Welcome, Ulrika! Posted on July 18th, 2011 by Helena Karlsson

Join me in welcoming Dr. Ulrika Dahl to Gustavus and our department. Ulrika Dahl (B.A. Lawrence University, Ph. D. University of California, Santa Cruz) is Assistant Professor and Chair of Gender Studies at Södertörn University in Stockholm and a regular contributor to contemporary Scandinavian feminist debate. An activist at heart, a cultural anthropologist by training and with a passion for creative writing, Dr Dahl’s interdisciplinary work is informed by European postcolonial and feminist ethnography, queer and critical race feminist theories and driven by a commitment to methodologies for social change.

Among her publications are the widely reviewed book Femmes of Power: Exploding Queer Femininities (with visual artist Del LaGrace Volcano, Serpent’s Tail 2008) and numerous articles on femme figurations, femininity and feminist theory, fashion and queer and lesbian community making. With a commitment to antiracist and queer interventions, Ulrika has also written about homophobia and hate crimes, queer reproductive politics and most recently, she has completed a foreword to a translation of the work of Sara Ahmed on the hegemony of whiteness into Swedish (Tankekraft förlag 2011).  This fall she will be completing a book of these essays in Swedish, entitled Skamgrepp: Femme-inistiska essäer that brings together her writings over the past decade. Committed to the circulation of feminist knowledge, she is also senior editor of lambda nordica, Scandinavia’s leading journal of LGBTQ studies and serves on the advisory board of several scientific and popular feminist and antiracist journals, including Tidskrift för Genusvetenskap, Bang and Slut.

As the Fulbright Hildeman scholar at Gustavus Adolphus, Ulrika Dahl will be teaching a class on gender and sexuality in Scandinavia, where she will be offering both historical and contemporary perspectives, introducing students to Scandinavian feminist scholarship and as well to a wide range of topics drawing on popular culture, film and theories of gender. Ulrika will also be offering public lectures to the Gustavus community from her current research and welcomes working together with students and faculty interested in European postcolonial feminist theory, queer theory, Scandinavian social movements, femininities and other topics related to her areas of expertise. With her partner, she very much looks forward to getting to know the Gustavus community and to learning about the Scandinavian legacies of both the college and Minnesota, as well as to visiting old with friends from her college days in the Midwest.

Students and faculty and the Gustavus community – this is a unique opportunity for you to meet, work with, and learn from a very interesting and accomplished scholar in the field of gender & sexuality! See the course description below for information about the course Ulrika will be teaching! For questions to Ulrika before her arrival at Gustavus, please feel free to email her at: ulrika.dahl@sh.se, or email me with any questions you may have.

Helena Karlsson (hkarlsso@gac.edu)

SCA 344 – Gender and Sexuality in Scandinavia (T TH 2:30-4:20)

Gender equality, gay marriage, reproductive rights, strict prostitution laws and strong feminist movements, are among the factors that contribute to an image of Scandinavia as progressive and even utopian, when it comes to gender and sexual politics. In this course we will study some of the historical, ideological and cultural factors that have put gender and sexuality at the center of the (re)making of modern Sweden in particular. Making the politics of class, race, migration and nationbuilding central to our investigation, the course also introduces Scandinavian (feminist) scholarship, fiction and film.  Students will need a basic familiarity with theories of gender.