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Conference Schedule

Daytime presentations Thursday and Friday will take place in medical building one on the UiT campus. Keynote presentations and all of Saturday´s events will take place at the Scandic Grand downtown. All presentations will be streamed via Zoom. (Program with Zoom links sent via email.) 

 

 

Thursday, September 24th

 

8: 45-9: 15 COFFEE AND REGISTRATION

Medicine and the health professional building 1

  

9:15 - 9:30 WELCOME AND OPENING

Medicine and health sciences building 1 Large auditorium

Cassandra Falke, Professor of English Literature, UiT - The Arctic University of Norway, President of ASANOR

Tristram Perry, Public Affairs, US Embassy of Norway 

 

9:30 - 11:00 PLENARY PRESENTATION

American Studies under / after a Post-Factual President: The Effects on American Democracy of 'Fake News', 'Alternative Facts,' and the 'Dumbing Down' of a Large Part of the Population

Medicine and Health Sciences Building 1: Large auditorium

Ole O. Moen (Professor Emeritus, University of Oslo, Norway)

Respondent: Alf Tomas Tønnessen (Univesity of Adger, Norway; President, Nordic Association for American Studies, 2019-2023)

  

11:15 - 12:45 PANEL PRESENTATION 1

 

Panel 1: Intersectional Truths / Fictions / Facts - Gender, Sexuality, Ethnicity, Race

Medicine and Health Sciences Building 1: Large Auditorium

Moderator: Justin Parks 

  • Borders and Betrayal in Zora Neale Hurston's  Barracoon : Rethinking Truths and Facts in the American Slave Narrative

Nahum Welang (University of Bergen, Norway)

  • ¨ Historical Truths vs. Facts in Representations of Race:  Hidden Figures

Deborah Kitchen-Døderlein (University of Oslo, Norway)

  • ¨ Undeniable Facts, Impossible Truth: The Case of Sara Baartman

Željka Švrljuga (University of Bergen, Norway)

 

12:45 - 13:45 LUNCH

 

14:00 - 15:30 PANEL PRESENTATIONS 3 AND 4

 

Panel 3: Autobiographical and Autofictional Truths

Medicine and Health Sciences Building 1: Auditorium 6

Moderator: Nahum Welang

  • ¨ “Some day, all this will have to be developed”: Testimony, Futurity, and Camp in Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin

Eric Doise (Southwest Minnesota State University, USA)

  • ¨ Truth, Falsity and Justice in Poems from Guantanamo

Ruben Moi (UiT-Norway's Arctic University of Tromsø)

 

Panel 4: Narrating contemporary US identities and ideological conflicts 

Medicine and Health Sciences Building 1: Large Auditorium

Moderator: Alf Tomas Tønnessen 

  • ¨ The Post-Truth Poetics of Prose-Poem Testimony in Citizen by Claudia Rankine

Jiri Flajsar (Palacky Uniersity Olomouc, Czech Republic)

  • ¨ Spiteful Fictions

Marianne Kongerslev (Aalborg University, Denmark)

 

 15:30 - 16:00 COFFEE BREAK

  

16:00 - 17:30 KEYNOTE ONE:  Truth, Rights, and US Political and Literary Culture

Scandic Grand, Gokkohjørnet

Moderator: Cassandra Falke

James Dawes (DeWitt Wallace Professor of English, Macalester College, USA)

  

17:45 - 19:00 WELCOME RECEPTION (Ardna) https://uit.no/enhet/sesam 

 

Friday, September 25th

 

9:00 - 9:30 COFFEE

 

9:30 - 11:00 SAMI ART WALK with Irene Snarby, beginning at Ardna

 

11:15 - 12:45 PANEL PRESENTATIONS 5 AND 6

 

Panel 5: Truth-Telling in Activism and Reform

Medicine and Health Sciences Building 1: Auditorium 6

       Moderator: Eir-Anne Edgar 

  • Rosa Sonneschein's Fin de Siecle Fiction: the Clashing (Un) true Worlds of Zionism, Reform, Judiasm, Feminism and Conformity

Irina Rabinovich (Holon Institute of Technology, Israel)

  • ¨ The Myth of Male Power: Men's Rights, Alternative Histories, and Telling the “Truth” about American Matriarchy

Keira V. Williams (Queen's University of Belfast, Ireland)

  • ¨ Native American Women's Truth-Telling Activism: the Oil Industry and #MMIWG

Ellen Marie Jensen (UiT-Norway's Arctic University)

  

Panel 6: Grand Narratives, Histories, and Ideologies of “America” Across Genres

Medicine and Health Sciences Building 1: Auditorium 1

Moderator: Minna Niemi

  • ¨ The Truth in the Script and the Untruth in the Movie: Tarantino's Rewriting of American History

Enrico Botta (Independent Scholar, Italy)

  • ¨ Young Folks' History: Grand narratives of citizenship and identity in American schoolbooks from the early Republic to the Reconstruction Era

Luana Salvarani (University of Parma, Italy) 

  • ¨ Truth in Crisis: The Great Depression and the Impasse of Writing

Justin Parks (UiT-Norway's Arctic University)

 

12:45 - 13:45 LUNCH

 

14:00 - 15:30 PANEL PRESENTATIONS 7 AND 8

 

Panel 7: Truth and Politics in the Trump Era

Medicine and Health Sciences Building 1: Auditorium 6

Moderator: Justin Parks

  • ¨ Republicans Ignoring the Truth: Why Trump Survived Impeachment While Nixon Resigned

Alf Tomas Tønnessen (University of Agder, Norway)

  • ¨ Defamiliarizing the American Audience's Biases via Ethnodrama: The Clinton-Trump Debate's Monsters and Beyond

Joe Salvatore (New York University, USA) and Phillip Pierce (UiT-Norway's Arctic University)

 

15:30 - 16:00 COFFEE BREAK

 

16:00 - 17:30 KEYNOTE TWO:  Finding Our Way with Native Literature

Scandic Grand, Gokkohjørnet

Moderator: Laura Castor

Carter Meland (Assistant Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, USA)

 

19:30 - 21:30 CONFERENCE DINNER at SKARVEN

 

 

Saturday September 26th

 

9:30 - 10:30 COFFEE AND BUSINESS MEETING

Scandic Grand, Gokkohjørnet

 

10.30 - 12:00 PANEL PRESENTATIONS 9 AND 10

 

Panel 9: Narrating the Self for Others

Scandic Grand, Grupperom 2

Moderator: Ellen Marie Jensen

  • ¨ “Would You Ever Lie to Me?”: Truth, Reality and the Posthuman Identity in  Westworld

Amaya Fernandez Menicucci (University of the Basque Country, Spain) 

  • ¨ “Sorry You Feel That Way:” #Metoo and the Public Apology

Eir-Anne E. Edgar (The Norwegian University of Science and Technology)

  

Panel 10: Regional Narratives and Contested Histories of South and West

Scandic Grand, Gokkohjørnet

Moderator: Justin Parks

  • ¨ Ready, Player, Outlaw: The Mythical West, Neo-Revisionism, and Video Games

Michael Fuchs (University of Oldenburg, Germany); and Stefan Rabitsch (University of Graz, Austria)

  • Territories of Indian Mind and Heart: Storytelling and the Issue of Indigenous Identity in Simon J. Ortiz's from  Sand Creek: Rising in this Heart which is our America  (1981)

Panteleimon Tsiokos (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece) 

  • ¨ An Invitation to the Truth: The “Prologue” in Tommy Orange's  There, There

Kristin Rozzell Murray (American University in Dubai)

 

12.00-13.00 LUNCH 

 

13.00-14.30 PANEL PRESENTATIONS 11 AND 12

Panel 11: Writing the Self Private and Public

Scandic Grand, Grupperom 2

Moderator: Laura Castor

  • ¨ Literary Re-presentations as Acts of Critical Social Responsibility

Anette Svensson (Jönköping University, Sweden)

  • ¨ Truth and 'Headlies': The truth-telling of T-Bone Slim

Owen Clayton (University of Lincoln, UK)

  • ¨ Fitzgerald's Slanted Second Act:  The Crack-Up  as Revisionist Self-Invention

Jessica Allen Hanssen (Nord University, Norway)

 

Panel 12: Difficult Truths and Contested Subjectivities

Scandic Grand, Gokkohjørnet

Moderator: Cassandra Falke

  • ¨ Representing Unpleasant Truths: Postcolonial Gothic and Cultural Abjection in Adichie's "Tomorrow is Too Far"

Minna Niemi (UiT-Norway's Arctic University)

  • ¨ The Issue of Self-Representation in American Literature Featuring Drag Queen Characters, 1960s-1980

Ewa Scibior (University of Warsaw, Poland) 

  • ¨ Vivid and Repulsive as the Truth: The Effects of Contrast in Djuna Barnes'  The Book of Repulsive Women

Helle H. Lapeniene (University of Bergen, Norway)

 

14:30 - 15:00 COFFEE BREAK

15:00 - 16:30 KEYNOTE THREE:  BREAKTHROUGH: MeToo and the Formation of Collective Witness

Scandic Grand, Gokkohjørnet

Moderator: Laura Castor

Leigh Gilmore (Visiting Professor of English, The Ohio State University, USA; and Visiting Scholar, Penbrook Center for Teaching and Research on Women, Brown University, USA)