Public invited to lecture by Swedish-American scholar Dag Blanck

Dag Blanck, director of Augustana College’s Swenson Swedish Immigration Research Center and honorary professor of Swedish-American studies, will present a lecture titled “Trump and Harris from Abroad: How the American Election is seen in Sweden,” at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 30.

Focused on Swedish views on the American election, the lecture is open to the public and will be held in the Swenson Center, located on the first floor of Augustana’s Denkmann Memorial Building, 3520 7th Ave., Rock Island.

Additionally Blanck will be featured on the Quad Cities’ WVIK News and contribute to election broadcasts as an in-house expert for Sveriges Radio, Sweden’s national publicly funded radio, from Washington, D.C., Nov. 5-7.

Since 1985, Blanck has split his time between Augustana College and Uppsala University in Sweden, a partner school to Augustana. At Uppsala, Blanck is professor of North American Studies and director of the Swedish Institute for North American Studies. Blanck has been an active scholar and teacher of American Studies in Sweden for more than three decades.

“The interest in the United States is intense in Sweden, not least in the election,” he said. “The Swedish interest provides a good example of how the U.S. and its politics are perceived outside the country, through non-American glasses. There are some interesting differences.”

Dr. Mariano Magalhães, professor and chair of Augustana’s political science department, said Blanck’s lecture is an especially good match for students in his Intro to Comparative Politics this fall semester.

“Students in this class are discussing the ideas of democracy and elections,” said Dr. Magalhães. “The chance to hear from a scholar like Dag Blanck is an incredible opportunity and the timing in advance of the Nov. 5 election couldn’t be better.”

The lecture is one of many cultural events hosted by Augustana’s Swenson Swedish Immigration Research Center. The center is a national archives and research institute providing resources for the study of Swedish immigration to North America. It promotes and initiates academic research in the field and assists individuals in researching their own Swedish-American genealogy.

Annually, more than 600 people access the center’s resources, including in-person and digitally. 

In fall 2023, the Swenson Center was awarded a $50,000 grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities to study how the center’s records can be better preserved. The grant allowed the center to hire two consultants – one archival and one architectural – to study the center’s stewardship of letters, diaries and several hundred newspapers focused on the period of 1840-1930, when 1.3 million Swedes made their way to the “new world.”

The Swenson Center was founded in December 1980, and its staff today includes full-time faculty and staff, interns and student workers. 

Learn more about the Swenson Center.