| 51. |
- Sandin, Bengt, 1949-
(author)
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Infanticide, abortion, children, and childhood in Sweden 1000-1980
- 2012
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In: The Routledge History of Childhood in the Western World. - London and New York : Routledge. - 9780415782326 - 0415782325 ; , s. 360-379
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Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The life course of women and men in most soc1et1es simply does not allow for childbirth and rearing during the entire period women are able to reproduce. Choices ha ve always been made not to ha ve children. Child bearing and the choices it involves have also been a source of social, cultural, and political conflict as the historiography of women, family, and fertility makes very clear. Yet it is also evident that revealing a society's attitudes towards infanticide and abortion, the subjects dealt with here, exposes the parameters of what is sanctioned or accepted as ways to limit reproduction in any particular society at any particular moment in time. Determining these restrictions has been central to policies on the regulation of populations practiced by the church, the state, government agencies, and civil society organizations such as medical societies and philanthropic organizations. Boundaries were also set by the norms developed in families and kinship networks. The negotiations related to these !imitations reflect not only the position of women and concepts of family, but they are also integrated into the understanding of children and childhood during different periods of time.Critical issues such as these have been addressed through legal changes, the development and use of church registers, the establishment of midwives, the refinement of statistical surveys, the spread of education, and the conscious development of family and population policy. In a wider context, the understanding of populationchange and analyses of sexual behavior also had a bearing on and interacted with the techniques and technology of governance as early as the introduction of Chnstianity, during the debates on the high rates of infanticide of the seventeenth century, during the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century discussions about the predicament of unwed mothers, and in the discussions on the rise of the welfare system
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| 52. |
- Almgren White, Anette, 1960-, et al.
(author)
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Astrid Lindgren’s Seacrow Island from an Intermedial Perspective
- 2021
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In our presentation we analyse how the chapter book Seacrow Island (1964 in Swedish), the original television series of the same name and the subsequent films have been reimagined as two new picturebooks illustrated by Maria Nilsson Thore (2019, 2020). We will discuss the artistic/didactic/considerations given to at once remaining respectful to the source material and to making the story an understandable and enjoyable experience for a new generation of readers.Astrid Lindgren’s works belong to Sweden’s cultural heritage and many of her books have been translated into multiple languages and are read around the world. It is interesting to ponder which of Lindgren’s books will live on as classics and what adaptations are required in terms of their content, language, style and form for this to happen. Here, it is also appropriate to consider what Göte Klingberg called medium-choosing adaptations, in order to give due consideration to how a story can maintain the reader’s interest in a new millennium (Klingberg 1972: 95). Likewise, to observe the artistic deliberations involved in the illustrator’s visualisations (Nikolajeva & Scott 2001: 41-60). In the context of children’s literature, classics are often adapted works that are more or less reworked versions of the source material, whether originally intended for children or adults. Many of the works we now call classics would not have survived without this reworking (Ehriander 2015: 26-27). It is also striking that the story of Seacrow Island, the archipelago and the people who live there, is now being reworked for a younger readership in much the same way as many of Lindgren’s other works, in keeping with the changing times and changes in reading habits over the half century since the first generation of children encountered the fictional world of Seacrow Island (Almgren White & Ehriander 2020).Selected BibliographyAstrid Lindgrens bildvärldar (ed.) Helene Ehriander & Anette Almgren White, Göteborg: Makadam 2019.“Ett litet djur åt Pelle” – en bilderboks relationer till Vi på Saltkråkan. Anette Almgren White & Helene Ehriander, HumaNetten, 2020, p. 231-255.“Pictures of Alma in Katthult: Emil’s Mother the Writer in an Intermedial Light”, LP Publishing Contemporary Literary Criticism series: Astrid Lindgren, to be published 2021.
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| 53. |
- Podlevskikh Carlström, Malin
(author)
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The Trials of the Intertextual: The Translation and Reception of Tatyana Tolstaya's Kys´ in Sweden and the United States
- 2020
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This dissertation analyses the translation and reception of Tatyana Tolstaya’s novel Kys´ (2000). The analysis includes, as well as the Russian source text, the Swedish translation Därv (2003), translated by Staffan Skott and Maria Nikolajeva, and the English translation The Slynx (2003), translated by Jamey Gambrell. A basic premise for the investigation is that intertextuality takes particular expression in the Russian literary tradition, which is why it is vital to discuss possible strategies for translating intertextual references and also how the choice of strategies may affect the reception of a target text. The first part of the dissertation focuses on intertextuality and possible ways to classify and translate intertextual references. The analysis reveals that the Swedish translators have replaced many quotations from Russian poetry with Swedish or canonical poetry, while the American translator has translated the Russian quotations into English. To summarize, while the Swedish translators seem to have interpreted intertextuality as such as being important and recontextualized some of the references, the American translator instead seems to have interpreted the references to Russian culture and the actual referent texts as being important. The second part analyses the reception of the two target texts by means of a comparative analysis of twelve Swedish and sixteen American reviews in non-scholarly and non-professional publications. The analysis reveals that the reception differed between the two target cultures. While the English target text was primarily read as a novel about Russia, the Swedish critics were also able to relate the novel to universal topics such as art and human nature. Finally, the analysis revealed that an underlying theme among the Swedish reviews is “Can art/literature save us?” while an underlying theme among the American reviews is instead “Can Russia be saved?” To conclude, the Swedish translators managed to achieve an interpretation of the source text that was not only more intelligible for the target text readers but also more interesting and relevant from their perspective. Thus, intertextual literature may benefit from a translation strategy that takes the function of intertextuality into consideration and that also—when necessary—recontextualizes intertextual references.
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| 54. |
- Blomberg Gudmundsson, Julie
(author)
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Time of Turmoil : Reading and Media Combination in the American Young Adult Novels Cathy’s Book, Skeleton Creek, and Endgame
- 2022
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In the beginning of the twenty-first century, Young Adult (YA) fiction experienced a renaissance, and YA novels began to appear on the best-seller lists in the US. Around the same time, many reports sounded alarms about rapidly declining rates of fiction reading among young adults. Often, such alarms identified an increased usage of the Internet in various forms as a possible culprit. In an attempt both to retain interest in YA fiction and to capitalize on the growing Internet usage among teens, many writers began to experiment with novel forms of storytelling that combined print fiction with other media. This study focuses on three such American YA novels to show a spectrum of experimental endeavors: Cathy’s Book: If Found Call (650) 266-8233 (2006), Skeleton Creek: Ryan’s Journal (2009), and Endgame: The Calling (2014). The novels are analyzed for their ways of combining media and forging specific “reading paths” through what I call nudges – the implicit and explicit instructions to the reader. In all three novels, reading is characterized by interruptions as the reader is asked to shift between media to access parts of the story and (re)construct the plot. This interrupted reading, I claim, has the function of drawing attention to the medium of storytelling. Therefore, media consciousness becomes a significant part of reading and this, I claim, supplements what Jonathan Culler has named “literary competence.” My study continues the revision of Culler’s understanding of literary competence that Maria Nikolajeva has undertaken for children’s literature. In particular, I draw on Nikolajeva’s set of interpretative codes and expand them for reading multimedia novels.In the introduction of the dissertation, I situate the three novels that I analyze within the context of YA fiction and teen reading and present the key frameworks for my analysis: media studies and theories of reading. In my first analytical chapter, focusing on Cathy’s Book, I explore how media combination promotes a reading based on ordering and detection. I further explore how media combination requires readers to critically assess each medium’s authenticity, concluding that source criticism and media consciousness are central competences promoted by the book. In the second analytical chapter, I explore how print and videos are “stitched” together in Skeleton Creek: Ryan’s Journal; this “stitching” of the media results in a “seamfull” reading process, the seams drawing attention to the semiotic significance of the medium of storytelling. Studying Endgame: The Calling in the last analytical chapter, I investigate what shape the reading process takes when the fictional work mimics games, and the print book itself contains a game. Endgame, I show, promotes “gamified reading” whose logic leads to the physical destruction of the print book. In the concluding chapter, I reflect on the significance of expanding Culler’s concept of literary competence in conjunction with how multimedia novels make use of metalepsis to raise concerns and queries about the distinction between ontological realms and the boundaries of the novel. Lastly, I consider some paths forward for research on reading and multimedia fiction.
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| 55. |
- Janson, Torsten
(author)
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The Politics of Picturing: Representational Restraint and Renewal in English-Islamic Picturebooks : Paper presented at the Visual/Verbal Texts Symposium, Winnipeg, Canada
- 2014
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The proposed paper aims at discussing transforming representational programs in recent English-Islamic picture books. As a background, it draws attention to the identity political processes underlying the emerging literature, as stimulated by minority/marginality experiences. In its main section, the paper focuses how the picture books both reproduce and renegotiate Islamic traditional representational restraints, vis-à-vis the artistic and pedagogic demands of a contemporary picture book format. It concludes with a discussion of politics and power in the pictures of an emergent English-Islamic children’s book tradition. BackgroundHow to maintain religious identity among Muslim youth in a pluralistic, secular and commercial environment? The strategies responding to this challenge have varied significantly among European and North American minorities, ranging from seclusion and defensiveness, to creative, participatory and entrepreneurial projects. Among the latter, we find efforts of re-inventing Islamic traditions for young audiences in novel forms, emulating late-modern arts and consumer cultures. Recent examples are Islamic pop, rock and hip-hop, computer gaming, fashion and sports. The cultural form first emulated by such initiatives, however, was children’s literature. Already in the early 1970s, the Islamic Foundation (UK) published its first specific Islamic children’s books, and has since then become the dominant publisher of English-Islamic children’s literature. Developments of an English-Islamic picture book literatureDuring an initial phase, the literature of this publisher remained archaic, relating well-known stories and traditions of the Islamic formative history: the life and adventures of the Prophet Muhammad, the early caliphs and heroes. During this phase, the graphic elements remained sparse and were typically informed by a respect for traditional Sunni-Islamic artistic restraints, largely avoiding depiction of humans and other animated creatures. Nevertheless, we also find pictures in apparent transgression of such norms, providing interesting examples of the emerging negotiation of religious principles and pedagogic and artistic considerations. Since the 1990s, however, the literature has become increasingly contemporary in focus, telling stories set in mundane, everyday, domestic British settings. Interestingly, this topical shift concurs with a radically different pictorial program, where human beings and animals are depicted more or less on every page. Theoretical focusThe proposed paper will pay particular attention to the shifting normative signifiers in the English-Islamic picture books, that is, how the books gradually departs from a complete reliance on the written texts for conveying specific identity and religious norms, to an increasingly confident reliance on the pictorial elements as co-narrative. Theoretically the paper relies on: 1. Insights from the history of religions and visual anthropology analyzing traditional Islamic norms of representation (Oleg Grabar, Gunther Kress, Theo van Leuven, Pamela Karimi, Christiane Gruber); 2. Sociological discussions on migration and multiculturalism and the emergence of religious entrepreneurship as an aspect of minority identity politics (Nancy Fraser, Gregory Starrett, Torsten Janson); and3. Literary picture book analysis, focusing the interplay of text and picture, and the notion of counterpoint in particular (Perry Nodelman; Maria Nikolajeva, Carol Scott).
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