Dear alumni and friends,
I’m writing as chair of the Scandinavian Department to encourage you to participate in UC Berkeley’s annual 24-hour online fundraising blitz this Thursday, March 11: Big Give!
By donating directly to our department during Big Give, you can join others in showing your passion for Berkeley and help ensure the continued excellence of the Department of Scandinavian. We are sincerely grateful to those of you who have donated in the past, and we welcome both new and return participation this time.
Your support will be especially meaningful this year after the challenges brought on by the pandemic. Online instruction has forced us all to rethink the way we teach and study. We have all risen to the occasion and look forward to bringing these experiences with us as we return to the classroom.
Our department is made up of energetic scholars in a variety of Scandinavian and interdisciplinary areas, spanning fields such as literary studies, philology, folklore, film and media studies, medieval studies, theater history, art history and the digital humanities. This year we have been particularly excited that Timothy Tangherlini joined the faculty as Professor of Danish and that Kate Heslop was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor of Old Norse.
For the upcoming year, we hope to offer an exciting array of courses including language instruction in four modern Nordic languages (Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish) as well as Old Norse, along with content courses such as A Cultural History of Nordic Values, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, The Scandinavian Novel, Scandinavian Myth and Religion, Finnish Culture and History, and Network Analysis of Saga Worlds. These will
expose campus-wide Berkeley students to the rich intellectual and cultural world of the Nordic region.
Your support will help us carry on this vibrancy and can allow us to offer new opportunities to our students, to maintain our department library and facilities, and to continue hosting Nordic-related events of interest to students and the general public.
Please read more about our profiles, courses, and events on our web site. You may also subscribe to our events announcements by sending us a request by email.
On behalf of our faculty and students, I thank you in advance for considering a donation to our department by clicking here.
Sincerely,
Jonas Wellendorf
Chair, Department of Scandinavian