Lecture on Contemporary Norwegian Poet Inger Elisabeth Hansen

The Department of Scandinavian Studies looks forward to welcoming Dr. Jenna Coughlin, St. Olaf College, for a lecture “You Can Shock Yourself with the Starlings: The Ecopoetry of Inger Elisabeth Hansen,” on Monday, April 15th, at 7:00 p.m. in 101 Beck Hall. Coughlin will also be a guest in Kjerstin Moody’s SCA-224: “Scandinavian Women Writers” course. Her evening lecture is free and open to the public. Welcome, Jenna, and all who would like to come and listen!

Abstract of Dr. Coughlin’s talk:

While representations of the natural world have played a pivotal role in Norwegian poetry throughout its history, in recent years a growing number of poets have begun to engage with what the scholar Lynn Keller calls the “self-conscious Anthropocene,” an understanding of nature as fundamentally influenced and altered by human activity. Poets who hold this view of nature often explore how experimental poetic forms might better represent our current moment and perhaps help us to discover better ways of relating to the more-than-human world. This lecture will present the work of Inger Elisabeth Hansen, an award-winning poet and translator who is particularly interested in the relationship between language, representation, and power, as a Norwegian example of poetry of the self-conscious Anthropocene. It will also situate Hansen within the broader picture of how Norwegian authors are responding to climate change and public policy.