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What happens when a classic melodrama set in 19th-century Norway is reinvented for 21st century Broadway? Or when ABBA music is sampled in a rap monologue for multicultural audiences? This course examines the dual nature of theater as both local and global, drawing from famous plays from the Nordic region that have been performed the world over. Students will read plays in English translation, view performances, and research specific characters as well as the cultural history of a play of choice. No prior knowledge of, or exposure to, theater or the Nordic region is expected.

While the Nordic countries rank among the world's wealthiest, most educated, and most egalitarian, categories of identity in the Nordic region are shifting dramatically in the new millennium. Ample and important counter-narratives have emerged to prevailing discourses of exceptional and homogenous "Nordicness." This course interrogates historical categories of diversity in a Nordic context, including gender, sex, class, ethnicity, and race, as well as how these categories intersect. We will examine new forms of, and platforms for, diverse ideas and creative expression, including fluid masculinities, digital cultures, new media, and fashion. We will question the terms on which the Nordic region's indigenous peoples, the Sámi and the Greenlandic Inuit, as well as stateless people such as the Kurds, are brought into Nordic discussions of diversity, citizenship, and agency, and analyze the implications of neo-nationalist and patriarchal discourses that have emerged since the turn of the century.

Scandinavian women writers currently hold a significant place in the Scandinavian literary canon but their efforts to be granted this ground are ongoing. In this course we will read and analyze works of literature in English translation written by women writers from across the Nordic region of the world. We will focus on the important Modern Breakthrough period of the late 19th century, the dynamic 20th century, and today. We will read literature by women writers including the long-canonized, those recently excavated from history, those writing today; voices from a variety of class, ethnic, and geographical backgrounds; and forms of literature ranging from the traditional to the highly experimental. Our reading and analysis of these writers' works will help us to understand the ever-shifting places and roles in which Scandinavian women have lived and created.

This course explores the crime fiction genre (literature, television, and film) from the Nordic countries. The course will focus on the political and social critique embedded in crime stories, the values of the societies represented, and the function of the crime fiction genre as a critique of ideologies and institutions. Starting in the 1970s with Sjöwall/Wahlöo and ending in the present day, the class will cover a variety of themes in the Nordic context: Marxism, the welfare state, immigration, the EU and the Third World, feminism, racism, neoliberalism, and global capitalism. It will also introduce students to typically Nordic perspectives on crime prevention and punishment.