Report of the President of the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study

The calendar year 2014 was productive and exciting for the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study. On March 13–15, 2014, the Society hosted its annual conference, in this case, combined with that of the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS). A joint conference committee of SASS members Sharon Franklin-Rahkonen and Sherill Harbison, along with AABS members Mara I. Lazda and Bradley D. Woodworth, planned a dynamic and innovative conference program that included more than 400 different conference presentations and drew more than 550 participants from some 22 different countries. Yale professor of history Anders Winroth delivered the conference’s opening plenary address with a paper entitled “The Curious Career of the Viking Berserk,” and the program included a special panel in honor of longtime SASS member and Yale professor emeritus of German and Scandinavian Studies, George C. Schoolfield. The conference took place on the campus of Yale University, where the university’s Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies was invaluable in helping secure and utilize some remarkable spaces for lectures, receptions, and performances. Special thanks go to our Yale contacts at the Center, Program Manager Marianne C. Lyden and her assistant, Jadwiga Biskupska, for their tremendous help on all aspects of the conference.

As in other recent SASS conferences, the planning committee was greatly aided by SASS members who proposed and then helped evaluate either organized panels or multi-panel “thematic streams” to help give form and coherence to an increasingly complex conference program. The planners of the 2015 SASS conference—Merrill Kaplan, Julie Allen, and Anna Westerståhl Stenport—continue this trend with some ten identified streams, including a “presidential stream” tied to the conference’s main theme: “Indigenous Discourses, Methodologies, and Histories.” The SASS 2015 conference will be held at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, May 6–9, 2015. Both in terms of stream organizers and in terms of conference participants, it is impressive to see the range of scholars and topics that make up our annual conference each year. The Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study has become a model for effective interdisciplinarity, with conferences that allow for the inclusion of novel and innovative research topics while also guaranteeing depth and quality of research presentations. It is little wonder that the annual conference continues to grow each year: SASS offers an intellectual event that is truly unique in our field, one that leverages good thinking in interesting ways. And, of course, who can beat our final banquet and dance?

Another area of exciting development during 2014 has been the revamping of our Society website. With a generous grant from the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation, the Society has been able to contract with Reify Media for the development of a new website that will facilitate communication and the circulation of information in our increasingly far-flung but digitally connected membership. The new website should be operational by December 1, 2014. In addition to improving features of the current website, it will highlight recent faculty publications and graduate student research, feature a syllabus repository, and facilitate posting news to social media. Keeping the Society abreast of technological developments is a constant challenge but absolute necessity for our organization. I am particularly grateful to past and present Executive Council members Anna Westerståhl Stenport, Melissa Gjellstad, and Peter Leonard, News and Notes editor Louis Janus, Executive Director Richard J. Jensen, past president Mark B. Sandberg, and Vice President Margaret Hayford O’Leary, for their help in thinking through our “SASS communications overhaul” and charting a course for effective development in the coming years.

My thanks also go to outgoing Executive Council members Mary Ehrlander and Melissa Gjellstad, who completed their terms at the 2014 SASS conference. A hearty welcome to the newly elected Executive Council members Glenn Kranking and Sherrill Harbison, who began their terms after the 2014 SASS conference. Warm thanks also go to my University of Wisconsin-Madison colleague Susan Brantly for her editorship of the Society’s journal Scandinavian Studies, and for the [End Page...