Registration for this year's Edinburgh Summer School (4 - 18 Aug 2018) is open - would you like to join? During the Summer School students can take two fully credited courses. Choose between one on British Literature (JP Jens Elze) and one on American Literature (Susann Köhler), and take a Life and Institutions class on top (J. Pfändner/Dr. G. Ross). Interested? Join the StudIP course "Edinburgh Summer School - First Information Meeting" for more information. Registration ends 10 Jan 2018, 11.59pm!

Hello everyone and welcome back! ☺️ We hope you all started 2018 off right! Now it's back to work for us! 👩‍🏫☺️💻📚📧👨‍🏫💪 Marleen Knipping and Julia Kroll are currently busy organising the conference "Glocal Places of Literature"! In times of global deterritorialisation and transnational cultural exchange, the prominence of local places of production and reception has become more, rather than less, significant: writers’ museums, for example in Weimar and Stratford-upon-Avon, Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence in Istanbul, chapbook presses across the globe, literary institutions such as Copenhagen’s LiteraturHaus, UNESCO Cities of Literature, for instance in Cracow and Prague, and slam events in many cities have emerged in the digital age. With this conference, the English and the Comparative Literature Departments intend to explore the shifting interconnection between literatures and place in the twenty-first century on three intersecting planes: literary production, distribution, and reception. We want to bring together scholars from all fields within literary and cultural studies, as well as from disciplines such as the sociology of literature, human geography, book studies, and museology. If you want to participate, please check out our Call for Papers (on our homepage) and our social media accounts! 😊 https://glocal2018.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/glocal2018/?hc_location=group https://twitter.com/glocal2018

Germans celebrate Silvester, the Scots do too - but they call it Hogmanay (which is Scots for Old Year's Eve). The origins probably go back to Norse or Gaelic times. The custom of singing Robert Burns's "Auld Lang Syne" (with a soft 's', incidentally!) as the clock chimes midnight has spread from Scotland all over the world. Not quite as far-spread is the special attention that is paid to the 'first-footer', the first person to cross the doorstep in the new year - these people bring luck to the house. Have a good Old Year's Eve and a Happy New Year! Photo credits: (c) Gyula Péter (CC3.0 license as of 1 Jan 2017), uploaded to Panoramio

Reviewing 2017 at the English Department we found a lot of memorable events we would like to share - thank you everyone, and we're already looking forward to what 2018 will bring!

Our social media team wishes you all a merry Christmas and happy holidays!☺️🤗❄️🎅🏼🎄We are taking the holiday week off, and are looking forward to seeing you all back here for news and updates in 2018! 😀

Christmas is approaching fast and everyone starts thinking about food for the holidays! 🎄🎅🥘🍲🍩🍵 If you'd ask what is the traditional German Christmas food, you would get many answers! The one thing Germans can agree on when it comes to food and Christmas, is that we all love Christmas sweets! Christstollen, Pfeffernüsse, Lebkuchen, Printen and all sorts of homemade biscuits!🤗😊☺️ So what are your traditional foods when celebrating the holidays? 😉

An idiom for every season (and our recommendation for the hurly burly of the Christmas season): “Don‘t get your tinsel in a tangle”. Can you guess the meaning of this one? Yes, don’t let stress get the better of you just before Christmas!

Our social media team is very happy to announce that we have gained our eleventy-first follower on Instagram! 👏🏼🎉🎈🎊 Follow us on Instagram @englishingoe for our latest news and updates! 😃

The holidays are fast approaching, which implies that it's about time to pick a film that will get you into the spirit of Christmas! Try It's a Wonderful Life while huddling up with cookies and hot cocoa, the 1946 Capra movie that is not only America's most beloved Christmas film, but also number one on AFI's top 100 list of the most inspiring films of all time. The film follows depressed small-town man George through a retrospective of his life, kindly provided by angel Clarence, only to show him the true meaning of friends and family and the values of community. The film also offers some snide commentary on the dangers of greed and egotism and was, allegedly, earmarked with the FBI's mark of disapproval due to its implicit 'communist propaganda.' If you're still trying to decide which film will propel you into the holiday mood at the speed of Santa's sleigh, forget the 1983 A Christmas Story, Miracle on 34th Street (1947), or Love, Actually (2003): Watch It's a Wonderful Life!

Seems like our Reading Club is not letting 2017 go! They are meeting again tomorrow evening for a literary pub quiz and they seemed to have promising gifts for those who win. If you wish to attend their meeting or if you are curious to know more about it, head to their event.

Still looking for the right story to read on Christmas Eve? Our departmental library holds books with Christmas stories, carols and more from the medieval times until today that put you in the right Christmas spirit: For example Charles Dicken's "Christmas stories"! Come over and take them home over the holidays :) But be quick because we will be CLOSED during the CHRISTMAS and NEW YEAR period: 21 December 2017 – 7 January 2018. In return we have got extended VACATION LOANS: Tuesday 19th December 2017, 13:00 to Tuesday 9th January 2018, 13:00 The SEP-Library Team wishes you all a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

Learning to become a teacher can make the time before Christmas even busier and more exciting! Once again, students from the department of English Didacticts have planned and conducted a simulation of a Sherlock Holmes' Assessment Centre at the YLAB. In the roles of applicants, the year 9 students from the Hainberg Gymnasium Göttingen had to solve the case of the mysterious death of a girl, prove their detective skills and - of course - interact in English the whole time. At the same time, the university students were able to test and develop their teaching skills. From all different perspectives (university students, pupils, teacher and lecturer) it was a huge success. Theatre projects can be a lot of fun and also very christmassy - like the adaption of the Christmas Carol in 2014. For more information about the global simulations seminar or on how you can get involved yourself, see: https://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/projekte+der+fachdidaktik/517722.html.