Academic interests
My research interests are literature and ethics, narrative emotions (specifically empathy), intercultural competence, and literature didactics.
My most recent work focuses on the development of an ethics of reading for the literature classroom based on a central aesthetic-ethical problem (of realism). I’m currently writing on a monograph with the working title “The Paradox of Narrative Empathy in George Eliot, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf: A New Ethics of Reading” which brings together theoretical, ethical, historical, and didactical perspectives on the novel.
Another aspect of my research concerns ways in which literature can foster the development of intercultural competence. In a forthcoming article I discuss how books that contain stereotypes and negative images may provide didactic opportunities for readers to reflect on their own relation and attitude to “the other”. Other forthcoming publications include an article on the use of written retelling of narrative texts in the Swedish as a second language classroom to support learners’ identity development and a paper on the ethics of the ending in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway.
Courses taught
- SFE11220 Britisk kultur (Høst 2023)
- LMUENG40217 ENG402 Interkulturell læring (5-10) (Vår 2024)
- LMBENG40217 ENG402 Interkulturell læring (1-7) (Vår 2024)
- Supervision of Master Theses in MFRISK
- Supervision of Master Theses in English LMUENG40517 ENG405
- SFE41115 Interkulturell læring og demokratisk kultur (Høst 2024)
Background
I’ve taught English and other subjects and supervised and examined Bachelor and Master Theses at a range of universities, amongst them Lund University, Linnaeus University, North Carolina Central University, and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, before joining The Department of Languages, Literature and Culture here at Östfold. I have a PhD in English Literature from Lund University, and I did my postdoc at Umeå University in Literary Studies with a didactic approach. I've spent one term as a Visiting Scholar at Duke University and a year as a Visiting Graduate Student at Worcester College, Oxford University
Awards
- Award for "Best Dissertation on Margaret Atwood", The Margaret Atwood Society
- Award for "Excellence in Teaching and Collegiality", College of Liberal Arts, North Carolina Central University