Transforming Author Museums (Paperback)

Literary museums today must respond to new challenges; the traditional image of the author’s home museum as a sacred place of literary pilgrimage centered around a national hero has been questioned, and literary museums have begun to develop new strategies centered not only on biography, but also literary texts, imagined spaces, different readers, historical contexts, architectural concepts, and artistic interventions. As this volume shows, the changing of spaces asks how literary museums create new ways of interlinking real and literary spaces, texts, objects, readers, and tourists.

Ulrike Spring is Professor of Modern European History at the University of Oslo and during this book project was also Visiting Professor at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences. Key publications include Passagiere des Eises: Polarhelden und Arktische Diskurse 1874 (co-author 2015) and Nordic Travels (co-editor 2021).

Johan Schimanski is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Oslo. Key publications include Passagiere des Eises: Polarhelden und Arktische Diskurse 1874 (co-author 2015) and Border Images, Border Narratives (co-editor 2021).

Thea Aarbakke is a curator at the National Medical Museum/The Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology. During this book project she was a doctoral fellow at the University of Oslo/Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, and now holds a PhD in Museology. Her thesis is a study of contemporary exhibition practices at literary museums in Norway.