2 Learning About Living

After five academic years of working as an assistant professor at Gustavus Adolphus College, I believe I have and continue to establish a record of excellence as a teacher. Student evaluations of my teaching (SETs) consistently point to my enthusiasm for and knowledge about the subjects I teach. In both the Swedish language (SWE) and in the Scandinavian area studies (SCA) classrooms—the settings in which I teach classes every semester—my enthusiasm is not only apparent but, as students often write, it also helps to cultivate and further their own interest in the class and encourages them to put forth their best effort.

I am an effective teacher with a strong interest in and knowledge about the subjects that I teach. I bring my full self to the classroom each day. My pedagogies aim to fuel the students’ interest in the subject matter and stimulate them to find ways to connect with the subject, take it to heart and mind, and engage with it—and myself and their peers—in the classroom when we are gathered together and beyond the classroom as they work independently. From the first day of the course we carefully go over together the detailed course syllabus, which includes the course’s content, learning objectives, assignments, grading breakdown/criteria, and grading scale. Throughout the semester, I work with students both collectively and individually to establish and set goals and to help them do their best to achieve these goals. I design daily homework, paper, presentation, and other assignments that vary from formal to informal; I explain what materials will be covered on quizzes and exams; I state my expectations for their work; I scaffold assignments. At all levels of all of the courses I teach my students undertake analysis, critical thinking, synthesis, reflection, and revision.

Our shared classroom is a safe, non-hierarchical, and hopefully empowering environment that facilitates student-driven learning. It is an environment where there is room for students to stumble, find their way, wonder, ask questions, think and state critically, tactfully disagree or challenge, and to bring in what they know from other classes or disciplines or walks of life. My commitment to student learning manifests itself in the diversity and range of my course offerings. As my CV and syllabi in my tenure file show, over the past five years I have developed and taught fifteen different courses, ranging from the beginning (100) to the advanced (300) levels in both the SWE (Swedish language) and SCA (Scandinavian area studies) classrooms at Gustavus.

My classes at the 100 level aim to give students a solid foundation in the topic at hand. In the 100-level Swedish-language classroom, I work hard—from the first day of the semester forward—to get students to believe in themselves and to be unafraid as they take on the learning of a new and less-commonly-taught language. While our textbook and workbook provide the framework for our courses (teaching and scaffolding new vocabulary and grammatical concepts, and providing cultural introductions to daily life in Sweden), I supplement these books with additional exercises and materials that encourage students to work closely with the language. In the classroom setting, students embody the language they are learning; they act out skits, they play games that test them on new words or grammatical rules or concepts, and everyday they move about the classroom and interact with one another using the target language. I also work to bring the Swedish language to life through simple authentic language texts, through films and music, and through funny (and sometimes culturally different/puzzling!) television ads or programs. By the end of the first-year Swedish-language cycle at Gustavus, my students share in their reflections about the course and often on their SETs that they have learned a lot—not only in terms of their fluency and comprehension of the language—but also about Swedish (and Scandinavian) culture and society. A number of students have noted that they felt they learned more Swedish in my first-year course than they had after studying three or four years of another second language in high school. In the 100-level culture courses (and FTS) that I have taught, I also aim to present students with a foundational knowledge in the topic at hand. I plan my courses carefully and intentionally so that each student can be challenged, understand new material, and grow as a critical thinker prepared to succeed in more-advanced courses. I bring my full self to the classroom each day, but I do not see my role as a teacher as someone who simply feeds or funnels factual knowledge to my students. Rather, I facilitate and I guide. In my SCA-100: “Scandinavian Life and Culture” course students gain an introduction to the Nordic world. Taking a “history of ideas” approach, we assess key cultural moments in Scandinavian society, ranging from the Viking Age to the Enlightenment, from the National Romantic period to the foundations of the welfare state, through to today. While much ground is covered historically, students are asked through presentations, small-group and whole-class discussion, papers, exams, and textual analysis, to consider how cultural values shift and societal trends change in the Nordic region over time. While the class prepares them for further, more-advanced Scandinavian area studies coursework in our department, it also gives students a general understanding of key moments in European and world history through the lens of the Scandinavian countries. They are challenged in the course to make relationships not only across time but also across space, understanding, for instance, how a play about education and knowledge, Eramus Montanus, written by the Danish-Norwegian author Ludvig Holberg in 1722 might be relevant to discussions related to the value (and values) of higher education and ways of knowing today.

At the 200 level, my courses build on an already-established and solid foundation and ask students to recall and to use their existing knowledge and their skills of analysis. When I teach the 200-level Swedish language cycle, I work hard to discern and identify early in the semester what each student’s particular strengths and challenges are. Their first homework assignment in the course is to reflect on (in Swedish and come to class ready to discuss) what they know, what they want to learn, and how they can learn these things. Students often have an accurate sense and awareness about what aspects of the language they have already mastered and the aspects on which they need to work. It is also valuable for them to identify ways they can take responsibility for their continued learning and efforts. At the intermediate level we use a continuation of the textbook and workbook materials used in first-year Swedish but I integrate more authentic language materials. I scaffold homework and formal presentation and writing assignments in this setting but I also leave plenty of time for playing and speaking (modeling and using these more-complex aspects of the language) in the classroom. In 2012, with the MAYDAY! Peace Conference on the topic of “Multicultural Sweden,” I decided to give my 200-level Swedish course the topic of multicultural Sweden for the semester. This topic is equally as relevant today given the increased populations of Roma people now living in Sweden and the current refugee migrations into and traveling through Europe. In tying this topic to the course, students learn about current events related to the topic, present on the five historical minority groups that have rights in Sweden, discuss other minority groups and their more-recent histories in the country, as well as consider the term “multiculturalism” as they find it defined and used in authentic language materials including newspaper articles, short stories, radio programs, televisions programs, and films. At the 200-level Scandinavian area studies classroom, I structure the course so that students are able to work with and build on cultural knowledge and communication and critical thinking skills they already have. In my SCA-224: “Scandinavian Women Writers” course, students gain a more-nuanced understanding of Scandinavian society, particularly as it concerns the topic of women’s place(s) in it. In this course, students are asked to question and analyze both through class discussions and in a variety of writing assignments the ways in which women’s roles in Scandinavia might differ from country to country, between urban and rural settings, depending upon social class or ethnic background. They are also asked to consider the extent to which women’s roles in these societies—as these roles are represented in the literary works read—seem to be fixed or fluid over time. Students read, in English translation, various genres of literature (poetry, memoir, dystopia, novellas, short stories, essays) in the class. Over the course of the semester, I ask students to identify the various genres of literature we read, but they are also presented with highly experimental works which do not easily fit into traditional definitions of “types” of literature. In order to gain a better understanding of the conventions of literature that define “types” of literature, students work in small groups to also consider literary terms such as “content,” “structure,” “narrative,” “form.” Both in working to define “types” of literature as well as definitions for common literary terms, students effectively develop a greater awareness about the looseness and openness of definitions and the systems (often of power) that structure them. In many of my Scandinavian area studies courses, a recurring pedagogical objective is to open up students’ understanding about what they think they know, how they came to know it, and where there might be places and possibilities for increasing and furthering this understanding and knowledge.

In my 300-level courses, I expect students to apply what they know and are carrying forward from the 100- and 200-level courses they have taken. I combine primary sources with a great number of secondary sources, create assignments that ask students to analyze both primary and secondary literatures, to synthesize, and to articulate and argue their own original conclusions. My SWE-301 course has the theme “Child, Youth, Adult in Sweden.” Throughout the semester we trace the history of Swedish children’s literature and touch on the place/role/view of children in Swedish society. All of the texts are original language texts. Students work with one author and provide an opening presentation on that author for the class (using a PowerPoint with only notecard prompts), and at the end of our discussion of that author, each student leads the final, summarizing 25-minute discussion of his or her author’s work(s). Students keep an informal reading journal as well as write longer, formal essays in this course. There is a guided peer-review process for these essays. We also watch Swedish films, read a selection of articles, and discuss scholarly and cultural criticism related to the topics of the course. Most Fridays function as “grammar days” where we touch on key grammatical concepts at the advanced level of Swedish-language learning. My 300-level special topics course SCA-344: “Picturing the North: Representations versus Realities of Arctic Scandinavia” has been an intellectually stimulating and enriching teaching and learning experience. When I taught the course for the first time in spring 2012, it attracted double majors (Scandinavian Studies combined with another major) and non majors from a variety of departments (Environmental Studies, Anthropology, Physics, Biology, Geography); the students’ knowledge in these other fields greatly expanded and increased the depth of our classroom discussions. The course runs as a three-hour, once-per week seminar, and each week focuses on a topic of importance in the Scandinavian circumpolar region. Course materials include a “representation” (often via film, literature, or another form of art) of the week’s topic, which I carefully pair with a “reality” (a scholarly text from the social sciences, natural sciences, or humanities on that same topic). The course is primarily discussion based, but students also complete a number of informal and formal writing and oral-presentation assignments; additionally, they each lead a 25-minute class discussion once during the semester. Students are assigned a research paper on a topic of their choice which they write over the course of the semester (they work closely with me one-on-one at all stages of their papers as well as do an in-class peer review). They share this paper in the form of a presentation with their fellow students at the end of the semester. One of my most rewarding teaching experiences occurred this past spring semester in my SWE-344: “Ingmar Bergman and His World,” course, a discussion-based seminar on the Swedish filmmaker, writer, and theatre director Ingmar Bergman. I entered and left that class each day almost as if afloat. Eight of nine of the students in the course were seniors (six of the eight seniors were my advisees), each preparing for and thinking a lot about life after Gustavus. For fifty minutes a day, three days a week, for fifteen weeks we discussed entirely in Swedish the themes (life and death, love and family, creation and ruin) central to Bergman’s cinematic and literary corpus. I was inspired by the students’ linguistic fluency but perhaps even more so by their wise, thoughtful, and astute philosophical considerations about these topics. I felt we all developed as thinkers, communicators of our heads and our hearts, and human beings over the course of our time together in this class. It was a good reminder for me of what my students hold and know and what we are all capable of feeling, learning, experiencing, and thinking. (I was nearly brought to tears in a discussion about love—if it ever really ends—while we were discussing Bergman’s 1973 film Scener ur ett äktenskap [Scenes from a Marriage]).

My concern for each of my student’s learning shows itself in our shared classroom every day, but it also extends to the feedback I provide on their assignments, quizzes, and exams, as well as in the form of the advising I do with them about their learning in our class but also in terms of their learning about living and their individual and personal growth as human beings. My own education at Gustavus Adolphus College helps me understand the nature of my role as a teacher, mentor, and advisor here. While a student at Gustavus, I experienced faculty who were models of excellent teachers, mentors, and advisors, who listened to, cared about, and were invested in my learning and in me as a person. My own path back to Gustavus, where I was an undergraduate student majoring in English and Scandinavian Studies and graduating in 1998 is a circuitous and fortuitous one. Between undertaking and completing my graduate studies, I worked in a number of fields for which training in the humanities, world languages, literatures, and cultures prepared me well. This work included a variety of positions in book publishing in Minnesota and Wisconsin; as an intern at a translation agency in Brooklyn, New York, immediately following my graduation from Gustavus; as a transcriber of an oral history project in Windhoek, Namibia; and as a writer and editor at an environmental NGO, in Jokkmokk, Sweden. I see these professional experiences as positive not only for me given all that I learned, but perhaps more importantly also in terms of my work now as an educator in the humanities at a liberal arts college. I help students understand that what they learn and master—in terms of subject areas at Gustavus—is important, but that they have learned not only factual things or gained fluency in a foreign language. They have also learned how to think critically, how to communicate effectively, and how to analyze, argue, reflect, and express. The possibilities for them in terms of their professional lives and personal lives post-Gustavus are open-ended and endless.

In terms of advising I also hope to encourage students’ desires to travel, work, or study abroad or nearby, and to become sensitive, thoughtful, and engaged global citizens in their immediate local communities and those communities further away (in terms of time and place) of which they imagine themselves being or becoming a part. I listen carefully to my students. I discuss with them the ideas, hopes, and plans that they have; I encourage them, I ask them questions, and I do my best to support them in their efforts and decisions. Over the last five years, I have been an official faculty advisor for 32 students, and I advise, on average, twelve Scandinavian Studies majors as well as 10 Scandinavian Studies minor advisees, as well as all FTS advisees I have, each year. My advisees have gone on to gain prestigious graduate research fellowships in the field of Scandinavian Studies, have entered professional and graduate programs in the U.S. and abroad, and have begun a variety of careers in the U.S. and throughout the world.

My senior major advisee (Scandinavian Studies and Honors Classics double major) Zachary Blinkinsop (’14) is beginning his second year in the Ph.D. program in the Department of Scandinavian Studies at the University of California Berkeley. Upon beginning at Berkeley, Zach was awarded the University’s prestigious Mellon Humanities Doctoral Fellowship—a fellowship given to one incoming student from across the Humanities at Berkeley each year. While each Humanities Department and Program nominates a student for this award annually, never before in Berkeley history had the Fellowship been awarded to a student in the field of Scandinavian Studies. As Zach was considering graduate programs, we met numerous times to discuss his ideas and hopes. When I became his advisor during his second year, he would often drop by my office hours and talk about class assignments and about what he was reading both for class and outside of class. Our discussions ranged from dystopian Danish novels to veganism to meditation. While it was apparent to me early on that he was a gifted and talented student in languages and literary analysis, it was perhaps most rewarding to listen to his ideas about life and how he wants to live it. He is thriving at Berkeley and content in his decision.

Many of my advisees are double majors, and they often combine their two academic areas of interest and expertise in meaningful ways. My advisee Dawn Comstock (Biology and Scandinavian Studies, ’13) is beginning her second year of medical school at Harvard. During her time at Gustavus I helped facilitate for her an internship at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm through a friend of mine there who was completing an Ph.D. in Epidemiology. I worked closely with Dawn on her Scandinavian Studies Senior Major Colloquium research project on rural health in Greenland. This project began as a paper in my SCA-344 special topics course “Picturing the North: Representations versus Realities of Arctic Scandinavia.”

My very first advisee was Scandinavian Studies and Psychology student Kirstin Erickson (’13). Kirstin is completing a law degree at William Mitchell College of Law, focusing on childhood and family law. Her senior colloquium presentation displayed the beautiful synergy that interdisciplinarity and double majoring can form: she presented on how the family-leave policies in the U.S. and Sweden differ, and the benefits the more-extensive Swedish model has in terms of childhood wellbeing and psychological development. The initial groundwork for this project was laid when she was a student in my SCA-100: “Scandinavian Life and Culture” course while she was beginning the major in Scandinavian Studies.

The majority of my advisees have stepped into a job directly after college. They are, among other things, serving as teachers in Teach for America; as study abroad coordinators in Copenhagen, Denmark, and in the U.S.; as environmental activists; and as literacy councilors and teachers. Over the course of my five years at Gustavus, I have written numerous letters of recommendation and/or served as a reference for students applying to graduate programs, medical schools, and in a variety of job settings—many of these students have taken only one course with me, but we developed a positive relationship and I served as an informal advisor for many of them.