Scandinavia House in New York City presents the Danish-Norwegian Contribution to NYC’s Modern Architecture in October

Monday, October 7, 6:30 pm – FREE (This lecture was rescheduled from Monday, May 13, 2013.)

(Photo courtesy of Scandinavia House)

Norwegian father and son duo, the architect and writer Jan and photographer Are Carlsen, with video director Ninja Benneche, enthusiastically tell the relatively unknown story of Williamsburg-based Hecla Iron Works and its two pioneering founders Carl Michael Eger (Norwegian, 1843 – 1916) and the ASF’s founder Niels Poulson (Danish, 1843 – 1911) during the early 20th century, a vital period of growth for New York City as a modern metropolis developing its modern architectural language.

Amongst their discoveries of buildings that Hecla contributed to are the American Surety Building, Dakota House, B. Altman & Co. Department Store, Macomb´s Dam Bridge and 155th Street Viaduct, Grand Central Station, the New York Stock Exchange, Flatiron Building, Lullwater Bridge, and several original kiosks for the IRT subway system.

A Swedish Literary Icon: The Writings of Stig Dagerman in America

Tuesday, October 22, 6:30 pm – FREE

(Photo courtesy of Scandinavia House)

Stig Dagerman was one of Sweden’s most prolific and acclaimed post-war writers. As writer, playwright, and literary critic Graham Greene noted: “Dagerman wrote with beautiful objectivity. Instead of emotive phrases, he uses a choice of facts, like bricks, to construct an emotion.” A literary phenomenon during his brief career, Dagerman died tragically young, but his writing continues to attract new generations of readers around the world. Now, for the first time, his body of work is being published in the United States with four new volumes to date.

Novelist Siri Hustvedt, translator Steven Hartman, and PEN Translation Committee Chair Susan Bernofsky read and discuss Stig Dagerman’s writings with moderator Ann Kjellberg, editor of the literary magazine Little Star. The author’s daughter, Lo Dagerman, will introduce a short documentary, Our Need for Consolation (directed by Dan Levy Dagerman, 2012), featuring actor Stellan Skarsgård, and based on Dagerman’s classic text of the same name.

Co-presented by the Consulate General of Sweden in New York and PEN American Center, in association with the American Scandinavian Society of New York.

A Highway Under Siege: Power, Privacy, and the Internet

Wednesday, October 30, 2 – 5:30 pm & Thursday, October 31, 9:30 am – 3:15 pm – FREE

The Snowden affair, the readiness of the U.S. government to subordinate the privacy of Internet communications to the interests of national security, the accumulation of Internet-based information by private businesses for their own uses – these developments propel Internet technologies and issues surrounding their use to the center of everyday political and civic concerns.

In a two-day conference organized by the New York Review of Books Foundation, in association with Norway’s Fritt Ord Foundation and PEN American Center, these issues and the role of the Internet in corporate management systems (known as “Computer Business Systems”), its role in dissent and repression, with a special focus on China and Russia will be examined. Further topics will be the Internet and the printed press, and the Internet and the future of higher education.

Among those participating will be James Bamford, author specializing in intelligence issues, including the role of the National Security Agency; Robert Darnton, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the University Library at Harvard; Simon Head, Senior Fellow, the Institute of Public Knowledge, New York University and Director of Programs, the New York Review of Books Foundation; Amy Knight, historian specializing in Russian history and politics; Nicholas Lemann, staff writer, The New Yorker and formerly the Dean of Columbia’s School of Journalism; Perry Link, Professor of Comparative Literature, University of California, Riverside; Jeff Madrick, journalist, economic policy consultant and analyst and visiting Professor of Humanities, Cooper Union; Michael Massing, contributing editor, Columbia Journalism Review; and Robert Silvers, editor, The New York Review of Books.

Organized by the New York Review of Books Foundation and co-sponsored by the Fritt Ord Foundation and PEN American Center, with the generous support of Sara and Landon Rowland and the Lead Bank of Kansas City, and of The Europaeum of Oxford.  

For reservations, call 212.847.9740 or email event_reservation@amscan.org.