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- Abrahamsson, Elin, 1983-
(författare)
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Enahanda läsning : En queer tolkning av romancegenren
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This doctoral thesis investigates popular romance, a mass-cultural genre with a large female audience. Popular romance is often considered ”lowbrow” and is referred to by terms such as ”porn” and ”garbage”. The female reader of this so called “sentimental trash” is often portrayed as naïve and unworldly. The thesis makes this derogatory view of the genre its point of departure, to investigate what cultural understandings of gender and sexuality the critique against popular romance entails. The thesis further investigates how these conceptions of gender and sexuality deviate from and challenge a culturally promoted and normative sexuality.The thesis consists of six chapters. The first chapter describes the selection of the empirical material and the theoretical and methodological framework. The empirical material consists of the three novels in the popular series Fifty Shades of Grey and the four novels and five films in the popular series Twilight. The thesis places itself within the field of feminist cultural studies and queer theory. It makes use of the concept of masturbation (both literal and figurative) as an analytical entry point and as a method focusing on the “here and now” of romance reading.The second chapter contextualizes the study by defining the term “popular romance” and by providing a brief historical overview of the genre. Previous research on popular romance is presented and discussed in relation to the derogatory view of the genre.The third chapter studies the Swedish media commentaries on Fifty Shades of Grey and Twilight to define how the rejected romance reader is conceptualized, and how this romance reader is presumed to be reading. This “romance reader” is thereafter discussed in relation to the Western historical discourse on masturbation, “female illness” and (women’s) private reading. The chapter closes with a discussion on the form of reading that the romance reader is associated with. This self-immersed, excessive and over-invested reading form is defined as “masturbatory”.The fourth chapter explores the act of romance reading when defined as a sexual activity. The romance community is compared to the “second wave” feminism of the 1970s in order to demonstrate how the genre establishes a separatist female community where relations, positions, and identifications are in motion, revealing both homoerotic and autoerotic elements to this homosocial context.In the fifth chapter, a close reading of the material is performed with a focus on the “here and now” of the reading situation. The dichotomy of desiring subject and desired object is problematized in relation to looks and gaze. The thesis argues that the romance text uses detailed and intimate descriptions to instill a sexual charge and to freeze the flow of the storyline in order to make room for constant erotic contemplation. These “frozen moments” and the repetitiveness of the genre are discussed in relation to theories of queer temporality. The romance text constructs a room “outside of time” that privileges the overwhelming pleasures of the “here and now”. This liminal room is not only available for the heroine and hero of the story, but for the romance reader as well.The sixth and final chapter ties together the main arguments of the thesis in an overarching discussion on how conceiving romance reading as a form of masturbation challenges previous research on popular romance and the gendering of and contempt for mass culture.
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- Abrahamsson, Elin, 1983-
(författare)
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Superwomen, Latte Dads and Feminist Alphas : Negotiations on Feminism in Contemporary Swedish Popular Romance Novels
- 2021
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Ingår i: Journal of Popular Romance Studies. - 2159-4473 .- 2159-4473. ; 10
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- During the 2010s, popular romance has emerged as a popular genre in Sweden. Popular romance is often criticized on account of its perceived gender conservatism. In Sweden – a country that prides itself on being at the forefront of progressive gender politics – the genre has however become promoted as feminist, and Sweden is represented as an especially beneficial context for the emergence of a (more) feminist popular romance. For this article I analyze a selection of Swedish contemporary romance novels, released between 2014-2019. Taking the feminist critique into account, I analyze how these novels negotiate genre conventions in an effort to produce (more) feminist love stories, and how these local variants of a global genre relate to the feminism of the Swedish context and the Swedish self-image. The novels, I argue, are permeated by a Swedish gender equality discourse; one that focuses on heterosexual couples who fulfill themselves equally in relation to both family and work life. The novels both challenge and uphold gendered inequalities and criticized romance tropes. They further produce different representations of Sweden, sometimes representing Sweden as only superficially equal and other times as a country where equality is already almost in place.
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- Nordlund, Jessica, et al.
(författare)
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DNA methylation-based subtype prediction for pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia
- 2015
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Ingår i: Clinical Epigenetics. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1868-7083 .- 1868-7075. ; 7
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: We present a method that utilizes DNA methylation profiling for prediction of the cytogenetic subtypes of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) cells from pediatric ALL patients. The primary aim of our study was to improve risk stratification of ALL patients into treatment groups using DNA methylation as a complement to current diagnostic methods. A secondary aim was to gain insight into the functional role of DNA methylation in ALL. Results: We used the methylation status of similar to 450,000 CpG sites in 546 well-characterized patients with T-ALL or seven recurrent B-cell precursor ALL subtypes to design and validate sensitive and accurate DNA methylation classifiers. After repeated cross-validation, a final classifier was derived that consisted of only 246 CpG sites. The mean sensitivity and specificity of the classifier across the known subtypes was 0.90 and 0.99, respectively. We then used DNA methylation classification to screen for subtype membership of 210 patients with undefined karyotype (normal or no result) or non-recurrent cytogenetic aberrations('other' subtype). Nearly half (n = 106) of the patients lacking cytogenetic subgrouping displayed highly similar methylation profiles as the patients in the known recurrent groups. We verified the subtype of 20% of the newly classified patients by examination of diagnostic karyotypes, array-based copy number analysis, and detection of fusion genes by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq). Using RNA-seq data from ALL patients where cytogenetic subtype and DNA methylation classification did not agree, we discovered several novel fusion genes involving ETV6, RUNX1, and PAX5. Conclusions: Our findings indicate that DNA methylation profiling contributes to the clarification of the heterogeneity in cytogenetically undefined ALL patient groups and could be implemented as a complementary method for diagnosis of ALL. The results of our study provide clues to the origin and development of leukemic transformation. The methylation status of the CpG sites constituting the classifiers also highlight relevant biological characteristics in otherwise unclassified ALL patients.
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- Saavedra, Valeria, 1985, et al.
(författare)
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Extending charge separation lifetime and distance in patterned dye-sensitized SnO2–TiO2 µm-thin films
- 2017
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Ingår i: Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics. - : Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). - 1463-9084 .- 1463-9076. ; 19:34, s. 22684-22690
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A simple method for the preparation of patterned dye-sensitized SnO2–TiO2 thin films, designed to prolongthe lifetime of the interfacial charge separated state is presented. Using microfluidic technology,the thin films were sensitized with the organic sensitizer D35 such that they contain SnO2–TiO2 areaswith dye and SnO2 dye-free areas at which injected electrons can be accumulated. Single wavelengthtransient absorption spectroscopy confirmed significantly extended charge separation lifetime at thedye-semiconductor interface. Sufficiently high density of injected electrons results in substantialdecrease of charge recombination rate constants (kcr); a factor of B50 compared to dye-sensitized TiO2thin films and a factor of B2000 compared to dye-sensitized SnO2 thin films. Furthermore, the potentialof this approach was confirmed by photoinduced conduction band mediated electron transfer from thedye to a model electron acceptor, Co protoporphyrin IX, which was adsorbed to the SnO2-only regions.
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