Phone: 510-642-2979
Initial point of contact for the department; Coordination of departmental access including keys and cardkeys; Listserv management; Seminar room and other space reservations; Liaison with IT and with Campus and L&S Facilities; Mail and supply administration, etc.
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Joshua Lee is a current PhD student at UC Berkeley’s Department of Scandinavian. He received his BA from the University of Edinburgh in History and Politics in 2020, and an MLitt in Mediaeval History from the University of St Andrews in 2021, where he studied medieval Icelandic society, Latin, Old Norse, and Palaeography and Codicology. His master’s thesis was entitled ‘Friendship and Mistrust: characterising interactions between Scoto-Norse leaders and Norwegian kings c.1100-1260’.
Victoria Häggblom is a writer and translator of Swedish with an MFA from Columbia University. Her translation of poet Bruno K. Öijer’s The Trilogy won the American-Scandinavian Foundation’s translation prize and her short fiction has been published in several literary journals. Her interests are Critical Theory, Ecocriticism, Creative Writing, and Scandinavian modernist literature.
Natalya is a current PhD student at the department of Scandinavian with a Designated Emphasis in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies. She obtained a B.A. in English and Scandinavian Studies at BYU in 2021, and received her M.A. from UC Berkeley in 2023. Her research interests include the relationship between Nordic literature and its political contexts, especially as it relates to the political landscape of women (including trans women) and gender queer individuals. » read more »
Sofie Malmborg Hansen is a Danish novelist with an MA in Anthropology from the University of Copenhagen. Sofie’s debut novel, Bargums synder (2020), about Danish transatlantic slave trade, received the Danish Debutantpris, a prize awarded annually to the best literary fiction debut published in Denmark. She moved to the Bay Area in August 2021 to work as a lecturer at UC Berkeley’s Scandinavian Department, where she currently teaches courses on Scandinavian colonialism and contemporary Nordic novels, in addition to Beginning and Intermediate Danish. In all her classes, she aims to foster curiosity and creative expression.
Sofie has previously worked as a translator of fiction and taught university level classes on qualitative research methods and academic writing. As an anthropologist, she has worked to empower young people to build and engage in local democracy. Her ongoing interests include economic anthropology, new literary fiction, podcasts, and wild plants.
Professor Tangherlini’s research focuses on folklore, and aspects of informal culture in Scandinavia, with a primary focus on Denmark. A folklorist and ethnographer by training, he has worked extensively on understanding the circulation of informal storytelling in both agrarian and urban communities, and the manner in which stories both reflect and inform changes in social, economic and political organization. He has developed various computational methods for the study of topic change and geographic distribution in large folklore corpora. These include standard descriptive statistical methods, the application of probabilistic modeling, natural language processing techniques, and the use of historical geographic information systems (hGIS). He has also worked on network methods for understanding complex, dynamic systems not only to describe storytelling networks and classify stories, but also to understand the networks within stories, be those networks derived from character interactions in the Icelandic sagas, or actant-relationship networks derived from stories about witchcraft. Prof. Tangherlini has extended the use of these computational methods to understanding aspects of literary movements, such as the Modern Breakthrough, and individual authorships, such as that of H.C. Andersen.
Prof. Tangherlini also explores aspects of contemporary Danish cinema, with a particular focus on the representation of culturally informed systems of interaction or institutions, and the use of visually-based narrative as a means for exploring social, economic and political decision-making and community-making.
Prof. Tangherlini has worked extensively on the study of Korean folklore and culture, as well as the development of the field of Computational Folkloristics. Current projects include the tracking of conspiracy theories in social media, and the extraction of dance moves and sequences from K-pop music videos.
Books:
Nordic Mythologies: Interpretations, Intersections, and Institutions. Ed. TR Tangherlini, Berkeley, North Pinehurst Press, 2014.
Danish Folktales, Legends, and Other Stories, Seattle, Univ. of Washington Press, 2013.
News from Other Worlds. Ed. M Kaplan and TR Tangherlini, Berkeley, North Pinehurst Press, 2012.
Sitings: Critical Approaches to Korean Geography. Ed. TR Tangherlini and S Yea. Honolulu, Univ. of Hawaii, 2007.
Nationalism and the Construction of Korean Identity. Ed. TR Tangherlini and HI Pai. Berkeley, Institute of East Asian Studies, 1999.
Talking Trauma: Paramedics and Their Stories, Jackson, Univ. Mississippi Press, 1998.
Interpreting Legend: Danish Storytellers and their Repertoires, New York, Routledge, 1994(2015).
Documentary Films:
Us & Them: Korean Indie Rock in a K-Pop World. Dir. S Epstein and TR Tangherlini, Berkeley, Traumatic Productions, 2014.
Our Nation: A Korean Punk Rock Community. Dir. S Epstein and TR Tangherlini, New York, Alexander Street, 2003.
Talking Trauma. Dir. TR Tangherlini, Chicago, 1994.
Websites:
The Danish Folklore Macroscope.
Michael Lawson is a 4th-year PhD student in the Department of Scandinavian with a dual focus on Scandinavian Languages & Literatures and Medieval Studies.