Norway

Runology is concerned with some 1300 years of the history of writing. Runes constituted the script used by many Germanic peoples from the second century A.D. Their use died out in Norway around 1400. This course spans the entire history of runes and gives an overview of both the secondary literature and the inscriptions themselves. For a relevant point of comparison, the course also includes a concise introduction to contemporary Roman Alphabet epigraphy in Scandinavia.

This course offers an introduction to Norwegian dialects, Norwegian language history, and New Norwegian both as cultural heritage and as a language of use. This course is an overview of the Norwegian language situation before and now. Upon completion of the course, the students must have knowledge of the main points in dialectology. They must work practically with target samples and be able to recognize the four main groups into which Norwegian dialects are divided. The students must have a good insight into Norwegian dialects and dialect variation and an overview of the historical and political background for the current situation. They must be able to transfer their knowledge of Norwegian colloquialisms to confidential situations. The students should also be familiar with some main features of Norwegian language history and have knowledge of Nynorsk's place in Norway today. They must be able to read and understand Nynorsk texts in various genres from blogs and newspapers to professional articles and shorter literary texts. The students gain insight into the Nynorsk vocabulary and basic grammatical features of the Nynorsk language and use this competence to write their own texts in Nynorsk. Students must have completed NORINT0130 – Norwegian for international students, level 3 or equivalent as a prerequisite.

Applied ethics deals with specific moral problems of fundamental importance for today’s individual and society. This branch of ethics covers areas such as animal rights, medical ethics, environmental ethics, and corporate ethics. This course discusses questions such as: Do humans and animals have a different moral status? Can eating meat be morally justified? Are there any moral reasons for allowing euthanasia?  How should one balance different values and demands in care work when it comes to the sharing of resources? Are we morally obliged to fight climate change? How should we as individuals deal with the environmental as well as the economic changes which the globalization makes us face? Can today’s economic system be justified? The content of the course may vary from one semester to another, something which means that often different topics will be discussed each time the course is given. Applied ethics also covers methodological questions regarding how to discuss and conclude as far as moral problems are concerned.

Published in 1845, Friedrich Engels’s book DIE LAGE DER ARBEITENDEN KLASSE IN ENGLAND (THE CONDITION OF THE WORKING CLASS IN ENGLAND) describes how industrialization affected the lives of working people, based in part on his encounters with them at a Manchester cotton mill. Regarding industrial labor as both a consequence of an ongoing class struggle and the sparkplug for the revolution that would end it one day, Engels told a story of industrial work as a catalyst for political change that was going to happen the world over, one nation at a time. Fast forward a good hundred and fifty years, and the perspective on work and labor shifted. Industrial wage labor has moved in large parts to the Global South and is less clearly distinguishable from unfree labor. Unemployment has arisen as a major issue in wealthy countries. New forms of work have attracted scholarly attention, from domestic, reproductive, and service labor (partly unpaid and often done by women) to creative work, where self-realization is considered as much a reward as financial compensation. Fairness of pay and conditions is still an important concern, but it has become more difficult to mobilize for it, as dwindling union membership and the decline of Labor parties indicate. The course discusses topics including major trends and issues in the history of work and labor in the West since the mid-nineteenth century, and historiographical arguments.

The course examines main points of development in the Anglo-American short story tradition in the 19th and 20th centuries, drawing on central concepts from short fiction theory from Edgar Allan Poe to contemporary theorists. Beyond the much debated question of generic definition, the course takes a variety of approaches to the short story, including: considering the short story in literary history; the impact of modernism and impressionism; the postcolonial short story; varieties of style and narrative technique; and the representation of class, race, ethnicity, and gender in the short story.