Adriana Margareta Dancus - Universitetet i Sørøst-Norge

Department of Languages and Literature Studies

Faculty of Humanities, Sports and Educational Science

Campus Vestfold

adriana.m.dancus@usn.no

+47 31 00 99 07

Dancus has a Ph.D. in Scandinavian Studies: Theory and Criticism from University of Washington in Seattle. Her academic interests include: Scandinavian film with an emphasis on Norwegian features and documentaries; Norwegian literature with an emphasis on literature since 1945 and comics from the 2000s; gender and ethnicity; affect, emotions, feelings, moods; the aesthetics, politics, and ethics of vulnerability.

Responsibilities

Teaching, supervising, evaluating and grading students of literature at BA and MA levels and in continuing education
Teaching and supervision at Ph.D. level
Leader of the research group Literature and film and co-leader of the research group Literature and Literature Education
Project manager of the Nordplus-financed project Nordic Comics and Mental Health: Developing Learning Resources for Teacher Training Programmes
Project manager of the Erasmus+ project European Comics, Mental Health Teaching and Professional Education (ECEDU)
Active participation in international research networks such as Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies (SASS) and European Network for Cinema and Media Studies (NECS)

Competences

Research expertise:

Film analysis
Norwegian comics and mental health
The poetics and cultural politics of emotions
Vulnerability as a productive resource

Pedagogical qualifications:

Planning, teaching, supervision at all university levels
Grading and evaluation at BA and MA evels
Experience from teaching in high school
Course in university pedagogy and course in doctoral supervision (ongoing)
Accredited pedagogical education from abroad

Publications

Academic publications:

“’This is not love. It’s sperm’: Pregnancy, autonomy, and resistance in the Norwegian experimental comedy Ninjababy.” European Journal of Women’s Studies, OnlineFirst, 29 July 2026. https://doi.org/10.1177/13505068261471719.

“Mental Health in Transitional Life Phases: An Analysis of Comics from the Faroe Islands, Norway, and Sweden.” European Journal of Scandinavian Studies 56, no. 1 (2026): 159-184. https://doi.org/10.1515/ejss-2026-3010. Co-written with Paula Gaard, Anna Nordenstam, and Silje Haugen Warberg.

“Streken og det indre liv: ufrivillig graviditet i Fallteknikk og Ninjababy.” Edda 113, no. 2 (2026): 65–78. https://doi.org/10.18261/edda.113.2.3.

“Novellefilmen, seksualitet og kritisk påkobling.” In Noveller i undervisning, edited by Ylva Frøjd and Audhild Norendal. Bergen: Fagbokforlaget, 2025. Open Access.

“Spiseforstyrrelser og grafiske metaforer i tegneserieromanen Hva skjedde egentlig med deg?. In Visuell litteratur. Møteplasser i og utenfor bøkene, edited by Linda Wahlmann Olsen, Trine Solstad and Anne Beate Storm-Larsen, 155-166. Bergen: Fagbokforlaget, 2025.

Literature and the Video Essay: Researching and Teaching Literature Through Moving Images. ELLA – Education, Literature, Language 3, no. 2 (2025). Special issue co-edited with Alan O’Leary. Open Access.

“Literature and the Video Essay. Researching and Teaching Literature Through Moving Images.” ELLA – Education, Literature, Language 3, no. 2 (2025): 1-29. Co-written with Alan O’Leary. Open Access.

“Monsters. Comics and Eating Disorders.” ELLA – Education, Literature, Language 3, no. 2 (2025): 1-8. Co-written and co-made with Alina Coman. Open Access.

“Animation and the Vizualization of Subjective Experiences in Ninjababy”. Journal of Scandinavian Cinema 14, no. 1 (2024): 49-55.

“Young Women and Alcohol in Lise Myhre’s Nemi.” MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture. March 30, 2023. Open Access.

“Young Women and Disgust in Contemporary Norwegian Comics: A Close Reading of Ane Barstad Solvang’s Frykt & medlidenhet.” Scandinavian Studies 94, no. 4 (2022): 431-52.

“From Polarizing to Shared Shame: Multicultural Daughters, Pakistani Mothers, and Norwegian Child Welfare Services in What Will People Say.” NORA-Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research. November 3, 2022. DOI: 10.1080/08038740.2022.2126520. Open Access

“Sami Identity across Generations: From Passing for Nordics to Sami Self-exposure.” Journal of Critical Mixed Race Studies 1, no. 2 (2022): 262-76. Open Access

“Childbirth during the COVID-19 Pandemic. An Analysis of Fødselen [The birth] by Norwegian Cartoonist, Blogger, and Nurse Hanne Monge Sigbjørnsen.” European Comic Art 15, no. 1 (2022): 109-127.

“Vemmelsens pedagogikk og tegneseriens potensial: En analyse av Ane Barstad Solvangs Frykt & medlidenhet og Ida Eva Neverdahls ‘I’m a girl, it’s fantastic’.” In Litteratur og sårbarhet, edited by Adriana M. Dancus, Silje H. Linhart og Annika B. Myhr, 93-113. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2021. Open Access

"Sårbarhet i politisk filosofi, litteraturvitenskap og litteraturdidaktikk”, co-authored with Silje H. Linhart og Annika B. Myhr. In Litteratur og sårbarhet, edited Adriana M. Dancus, Silje H. Linhart og Annika B. Myhr, 9-28. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2021. Open Access

Litteratur og sårbarhet. Co-edited with Silje H. Linhart og Annika B. Myhr. Univeristetsforlaget: 2021. Open Access

“Vulnerable exposures: A conversation with Norwegian filmmaker Anne Haugsgjerd.” Journal of Scandinavian Cinema 10, no. 3 (2020): 273-79.

“Reenacting Rape in Édouard Louis’s History of Violence.” In Terrorizing Images. Trauma and Ekphrasis in Contemporary Literature, edited by Charles Ivan Armstrong and Unni Langås, 101-16. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2020. Open Access.

Vulnerability in Scandinavian Art and Culture. Co-edited with Mats Hyvönen and Maria Karlsson. Palgrave Macmillan: 2020. Open Access.

“Mobilizing Vulnerability in Scandinavian Art and Culture.” Co-authored with Mats Hyvönen and Maria Karlsson. In Vulnerability in Scandinavian Art and Culture, edited by Adriana M. Dancus, Mats Hyvönen and Maria Karlsson, 1-15. Palgrave Macmillan: 2020. Open Access.

“The Art of Begging.” In Vulnerability in Scandinavian Art and Culture, edited by Adriana M. Dancus, Mats Hyvönen and Maria Karlsson, 223-46. Palgrave Macmillan: 2020. Open Access.

Exposing Vulnerability: Self-Mediation in Contemporary Scandinavian Films By Women. Bristol: Intellect Books/Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019.

“The virality of Norwegian guilt. How a story of male rape from Norway made international headlines.” Journal of Aesthetics and Culture 10, no. 2 (2018): 74-82. Open Access.

“Å filme sine dype arr. (Selv)mediering og selvskading i Idas dagbok (2014)”. In Lidelsens estetikk. Sår, sorg og smerte i litteratur, film og medier, edited by Christine Hamm, Siri Hempel Lindøe and Bjarne Markussen, 141-58. Bergen: Alvheim & Eide Akademisk Forlag 2017.

“Å skape broer med flerkulturell sansing. Filmens og litteraturens rolle i dagens samfunn.” Studia Philologia 61, no. 3 (2016): 199-208.

“Women, vulnerability and depression: The cruel optimism of not giving a damn in Good Girl.” Journal of Scandinavian Cinema 6, no. 2 (2016): 137-51.

“Skyld, humor og den kommunistiske fortiden i norsk og rumensk samtidsfilm.” In Skandinaviske fortellinger om skyld og privilegier i en globaliseringstid, edited by Elisabeth Oxfeldt, 113-32. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2016. Open Access.

“Trollism, Reality Hunger, and Vulnerability. Trolls in Film and Literature in the 2000’s.” European Journal of Scandinavian Studies 46, no. 2 (2016): 250-69.

“Melankoli i vinterland. Hisham Zamans Vinterland (2007) og Før snøen faller (2013).” In Det tredje språket. Multimodale studier av interkulturell kommunikasjon i kunst, skole og samfunnsliv, edited by Martin Engebretsen, 34-48. Kristiansand: Portal, 2015.

“Film and Pathoscapes: A Study of Upperdog (Sara Johnsen, 2009).” In Acta Nordica. Studier i språk- og litteraturvitenskap. Globalization in Literature, edited by Per Thomas Andersen, 215-26. Oslo: Fagbokforlaget, 2014.

“Ghosts Haunting the Norwegian House. Racialization in Norway and The Kautokeino Rebellion (Gaup, 2008). Framework 55, no. 2 (2014): 121-39.

“Male Mental Illness and Norwegian Compassion. A Study of Elling (2001) and The art of negative thinking (2006).”NORMA – Nordic Journal for Masculinity Studies 8, no. 1 (2013): 7-25.

"Diasporic Feeling and Displaced Nostalgia: A Case Study: Import-eksport and Blodsbånd." Scandinavian Studies 83, no. 2 (2011): 247–66.

“A Father’s Body, a Nation’s Heart - Care-giving Fathers in Contemporary Norwegian Film.” NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research 19, no. 2 (2011): 71-86.

“War and Literature in Norway: A Genealogy of Shame in Postwar Norway.” Studia Philologia 2 (2010): 51-60.

“Civil Society: The Renegade Child of Neoliberalism- A Study of Norwegian Fisheries,” Minerva, 16 March, 2009. Open Access.

“Sammenlikningskonstruksjoner med enn som eller bare som etter komparativ og annen i norske dialekter.” Co-author Endre Mørck. Norsk Lingvistisk Tidsskrift 26 (2008): 13-36.

Other publications:

“Bilete større enn oss sjølve”, Anja Breien 80 år – Et festskrift til jubilanten (2020), 75-6.

“Hvem skal betale for mangfoldet”, Morgenbladet, 30 August, 2019. https://morgenbladet.no/ideer/2019/08/hvem-skal-betale-mangfoldet-spor-adriana-margareta-dancus

“Krigsminner som bygger broer”. Rushprint, 27 February, 2019. https://rushprint.no/2019/02/krigsminner-bygger-broer/

”Å framkalle sårbarhet – om nordiske samtidsfilmer av og med kvinnelige filmskapere.” Nordic Women in Film, December 2017. http://www.nordicwomeninfilm.com/a-framkalle-sarbarhet/

”Om å tørre å stå naken foran kameraet - intervju med Anne Haugsgjerd.” Nordic Women in Film, December 2017. http://www.nordicwomeninfilm.com/om-a-torre-a-sta-naken-foran-kameraet/?lang=no

“Hollywoods hese stemme - Chuck Norris vs. Communism.” filmtidsskriftet Z 4: Rumensk nybølge (2016): 38-45.