This year the AASSC Publication Awards Adjudication Committee was pleased to receive a number of high-quality submissions for both the undergraduate and graduate publication awards. Thanks to all of the professors who nominated students, and thanks to the students for sharing their work. We are delighted to announce the following winners:
Recipient of the AASSC Gurli Aagard Woods Undergraduate Publication Award: Linnie McGuire (Bishop’s University) for “The Fragmentation of Sápmi: a Nordic Model of Settler Colonialism” / Nominated by Dr. Trygve Ugland.
Linnie McGuire is a final semester undergraduate student completing an Honours in Political Studies with minors in English and Economics at Bishop's University. Her main research interests include settler-colonialism, public policy, and political violence. She will be pursuing these interests this fall in the MA in Political Studies programme at Queen's University.
Recipient of the AASSC Marna Feldt Graduate Publication Award: Karin Filipsson (University of Washington, Seattle) for “Shadows and Silences in Göran Rosenberg’s Memoir: Jewish ‘Postmemory’ in the Swedish Welfare State” / Nominated by Dr. Marianne Stecher-Hansen.
Karin Filipsson is a PhD student and she teaches Swedish in the Department of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Washington. She has two Master’s Degrees; in English literature and in Creative Writing and she is also a literary translator and a writer. Her PhD project explores postmigrant Swedish literature; particularly the connection between cultural memory and postmemory narratives in Holocaust-memoirs. She is the winner of the Aurora Borealis Award in 2021 from the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study for best graduate student paper in Language and Literature for the paper “’Welcome to my Body’: Construction of Racialized Identity through the Transgressing of Boundaries in Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s work”. She is currently one of six fellows in the Joff Hanauer for Excellence in Western Civilization Graduate Fellowship 2021-22 at the University of Washington.
Recipient of the AASSC Marna Feldt Graduate Publication Award: Arwen Thysse 陳藹文 (University of Alberta) for "Men and Trolls: A Discussion of Race and the Depiction of the Sámi in the Hrafnistumannasögur” / Nominated by Dr. Natalie Van Deusen.
Arwen Thysse is a doctoral student in the Department of History, Classics, and Religion at the University of Alberta. Her research interests include intercultural and mixed-race relations in medieval Scandinavia, cross-cultural contacts in the global Middle Ages, as well as questions of personal and social identities. She is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
Congratulations to our three winners! We look forward to reading their papers when they are published in Scandinavian-Canadian Studies.
We are pleased to announce a presentation by author Henry Milner in a new online session as part of the AASSC Virtual Series, which will take place on Wednesday, April 20 at 12:00 PM EDT / 10:00 AM CST / 4:00 PM GMT / 5:00 PM CET.
Milner, author of Participant Observer: An Unconventional Life in Politics and Academia, will draw on his experience as a close observer of Nordic politics to share what he has learned about the relationship between participating in politics on the inside and observing politics from the outside. Several chapters in the memoir are set in Finland and Sweden.
About the Speaker:
Henry Milner has published nine books, the most recent of which is his political memoir, Participant Observer: An Unconventional Life in Academia and Politics, and edited four others. He has written numerous articles, both scholarly and journalistic, specializing in political participation and electoral reform, notably in Inroads, a journal founded in 1991 with John Richards.
He obtained his BA from McGill University and completed his MA and PhD at Carleton, also spending a year at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC. In the 1980s his interests took him to the Nordic countries and led to books focusing on social democracy in Scandinavia. Between 1999 and 2013 he spent each fall term as a Visiting Professor of Political Science at Umea University in Sweden, and in 2012 came to the l’Université de Montréal, where he is now Research Fellow at the Chair in Electoral Studies in the Department of Political Science.
If you are interested in registering for this Virtual Series session, please first ensure you are a paid up AASSC member for 2022 and then contact Amy Poole, Webmaster, at aassccommunications@gmail.com.
You can check your membership with your AASSC login information, or signing up at:
https://www.aassc.com/membership
The deadline for submission of proposals is for the AASSC 2022 Virtual Conference has been extended to Monday, March 7, 2022.
The fortieth annual conference of the Association for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies in Canada (AASSC) will be held virtually from Monday, May 16–Thursday, May 19, 2022.
Theme: The 2022 conference has an open theme, and we invite submissions on any Scandinavian / Nordic related topic in any discipline. In recent years, our conferences have included research from the fields of anthropology, archaeology, business studies, folkloristics, geography, history, Indigenous studies, linguistics, literary studies, medieval studies, philosophy, political science, religious studies, and sociology, among others.
Keynote speaker: We are pleased to announce that the keynote speaker for our 2022 conference will be Dr. Sayaka Osanami Törngren, Associate Professor in International Migration and Ethnic Relations and Senior Researcher at the Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity, and Welfare at Malmö University. Dr. Osanami Törngren is an expert on race and racialization’s effects on interpersonal encounters.
Submissions should include the title of the paper/presentation(s), an abstract (150–250 words), the author’s or authors’ name(s) and affiliation(s), a very brief bio or bios, and updated contact information. Please email your submission to the Chair of the AASSC Program Committee at: cwe1@hi.is.
The following information has been shared with the AASSC on behalf of The Norwegian-American Historical Association (NAHA):
NAHA is excited to announce that applications are open for its Odd S. Lovoll Award, which recognizes originality, excellence, and creativity in undergraduate research and writing on any aspect of Norwegian-American studies.
The winner of the award will receive a cash prize of $500 and a one-year student membership in NAHA. Interested applicants should submit an interpretive essay based on original research of between 2,000 and 10,000 words in length, which conforms to Chicago style (using endnotes). Essays must be written as an undergraduate and submitted within one year of graduation from an undergraduate institution. Preference will be given to essays that explore previously neglected topics or new approaches to previously treated topics.
The award-winning essay will be considered for publication in NAHA’s academic journal, Norwegian-American Studies. The deadline for student submissions for the award is June 1 of each year. The NAHA publications committee, in consultation with the editor of Norwegian-American Studies, will select the winner. Award-winning essays will be announced September 1.
Please see the attached Annual General Meeting Agenda as part of the AASSC Conference. The Annual General Meeting will take place on Wednesday, June 2, at 9:00 AM MST.
We look forward to seeing everyone at the 39th annual AASSC conference virtually from May 31 - June 3, 2021!
As a kind reminder, the 39th annual AASSC conference will be happening virtually Monday, May 31 - Thursday, June 3, 2021. There are lots of exciting papers planned ahead, and we hope that you will consider joining us. Registration is open to all AASSC members (paid as of 2021), so if you are interested, please contact AASSC President Natalie Van Deusen at vandeuse@ualberta.ca to register and receive the Zoom link.
Our Conference program is included here as well, should you wish to see what's on schedule! Please be aware that the scheduled times are shown in this program in MDT. Please convert accordingly to your timezone so that you do not miss out on the fantastic upcoming papers!
We look forward to exploring the wonders of virtual space with you all!
In solidarity with the Black Canadian Studies Association (BCSA), the AASSC Executive has made the decision to withdraw from and to hold our annual conference outside of Congress 2021.
While this has been a difficult decision and we have been encouraged by some of the steps Congress has taken toward the BCSA’s requests, we continue to have concerns over Congress’ accountability, commitment toward, and communication of these actions to students and community members. The AASSC executive also recognizes our specific responsibility to act in light of the fact that the material on which many of our members conduct their research has been and sometimes continues to be appropriated to support anti-black, anti-Indigenous, and other forms of racism. We recognize the importance of critically engaging with this aspect of the legacy of the material many of us work with and our responsibility to raise awareness of how Scandinavian and Nordic culture and history are weaponized by white supremacists to support racist ideologies.
At our AGM this year, we plan to have an open discussion about whether or not the AASSC will continue our affiliation with the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. All registered presenters and attendees for the AASSC conference have been contacted with details on the next steps moving forward. Please refer to this e-mail for all details. The AASSC Executive will continue to keep members updated via e-mail.
The Norwegian-American Historical Association (NAHA) is excited to open applications for the Odd S. Lovoll Award, which recognizes originality, excellence, and creativity in undergraduate research and writing on any aspect of Norwegian-American studies.
The chosen winner will receive $500.00 as well as a 1-year student membership with NAHA. The award-winning essay will also be considered for publication in NAHA's academic journal.
The deadline to submit applications is Tuesday, June 1, 2021, and more information can be found at https://naha.stolaf.edu/publications/?fbclid=IwAR0JbKgnGIZLxkFfeGkxLVhYK6Qq5TEDLx57T_EGrbtQLbEkxm4b89QIT60
The Association for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies in Canada (AASSC/AAESC) executive would like to express our solidarity with our colleagues in the Black Canadian Studies Association (BCSA). While we are encouraged by Congress’ decision to meet the requests put to them by the BCSA, we have serious concerns that they were met unilaterally only after the BCSA had withdrawn from Congress 2021 and made the difficult but necessary choice to make public Congress’ original denial of these requests. Like the BCSA and a number of other associations, we were puzzled and disappointed by Congress’ decision not to carry the 2020 theme of “Confronting Colonialism and Anti-Black Racism” over to the 2021 event. Because of this, we decided to still include the theme in our Call for Papers. We are pleased with the programming that we have developed around this theme including the topics of Decolonization and indigenization in a Canadian context, cultural heritage, Indigenous resurgence and decolonization in Greenland, and reactionary conservatism and racial politics in Scandinavia. Yet, we do understand and support the BCSA’s decision to opt out of participating in Congress 2021. We also recognize our ongoing responsibility to create an environment where such programming remains central to our association’s future events. At present, in large part due to our members’ hard work to develop programming around the theme of “Confronting Colonialism and Anti-Black Racism,” we are planning to hold our conference as a part of Congress 2021. However, we wish to call upon the leadership of the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences to engage in meaningful dialogue with the BCSA to ensure that the Congress becomes an environment where the BCSA and its members are both safe and feel welcome in the future. We will continue to monitor the situation as our planning continues. Members of our executive have also used this opportunity to make individual donations to local or national non-profit groups dedicated to serving and supporting Black and Indigenous communities in Canada, including groups focused on food security issues and addressing health inequalities. We only add this detail in the hope that those who read this statement, and who are in a position to do so, will use this opportunity to show similar support.
The Autumn School and Centre for Nordic Studies at the University of Helsinki in cooperation with Glossa (the Society for Medieval Studies in Finland) is offering a course for all MA & PhD level students: 'Magic & Memory in the Pre-Modern North.' This course focuses on magic in medieval and early modern Scandinavia.
'Magic and Memory' is happening October 25 - 29, 2021 at the University of Helsinki.
Fifteen students will be accepted into the course. Students are invited to submit a cover letter and one-page project abstract by Monday, May 31, 2021. More details of the course can be found at: http://www.glossa.fi/wp/?page_id=1877
