Prize recipient 2023 | Anne-Marie Mai

Professor Anne-Marie Mai has altered our perception of how literary history can be studied and analysed, and she has communicated this in the clearest possible way both in her teaching and to the wider population through the media.

Throughout her career, Mai has created new approaches and understandings of literature, not only in Denmark and the Nordic region but also in an international context. She has changed our understanding of recent periods of Danish literature, identifying a break in the mid-1960s and the emergence of a new period. In doing so, she has linked together leading bodies of work in a new way and established the concept of the “formal breakthrough”, an insight that has woven together a variety of contributions to Danish literary history. This discovery has been pivotal for Danish and Nordic literary research, and the “formal breakthrough” is now a recognised period of recent Danish literature.

Mai has always been keen for literary research to be open and to interact with, involve and even provoke the outside world. She has produced a strong and very broad body of writing, where she has drawn on her research to publish not only research literature of the highest academic standard, but also works for target groups far removed from academia and with an international audience.

Based on the “Uses of Literature” project carried out with a grant from the Danish National Research Foundation together with Professor Rita Felski, Mai has developed new cross-disciplinary methods for analysing society’s consumption of literature with a focus on the personal and social function of literature. Here too, she has broken new ground and generated new insights which have subsequently been adopted widely in literary research.Besides strong and innovative contributions to Danish and international literary scholarship, Mai’s very real commitment to sharing knowledge and insights from research has led to a number of important outreach contributions. For example, she is the host and editor of a book programme broadcast on Danish national TV. 

Mai has examined literature as an institution consisting of publishers, markets, book fairs, authors, and book clubs. This enables her to capture the reader’s perspective and explore literature from the outside. She has also made a broad contribution to literature and communication around literature, demonstrating her versatility. Examples include Hvor litteraturen finder sted [Where literature takes place], a retelling of Danish literary history starting from the places that have been particularly important for authors and literature, and Nordisk Kvindelitteraturhistorie bind I – V [The history of Nordic women’s literature, volumes I-V], of which she is editor in chief.

One particularly innovative cross-disciplinary achievement is her research and teaching on “narrative medicine”, where medical students gain a better understanding of patients and their families’ experiences in the health care system through portrayals in literature.

Mai’s internationally acclaimed monograph on the American writer, lyricist and Nobel Prize laureate Bob Dylan has been translated into both English and German and led to her appointment to the board of the Bob Dylan Archive at the University of Tulsa.

Mai has received a number of distinctions and awards, including the Søren Gyldendal Prize and the Blixen Prize, as well as several research communication prizes.

Mai has been incredibly productive during her career and made a marked impression on Danish and international literary historiography with 56 peer-reviewed articles, 24 monographs, 127 book chapters and countless other contributions to the benefit of both science and society. Many of her works are published first in Danish and then in English and German translation. Since 2014, she has been a member of the Danish Academy, where literary science and authors meet.

Members of the Prize Committee

Chair:

• Marie Louise Nosch, President of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, Professor at the SAXO Institute at the University of Copenhagen 

International members in the humanities and social sciences:

• Joanna Story, Professor of Early Mediaeval History at the University of Leicester
• Karin Lisbeth Sanders, Professor of Scandinavian Literature at the University of California, Berkeley

International members in the natural sciences:

• Janne Blichert-Toft, Research Director at CNRS at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon
• Susanne Renner, Professor of Biology at Washington University in St. Louis

Members who have previously won the Carlsberg Foundation Research Prizes:

• Andreas Roepstorff (2015), Professor, Director of the Interacting Minds Centre at Aarhus University
• Mette Birkedal Bruun (2017), Professor of Church History at the University of Copenhagen
• Karl Anker Jørgensen (2017), Professor of Chemistry at Aarhus University
• Poul Nissen (2018), Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Aarhus University