Submitted by Debbie Sue Olson
on
pictured from left to right:
Marianne Wirenfeldt Asmussen (former director of the Karen Blixen Museum and literary executor);
Marianne Alenius (director of Museum Tusculanum Press)
Marianne Stecher (UW professor)
Marianne Stølen (UW alumna and former Visiting Danish Lecturer)
"Four Mariannes" celebrated together at the annual BOGFORUM (Book Fair) in Copenhagen Nov. 8th: each played a role in the publication of Marianne Stecher's new book, The Creative Dialectic in Karen Blixen's Essays. There were plenty of other book publications featured that weekend. But the four Marianne's took a moment to gather around the Karen Blixen book (held here in foreground).
It's not often that a literary study makes front page news! On September 2nd, Denmark's largest daily newspaper POLITIKEN had published a front-page story on Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen), reporting that an important new study by UW Professor of Scandinavian Studies Marianne Stecher had challenged decades of criticism about the Danish literary icon, whose literary works about colonial Africa have often provoked controversy and elicited praise. Critic Mikkel Bruun Zangenberg gave high marks (five-hearts) to The Creative Dialectic in Karen Blixen's Essays, calling it a "smashing good study" ("Knagende god afhandling") and a full-page interview with Professor Stecher by cultural journalist Camilla Stockmann was also featured in that day's paper. Read the articles, interviews and book reviews from Politiken and other Danish papers, posted on the department's website under NEWS.