Dean Krouk is an Associate Professor in the Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic+. His research and language interests lie in Modern Scandinavian literature and history; politics of literature in the twentieth century; literary and cultural modernism; fascism and anti-fascism. He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley and teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in Scandinavian history and literature, as well as advanced Norwegian. His main area of research is Norwegian literature since the nineteenth century, especially its intersections with modern political ideologies. In addition to his first book, Fascism and Modernist Literature, Dean has published academic articles about authors such as Knut Hamsun, Karl Ove Knausgård, Kjartan Fløgstad, Merethe Lindstrøm and Henrik Ibsen.
A word from Thomas DuBois, Chair of German, Nordic & Slavic+ Department:
GNS+ congratulates Prof. Dean Krouk on his well-earned promotion to the rank of Associate Professor, with tenure. Krouk's monograph Fascism and Modernist Literature in Norway (University of Washington Press, 2017) has been well received in both the United States and Norway, and helps establish Krouk as a major authority on WWII-era Nordic literature and cultural politics. In addition, Prof. Krouk has written important and insightful studies of an array of other Norwegian authors past and present, and is well on his way to completing his second monograph. Prof. Krouk plays a key role in our Scandinavian literature and cultural studies curriculum at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. We are delighted that Prof. Krouk has received tenure and look forward to his bright future in our department, university, and field.
Written Q&A with new tenured faculty: Dean Krouk
Describe your primary research, as well as its significance to your field and, if applicable, current issues and events.
My research on twentieth-century Norway focuses on the ways in which literature becomes political and political ideologies become literary. Much of what I have published is about the period 1890-1945, and I have been especially interested in the relations between literature and the rise of European fascism and Nazism, as ideologies, parties, and regimes in power. My first book, Fascism and Modernist Literature in Norway (2017), brought together perspectives from literary studies, intellectual history, and political theory to examine the work of four male writers who interacted with fascism and Nazism in different ways, both enthusiastic and critical. One of them was the Nobel-prizing winning author Knut Hamsun, who is also significant in the development of the modern European novel. This book explains how these writers imagined the appeal and cultural meanings of fascism over time, in novels, essays, poems, and other writings, as well as their specific interactions with fascist parties and regimes, not least during the Nazi occupation of Norway. (Norway in the 1930s was a country with a tiny and politically powerless fascist party, which nonetheless became the only allowable party and a chief source of many “Quislings,” or collaborators, during the occupation years of 1940-1945.)
My second book deals more centrally with antifascism, as practiced in the work of the canonical writer Nordahl Grieg, an interwar dramatist, journalist, and poetic voice of the resistance during the occupation. Using Grieg as a focal figure in the context of literary and cultural antifascism, I analyze how his works addressed controversial topics such as political violence, pacifism, masculinity, Stalinism, and the Spanish Civil War. I completed the manuscript of this book in the fall of 2020 after researching it for a few years. It is no coincidence that this project emerged during a time when observers were frequently noting echoes of the interwar years, in terms of democratic breakdowns, rising ethno-nationalist and populist reactions, and authoritarian or autocratic tendencies around the world.
Describe what your research specifically involves (travel, experiments, historical texts, etc.). What’s most exciting and challenging about it?
My research involves reading historical and literary texts in the Scandinavian languages (especially both forms of written Norwegian, bokmål and nynorsk) and thinking about their meanings, forms, impacts, and contexts. In 2019, I spent a month in Norway researching at archives in Oslo and Bergen, including the special collections of the National Library. I find it exciting to interpret primary sources and to see twentieth-century historical events through the various ideological and aesthetic lenses of literary history.
What drew you to UW-Madison (i.e. how did you end up on the faculty here?)
UW-Madison is fortunate to have an excellent and longstanding program for the study of Nordic languages, cultures, and literature, so that was the main appeal as I decided to leave an assistant professor position at another school. Madison was also the place where my sister and her family lived (and still live). It is rare for academics to have the opportunity to live near family.
Describe your teaching style. What kinds of strategies do you use to keep students engaged?
This varies a bit by whether I am teaching in English or Norwegian, but I emphasize discussions that involve both careful preparation and room for spontaneity and discovery. It is very important to create conditions in which students can develop their own voices in the discipline (or in the language). To do this the instructor must be inviting and friendly, but also challenging enough to ensure that some kind of growth happens. Instructors should constantly be calibrating what the mixture of comfort and challenge needs to be, based on individualized attention to each student. This is one reason why small classes can be such high-impact learning experiences.
What do you like most about teaching and researching at UW-Madison?
One very important thing is the abundance of brilliant colleagues in my department (German, Nordic, and Slavic+). It is home to the study of a great number of languages, literatures, and cultures, from Old Norse to Czech to Turkish. Something else I appreciate is that the students I work with tend to be very motivated to learn more about modern and contemporary Scandinavia, in all its diversity and global interconnectedness.