New PhD-studentship at UCL: From Miss Smilla to Sara Lund: Danish-English Literary Translation in a Changing Media Landscape

A fully-funded three-year PhD studentship sponsored by Statens Kunstråds Litteraturudvalg (The Danish Arts Council’s Committee for Literature) and UCL is available under the supervision of Dr Claire Thomson and Dr Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen in the Department of Scandinavian Studies, School of European Languages, Culture and Society, UCL, starting 1 October 2013 (negotiable). The studentship award consists of fees paid for three years at the UK/EU rate, and a stipend of £15,000 per annum for three years.

The focus of the proposed research project is a literary-sociological analysis of the reception and marketing of Danish literature in the UK, in the context of the current wave of media and popular interest in Danish culture. As a UCL Impact PhD Student, the successful candidate will also be expected to undertake public engagement work in the broad field of Danish literature in the UK (including, for example, organising book club meetings and other events, attending book fairs and blogging), and to facilitate the development of a new network for Danish-English translators. Training and support in public engagement work and relevant research methodologies will be provided.

Full details of the research project, the person specification, and the application procedure, can be found at this link: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/scandinavian-studies/danish-impact-phd. The deadline for applications is 5pm on 5 July 2013.

Nordicana News

At Nordicana, Barry Forshaw will be talking to Arne Dahl and the cast of the BBC4 show that bears his name; Barry’s also coming up with some challenging Nordic Noir quiz questions … see http://nordicnoir.tv/nordicana/

Kierkegaard, the Uncanny and Nordic Noir

Unsettling Copenhagen in Philosophical writing and contemporary drama

5 May 2013 marks the bicentenary of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s birth. The aim of this symposium is to explore Kierkegaard’s writing on Copenhagen in relation to the theme of the uncanny. This will be done by superimposing the Copenhagen found in Kierkegaard’s writings with a contemporary and notoriously unsettling representation of this city: the TV-drama The Killing.

Join the PUBLIC SYMPOSIUM on 17 May, 2013, 10-5 PM. UCL, Pearson Building (North East Entrance) G22 LT (map)

The event is free but please register your participation here as seats are limited. For further information and the programme visit the website: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/scandinavian-studies/kierkegaard.

The UKs first ever show celebrating 
Scandinavian crime & thriller fiction & film

A quick glance at the best-seller lists for novels and DVD box sets and it is obvious that Scandinavian crime fiction and drama have become a cultural phenomenon here in the UK. 

Kick-started by the novel ‘The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo’ and the subsequent films, Scandinavian crime drama, or ‘Nordic Noir’ has gone from strength to strength with the screen adaptations of Henning Mankell’s ‘Wallander’ followed by the original Danish police procedural drama ‘The Killing’ which won over the hearts and minds of the UK media and public making Sarah Lund (and that jumper) a household name.

The UK’s love affair with these compelling and atmospheric dramas from our Northern European cousins shows no sign of abating, demonstrated by the success of BBC4’s most recent acquisition ‘Arne Dahl’ and the fervent anticipation for the third series of ‘Borgen’.

The Nordicana Show is a unique event, which will bring the enthusiastic and dedicated fans of Nordic Noir’s superlative TV shows, films and crime novels together for a 2-day celebration in association with Arrow Films’ Nordic Noir label the leading UK distributor of Nordic Noir on DVD and Blu-ray, and the global literary network English Pen.

The Nordicana Show will play host to the stars of the hugely popular BBC Four TV series’ and best-selling authors with exclusive premieres, panel discussions, signings, retail stands for books, DVD and  Blu-ray, food and drink and much more. The setting for this event is The Farmiloe Building in Clerkenwell, an elegant former Victorian glassworks, which will provide a striking backdrop. 

 15^th - 16^th June 2013
The Farmiloe Building – 34-35 St. John Street, London, EC1

http://nordicnoir.tv/nordicana

Press information: Please contact Lisa Richards – lisa@nordicana.co.uk Tel: 07798 876 352

Event information: Please contact Joe Pidgeon – joe@happeningevents.co.uk Tel: 07557 375 500

Two events 11-12 May: Something Else for the Weekend

Hej! We have two events coming up, and Nordic Noir will loom large in both of them.

On Saturday 11 May, 2-3pm, enjoy a virtual tour of Crime Scenes and Cycle Paths: Copenhagen’s Hidden (Hi)stories. We’ve been working with UCL’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) to make a multi-layered map of Copenhagen that reveals some sites, sights and stories you may not have witnessed in the literature and television of the city.  You can contribute to the map by telling us about your favourite places in Copenhagen. You can leave a comment below, or tweet @scandstudies using the hashtag #copenmap. Deadline: Wednesday 1 May! Tak!

On Sunday 12 May, 2-3pm, join us for a panel discussion on Welfare, Literature and the Body: Nordic Perspectives. Panelists include our very own Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen, Dominic Hinde (phd student, translator, journalist, Scottish green politico, and an editor of Post Mag), and others tbc. This panel discussion and Q&A explores the welfare state in the Nordic countries, focusing on how literary fiction has functioned as a space in which ideas about society, justice, welfare and well-being could be debated and developed. Of special interest is the human body: how have Scandinavian novels, poems, plays and even films represented the body – male or female, healthy or sick, infant or aging, working or playing – as  building, challenging, and benefiting from the welfare state? We’ll be using exciting new voting pod thingummies (that’s the technical term) to enable audience participation.

The venue for both events is the Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Roberts Building, Malet Place, London, WC1E 7JE [click here for a map and transport information]

Both events are free – no need to book, just come along! The first sixty attendees will be able to enjoy complimentary coffee and biscuits.

These events are part of Something Else for the Weekend, 2 days of hands-on activities around the theme of Reading, giving festival-goers the chance to get up close and personal with UCL research. There are lots of fascinating exhibits and activities, from travel writing about toilets to learning difficulties to fairy tales, and it’s all free! For more information, please visit http://www.ucl.ac.uk/festival-of-the-arts/something-else-for-the-weekend

 

 

Conference: Crime Fiction 2013

Nordic Noir Book Club is considering sending a team of investigators to Leeds in September, will you be there?

Second call for papers:

The University of Leeds’ Faculty of Arts and the Crime Studies Network are pleased to invite you to the ‘Retold, Resold, Transformed: Crime Fiction in the Modern Era’ cross-disciplinary conference to take place at Leeds on the 17th and 18th of September 2013. See the conference website http://www.leeds.ac.uk/arts/info/125158/crimefiction2013 for the conference abstract, speakers and call for papers.

In recent decades crime fiction has enjoyed a creative boom. Although, as Alison Young argues in her book Imagining Crime (1996), crime stories remain strongly identified with specific locations, the genre has acquired a global reach, illuminating different corners of the world – from the downtown precincts of Baltimore to the South African peninsula to bleak Danish skies – for the delectation of international audiences. The recent fashion for nordic noir has highlighted the process by which the crime story may be franchised, as it is transposed from one culture to another. Crime fiction has thus become a vehicle for cultural exchange in the broadest of senses; not only does it move with apparent ease from one country to the next, and in and out of different languages, but it is also reproduced through various cultural media. But what is involved in these processes of transference? Do stories lose or gain value? Or are they transformed into something else altogether? How does the crime story that originates in a specific society or culture come to articulate aspects of very different societies and cultures? And what are the repercussions of this cultural permeability?

Fans of Nordic Noir will be pleased to learn that Barry Forshaw’s most recent book on the phenomenon has now been published.

A compact and authoritative guide to the phenomenally popular genre. The information-packed study examines and celebrates books, films and TV adaptations, from Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s highly influential Martin Beck series through Henning Mankell’s Wallander (subject of three separate TV series) to Stieg Larsson’s groundbreaking The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, cult TV hits such as the Danish The Killing, The Bridge and the political thriller Borgen, up to the hugely successful books and films of the current king of the field, Norway’s Jo Nesbo.

This and Barry’s previous book, Death in a Cold Climate, have received excellent reviews. The Nordic Noir blog has published an informative double-review.

 

Nordic Noir. The POcket Essential Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction, FIlm & TV is also available for kindle at Amazon.