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Julia Watkin Memorial Kierkegaard Lecture to be held Tuesday

By Anna Stevens '10
November 14, 2008

Connecticut College Professor Emeritus of History Bruce H. Kirmmse will deliver the third annual Julia Watkin Memorial Kierkegaard Lecture Tuesday, Nov. 18, at 7 p.m. in Buntrock Commons Viking Theater. The lecture, titled "Poetry, History, Humanity: A Historian Reads Kierkegaard," is free and open to the public.

KirmmseBruce
Kirmmse
The Howard and Edna Hong Kierkegaard Library at St. Olaf College sponsors the annual lecture in remembrance of late Kierkegaard scholar Julia Watkin. This year's lecturer, Kirmmse, has been a friend of the Hong Kierkegaard Library for 30 years. He has served on the Library's advisory board as well as on the staff of the other leading institute for international scholarly work relating to Kierkegaard, the Soren Kierkegaard Research Centre in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The historian
Well versed in Kierkegaard's work, Kirmmse is presently serving chair of the editorial board for the English language edition of Kierkegaard's unpublished writings. The multi-volume work Kierkegaard's Journals and Notebooks is being published by Princeton University Press, which has so far issued two completed volumes of the ongoing project.

Kirmmse recently served as director of the Soren Kierkegaard Society in Denmark and on the editorial board of its journal, Kierkegaardiana. He has also been active in the Soren Kierkegaard Society of the United States. Kirmmse is the author of two books, numerous articles and essays, and a number of translations, largely relating to the work of Kierkegaard. His book Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark has become a standard work for anyone interested in investigating the life and work of Kierkegaard within historical context.

In 2007 Kirmmse retired from Connecticut College, where he was a professor of history. He received his B.A. degree in history from Wesleyan University in Connecticut and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley.

Memorial lecture
The annual lecture is named in honor of Julia Watkin, an accomplished Kierkegaard scholar and author who died in 2005. A British citizen who lived much of her life in Denmark and Australia, Watkin bequeathed her estate to St. Olaf's Hong Kierkegaard Library in order to support the ongoing work of Kierkegaard scholars.

Watkin was a teacher and mentor to many students and scholars around the world as they began and developed their own study of Kierkegaard's thought. She created and edited the International Kierkegaard Newsletter, which served to connect and inform international scholars, and she developed the Kierkegaard book collection now part of the Soren Kierkegaard Research Centre in Denmark.

Contact Kari VanDerVeen at 507-786-3970 or vanderve@stolaf.edu.