Die Welt ist gefüllt mit Material zum Englischen. Jetzt möchte ich meinen Kaffee aber auch noch dazugeben. Seid gespannt and stay tuned!
TV show recommendations
Doctor Who (BBC/Disney+)
– British Sci-Fi show including time travel and travel in space
Podcast recommendations
Culture Searching by Jia
– Episodes about storytelling in different cultures
Englishes around the world
English is one of the most used languages on planet Earth. It’s not just the language brought from UK to the US. English is spoken and used everywhere. Every speaker of the language has their very own take on it. If you are aiming to not police the language of people who are perfectly capable of communicating their thoughts while not sounding like Queen Elizabeth II., I’d like to recommend reading the introductory text of the academic journal “Constellations” that’s intertwined with the NYI Global Institute of Cultural, Cognitive, and Linguistic Studies.
According to that introduction, the journal’s team wants to focus on English as a tool to communication, not something you should police to sound a certain way:
The “Englishes” of our contributors often work powerfully on the level of metaphor and association. Non-native speakers often dare to take risks with language that native speakers might, unfortunately, shy away from. For this reason, our editorial practice is one of “scrupulous reading”—by which we mean meeting the texts halfway, not emending them unnecessarily from on high.
Journal “Constellations” (NYI journal)
Furthermore, if we are already talking about the journal “Constellations”, you should check out their poems, prose and academic articles. Here is a poem written by Tatiana Kulikova, “HappyPlace”:
Kulikova, Tatiana (2024): “HappyPlace“, in Constellations, Issue No. 2.
Also related to the NYI Global Institute is the course by Kevin Potter, Department of English and American Studies, University of Vienna, titled “Palestine Literature as World Literature” in the current V-NYI summer school program. In Kevin Potter’s university bio, it’s stated that he has a research focus on migrant literature and Palestine, besides other topics. What’s interesting to me is this combination of English Language Department and actively choosing topics like migrant literature and Palestine. It sounds like an effective way to shift the focus from “English Literature has to be written by white authors from the UK, US or maybe Australia” towards literature from marginalized groups, just as Palestinian authors or migrant authors in general. In his course description, he states the following:
In doing so, will think of Palestinian Literature as world literature, changing our orientation towards texts in a way that helps us illuminate the dynamics that structure power worldwide.
As you can see, this course isn’t part of the NYI branch of “critical culture studies” for nothing.