Current research

My Ph.D.-project is titled In Dubious Battles – The Novel and the Strike, 1850-1950. The aim of the project is to examine and conceptualize how strikes have been represented in western literature from mid-19th century to World War II – the period constituting the the earliest and most dramatic chapter of the history of western strike action. Consequently, the project, as most of my previous research, is situated in the intersection between literary, political and social history

The dissertation will include analyses of novels such as Émile Zola’s Germinal, Martin Andersen Nexø’s Pelle the Conqueror and John Steinbeck’s In dubious battle as well lesser known books most often categorized as a examples of proletarian or working class literature.

These literary works do not only offer important insights into, for instance, the historical significance of the strike, the experience of the social, political and economic conflicts of early capitalist society, and the emergence and development of a socially engaged literature.  They also enable us to raise more principal questions about the nature of political agency and action – for instance in regards to the complex relation between violence and politics.

Given the character of the project and its material, my research also considers methodological questions related to literary historiography.

Supervisor: Tue Andersen Nexø, associate professor, University of Copenhagen

Areas of concentration

• Socially engaged literature of the 19th and 20th century (e.g. the industrial novel, the novel of social protest, proletarian/working class literature etc.)
• Modern literary history 1850-1950
• American literature during the Gilded Age and The Progressive Era (1870-1920)
• Representations of the American West (frontier novels, Westerns etc.)
• Contemporary Danish Literature
• The British novel during and after Thatcherism
• Émile Zola, John Steinbeck, Mary Heaton Vorse, Martin Andersen Nexø,  David Peace, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, William Faulkner.

Teaching

Fall 2015: Modern literary history 1850-1950, undergraduate course, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen

Fall 2014: Modern literary history 1850-1950, undergraduate course, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen

Fall 2013: ‘It is a war’ – a cultural history of strikes, graduate course, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen

Spring 2013: The politics of the Wild West – the American western novel 1860-1910, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen