Department of Film & Media UC Berkeley

Bio

Professor Rugg’s research has long focused on issues related to self-construction and self-representation, particularly in textual autobiography and visual media. Authorship is another strong allied research interest, with special attention to the authorships and authorial personae of August Strindberg, Mark Twain, Ingmar Bergman, and a range of art cinema directors who perform as authors. In addition to her interest in autobiographical studies, Rugg has drawn inspiration for her research from two of the courses she teaches: “Ecology and Culture in Scandinavia” and “Hyperwhite: Policing the Boundaries of Whiteness in American Literature and Film.” The ecology course led to an exploration of the Scandinavian ecological subject in literature, art, and film, while the hyperwhite course (based originally on American culture) developed into a study of whiteness and race as represented in Nordic literature, film, and visual arts. She is working on articles and book projects in both of these fields. Rugg has been active as a translator of critical essays and literature from both Swedish and German into English. She enjoys lecturing and teaching in the broader community, both in individual presentations at diverse venues and through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University. She has served as a consultant on the Environmental Humanities to Sweden’s Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research (MISTRA). For five years she acted as a member of the Modern Language Association’s Executive Division Committee for Autobiography, Biography, and Life-Writing, and she has also served as a member of the Executive Board for the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study. She is on the editorial board for Samlaren: Tidskrift för forskning om svensk och annan nordisk litteratur (Journal for the Study of Swedish and Other Nordic Literature.” She is a co-editor with colleague Professor Sanders for the third volume of the ICLA project, A Comparative History of Nordic Literary Cultures.

Books

Publications

Edited Volumes and Co-Authored Report 

Guest co-editor, special issue of Journal of Scandinavian Cinema, “Ecocritical Approaches to Scandinavian Visual Media,” to appear 2018.

Nordic Literary History, volume 3, Literary Figures of the North, with Karin Sanders. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Press, forthcoming 2017.

Co-author; Nye, David (chair), Emmett, Robert, Fleming, James, Rugg, Linda Haverty, The Emergence of the Environmental Humanities: A Background Paper (Stockholm: MISTRA/The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research) 2013. http://www.mistra.org/download/18.7331038f13e40191ba5a23/Mistra_Environmental_Humanities_May20 13.pdf

Guest editor of special issue of Biography, vol. 29, no. 1, “Self-Projection and Autobiography in Film,” winter 2006.

Articles

“Double Exposures: The Interplay between Scandinavian Photography, Cinema, and Literature around 1897,” Nordic Literary History, volume 2, eds. John Lindow and Timothy Tangherlini, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Press, to appear 2017.

“August Strindberg’s First Autobiography: The Son of a Servant,” Autobiography/Autofiction: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, ed. Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf, vol. 3 (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter) to appear 2017.

“Displacing Crimes against Nature: Scandinavian Ecocrimefiction,” The Happiest People on Earth? Scandinavian Narratives of Guilt, Oslo: Norway’s Research Council, forthcoming 2017.

“August Strindberg, Edvard Munch, et la autographie photographique,” in August Strindberg, de la mer au cosmos: Peintures et photographies, ed. Camille Lévêque-Claudet (Lausanne: Musée Cantonal des Beaux- Arts de Lausanne et Les Editions Noir sur Blanc, 2016).

“Male Reproductive Rights: Mark Twain, August Strindberg, and Literary Paternity,” Festschrift in Honor of Ross Shideler, Berkeley and Los Angeles: North Pinehurt Press, 2016, 3-15.

“A Tradition of Torturing Women: Ingmar Bergman, his Nordic Predecessors and Successors,” Blackwell Companion to Nordic Cinema, eds. Mette Hjort and Ursula Lindqvist (London: Blackwell), 2016, 351-367.

“Strindberg’s Modern Ecological Subject: ‘Swedish Nature’ Viewed from a Train” in Spaces in-between: Cultural and Political Perspectives on Environmental Discourse. Leiden: Brill/Rodopi, 2015, 27-37.

“Naturens öga”. Det ekofeministiska subjektet i Katarina Frostensons ”Jungfrun skär; ljudkällan (variation)” [”’Nature’s Eye’: The Ecofeminist Subject in Katarina Frostenson’s ’Jungfrun skär; ljudkällan (variation),” original in Swedish], Festskrift till Lisbeth Larsson (Gothenburg: Gothenburg University Press), 2014, 106-118.

“Tala och tiga/Call and Response” [“To Speak and Be Silent/Call and Response,” original in Swedish], Festskrift till Ulf Olsson (Stehag: Bruno Österlings bokförlag Symposion), 2013, 110-116.

“Standing at the Bourne of the Modern: Strindberg’s Ecological Subject in By the Open Sea and his Archipelago Paintings,” in The International Strindberg: Essays in Commemoration of the Centennial of August Strindberg’s Death, ed. Anna Westerståhl Stenport, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2012, 89-105.

“Picturing Oneself as Another,” Graphic Subjects: Critical Essays on Autobiography and Graphic Novels, Michael A. Chaney, Madison and London: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011, 73-75.

“August Strindberg: The Art and Science of Self-Dramatization,” The Cambridge Companion to August Strindberg, ed. Michael Robinson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, 3-19.

“Self-Projection and Still Photography in the Work of Ingmar Bergman,” Koskinen, Maaret (ed. and introd.); Ullmann, Liv (prologue). 2008. Ingmar Bergman Revisited: Performance, Cinema, and the Arts. (pp. 107-119). London, England: Wallflower.

“Gender and Sex in Scandinavian Cinema as Screened in the American Mind,” Bent, a collection of essays to accompany the exhibit of the same name, San Francisco: State University of San Francisco, May 2006, 3-9.

“Keaton’s Leap: Self-Projection and Autobiography in Film,” Biography 29.1 (2006) v-xiii.

“A Tramp Abroad and at Home: European and American Racism in Mark Twain,” in German Culture in 19^th-Century America: Reception, Adaptation, Transformation, eds. Lynne Tatlock and Matt Erlin, Camden, S.C.: Camden House, 2005, 233-246.

“A Camera as Close as Ingmar’s: Film Direction and Sexuality in the Work of Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann,” in Power and Gender in Scandinavian Literature and Culture, ed. Helena Forsås-Scott, Norwich: Norvik Press, 2004, 231-245.

“Globalization and the Auteur: Ingmar Bergman Projected Internationally,” in Cinema in a Global North: 1990s Nordic National Cinemas, eds. Trevor Elkington and Andrew Nestingen, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, forthcoming 2004.

“Writing on the Body: Scars as a Metaphor for the Break Between Analog and Digital Representation,” in Sensuality and Power in Visual Culture, ed. Raoul J. Granqvist, Umeå: Umeå University Press, 2002, 19- 33.

“Kinski/Herzog y Ullmann/Bergman: el autor y el actor en el cine autobiográfica,” [“Herzog’s Kinski and Bergman’s Liv: The Auteur and the Actor in Autobiographical Films”], Communicación y Sociedad 14.2 (December 2001) 93-114.

“’Carefully I touched the faces of my parents’: Ingmar Bergman’s Autobiographical Image,” Biography 24.1 (Winter 2001) 72-84.

“The Revenge of the Rats: The Cartesian Body in Kerstin Ekman’s Rövarna i Skuleskogen” Scandinavian Studies 70 (Winter 1998): 425-436.

“A Self at Large in the Hall of Mirrors: Rilke’s Malte Laurids Brigge as Autobiographical Act.” Seminar (1993): 43-54.

“Strindbergman: The Problem of Filming Autobiography in Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander.” Literature/Film Quarterly 16 (1988): 174-180.