Postcolonial Europe

Bolette Blaagaard is a doctoral candidate and a Marie Curie Fellow at the Gender Studies Programme at Utrecht University. She holds a MA in journalism and cultural studies from the University of Southern Denmark. Her work is centred on the journalistic and public representation of Nordic whiteness, and how this representation works within and alongside a Nordic imaginary and self-identification. Within this imaginary lies understandings of the past as both being used actively in constructing a sense of self (as in the case of the Icelandic sagas and the Viking myths), and being suppressed in order to sustain this sense of self (as in the case of the southern colonies and the slave trade). Both these understandings carry implications of whiteness and gender biases, and in her work she is tracing their genealogies and socio-political implications in order to answer the questions of What role do Danish journalistic discourses play in the (re)constructions and sustainments of certain Danish self-identifications and national belongings? And, moreover, what are the implications for the journalistic expression? This question has been made all the more urgent recently by the ongoing transformation of the Danish society and welfare state and the rising climate of intolerance – as evidenced by the case of the satirical cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed.

---

Published work

---

She has published in Nordicom Information (2005), in European Journal of Communication (December 2006, forthcoming), and in connection to the project Rethinking Nordic Colonialism (Kuratorisk Aktion and Nordic Institute of Contemporary Art (NIFCA) (November 2006, forsthcoming).