Phone: 510-643-2542
Purchasing; reimbursements; accounts reconciliation including campus recharge, credit card, deposits, gift management; travel and lodging arrangements; faculty research funds administration; student hiring; course textbook coordination; website administration; department level computer support and equipment coordinator.
Wed, Thu, Fri: in office; Mon, Tue: working remotely
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Rue works on contact between Scandinavia and the Byzantine Empire during the Viking and Middle Ages, with a focus on the Varangian Guard and their legacy in the Old Norse saga tradition. Other research interests include Norse mythology, adaptation and narrative evolution, and the role of Vikings in current video game culture.
Ida Moen Johnson’s interest in Scandinavian studies stems from her upbringing in a Scandinavian-American family and her studies of comparative literature. She earned her undergraduate degree in comparative literature in 2005 from Brown University where she focused on Spanish and French literature of the Caribbean. » read more »
Jenna received her PhD in Scandinavian from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2017 with a dissertation titled “Conceptions of Nature in Nynorsk Poetry: Local Language and Situated Nature Knowledge in Ivar Aasen, Olav Nygard, and Aslaug Vaa.” Having received her BA in Anthropology from the University of Chicago, Jenna’s research is interdisciplinary, focusing on the intersection between language, literature, and cultural practice, especially at moments of significant environmental and social change. Her research on poetry focuses on how poets use poetic form and vernacular language to navigate these changes. She has two publications forthcoming on the poetry of Inger Elisabeth Hansen, and she has also published on postcolonialism in the work of Thor Heyerdahl. Jenna has taught Norwegian language at Berkeley, as well as courses on place, immigration, travel narratives, and nature in Scandinavian literature and culture.
Lotta Weckström’s research interest centers on sociolinguistics, social anthropology and the subjective, yet often shared, experience of migration, alternative narratives, digital humanities, ethnographic research, and oral histories. In her work, she combines sociolinguistics, rhetoric and argumentation and the study of migration in interdisciplinary projects. For her dissertation she worked with young people with Finnish background in Sweden focusing on cultural heritage, language use and feelings of national belonging. Her research specialties are linguistic minorities, migrant women in post-war Europe, and migration in all its manifestations.
Weckström is an experienced instructor, she has taught university level courses in her native Finland, in Germany, the Netherlands and in the US. She makes creative use of new classroom technology and aims to design the courses in a manner that involves students actively in the learning process. She is also a language instructor for Finnish as a second language and, in addition, teaches German language courses.
She works currently as a lecturer at Department of Scandinavian teaching courses in Finnish culture and history.
Books
Representations of Finnishness in Sweden. Studia Fennica. Linguistica, Finnish Literature Society, Helsinki. 2011. 173 pages.
Suomalaisuus on kuin vahakangas. Ruotsinsuomalaiset nuoret kertovat suomalaisuudestaan. Tutkimuksia A36. Siirtolaisuusinstituutti & Sverigefinnarnas Arkiv, Stockholm. 2011. 160 pages. (Finnishness is like a washcloth — Young Sweden Finns talk about Finnishness).
Professor Rugg’s research has long focused on issues related to self-construction and self-representation, particularly in textual autobiography and visual media. Authorship is another strong allied research interest, with special attention to the authorships and authorial personae of August Strindberg, Mark Twain, Ingmar Bergman, and a range of art cinema directors who perform as authors. In addition to her interest in autobiographical studies, Rugg has drawn inspiration for her research from two of the courses she teaches: “Ecology and Culture in Scandinavia” and “Hyperwhite: Policing the Boundaries of Whiteness in American Literature and Film.” The ecology course led to an exploration of the Scandinavian ecological subject in literature, art, and film, while the hyperwhite course (based originally on American culture) developed into a study of whiteness and race as represented in Nordic literature, film, and visual arts. She is working on articles and book projects in both of these fields. Rugg has been active as a translator of critical essays and literature from both Swedish and German into English. She enjoys lecturing and teaching in the broader community, both in individual presentations at diverse venues and through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University. She has served as a consultant on the Environmental Humanities to Sweden’s Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research (MISTRA). For five years she acted as a member of the Modern Language Association’s Executive Division Committee for Autobiography, Biography, and Life-Writing, and she has also served as a member of the Executive Board for the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study. She is on the editorial board for Samlaren: Tidskrift för forskning om svensk och annan nordisk litteratur (Journal for the Study of Swedish and Other Nordic Literature.” She is a co-editor with colleague Professor Sanders for the third volume of the ICLA project, A Comparative History of Nordic Literary Cultures.
Books
Self-Projection: The Director’s Image in Art Cinema, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014.
Picturing Ourselves: Photography and Autobiography (1997) University of Chicago Press. 286 pages, 38 illustrations.
Karen Møller directs the Scandinavian Languages program and mentors the Graduate Student Instructors who teach Scandinavian-language courses. She teaches all levels of Danish language classes and courses in Nordic philology, foreign-language pedagogy, Scandinavian emigration and inter-Nordic communication. Her interests are focused on foreign-language teaching and learning, especially related to Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTL). Throughout her career Møller has been devoted to developing her teaching and teacher training to encompass effective new approaches promoting language learning. She has previously worked on introducing Readers Theater and implemented Watcyn-Jones’ Pair Work theory; more recently, she has adapted Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) for the foreign Language classroom and explored the benefits for language teaching in a Flipped Classroom. She was part of a pioneering team to develop an online and synchronous Distance Learning Program, which shares language classes between all ten UC campuses, a topic on which she gives workshops and presentations. Møller has served as Academic Coordinator with the Berkeley Language Center (BLC) from 1992-1997 under Claire Kramsch as Director, and she has since 1996 served as Faculty interviewer and Mentor for the Regents’ and Chancellor’s Scholarship (under CUSH).
Professor Lindow’s research focuses on two areas. Within the Old Norse-Icelandic literary tradition, he is particularly interested in myth and religion and the texts and genres that reflect them. In his research on the folklore of northern Europe, Lindow has specialized in the stories of the rural countryside, from Greenland to Karelia. Common to his research in both areas is an attempt to understand how texts function, both internally and in their greater literary and cultural contexts, with the concept of “culture” understood broadly.
With Jens Peter Schjødt and Anders Andrén, he is co-editor of the forthcoming Pre-Christian Religions of the North: History and Structures (4 vols, Brepols), and his book Old Norse Mythology is forthcoming with Oxford University Press. Lindow has taught as a Fulbright lecturer at the University of Iceland and held a research appointment at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Iceland and in 2018 was awarded the Knights Cross of the Order of the Falcon of the Republic of Iceland.
Books
Trolls: An Unnatural History. London: Reaktion Books, 2014.
Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs. Oxford etc.: Oxford Univ. Press, 2002.
Medieval Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Myths, Legends, Tales, Beliefs, and Customs. Ed. Carl Lindahl, John McNamara, and John Lindow. ABC Clio, 2000. Also Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2002.
Murder and Vengeance Among the Gods: Baldr in Scandinavian Mythology. FF Communications, 262. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1997.
Scandinavian Mythology: An Annotated Bibliography. Garland Folklore Bibliographies, 13; Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, 393. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1988.
Structure and Meaning in Old Norse Literature: New Approaches to Textual Analysis and Literary Criticism. Ed. John Lindow, Lars Lönnroth and Gerd Wolfgang Weber. Viking Series, 3. Odense: Odense University Press, 1986.
Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A Critical Guide. Ed. with Carol Clover. Cornell Univ. Press, 1985. Rpt. University of Toronto Press, 2005.
Swedish Legends and Folktales. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978.
Comitatus, Individual and Honor: Studies in North Germanic Institutional Vocabulary. University of California Publications in Linguistics, 83. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976.
Professor Heslop’s research centres on Old Norse textual culture, especially skaldic and eddic poetry, the sagas and the heroic tradition. » read more »