{"id":2214,"date":"2017-11-15T15:54:13","date_gmt":"2017-11-15T16:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/bremen\/?p=2214"},"modified":"2019-07-15T17:22:32","modified_gmt":"2019-07-15T18:22:32","slug":"the-william-71-and-elke-durden-literary-series-at-bremen-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/bremen\/2017\/11\/15\/the-william-71-and-elke-durden-literary-series-at-bremen-3\/","title":{"rendered":"The William \u201971 and Elke Durden Literary Series at Bremen #3: Lana Lux"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Janine Ludwig<\/strong><\/p>\n

For the third William \u201971 and Elke Durden Literary Series at Bremen<\/em> on November 9, 2017, we cooperated with the Institute for Cultural German Studies (IfkuD)<\/em> at the University of Bremen. The student workshop, organized by Dr. Janine Ludwig, was the opener of a three-day conference on German-language literature written by migrant writers from Eastern Europe and Russia, under the title: Migration Foreground, Province Background. German Speaking (World) Literature from Eastern Europe<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In this workshop, the Dickinsonians currently studying in Bremen and German students talked with the author Lana Lux about her debut novel Kukolka<\/em>. The novel tells the story of an orphan child named Samira who lives in a protectory in Dnipropetrovsk, Eastern Ukraine. At the age of seven, she loses her best friend Marina who is adopted by a wealthy German couple. Subsequently, she decides to flee the orphanage, hoping to make her way to Germany to reunite with Marina. Instead, she finds a new \u201chome\u201d in an Oliver-Twist-like gang of teenage beggars and thieves led by the pimp Rocky who adores her and calls her Kukolka (Russian for \u201clittle doll\u201d). For years, she thinks he is saving money for her to make her finally see the \u201cland of plenty\u201d called Germany. When, at the age of twelve, she finds out\u00a0 that this will never happen, she leaves him for a beautiful young man named Dima who becomes her great love and promises to take her to the wonderla\"\"<\/a>nd that is Germany. He keeps his promise, but only to talk her into and later force her into prostitution. While still clinging to her na\u00efve hopes for a better life, she ends up in a brothel with other Eastern European girls, with similar stories and the same shattered dreams. Samira manages to escape again, and a Ukrainian woman named Olga who can translate between both worlds helps her to finally meet her friend Marina again after eight years of separation.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>With Lana Lux, who came to Germany at the age of ten from the same town as her protagonist, we discussed the different images and (mis-)perceptions of Germany as a new dreamland for migrants. Lux read passages from her both funny and hyper-realistic novel which we then analyzed. In this lively talk, our guest answered the students’ questions and told memorable stories from her childhood in the Ukraine, her first impressions as a school child in Germany, her experiences of being discriminated against as a Jew, and her yearning for her homeland which she has not visited in almost twenty years.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Lana Lux describing the scrutiny at the border control when she entered Germany<\/p><\/div>\n

The workshop also related to our current seminar \u201cGerman 340 \u2013 Comparative Cultures \u2013 USA\/Germany\u201d in which we analyze the former emigration from Germany to the United States and the myth of America as a \u201cpromised land\u201d for immigrants. Comparing these findings, we opened the discussion to larger questions of flight and migration and cast a cultural studies oriented glance at the current image of Germany in the world.<\/p>\n

At the evening of the same day, Lana Lux gave a public reading of her novel which was also sponsored by Bill and Elke Durden as part of our Literary Series. The IfkuD<\/em> conference, which was open to our students as an opportunity to take a peek at up-to-date German academia, also cooperated with the renowned international literary festival globaleo<\/sup><\/em> (November 3-13).<\/p>\n

Further information:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.deutschlandstudien.uni-bremen.de\/aktuelles\/<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/globale-literaturfestival.de\/<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Janine Ludwig For the third William \u201971 and Elke Durden Literary Series at Bremen on November 9, 2017, we cooperated with the Institute for Cultural German Studies (IfkuD) at the University of Bremen. The student workshop, organized by Dr. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46448,110570,140680],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic","category-cultural","category-durden-literary-series-at-bremen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/bremen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/bremen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/bremen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/bremen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/178"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/bremen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/bremen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2214\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/bremen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/bremen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/bremen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}