Anglophone

Studies

As part of the project "One University, One Book", OVGU is organising a lecture series in the summer semester 2024 entitled "The World of Things: Insights into Science, History, Theory and Practice“, which PD Dr. Nora Pleßke will open on 18 April 2024 at 6 p.m. in the Senate Hall (Building 05, Room 205) with a lecture on "'The Great Victorian Collection' and the Translocation of Colonial Objects". In her habilitation thesis, Nora Pleßke investigated the transformative influence of products from colonial territories perceived as 'foreign', the appropriation of exotic objects and the commercialisation of colonial objects, and these epistemological changes will also be the focus of the lecture. Using the example of the Great Exhibition, the concept of translocation for postcolonial studies of material culture will first be introduced in order to then trace the complex processes of appropriation of colonial objects in new (everyday) networks of meaning. Other lectures will deal with computer and video games, post-digital materiality, object biographies, provenance research on property looted by the Nazis and cyclographic narratives.

The "One University, One Book" project is a nationwide competition organised by the Stifterverband and the Klaus Tschira Foundation, in which the Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg was one of nine universities to win. University staff, students and interested book lovers read the book At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson together, discuss it and exchange views on questions and challenges of the present and future in order to find new ways of thinking. The book selection was the result of a voting process; Bryson's At Home was suggested by Marlene Adam, a former member of the University Collection Project initiated by the Magdeburg Anglophone Studies Department. Nora Pleßke's lecture will also be thematically linked to the University Collection project.

With transSCAPE - Cultural Spaces of Knowledge - a research project led by the OVGU's Anglophone Studies division has been approved by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research for the Port of Science Magdeburg, which promotes the development of the Port of Science into an open and diverse place of knowledge through culturally supported transfer formats. transSCAPE is part of the transPORT research initiative, which is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in the programme line T!Raum - Transfer Spaces for the Future of Regions.

With respect to the development of the Port of Science into a modern urban quarter and ecosystem, transSCAPE is playing a key role in developing the neighbourhood into an attractive urban space, cultural hotspot and an interesting and sustainable residential landscape. The scientific approaches anchored in transSCAPE from spatial, culture-led transformation for the spatial, social and ideational structural change to the new high-tech ecosystem in the Port of Science also provide suitable innovative transfer formats. Tailored spatial design and urban curatorial elements are intended to bring urban culture and knowledge culture together physically and materially in the overall transPORT initiative and allow them to grow together innovatively. An annual cultural programme specially designed for the Port of Science with its various social transfer formats always serves the exchange and development of knowledge. The focus here is on the identity-creating potential generated by the participation of all transPORT contributors from science, society and business in the planned events.

In line with the project's focus on urban transformation and regeneration, the Department of Anglophone Studies is offering the interdisciplinary lecture series of the Faculty of Human Sciences in the summer semester 2024 on the topic of "City. Culture-driven Regeneration: Space - Knowledge - Participation". The aim is to ensure that research and teaching are interlinked and that OVGU students are actively involved in Magdeburg's urban transformation processes. As in every semester, the in:takt initiative, which is based on the interim use of urban spaces, is also included in the division's teaching programme with a seminar offered by Hendrik Weiner. This summer, the focus is on urban co-creation.

The Chair of Anglophone Cultural and Literary Studies is delighted to welcome Katja Lenßen as its new secretary from 1 February 2024. She will take over the secretariat from Susan Patzer. We wish Ms Lenßen a great start in her new role and Ms Patzer all the best for her professional future and thank her for her work at the chair.

At the same time, we are saying goodbye to PD Dr Simone Broders on 29 February 2024. We would like to thank Ms Broders very much for standing in for Prof Dr Nora Pleßke, who will return to OVGU on 1 March, and wish her all the best for her professional future.

The department of Anglophone Studies is pleased to welcome a new member to the team as of 17 April 2023. PD Dr. Simone Broders (formerly Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nuremberg) will step in for PD Dr. Nora Pleßke as a lecturer at the department in the summer and winter semesters of 2022/23, as Nora Pleßke will take over a stand-in professorship. Simone Broders offers exciting seminar topics and looks forward to many students in her courses. Her areas of expertise are diverse and highly interesting for our Cultural Engineering degree programme. She works, for example, on the topic Limits of Knowledge - Knowledge of Limits and on the history of ideas of curiosity. In doing so, she repeatedly builds bridges between cultural studies approaches and brain research, computer science, medicine and information science.

Since 2017, the Inklings-Gesellschaft für Literatur und Ästhetik e.V. (Inklings Society for Literature and Aesthetics) has been publishing a newsletter in irregular cycles, which is dedicated to the review of fantastic primary texts. The Inklings Society was founded in 1983 and is primarily dedicated to the study and dissemination of the works of the Inklings, a group of authors around J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, Dorothy Sayers, George MacDonald and G.K. Chesterton, but also to the analysis of the fantastic in literature, film and art in general.

From 2022 onwrds, the newsletter will be edited by Marthe-Siobhán Hecke, M.A., M.Ed. (University of Bonn), and Carsten Kullmann, M.A. (Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg), offerering a platform for the review of newly published primary texts (e.g. literature, film, series, etc.) that belong to a genre of the fantastic (e.g. fantasy, science fiction, horror, Gothic, dystopia). The editors are currently looking for student reviewers who would like to become part of the editorial team and contribute (academic) reviews of such primary texts for the newsletter. The reviews can be written in German or English. Review copies of literary works will be provided if possible. If you are interested, please contact Carsten Kullmann (). An overview of past newsletter issues can be found here.