For the 2015-2016 school year, I served as a Fulbright Roving Scholar in American Studies in Norway under a grant from the US-Norway Fulbright Foundation. During the year, I visited 61 upper secondary schools (videregåendeskoler is the Norwegian word) throughout the country. I’m deeply grateful for this rare opportunity (and the opportunities that attended it to visit family and friends and deepen my Norwegian language competence along the way!). At that time, I was also a Humanities teacher at The Northwest School in Seattle, Washington, where I taught 10th and 12th grade courses in literature, history, and writing. After I returned from Norway, I returned to my home state of Iowa for a sojourn at the edge of the Driftless Area, where I served one year as Visiting Assistant Professor of Scandinavian Studies in the Nordic Studies program at Luther College in Decorah—my alma mater. Currently, I am a Assistant Teaching Professor of Norwegian in the University of Washington‘s Scandinavian Studies department, where I teach the second-year sequence of courses in Norwegian language and courses on the literary Arctic.
Prior to my years teaching in independent high schools, I taught for over seven years as a Teaching Associate in the UW’s English Department and Program on the Environment and a post-doctoral instructor of English, teaching upper division literature courses in the English major. I earned a Ph.D. in English at the UW in December of 2010 with a dissertation entitled Occasions of Wildness: Literature, Simultaneity, and Habitation under the direction of the late Herbert Blau. The work examined our evolving (and troubling) conceptions of wilderness as they’re mobilized in literary, cultural, and political contexts. I also study nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature, Western American literature, and poetry and poetics.
From 2019-2021, I was Assistant Editor for The Norwegian American, the last remaining Norwegian-American newspaper in North America.
I come originally from a small farm and factory town in northern Iowa surrounded by corn fields and wind farms. I studied English and music (and Norwegian) at Luther in Decorah before moving west to Washington state in 2004, where I’ve felt at home among the mountains and the sound.
Suzanne Bottelli
Bon Voyage, mon frère, and have a great time there!
Ben Lee
一路顺风！
David
Que lo pases bien. 🙂
Dennis Hall
I just happen to see your web site on line. Saw the picture of Gustav Hansen grave. He is my great great grandfather too. I have a picture of his son Emil and his wife on the wall above me. Emil and Martha left Lilyhammer after his death with other family. They moved to Wisconsin and then Coos Bay, Oregon.
I was in Norway a couple year ago and in the 1980s. I was only 80km from the grave. I should have stopped. I have swedish relatives too. I usually stay with them when we visit. I did the 23 and me. My moms Norwegian and my Dad is Swedish. Some how both families are related back in Scandinavian. Worlds too small. I will check out your site. I plan to travel over there often in the future. Have a great week.
Andy
Hi Dennis, the world is small indeed! I’m glad you found the site—when I was living in Norway, I was in Lillehammer a number of times & found the approximate site of Gustav’s grave, based on the photograph. His gravestone is no longer there (nor, likely, the grave itself), but in the church records I found the record of his burial in 1906. Also: before I left for Norway, a friend and I found Emil’s grave in Puyallup. Emil was brother to Albert, my great grandfather, who stayed in Wisconsin, while Emil headed out here to the Pacific Northwest, as you say. I grew up in Iowa, but moved to Seattle in 2004. How fun to find those connections!