As Georgia Tech expands its footprint around the world, long-term international relations and collegial exchange impact the way in which our research and scholarship are received. Kenneth J. Knoespel, former School of Literature, Media, and Communication chair and interim Ivan Allen College dean, has a long and deep personal and scholarly commitment to several international partner institutions.

Recently, the University of Umeå, Sweden, conferred upon Knoespel a prestigious honorary doctorate recognizing his ongoing productive engagement with Swedish institutions of higher learning. Umeå officials praised him for developing “a deeper dimension for work in the digital humanities,” for integrating “work in the humanities and digital media through his scholarly and administrative work,” and for providing “a strategic resource for the ongoing development of HUM-Lab,” the university’s center for the interdisciplinary encounter of the humanities, culture, and information technology.

Knoespel’s connection with Sweden and Northern Europe in general was initiated when he was an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Later, he taught for three years as a “lecturer” in the English Department at the University of Uppsala, offering courses on Shakespeare and English poetry. During his stay, he also began to translate Swedish poetry into English and, together with Amy Arnett Knoespel, translated the first wave of sociologically important detective fiction (Mai Sjövall and Per Wahlöö’s Murder at the Savoy) and was able to mingle with many Swedish authors.

His Swedish sojourn also introduced him to the field of intellectual history, which would become one of his areas of specialization. It also inspired him to work on a range of European languages before moving to the University of Chicago, where he completed his M.S. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature. While at Chicago, he taught Swedish in the Department of German and Germanic Languages and worked as a dramaturg in Chicago, co-writing and –producing (with Robert Wolff), A Hail of Bullets, a play based on Bertolt Brecht’s one-act play secretly produced in Stockholm when he was there in exile.

His connections with Sweden have involved work with the University of Uppsala, University of Gothenburg, The Royal Institute of Technology, Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, Södertörns Högskola, and the University of Umeå. Together with LMC’s Jay Bolter, he established Georgia Tech’s exchange program with Blekinge Tekniska Högskola.

Knoespel’s work in Sweden has led in the past 15 years to extensive work with Russian colleagues. He taught at the Russian Academic of Sciences in St. Petersburg and worked closely with the European University in St. Petersburg.  This ongoing work contributed to the visit several weeks ago from colleagues from the Higher School for Economics, St. Petersburg. 

Knoespel was awarded the honorary doctorate during a public ceremony, followed by a banquet with the President of Umeå University and the Chancellor of the University System of Sweden in October 2013. During the banquet, Knoespel was invited to address the audience of 450 guests in Swedish.

Richard Utz, LMC chair and a product of the European university system, views the great honor awarded by Umeå University “a testimony to Ken Knoespel’s impressive record of excellence and sincere interest in international and collaborative scholarship.”

Kenneth J. Knoespel is McEver Professor of Engineering and the Liberal Arts and Director of the Allen Institute for Advanced Studies in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.