Dec 15: Online Guest Lecture “Claiming ‘The Great Black North’ in Contemporary Short Stories from Canada” 🗓

Dec 15: Online Guest Lecture “Claiming ‘The Great Black North’ in Contemporary Short Stories from Canada” 🗓

Claiming ‘The Great Black North’ in Contemporary Short Stories from Canada

Dr. Nele Sawallisch
(Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Germany)

Dec 15, 09:40-11:00, BigBlueButton

Free access: https://bbb.rlp.net/b/ern-ciz-knc-2v5
(BigBlueButton does not require a standalone app and works best on Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome. Safari and other browsers can cause technical issues.)

Canada’s popular moniker of “the Great White North” has long exceeded its reference to the land of ice and snow, assuming another metaphorical meaning in the context of the country’s demographic. Despite the adoption of an official policy of multiculturalism in the latter half of the 20th century, to immigrant populations as well as BIPoC in Canada, the country has often proven less than welcoming both in diachronic and synchronic perspectives. This talk therefore considers short fiction by Black Canadian and second-generation Black authors that negotiates the intersections of Blackness, Canada, and belonging. On the one hand, their short stories posit experiences of discrimination and racism as facts in the daily lives of BIPoC in Canada despite its professions of a tolerant multicultural society. On the other hand, the authors also appropriate and claim Canada’s geography to map histories, presents, and futures of a “Great Black North” that “remix[es]” (Mason-John and Cameron 2014) Canada’s story as we know it.

Dr. Nele Sawallisch works as a senior lecturer in American Studies at Catholic University Eichstätt- Ingolstadt, Germany. Her first monograph Fugitive Borders: Black Canadian Cross-Border Literature at Mid-Nineteenth Century (transcript, 2019) discusses community-building processes and genealogies in autobiographical writing by formerly enslaved men from the 1850s in the North American borderland between the United States and Canada.

You can download the poster here.

We are very much looking forward to seeing you (electronically) at the lecture!

Nov 14-21 + Nov 19: On-demand Film Screening + Talk and Q&A with filmmaker Yehuda Sharim (UC Merced) 🗓

Nov 14-21 + Nov 19: On-demand Film Screening + Talk and Q&A with filmmaker Yehuda Sharim (UC Merced) 🗓

Watch Songs That Never End (2019) on-demand
Nov. 14-21 (register on eventbrite)

Talk with filmmaker Yehuda Sharim
Nov. 19, 6 pm CET (on BigBlueButton)

 

The Obama Institute is hosting a week-long on-demand film screening (Nov 14-21, https://obamainstitute.eventbrite.com) of Yehuda Sharim’s documentary film Songs that Never End (2019). Part of a trilogy, with Seeds of All Things, Songs that Never End offers a lyrical, poetic, and intimate portrayal of the emotional histories tied to displacement and immigration.

LOGLINE
Having fled their home in Iran, the Dayan family is greeted in Houston with hurricanes and perilous politics. Nine-year-old Hana is bold and brilliant and struggles to be heard while her family comes to grips with life in the sprawling Texan metropolis, constantly reaching out to all that is gone but is still here: a hunger for the future, and songs about a kind world.

In addition, the filmmaker has kindly agreed to be available for an online talk and Q&A session (Nov 19, 18:00, https://bbb.rlp.net/b/pli-yvk-y8a-lot) about his film.

Come join us and share your questions and thoughts on the film or simply listen to the discussion!

For more details and all links to the event, please see or download the poster here or click on the image below.

www.songsthatneverend.com
www.sharimstudio.com

Please note: BigBlueButton does not require a standalone app. Please use Firefox or Chrome to access.

Direct Exchange – Info Sessions 2020 for Programs in 2021/22 🗓

Direct Exchange – Info Sessions 2020 for Programs in 2021/22 🗓

On Nov 11 the Obama Institute will hold info sessions on its Direct Exchange programs. Please join us on BigBlueButton for more information about the exciting exchange opportunities!

Nov 11, 6-7 p.m.
Universities Group A (https://bbb.rlp.net/b/mee-xih-fuc-v4k)

Nov 11, 7-8 p.m.
Universities Group B (https://bbb.rlp.net/b/vel-uyc-szp-ypo)

Please find all details regarding each session on the flyer, which is available for download here and on the Exchange page.

Looking forward to seeing you online!

Anne Bull, Sandra Meerwein, Nina Heydt, and Julia Velten

Oct 22: Online Talk/Film Screening with Yehuda Sharim (UC Merced) 🗓

Oct 22: Online Talk/Film Screening with Yehuda Sharim (UC Merced) 🗓

“We & We: Cinema of Two”

Oct. 22, 7pm, BigBlueButton

https://bbb.rlp.net/b/pli-yvk-y8a-lot

We would very much like to invite you to the virtual guest lecture by Prof. Yehuda Sharim (UC Merced). Prof. Sharim is an accomplished scholar, a professor in film and performance studies, as well as an award-winning film director. His films provide alternative visions on migration, transnational mobility, class and cultural belonging. He will especially speak about and screen excerpts from his recent films, Songs that Never End (2019) and Seeds of All Things (2018).

For more details and the link to the event, please see or download the poster here.

We are very much looking forward to seeing you (electronically) at the lecture!

(BigBlueButton does not require a standalone app and can be run in any browser without registration.)

Job Posting: Student Assistant (6h/w) for the DFG Research Training Group “Life Sciences – Life Writing” 🗓

Job Posting: Student Assistant (6h/w) for the DFG Research Training Group “Life Sciences – Life Writing” 🗓

Literary and Cultural Studies meet Life Sciences – Join the team!

The interdisciplinary DFG-funded research training group “Life Sciences – Life Writing” is looking for a student (3rd semester or higher) to assist and support the team 6 hours/week at the Unimedizin Mainz. The group is led by Prof. Dr. Mita Banerjee (Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies) and Prof. Dr. Norbert Paul (Institute for History, Philosophy, and Ethics of Medicine).

For all details regarding the job description and how to apply, please see the official posting below or download it here.

The application deadline is Oct 31, 2020.

 

Ep. 2 of American Literature Association Conversations (Podcast) 🗓

Ep. 2 of American Literature Association Conversations (Podcast) 🗓

“The Flexibility, Durability, and Portability of the Short Story”

In our second installment of the ALA Conversations series, Society for the Study of the American Short Story president James Nagel speaks with Kasia Boddy (University of Cambridge) and Oliver Scheiding (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz) about the almost alchemical ability of the short story to adapt to new narrative platforms. The unique tenacity of the genre has allowed it to remain vibrant and relevant while competing prose forms like the novel struggle to accommodate evolving patterns of literary consumption. Ranging from the short story’s roots in oral tradition to its contemporary compatibility with delivery technologies, whether Kindle, Twitter, or podcasts, our roundtable examines the manifold ways that a type of fiction often stereotyped by its most basic feature—its “shortness”—helps satisfy the human need to explain experience through stories. Along the way, the panel discusses everything from beast fables to tales of initiation to story cycles to the New York Times’s recent Decameron Project, highlighting writers as eclectic as Lucia Berlin, Tommy Orange, George Saunders, and Jennifer Egan. A must for short story historians and fans!

Access the complete series of American Literature Association Conversations here.