Swedish-American Borderlands: New Histories of Transatlantic Relations

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Reframing SwedishAmerican relations by focusing on contacts, crossings, and convergences beyond migration

Studies of Swedish American history and identity have largely been confined to separate disciplines, such as history, literature, or politics. In SwedishAmerican Borderlands, this collection edited by Dag Blanck and Adam Hjorthn seeks to reconceptualize and redefine the field of SwedishAmerican relations by reviewing more complex cultural, social, and economic exchanges and interactions that take a broader approach to the international relationshipultimately offering an alternative way of studying the history of transatlantic relations.

SwedishAmerican Borderlands studies connections and contacts between Sweden and the United States from the seventeenth century to today, exploring how movements of people have informed the circulation of knowledge and ideas between the two countries. The volume brings together scholars from a wide range of disciplines within the humanities and social sciences to investigate multiple transcultural exchanges between Sweden and the United States. Rather than concentrating on one-way processes or specific national contexts, SwedishAmerican Borderlands adopts the concept of borderlands to examine contacts, crossings, and convergences between the nations, featuring specific case studies of topics like jazz, architecture, design, genealogy, and more.

By placing interactions, entanglements, and cross-border relations at the center of the analysis, SwedishAmerican Borderlands seeks to bridge disciplinary divides, joining a diverse set of scholars and scholarship in writing an innovative history of SwedishAmerican relations to produce new understandings of what we perceive as Swedish, American, and Swedish American.

Contributors: Philip J. Anderson, North Park U; Jennifer Eastman Attebery, Idaho State U; Marie Bennedahl, Linnaeus U; Ulf Jonas Bjrk, Indiana UIndianapolis; Thomas J. Brown, U of South Carolina; Margaret E. Farrar, John Carroll U; Charlotta Forss, Stockholm U; Gunlg Fur, Linnaeus U; Karen V. Hansen, Brandeis U; Angela Hoffman, Uppsala U; Adam Kaul, Augustana College; Maaret Koskinen, Stockholm U; Merja Kyt, Uppsala U; Svea Larson, U of WisconsinMadison; Franco Minganti, U of Bologna; Frida Rosenberg, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm; Magnus Ulln, Stockholm U.

Reviews

"Readable and informative, exploring topics from various angles but always through the lens of borderlands. The essaysaddress issues often neglected in the literature to date, providing welcome new perspectives and discussions."CHOICE

"The volume is not only a worthwhile read and a valuable resource for researchers in American studies; it is also an invitation for new research on European-North American borderlands."European Journal of American Culture

"The anthology offers a timely collection of succinct, multidisciplinary essays written by established researchers and some newcomers to the field. Altogether, Swedish-American Borderlands provides a groundbreaking next step in the study of borders, both geographic and metaphoric."Scandinavian Studies

Author Bio

Dag Blanck is professor of North American studies and director of the Swedish Institute for North American Studies at Uppsala University and director of the Swenson Swedish Immigration Research Center at Augustana College. He is author of The Creation of an Ethnic Identity: Being Swedish American in the Augustana Synod, 18601917 and recipient of the Carl Sandburg Medal from the Swedish-American Historical Society.

Adam Hjorthn is postdoctoral researcher at the Free University of Berlin and at Stockholm University. He received the Loubat Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters in 2018 and is author of Cross-Border Commemorations: Celebrating Swedish Settlement in America.