About our Speakers

Student Conference: Culture within Culture 

11th - 12th July 2019

About our Speakers

Thursday, July 11th

 

Instagram and Intersectionality: The Visual Potential of the Hashtag #Fatacceptance, by Judith Schreier

Judith J. Schreier is a second-year MA student of American Studies at the University of Leipzig. She received her BA in American Studies and German as a Foreign Language in 2017. Judith studied abroad at Stockholm University and Hobart and William Smith Colleges, where she focused on women and queer studies. She is interested in the representation of ‘deviant’ bodies, such as fat and queer bodies, in American culture. Her additional interests lie in feminist narratology, poetry, and social media. She has been a member of the editorial team of peers 11 and has presented at the 6^th Weight Stigma Conference.

Latinx Queer Identities: A Counter-Culture Within the LGBT+ Movement, by Corina Wieser-Cox

Born and raised in Brownsville Texas USA, Corina is a graduate student at Bremen Universität. She received her undergrad degree from Troy University in English Literature and Creative Writing. Corina now studies in the English-Speaking Cultures M.A. program with a focus on postcolonial and queer theory, and writes short stories and poetry. She has recently published two poems in literary journals and is working on a collection of short stories and poetry concerning the narratives of unauthorized immigrants in the United States. Corina recently moved to Bremen with her German wife and two (very American) dogs named Milo and Chica. She spends her free time helping produce and manages staged readings with Cake and Conflict, reading every book she can get her hands on, and hopelessly learning German

Fast Fashion:The true cost and the dark side of Fast Fashion, by Ariola Kaziu

Ariola Kaziu is currently a student of Advanced Anglophone Studies at Leibniz University Hannover. She has finished Bachelor in English Teaching in Albania. Her research interests lie in the area of (im)migrants and their integration into a new culture. She has collaborated with researchers in several immigration services, particularly dealing with the four stages of cultural adaptation. Ariola enjoys going out, exercising regularly, and reading good books.

Marvel, Multiculturalism, and Whiteness: The Cultural Significance of a Muslim Superhero on the Example of Kamala Khan, by Fereshta Soysal

Fereshta Soysal is 28 years old and recently moved to Leverkusen after getting married.

She was born and raised in Mayen (Rheinland-Pfalz) and moved to Hannover when she was 12. After finishing high school, she tried studying law but very soon realized it is the exact opposite of what she wanted. Since she is passionate about languages and enjoys teaching, she started studying English and Religious Studies to become a teacher at the Leibniz University Hannover). She is about to finish her Masters once she is back from abroad. She worked as a tutor for the past 14 years, covering the entire scope from single private lessons to working at a tutoring school. During her time at the university, she became interested in cultural studies, especially race-related. She loves researching in this area and trying to create a picture of human interaction in an increasingly globalized and highly pluralistic world community.

She has spent the last five years being part of Charity Week, a worldwide 100% non-profit project aiming at uniting people through raising funds for orphans and needy children. She started as a local volunteer and became head of the national marketing team, and this year she became part of the international head of marketing (see www.charity week.com for further info). She also practiced “pastoral“ care for Muslim patients at the MHH for about two years before moving from Hannover. In her free time, she likes to do sports, read, and do any kind of artistic activity, such as writing, drawing, or DIY projects.

Trekkies: A fandom or a subculture, by Marina Kornelaki

Marina Kornelaki is Greek-Dutch and moved to Germany in  2013 to pursue her studies.
She studied English Speaking Cultures and Germanistik as her BA degree at the University of Bremen. She graduated in 2018 and went on to her current MA degree in English Speaking Cultures: Language, Text, Media.
She has two languages as mother tongues (Greek, Dutch), speaks two languages fluently (English, German) and two languages in beginners level (Italian and French). Due to her dual nationality, her moving to a foreign country and her studies being on a different culture as well, she is fascinated by anything and everything culture related. Her goal is to successfully finish her MA and go on to a Doctor's degree, which will hopefully lead her to teach at a University one day. Parallel to her studies, she works in an Irish Pub in Bremen and as a Student assistant at the University. Her latest projects consisted of transcriptions and translations.

 Friday, July 12th

The Influence of Social Media on Contemporary Youth Subcultural Groups in China, by Cathy Zhou Shi-Ting

University of Bremen

Right-Wing Media and Propaganda: A Comparison of the Narratives

created by Breitbart and Stormfront, by Sarai Zahn

Leibniz University Hannover

Soul and Country Music and the (Re-)Making of Racial Ideology in the 1960s and 70s, by Hendrik Burfeind

Hendrik completed his B.A. (in History and Anglistik/Amerikanistik) at Kiel University in 2017 with a thesis called Authenticity and Appropriation in the “White Blues Controversy”: Constructing the Blues Through Race, in which he examined the critical debate on white blues musicians (and their perceived inherent inferiority) that gained momentum in the late 1960s. In his analysis, he argued that as those writers "set out to document what the blues is [and,  he might add, is not], they actually invented their own image of the blues tradition" which "resulted in a racially informed version of what they saw as 'authentic blues,'" thus helping to reinforce the artificial distinctions imposed by the American record industry since the 1920s. After that, he continued his studies at Kiel University in a master course, "English and American Literatures, Cultures, and Media." Generally speaking, his research interests focus on the intersection of popular music, ideology critique, and critical race studies.