Library Committee

    KIERKEGAARD LIBRARY COMMITTEE MEMBERS

    Appointed by the St. Olaf College President, this committee serves as an advisory group to the Hong Kierkegaard Library.

    Kari Lie Dorer (Professor of Norwegian, King Olav V Endowed Chair in Scandinavian-American Studies)

    Kari completed her Ph.D. studies at the University of Texas at Austin in the Department of Germanic Studies with an emphasis in Applied Linguistics and a minor emphasis in Scandinavian Languages. Kari received her M.A. in Curriculum and Instruction of Second Languages and Cultures from the University of Minnesota and her B.A. in Scandinavian Studies, History, and Political Science from Concordia College in Moorhead, MN. After spending 10 years as a villager at Skogfjorden, the Norwegian language village located in Bemidji, MN, she attended eight study abroad programs, seven of which were in Norway. She specializes in the scholarship of teaching, foreign language instruction, curriculum development, the use of technology with language learning, Sámi studies and Nordic film.

    Peder Jothen (Associate Professor of Practice in Religion)

    Professor Jothen teaches classes in Bible, Christian Theology, Existentialism, and Ethics. Current and past courses include Religion, Beauty, and the Arts; Christian Ethics: Life and Death; The Bible and Ecological Desire, and Christian Theology and Human Experience. He’s led several study away/abroad classes as well, including Living Faith: Theology and Practice at Holden Village and Global Semester: The Ethics of Travel. He’s also taught in the Great Conversation/Enduring Questions Conversation program. His research revolves around questions of moral formation and practice, especially in relation to culture and aesthetics. His first book, Kierkegaard, Selfhood, and Art: Aesthetics and Christian Becoming, was published by Routledge Press in 2014. He is married to Kaethe Schwehn, a writer who teaches in the English Department at St. Olaf, and has two delightful children, Thisbe and Matteus.

    Brian Soderquist (Endowed Kierkegaard Chair in Christian Philosophy)

    Brian’s areas of specialization are Philosophy of Religion, Existentialism, and the thought of Søren Kierkegaard. Brian has a Ph.D. from the University of Copenhagen, a master’s degree from Yale University, and a bachelor’s degree from Utah State University. He is the author of The Isolated Self: Truth and Untruth in Kierkegaard’s On the Concept of Irony as well as numerous articles and book chapters. He was part of the team that translated Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks (11 volumes) and has served as co-editor of Kierkegaard Studies: Yearbook and Kierkegaardiana. Brian enjoys metalsmithing, biking through the Danish countryside, and hiking in the deserts of Southern Utah.

    Anna Söderquist (HKL Director and Associate Professor of Philosophy) – Ex Officio

    Anna Söderquist is both a professor of philosophy and the curator of the Hong Kierkegaard Library at St. Olaf College. She specializes in Kierkegaard, Continental Philosophy, and the History of Philosophy. Her interests meet at the intersection of philosophy, religion, literature, and art. She is author of Kierkegaard on Dialogical Education: Vulnerable Freedom, has published articles in Res Philosophica and The Philosophical Forum, and contributed chapters to numerous edited volumes on Kierkegaard.