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- Bark Persson, Anna
(författare)
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Steel as the Answer? : Viking Bodies, Power, and Masculinity in Anglophone Fantasy Literature 2006–2016
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation examines the motif of the popular Viking in contemporary Anglophone fantasy literature, with a focus on masculinity, power, embodiment,and sexuality. The study draws on queer-theoretical perspectives on masculinity and the method of queer reading, and approaches the Viking as at once bound up with the legitimization of normative and hegemonic forms of masculinity and open to (queer) negotiations and possibilities beyond normative male masculinities.The material consists of contemporary gritty fantasy, a recent subgenre deeply invested in contemporary concerns regarding masculinity, masculine failure, and masculinity crisis narratives, where the Viking motif plays a major role. The texts under consideration are Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law (2006–2012) and The Shattered Sea (2014–2015), Richard K. Morgan’s A Land Fit for Heroes (2008–2016), Mark Lawrence’s The Red Queen’s War (2014–2016), and Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette’s The Iskryne Saga (2007–2015).Understanding the Viking as a motif that is intractably bound up with ideas of the past and the historical period of the Viking Age but not reducible to it, the thesis considers the fantasy Viking as a medial representation of spectacular hardbody action masculinity and puts it in relation to the fantasy text and fantasy worldbuilding as well as more generalized cultural ideas of the North and the Nordics. Furthermore, it asks how we can understand the masculinity of the Viking – long made symbolic of or associated with white supremacy, misogyny, homophobia, and reactionary gender roles – beyond an assumed direct relation to men or men’s concerns.Analytically, the thesis considers the Viking in relation to spatiality, temporality, and embodiment, finding that in the fantasy text, the Viking emerges with a strong focus on a mighty, muscular body and as a barbarian Other connected to the past and in direct opposition to civilization and futurity, making it an escapist possibility outside the disciplining power of neoliberal late-stage capitalism. Furthermore, connecting to postfeminist perspectives on masculinity in media, the thesis finds that the fantasy Viking has developed in ways that seemingly take into account feminist and queer critique of traditional, homophobic forms of masculinity, transforming the Viking and offering it up for (queer) objectification. At the same time, the Viking also becomes a safe site of traditional masculinity, where anxieties and concerns regarding a supposed loss of male power in modernity can be projected and ultimately resolved.
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- Dahl, Ulrika, et al.
(författare)
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The Geopolitics of Nordic and Russian Gender Research 1975–2005
- 2016. - 1
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Bok (refereegranskat)abstract
- This book examines how a geopolitical grammar works in Nordic and Russian academic feminism and how understandings of a joint feminist “we”, of “Nordicness” and ideas of an “East/West-Divide” shape the formation of gender research fields. In three distinct chapters, each with a different approach to theories, methods and source materials, the book explores the implications of language, translation, and situated knowledges in the development of gender research as a geopolitical area and particular academic space during the mid-1970s until 2005, and considers feminist knowledge production as a field of power relations.
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| 7. |
- Larsen, Eirinn, et al.
(författare)
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Gender-equality pioneering, or how three Nordic states celebrated 100 years of women’s suffrage
- 2022
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Ingår i: Scandinavian Journal of History. - : Routledge. - 0346-8755 .- 1502-7716. ; 47:5, s. 624-647
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Nordic countries do not just identify strongly with gender equality: they also increasingly mobilize their pasts, as well as more contemporary notions held at the international level wherein the Nordics are seen as exceptionally gender equal, to highlight and brand themselves in the present as global pioneers of women’s rights. In this article, using nation-branding as an overarching perspective, we examine how this eagerness among the Nordics to be perceived as front-runners of gender rights affected the memory politics at play during the national commemoration of 100 years of women’s suffrage in Finland (2006–2007), Norway (2013) and Sweden (2018–2022). In addition, we ask what national narratives the respective jubilee celebrations helped to facilitate – and whether those narratives correspond with the images that function as the primary brands of Finland, Norway and Sweden today.
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