| 1. |
- Hellberg, Therese, 1981-
(author)
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Vanära, fattigdom och dubbelarbete : om kvinnors platser och värden i folkhemmet i romaner och krönikor 1940–1955
- 2022
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- My doctoral project aims to provide new knowledge about Swedish women’s writing between 1940 and 1955. I ask questions about how novels, short stories and chronicles depict women’s citizenship and produce ideas about the Swedish national community. I also ask questions about what conditions are required for women to be writers and in what ways a selection of texts written by working-class and middle-class women can contribute to new perspectives on the history of Swedish literature.With an understanding that the mass media plays a major role in the production of the imagined Swedish community, I study the production of women’s literature in relation to the dominant culture and the public (literary) sphere. By reading the texts both as mass media and as literature, I analyse the ways in which the texts (re)produce and negotiate the dominant national culture, and I highlight tensions and conflicts in and between the texts. Furthermore, I deploy a critical perspective when discussing the (re)production of myths about Sweden and citizen ideals. Another core point of departure is my understanding of how history is made and how the meanings of time and space are created through the selection, interpretation and valuation of texts. Additionally, the dominant culture becomes visible when marginalized texts, such as those written by female writers from 1940 to 1955, are read and the voices of these writers are heard.Various notions of Swedish women and their citizenship are produced in my selection of texts found in the archives. Overall, these texts challenge the myth of the Swedish welfare society, where all citizens can live without discrimination and poverty. Women’s citizenship is portrayed as circumvented, and brutal insights are provided into what a limited right to abortion and limited rape legislation mean for women, as well as what a society planned from a gender-complementary viewpoint means for women’s social and economic rights. The texts make visible both the patriarchy and the class society’s naturalised defence of inequality. They show that the struggle for (more) equal citizenship requires that it be waged against discrimination and against unequal material conditions.Furthermore, the texts also tell us that the myth of the Swedish community as homogenous, requires that conflicting narratives – like women’s novels and chronicles – be sorted out of the historiography.
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| 2. |
- Nilsson, Magnus
(author)
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Den moderne Ivar Lo-Johansson: Modernisering, modernitet och modernism i statarromanerna
- 2003
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This dissertation examines the modernity of the Swedish proletarian author Ivar Lo-Johansson (1901-1990), as manifested in the so-called 'statare' novels: Godnatt, jord (Breaking Free, 1933), Bara en mor (Only a Mother, 1939), and Traktorn (1943). The dissertation examines, on the one hand, modernisation and modernity as the topoi of these novels, and on the other, how the author relates to the literary tendency that has come to signify the aesthetic modernisation of the 20th century, i.e. modernism. The theoretical basis of the dissertation is Marxist. The primary source of inspiration has been the model for a Marxist hermeneutics presented by Fredric Jameson in The Political Unconscious, comprising three levels of textual interpretation: the text is read, first, as an historical allegory, and second, as a statement within a class-related discourse, and, finally, in relation to the transformation of the modes of production. The accounts in the novels of modernisation and modernity are first close read and then studied in a historical context. Then the aesthetics of the novels are related to modernism. The account of modernisation and modernity in the novels is found to be fundamentally embracing, even if the negative or threatening aspects of modern society are never downplayed by the author. This position is founded in Lo-Johansson’s socialist outlook, according to which the labour movement guarantees the fulfilment of modernity’s utopian promises and avoidance of its dangers. This view is expressed by Lo-Johansson in a critical dialogue with other contemporary accounts, literary and non-literary, of modernity and modernisation. This dialogue is examined historically with the aid of Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of dialogue and Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, as interpreted by Raymond Williams and other Marxist critics. First, Lo-Johansson's relationship to other literary responses to modernity and modernisation – mainly primitivism and socialist realism – is examined. Then, the 'statare' novels are related to non-literary modernist discourses, such as the ideology of the social democratic welfare state and the ideas about the new woman and the new youth. The description of the relation between the aesthetics in the 'statare' novels and modernism is focussed on the term 'social modernism'. This term was coined by Michael Denning and it signifies an attempt to redirect modernist aesthetics away from the abandonment of political, avant-garde ideals as well as the celebration of artistic autonomy, by establishing contacts with extra-literary movements who aim for a change of society. Avant-gardist and social modernist ideas were propagated in Sweden in the interwar period by socialist critics such as Ture Nerman and Arnold Ljungdal. That Lo-Johansson embraces similar ideals is showed in an analysis of three constitutive components of the aesthetics of the 'statare' novels: polyphony, facticity, and the grotesque. These stylistic traits are placed within a modernist context through comparison to the social modernist American documentarism of the 1930s , as well as to different examples of experimental modernism, such as the American non-fiction novel and the nouveau roman.
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| 3. |
- Nilsson, Sanja, 1978-
(author)
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Performing Perfectly : Presentations of Childhood in Knutby Filadelfia Before and After the Dissolution of the Congregation
- 2019
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The Knutby Filadelfia Congregation, founded in 1921, started out as a Pentecostal congregation. It has, however, been considered a deviant and semi-isolated new religious movement ever since it became known to the public after a murder took place within its community in 2004. The massive media attention it received revealed the presence of a charismatic leader within the group, and the development of a new theology in which the charismatic leader was considered to be the Bride of Christ. After 2004, the congregation reinforced its boundaries with society, and then suddenly began to dissolve in 2016. This study discusses the development of totalistic features within the congregation from the perspective of sociologist Erving Goffman; it highlights the simultaneous presence of in-group as well as out-group social stigma; and it explores the conflicting presentations of childhood in the congregation in performances from before and after the dissolution of the congregation.The results are based on empirical material from 25 semi-structured interviews with children and youth aged 7–25, 2 focus group interviews with youths, and 24 days of participant observations. Goffman’s theoretical framework, including the key concepts total institutions, stigma, and presentations, is used together with an interpretative phenomenological analysis approach in order to explore the experiences of childhoods as presented by children and youth within the congregation.The findings suggest that their individual understandings of and responses to the presence of a charismatic authority, as well as the consequences of such authorities on parent–child relations, are individual. The Pre-Narratives focus on stigmatisation from society, while the Post-Narratives include stigma within the congregation in the form of social exclusion. The study further indicates that the presentations of childhoods given prior to and after the dissolution of the congregation, the so-called Pre- and Post-Narratives, differ due to changing dramaturgical loyalties, although they should both be considered front-stage activity in Goffman’s terms.
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| 4. |
- Ulfgard, Maria
(author)
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För att bli kvinna - och av lust : en studie i tonårsflickors läsning
- 2002
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- As part of the development of the teaching of literature in school, it is also important to reflect upon what pupils read outside school. This thesis deals with the spare time reading of twenty 15-16-year-old girls which has been examined during a two-year period. Empirical material related to young girls’ reading is examined in a variety of scholarly methods. Young girls’ reading is studied in the light of reception theory; novels are analysed by means of narratology; young girls’ lives are charted from perspectives drawn from cultural sociology and social psychology; finally, all aspects of the empirical material are tested by means of theories derived from gender studies. For the purposes of the thesis the initial question has been broken down into three segments: To what extent the girls actually engage in reading in their spare time, what they read, and what importance they attach to their reading. Another aim, which focusses attention on the connection between the girls’ lives and their reading, has been to find out to what extent the girls’ choice of literature is determined by geographical, social, cultural, and religious factors and by the teaching of literature at school. The third aim has been to find out how gender is constructed in the books that the girls choose to read, how they construct gender while reading these books, and how they construct gender in their own lives. The results of the study suggest that pleasure is a strong factor governing the girls’ reading and that there is a strong connection between the girls’ construction of their identity, including the formation of gender, and their choice of literature and the development of their reading. The study shows that the fiction chosen by the girls themselves mirrors their lives and that the social, cultural and religious factors have an influence on their reading. The relevance of the results of the thesis to the teaching of literature in Swedish schools is discussed. A dialogue is initiated with Läroplanens värdegrund, Lpo 94 and with Kursplan 2000, the Swedish syllabus currently used.
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| 5. |
- Ullström, Sten-Olof
(author)
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Likt och olikt. Strindbergsbildens förvandlingar i gymnasiet
- 2002
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This doctorial thesis deals with the changes in the image of August Strindberg in Swedish Senior High School Education. Strindberg represents the breakthrough of modern literature in Sweden, where the bounds between public and intimate spheres are challenged. The study investigates how and why the image of a writer is qualified or disqualified for inclusion in a national literary discourse of teaching, and why this image varies. Strindberg’s role illustrates how literary meaning is constructed in higher mother tongue education. Learning and literary understanding are viewed as dialogical, communicative processes. The literary classroom is, however, an arena for a process of sociocultural reproduction and socialization, where linguistic actions also serve non-communicative purposes and various relations of power influence the teaching process. The present study begins around the 1880s. The bulk of the thesis deals with the period beginning around the early 1900s up to the mid-sixties, but it also includes outlooks on teaching today. The research is based on a critical analysis of texts produced for or within literary education. Passages or chapters on Strindberg in frequently used textbooks of literary history are discussed, as well as works of Strindberg represented in school and text selections in various anthologies. Additionally, close to 300 student essays on Strindberg were retrieved from seven or more educational institutions, dated in 1912, 1923, 1943, 1950, and 1960. The approach to Strindberg in school became ambiguous and divided. In the beginning, textbooks and educational institutions tended to ignore his literary authorship. Later on, literary works with themes from national history were given priority, but this canon was mainly studied with a number of important reservations. A qualitative inconsistency in Strindberg’s writings was brought forth as a basis for selection. Many times, this artistic inconsistency was attributed to Strindberg’s psyche. Taken together, the student essays present a picture of how different conceptions of Strindberg have been reproduced and constructed at the senior high school level during half a century. Despite the many stereotypes, the student essays stand out as more or less heterogeneous and reflect, to varying degrees, multiple voices. Even though the teaching of literature often has strongly influenced the reading pre-ferences of the predominant culture, to some students, it has also sometimes had a meaning-making function.
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| 6. |
- Söderman, Johan
(author)
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Rap(p) i käften : Hiphopmusikers konstnärliga och pedagogiska strategier
- 2007
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Title: Verbally fa(s)t. Hip-hop Musicians' artistic and educational strategies. During the last decade there has been an awakening interest in concidering not only the formalised learning situations within institutional settings, but also all forms of learning that goes on in informal musical learning practices outside schools. My own personal experience of informal learning, my fascination and curiosity concerning hip-hop culture, and my interest in school, education and learning - are the foundations for my interest and reserach focus and the driving forces behind this doctoral theisis. The aim of this doctoral thesis is to study how hip-hop musicians talk about learning and artistic and educational strategies in different contexts. The study is focusing on both amateurish and professional milieus with female and male informants. How the informants talk about creative strategies, aesthetics, identity, transmitting tradition, fostering and adult education is the focus of the four articles. The research question in articles (1-4) are formulated as: How is the meeting between words and music in the creation of a hip-hop song and how do the informants talk about creativity and learning strategies? What interpretation repertoires are in use when the rappers construct a professional identity, how are they being legitimised and what discourses are they influenced by? What aspects of learning appear when two American rappers talk about their activities in interviews, group conversations, media interviews and in texts produced by themselves? How do rappers talk about hip-hop, their activities and learning with the focus on musical craft, education and activism? The theoretical points for this dissertation are: social constructionism, discourse, identity, field theory and culture criticism. It may seem like many theoretical perspectives, but every article has its own specific theory. The methodological approach suggest a broad attitude to method which is more about describing how the researcher has approached the topic. Methodology is, in the first place, a reflective activity. Individual interviews are the dominating research method in all the articles and discourse analysis has been used as a method in article 2. Howewer, there are inspiration from discourse analysis throughout the thesis. The hip-hop musicians are seen as fosterers, popular adult educators, jazz musicians, tradition-bearers, preachers, craftsmen, artists etc. Finally, it is important to emphasise that aesthetic contexts like hip-hop should not be described as radically different compared to the schools or other institutions. It seems as if both formal learning and informal learning exist in a dialectic way in and outside school.
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| 7. |
- Bergman, Lotta
(author)
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Gymnasieskolans svenskämnen. En studie av svenskundervisningen i fyra gymnasieklasser
- 2007
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This dissertation explores how the school subject Swedish is constructed for various groups of upper secondary school students and how the meeting between teacher and pupils is embodied in a range of Swedish subjects. The overall aim of the study is to illustrate why the teaching of Swedish in the classes under investigation takes place the way it does, as well as to discuss possible changes on a more principal basis. Three basic perspectives give a point of departure for the more general argumentation about problems and possibilities that the subject Swedish has to face: social and cultural changes, the importance of communication and meaning-making context, and, finally, the traditions and values contained in the subject. Four different classes participated in the investigation during a period of two years. The empirical material consist mainly of field notes from classroom observations and of qualitative interviews. The result indicates that the teaching of Swedish has a tendency towards the formal training of skills. The content of the reading, writing and spoken exercises that the students meet is subordinate or even irrelevant. Most of the students find it difficult to formulate a satisfactory answer to why fiction is given such priority in the subject Swedish. The significance of literature in the classroom is reduced when reading simply becomes a process in skills training. The school subject Swedish is affected by the cultural changes. One teacher strategy is to counteract the influence of new media by adhering to a more traditional content, another to give some space to other kinds of textual and experiential worlds. Still, however, the teaching of Swedish remains largely faithful to its traditional practices. The study suggests that focus should be moved from language skills in themselves to language use in the quest for knowledge and, furthermore, that literature and other media is to be integrated in everyday teaching. Teachers? most demanding challenge is to discuss and adjust the content in relation to the students? development of knowledge and identity as well as in relation to the students as members of society. The question asked and tasks chosen must engage the students, encourage mutual exchange and give possibilities to form an opinion. It is of crucial importance to include the students? social and cultural experiences as well as the cultural products in their world and to treat them as active participants and citizens in dialogue with others. Such teaching contains the potential to provide the students with democratic experience and a preparedness for acting in the world.
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| 8. |
- Ewald, Annette
(author)
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Läskulturer. Lärare, elever och litteraturläsning i grundskolans mellanår
- 2007
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This dissertation explores the teaching of literature in Swedish compulsory school. The aim of the study is to elucidate different approaches to literature instruction in upper elementary school (grades 4-6, pupils aged 10-13). The research questions focus on what goals and ideas about literature and reading guide teachers and how these are carried out in pedagogical practice and classroom activities. Three overlapping school ethnographic case studies were conducted in four Swedish compulsory schools during a period of four years. The empirical material was collected mainly through direct observations and interviews with teachers and pupils, but also comprises local policy documents directing education policy and pupils? written materials. A number of classroom episodes and settings are described, interleaved by portraits and presentations of teachers? and pupils? conceptions and attitudes regar-ding literature, reading and schooling. The description yields a varied picture. The analysis concentrates on teachers? conception of literature, their expressed view of the teaching of Swedish and the literature as well as reading experiences pupils are invited to have in the classrooms. A conclusion that follows from the study is that traditional focus on skills-oriented teaching models with a focus on basic literacy dominates the reading cultu-res. Approaches that aim at more thoughtful literacy characterized by the ability to read, write and think in more complex and critical ways are rare. The outcome of the study indicates that historical reproduction as well as con-temporary demands on basic reading skill achievement not only has a strong impact on schools? reading cultures but also raises questions about educational reform activities such as further teacher education.
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| 9. |
- Hansson, Fredrik
(author)
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På jakt efter språk : om språkdelen i gymnasieskolans svenskämne
- 2011
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- A common feature of existing research is that the linguistic part of the subject Swedish in upper secondary school appears to be diffuse and seems to lack core and theoretical framework. The purpose of the thesis ’Hunting for language’ is to describe and investigate how the linguistic part of Swedish is handled in upper secondary school. The study was carried out in two classes of college-preparatory programs during the first semester of the students in high school. In addition to observations of lessons, interviews with students from each class, with their Swedish teachers and with their headmasters were conducted. Further, texts produced by students and teachers were collected. One background for the study consists of different conceptions of the subject Swedish and of how these conceptions are related to changes of school policy. Another important starting point is Bernstein's theory of pedagogy with its concepts of classification, and invisible and visible pedagogies. In these, the dichotomy of implicit and explicit teaching is vital and is contained, for example, in the issue of explicit versus implicit writing instruction. The study shows that the linguistic part is justified in different ways. An emphasis on benefit in terms of personal growth for one’s own career appears in the textbook and the policy documents, as well in interviews with students and school leaders, which is consistent with the principle of school and education as a private good. The teachers further include an idea of personal growth, but the link to a future career is not as strong. The policy documents and the teachers also show a citizenship perspective. On the whole, the classification of the linguistic part stands out as weak. The idea of implicit learning is prominent, while, at the same time, the students and the teachers believe that teaching should be explicit. It is clear that different ideas about language and language development are intermingled in the subject Swedish without being made visible. Thus, the linguistic part of the subject Swedish appears as an example of an invisible pedagogy. The observed teaching practice shows a domination of implicit instruction and a presupposed implicit learning. A strong external classification in terms of clarity regarding material selection and opening explanations by the teachers contrasts with a weak internal classification indicated by the absence of a linguistic metalanguage when working with, for instance, genres. Finally, explicitness and use of metalanguage are emphasized. The subject of Swedish must try to accommodate the wishes of the students concerning language as a tool for their personal projects, while, at the same time, values embedded in the language and in the reality that language constructs are challenged and brought up for discussion.
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| 10. |
- Jarhall, Jessica
(author)
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Historia från kursplan till klassrum : perspektiv på lärares historieundervisning från Lpo 94 till Lgr 11
- 2020
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The thesis examines how history teachers perceive history teaching in Swedish lower secondary schools during a time-period when two different curricula were in use: Lpo 94 and Lgr 11. The overall aim is to investigate how history can be expressed through teachers' transformation of the subject, from syllabus to classroom. The study focuses mainly on the perceived and the operational curricula, according to Goodlad et als curriculum theory. Transformation and transformation factors, i.e. factors that influence teachers' transformation, are central concepts of the thesis. Those are based on Shulman's theory of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and teachers' knowledge base. The term transformation is used in a wide sense, including the process of planning, teaching, and evaluation. Theories from both German and Anglo-american history didactics are used to create an analytical model, including three dimensions of historical knowledge and three sets of historical concepts. The model is used to analyze the respondents' stories as content knowledge, disciplinary knowledge and functional knowledge.The empirical material was collected from qualitative interviews with twenty-one history teachers at six different lower secondary schools. In addition to the interviews, teaching material in the form of teacher planning, examinations and other documents were collected. These documents were used to support, or question, the findings in the interviews.The results show that teachers transformed the history subject in several different ways, using the syllabus as starting point. The main factors influencing the teachers' choice of goals, content and methods in their history teaching were the students, the text books and their knowledge base. For the teachers in the second sub-study, the new national test had a profound impact on the choices teachers made. The three dimensions of knowledge, dealing with content (substantive knowledge), metahistorical concepts and skills (procedural knowledge), and value related issues (meaning) in history proved to be important in history teaching, both before and after Lgr 11. Although the main emphasis on knowledge as content was a continuity, the disciplinary aspects have gained importance during the period. All teachers also took the dimension of meaning into their teaching. A specific result shows that teachers who taught in multi-cultural classrooms especially saw identity and democratic citizenship as important aspects of their teaching. Another important result is that the national tests had a great impact on teachers after Lgr 11. The study also showed that history teachers were affected by the educational context, i.e. accountability, a strong emphasis on the quality of education and increased control.
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