UW Scandinavian Studies

Marianne Stecher-Hansen

Associate Professor; Scan|Design Foundation Professor in Danish Studies | Ph.D. UC Berkeley, 1990
Tel. +1-206-543-6084 | Email marianne@u.washington.edu

Lectures & Conference Papers:

“Nordic Connections in the Pacific Northwest,” invited public lecture for visiting Danish delegation of legislators from Copenhagen Regions Capital, Nordic Heritage Museum, Seattle, 18 January 2009.

“Refugees and Immigrants in Nordic Literature,” Invited University Lecture in series ‘Law and Literature,” Institute of Law, University of Oslo, Norway, 21 March 2007.

“Colonialism and Revisionist Historiography: Thorkild Hansen’s Slave Trilogy,” Denmark and The Black Atlantic, International Conference, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, 4 – 6 May 2006.

“Knut Hamsun – Great Voices of Norwegian Literature,” in Norway – a Centennial Celebration, invited public lecture, co-sponsored by Royal Embassy of Norway and the Smithsonian Associates, The Smithsonian, Washington, D.C., 14 November 2005.

“Picturing Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen): European Storyteller in the American Marketplace,” invited plenary lecture, International Conference on Danish Culture, Past and Present: The Last 200 Years, Danish American Heritage Society, Des Moines, Iowa, 14 October 2005.

“From Romantic to Modernist Meta-texts: Commemorating Andersen and the Self-Referential Text,” invited plenary lecture, Fourth International Hans Christian Andersen Conference, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark, 4 August 2005.

“A Moment in History: Rescue of the Danish Jews, 1943,” invited public lecture for exhibit opening, A Living Wall, co-sponsored by Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center and Northwest Danish Foundation Odegaard Undergraduate Library, University of Washington, 11 January 2004.

Publications:

Books:
Danish Writers from the Reformation to Decadence, 1550-1900 WorldCat, edited and with an introduction by Stecher-Hansen, volume 300 in Dictionary of Literary Biography, produced by Bruccoli Clark Layman (Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2004), 593 pp.

Twentieth-Century Danish Writers WorldCat, edited and with an introduction by Stecher-Hansen, volume 214 in Dictionary of Literary Biography, produced by Bruccoli Clark Layman (Detroit: Gale Group, 1999), 518 pp.

History Revisited: Fact and Fiction in Thorkild Hansen's Documentary Works WorldCat, Studies in Scandinavian Literature and Culture (Columbia SC: Camden House, 1997), 164 pp.

Articles:

“Thorkild Hansen and the Critique of Empire” in A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures – Continental Europe and its Empires, edited by Prem Poddar, Rajeev Patke, and Lars Jensen (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008). 74 - 77.

“Romantic and Modern Metatexts: Commemorating Andersen and the Self-Referential Text,” in Hans Christian Andersen between Children’s Literature and Adult Literature (Odense: Hans Christian Andersen Center/University Press of Southern Denmark, 2007). 88 – 101.

“Picturing Karen Blixen—Artist, Charlatan, Heretic, and Iconoclast: European Storyteller in the American Marketplace” in The Bridge: Journal of the Danish American Heritage Society—Danish Culture, Past and Present: The Last Two Hundred Years 29:2 (2006): 25 – 41.

“Scandinavian Literature,” in Encyclopedia of Literature and Politics, vol. 3, edited by M. Keith Booker (Westport, Connecticut/London: Greenwood Press, 2005), pp. 632 – 634.

“H.C. Andersen’s ‘Historien om en Moder’: Allegory and Symbol in the Danish Golden Age” in Hans Christian Andersen: Old Problems and New Readings, edited by Steven P. Sondrup (Odense: Hans Christian Andersen Center/U of Southern Denmark Press and Brigham Young University, 2004), pp. 97-116.

With Bo Kampmann Walther, “Hans Adolph Brorson” in Danish Writers from the Reformation to Decadence, 1550-1900, edited by Stecher-Hansen, vol. 300 in Dictionary of Literary Biography (Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2004). 126 – 132.

"Both Sacred and Secretly Gay: Isak Dinesen's 'The Blank Page,'" [Reprinted from Pacific Coast Philology, 29:1 (1994): 3-13] in Short Story Criticism: Criticism of the Works of Short Fiction Writers, vol. 75, edited by Joseph Palmisano (Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2004), pp. 46-51.

Romantic and Modern Metatexts: Commemorating Andersen and the Self-Referential Text,” in Hans Christian Andersen between Children’s Literature and Adult Literature, (Odense: University of Southern Denmark Press). 2008.


Areas of Expertise:

Areas of teaching and scholarly expertise in cultural and literary studies, including Danish language and literature, modern Scandinavian literature (including Danish, Norwegian, Swedish literature), authorships of Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) and Karen Blixen (1885 – 1962) as well as Nordic history and literature of the World War II period. Nordic colonialism and postcolonial studies of Scandinavian literature and history is an area of developing focus.

Programs:

Program Director, Copenhagen Classroom Summer Program
Program Director, Scan|Design Fellowship Program

Teaching:

SCAND 515: Pre-19th Century Scandinavian Literature
SCAN 508: Topics in Scandinavian Prose
SCAN 445/EURO 445: War and Occupation in the Nordic Region
SCAN 462/WO 462: Isak Dinesen and Karen Blixen
SCAN 312: Masterpieces in Scandinavian Literature
SCAN 232: Hans Christian Andersen and the Fairy-Tale
DAN 310: The Danish Short Story
DAN 311: Topics in Danish Literature and Culture
DAN 312: The Danish Novel