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There will be two sessions on Strindberg and Lotta Gavel Adams will chair one session on Modern and Premodern Forms in August Strindberg.
Students studying Swedish at the UW will combine with the Swedish Women’s Chorus, the Svea Male Chorus and the Swedish Cultural Center’s best bakers to help you feel the Lucia love! Come early for a good seat—this event fills up fast.
For more information, please visit the Swedish Cultural Center website.
Film historian and Bergman specialist, Peter Cowie, will be leading a live discussion and Q&A with audience members at this special online screening. This is a great opportunity for students who are fans of Bergman and/or classic film to engage with a global audience and an expert on this film. The Q&A discussion will take place in Constellation’s virtual movie theater platform with Peter Cowie live via webcam:
Screening Details:
WHAT: The Seventh Seal hosted by Peter Cowie
WHEN: Friday December 2, 2011 at 5:30PM EST
WHERE: https://www.constellation.tv/seventhseal
Peter Cowie is a film historian and author of more than thirty books on film. His books include definitive surveys of the Scandinavian Cinema, in particular the work of Swedish film director, Ingmar Bergman. Other aspects of his work in the area of Scandinavian cinema include his service on the “Quality Awards” Jury of the Swedish Film Institute for 11 years from the 1970s where he was its only non-Nordic member. In 1989 he was decorated by the King of Sweden with the Royal Order of the Polar Star for his services to Swedish culture. During the 1980’s he spent several years in Finland, and in 1983 was director of the Nordic Film Festival in Hanasaari Hanaholmen.
WHERE: IPE Office, 459 Schmitz Hall
WHEN: Thursday, December 1st from 1-4pm
WHAT: Join Uppsala International Summer Session representative Emma Bendz and current Swedish UW students in discussing the following Swedish Study Abroad options:
Stockholm University
University of Gothenburg
Uppsala University
Uppsala International Summer Session
Summer Language Opportunities
The Swedish author Steve Sem-Sandberg will discuss his new book Emperor of Lies (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux) on November 17, 2011, at 7pm at the Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Avenue, Seattle, WA 98122.
For more info call 206-624-6640
Dr. Sofia Wijkmark will lecture on Selma Lagerlöf’s Gösta Berling’s Saga. Dr. Wijkmark teaches at Karlstad University in Sweden. Her research focus is on the the Uncanny (det kusliga/das unheimliche) in the works by Selma Lagerlöf and in contemporary novels. Her theoretical interests are ecocriticism and narratology.
Thomas Bodström, Sweden’s former Minister of Justice, will give a talk in the course Sexuality in Scandinavia: Myth and Reality in Smith Hall 120 at 1.30 - 2.20 on Thursday, June 2nd. The title of his talk is “Trafficking, Criminalization of Prostitution in Sweden and the Strict Rape Laws.
This event is supported by the Swedish Embassy in Washington DC and the Scandinavian Department.
Dr. Kåre Bremer, the President of Stockholm University, will visit the UW on May 26 to partcipate in a panel with Interim President Phyllis Wise on The University and the City, a capstone and a conversation about the global role of universities shaping present-day urban realities and future urban possibilites. The conversation, which will take place in Kane 120 at 6:30, is part of the 2010-2011 John E. Sawyer Seminar in the Study of Comparative Cultures at the University of Washington. It is a component of the NEXT CITY initiative, hosted by the Simpson Center for the Humanities. The event is free and open to the public.
The August Strindberg Society of Los Angeles (TASSLA) presents a reading of August Strindberg’s Dance of Death I in a new translation by Anne-Charlotte Hanes Harvey on Tuesday April 12, 2011, at 1.30 p.m. in Smith Hall 120
And
Tuesday April 12, 2011, at 7 p.m. at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Ballard with Michael Harvey, Anne-Charlotte Harvey, Peter Larlham, and Sandy Johnson
A riveting and explosive drama of grotesque humor and hatred, about a bitter artillery captain and his wife, a former actress, isolated in their island fortress quarters during a storm. The surprise return from America of her cousin sets things really going, including a threat of divorce, a near-seduction, and a dance-induced stroke. Absurdly funny but not a light comedy! Vintage Strindberg!
August Strindberg, Sweden’s foremost dramatist, used a pending silver anniversary to show his mastery at portraying intriguing characters. Dance of Death is a biting, deadly—but also absurdly funny—verbal duel between an artillery captain and his wife—modeled on Strindberg’s sister and brother-in-law—facing their quarter-century anniversary in self-imposed isolation in a fortress off the west coast of Sweden. Evenly matched, they spend their evenings in mutual blame and game playing until an unexpected visitor disrupts the status quo and ups the stakes for them both. Through the dramatic revelations that result, Strindberg addresses the nature of life, death, and life after death—burning issues for the aging playwright.
This concert reading of a new translation by Anne-Charlotte Harvey, Professor Emerita of Theatre at San Diego State University, is produced by TASSLA (The August Strindberg Society of Los Angeles). Joining her in performing Dance of Death are Los Angeles-based TASSLA member Sandy Johnson and two San Diego actor colleagues, her husband Michael Harvey and Peter Larlham.
Sunday, Dec 12. Lucia Celebration. Students from the UW’s Scandinavian Studies Department perform a Lucia tog plus traditional music by the Swedish Women’s Chorus and Svea Men’s Chorus, and dancing by Skandia Spelmanslag. Plus dancing around the Christmas tree, cookies and coffee. 3 pm.
For more information, please visit: http://www.swedishculturalcenter.org/index.htm
Professor Charcot with patient Blanche Wittman
Thursday, December 2, 6:30 pm - Public Lecture at the Frye Art Museum.
Professor Lotta Gavel Adams will speak on “August Strindberg and the Occult Societies of Paris in the 1890s”
The lecture is part of a series presented in conjunction with the exhibition Séance: Albert von Keller and the Occult, the Frye Art Museum, the University of Washington’s Germanic Department, and the Simpson Center for the Humanities. The series explores how artists, writers, and intellectuals in the late nineteenth century were fascinated with the occult and how this fascination opened up new creative paths.
This program is supported in part by a grant from Humanities Washington.
Free entry and free parking.
You may reserve the free tickets in advance to guarantee seating. To reserve, call (206) 432-8289 or e-mail rsvp@fryemuseum.org
Wednesday November 24, 2010
2:00 - 4:00 pm
Donald E. Petersen Room, Allen Library, UW
Jan Teorell, Associate Professor of Political Science, Lund University
Presented by the Center for West European Studies, Political Science Department, and European Union Center of Excellence
For more information, contact cwes@uw.edu
This lecture will examine how and why electoral corruption was abolished in the case of Sweden, drawing on original data from second-instance election petitions filed in 1719-1909. These petitions reveal fraudulent practices in the electoral history of Sweden, most notably systematic procedural violations committed by local election administrators towards the end of the Age of Liberty in the 18th century. By the mid 19th century, however, Swedish elections had by and large been purged from fraud, and most petitions instead concerned unclear regulations pertaining to suffrage and eligibility criteria. Teorell argues that this development cannot be explained by changes in electoral rules, such as the secret ballot, or by shifts in economic inequality. Instead, the ebb and flow of electoral fraud in Sweden could best be understood as stemming from the combination of two factors: partisanship and administrative corruption.
Jan Teorell, Associate Professor of Political Science at Lund University and Research Fellow at the Quality of Government Institute, Gothenburg University, received his PhD in 1998 with a dissertation on intra-party democracy. His latest publications have appeared in Political Research Quarterly, Governance, and the Journal of Democracy, and he has a book (Determinants of Democratization: Explaining Regime Change in the World, 1972-2006) coming out with Cambridge University Press this fall. Teorell’s research interests include political methodology and comparative politics, particularly political participation, public opinion, corruption and comparative democratization. He is currently working on a research project on how and why electoral fraud was abolished historically in Sweden and other established democracies, and is a Visiting Scholar at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University for the academic year 2010-2011.
Sweden Week is from May 2nd through May 9th. Below is an agenda for events on campus:
Tuesday, May 4
Public lecture:
Ia Dubois “The Making of the Myth of the Swedish Sexuality and Ingmar Bergman’s Films in the 1950s 1:30 - 3:20 in Smith Hall 120
Wednesday, May 5
Public lecture:
Christine Ingebritsen “Sweden’s Global Role” 10:30 - 11:20 in Sieg Hall 134
Public lecture:
Olavi Hemmilä “Narratives on Sustainability: Gustaf Fröding, Tomas Tranströmer, and Others”
1:30 - 2:20 in Parrington Hall 120
Thursday, May 6
Public lecture:
Swedish Ambassador to the US, Jonas Hafström will discuss current issues in Swedish politics and diplomacy 10:30 - 11:20 in SIG 134
Public lecture:
Andrew Nestingen “Ulcers, Fat, and Tattoos: Swedish Crime Fiction since the 1960s”
11:30 - 1:20 in Communications 326
Friday, May 7
Visit by Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden
Birgitta Steene, internationally-renowned scholar of Swedish literature, drama and film, will speak on the late Swedish director Ingmar Bergman.
Steene received a Special Jury Prize from the Theatre Library Association for her latest book Ingmar Bergman: A Reference Guide and was contributing author/editor of the multi-language volume The Bergman Archives, which was awarded the Swedish August (“Pulitzer”) prize as best non-fiction book of the year (2008).
Steene received her Ph.D. at the University of Washington in 1960. After returning to the UW as Full Professor in the Scandinavian Department, she served as Department Chair until 1978. In addition to her Department duties, she was also appointed the first Director of the new Cinema Studies Program at the University of Washington. In 1982, Steene’s undergraduate alma mater, Uppsala University in Sweden, bestowed upon her an honorary doctorate.
Allen Library Auditorium
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.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009, 5:30-6:30 pm in the Viking/SVEA room at the Swedish Cultural Center. A reception follows. For more information about this event, please click here. [PDF]
Entrepreneur, Business Leader, Investor and Board Executive Katarina G. Bonde shares her insights into the corporate worlds of Sweden and the US as part of the Empowerment - Swedish Style: The Pippi Longstocking Effect, sponsored by the Swedish Institute in Stockholm. Her talk on campus will be from 12:30 p.m. - 1:20 p.m. in Room 310 at the BAEEC (Bank of America Executive Education Center) hosted by the Global Business Center. For more information about this event, please click here. [PDF]
Nordic Heritage Museum
The 2000s saw a burst of literary creativity in Sweden, as young authors—many of them second-generation immigrants—began writing their own stories, set in a diversifying society where citizens with many different ethnic backgrounds were making claims to full-fledged Swedish identity. Doctoral candidate Peter Leonard will explore the imaginative fiction of Khemiri, Wenger, and Bakhtiari for hints of a new, “post-ethnic” Nordic identity in this talk as part of the Museum’s Wallenberg Lecture Series.
Criminalizing the Johns to Protect Victims of Prostitution:
Meet the Architect of Sweden’s Controversial Sex Law to Discuss its Consequences and Effects
Women’s University Club
Co-sponsored by the Center for Women and Democracy. Registration and dinner reservation required online.
Margareta Winberg is the former Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden, Secretary of Labor and Minister of Gender Equality Policies. Her lecture is part of Empowerment — Swedish Style: The Pippi Longstocking Effect, sponsored by the Swedish Institute in Stockholm and SAS Seattle.
Why Men and Women are More Equal in Sweden:
Proactive Policies in Swedish Legislation and Society
Smith 120
Margareta Winberg is the former Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden, Secretary of Labor and Minister of Gender Equality Policies. Her lecture is part of Empowerment — Swedish Style: The Pippi Longstocking Effect, sponsored by the Swedish Institute in Stockholm and SAS Seattle.
Katharsis for Two-Year Olds: From Aristotle to the Puppet Theatre Tittut
Thompson 125
Do very small children really enjoy and benefit from live theatre performance? Does a 2-year old get anything out of seeing, e.g., Little Tiger and Little Bear? Stockholm’s Puppet Theatre Tittut thinks so—and they have 30 years experience to prove it. Sweden’s forward-looking culture policy recognizes the central role played by art and literature in the development of very young children. Find out in what special way theatre benefits its youngest audience members and how you can help enrich the lives of the children in your world.
Anne-Charlotte Harvey is Professor Emerita of Theatre at San Diego State University and an acclaimed singer, actress, and translator.
Since 1948, students in the Scandinavian Department have performed a Luciatåg (Lucia procession) to celebrate the beginning of the holiday season. Join us this year for a special Lucia Concert on Friday, December 5th at 2:30 PM in room 108 in the Husky Union Building (HUB) on campus. This event is free and open to the public. Coffee and refreshments will be served following the concert. The event is being sponsored by the Scandinavian Department and the UW Swedish Club.
This year, the concert will feature an impressive 43-voice choir of students from Södra Vätterbygdens Folkhögskola in Jönköping, Sweden, as well as the members of the UW Swedish Club who will perform the Luciatåg. All students interested in participating in the Luciatåg should contact Swedish Club president, Sarah McConkey.
A note on the tradition: Lucia celebrations are held in many places in Scandinavia on Dec. 13th, Lucia’s saint day. The tradition of a girl wearing a crown of candles on her head is full of symbolism, most notedly the theme of the return of light at the darkest time of winter (Dec. 13th was the winter solstice on the old Julian calendar).
Staging Migration and Post-National Identities:
The Performance of Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality in Contemporary Europe
Iranian-Swedish playwright and director Farnaz Arbabi discusses the performance of ethnicity, gender, and sexuality in contemporary Europe with members of Lotta Gavel-Adams’ Drama seminar.
In the past couple of years her work has awakened political and cultural debate and secured some of Sweden’s most prestigious theater awards. In her 2006 adaption of the literary classic The Emigrants, she recasts Vilhelm Moberg’s epic of 19th-century immigration to America as a narrative of today’s immigration to Sweden. Her production of Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s play Invasion! (2006) deals with questions of ethnicity and identity among first-generation young people whose parents immigrated to Sweden.
In 2007, she produced Normal for Camp X theatre in Copenhagen, a devised work about sexuality and sexual identity among teenagers. This year, she directed the musical Hedwig and The Angry Inch for Stockholm City Theatre. In her talk, Arbabi will show filmed clips from her productions and discuss recurring themes in her work: identity, ethnicity, gender, and alienation among minority groups in contemporary Europe.
The Architecture of Private Life: Strindberg’s The Roofing Ceremony and the Modernist Novel
Anna Westerståhl Stenport is assistant professor of Swedish and Director of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. Her publications include studies of August Strindberg, Swedish cinema, and Swedish popular fiction.
From a Cold War to a Cold Peace. Time for a Revival of Disarmament?
The Department of Scandinavian Studies and the Alumni Association were honored to welcome Swedish diplomat Dr. Hans Blix to campus for a guest lecture on October 18th. Now you can view Blix’s speech, From a Cold War to a Cold Peace. Time for a Revival of Disarmament? online in streaming and downloadable video. Blix underscores the impact of our current political climate on world affairs and feature his insight and expertise regarding instituting change via weapons control.
Born in 1928 in Uppsala, Sweden, Dr. Blix’s career has largely been in politics and public service. From January 2000 until June 2003, he was appointed Executive Chairman of the United Nations Mentoring, Verification and Inspection Commission for Iraq by the UN Secretary-General. In early 2004, Dr. Blix chaired the independent international Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission. He has received several honorary doctorates, is the recipient of many decorations and awards, and has written numerous books on international and constitutional law and articles relating to energy and the problems of the spread of nuclear weapons.
Prize-winning Swedish author Heidi von Born visited the Department of Scadinavian Studies and Ia Dübois’ second-year Swedish class on May 11th, giving an overview of books recently published in Sweden.
Is the Swede Human? Radical Individualism in the Land of Social Solidarity
In this talk, Trägårdh & Berggren will discuss their book “Är svensken människa?” which claims that the supposedly socialist Swedes are, in fact, individualists in extremis. At the heart of the Swedish social contract lies a deeply rooted conception, what the authors call “a Swedish theory of love,” according to which authentic love and friendship is only possible between individuals who are independent and equal. This moral logic, joining the ideal of independence to those of economic equality and social solidarity, has been institutionalized in modern Sweden through the radical alliance between the individual and the state, which the authors term “statist individualism.”
Sweden’s Desperate Hunt for Diversity
Marjaneh Bakhtiari
Author and Critic
From the courtyards of multiracial housing projects to the backseats of immigrant-driven taxis, never have Swedish journalists been more eager to depict their nation’s new demographic reality. But what assumptions about religion, culture and language lie hidden behind this newfound obsession with multiculturalism?
Bakhtiari’s debut novel, Kalla det vad van du vill (Call It Whatever You Like), chronicles the lives of two Malmö families, Irandoust and Sundén, who meet when their two teenagers begin dating. In scenes alternately absurd and touching, Bakhtiari shines the spotlight on both “new” and “old” Swedes alike.
Swedish-language radio journalism by Bakhtiari:• Critique of “Mohammeds Taxi”, a TV program about integration
• Analysis of state radio’s outreach efforts in Rosengård
Sweden and Europe and the Era of Globalization: How are Europe and Sweden Performing?
Gunnar Lund
Swedish Ambassador to the United States
Ambassador Lund will speak in Christine Ingebritsen’s International Political Economy course.
The Evolution of the Modern State
Steinmo (University of Colorado, Boulder) examines the ways Sweden, Germany, Japan and the US have responded and adapted to the pressures of globalization, demographic change and the decline of public trust. He also introduces insights drawn from evolutionary theory and suggest that there is much to gain from this approach to improve our understandings of political and institutional change. This talk will focus on the case of Sweden.
New Music by UW Student Cónan Mclemore
Three Poems of Vesaas, a sonata for flute & piano commissioned by Ed Egerdahl for the 25th anniversary of the Scandinavian Language Institute and based on three poems of Tarjei Vesaas: Vårlukten, Slik Var Den Draumen, and Gjennom Nakne Greiner.
Concertino for Alto Saxophone (a musical re-telling of Helge Kjellin’s Swedish fairy tale Leap the Elk and Little Princess Cottongrass.
Brechemin Auditorium (Music 128)
Ecological Man and the Laponia World Heritage Site
Hugh Beach is Professor of Anthropology at the Department of Cultural Anthropology & Ethnology, Uppsala University, Sweden. His extensive body of research includes: Saami (Lapp) and Circumpolar Studies, Pastoralism, Minority Politics, the Social Effects of the Chernobyl Disaster, the “Politics of Ecology” (Global Environmentalism and Indigenous Rights). Sponsored by Program on the Environment and the Department of Anthropology
Lunacy, Political Arrogance, and Nationalism: Eighteenth Century Scandinavian Music in a Nutshell
Bertil van Boer is a musicologist, composer, conductor and violinist. Van Boer (Western Washington University, Bellingham) specializes in Scandinavian music of the 18th century. His own compositions have been performed in Austria, Sweden, US, Nicaragua and served as conductor with the Opera Kansas.
Leading researchers from Seattle and Sweden will present state-of-the-art studies & promising new developments for children and adolescents with diabetes.
Bell Harbor International Conference Center
2211 Alaskan Way Seattle, WA 98121
Cross-Dressing: Concepts of Gender and Self in the Films of Ingmar Bergman
Marilyn Johns Blackwell, Professor of Scandinavian Studies and Director of Swedish at Ohio State University, earned her Ph.D. at the University of Washington in 1976. She is the author of three books on Swedish literature and film (Gender and Representation in the Films of Ingmar Bergman [1997], Persona: The Transcendent Image [1986], and C.J.L. Almqvist and Romantic Irony [1983]), and she is the editor of Structures of Influence: A Comparative Approach to August Strindberg [1981]. In addition to her books, Dr. Blackwell has published widely in North American and Scandinavian journals on Strindberg, Ibsen, Bergman, Vesaas and Dinesen. A distinguished literary scholar and popular teacher, she regularly teaches courses on the films of Ingmar Bergman and Scandinavian literary topics. The Department of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Washington is proud to welcome Dr. Marilyn Johns Blackwell back to the UW campus as the first distinguished alumni lecturer.
Eighteenth-Century Stockholm in American English
Paul Norlen, Ph.D.
Affiliate Assistant Professor
Regarding Some Problems Translating Ernst Brunner’s First-Person Novel about Carl Michael Bellman.
Nature and the Authorities as Artistic Material
Lars Vilks
Sculptor and Professor of Art Theory, Bergen National Academy of the Arts
Article on Vilks (in Swedish):
Lars Vilks om sparandets konst
Svenska Dagbladet
September 8 2004
Part of Modern Vikings
Going Baroque: August Strindberg on Science and the Visual Arts
August Strindberg is regarded as a founding father of modern drama. In the groundbreaking plays To Damascus, A Dream Play and The Ghost Sonata he develops an innovative dream-poetics that had a profoundly influenced later writers and directors. Paradoxically, the radical modernism evident in these plays and other writings is built on archaic and anti-modern premises. In the 1890s, Strindberg abandoned fiction and began experiments in chemistry, alchemy, photography, and optics, seeking to develop an interdisciplinary total science. This work is arguably a conscious attempt to reject the scientific paradigm for a regression to archaic, medieval and baroque ideas about God, nature, man and his place in the universe. In this talk, Balbierz (Jagiellonian University in Krakow) reconstructs Strindberg’s scientific theories and show how he uses modern media such as photography to create an aesthetics that is both modernist and neo-baroque.
Photography by Eva Sköld Westerlind on view at the Nordic Heritage Museum Dec 2 2004 through Jan 2 2005
Born in Nyköping, Sweden, Westerlind currently lives and works in Kirkland. A graduate of the Photographic Center NW, her work has been published in numerous journals and magazines.
Underwritten by the Scandinavian Initiative for the Pacific Northwest, Western Canada,
and Alaska.
Photo from the series Solitary Traveler
Mikael Niemi will discuss his best-selling novel Popularmusik från Vittula, recently translated into English.
Kids, Trolls, and the Environment in the Picture Book World of Elsa Beskow
Part of Modern Vikings: The Scandinavian Initiative for Alaska, the Pacific Northwest and Western canada, supported by the Nordic Council of Ministers
Nurturing the Natural: Children and the Environment in the Nordic Picture Books
An exhibition at Pacific Lutheran University and The University of Washington. Curated by the National Museum of Women in the Arts, New York.
Sept 15 to Oct 29:
Scandinavian Cultural Center
Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma
Nov 3 to Dec 30:
Suzzallo Library
University of Washington, Seattle
Part of Modern Vikings: The Scandinavian Initiative for Alaska, the Pacific Northwest and Western canada, supported by the Nordic Council of Ministers
Image: Anna Höglund Hjälp!, skrek trädet (Help!, shrieked the tree), 1991
