweifelt seine Ehe zu retten. Und Paul North, Eishockey-Spieler der IHL, sieht sich mit dem wenig glamourösen Ende seiner Karriere konfrontiert. Sehr schnell wird klar, dass jemand – oder etwas? – die vermeintlich isolierten Figuren verbindet. Etwas, das auf sie alle Jagd macht…

Drew Hayden Taylor, preisgekrönter kanadischer Schriftsteller und Theaterautor, verlagert in seinem Bestseller traditionelle indigene Geschichten in die modernen Straßen Torontos und verwebt Unterhaltung, Krimi, Thriller und Horror zu einer temporeichen Erzählung mit lebensnahen Charakteren. Nebenbei behandelt er dabei Themen wie Vertreibung und Trauma und liefert eine satirische Kritik an der aktuellen indigenen Literatur.

Drew Hayden Taylor (*1962 in Curve Lake First Nation, Kanada) ist ein preisgekrönter indigener Dramatiker, Romanautor, Filmemacher und Journalist.

Er hat alles gemacht, von Stand-up-Comedy im Kennedy Center in Washington D. C. bis hin zur künstlerischen Leitung der ersten indigenen Theatergruppe Kanadas (Native Earth Performing Arts). Drew Hayden Taylor ist Autor von bislang 36 Büchern – COLD ist der erste Roman, der ins Deutsche übersetzt ist. In Deutschland ist er einem breiteren Publikum durch seine Dokumentation Searching for Winnetou (2018) bekannt.

www.drewhaydentaylor.com

Bilder + Texte: Merlin Verlag

 

You can download the poster for the event here.

Nov 11 – Guest Lecture: Introducing Scottish Magazine Culture, from BLACKWOOD’S to RADICAL SCOTLAND 🗓

Nov 11 – Guest Lecture: Introducing Scottish Magazine Culture, from BLACKWOOD’S to RADICAL SCOTLAND 🗓

General, Lectures, News

Guest Lecture by Scott Hames (University of Stirling, Scotland, UK)

Introducing Scottish Magazine Culture, from Blackwood’s to Radical Scotland

November 11, 2025, 6-8pm, P 6 (Philosophicum)

Periodicals have been unusually central to Scottish literary culture, and have often been a key conduit for connecting with the rest of the British cultural and political scene. This session will briefly introduce some key Scottish magazines since 1800, with a focus on the cultural politics of ‘provincial’ versus ‘national’ publishing. The journals and magazines we’ll consider frequently grapple with questions of audience, influence and peripherality on terms which bring publishing and literary criticism into direct and unavoidable contact with the national question in politics.

Dr Scott Hames is Senior Lecturer in Scottish Literature at the University of Stirling, where he writes mainly about Scottish literature and cultural politics. He has particular interests in the post-1960s movement for Scottish devolution, which led to the creation of a Scottish Parliament in 1999.
The Literary Politics of Scottish Devolution: Voice, Class, Nation was published in 2020. It‘s a cultural history and critique of devolution, focused on the role of writers, critics, magazines and intellectuals.
He also leads the Scottish Magazines Network, an AHRC research network partnered with the National Library of Scotland. His current book project is on the political essayist Tom Nairn (1932-2023), arguably the most influential Scottish intellectual of the past century, who made his entire career in magazines and forgotten newspapers.

You can download the poster for the event here.

July 4 Event 2025 – Lecture, Exhibition, Get-together, Food and Drinks 🗓

July 4 Event 2025 – Lecture, Exhibition, Get-together, Food and Drinks 🗓

Events, Lectures, News

Fourth of July Event at the Obama Institute

July 4, 2025, 2-6 p.m., P5 & Foyer P2-P5 (Philosophicum)

2-4 p.m. I Keynote Lecture I P5

Speculative Plantations: Reimagining Past, Present, and Futures through Gothic Horror
Amy King, PhD
Tuskeegee University, AL, USA

What could be possible when we apply a “speculative” framework to texts and contexts that may magnify, combine, bend, and/or even break audiences’ expectations of genre and what, exactly, constitute plantation settings?

 

4-6 p.m. I Student Project Exhibition I Foyer P2-P5
with Food and Drinks

Posters and presentations by students from Dr. Sonja Georgi’s CS III course.

How can we tell, preserve, and engage with stories of resistance in the U.S. of 2025?

Check out last year’s event in the video and find further information about this year’s event on the poster below or download it here.

 

July 3 – Guest Lecture “‘You can go dig him out of his grave’: Anishinaabe Resistance to Racialization in the 1910s” 🗓

July 3 – Guest Lecture “‘You can go dig him out of his grave’: Anishinaabe Resistance to Racialization in the 1910s” 🗓

Lectures, News

Jill Doerfler
(University of Minnesota, Duluth)

“You can go dig him out of his grave”: Anishinaabe Resistance to Racialization in the 1910s

July 3, 2025, 18:15-19:45, P 15, Philosophicum

Professor Jill Doerfler will detail the various ways in which White Earth Anishinaabe/Ojibwe people described their identity and shrewdly resisted US racialization efforts in the 1910s. She will examine the concept of blood quantum including US legal definitions of “mixed-blood” and “full-blood” and the economic motivation behind those definitions. She will also discuss both the historic and contemporary significance of identity.

Jill Doerfler is a professor and department head of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota-Duluth. She grew up on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota and is the daughter of an enrollee. Dr. Doerfler has lectured and published widely on the topics of citizenship, blood quantum, and constitutional reform. Her monograph, Those Who Belong: Identity, Family, Blood, and Citizenship Among the White Earth Anishinaabeg, examines staunch Anishinaabe resistance to racialization and the complex issues surrounding tribal citizenship and identity. She also co-authored The White Earth Nation: Ratification of a Native Democratic Constitution with Gerald Vizenor and co-edited Centering Anishinaabeg Studies: Understanding the World Through Stories with Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair and Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark. Recently, she co-edited a special guest issue of American Periodicals with Cristina Stanciu and Oliver Scheiding focused on cultural and political work of Indigenous periodicals.

You can download the poster for the event here.