In non-fiction books, experiences of and with foreignness are predominantly shown as the result of a process of change or as a marker of the Other. Students of the subjects of non-fiction, art and German studies have approached the foreign in its various manifestations in different ways with the teachers.

For example, students worked together with second-grade pupils from the Haarentor/Oldenburg primary school on the topic of "Otherness-Foreignness" under the direction of Dr Ines Oldenburg (Institute of Educational Sciences) and Thomas Robbers (Institute of Art and Visual Culture). The documentation of this work by students will be shown as an artistic commentary in the exhibition.

The emergence of judgements and prejudices in historical and current images and discussions in print media, the Internet and popular culture was at the centre of the artistic examination of the foreign in Sabine Wallach's art practice seminar. Students developed three-dimensional, sometimes atmospheric, sometimes coded spaces and installations that invite you to look closely, play and unravel.

How are foreign places, things and people actually reported on in non-fiction books? What is labelled as foreign, what as familiar? A compilation of historical and current literature (under the guidance of Dr Mareile Oetken) provides an exemplary overview.

In addition, a children's book written by students under the guidance of Prof. Dr Astrid Kaiser on the cultural heritage of the water nomad tribe of the Yagan (Chile) will be shown from the perspective of today's children of this cultural group.

Three lectures complement the exhibition:

Sunday, 03.11.2013, 11.15 a.m., Youth Library Peterstr. 1

Opening lecture: Prof. Dr Hans-Peter Schmidtke, University of Oldenburg

The one 'you' - the other 'me'

"In Panama," said the little bear, "everything is much nicer, you know. Because Panama smells of bananas from top to bottom..." And the inhabitants? Are they Panamanians or Panamanians or Panamas or Panamanians? Do they also smell of bananas? Unlike picture books, non-fiction books don't mislead us like this.

07.11.2013, Children's and Youth Library, Peterstr.1, at 7.00 pm

Prof Reinhard Schulz-Schaeffer

Visual concepts in non-fiction - drawing as a thought process

"In a certain sense, all things lose their colour when they are captured by/in language."

Ludwig Wittgenstein, The big Typescript

There is a significant difference between developing a book concept linguistically and designing it visually. Using practical examples, the impact of visual concepts on the structure, aesthetics, content and narrative form of non-fiction books will be analysed.

Reinhard Schulz-Schaeffer is Professor at the Department of Design HAW Hamburg with a research focus on informative illustration

09.11.2013, Seminar room, PFL at 11.00 a.m.

Dr Renate Grubert,

From classic all-rounder to dispensable genre?

Trends in current non-fiction books for children and young people!

After 50 years of well-known series names and a few individual titles reliably covering the range, non-fiction virtually exploded after the PISA studies and reached a volume that publishers can only dream of today. What has happened and what do the changes mean? The lecture follows the development of the children's and young adult non-fiction market, traces trends and tendencies and shows a cross-section of the current range.

Dr Renate Grubert is head of the press office for children's and young adult book publishers at Verlagsgruppe Random House, Munich. She works as a freelance specialised journalist, publicist and lecturer.

Invitation