Lectures & Literary Events
For reservations, call 212.847.9740 or email event_reservation@amscan.org.
The Ambassador
Book Talk with Bragi Ólafsson
Thursday, September 30, 6:30 pm
FREE
Sturla Jón Jónsson, the fifty-something building superintendent and sometimes poet, has been invited to a poetry festival in Vilnius, Lithuania, appointed, as he sees it, as the official representative of the people of Iceland to the field of poetry. His latest poetry collection, published on the eve of his trip to Vilnius, is about to cause some controversy in his home country—Sturla is publicly accused of having stolen the poems from his long-dead cousin, Jónas.
Then there’s Sturla’s new overcoat, the first expensive item of clothing he has ever purchased, which causes him no end of trouble. And the article he wrote for a literary journal, which points out the stupidity of literary festivals and declares the end of his career as a poet. Sturla has a lot to deal with, and that’s not counting his estranged wife and their five children, nor the increasingly bizarre experiences and characters he’s forced to confront at the festival in Vilnius.
Bragi Ólafsson’s most recent work The Ambassador is a quirky novel that’s filled with insightful and wry observations about aging, family, love, and the mysteries of the hazelnut. It was a finalist for the 2008 Nordic Literature Prize and received the Icelandic Bookseller’s Award as Best Novel of the Year.
Ólafsson was born in Reykjavík, and may be most well known for playing bass in The Sugarcubes, Björk’s first band. After recording three albums and touring the world, he quit making music and turned to writing. He is the author of several books of poetry and short stories, and four novels, including Party Games, for which he received the DV Cultural Prize in 2004. He is also a founder of the publishing company Smekkleysa (Bad Taste), and has translated Paul Auster's City of Glass into Icelandic.
Co-presented in collaboration with Open Letter Books.
Nordic Design Now
Wednesday, November 10 & Thursday, November 11, both @ 7 pm
Individual tickets for each program: $15 ($10 ASF & CH Members)
Nordic Design Now consists of two panel discussions, Social Awareness & Sustainability and Design Policy: Lessons Learned, co-presented by Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum and The American-Scandinavian Foundation. These panels are held in conjunction with two design exhibitions: National Triennial 2010: Why Design Now? at Cooper-Hewitt and Nordic Models + Common Ground at Scandinavia House.
Co-presented by Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum and The American-Scandinavian Foundation. Funding for this program has been provided by the Nordic Culture Fund, with special thanks to the Consulate General of Denmark in New York; the Consulate General of Iceland; the Consulate General of Finland in New York; the Royal Norwegian Consulate General; and the Consulate General of Sweden, New York.
Social Awareness & Sustainability
Wednesday, November 10
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
Designers working in the Nordic countries often favor simplicity, clean lines, and modern shapes and colors. Nordic designers also have a long tradition of creating designs for products, public spaces and buildings that take into account quality of life and social responsibility. Sustainability has also been an integral part of Nordic design traditions through consideration of materials and craftsmanship. Many emerging, as well as established designers in the Nordic region are currently working on projects that are not only aesthetically pleasing, but also focus on social welfare and the environmental impact of the designs.
The first panel is moderated by Matilda McQuaid, Deputy Curatorial Director, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, and features leading Nordic designers discussing their stance on sustainability and social responsibility in their work and current design practices.
Design Policy: Lessons Learned
Thursday, November 11
Scandinavia House
How does policy cultivate the right conditions for design markets to be competitive on a global scale and still be socially minded? The Nordic countries have set a precedent for design policy in the global design community. Today Nordic design and business increasingly go hand-in-hand. Promoting good design that creates solutions to social, ethical, and environmental problems has proven over time to be good business for the Nordic design market.
Moderated by Bradford McKee, Editor-in-Chief, Landscape Architecture Magazine, the second panel also includes up-and-coming and major designers, focusing on architecture and design policies in the Nordic countries and the knowledge acquired in carrying out those policies.
See also Nordic Models + Common Ground on Exhibition page.
Susan Sontag Foundation Translation Prize Seminar
Friday, November 12, 3:30 – 4:30 pm, 5 – 6 pm & 8:30 pm
The 2010 Susan Sontag Prize for Translation was awarded to Benjamin Mier-Cruz, a Ph.D. candidate in Scandinavian Languages and Literatures at UC Berkeley, for his proposed translation of selected letters and poems by the Finland-Swedish author Elmer Diktonius (1896 -1961). In celebration of the translation prize, programs will include the panel discussions The Challenges of Literary Translation Today and Elmer Diktonius, Finland-Swedish Literature, and Modernism in Scandinavia. Programs will also include a screening of the rare Sontag film Duet for Cannibals/Duett för kannibaler (Sweden, 1969).
Benjamin Mier-Cruz is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Scandinavian Languages and Literatures at UC Berkeley. He received his B.A. in German Language and Literature from Arizona State University and completed his M.A. at UC Berkeley. Mier-Cruz studies 19th- and 20th-century Swedish literature with a particular interest in Finland-Swedish modernism and German expressionist poetry. He is fluent in German and Swedish and has studied in Berlin and Uppsala. Mier-Cruz became interested in Elmer Diktonius after lengthy study of Diktonius’ literary colleague Edith Södergran.
Elmer Diktonius’ letters to prominent European authors and literary critics are rich and vibrant documentation of Finland’s evolving Swedish language literature. The letters originate during the Finnish Civil War in 1918, when Diktonius was just 22 years old, and conclude with his final correspondences in 1951. The exchanges reveal the private conflicts and travels of a vanguardist of literary expressionism. In the true spirit of modernism, Diktonius sought a new literature that reconciled antiquated art forms with the psyche of a changing Europe; one that represented and provoked revolt against political and economic establishments. The letters give insight into the literary climate that lay behind the radical yet finely tuned poetry that is also included in this translation.
Elmer Diktonius (1896 – 1961) was a Finland-Swedish avant-garde poet who helped to arouse modernism in Scandinavian literature. Diktonius introduced unique representations of social, political, and cultural change with an innovative style that borrowed elements of Finnish in his Swedish verse.
Born in Helsinki, Diktonius, also a composer and fluent in Finnish, fervently sought to abandon the rigid structures of traditional rhythm in verse. He promoted literary expressionism in Finland by giving voice to man’s internal consciousness and social unrest as it came into modernity and confronted new technology. Diktonius’ poetry demonstrates his visionary aspirations for literature, the working-class, and the fate of his native Finland. His swaying political views can be seen throughout his writing, which ended in 1951.
Special thanks to the Consulate General of Sweden, New York; the Consulate General of Finland, New York; and Jacob Perlin, BAMcinématek.
The Challenges of Literary Translation Today
3:30 – 4:30 pm
FREE
Elmer Diktonius, Finland-Swedish Literature, and Modernism in Scandinavia
5 – 6 pm
FREE
See also Duet for Cannibals/Duett för kannibaler on films page.
The Lapp King’s Daughter
Book Talk with Stina Katchadourian
Tuesday, November 16, 6:30 pm
FREE
From 1939 to 1945, Finland fought three wars: the Winter War of 1939, when the Soviet Union attacked the country; the Continuation War, when Finland fought the Soviet Union alongside Germany; and the Lapland War of 1944-45 against Germany.
Stina Katchadourian's memoir, The Lapp King's Daughter, tells the story of how these three wars uprooted the lives of one Finnish family. The book draws on the author's childhood memories and also on the correspondence between her parents, who were separated during most of World War II, with the father on the front, fighting the Soviets.
In 1944, the mother took her two daughters from their home in Helsinki and moved them to the presumed safety of a farm in Finnish Lapland. A pawn in the power play between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, Finland had allied itself with Germany, hoping to stave off a Russian occupation. But in the summer of 1944, Finland could no longer fight, and so concluded a separate ceasefire with the Soviets. The peace conditions were harsh. No one knew what the Red Army would do next.
Things did get worse. Strongly urged by the Russians, the Finns attacked the Germans in Lapland. This conflict was preceded by a mass evacuation of the population of Finnish Lapland (100,000 people and their livestock), as the retreating Germans, using the scorched-earth tactic, burned down all of Finnish Lapland.
Sixty years later, after both her parents had passed away, Stina Katchadourian read their wartime correspondence for the first time, while she was a resident at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire. Through those carefully saved and chronologically bundled letters emerges a little girl who, sheltered by her parents' love, never realized how close to the brink she and her country had come.
Finland’s dramatic political history during World War II and how this small country retained its independence despite facing occupation by the Soviet Union or domination by Nazi Germany is told in riveting detail in this eyewitness account, which also includes family photos, maps, historical photos and other unique material from Swedish and Finnish archives.
Co-presented in collaboration with the Finlandia Foundation.
Multicultural and Multilingual Identities in Contemporary Sweden
By ASF Visiting Lecturer Dr. Gunlög Sundberg
Monday, November 22, 6:30 pm
FREE
Sweden today is a multicultural society. ASF Visiting Lecturer Dr. Gunlög Sundberg will discuss individuals of different identities who use their multilingual or multicultural background as a resource in their professional lives in contemporary Sweden, using examples from literature, film, politics, music, education, sports, and business. Dr. Sundberg will also address new language laws and how Swedish, English, minority, and immigrant languages are used and identified in a multilingual Sweden.
Dr. Sundberg is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Scandinavian Languages, Stockholm University. She holds higher degrees from Stockholm University and Indiana University. During the fall 2010 semester, she will be an ASF Visiting Lecturer at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign where she will teach an advanced Swedish course and a class about contemporary multiculturalism in Sweden, as well as offering guest presentations. Dr. Sundberg will share her research on second language usage and multicultural workplace communication in Sweden. She will also participate in a weekly interdisciplinary multicultural applied linguistics seminar. Additionally, Dr. Sundberg will attend the annual Swedish Teacher’s Conference in North America, hosted by the Swedish Institute in fall 2010.