Time: Wednesday 2 April 2025 @ 13:15
Venue: Aula, Collegium Heliodori Święcicki, Grunwaldzka 6
Speaker: Prof. Ernst Håkon Jahr (University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway)
Clara Holst (1868–1935) — an important but long forgotten Norwegian linguistic and woman pioneer
Abstract
Clara Holst (1868–1935), a pioneering Norwegian linguist and feminist, was the first woman in Norway to defend a PhD (1903). Her research focused on German, particularly Low German, and the contact between Low German and Scandinavian languages during the Hansa period. Some of her work clearly point forward in the direction of structuralism. However, due to her gender, she was never granted a university position in Norway. When she finally protested the discrimination she faced, she was soon relegated to obscurity and nearly forgotten. Until recently, her scholarly and feminist contributions were rarely acknowledged after she left academia in 1910. This represented a significant loss for Norwegian linguistics, as no one in the country was as experienced or up-to-date with international linguistics as she was. This lecture will outline her biography as a pioneering female linguist with extensive studies and work abroad, and will discuss her contributions, particularly to contact linguistics, historical linguistics, and dialectology.
About the speaker
Ernst Håkon Jahr is Professor emeritus at University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway. He was Rector of University of Agder and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education, visiting professor at various universities, including Hamburg and Reading as well as Fulbright research scholar at UCSB. He is the founder of Agder Academy of Sciences and Letters in 2002, and was its President for 17 years and now its honorary member. He is member of 11 academies and learned societies in Norway and abroad. He was knighted by the King of Norway for linguistic research and for founding and building academic institutions. Prof. Jahr has published around 80 books and 250 articles and papers. He presented more than 60 papers at international conferences and was a guest lecturerer at many universities in Europe and America. He founded 3 linguistic journals, 3 book series and one national conference series. His research areas include historical (socio)linguistics, sociolinguistics, language planning, language contact, creolistics, language conflict and history of linguistics.
About the lecture series
WA Distinguished Professors’ Lectures Series features internationally renowned scholars visiting the Faculty of English to share their research and professional expertise with the faculty and students.