English professor’s public lecture March 29 to focus on Swedish immigrants’ letters

The Idaho State University Phi Kappa Phi Spring Scholarly Lecture will feature Dr. Jennifer Eastman Attebery at 7:30 p.m. March 29.
    Attebery will speak on her research concerning Swedish immigrant letters. The immigrants came to the Rocky Mountain states during the period 1880 to 1917. To study the letters, Attebery traveled to archives in Sweden and the western United States. Her book, to be published by University of Minnesota Press this spring, analyzes immigrant letters from a folklorist’s point of view.
    Many Swedes coming to the West were single men working in mining, smelting, logging and railroad construction, or young women working as domestic servants. Their letters eloquently express their experiences as they came in contact with a foreign culture and language and their attitudes toward work, immigrant culture, the “old country” – Sweden, and their new region – the “wild West.”
    Attebery is professor of English and director of American studies at ISU. Her research concerning Swedish immigrants and their writing has been supported by grants from the Swedish Emigrant Institute, a Fulbright research/teaching fellowship and internal grants from ISU’s Office of Research.
    For more information contact Joanne Tokle at 282-2934 or tokljoan@isu.edu.