Spring Quarter 2026
Mondays and Wednesdays, 12:30-2:20 pm
Guntis Šmidchens, guntiss@uw.edu
Societies hold together in institutions: stable value systems that underlie a people's behavior through time. In Northern Europe, institutions rooted in rule of law, individual rights, and responsibility for shared governance have developed and adapted over centuries, described, assessed, and shaped by individual thinkers. This graduate seminar confronts seven recent books by North European political, academic, and cultural influencers, along with three North American authors. Each week, seminar participants will present, discuss, and write a short essay to review, interrogate, and adapt each author's ideas, with an eye toward institutions of their own present and future as readers, thinkers and writers.
This course meets alongside the Symposium on European Union Security and Democracy, a series of lectures hosted in 2025/26 by the Jean Monnet EU Center of Excellence, UW Jackson School of International Studies.
Please watch for syllabus updates on this Canvas page.
Reading List (in order of discussion, one book per week):
- Timothy Snyder (University of Toronto), On Freedom. First edition., Crown, 2024.
- Alexander Stubb (President of Finland), The Triangle of Power : Rebalancing the New World Order. La Vergne: Columbia Global Reports, 2026.
- Phillips O'Brien (University of St Andrews, Scotland), War and Power : Who Wins Wars--and Why. First US hardcover edition., PublicAffairs, 2025. [e-book at UW Libraries, limit one reader]
- O'Brien is keynote speaker at the REECAS NW conference hosted by UW (Thurs April 16)
- Henrik Berggren (Journalist, Sweden) and Lars Trägårdh (Uppsala University, Sweden). The Swedish Theory of Love: Individualism and Social Trust in Modern Sweden. 1st ed., University of Washington Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3828/9780295750545 .
- Žemaitė (Author, Lithuania), Marriage for Love : A 19th Century Lithuanian Woman’s Fight for Justice. Birchwood Press, 2020.
- Mart Kuldkepp (University College London, UK), The Shortest History of Scandinavia : 14,000 Years from the Stone Age and the Vikings to the Happiest Nations in the World. New York: The Experiment, 2026.
- EU Democracy and Security Symposium hosted by UW, Tues May 7
- Unni Wikan (University of Oslo, Norway), Generous Betrayal : Politics of Culture in the New Europe. University of Chicago Press, 2002, .
- Hans Rosling (Karolinska Institute, Sweden), et al. Factfulness : Ten Reasons We’re Wrong about the World - and Why Things Are Better than You Think. First Flatiron Books paperback edition., Flatiron Books, 2020,
- Anne Applebaum (Journalist, USA), Autocracy, Inc. : The Dictators Who Want to Run the World. Penguin Random House LLC, 2024. [e-book at UW Libraries],
- Melvin Rader (University of Washington, Seattle), False Witness. University of Washington Press, 1998,