Somehow October is here, the Swedish House’s annual kräftskiva dinner has come and gone, the leaves are changing as they always so beautifully do this time of year, and the semester and academic year are well underway!
The Department is thrilled to have Dr. Ursula Lindqvist beginning her second year at Gustavus, and this fall we are enjoying the addition of David Jessup, who is teaching one of the Department’s three sections of Swedish-101. Welcome, David! We’re so glad to have you with us!
As Gustavus’s 50th annual Nobel Conference continues on its second day, Wednesday, October 8th, Professor Glenn Kranking will present a talk on the life and legacy of conference namesake, Alfred Nobel. We look forward to listening to you, Glenn! Professor Kranking’s opening remarks and the conference, in its entirety, can be followed from afar, streaming live online, from the conference website: https://gustavus.edu/events/nobelconference/2014/.
This fall Professor Lindqvist is offering a new course in the Department, SCA-330: “Nordic Theatre and Drama.” This Friday, October 3rd, Gustavus Department of Theatre and Dance Professor Amy Seham, and Department of Scandinavian Studies and Department of Theatre and Dance Gustavus alumnus Ethan Bjelland ’12, will visit Professor Lindqvist’s class to discuss “Grey Duck,” a play written by Seham and starring Bjelland, which was performed as part of this past summer’s Minnesota Fringe Festival, and was inspired by Henrik Ibsen’s “The Wild Duck”: http://www.fringefestival.org/2014/show/?id=2755. On Friday, October 10th, as part of Professor Lindqvist’s course, students will attend the Theatre Coup d’Etat performance of August Strindberg’s “Miss Julie” at the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis. Members of the cast and the director will engage in a post-performance discussion with the students.
The performance of “Miss Julie” is one of many events tied to Fotografiska’s (The Stockholm Museum of Photography’s) “The Image of Strindberg” exhibit, which has been on view at ASI throughout the summer and ends October 24th; on September 24th, Professor Kjerstin Moody presented the talk “Images of Strindberg” at ASI as part of the events related to the exhibit: http://www.asimn.org/programs-education/events/lecture-images-strindberg.
Later this month we look forward to welcoming two guest scholars, Dr. William Banks from the Department of German, Scandinavian and Dutch, at the University of Minnesota for a lecture on Georg Brandes (on Monday, October 13th), and Dr. Benjamin Teitelbaum, from the University of Colorado at Boulder for a lecture on music, gender, right-wing radicalism, and ideologies of tacit ethnocentrism in Scandinavia (on Monday, October 27th). The lectures are free and open to the public, and will take place at 7:00 p.m., in Confer 128. Both scholars’ visits are tied to Professor Kjerstin Moody’s SCA-100: “Introduction to Scandinavian Life and Culture” course, and the guests will lead the class in discussion earlier both days.
In addition to regular postings about events and happenings in the Department over the course of this academic year, please also keep an eye out for Academic Assistant and senior major Lesley Darling’s monthly posts to the blog: each month, she will profile one current student in the Department, and one alumnus/alumnae of the Department.
In closing, we would like to (again) invite all current students and alumni of the Department to join us this Saturday, October 4th, from 4:00-7:00 p.m. at our annual Student-Alumni Homecoming BBQ at the home of Professor Glenn Kranking. RSVPs can be sent to Lesley Darling (ldarling@gac.edu).
And don’t forget, for those of you on Facebook, you can follow the Department postings there: Here’s one of the highlights from last May’s wonderful Out of Scandinavia Artist in Residence visit with the smart, funny, kind, and generous Swedish crime fiction writer Arne Dahl (cake courtesy of Lesley Darling, and the knife, well, we’re not quite sure where it came from, or how, exactly, it got there . . .): https://www.facebook.com/218693374811167/photos/pb.218693374811167.-2207520000.1410794129./843249442355554/?type=1