In his 2003 work, Living Pictures, Missing People, Mark Sandberg proposes a new genealogy of Nordic cinema with a particularly intimate relationship to material cultures. Because of the relatively late modernization of Nordic countries, he argues, recording technologies of modernity like film and photography, which promised new fantasies of mobility, flourished alongside a particularly material “effigy culture,” which included museum display, mannequins, performance practices, and the preservation of historical buildings. This material culture emphasized the authenticity of physical objects sought to safeguard a historical past perceived as rapidly disappearing. In recognition of the twenty year anniversary of Living Pictures, Missing People, this stream invites papers that reflect on the impact and provocations of Sandberg’s interdisciplinary monograph on a wide range of fields and scholarship within and in conversation with the Nordic Region. How has discourse and thinking changed in the 20 years since publication? What persons might be included in this consideration of missing persons? 

Papers and panels might engage with a renewed examination of Sandberg’s underlying claim, that Nordic Cinema emerges from and reflects particular investments in materiality, by reframing it in terms of intermediality, questions of race, nation, ethics, genre, or desire. Comparative papers that engage contexts outside of the Nordic region are wholeheartedly welcomed. Potential papers might consider Sandberg’s work from various perspectives, including: 

• Cinema Studies
• Museum Studies
• Performance Studies
• Tourism Studies
• Archive Studies
• Media Studies
• Ecocritical Studies

Chairs: Amanda Doxtater (doxtater@uw.edu), Maxine Savage, and Christopher Oscarson

Fairy tales and folktales remain as popular as ever. They have long played an essential role in Scandinavian folklore, cultures, literatures, languages, and pedagogies and have been pivotal in the field of Scandinavian Studies. But what is the status of the study of fairy tales today? What does the decolonization of the canon, inclusion of indigenous voices, and the challenges to Eurocentrism look like in contemporary scholarship on fairy tales and folktales? And how does the current scholarship reflect the historical and material circumstances of the societies in which the fairy tales were produced?

In this stream, we seek to showcase current scholarship on folk- and fairy tales in Scandinavian Studies. We want to explore the significance of folk- and fairy tales in Scandinavian literatures and cultures by offering a comprehensive multidisciplinary exploration. As such, we invite papers that investigate folk- and fairy tales through historical, social, literary, linguistic, compactional, and folkloristic perspectives. We welcome and invite papers that delve into the complexities of indigenous voices, the impact of colonialism, and the potential for inclusive DEIJA approaches to Scandinavian folk- and fairy tales.

Chairs: Claus Elholm Andersen (ceandersen2@wisc.edu), Tim Tangherlini, and Ann-Kathrine Havemose

This stream welcomes papers and panels that apply computational methods to nineteenth-century cultural production in Scandinavia, including but not limited to literary works. We would like to shed new light on authors, characters, and literary devices, as well as affects, concepts, and ideas “on the move” throughout the period. Questions of interest include delimitations of genres, periods, and other critical categories, network analyses, measurements of change over time, and discussion of relevant methodologies. We especially welcome presentations that explore:

• The intersection between traditional and digital methodologies
• The uses and abuses of statistical methods
• Machine learning and AI
• Broader theoretical reflections on the status of computational humanities research
• The specific challenges and benefits of working within the Scandinavian context

We hope and expect that the sessions within the stream will provide fertile ground for exchange of knowledge on nineteenth century developments as well as for inspiration and discussion across diverse research groups and across more or less digital work, large and small, real and imagined.

Chairs: Ellen Rees (ellen.rees@iln.uio.no), Jens Bjerring-Hansen, Anders Skare Malvik

In line with the presidential conference theme of “Movement,” this stream invites papers on Nordic settler experiences in North America during any time period. We seek papers that challenge traditional migration histories in the Nordic countries in which Nordics have typically been viewed in isolation from the broader American settler colonial context due to a presumed exceptional benevolence. We are particularly interested in projects that understand Nordic immigrants as settler colonists who establish themselves as the rightful inhabitants of the land through Indigenous dispossession and displacement, exploitative labor practices, depletion of natural resources, and/or the exercise of white privilege. This stream engages increasing scholarly and public interest in histories of colonialism in the Nordic countries and the role of these histories in shaping Nordic identities, past and present. Scholars have examined Nordic participation in the global slave trade, settler colonialism in Sámi lands, and various forms of collaboration by Nordic individuals and groups with other European empires. We would like this stream to contribute Nordic settler histories in North America as a shared Nordic phenomenon to this growing body of scholarship. Papers may address the settler colonial histories, logics, and representations of one or several Nordic countries or territories (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Faroe Islands, Greenland [Denmark] and Åland [Finland]). 

Some questions to guidestream submissions:

• How do Nordic settler experiences relate to, represent, and shape the processes of land-claiming and land-use? And the processes of claiming and commodifying natural resources? 
• How was the Nordic settler experience racialized?
• What role did the construction and maintenance of white subjectivity and whiteness play in settler colonial logics and practices?
• How did the Nordics build and situate themselves in racial hierarchies in relation to other European settlers, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Indigenous peoples?
• How do Nordic settler experiences shed light on the entanglements of Native and African American histories?
• What gender ideologies are at work in Nordic settler colonial projects? 
• What kinds of material cultures and cultural productions were established, formulated and given meaning in relation to Nordic settler experiences?
• How do the legacies of Nordic experiences in North American settler colonialism reverberate in the present, both in the Nordic countries and in North America?

Chair: Lucia Hodgson (lucia.hodgson.extern@lnu.se)

A formalized Nordic art music tradition began to flourish with a delay of approximately one hundred years compared to the mainland Europe countries, arguably due to the topography of the Nordic countries. Nordic composers responded to the idiomatic qualities of their languages incomparable to the other musical movements who similarly assimilated the vernacular of folk traditions. Both this initial delay, and subsequent present abundance of composition, tie unquestionably into each Nordic language, dominated by the rhythmic sonorities associated with their national oral literary traditions. During the late 20th century, there was a new so-called movement nicknamed the homogenous “Nordic Sound”, constituting a conglomerate singular sound that dominated the Nordic compositional landscape. As this “Nordic Sound” has continued into the present day, how does it continue to influence the realms of both contemporary art and popular genres?

The stream of “The Shifting Evolution of Nordic Music” welcomes papers, lecture recitals, or full recitals that could include the following themes: interdisciplinary studies within Nordic music, the influence of migration on Nordic Performance Practice, the significance of Nordic music festivals on composition, Nordic LGBTQIA+ compositional trends, the relationship between contemporary Nordic Humor and Art Music, compositional trends that are being contemporarily reflected within the Nordic nations, composer or Poet profiles and their relationship to “Nordic Sound.” The following composers have significant anniversaries this year, and could be given particular consideration:

• Christoph Ernst Friedrich Weyse (1774-1842)
• David Monrad Johansen (1888-1974)
• Oskar Merikanto (1868–1924)
• Knudåge Riisager (1897–1974)
• Kurt Magnus Atterberg (1887-1974)
• Páll Ísólfsson (1893–1974)
• Hans Christian Lumbye (1810–1774)
• Else Marie Pade (1924-2016)

This is also a significant year for the art songs of Ture Rangström (1884-1947).

The stream especially encourages composers, musicologists, and performers of Nordic Music to submit to this stream. If proposing a lecture-recital or full-recital, please detail the compositions, the performers, and the performers biographies.

Chair: Colin Levin (colinlevin@gmail.com) 

Debates around the topic of motherhood have become increasingly common in the Nordic countries during the past decade. A general fascination with mothers is visible in contemporary media debates, literary fiction, social media, and academic research. We see a tendency to problematize common understandings and myths surrounding motherhood, for example through research and public discussions about maternal regret and the choice to remain childfree. Simultaneously, or perhaps as a reaction to this, the tradwife movement praises conservative ideals of motherhood while dressing their children in the earth-colored linen clothes of an imagined, glorified past. Many influencers are making a career out of presenting themselves as conventionally good mothers online. At the same time, Nordic mothers in the workforce can still count on being paid less than their male peers for the rest of their working lives. Motherhood can also be a position of political ethos, as we have seen with the climate action group Mothers* Rebellion, active in Norway, Sweden and Finland. How can we understand these conflicts and trends? 

For this session, we invite proposals that examine the topic of Nordic motherhood. We welcome perspectives from a multitude of disciplinary fields. In what ways is the topic of motherhood represented, discussed, problematized and idealized in Nordic literature, art, media, policy, law, education, health care, commerce and politics? Topics can include but are not limited to: 

• Motherhood as identity and experience
• Maternal ambivalence and regret
• Motherhood and migration
• LGBTQ+ and single mothers
• Non-motherhood and in/voluntary childlessness
• Surrogacy and adoption
• Postpartum depression
• Abortion
• Breastfeeding
• Momfluencers and motherhood as business
• The “motherhood penalty” and the gender pay gap
• Motherhood and activism
• Motherhood in far-right movements
• Historical perspectives on Nordic motherhood

Chairs: Daniela Lillhannus (daniela.lillhannus@littvet.uu.se) and Jenny Björklund

Specialized fields like Nordic Studies, or even Finnish Studies, Swedish Studies, and their lesser-taught languages require constant teaching innovation to create and maintain student interest and institutional backing in our respective colleges and universities. While the teaching of language has in the past received fairly consistent professional attention at SASS, the teaching of all levels of culture, literature, and history courses in the Nordic context has not. Proceeding from the assumption that we have successes and date from experimental projects to share with each other that can strengthen the field of Nordic studies, this stream proposal invites attention to pedagogical strategies that have worked in a variety of contexts for instructors in our field. This includes papers on pedagogy in Nordic language courses, papers that address course and curriculum design in the other research areas of Nordic Studies, as well as papers on the paradigm shift from specific language and culture focus to more pan-Nordic approaches. 

This stream imagines a benefit from considering the following together in a comparative context:

• New pedagogical strategies for different levels of language instruction
• Teaching topics in language and society
• Hybrid instruction in advanced language and literature/culture classes
• Designing and teaching large gateway general education courses designed to fulfill university requirements and stimulate new student interest in the field
• Teaching anchor courses for majors in the face of declining numbers
• New approaches to the graduate seminar, especially including strategies for teaching pan-Nordic materials
• Colonial studies and racio-linguistic approaches to Nordic languages and culture
• Several kinds of contribution to this stream are welcome:
• Papers that describe the course design and results for a specific course
• Papers that engage with pedagogy research about the teaching of content courses
• Papers discussing the changing landscapes of colonial studies in the Nordic context, reframing the underpinnings of Nordic studies in North America
• Comparative teaching strategies in North America and the Nordic countries
• Innovative teaching strategies within or across courses

Chairs: Anu Muhonen (anu.muhonen@utoronto.ca), Lotta Weckström

All proposed papers relevant to Ibsen studies will be considered for the Annual Ibsen Society of America (ISA) panel at SASS. The ISA panel aims to support the field of Ibsen studies by showcasing cutting edge research on Ibsen from a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives. Proposals for sharing new research on Ibsen and “movement,” as well as proposals guided by other themes and approaches, are welcome. Within Ibsen studies, “movement” could refer to manifestations of Ibsen on global and local stages, the dynamics of theatrical practices, adaptation, the sociopolitics and history of drama and performance, and more. Papers in Ibsen studies not selected will be considered for other relevant streams and panels at SASS.