Preface

The year’s second issue of Ibsen Studies takes the reader through a spatial, temporal, methodological and even generational journey in the Ibsen world from Milwaukee, Chicago and New York to Hong Kong, and from the beginning of the 20 century to the end of World War 2. Not only that, film, theatre and performance, Digital Humanities, literary studies and even economics meet in this landscape. Furthermore, this issue celebrates the debut of a new generation of Ibsen scholars, who bring to light new datasets and fresh perspectives from their doctoral research. Lars August Fodstad’s “Economic extensions in Space and Time: Mediating Value in Pillars of the Community and A Doll’s House” weaves together literature, economy and media history, focusing on the central role of money in Ibsen’s works. He demonstrates how the macroeconomic structures in Pillars of the Community are built on the relationship between time, information and money, whereas in the microeconomic household universe of A Doll’s House, risk management is connected, for example, with the private trading of the female body. Overall, Fodstad approaches the consequences of the characters’ financial behaviour as a way to thematise and highlight the importance of temporal and spatial displacement not only in Ibsen’s plays, but also in the modern drama in general. Svein Henrik Nyhus’s inquiry into “Ibsen in the GermanAmerican Theatre” exploits further the principle of spatial extension, but from a quantitative Digital Humanities and theatre historiographical perspective. The article draws on the author’s recently defended doctoral dissertation and focuses on the contribution of German immigrant communities to the breakthrough of Ibsen in America at the beginning of the 20 century, using the IbsenStage database as a starting point. It demonstrates the