With Dr. Cedric Essi, Stefanie Schäfer talks about the legacy of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, a mainstay of US culture and a holiday classic, and the politics of the 1991 “unauthorized parody” The Wind Done Gone by Alice Randall, in which Scarlett’s black half- sister Cynara tells a very different family story. She asks readers to discard Confederate nostalgia and white melodrama and to dismantle Gone with the Wind’s status as cultural monument to the Lost Cause.

In this episode, host Douglas Cowie and his guest, Professor Robert Eaglestone discuss The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon, published in 2008. The conversation looks at the novel's structure, and its development of themes of immigrant and refugee identity, ethnic cleansing, trauma, language, and much more.

In this episode, Stefanie Schaefer and her guest Savage Bear (Cree) commemorate Native American Heritage Month. They discuss sensuality and the politics of decolonizing sexuality in contemporary indigenous art. They address indigenous interventions in academic discourses, read poetry by Richard van Camp (Tłı̨chǫ Dene) and Tenille Campbell (Dene/Métis), and talk about moose lips and feminist body sovereignty.

In this episode, host Douglas Cowie and his guest, poet and teacher Alina Borger, discuss The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. They begin by exploring why the novel makes for useful study on a high school curriculum, and move to a wide-ranging discussion of its place as a novel of Chicago, its structure, and the many themes that emerge from its center as a novel about a Latina girl's tentative steps towards adolescence.

The Amerikazentrum Hamburg commemorates Kurt Vonnegut's 100th birthday with a special podcast about his seminal novel Slaughterhouse-Five. The Amerikazentrum will also be hosting a Virtual Vonnegut Birthday Celebration live on ZOOM on Saturday Nov. 19 from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. CET. The expert panel includes Dr. Wieland Schwanebeck, Vonnegut biographer Charles J. Shields, and Jan-Christian Petersen. Please visit our website to register for the event: amerikazentrum.de.

In this episode, our experts explore the effects of Russia's war in Ukraine on European energy policy and EU politics. A number of countries are analyzed, including Germany, France, Hungary, Poland, and the Baltics. The episode ends with a moral and legal assessment of EU policy regarding Russian draft dodgers.

In this episode, Sola and Danner examine the recent elections in Sweden and Italy. Both nations experienced an enormous surge in votes for far-right parties. Is the European electorate moving to the right? Are are far-right parties moving to the center? Join us as we explore the history of Swedish and Italian politics over the last 100 years.

In this episode, host Douglas Cowie and his guest, documentary filmmaker Mark Blottner, discuss The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren. Published in 1949, it tells the story of a war veteran's struggle with morphine addiction, and in so doing paints a portrait of a marginal neighborhood in Chicago and its people.

In this episode, host Douglas Cowie and his guest, writer Ryan Gattis, discuss Native Son by Richard Wright. Published in 1940, it tells the story of a young Black Chicagoan who murders a White heiress, and the personal, social and political consequences that ensue.

In this episode, host Douglas Cowie and his guest, Dr. Katie McGettigan, Senior Lecturer in American Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London, discuss Sister Carrie, a novel by Theodore Dreiser. Published in 1900, it tells the story of a young woman seduced by the material trappings of Chicago and its men