The Department of Scandinavian has had an excellent track record over the past ten years in the placement of recent Ph.Ds in teaching positions. Dissertation topics range from medieval to modern, from the strictly literary and historical to more interdisciplinary subjects. Since 1991, Scandinavian Department students have produced the following dissertations and have been hired in the following positions:

Doxtater, Amanda. Pathos, Performance, Volition: Melodrama’s Legacy in the Work of Carl Th. Dreyer. Filed 2012. Instructor, Department of German and Scandinavian, University of Oregon, beginning Fall 2012.

Krouk, Dean. Catastrophes of Redemption: Modernism and Fascism in Norway. Filed 2011. Assistant Professor, Department of Norwegian, St. Olaf College, beginning Fall 2012.

Martin, Suzanne. Alla människor har sin berättelse: Interculturalism, Intermediality and the Trope of Testimony in Novels by Ekman, Ørstavik and Petersen. Filed 2010.

Olsen, Carl. Ekphrasis and the Old Norse Shield Poem. Filed 2009. Visiting Assistant Professor, Gustavus Adolphus College, 2012-13.

Sterling, Nichole. The Other Side: Icelandic Identity and Foreigners in the Islendingasogur. Filed 2008.

Gurley, David Gantt. Meir Aaron Goldschmidt and the Poetics of Prose. Filed 2007. Assistant Professor, Department of German and Scandinavian, University of Oregon, beginning Fall 2009.

Willson, Kendra. Icelandic Nicknames. Filed 2007. Assistant Professor in Residence, Scandinavian Section, UCLA. Works on Icelandic nicknames and linguistics in Finnish and Icelandic.

Larsen, Hanne Pico. Solvang, the ‘Danish Capital of America’: A Little Bit of Denmark, Disney, or Something Else. Filed 2006. Postdoctoral research fellow in a Nordic group research project sponsored by Sweden’s National Bank. Group topic: real and imagined Scandinavian communities in America.

Kaplan, Merrill. The Irruption of the Past in four texts in Flateyjarbók. Filed 2006.
Associate Professor, Departments of English and Germanic Languages and Literatures, Ohio State University. Has published articles on both medieval and modern Scandinavian literature. Book: Thou Fearful Guest: Addressing the Past in Four Tales in Flateyjarbók (Folklore Fellows Communications 301, 2011).

Oscarson, Christopher. Landscape and the Entangled Bird’s Eye View: Turn of the 20th Century Swedish Culture and the Ecological Imaginary. Filed 2006. Assistant Professor, Scandinavian Program, Brigham Young University. Has published on Swedish author Lars Gustafsson and topics on ecocriticism and Scandinavian literature.

Coleman, Michael Durwin. Media(ting) Jenny Lind: Representing Celebrity in Nineteenth Century Sweden. Filed 2005. Web-based entrepeneur in San Francisco, founde of Miduco web services.

Gaffikin, Brigid. Fiction and Materiality in Han Christian Andersen’s Travel Writing. Filed 2005. Currently active in journalism as Desk Editor of the Bay City News Service in San Francisco. Several years of experience in business and political reporting in the Bay Area. Also active as a freelance academic editor. Has published on Hans Christian Andersen.

Wichmann, Sonia. Truths About Women: Self-Representation as Fiction and Testimony in the Diaries of Victoria Benedictsson, Aino Kallas, and Elin Wagner. Filed 2005. Active as a published literary translator from Finnish and Swedish. Has published articles on Finnish and Swedish literature.

Hafstein, Valdimar Tr. The Making of Intangible Cultural Heritage: Tradition and Authenticity, Community and Humanity. Filed 2004. Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Folklore at the University of Iceland and a fellow in the International Center for Advanced Studies at New York University. He served as Visiting Assistant Professor in Folklore in spring 2008 at UC Berkeley. Author of articles on Old Norse and folklore as well as biotech and folklore.

Lunde, Arne. Nordic Exposures: Scandinavian Whiteness and Ethnic Assimilation in Classical Hollywood Cinema. Filed 2003. Postdoctoral fellow, UC Berkeley, 2003-2004; Lecturer, Department of German, Dutch, and Scandinavian, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, 2004-2007; Associate Professor, Scandinavian Section, UCLA, 2007-present. Has published on Scandinavian and American film. Book: Nordic Exposures: Scandinavian Identities in Classical Hollywood Cinema (University of Washington Press, 2010).

Buus, Stephanie. Travel, Translation, and Self in Scandinavian Travel Accounts of the Napoleonic Era. Filed 2002. Awarded a post-doctoral research fellowship at Aarhus University’s Center for European Cultural Studies as part of the project “Konstruktionen af Norden, 1700-1830: Utopi og Distopi.” Has published on Ludvig Holberg and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Scandinavian travel narrative.

Oxfeldt, Elisabeth. Orientalism on the Periphery: The Cosmopolitan Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Danish and Norwegian Literature and Culture. Filed Spring 2002. Tenured Associate Professor at Oslo University. Book: Nordic Orientalism. Paris and the Cosmopolitan Imagination 1800-1900 (Museum Tusculanum Forlag, Copenhagen, 2005); Journeys from Scandinavia. Travelogues of Africa, Asia, and South America, 1840-2000 (University of Minnesota Press, 2010); Romanen, nasjonen og verden. Nordisk litteratur i et postnasjonalt perspektiv (Universitetsforlaget, 2012).

Thomsen, Ulla. Familie-Tidende: A Portrayal of Danish Women’s Rights in 1871. Filed 2002. Instructor at the College of Marin teaching courses related to the literature of Hans Christian Andersen.

Stern, Michael Jay. Strindberg’s Encounter with Nietzsche: The Conflation of Autobiography and History. Filed 2000.
Tenured Associate Professor at the University of Oregon-Eugene. Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Chicago, 2001. Book: Nietzsche’s Ocean, Strindberg’s Open Sea (2008). He has published on Søren Kierkegaard, Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Ingmar Bergman. His next book project, The Singing Socrates, involves a discussion of music and passion in the nineteenth century. Associate Professor, Department of German and Scandinavian, University of Oregon, beginning Fall 2001.

Segerberg, Ebba Filippa. Nostalgia, Narrative, and Modernity in Swedish Silent Cinema. Filed 1999. Adjunct Lecturer of Swedish in the German Department, Washington University, St. Louis. Literary translator of Swedish detective wrtiers Henning Mankell and Kjell Westö.

Olmstead, Charles Maxwell. An Introduction to Oddr Snorrason’s ‘Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar’. Filed 1998. Initially Assistant Professor in the German Department at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Later left to study theology. Pastor of Higganum Congregational Church, Higganum, Connecticut since 2004.

Borovsky, Zoe Patrice. Rocking the Boat: Women in Old Norse Literature. Filed 1994.
Hired as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Oregon.

Zagar, Monika. Ideological Clowns in the Fiction of Dag Solstad. Filed 1994.
Tenured Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Department of German, Scandinavian, and Dutch. Book: Ideological Clowns: Dog Solstad Between Modernism and Politics, Vienna: Edition Praesens, 2002. Served as one of two primary organizers of a conference on World War II and the Holocaust in Norway, held in April of 2007. Has published articles on Norwegian literature.

Tangherlini, Timothy Roland. Interpreting Legend: Evald Tang Kristensen’s Legend Informants and their Repertoires. Filed 1992.
Hired as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles in the Scandinavian Section. Now an Associate Professor at UCLA.

Sandberg, Mark Bennion. Missing Persons: Spectacle and Narrative in Late Nineteenth-Century Scandinavia. Filed 1991.
Hired as a Lecturer/Assistant Professor in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Chicago. Now an Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkeley.