| 1. |
- Bark Persson, Anna
(author)
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Steel as the Answer? : Viking Bodies, Power, and Masculinity in Anglophone Fantasy Literature 2006–2016
- 2023
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)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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| 2. |
- Wintersparv, Spoke, 1977-
(author)
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Teaching the reading experience : upper secondary teachers’ perspectives on aesthetic aspects of literature teaching
- 2021
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Written fiction is a cornerstone in upper secondary Swedish first language (L1) studies. However, in a time when international assessments in education create and maintain a focus on measurability, non-measurable aspects of literature teaching might not be given the same attention in the literature classroom. One of those aspects is the reader’s immersion in a text through an aesthetic experience, which is often why readers turn to fiction. This would mean that one of the main incentives to read fiction is separated from literature teaching in school.In my thesis, I examine the experiential nature of Swedish upper secondary L1 literature teaching from teachers’ perspectives, and the role of the Reading Experience—that is, the immersion in a text through thoughts, feelings, and reactions that readers experience during reading—in the literature classroom. In doing so, I employ focus group interviews, an online questionnaire, individual interviews, and participant observations within a theoretical framework comprising ideas by Dewey about art as communication, Felski’s theory about modes of textual engagement, Rosenblatt’s Transactional Theory, and Langer’s concept of Envisionment. Although stipulated learning goals in the curriculum and the current focus on measurability downplay experiential aspects, the findings indicated that individual teachers create a space for it in their literature teaching. This means that students’ access to the Reading Experience is dependent on individual priorities, which entails a risk of arbitrariness and inequivalent education. Thus, if all students are to be granted a holistic teaching approach that regards the measurable and the instrumental as well as the intangible and experiential, all teachers have to take it into account in their teaching. Without this holism, there is a risk that students will attain literacy proficiency at the expense of their literature proficiency.
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| 3. |
- Lindgren Leavenworth, Maria, Professor, 1969-, et al.
(author)
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Human-other entanglements in speculative future Arctics
- 2022
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In: Fafnir. - Oulu : The Finnish Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy Research. - 2342-2009. ; 9:2, s. 118-133
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Migrating from the periphery into the global consciousness, the vast Arctic is central to discussions about anthropogenic climate change. The spatio-temporal scope of environmental changes poses complexities for scientific and cultural debates but also allows for imaginative responses in fiction. Speculative climate fiction is generated by real-world anxieties and aspirations but imaginatively and productively explores the effects of accelerated change. In this article, we apply Stacy Alaimo’s and Donna Haraway’s theoretical concepts, which assert entanglements between humans and others in the more-than-human environment, in our analyses of Laline Paull’s The Ice, Sam J. Miller’s Blackfish City, and Vicki Jarrett’s Always North, three novels that engage with climate change and its effects in the Arctic. Entanglements find different forms depending on the level of speculation in the works examined, but they all demonstrate the detrimental centrality of the human in past and future paradigms.
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| 4. |
- Löf Nyqvist, Malin, 1990-
(author)
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Hundraårsflöden : översvämningsskildringar i svensk samtidsprosa
- 2023
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The flood motif is one of the oldest in literary history, stretching back to the deluge myths in many cultures. It has influenced Western culture throughout the ages, perhaps most notably in the form of the biblical story about Noah’s Ark, continuously taking on new forms and connotations. As awareness of the global climate crisis has grown in the last few decades, the flood motif has become increasingly common in climate fiction. The aim of this thesis is to examine the flood motif in contemporary Swedish prose, in order to contribute to a deeper understanding of how the relationship between humans and their environment is shaped and transformed. By focusing on six Swedish novels from the 2010s, an additional aim is to broaden the scope of international ecocritical research on water and disasters in contemporary literature. Ecocritical readings of Fallvatten (2012) by Mikael Niemi, Vintern (2016) by Conny Palmkvist, Ödmården (2017) by Nils Håkanson, and the trilogy Ättlingarna (2018–2020) by Mats Söderlund, start from the following questions: How are floods depicted in contemporary Swedish prose? In which ways do these depictions relate to specific genres or genre conventions? What ideas about time, place, catastrophe, and water characterize the flood motif in the novels in question? How can these ideas be understood and problematized within the context of contemporary ecocritical research?The methodological approach consists of a combined analysis of motif, genre, imagery, and the role of place and place attachment in the novels. The theoretical framework underpinning the analyses is mainly based in contemporary ecocriticism and econarratology, in particular perspectives on the concepts of genre, spatiotemporality, place, water and catastrophe. With readings of the primary materials situated in a broader Swedish context as well as in relation to international examples and criticism, the study concludes that the flood motif in Swedish contemporary fiction in many ways aligns with general trends in terms of generic elements, textual strategies, and the use of the biblical deluge as a powerful intertextual framework. Nevertheless, there is a distinct tradition of tying flood narratives to the landscape, especially in the northern part of the country, which continues to influence Swedish flood depictions today. Further, references and connections in the examined flood novels create specific intertextual links to Swedish literary works, especially to poetry. The results also show that while there are diverse ideas about water, based on religious, mythological, or technological imagery represented in the novels, and while the agency of the water is often emphasized, there is, with a few exceptions, still a somewhat problematic distance between human and water upheld in the narratives. In the novels, the past, present and future are connected through water as a symbol of change and/or as a material change of the environment.
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| 5. |
- Hansson, Heidi, 1956-, et al.
(author)
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Speculative water : atopic space and oceanic agency in Julie Bertagna’s raging earth trilogy
- 2022
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In: Cold waters. - Cham : Springer Nature. - 9783031101489 - 9783031101496 ; , s. 225-241
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Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In this chapter, we take atopias as a conceptual starting point in examinations of Julie Bertagna’s speculative Young Adult novels Exodus (2002), Zenith (2003), and Aurora (2011), demonstrating how imaginary and unstable spaces through various processes are rendered un-atopic. In speculative or non-mimetic fiction, the reader is presented with alternatives to ordinary reality, yet texts are grounded in already existing situations, relations and circumstances. In the examined novels, contemporary climate change and attendant anxieties are extrapolated in the depiction of a world covered by water: an extended atopic space. The Arctic fills a specific function in the novels because of climate change and Greenland in particular emerges as a possible future home for the surviving humans. The atopic space that the inhospitable and inaccessible Arctic traditionally constitutes, is transformed into space available for new forms of colonization. In earlier examples of speculative fiction set in the Arctic, open water replaces ice in fantasies about conquest or discovery, and there is a large body of fiction connected to flooding caused by climate change. By situating the trilogy in these literary contexts, we demonstrate how both water and the Arctic have been perceived of as unstable, atopic spaces, particularly vulnerable to anthropogenic change.
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| 6. |
- Lindgren Leavenworth, Maria, Professor, 1969-
(author)
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Orientation and disorientation in realistic and speculative young adult fiction
- 2020. - 1
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In: The Arctic in literature for children and young adults. - New York : Routledge. - 9780367360801 - 9780429343704 ; , s. 217-229
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Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This chapter examines three contemporary novels aimed at a young adult audience that move from one example of realistic fiction: Marcus Sedgewick's 2009 Revolver, via a work that uses specificities of place to envision alternative ways of life only incrementally removed from the plausible: Rebecca Stead's 2007 First Light, to a text in which physical laws are radically reconfigured: Sarah Beth Durst's 2009 Ice. At focus is how the function of the Arctic varies with each work's connections to the real world, and how aspects of the Arctic destabilize the characters' possibilities for physical and existential orientation.
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| 7. |
- Lindgren Leavenworth, Maria, Professor, 1969-
(author)
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The imagined Arctic in speculative fiction
- 2024. - 1
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Book (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The Imagined Arctic in Speculative Fiction explores the ways in which the Arctic is imagined and what function it is made to serve in a selection of speculative fictions: non-mimetic works that start from the implied question “What if?” Spanning slightly more than two centuries of speculative fiction, from the starting point in Mary Shelley’s 1818 Frankenstein to contemporary works that engage with the vast ramifications of anthropogenic climate change, analyses demonstrate how Arctic discourses are supported or subverted and how new Arctics are added to the textual tradition. To illuminate wider lines of inquiry informing the way the world is envisioned, humanity’s place and function in it, and more-than-human entanglements, analyses focus on the function of the actual Arctic and how this function impacts and is impacted by speculative elements. With effects of climate change training the global eye on the Arctic, and as debates around future northern cultural, economic, and environmental sustainability intensify, there is a need for a deepened understanding of the discourses that have constructed and are constructing the Arctic. A careful mapping and serious consideration of both past and contemporary speculative visions thus illuminate the role the Arctic has played and may come to play in a diverse set of practices and fields.
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| 8. |
- Lindgren Leavenworth, Maria, Professor, 1969-
(author)
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Under (i) Arktis
- 2023
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In: Le repos de la guerrière. - Umeå : Umeå University. - 9789180702454 - 9789180702447 ; , s. 71-86
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Book chapter (other academic/artistic)abstract
- I kapitlet undersöks hur Arktis för artonhundratalsförfattare är en plats och en idé som erbjuder ett fritt spelrum för fantasin, men hur detta spelrum också begränsas i takt med att Arktis kartläggs och hur berättelser förläggs i en ihålig planet, under Arktis yta. I det första avsnittet ligger fokus på föreställningar om ett öppet polarhav och fantastiska öar i kortromanen “The Extraordinary and All-Absorbing Journal of Wm. N. Seldon” (1851; anonym författare), Jules Vernes Voyages et aventures du capitaine Hatteras (1864), Vidar Berges Den hemlighetsfulla nordpolsön (1902) och Robert Ames Bennets Thyra: a Romance of the Polar Pit (1901). Samtliga texter fyller vad som uppfattas som ett tomt Arktis, eller luckor i historien, med eget innehåll. I det andra avsnittet analyseras Mary E. Bradley Lanes Mizora: A Prophecy (1889), och William R. Bradshaws The Goddess of Atvatabar (1892) som exempel på texter där handligen förläggs till utopiska samhällen under jord i den Arktiska periferin. I det tredje avsnittet diskuteras hur författare skapar logiska förklaringar till hur texter om upptäckter i eller under Arktis når en publik.
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