Please join us on Monday, April 16th, from 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm for refreshments, hors d’oeuvre, a champagne toast, and cake. The reception will be held at the University of Washington Club, Seattle Campus in the Colleen Room. Directions are available here.

This occasion is also an opportunity for the Danish community to meet and welcome our new Visiting Lecturer in Danish, Désirée Ohrbeck.

Please RSVP by April 10th to uwscand@uw.edu or (206-543-0645). If you have any questions about the event, feel free to contact Marianne Stecher-Hansen at (marianne@u.washington.edu)

This event is gratis to invited guests of the Department.
Contributions in sponsorship of this celebration are welcomed to the Metzon Fund.

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Over fifty people from the Danish community gathered at the UW Club to celebrate Her Majesty Queen Margrethe II of Denmark’s 72nd birthday. Here are some photos from the celebration.

Photo Album

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Bianca Hermansen, Architect + Urban Planner, Gehl Architects, Copenhagen

Does design for livable cities lead to gentrification and displacement?
Come hear about Copenhagen’s last decade of work to revitalize its neighborhoods while respecting existing neighborhood residents, culture and identity. Bianca Hermansen will show examples from the last decade of work in Copenhagen that demonstrate deliberate strategies to spatially democratize renewal projects.

Tuesday, November 29, 6:30 pm
UW Architecture Hall 147

Bianca Hermansen, Architect MAA, is an Urban Designer at Gehl Architects and a PhD Fellow at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen.

Sponsored by the UW Green Futures Lab, the UW Department of Landscape Architecture, and the Scan|Design Foundation.

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Is Dinesen to Christianity what Salman Rushdie is to Islam? This talk will explore themes of intertextuality, blasphemy and subversive repetitions in Dinesen’s late work.

Dag Heede is an Associate Professor at the University of Southern Denmark. He has undertaken a megalomanic project of queering the canon of Danish Literature. The result so far has been an introduction to Michel Foucault and monographies on Karen Blixen, Herman Bang and Hans Christian Andersen.

Please join the Masterpieces of Scandinavian Literature course in Communications Hall, Room 326 for a guest lecture.

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The Creative Dialectic in Karen Blixen’s Essays – On Colonialism, Feminism, and War is topic of the lecture by Professor Stecher-Hansen regarding her recently completed book manuscript about the essays and broadcast orations of Karen Blixen (“Isak Dinesen”), a widely celebrated literary figure in Scandinavia and the Anglo-American world. Overlooked in existing critical studies of Blixen’s literary fiction is the fact that the author functioned as a sage contributor to contemporary debates in Denmark, particularly during the 1950s when her distinct voice on the Danish radio became familiar to a nation of listeners. Blixen’s essays were often aired as readings on Danish radio, contributing her voice to the public debates of the day. European Colonialism and its devastating legacy on the African continent, Feminism and its new significance for modern midcentury women, Hitler’s Germany and totalitarian regimes governed by repressive ideologies; these are among the major concerns of twentieth-century Scandinavians and central questions to which Karen Blixen makes provocatively philosophical contributions that deserve further scholarly attention. Stecher-Hansen’s study is framed by the concept of a “creative dialectic;” the title refers to the dialectic method in the essays, a dialogue between two or more different points of view, as well as to Blixen’s aesthetic principle that a meeting of opposing forces is necessary to form a creative synthesis.

Marianne Stecher-Hansen, Associate Professor (UC Berkeley, Ph.D. 1990), is celebrating this autumn her twentieth year as a faculty member in the Department of Scandinavian Studies at UW where she has taught the works of Karen Blixen in undergraduate and graduate courses in Scandinavian literature and published numerous articles in scholarly journals, including two recent articles on Blixen’s essays in Scandinavian Studies, a monograph on Thorkild Hansen’s documentary works entitled History Revisited, and served as volume editor for two substantial reference works in Danish literature. Marianne is recently appointed the College of Arts and Sciences Term Professor in Danish.

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The Danish Cultural Conference is an annual opportunity to learn about Denmark and its links to the US, today and the past. Melissa Lucas, a Ph. D. candidate in our Department, will be discussing the history and development of the Scandinavian languages at the conference. Please see the brochure for more information.

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Please join Mads Bunch in Marianne Stecher-Hansen’s class on Thursday, May 26th at 1:30 for a Colloquium titled “Karen Blixen and Søren Kierkegaard: Narration and Unreliability” in Raitt Hall, Room 314


Søren Kierkegaard’s thinking has had a major impact on Karen Blixen’s production. Already as early as 1924, during her stay in Africa, she writes excited about Kierkegaard’s notion of “The Individual” in a letter to her brother Thomas Dinesen. Her interest in Kierkegaard lasted throughout her life and even intensified during the 1950s after meeting Danish Scholar Aage Henriksen. Karen Blixen was, however, not just inspired by Kierkegaard’s philosophical ideas, but also by the way he chose to present them. She, as him, used a variety of pseudonyms, but also adapted the Chinese Box composition system we find in Either/Or and Stages on Life’s Way and the sophisticated use of unreliable narrators that she developed to perfection. In this talk I will compare Blixen’s novella Ehrengard and Kierkegaard’s “The Seducer’s Diary” in order to point out similarities and differences in regards to narration and the use of unreliable narrators.


Mads Bunch (b. 1974) is Mag. Art. in Nordic Literature from The University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He has been a Lecturer in Danish and Scandinavian Studies at The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada since 2006. He has published articles on August Strindberg, Henrik Ibsen, Lars von Trier and contemporary Scandinavian Literature. In 2009 he published the book Samtidsbilleder – realismen i yngre dansk litteratur 1994-2008 [Images of Time – Realism in Danish Literature 1994-2008) describing the new wave of realism in Danish and Scandinavian Literature around the Millennium. He is currently working on the research project Reading Blixen in the Light of Kierkegaard. He will be leaving UBC this summer and return to The University of Copenhagen to finish this project.

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Please save the date to attend the Northwest Danish Association Gala Fund-Raising Auction on Saturday, April 23, 2011. This evening will celebrate HM Queen Margrethe’s Birthday and will be held at the Lynnwood Convention Center. More information is available here.

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The Royal Danish Guards Association - Pacific Northwest in collaboration with the Northwest Danish Association cordially invite you to attend A Royal Celebration honoring Her Majesty Queen Margrethe II of Denmark on April 16, 2011 at the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Post 2995 - 4330 148th Ave, in Redmond, WA

Tickets are limited. Please RSVP by April 8th, $40.00 per person - Black Tie Optional. Check made payable to: Northwest Danish Association Mail to: 1833 N. 105th St. #101, Seattle, WA 98133-8973.

For additional information, please contact Kenneth Olsen 206-963-3334 or vko61@hotmail.com.

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Please join us for a talk from Claus Elhom Andersen on March 3rd at 4:00 p.m. in Savery 139. The title of the talk is “Danish Mother Seeking.” The talk analyzes a video produced by the Danish Tourism Council. Analysis of the video and its reception helps illuminate political debate in Denmark and the United States. Claus Elhom Andersen has written extensively in the Danish press on both the culture and politics of the United States and Denmark. A link to his blog is available here: http://blogs.jp.dk/amerikanskeperspektiver/

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Applications are currently being accepted for fellowships to study in Denmark during Fall semester 2011, Spring semester 2012, or academic year 2011/12. The deadline for application is January 14, 2011 at 5pm. Please see the Study in Denmark website or contact Anni Fuller at 206-819-2137 or afuller@uw.edu for more information.

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Marianne Stølen will discuss her book The Story of Den Røde: A Danish-American Songbook (2010) at the Nordic Heritage Museum on Thursday, June 3rd beginning at 7:00 p.m. A native and resident of Copenhagen, Marianne holds graduate degrees from the University of Copenhagen and the University of Washington.

Her most recent book traces the fascinating origins and life of Sangbog for det Danske Folk i Amerika (Songbook for the Danish People in America), commonly known as Den Røde (The Red One). In Stølen’s analysis, “The Red One” is more than a songbook: it is a snapshot of cultural history and tradition extending from one home across an ocean to another.

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www.dortemandrup.dk

Tuesday May 4, 2010
12:00 p.m. - Brown Bag Lecture @ the Seattle Public Library Microsoft Auditorium

Wednesday, May 5, 2010
5:30 p.m. - Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter Exhibit Reception @ Architecture Hall 250, UW
6:30 p.m. - The 2010 Scan|Design Lecture, GOING PUBLIC @ Architecture Hall 147, UW

Dorte Mandrup received her Master of Architecture degree from the Aarhus School of Architecture in 1991. After several years at Henning Larsen’s office, she began her private practice, at first with Niels Fuglsang, then on her own. In 1999, she founded Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter. The office engages in a wide variety of projects including housing, master plans and office buildings, as well as the renovation and alteration of historical buildings. They have received numerous national and international awards. Dorte Mandrup-Poulsen has been an Associate Professor with the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and is a board member of a number of significant Danish architecture and art organizations.

The lecture on May 5th will describe the addition and renovation of Arne Jacobsen’s Munkegårdsskole, the Herstedlund Culture Center and a number of other recent projects. These events are sponsored by the Scan|Design Foundation and the UW Department of Architecture. They are free and open to the public.

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The Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study and the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies welcome papers, panels, and roundtable presentations for the first joint conference of Scandinavian and Baltic Studies in the United States. The deadline for abstract submission is December 11, 2009.

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The Spirit of Place
Johnson 102

Lene Tranberg is the principal partner of Lundgaard & Tranberg Architects, one of the most influential architecture firms practicing in Denmark today. Her office produces exemplary work at several scales, from lighting design to building in the urban context of Copenhagen and other Danish cities. Recent work includes a student dormitory for Copenhagen University (Tietgenkollegiet), the Copenhagen Business School (“Kilen”) in Fredericksberg, and the Playhouse for the Royal Danish Theater located at Nyhavn. These buildings have received numerous prizes in Scandinavia and Europe including a prestigious RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architecture) Award for the Playhouse this past June.

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Pre-Dissertation Colloquium with Kirstine Kastbjerg
Raitt 314

Danish Gothic has gone unexamined despite canonical writers’ frequent and consistent use of Gothic conventions, renegotiated for a Danish context. Gothic conventions of evil, decay, fragmentation, perverse desire, supernatural spectacles, and sensory disorientation represent an onslaught of destructive forces, threatening to demolish the modern subject as it emerges in Romanticism. Ingemann, Andersen, Blixen and Høeg engage with nineteenth-century Danish discourses of identity and self formation, using the excesses of Gothic surface mechanisms, theatrical effects and cheap thrills to articulate ideas about the production of identity that ties into the Gothic aesthetic and ontology of the present day.

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Toward a Walkable Seattle: Drawing on International Examples
Architecture 147

Danish architect Helle Søholt will present a series of recommendations for improving the pedestrian experience within Seattle. Drawing from experience in cities around the globe, Ms. Søholt will illustrate the relationships between urban walkability and vibrant public life.

Helle Søholt is a founding partner at Gehl Architects, a firm renowned for its influence on urban life and public space. Gehl Architects’ unique methodology uses empirical survey and mapping methods to measure the human experience of urban space, and applies these lessons to their urban design solutions. Ms. Søholt has extensive experience consulting on international urban design projects. She has taught both Urban Design Theory and Studio Work, and is a frequent lecturer and keynote speaker. She received a MA in Architecture and Urban Design from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, Denmark as well as a MArch from the University of Washington.

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Consul Erik D. Laursen and the Nordic Heritage Museum invite members of the Seattle community to meet a twenty-member delegation of Danish legislators from the Regions Capital.

The delegation is visiting the Seattle area to study regional development, technology transfer and commercialization.

Guests will have an opportunity meet and mingle with the visiting legislators at the reception.
Following the reception guests will be treated to a catered dinner and presentations from Marianne Stecher-Hansen, Professor of Danish Studies at the University of Washington and Consul Erik D. Laursen, KGL Dansk Konsulat. Stecher-Hansen will deliver a lecture “Nordic Connections in the Pacific Northwest” and Consul Laursen will present “Cultural Comparisons: Examples from the US and Denmark”.

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Architecture Hall 147

Bicycle Transportation in Portland: A Tale of Three Cities
Roger Geller
Bicycle Coordinator, City of Portland

There’s More to Walking Than Walking: Design for Copenhagen’s Public Realm
Louise Grassov, MAA
Associate, Gehl Architects - Copenhagen, Denmark

Walkable Design for a Sustainable Dockside Green
Jim Huffman, MAIBC, LEED A.P.
Associate Principal, Busby Perkins + Will - Vancouver, Canada

Discussion Moderator:
Anne Vernez Moudon, Dr. es Sc.
Professor, College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Washington

This panel is part of Global Green: Sustainable Planning and Design in the Pacific Northwest and Denmark.

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The Tsar’s Dwarf

Danish author Peter Fogtdal comes to Seattle to talk about his new book The Tsar’s Dwarf, which has been translated into English by affiliate faculty member Tiina Nunnally. Søerine, a female dwarf from Denmark, is given as a gift to the Russian Tsar, Peter the Great, during his visit to Copenhagen. Søerine travels to St. Petersburg where she becomes a jester at the Tsar’s functions. She enjoys her new life and falls in love with the Tsar’s favorite dwarf, but disaster strikes in the shape of a priest who wants to “save” her.

Fogtdal speaks in Jan Krogh Nielsen’s class on Scandinavian Literature.

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Movie Showing and Lecture

Christiania: Our Heart is in Your Hands tells the story of the “free state” of Christiania, a 36-year-old anarchist squatter community occupying an abandoned military base in the heart of Denmark’s capital, Copenhagen.

After the movie showing there will be a question and answer session with the movie’s producers Richard Jackman and Robert Lawson. The Q and A session will be led by Marianne Stecher-Hansen.

More Information: Nordic Heritage Museum

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Conversation on the Environment: Denmark and the Pacific Northwest

Svend Auken, former Danish Minister on the Environment

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The Royal Danish Guards Association - Pacific Northwest & UW Dept. of Scandinavian Studies present:

A Royal Birthday Celebration
honoring
Her Majesty Queen Margrethe II of Denmark

Saturday April 19, 2008
Hosted bar from 6:00 p.m.
Dinner at 7:00 p.m.
Dancing until 11:30 p.m.
Black Tie Optional

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Cinematic Counter-Globalization in a Small-Nation Context

In Small Nation, Global Cinema, Hjort argues that the emergence of the New Danish Cinema in the course of the ’90s can be traced to various strategies of counter-globalization aimed at thwarting the workings of what Miller et al. refer to as ‘Global Hollywood.’ She suggests the successful globalization of the New Danish Cinema hinges on, among others, a strategy of counter-globalization rooted in what Greg Urban calls ‘meta-culture.’ The Dogma 95 movement, devised by filmmakers Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, is a clear instance of this strategy.

This lecture examines more closely the meta-cultural strategy (which involves framing specific cinematic works in terms of manifestos or rules) so as to draw attention to the crucial role that key individuals (rather than State-driven initiatives) can play in processes of counter-globalization. Hjort argues that individuals make a difference when they self-consciously refuse the more than likely possibility of ultimate success in what Robert H. Frank and Philip J. Cook call ‘winner-take-all-markets’ in order instead to generate the dynamics of a gift culture that effectively transforms, and thereby psychologically expands, the small-nation context. In an effort to refine and substantiate this view, Hjort looks closely at Lars von Trier’s most recent attention-grabbing project, the collaborative experiment with veteran filmmaker Jørgen Leth, entitled The Five Obstructions (De fem benspænd, 2003).

Hjort is Professor of Intercultural Studies at Aalborg University and a Visiting Research Associate at Kwan Fong Cultural Research and Development Program.

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New Realism in Scandinavian Film and Television: A Response to New Digital Media and 3-D Spatiality

In 1995, Danish director Lars von Trier initiated the Dogma-95 manifesto along with Thomas Vinterberg, Søren Kragh Jacobsen and Kristian Levring. The four directors each made a film following the Ten Commandments of Dogma’s “Vow of Chastity,” which proscribes artificial light and sound, postproduction image alteration, as well as many other devices used to “mask” or alter reality and strengthen film’s illusion. Since 1995, thirty-five films have been produced around the world according to the Dogma program. The international press has interpreted Dogma as a protest against the digital mega-productions of Hollywood. What is rarely noted about Dogma’s aspirations towards a new realism is that it also includes an ambition to influence the senses of the audience, rather than to present only a “hand-held” version of everydayness, a phenomenological reading of the world in the style of Italian Neorealism or the French New Wave.

The films of Dogma-95, and especially von Trier’s contribution, as well as his other 1990s films, present a realist expressionism that seems to attack the audience. Aesthetic values are pushed towards the realm of ethics. This lecture proposes a new reading of this new realism, focusing on von Trier’s creation of a perceptible space between screen and audience in The Idiots (1998), spatial multiplicity in Breaking the Waves (1996) and Dancer in the Dark (2000), and a mix of theatre space and computer-simulated space in Dogville (2003).

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The Belligerent Gaze: Witnessing at War

Mikkel Bruun Zangenberg is an Assistant Professor in Comparative Literature, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and currently a Visiting Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at UW. He has published books on Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake (1999) and on Beckett’s Ontic Space (2001), as well as articles on literary theory, the ontology of fiction, and the European avant-garde. He is currently working on a large-scale study of the relation between politics, aesthetics, violence, and democracy in the twentieth century, ranging from Italian Futurism to the war in the former Yugoslavia and contemporary forms of terrorism.

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Sense Studies and Madsen’s Genspejlet

Kerstin Bergman, Ph.D. (Lund University, Sweden)

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The Art of Writing Posthumous Papers:
The Great Earthquake of Søren Kierkegaard Revisited

Poul Behrendt (University of Copenhagen, Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley) speaks on his current book project on Kierkegaard. Professor Kim Andersen of WSU has been invited to serve as the respondent to the lecture.

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