FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT:
Verne Moberg
E-mail: [email protected]
Telephone: 212-854-7859
 
COLUMBIA SWEDISH PROGRAM ANNOUNCES FALL 2002 SCHEDULE
FEATURING TRANSLATORS, BOOK SALE, LECTURE, PLAY READING
 
The Swedish Program at Columbia University has announced its fall 2000 roster of Scandinavian cultural activities including readings of translations, a book sale, a feminist lecture, and a play reading, scheduled from October 1 through November 8.
All these activities will be at Deutsches Haus, the cultural center for the Department of Germanic Languages at Columbia, located at 420 W. 116th Street, New York City (between Amsterdam Avenue and Morningside Drive on the Columbia campus).
The public is invited, and admission is free to all these events, the first of which will be “Nordic Translators’ Night,” at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, October 1. New translations from the Nordic Languages (Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish) will be read by their translators, including Daniel Dale, Aili and Austin Flint, Robert Greer, Verne Moberg, and others. The evening is being sponsored by the Columbia Swedish Program in cooperation with the American-Scandinavian Foundation
In connection with the translators’ reading, a Nordic book sale will also be held at Deutsches Haus from 4 to 7 p.m., on the same day, Tuesday, October 1. Bargain used books (mainly about Scandinavia and Scandinavians) will be offered for sale, including publications in Danish, English, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish. The sale will be sponsored by the Swedish Program in cooperation with the Program in Finnish Studies of the Department of Germanic Languages at Columbia University.
The next fall event will be a lecture by Åsa Arping, a leading Swedish women’s studies scholar from the University of Gothenburg. Scheduled for 7 P.M., Tuesday, October 22, her talk in English is entitled “Ideas for the Ideal Society in an Early Swedish Feminist Novel: Swedish and American Elements in Fredrika Bremer's Hertha (1856).” Fredrika Bremer (1801-1865) was a pioneer of Sweden’s 19th-century women’s movement and an early realist novelist. Åsa Arping is editor of the scholarly Swedish feminist journal Kvinnovetenskaplig tidskrift (Women’s' Studies Magazine); of a forthcoming critical edition of Fredrika Bremer’s novel Hertha; of the anthology “Mig törstar!" (“I Thirst!”) with texts on Bremer, published in August 2001 in commemoration of the 200th birthday of the author; and of a commentated edition of Bremer's first novel, Famillen H*** (The H. Family). In 2001 she won a scholarship for studies in intercultural relations from the Swedish Women’s Educational Association—International, and on September 14, 2002, defends her Ph.D. dissertation (entitled "Pretentious Modesty. Authority and Gender in the Swedish Debate on the Novel in the 1830s") at Gothenburg University, where she teaches women’s studies and cultural journalism. Her lecture on October 22 is sponsored by the Swedish Program in cooperation with Columbia’s Institute for the Study of Europe and Institute for Research on Women and Gender along with the Swedish Women’s Educational Association—New York.
The final Swedish event on the fall schedule will be a staged reading of a play by leading Swedish dramatist Margareta Garpe. Entitled “All the Days, All the Nights,” the program will begin at 7 p.m., Friday, November 8, 2002, also at Deutsches Haus. The work was translated from the Swedish by Tana Ross and Paul Luskin and will be directed by Robert Greer, with professional actors cast in the roles. The drama deals with the dilemma of a modern Swedish woman who is part of an in-between generation: she is faced with the problem of how to afford the responsibility of caring for her ailing, aging mother at the same time she is supporting her teenage daughter.
Together with Swedish director Suzanne Osten, Margareta Garpe has created dramas with feminist themes for Stockholm’s Municipal Theatre and has also been active as a film director. She has written film scripts, cabarets, songs, and monologues and has worked with translations and adaptations of drama classics. In addition to staging her own plays, Ms. Garpe has also directed and adapted Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts and Hedda Gabler for Swedish Television as well as the drama series “Skilda Världar” (Separate Worlds) for Swedish television’s Channel 4.
“All the Days, All the Nights,” was first staged in Swedish under the author’s direction by Sweden’s Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm in 1992 and on Swedish Television in 1996; in Denmark it was performed in Danish by the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen in 2002, under the direction of Vibeke Bjelke. Another play by Margareta Garpe, “For Julia,” was produced recently in Washington, D.C., and in New York.
The play reading will be sponsored by the Swedish Program of the Department of Columbia University, with the assistance of the American-Scandinavian Foundation.
The Columbia Swedish Program offers four semesters of basic language instruction in Swedish each year as well as courses taught in English on Scandinavian literature, culture, and film. This year, in addition to courses in elementary and intermediate Swedish, the Program is offering a course in the fall entitled “Ibsen and Strindberg” and another in the spring entitled “Folk Tales, Fairy Tales, and Children’s Literature in Scandinavia.” All courses are taught by Verne Moberg. Further information is available on the Swedish Program Web site at www.columbia.edu/cu/swedish or by phoning 212.854.7859 or E-mailing [email protected].