My book, Myths of the Rune Stone: Viking Martyrs and the Birthplace of America, was published by the University of Minnesota Press three years ago. I’m pleased the book is still getting attention and I look forward to several upcoming events.

My first stop will be in Uppsala, SWEDEN for the The 19th Biennial Conference for the International Society for Religion, Literature and Culture held at Uppsala University from September 28-30. The theme of the conference this year is “The Place of Truth” and I’ll be presenting a paper titled “The Sacralization of the Kensington Rune Stone: Constructing a Myth of America’s Birth.” This will be for the Material Religion section. Thanks to S. Brent Plate, the editor of the Material Religion journal for hosting this session.

During the first week of October, I’ll be headed to MINNESOTA for a series of three lectures sponsored by the Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning at the University of St. Thomas. Dr. Hans Gustafson reached out to me several months ago after he had read a copy of Myths of the Rune Stone. The series we come up with is entitled “Viking Myths of Minnesota’s Kensington Rune Stone — and What Those Myths Reveal About the (Mis)Shaping of Identity in the Face of the Religious and Racial Other.”

• October 3 @ 12:15 pm: University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN
• October 3 @ 7:00 pm: American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis, MN
• October 4 @ 4:30 pm: St. John’s University in Collegeville, MN

On October 23, I’ll be traveling to Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania to speak to Dr. Mary Ann Levine’s anthropology course entitled “Great Mysteries of the Past.” Dr. Levine’s course explores frauds and hoaxes, the difference between science and pseudoscience, and argument vs. assertion.

Finally, I’ll be traveling to Sarah Lawrence College on Monday, December 10 in New York to participate in an afternoon seminar in conjunction with Professor Irene Elizabeth’s Stroud‘s class “American Religious Mythmaking: The Stories We Tell Ourselves.”