A compact seminar features a distinguished instructor, usually a visitor from Scandinavia, with expertise in topics related to Scandinavian Literature and Cultures. The seminar is intended to teach these topics in an intensive format and to complement regular departmental offerings. A series of short papers or a single, longer paper is required.

Names are a linguistic category, but names are also inextricably linked to concepts such as identity, taste, fashion, generational differences, prejudice, social stereotypes and cultural variation. Compared to most other linguistic categories, a great deal of conscious deliberation often goes into choosing names, whether naming a child, a company, a street -- or deciding on last names when getting married. In this seminar we focus on the role of naming, especially personal naming, in contemporary Western societies and the cultural variation within these, focusing primarily on Scandinavia and the United States, discussing research from fields such as onomastics (the study of names), sociolinguistics, sociology and gender studies. The course is structured as an advanced compact graduate seminar, meeting for two-hour sessions once per week. Each week there will be a presentation of the week’s topic and intensive discussions, for which the students are expected to be thoroughly prepared. Students must turn in a weekly mini-bibliography of two annotated entries that extend the premise of that week’s topic. During the last week, students will present a 10 minute in-class presentation, and submit an 10-12 page paper, proposing a research question, data collection and research methodology.

This is a five-week course. Instruction starts February 16, 2022.

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