Lene M Johannessen
professor
Institutt for fremmedspråk
Stilling: professor
Telefon: 55 58 23 99
E-post: Lene.Johannessen@if.uib.no
Besøksadresse: HF-bygget, Sydnesplassen 7
Romnummer: 249
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Research interests and teaching are generally focused around topics in American Studies, Chicano studies, Postcolonial studies, and more generally yet, literatures of/in migration and the ideological, cultural, social and aesthetic manifestations and negotiations of the en-route as these are refracted in narratives. Most recently this is something I focus on in relation to the idea of genre/ritual as 'triggers' for transculturation/transvaluation.
Research stays connected to various projects include visits as Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Literature Program, Duke University (1996-97); as visiting scholar in the Centre for Chicano Studies., University of California Santa Barbara (2000), in the History of Consciousness Department, University of California Santa Cruz (2005-06) and in the Literature Department, University of California Santa Cruz (2009, 2011)
- M.A., American Literature, University of Bergen, 1994
- Dr.art (PhD), American Literature, University of Bergen, 2001
- Associate professor, English Dept, University of Bergen, 2005
- Professor, American literature and culture, IF, 2010
In progress:
"'Shangri-La Recall': Remembering Chávez Ravine"
Forthcoming:
"Russia's Californio Romance: The Other Shores of Whitman's Pacific," in The Imaginary and Its Worlds: American Studies after the Transnational Turn, UPNE
"Postcolonial Palimpsest: Hybridity and Writing," Cambridge History of Postcolonial Literatures. CUP 2012
BOOKS:
Horizons of Enchantment: Essays in the American Imaginary, Dartmouth College Press, 2011
Performing Change: Identity, Ownership and Tradition in Ugandan Oral Culture. Eds. Dominica Dipio, Lene Johannessen, Stuart Sillars. Oslo: Novus, 2009
Performing Community: Essays on Ugandan Oral Culture. Eds. Dominica Dipio, Lene Johannessen, Stuart Sillars. Oslo: Novus, 2008
Threshold Time: Passage of Crisis in Chicano Literature. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2008.
Considering Class: Essays on the Discourse of the American Dream. Berlin: LitVerlag, 2007. Co-edited and introduction with Kevin Cahill.
Readings of the Particular: The Postcolonial in the Postnational.Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2007. Co-edited and introduction with Anne Holden Rønning.
To Become the Self One Is: A Critical Companion to Drude Krog Janson’s A Saloonkeeper’s Daughter. Oslo: Novus, 2005. Co-edited and introduction with Asbjørn Grønstad.
ARTICLES / ESSAYS (selected):
“De-Symbolization and the Cultural Act,” Border Poetics De-Limited.Hannover: Wehrhahn Verlag 2007: 163-176.
“The Anatomy of Exile: David Malouf's An Imaginary Life and Anita Desai's Baumgartner's Bombay,” Violence and Transgression in World Minority Literatures. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter. 2005: 381-397.
“’The insincere embrace:’ Canons and the Market,” American Studies in Scandinavia 2004: 36(2): 77-92.
”The Lonely Figure: Memory of Exile in Ana Menéndez' “In Cuba I was a German Shepherd.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 2005: 41(1): 54-68.
Teaching includes courses on undergraduate and graduate levels, from the introductory survey course in American literature and culture (ENG122) to MA courses in various areas of American and postcolonial literatures and cultures:( "Other Routes" (spring 2006), "Literary Passages" (spring 2008), "Literatures of California" (spring 2010, "Transculturation in American Literature" (Fall 2010), "Itineraries in American Literature" (spring 2012)
Supervising of MA theses has tended to cover a wide range of topics and genres in American, postcolonial, and Chicano literature/culture, as well as certain areas o American popular culture studies.
The following projects and networks provide venues for various aspects of my research interests:
THE NORDIC NETWORK FOR LITERARY TRANSCULTURATION STUDIES
- a collaboration between researchers in Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia focusing on the theoretical and methodological challenges and possibilities associated with emergent cultural and aesthetic forms, subsumed under the concept of transculturation. The project started work in the fall of 2009, and has inwill begin its work in the spring of 2010, and runs until 2012. The network is funded in full by Nordforsk, and is coordinated by Lene M. Johannessen at UiB.
Closing conference "Transculturation and Aeshtetics" takes place in Bergen end of August
THE ROLE OF UGANDAN FOLKLORES AS REPOSITORY OF TRADITIONAL WISDOM
- a collaboration between Makerere University and University of Bergen, and funded in full by NUFU (The Norwegian Programme for Development, Research and Education). THe project runs until 2011 and is home to a team of researchers at Makerere University and the University of Bergen.Generally speaking the project aims to gather and disseminate the folklore traditions of several different Ugandan groups, to identify commonalities that in turn may function as foundation for national identity, long severed and suffering from the aftershocks of colonization and internal strife, particularly in the northern areas. It is the project participants' hope that this undertaking may be a step in the right direction of finding a path towards reconciliation.
Coordinators for the project are Dr. Dominica Dipio in Kampala, and Dr. Stuart Sillars in Bergen.
Over the past few years Johan Schimanski and Stephen Wolfe have been instrumental in giving shape to this project which explores epistemological and theoretical underpinnings and manifestations of the border. The link takes you to a comprehensive home page for this project, and an impressive and very helpful encyclopedia of terms related to border poetics.