Author’s Corner – Jenna Grace Sciuto – Intersecting Worlds

Intersecting Worlds – Iceland and the U.S. South

Jenna Grace Sciuto PhD, author of “Intersecting Worlds”

Professor of English, Jenna Grace Sciuto PhD, is the author of Intersecting Worlds which explores colonialist themes in Icelandic and U.S. Southern literature.

Examining the work of twentieth-century Icelandic novelists, including Halldór Laxness, Svava Jakobsdóttir, Guðbergur Bergsson, and Fríða Áslaug Sigurðardóttir and U.S. Southern writers, like William Faulkner, Gayl Jones, Jean Toomer, and Carson McCullers, on both thematic and aesthetic levels reveals much about each region’s history and the complexity of colonial dynamics.

Intersecting Worlds centers layers of Whiteness in both national and transnational contexts, challenges ideas of Nordic and US southern exceptionalism, and exposes the complex impacts of colonialism in the Global North and the Global South, as depicted in twentieth-century literature.

Jenna Sciuto will be joined in conversation by Dr. Amber Engelson, a professor of transnational feminist rhetorics whose book The Hands of God at Work: Islamic Gender Justice through Translingual Praxis was published in 2024.

Be sure to attend this thought-provoking look at Iceland’s colonialist history and how it compares to U.S. colonialist history through Sciuto’s pioneering work.

When: Tuesday, March 25 at 8 pm ET / 7 pm CT / 6 pm MT / 5 pm PT 

This event is open to the public and will be recorded.