Susan Brantly

Biography

Susan Brantly received a B.A. from Harvard (1980), an M.A. from the University of Minnesota (1983), and her Ph.D. from Yale University in 1987.  She is currently the Birgit Baldwin Professor of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she has worked since first receiving her degree in 1987.

Areas of Research / Professional Expertise

The Life and Writings of Laura Marholm (1991) is the standard work on Marholm, who was a cultural mediator between Scandinavia and Germany in the late 1800s. That book was published in German translation in 2004. Understanding Isak Dinesen (2002) provides close readings of that Danish author’s complex works, so well known to the English-speaking world, because that is the language in which she chose to write. Her most recent book, The Historical Novel, Transnationalism, and the Postmodern Era (2017), takes a broad and comparative look at the phenomenon of the historical novel from 1960 onward.  Brantly’s other books include an anthology of Scandinavian nineteenth-century short prose in translation, Sex and the Modern Breakthrough (2004), and a co-edited volume, The Nordic Storyteller: Essays in Honour of Niels Ingwersen (2009). Contemporary Swedish historical fiction remains a central research interest, and she has published articles on writers such as P.C. Jersild, Sven Delblanc, Sara Lidman, Per Anders Fogelström, P.O. Enquist and others in journals such as, Clio, Comparative Literature, Scandinavian Studies, Horizont.  She has also published on August Strindberg and other nineteenth-century Nordic writers, and contributed the chapter on the rise of modernism (1890-1950) in The History of Swedish Literature (1996).

Personal Interests

In 2003, Brantly was the recipient of the Chancellor's Distinguished Teaching Award and in 2013, she received the U.W. System Alliant Underkofler Excellence in Teaching Award. During her career, she has shown a key interest in student-oriented activities. She has been the Faculty Director of Bradley Learning Community since 2007.

Books

News