Bettina Nolde – författare

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,5 (A), University of Potsdam (Anglistics/ American Studies), course: PS The 1960s: An Age Of Turmoil, language: English, abstract: In the 1960s and 1970s one of the most controversial policies of the Americangovernment was its intervention in the Vietnam War. A whole nation was divided into socalled doves and hawks, the former were fighting and demonstrating for peace whereasthe latter supported the government s policies concerning Vietnam. A very influential and large group of the Antiwar Movement was the New Left, the mainplatform of the white students. In the following, the author will give some information about this group and examine theactions of the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) taken to harm or even destroy thatpart of the Antiwar Movement. These actions were manifested in the so calledCounterintelligence Program, which was shortened to the abbreviation Cointelpro. As there is just one source on which all the literature concerning this topic is based its notthat easy to evaluate in how far all the published material is really true or just serves someconspiracy theories, which were very common in that time. Especially in the Sixties, whenthe Cold War reached its climax in the Cuban Missiles Crises in 1963 and theassassination of famous people like John F. Kennedy in the same year and Martin LutherKing five years later supported the offspring of many conspiracy theories. So in theaftermath of that turbulent decade these theories continued to spread and were seen as trueby the majority of the American people because of the Watergate Affaire in 1972 andother revelations of scandals by the press. Even today after September, 11th 2001 a lot ofconspiracy theories arose. [...]

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2 (B), University of Potsdam (Anglistics/ American Studies), course: Feminist Chicana Writing, language: English, abstract: Sandra Cisneros is one of the most popular feminist Chicana writers. She was born inChicago in 1954 as the only daughter among six brothers of a Mexican Americanmother and a Mexican father. In her early childhood the family moved a lot betweenChicago and Mexico City, where her grandparents lived, so Cisneros never felt at homeanywhere. Hence, she spent most of her time reading for the family s mobility preventedthe development of friendships. When she attended college in 1974 she started writingpoetry and prose in a creative writing class. There she created a style of writing that wasintentionally opposite to those of her classmates. After receiving her M.A. at theUniversity of Iowa she worked in a Chicano barrio in Chicago teaching high schooldropouts and later on as an administrative assistant at Loyola University Chicago. Today she lives in San Antonio and is working on a new novel. In the following the depiction of women in her novel The House on Mango Street willbe examined. This novel consists of a series of vignettes describing the growing up of theyoung girl Esperanza in a barrio in Chicago as she herself reflects it with her youthfulnaivety. She characterises different people, particularly women respectively girlssurrounding her in various situations and depicts the living conditions of the barrio ingeneral. The different female characters appearing in the novel will be analysed in reference totheir deprived situation concerning race, gender and class. To that end the author willinitially give an insight into the image and role of women in the Mexican Americanculture. Accordingly the analysis of the different characters acting in various situationsagainst the background of this will follow. The literature used for this work is English as well as German whereas indirect quotationsfrom the German literature will be translated with the knowledge of the author. Due to its limited extend the following work is not exhaustive.