New Directions Series
Sverre Arestad Endowed Professor in Norwegian Studies and Chair | Ph.D. University of North Texas, 1978
Tel. +1-206-543-7233 |
Fax +1-206-685-9173 | Email: leiren@uw.edu
| Homepage
Professor Leiren teaches Scandinavian history and culture for the Department. His teaching also includes third- and fourth-year language and culture courses in the Norwegian Studies program. Leiren has been a member of the UW faculty since 1977 and has served as Department Chair since 1995. Professor Leiren was appointed to be the Department's first Sverre Arestad Endowed Professor in Norwegian Studies in 2007. He also has an appointment in the Department of History as Adjunct Professor of History.
Terje Leiren is co-general editor (with Christine Ingebritsen) of a new book series with the University of Washington Press — New Directions in Scandinavian Studies,. The series seeks to publish books which offer interdisciplinary approaches to the Nordic region of Scandinavia and the Baltic States and their cultural connections in North America with a focus on the study of the culture, history, literature and poltics of the North. To date, five books have appeared in the series.
Small States in International Relations. (2006)
Danish Cookbooks: Domesticity and National Identity, 1616-1901. (2007)
Crime and Fantasy in Scandinavia: Fiction, Film and Social Change. (2008)
Selected Plays of Marcus Thrane. (2007)
Munch’s Ibsen: A Painter's Visions of a Playwright. (2008)
Knut Hamsun: The Dark Side of Literary Brilliance. (2009)
Terje Leiren’s
research focuses on Norwegian studies, primarily 19th and
early-20th century Norwegian
history and the cultural history of Norwegian-America. He is
interested in questions of national identity, ethnicity, and
cultural
expression. Leiren has written extensively on the history of
the
Norwegian-Swedish Union (1814-1905), the establishment of
the modern Norwegian monarchy, and the American career of
Marcus Thrane, a Norwegian radical labor leader who
immigrated to the United States in February, 1864, where he
edited several newspapers, wrote and produced plays of the
immigrant experience while agitating for a more enlightened
Scandinavian-American populace.
Selected Plays of Marcus Thrane, published in 2007 by the Norwegian-American Historical Association and the University of Washington Press, was translated and edited by Professor Leiren from the original hand-written manuscripts of Marcus Thrane.
Terje Leiren has contributed to, and appeared in, several television productions on the Vikings for the History Channel, the History Channel International, and the A&E Network. His current research examines aspects of the development of Norwegian national identity in the nineteenth century.
During the last decade, Professor Leiren has participated as
lecturer and host on several tours on behalf of the UW Alumni
Association's UW Alumni Tours to Greenland, Iceland, Denmark,
Norway, Finland, Sweden, Ireland, Scotland, Russia, Estonia, Latvia,
Lithuania, Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic. In August, 2010, he
will accompany the UW Alumni Tour's "Scandinavian Odyssey" to Denmark,
Norway and Sweden.
