Scandinavian Studies Courses Spring 2022

(4 credits) 

• SEC 001: MTWRF 9:55 am – 10:45 am
• SEC 002: MTWRF 1:20 pm – 2:10 pm          Instructor: Ida Moen Johnson

Course Description: This course continues to build basic skills in speaking, listening, reading and writing Norwegian. We offer a thematic, communicative approach to language teaching that strives to put language in the context of culture. Classroom time focuses on communication and listening, as well as introducing basic grammatical concepts. Homework centers on reinforcing vocabulary, reading, grammar exercises and writing. Thematic units covered in Norwegian 102 include climate and weather, family and celebrations, and hometowns and housing. We end the semester with a project on travel in Norway. 

(This course is also offered to graduate students for 4 credits as SCAND ST 404 – Languages of Northern Europe.)

(4 credits) 

MTWRF 12:05 pm – 12:55 pm

Course Description: Continuation of SCAND ST 111.

Prerequisites: SCAND ST 111 or appropriate score on placement exam. Open to first-year students.

(4 credits) 

MTWRF 11:00 am – 11:50 am

Course Description: Continuation of SCAND ST 121.

Prerequisites: SCAND ST 121 or appropriate score on placement exam. Open to first-year students.

(4 credits) 

MTWR 2:25 pm – 3:15 pm          Instructor: Ida Moen Johnson

Course Description: SCAND ST 202 is an intermediate fourth semester language course that requires the completion of Norwegian 201 or equivalent. The course explores various aspects of Norwegian culture through texts, video, internet sources, and classroom discussion. Topics include Norwegian history, Norwegian language and dialects, the modern welfare state, and diversity in contemporary Norwegian society.  An important component of fourth semester Norwegian is an oral presentation in Norwegian on a topic of interest.

(This course is also offered to graduate students for 4 credits as SCAND ST 404 – Languages of Northern Europe.)

(4 credits) 

MTWR 11:00 am – 11:50 am        Instructor: Liina-Ly Roos

Course Description: Continuation of SCAND ST 211.

Prerequisites: SCAND ST 211 or consent of instructor.

(4 credits) 

MTWR 9:55 am – 10:45 am

Course Description: Continuation of SCAND ST 221.

Prerequisites: SCAND ST 221 or consent of instructor.

(3 credits) 

TR 1:00 pm – 2:15 pm        Instructor: Scott Mellor

Course Description: Telling stories is as old as time. Folk storytelling, which originate in the distant past, has often been scorned by the literary establishment, but the fact that they survived through centuries of oral transmission until they were finally recorded in the fairly recent past testifies to their lasting existential appeal. The stories these texts tell are dashingly entertaining and often deeply disturbing: they may offer a profoundly fatalistic view of existence, but they may also voice an angry and, at the same time, humorous protest against oppression. When this narrative type was discovered by scholars and the societal elite about 1800, it inspired many first-rank Nordic authors, e.g., Hans Christian Andersen, Henrik Ibsen, Selma Lagerlöf; and in the 20th century it has cast its spell over Isak Dinesen, Villy Sørensen, and Pär Lagerkvist and its influence has moved from literary to other media today. The course examines both the original folktales, its modern “imitations” and literature as well as gives an introduction to the critical methodologies that have recently been developed to deal with this seemingly simple, but in reality, highly sophisticated, narrative. 

(3 credits) 

TR 12:05 pm – 12:55 pm        Instructor: Susan Brantly

Course Description: Can thrillers, science fiction novels, or films be literary masterpieces? Yes, they can! Explore the changing fashions in literature throughout the 20th Century, while you learn important survival skills for the media age. Everybody wants something, so how do you assess what different writers want from you, and what tricks do they use to go about getting it? Through a selection of short texts, novels, and plays, we’ll be learning from some of the best: Nobel Laureates (Knut Hamsun, Pär Lagerkvist), medical doctors (P.C. Jersild), and other provocateurs (August Strindberg, Isak Dinesen, Ingmar Berman, Peter Hoeg, and the rest). 

(3 credits) 

MWF 12:05 pm – 12:55 pm        Instructors: Ida Moen Johnson/Claus Elholm Andersen/Scott Mellor

Course Description: Intensive work in spoken and written Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, based on contemporary readings, for undergraduate and graduate students with a basic command of a Scandinavian language. Required of graduate students.

Prerequisites: 3 years of Norwegian, Danish or Swedish or consent of instructor.

(1 credit) 

T 4:00 pm – 5:15 pm        Instructor: Scott Mellor

(3 credits) 

TR 9:30 am – 10:45 am        Instructor: Kirsten Wolf

Course Description: The course is intended to give students, who are already familiar with at least one of the Scandinavian languages, the opportunity to critically assess scholarly articles on aspects of the Scandinavian languages, such as dialectology, language policy and planning, trends in linguistic analysis. 

(4 credits) 

TR 1:00 pm – 2:15 pm      Instructor: Dean Krouk

Course Description: Often considered “the father of modern drama,” the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) is a major figure of world literature whose dramatic works remain fascinating and globally influential, both as texts and through performance and adaptation. Students read and discuss Ibsen in English translation, with a focus on Ibsen’s historical contexts, dramatic techniques, social and political thought, and the reception and adaptation of his work in modern culture. 

(3 credits) 

TR 11:00 am – 12:15 pm        Instructor: Dean Krouk

Course Description: This course offers a survey of the modern history of Scandinavia and the Nordic region, from 1815 to the present. Our focus will be on Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. Important issues and concepts will include political and cultural nationalism; modernization and modernity; war experiences and neutrality; social democracy and the Nordic model; gender equality; the European Union; multiculturalism, immigration, and globalization. 

(3 credits) 

TR 11:00 am – 12:15 pm        Instructor: Kirsten Wolf

Course Description: The course is designed to give students an understanding of saga literature as a genre and of the cultural history of Iceland in the Viking Era and the Middle Ages, based on the interplay between pagan codes of honor and Christian ethics. In addition, students will gain an understanding of the methodological problems involved in studying sagas as historical documents. 

(3 credits) 

MW 4:00 pm – 5:15 pm

Course Description: This course focuses on the folklore of Nordic America including Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, and Sámi materials to help us understand what we mean when we talk about Nordic America. We’ll be asking questions about the cultures and identities of the millions of immigrants who came to the United States from the Nordic countries and how they change or stay the same. And we’ll be examining what that means for the millions of Americans today who identify themselves as Nordic Americans.

This is a practical as well as theoretical course, so we will be conducting fieldwork with Nordic Americans in the region. While this is not an ethnic studies course, we’ll be working to better understand issues of ethnicity through the lens of folklore studies by exploring the culture of Nordic America so that you can gain a better understanding of the people and area in which you will be conducting your fieldwork. Along with your fieldwork, class projects will incorporate ways in which you can make your field research available to the public. 

(4 credits) 

TR 2:30 pm – 3:45 pm        Instructor: Thomas DuBois

Course Description: This course introduces Finland’s national epic, the Kalevala. Based on traditional heroic and romance songs collected by Elias Lonnrot from Finnish and Karelian peasants in the nineteenth century, the Kalevala provides a glimpse of ancient Finnish mythology as well as traditional Finnish agrarian life. We will examine the folklore on which it was based and the literature, film, music, and popular culture it has inspired over the past two centuries with an eye to understanding the ways in which Finns have used the Kalevala to imagine their nation, their ideals, and their aspirations.

(4 credits) 

MWF 8:50 am – 9:40 am        Instructor: Claus Elholm Andersen

Course Description: Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytales are known all over the world. He wrote The Little Mermaid, The Snow Queen, The Ugly Duckling and many, many more. This course to going to familiarize you with the works of Hans Christian Andersen, with an emphasis on his fairy tales. During the course, we will read and analyze some of his best-known fairytales, but also look at a few texts from some of the other genres he mastered. Our readings will include the biographical traits of his stories, but will primarily focus on his mastery of the genre and his complex narrative method. We will also talk about the time and place in which Hans Christian Andersen wrote his fairytales – Denmark in the 19th century ­– and discuss how this influenced his stories. Though his stories/tales might seem simply, they are complex literary artifacts. This course will argue that Andersen should be considered one of the great authors of the 19th century, not just an author of simple fairy tales for children. 

(3 credits) 

TR 2:30 pm – 3:45 pm       Instructor: Susan Brantly

Course Description: This course presents a survey of major texts of Nordic Romanticism and the dominant themes that emerge from the era. We will look at the rise of the poetic epic and its eventual eclipse by the novel. We will examine poets from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, and consider how they contribute to the national narratives of their respective countries. Nightside and Dayside Romanticism compete with each other, and the cult of the individual and originality is born. We will examine the question of what constitutes a hero and what is expected of a Romantic heroine. 

(3 credits) 

M 1:20 pm – 3:15 pm        Instructor: Claus Elholm Andersen

Course Description: The debate between formalism and historicism has preoccupied literary scholars in the past few decades. In this graduate seminar, we explore historical and formalistic approaches to the novel and novelistic theory. We will discuss classical theories of the novel (Kierkegaard, Lukács, and Bakhtin) and examine the promise of new formalism (Kornbluh, Levine, etc.) to combine formalism and politics. As an integral part of the course, we will read a number of novels from the 19th, 20th, and the 21st century and study how these novels are positioned in the intersection between formalism and historicism. While maintaining a focus on the novel in its different iteration from romanticism to the present, the course also introduces newer theories and discussion of fictional and fictionality (Gallagher, Cohn, Phelan, Walsh, and others).