CV

Curriculum Vitae

Thomas Ærvold Bjerre, Ph.D.

1. EDUCATION
2004-2008 University of Southern Denmark
Ph.D. i Amerikanske Studier ved Institut for Litteratur, Kultur og Medier
Titel: “Cowboy Crackers: Echoes of the American Western in Contemporary Southern Fiction.” Supervisor: Jan Nordby Gretlund. Examiners: Professor Robert Brinkmeyer, Jr. (U of South Carolina) and Professor Richard Gray (Essex).

2000-2001 Ohio University
On an exchange program between University of Southern Denmark and Ohio University

1999-2002 University of Southern Denmark
MA English. Thesis title: “Male Mississippi: Masculinity and Violence in the Works of
Barry Hannah, Larry Brown, and Lewis Nordan.” Supervisor: Jan Nordby Gretlund.

1996-1999 University of Southern Denmark
BA in English. Thesis on Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur.

2. APPOINTMENTS
February 2012-: University of Southern Denmark
Associate Professor in American Studies
Department of the Study of Culture

February 2009-January 2012: University of Southern Denmark
Assistant Professor in American Literature, Culture, and Media
Institute for Literature, Culture, and Media Studies

September 2008-January 2009: University of Southern Denmark
External Lecturer, Center for American Studies and Department of Media Science

January 2003-June 2003: University of Southern Denmark
Temporary Lecturer, Department of Comparative Literature


3. PUBLICATIONS
a. Books

• Southern Exposure: Essays Presented to Jan Nordby Gretlund. Co-ed. with David E. Nye and Clara Juncker. Odense: Department for the Study of Culture, 2017. 341 pp.

• The Scourges of the South? Essays on "The Sickly South" in History, Literature, and Popular Culture. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars P, 2014. 195 pp. Co-ed. with Beata Zawadka.

• With Torben Huus Larsen. Cowboynationen: Westernfilmen og det moderne Amerika. Odense: UP of Southern Denmark, 2009. 230 pp.

b. Chapters (Books)

• “Military Masculinities and the Deserting Soldier in Stop-Loss.” Negotiators of Identity: Figures of Transgression in War Representation. Ed. Lisa Purse and Ute Wolfel. Edinburgh UP, 2019. In press.

• ”Krigspropaganda og national identitet i amerikansk film: Why We Fight og American Sniper.” Visuel historie: Tilgange og eksempler. Ed. Anne Magnussen, Kirstine Sinclair and Casper Sylvest. University Press of Southern Denmark, 2018. pp. 219-23.

• “A Hun on the Loose: World War I and The Cove.” Summoning the Dead: Essays on Ron Rash. Ed. Randall Wilhelm and Zachary Vernon. Columbia, SC: U of South Carolina P, 2018. pp. 205-217

• “Making Sense of Murder: Emmett Till in the Imaginations of Lewis Nordan and Bebe Moore Campbell.” Southern Exposure: Essays Presented to Jan Nordby Gretlund. Ed. Thomas Ærvold Bjerre, David E. Nye, and Clara Juncker. Odense: Department for the Study of Culture, 2017.

• “From Warrior Heroes to Vulnerable Boys: Debunking "Soldierly Masculinity" in Tim Hetherington's Infidel Photos.” Visualizing War: Emotions, Technologies, Communities. Ed. Anders Engberg-Pedersen & Kathrin Maurer. Routledge, 2017.

• “‘The Natural World is the Most Universal of Languages’: An Interview with Ron Rash.” Conversations with Ron Rash. Ed. M. M.Claxton & R. Newcomb (Jackson, MS.: UP of Mississippi, 2017).

• “The Rough South of Ron Rash.” Rough South, Rural South: Region and Class in Recent Southern Literature. Eds. Jean W. Cash and Keith Perry (Jackson, MS.: UP of Mississippi, 2015).
• “Interview with Barry Hannah, Athens, Ohio.” Conversations with Barry Hannah. Ed. James G. Thomas, Jr. (Jackson, MS.: UP of Mississippi, 2015).
• “Mad Men: ‘Don never talks about the war.’” Fiktionens magt. Ed. Mette Rolan Kjærsgaard (Forlaget Rosenkilde, 2015), 95-104.
• “Generation Kill: ‘Get Some!’” Fiktionens magt. Ed. Mette Rolan Kjærsgaard (Forlaget Rosenkilde, 2015), 193-203.
• “Introduction.” The Scourges of the South? Essays on "The Sickly South" in History, Literature, and Popular Culture. Eds. Thomas Ærvold Bjerre and Beata Zawadka (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars P, 2014), 1-12.
• “Southern Evil, Southern Violence: Gothic Residues in the Works of William Gay, Barry Hannah, and Cormac McCarthy.” The Scourges of the South? Essays on "The Sickly South" in History, Literature, and Popular Culture. Eds. Thomas Ærvold Bjerre and Beata Zawadka (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars P, 2014), 77-91.
• “Leaving New York: The Post-9/11 South in Reynolds Price and Jay McInerney.” Unsteadily Marching On: The U.S. South in Motion. Ed. Constante González Groba (Valencia, Spain: Publicacions de la Universitat de València, 2013), 49-55.
• “The Wild West Visits Mississippi: (Mis)Using the Western Myth in Lewis Nordan's The Sharpshooter Blues.” The (Un)Popular South (Olomouc: Palacký UP, 2011), 155-169.
• “Ron Rash: One Foot in Eden.” Still in Print: The Southern Novel Today. Ed. Jan Nordby Gretlund (Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2010), 233-247.
• “Heroism and the Changing Face of American Manhood in Barry Hannah’s Fiction” Contemporary Literary Criticism 270 (Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Cengage, 2009), 146-155.
• “Southern Pop Culture and the Literary Tradition in O Brother, Where Art Thou?” Contemporary Literary Criticism 267. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. (Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Cengage, 2009), 90-94.
• “The White Trash Cowboys of Larry Brown’s Father and Son.” Larry Brown and the Blue-Collar South. Ed. Jean W. Cash, ed., (Jackson, MS.: UP of Mississippi, 2008), 58-72.
• “Heroism and the Changing Face of American Manhood.” Perspectives on Barry Hannah. Ed. Martyn Bone (Jackson, MS.: UP of Mississippi, 2007), 46-64.
• With Jan Nordby Gretlund: “A Madison Jones Bibliography.” Madison Jones’ Garden of Innocence. Ed. Jan Nordby Gretlund (Odense: UP of Southern Denmark, 2005), 184-196.

c. Articles (Peer-Reviewed Journals)

• ”’Let me see your war face’: Amerikaniseringen af Danmarks nye krig i film og litteratur.” Økonomi og Politik 90.1 (2017):64-72.

• “Southern Gothic Literature.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature (June 2017).

• “Post-9/11 Literary Masculinities in Kalfus, DeLillo, and Hamid.” Orbis Litterarum 67 (2012).
• “Authenticity and War Junkies: Making the Iraq War Real in Films and TV Series.” Journal of War and Culture Studies 4.2 (2011): 223-234.
•“The Critical Reception of Lewis Nordan.” Literature Compass 7.10 (2010): 922-934.
• “Shocked into Maturity: Sex and Violence as Initiation in the Fiction of Lewis Nordan.” Mississippi Quarterly 61:1 (Fall 2007): 735-747.
• “Longing for a Male Love: An Interview with Lewis Nordan.” Mississippi Quarterly 61:1 (Fall 2007): 749-758.
• “‘The Natural World Is the Most Universal of Languages:’ An Interview with Ron Rash.” Appalachian Journal 34:2 (Winter 2007): 216-227.
• “Southern Pop Culture and the Literary Tradition O Brother, Where Art Thou?” American Studies in Scandinavia: A Southern Issue 38:2 (Fall 2006): 55-65.
• “An Interview with Lewis Nordan.” Mississippi Quarterly 54:3 (Summer 2001): 367-381.
• “It was always life intense I was after’: Heroes, True and False, in the Fiction of Barry Hannah.” Mississippi Quarterly 54:2 (Spring 2001): 213-222.

d. Articles (Other Journals) 

• “11. september i amerikansk litteratur.” Noter 184 (March 2010): 13-18.
• “American Literature after September 11.” AngloFiles: Journal of English Teaching 151 (February 2009): 48-61.


e. Articles (Magazines)

• ”En god mand med et våben.” Filmmagasinet Ekko 78 (maj-juni 2018): 90-94.

• “Generation Kill.” Filmmagasinet Ekko 48 (2010): 80-81.
• “Den udødelige gangster: Hollywoods romantiske voldsspykopater.” Filmmagasinet Ekko (Juli 2009). http://www.ekkofilm.dk/essays.asp?viewall=true&table=essays&id=157

f. Reviews

• Terence McSweeney, The “War on Terror” and American Film: 9/11 Frames Per Second (Edinburgh University Press, 2014). American Studies in Scandinavia 47.2 (2015:2): 131-134.
• “Something Rich and Strange,” Review-essay of John Lang, Understanding Ron Rash (Columbia: University of South Carolina P, 2014) and Ron Rash, The Ron Rash Reader, ed. Randall Wilhelm (Columbia: University of South Carolina P, 2014). Mississippi Quarterly 67.1 (Winter 2014): 151-155.
• Birgitt Däwes. Ground Zero Fiction: History, Memory, and Representation in the American 9/11 Novel (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter GmbH, 2011). American Studies in Scandinavia 44.2 (2012): 140-143.
• Penner, James. Pinks, Pansies, and Punks: The Rhetoric of Masculinity in American Literary Culture (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011). American Studies in Scandinavia 44.1 (2012): 99-101.
• Waldemar Zacharasiewicz, ed., The Many Souths: Class in Southern Culture (Tübingen, Germany: Stauffenburg Verlag, 2003). Orbis Litterarum 60 (2005): 75-76

g. Newspaper Articles

• ”USA’s litterære superstjerne”. On Jonathan Franzen. Fyens Stiftstidende (Denmark), 28. Oct. 2010, 10-11.
• Kronik: ”En iscenesat virkelighed”. On the Danish documentary film Armadillo. Fyens Stiftstidende (Denmark), 27 November 2010, 19.
• “Kronik: Den levende sangfugl.” On Harper Lee. Fyens Stiftstidende (Denmark), 30 July 2009, 7.
• ”Oprah Winfrey og den tyske roman.” On Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader as novel and adaptation. Fyens Stiftstidende (Denmark), 9 April 2009, 8-9.
• “Endnu mere borte med blæsten.” On Gone with the Wind. Fyens Stiftstidende (Denmark), 31 May 2008, 7.
• ”En Bush-støtte fylder 100.” On John Wayne. Fyens Stiftstidende (Denmark), 21 May 2007, 10.
• “Fra Kultforfatter til medie-darling.” On Cormac McCarthy. Fyens Stiftstidende (Denmark), 27 April 2007, 20.


4. CONFERENCE PAPERS 

• (forthcoming) "The Remasculinization of America in American Sniper." Northeast Modern Language Association Conference, Hartford, CT, USA, March 2016.
• “A Hun on the Loose: World War I and Appalachia in Ron Rash’s The Cove.” The Southern Studies Forum Symposium, University of Essex, UK, September 2015.
• “Military Manhood and the Deserting Soldier in Stop-Loss.” Figures of Transgression in War Representation Workshop, University of Reading, UK, May 2015.
• “Vulnerable Boys? Tim Hetherington's Infidel Photos.” Visualizing War: The Power of Emotion in Politics, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, November 2014.
• “An Echo of Iraq: Trauma and Survivor Guilt in Kevin Powers’s The Yellow Birds.” Northeast Modern Language Association Conference, Harrisburg, PA, USA, April 2014.
• “Leaving New York: The Post-9/11 South in Reynolds Price and Jay McInerney.” Southern Studies Forum Conference, Santiago de Compostela, Spain, September 2011.
• “Let me see your war face’: American War Films and the Danish War on Terror.” Plenary talk at the Nordic Association for American Studies Conference, Oslo, Norway, May 2011.
• “Generation Kill: American Soldiers as Adrenaline Junkies in Post-9/11 Combat Films and TV Series.” Screens of Terror Conference, London, England, September 2010.
• “From Superman to Falling Man: Masculinities in American 9/11 Novels.” Nordic Association for American Studies Conference, Copenhagen, Denmark, May 2009.
• “The Wild West Visits Mississippi: (Mis)Using the Western Myth in Lewis Nordan’s The Sharpshooter Blues.” Southern Studies Forum Conference, Olomouc, Czech Republic, September 2007.
• “Southern Evil, Southern Violence. Gothic Residues in the Works of Cormac McCarthy, Barry Hannah, and William Gay.” Nordic Association for American Studies , Tampere, Finland, May 2007.
• “A Not-So-Solid South: Internal Conflicts in Contemporary Southern Fiction.” European Association for American Studies Conference, Nicosia, Cyprus, April 2006.
• “We’re just like a old married couple’: Male Bonding in the American Western.” Nordic Association for American Studies Conference, Växjö, Sweden, May 2005.
• “High Noon in Mississippi: The Dixie Cowboys of Larry Brown’s Father and Son.” “The American Literary West” Conference, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, October 2005.
• “The ‘White Trash’ Cowboys of Larry Brown’s Father and Son.” European Association for American Studies Conference, Prague, Czech Republic, April, 2004.
• “The Ultimate Southern Movie: Southern Pop Culture and the Literary Tradition in O Brother, Where Art Thou?” Nordic Association for American Studies Conference, Trondheim, Norway, August 2003.
• “Making Sense of Murder: Emmett Till in the Imaginations of Lewis Nordan and Bebe Moore Campbell.” Southern Studies Forum Conference “Southern Ethnicities,” Thessaloniki, Greece. October 2003.
• “How Yellow the Heart: The West and the Grotesque in Barry Hannah’s Never Die.” Nordic Association for
American Studies Conference, Copenhagen, Denmark, August 2001.

5. SELECTED ACADEMIC DUTIES
• Director, American Studies Program, SDU, 2013-2018.
• Chair, Center for American Studies, SDU, 2013-2018.
• Member of the Study Board for English and American Studies, SDU, 2013-
• Member of the Research Group “War and Culture,” Department for the Study of Culture, SDU, 2013-

• Workshop Organizer: The Southern Studies Forum Conference: “Southern Disruptions.” Odense: University of Southern Denmark, April 3-5, 2019. Co-organized with Clara Juncker and Marianne Kongerlslev.
• Workshop Organizer: The Southern Studies Forum Workshop at the 2012 EAAS Conference in Izmir, Turkey.
• Co-editor for Newsletter of the Southern Studies Forum, 2011-
• Co-editor/Contributor to American Literary Scholarship (Danish contributions), 2008-.
• Editor (literature and cultural history) for PEO: Pre-Publications of the English Department of SDU.
• Peer reviewer for Mississippi Quarterly, American Studies in Scandinavia, Orbis Litterarum, Aarhus University Press, Babel: Littératures Plurielles, Passage, K&K Kultur og Klasse, Journal of English Text Construction.

6. NOMINATIONS

Nominated for the 2015 Teaching Award, Faculty of Humanities, SDU.

7. MEMBERSHIPS

• Danish Association of American Studies (DAAS), 2003-.
• Southern Studies Forum (SSF), 2003-.

Forskningsområde

• 9/11 i populærkulturen
• Sydstatslitteratur
• Western-genren
• Nutidig amerikansk litteratur og film
• Den amerikanske Borgerkrig
• Maskulinitetsstudier.

Iganværende forskningsprojekt:

Mit nuværende forskningsprojekt omhandler 11. september, 2001 (9/11) og amerikansk populærkultur. Med udgangspunkt i romaner, film og musik, der direkte behandler 9/11, vil jeg undersøge, om angrebene og det efterfølgende traume har medvirket til et tilbagefald til de gamle manderoller, sådan som det var tilfældet i de populære medier i tiden umiddelbart efter 9/11. Bliver traumerne med andre ord forsøgt skjult bag en hård macho-maske, eller byder teksterne på mere komplekse og udfordrende billeder af amerikansk manddom efter 9/11. 
Jeg er interesseret i, hvordan maskuliniteterne i teksterne bliver afbilledet. Hvor nogle af teksterne åbenlyst trækker på en mytisk amerikansk maskulinitet i deres helteportrætter forsøger andre, især romanerne, at dekonstruere eller genopfinde ideen om maskulinitet ved at påpege den kulturelle konstruktion, der ligger bag. Jeg gør brug af en interdisciplinær tilgang, der trækker på både litteratur- og filmanalyse, sociologi og kønsforskning.

I min nyligt afsluttede Ph.D.-afhandling, Cowboy Crackers: The Influence of the American Western on Contemporary Southern Fiction, udforskede jeg en hidtil overset tendens i nyere amerikansk sydstatslitteratur; hvordan mange mandlige sydstatsforfattere bruger den amerikanske Western som formel. Ved at tage udgangspunkt i den feministorienterede maskulinitetsteori, undersøgte jeg, hvorledes forfatterne tackler diverse former for maskulinitet, om de blot videregiver Westerngenrens monolitiske og hegemoniske verdenssyn, eller om der er tale om et nyt billede af amerikansk manddom. Mit projekt spænder således over både amerikansk litteratur, maskulinitetsstudier og populærkultur.