Ross Shideler
(Professor)
Royce Hall 212. Tel.: (310) 825-3014. Fax: (310) 825-9754. shideler@ucla.edu
I
fell in love with Sweden and with Swedish when I went to Uppsala
and then Stockholm as a graduate student in the 1960s. My trip to
Sweden followed a circuituous route from my B.A. at San Francisco
State University in English and Creative Writing to France and the
Sorbonne for a year to study French, then finally to Sweden. After
finishing my M.A. in Comparative Literature with an emphasis on
Nordisk litteraturhistoria at the University of Stockholm, I went
to UC Berkeley to complete my Ph.D. in Comparative Literature with
areas of specialization in Swedish, French and American literature.
(Poetry is my first love and when I first started teaching I managed
to publish a number of my own poems as well as some translations
of Swedish poets.)
With the assistance of various scholarships and fellowships, I was able to return on a regular basis to Sweden and Scandinavia and, as the list below suggests, much of my academic research focused on nineteenth-and twentieth-century Swedish authors. My most recent work, Questioning the Father: From Darwin to Zola, Ibsen, Strindberg and Hardy (1999), has been both comparative and interdisciplinary, but Scandinavia remains a central focus of my research. Though research remains of great interest to me, teaching is more fun and genuinely exciting, whether it is a Scandinavian literature class or a Comparative Literature theory or poetry course. If any of the academic details interest you, see below.
Ross Shideler is a Professor of Comparative Literature and Scandinavian at UCLA. His books include Voices Under the Ground: Themes and Images in the Poetry of Gunnar Ekelöf (1973), Per Olov Enquist: A Critical Study (1984), Questioning the Father: From Darwin to Zola, Ibsen, Strindberg and Hardy (1999). He has co-edited with Kathleen Komar Lyrical Symbols and Narrative Transformations: Essays in Honor of Ralph Freedman (1998) and translated the plays The Night of the Tribades (1977) and The Hour of the Lynx (1990) by Per Olov Enquist. He has also published over seventy articles, poems and reviews in a wide range of journals. At UCLA he has served as Head of the Scandinavian Section for three years, Chair of Comparative Literature for ten years, and served on various academic senate committees including the Faculty Executive Committee, the Distinguished Teachers Committee (he received this award in 1985), and the Undergraduate Council. Currently he Chairs the College of Letters & Science’s Committee on the Implemention of Writing II. Nationally, he was elected to the Scandinavian Discussion Group of the MLA, has served in various capacities for the ACLA including the executive committee of the Association of Chairs of Departments and Programs of Comparative Literature. Having previously been on the advisory board of the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study, he was elected Vice-President of that organization in 1997 and served as its President for 1999 and 2000.
Courses
- Scandinavian 50: Introduction to Scandinavian Literature
- Scandinavian 50W: Introduction to Scandinavian Literature (Writing 2)
- Scandinavian C145: Strindberg
- Scandinavian 181: Contemporary Swedish Literature