• View Department's 2008-09 course schedule in pdf format

Department Celebrates 2008 Graduates

Graduates, their families, friends, and members of the Department faculty and Advisory Board gathered on June 13 at the UW Club to celebrate this year's graduating class.

View this year's B.A. recipients here.

The Latvians: Fifty Years in the State of Washington

In the years following World War II, immigrants from Latvia found home and work in Washington State. Photographs, textiles, folk costumes, and fine art tell the story of the 50-year history of their daily lives, work, accomplishments, and the cultural traditions they kept alive in their new home.

Where: Nordic Heritage Museum
When: Exhibit open June 6 - July 27, 2008

UW Swedish Club reinvigorated

The purpose of the UW Swedish Club is to promote and celebrate Swedish language and culture at the University of Washington and the surrounding community.  The Club holds weekly fika meetings throughout the school year and special events from time to time, which include IKEA visits, Nordic Heritage Museum visits, movie nights, and more.  The Club is involved in the annual Lucia pagent through the Swedish Cultural Center. Click here to learn more about the UW Swedish Club. 

Lotta Gavel Adams, Professor of Swedish studies and a specialist on the writings of August Strindberg, has been appointed the Barbro Osher Endowed Professor of Swedish Studies. The appointment, following a formal vote by the UW Board of Regents, is for a five-year term. The Barbro Osher Endowed Professorship was established with a major gift from the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation and its President and founder Ms. Barbro Osher.

A popular teacher, Gavel Adams joined the faculty in 1991. She has published two well-received critical textual editions of Strindberg's Inferno and Legender in the Swedish National Edition of Strindberg's Collected Works. She is also the editor of a Dictionary of Literary Biography edition of Twentieth Century Swedish Writers, the author of several scholarly articles and reviews, and a passionate advocate for Swedish studies in North America.

Marianne Stecher-Hansen Appointed Scan|Design Foundation Term Professor in Danish Studies

Marianne Stecher-Hansen, Associate Professor of Danish and Scandinavian literature and culture, has been appointed to be Scan|Design Foundation Term Professor in Danish Studies.

A popular teacher and leading scholar of Danish studies and Scandinavian literature in cultural, historical and political contexts, Stecher-Hansen is the author of a critical study on the documentary works of Thorkild Hansen. In addition, she has edited two major volumes in the Dictionary of Literary Biography series: Danish Writers from the Reformation to Decadence, 1550-1900 and Twentieth Century Danish Writers.

Stecher-Hansen's appointment to the Scan|Design Foundation Term Professorship represents a continuing commitment to the Department of Scandinavian Studies and the University of Washington by the Scan|Design by Inger & Jens Bruun Foundation as well as a significant strengthening of the cooperation and interchange of scholars, programs and ideas between the United States and Denmark in many critical areas. Stecher-Hansen helped to establish and currently directs the highly successful Scan|Design Fellowship Program and is also the director of the Copenhagen Classroom which she coordinates on site with Jan Krogh Nielsen.

Three New Books from New Directions in Scandinavian Studies in 2008

The University of Washington Press series, "New Directions in Scandinavian Studies," will publish three books this year:

Andrew Nestingen, Crime and Fantasy in Scandinavia: Film, Fiction and Social Change explores the changing nature of civil society in Scandinavia through the lens of popular culture.

Joan Templeton, Munch's Ibsen: A Painter's Visions of a Playwright, draws on a mass of printed and archival material to provide a comprehensive account of the relationship between the two great Norwegian modernists, Henrik Ibsen and Edvard Munch.

Terje I. Leiren, Selected Plays of Marcus Thrane, presents six translated plays from the Norwegian-American Theater of Norway's nineteenth-century political radical, Marcus Thrane. Published with the Norwegian-American Historical Association.

The co-General Editors of "New Directions in Scandinavian Studies" are Christine Ingebritsen and Terje Leiren, faculty members in the Department of Scandinavian Studies.

UW Press Book Series: New Directions in Scandinavian Studies

Graduate Student Wins Baldwin Fellowship

Ph.D. student Margareta Dancus has won a prestigious fellowship to study abroad in Scandinavia during the 2008-2009 academic year. Dancus is the recipient of a Birgit Baldwin Fellowship from the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study. Dancus is currently writing her dissertation on Norwegian popular film and TV produced in the last decade. The fellowship will allow her to do archival research and conduct interviews. She will spend one semester affiliated with the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and the Norwegian Film Institute. She will spend her second semester at the Department of Media Studies at the University of Bergen.

Graduate Student receives Textual Studies Award

Ph.D. student Ralitsa Lazarova has received a Textual Studies Award, which is granted by the Comparative Literature Department Textual Studies Program. The grant will enable Lazarova to conduct archival and reception research in Stockholm. Lazarova is currently working on her dissertation on contemporary Swedish fiction, with the preliminary title True Stories: Fiction and Emotion in Contemporary Sweden.

A newly endowed fund to support graduate student travel for study abroad, scholarly research, or to participate in scholarly conferences has been established in the memory of Leslie Ann Grove, former graduate student in the Department of Scandinavian Studies who passed away suddenly in 1997.

Leslie Grove earned two bachelor degrees from the University of Oregon before enrolling as a graduate student at the University of Washington where she earned Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in the Department of Scandinavian Studies. At the time of her death, Leslie was an Assistant Professor at St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota, where she was a member of the Department of Norwegian.

The Leslie Ann Grove Endowed Fund for Graduate Student Travel has been established by Leslie's mother, Loo-Ann Grove, in loving memory of her daughter, for the purpose of providing "support for graduate students in the Department of Scandinavian Studies, for study abroad, travel to conferences, or any other travel expense that supports academic research or study."