Curriculum

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-current                Associate Professor in American Studies, SDU

January 2019-July 2022              Viceinstitutleder, Department for the Study of Culture, SDU

January 2013-December 2017    Studieleder, American Studies Programs, SDU

January 2013- December 2017   Chair, Center for American Studies, SDU

February 2009-January 2012      Assistant Professor in American Literature, Culture, and Media, SDU

September 2008-January 2009:  External Lecturer, American Studies and Media Studies, SDU

January 2003-June 2003:   Temporary Lecturer, Department of Comparative Literature, SDU

3. PUBLICATIONS a. Books

• With Beata Zawadka, eds. The Scourges of the South? Essays on "The Sickly South" in History, Literature, and Popular Culture (co-editor, contributor, introduction). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars P, 2014. 195 pp.

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

b. Chapters (Books)

• “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 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)

• “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) • “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- • Chair, Center for American Studies, SDU, 2013- • 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 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-.

Research Interests

• 9/11 in American popular culture
• The literature of the American South
• The Western - literature and film
• Masculinities Studies
• Contemporary American literature and film
• The American Civil War

Current research project:

My research project focuses on 9/11 and American popular culture. With specific focus on the role of masculinities, I focus on 9/11-related novels, film, and music and examine whether the terrorist attacks and the subsequent trauma have resulted in a throwback to old, rigid gender structure, as was the case in the popular media following 9/11 - see Susan Faludi's The Terror Dream. In other words, is the trauma hidden behind a tough macho posture, or do the texts offer more complex and challenging discourses about American manhood.
I am interested in how the masculinities in these texts are depicted. Where some of the texts obviously draw on a mythic American masculinity, other texts, especially the novels, attempt to deconstruct or reinvent the notion of masculinity by pointing to the cultural construction behind the term. My project is interdisciplinary, drawing on literature and film analysis, sociology, and gender research.

In my recently finished Ph.D. dissertation, Cowboy Crackers: Echoes of the American Western on Contemporary Southern Fiction, I examined an fascinating tendency in contemporary southern fiction: how many male writers are influenced by the American Western, even though their books are set in the South. Using masculinities theory, I examined how the writers tackled various forms of masculinity, whether they merely passed on the Western's hegemonic world view of if they tried to debunk the Western's male-driven ideology.