Transforming Author Museums: From Sites of Pilgrimage to Cultural Hubs(13 Museums and Collections)

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.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction: The Expanded Spaces and Changing Contexts of  Author Museums Ulrike Spring, Johan Schimanski and Thea Aarbakke Part I: Expansion Chapter 1. New Architecture in Author Museums and Centres Elin Haugdal Chapter 2. A Displaced Apartment of a Poet in a Museum: Staging and Reception of Franz Grillparzer in the Wien Museum Eva-Maria Orosz Chapter 3. From Cobwebs to a Web-Based Reality: Drawing Young Adults into a Memorial House Anna Benedek Chapter 4. Ghostly Voices in the Author Museum Ulrike Spring and Johan Schimanski Chapter 5. Unpacking the Book Collection: Following a Guide, a Curator and a Librarian in an Author Museum Thea Aarbakke Chapter 6. The Gunnar Ekelöf Room and the Poet’s Widow as Archivist and Author Helena Bodin Chapter 7. This Is Not a Set of Guidelines – or How (Not) to Exhibit Literature Vanessa Zeissig Part II: Politics Chapter 8. New Sites of Worship: Sovietization and Literary Museums in Western Borderlands, 1940–79 Anastasia Felcher Chapter 9. Exposing the Obscurity of the Chinese Literary Establishment: The Destabilizing Power of Author Museums Emily Graf Chapter 10. South African Literature, Author Museums and Narrative Expansion: The Olive Schreiner House Dana Ryan Lande Chapter 11. Troublesome Heritage in the Home of Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson Marianne Egeland Chapter 12. Housing World Literature: The Norwegian Ibsen Museums Narve Fulsås Epilogue: Author Museums and Democratization Ulrike Spring, Johan Schimanski and Thea Aarbakke Index

About the Author :
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).

Review :
“This is a fine and rich collection of essays on the topic of the literary museum, notably on the writer's house museum. It offers engaging perspectives and new horizons that in the international scholarship on this topic will be highly appreciated.” • Harald Hendrix, University of Utrecht