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- Albrektson, Anna, 1966-, et al.
(author)
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Cool Nature : Utopian Landscapes in Sweden 1780–1840
- 2022
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In: Sjuttonhundratal. - : UiT The Arctic University of Norway. - 1652-4772 .- 2001-9866. ; 19, s. 94-116
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In this essay, an interdisciplinary group of researchers sets out to address the period 1780–1840 in Sweden in a new way, by placing nature at its centre. With the help of ecocritical and transcultural theory, combined with renewed attention to the Swedish fine arts, learned discourses, and practices, we suggest a new approach to these revolutionary decades. The perceived dissonance, the interplay between climatic conditions and cultural template in early modern and modern Sweden, has not been fully addressed in current research, despite the fact that the relationship between humankind and the environment is a central issue in contemporary society and scholarship. Representations of nature situate the nation, they negotiate the relationship between a sensed reality and an ideal, between human and more-than-human beings. We suggest a focus on the unpredictable space created by negotiations of nature in Swedish representations during this crucial period, and, furthermore, on the ways in which this creative space is charged with utopian possibilities in the early Anthropocene. This is the background and the driving force of the planned research project ‘Cool Nature: Utopian Landscapes in Sweden 1780–1840’.
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| 2. |
- Albrektson, Anna, 1966-
(author)
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Inverting the Barbarian : Estrangement and Excess in the Eighteenth-Century Medea
- 2023
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In: Mapping Medea. - Oxford : Oxford University Press. - 9780192884190 ; , s. 86-114
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Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- With a focus on the shifting use of the concept of the barbarian, Anna Albrektson positions the figure of Medea within the context of colonial expansion. Euripides labels Medea a barbarian, but this identity is pinned on Jason in several versions from the 1770s and 1780s, when a concomitant sentimental strategy enhances Medea’s position as woman and victim of male cruelty. The idea of the ‘ethical barbarian’ becomes a cultural commonplace within eighteenth-century literature. By the 1790s, however, Medea is translated once more into an ethnic barbarian in versions that abandon the Enlightenment idea of human universality. The interplay between Enlightenment discourses, colonial experiences, and aesthetic experimentations form the context for these often divergent representations of Medea from several European nations.
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| 3. |
- Albrektson, Anna, 1966-, et al.
(author)
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Mapping Medea : Revolutions and Transfers 1750-1800
- 2023
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In: Mapping Medea. - Oxford : Oxford University Press. - 9780192884190 ; , s. 1-20
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Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This introductory chapter outlines the overall aims of the volume and its theoretical perspectives and provides analysis of the ancient sources. It begins with an overview of Medea at the hands of colonial Europe and a discussion of the close (and often deliberate) parallels between Medea and the hugely popular Inkle and Yarico story, first published in The Spectator in 1711 and then subsequently regularly reworked in multiple media throughout the century. The middle section delineates the 1750–1800 focus and the significance of the synchronic approach at a moment of revolutionary change that precipitated the migration of ideas and people across borders, despite or even because of emergent geopolitical boundaries. It concludes with an outline of the volume’s bi-part structure: encompassing the context of expanding empires of the late eighteenth century in the first section to aesthetic transgression and innovation in the second.
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| 4. |
- Lome, Ragnild, 1987-
(author)
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Agency on the Page : Melodrama and Ecodrama in 1960s Scandinavian Fiction
- 2024
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- A multitude of ideas about individual and distributed agency circulated in Scandinavian culture during the 1960s, a period often designated as the early information age. Through an analysis of six novels, this dissertation discusses how prose fiction in and around the 1960s in Norway, Sweden and Denmark responded and contributed to this circulation of ideas of agency. The study argues that a transition is played out in the novels, from an idea of agency as individualistic and possessive, which I designate as melodramatic, towards an idea of agency as distributed and ecodramatic, emerging in an active environment, where multiple agents, human and non-human, co-exist (these concepts are derived and developed from works by Timothy Melley and Mark Seltzer). This transition is claimed to be conveyed through vague feelings expressed by the characters, signalling problems with the representation of agency, which are discussed in the thesis through the concept of affects (as understood by Sianne Ngai, primarily). The study overall applies a media ecological perspective to the literary works, situating questions of both literary form and ideas of agency in the techno-cultural development of the 1960s, investigated through the lens of the cultural history of cybernetics and understood as part of a larger epistemological and ontological change – a process of ecologization (Erich Hörl). This process accelerated during the period and is characterized in this study by a focus on relations, networks and self-reflexivity. From this theoretic approach, ideas of agency must be understood as intrinsically entangled with changes in the environment (environment understood in a broad sense as a setting in the novels, including both technologically mediated environments and natural environments), and this is conceptualized through the newly coined term agotope, an adjusted version of Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope. Three agotopes organize the readings in the study, each referring to key aspects of 1960s culture: “Traffic,” “Contamination” and “Media.” The six novels studied are Bilburen (Carborne, 1963) and Miniput (Miniput, 1969) by Swedish writer Nils Leijer, Den siste prøven (The Final Test, 1968) and Sommeren på heden (Summer on the Heath, 1970) by Norwegian writer Vigdis Stokkelien, Pap (Cardboard, 1967) by Danish writer Cecil Bødker, and Termush, Atlanterhavskysten (Termush, the Atlantic Coast, 1967) by Danish writer Sven Holm.
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| 5. |
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Mapping Medea : Revolutions & Transfers 1750-1800
- 2023
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Editorial collection (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The late eighteenth century witnessed multiple Medeas on the stages of Europe, in the Americas, and across the Russian empire, both to the east and to the south. Performances took place in Moscow and São Paulo, in London and Lisbon, in Gotha, Stuttgart, and Venice. This volume examines the reasons why Medea attracted the attention of authors, audiences, actresses, and rulers in Europe and its colonies during the pivotal period 1750 to 1800, and to what effects. As migrant and iconoclast Medea crosses a number of eighteenth-century borders: linguistic, cultural, national, temporal, spatial, aesthetic, ethical, and generic. Moreover, the fact that late eighteenth-century playwrights, poets, composers, and choreographers all turned to one of the most problematic characters of Graeco-Roman antiquity offers a unique opportunity to examine the remarkable flexibility of the reception process itself. By studying the figure of Medea within the revolutionary context of the late eighteenth century, it is possible to explore the negotiations between court culture and the emergent metropolitan cultural centres, as well as the role of antiquity in national, imperial, and colonial politics at this time.
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