Mid Sweden University

In 1951 Swedish writer Stig Dagerman wrote an autobiographical essay titled "Our Need for Consolation is Insatiable." It is a remarkable poetic meditation on the life-and-death stakes of the literary imagination from a writer who was likely suffering from an undiagnosed bipolar disorder, fighting for his life through one depressive episode after another. Written when his critical reputation and fame as Sweden’s greatest new literary phenom had been firmly established following a remarkable outpouring of critically acclaimed work in the late 1940s, the essay marked a point in time when the tides had turned for Dagerman, who now struggled with the opposite of this productive streak in the form of a debilitating bout of writer’s block that would eventually contribute to his suicide two years later. "Our Need for Consolation is Insatiable" lays bare the writer’s fragile psyche, not only his faltering ego but his selfless and far from sure-footed ambition to offer something of lasting beauty and meaning to a world indifferent to his very existence. While writing the essay, Dagerman managed to rise temporarily from the depths of his depression and identify the sources of his own consolation and hope in terms that have continued to resonate powerfully with many readers, and fellow writers, over the following 60 years. Originally published in 1952 in the improbable venue of Husmodern (a magazine dedicated to home economics for Swedish housewives, analogous to American magazines like Good Housekeeping or Better Homes and Gardens), the essay was a profound response to a trivial commission from the magazine’s editors, who asked Dagerman to send them “something on the art of living.” The soul- and psyche-searching tour de force that Dagerman composed was not likely what the editors had in mind, but to their credit—and also possibly owing to his celebrity—they published the essay as written. The essay has since been translated into 10 languages and published / reprinted a great many times. This is the first literary translation of the essay into English.

English translation of short story by Swedish author Stig Dagerman (1923-1954) about impoverished children in Depression-Era rural Sweden and the shame of being invisible.

Stig Dagerman (1923–1954) was regarded as the most talented young writer of the Swedish post-war generation. By the 1940s, his fiction, plays, and journalism had catapulted him to the forefront of Swedish letters, with critics comparing him to William Faulkner, Franz Kafka, and Albert Camus. His suicide at the age of thirty-one was a national tragedy. This selection, containing a number of new translations of Dagerman's stories never before published in English, is unified by the theme of the death of innocence. Often narrated from a child's perspective, the stories give voice to childhood's tender state of receptiveness and joy tinged with longing and loneliness.

Medieval biography or life-writing is often considered within frameworks established by classical and modern biography. This session discusses medieval life-writing traditions within their literary entanglements. How is the individual life presented, and memorialised, in relation to social, political, intellectual or religious institutions, or communities? Is biography defined by an emphasis on the individual, and how far is this a focus on the self, identity, and emotion? How are tensions negotiated through rhetoric, convention, and style? What narrative models and historiographical sources provided inspiration? How are stories disseminated through transnational intellectual communities and martial networks? Sources include royal and chivalric biographies, hagiographies, obituaries, autobiographies, found alone or within chronicles, histories, and romance. 

The structure and agendas of European research are undergoing a sea change. One example of this shift is the next multi-annual framework for research and innovation in Europe, Horizon 2020, which has proposed structuring research funding into interdisciplinary blocks defined in terms of “societal challenges.” A new role for the Social Sciences and Humanities is being envisaged within this forthcoming (eighth) framework, emphasizing greater prominence and integration of work from these areas in the overall organization of European research. Directly preceding the VIII NIES symposium in Pori, the Lithuanian Presidency of the EU has dedicated an entire conference, “Horizons for Social Sciences and Humanities,” to the goals of eliciting consultations from stakeholders within the European research community and advising the responsible European agencies on the shaping of Social Sciences and Humanities agendas in “Horizon 2020.” The main outcome of the meeting will be the “Vilnius Declaration on Horizons for Social Sciences and Humanities,” to presented by the EU Lithuanian Presidency to the European Commission before the framework undergoes final refinements leading up the program’s launch in 2014. A number of research interests and focuses are likely to be woven into the fabric of this declaration, and among these the emerging interdisciplinary area of the Environmental Humanities can and should be a significant component. To this end an alliance of strong European research centers and networks has been formed to identify and articulate the strategic challenges, goals and wider relevance of an emerging Environmental Humanities research community in Europe. Nordic researchers from a wide range of disciplines and study areas within the Humanities are playing a key role in the realization of this agenda, just as they have helped to lay the groundwork for this emerging research area. This talk traces the trajectory of Nordic research initiatives in the environmental humanities in recent years, highlighting in particular how an intensification of scholarly activity in the Nordic countries has contributed to the wider development of this field internationally. The state of the field is also addressed, both globally and within the European context.

Research clusters within the Nordic Network for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies (NIES), the North Atlantic Biocultural Organization (NABO) and the Global Human Ecodynamics Alliance (GHEA), in cooperation with partner networks in the USA, the UK and the Nordic countries, have undertaken a major interdisciplinary research initiative that aims to examine environmental memory in the medieval Icelandic sagas, with a prominent focus on historical processes of environmental change and adaptation. The medieval Sagas of Icelanders constitute one key corpus, among other literary and documentary corpora, to be investigated in this initiative. Anchored in traditional fields of study (e.g. saga studies and various medieval-studies fields) as well as newer and emerging fields (e.g. integrated history and historical ecology, ecocriticism, digital and environmental humanities, etc.), the initiative brings together literary scholars, anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, geographers, digital humanities specialists and environmental and life scientists in a coordinated set of sub-projects. The initiative seeks to foreground evidence of changing environmental conditions in Iceland, Greenland and Scandinavia from the late Iron Age through the pre-Industrial period, with a guiding focus on long-term human ecodynamics and the relations among ecological change and adaptation, on the one hand, and resource management, social organization/conflict and resilience on the other. Numerous IEM workshops organized by NIES, NABO, GHEA and various university networks are taking place in 2013 in Sweden, Scotland and Iceland. This talk briefly sketches how this initiative began and how it has developed over the past year. More importantly, it looks ahead to where we expect IEM to be heading in the next year and beyond.

Keynote presentation on the Role of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Global Environmental Change (GEC) research delivered at the 2013 GHEA Open Workshop, University of Maryland, 4 Novmeber 2013.

The circumstances that have given rise to the Anthropocene concept require that we reassess our assumptions about human agency and human effects on the earth system. Human activities, and thus human choices, clearly lie at the root of the great environmental predicament of our age, which is not primarily an ecological crisis, though its ramifications are far reaching within ecological systems. Rather, it is a crisis of culture. If the humanities "are a unique repository of knowledge and insight into the rich diversity of the human experience" from which we learn to make sense of our "responses, motivations and actions" in the face of challenges, then it is risky to omit humanities knowledge from scientific assessment and consultation processes informing environmental policy.

The complete article is available for free viewing on the Future Earth site: bit.ly/1QoHPeC .

Iceland’s attempted industrialisation through an expansion of hydropower and aluminium smelters can lead to a significant reshaping of the country’s landscapes. There has been considerable resistance against such plans since the 1970s, culminating in the debate about the Kárahnjúkar project between 2001 and 2006. The book Draumalandið. Sjálfshjálparbók handa hræddri þjóð [Dreamland. A Self-Help Manual for a Frightened Nation] by the writer Andri Snær Magnason has been particularly influential. It combines ecological consciousness with an appreciation of Iceland‘s literary tradition and history. Thus it displays a view of landscape which connects nature preservation closely to cultural achievements and to national sovereignty. This perception of landscape originates from the assumption that Iceland experienced a golden age from the beginning of colonisation in the Viking age until the subordination under the Norwegian and later Danish kings in the 13th century, which led to an all-embracing degeneration. Nationalist poets such as Jónas Hallgrímsson in the 19th century based their demands for independence on Iceland‘s medieval saga literature and the country‘s landscapes. These seemed to provide evidence for a high culture in unity with nature during the time of the Commonwealth. Although the historical reliability of the sagas is doubtful, they are still used as an important argument in Draumalandið. Now the narratives as such are put in the foreground, as they can give value and meaning to the landscapes and places they describe. Thus a turn from a realistic to a more constructivist perception of landscape can be observed in contemporary Icelandic environmental literature.

Can medieval Scandinavian literary texts tell us anything about the environmental conditions and the availability of natural resources in premodern times? This essay discusses some of the challenges of reconstructing past environments based on texts that make heavy use of genre conventions and literary devices such as symbolism, metaphor, and allegory. Environmental scarcity and abundance play an important role in both the Sagas of Icelanders and the Bishops' Sagas. Although the descriptions are not entirely historically accurate, they can shed valuable light on the ways humans of the past have perceived and dealt with problems of scarcity and environmental change.

Cultural criticism since Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s time is usually characterized by a triadic structure: (1) It criticizes its own present. (2) It refers to a reconstructed, idealized past. (3) It searches for alternatives in order to create a better future. This structure has also been characteristic of most environmentalist narratives since the ‘ecological turn’ around 1970. At this time, the future seemed still to be open, so that solutions to environmen-tal problems would be achievable in time. Today, however, the insight that irreversible, human-induced environmental change on a geological scale has already taken place – that the Holocene has ended and we are now living in the ‘Anthropocene’ – fundamentally challenges the triadic structure of both environmentalist fiction and nonfiction. Based on recent examples from literature and film, I will therefore illustrate how the Anthropocene and its implications change not only environmental consciousness as a whole, but also contemporary environmentalist narratives.

While the violence and subject matter of the novel may be what an initial reading tends to focus on, a close reading with an eco-critical approach shows that Child of God contains strong and clear eco-critical components. While being a shorter novel it features a multitude of facets and is worthy of further study and analysis. The strongest examples of eco-critical elements may be the purposeful usage of animals in the novel. The focus of the reader may be drawn to the larger mammals of the text: nonetheless as evidenced by this study even an entity as minute as a spider or crickets may be important while engaging in an eco-critical analysis of a text. While arachnids as well as flowers have been discussed by other academics this project has intended to further that discussion. It has also drawn heightened attention to the concepts of hunter/hunted as well as border and transitional areas. Child of God was written and published during an era where there was an increase in environmental consciousness (Bressler 232) that had already been gaining in momentum for many years. It is therefore of particular value to re-engage in close readings of novels from the 1960’s and 1970’s today so as to establish how eco-critical components have been incorporated and theorized, as this project has focused on doing with specific reference to Child of God.

In conclusion, this project has also evidenced the duality of canines and felines straddling both the realms of societal civilization as well as the wilderness in the novel. Additionally, it has explored the potential cricket metaphor. Furthermore, the project has also presented additional possible religious intertextuality regarding the blacksnake sequence. These areas have not been a clear focus of previous studies engaged with for this project. Therefore, this project may be viewed as contributing to the hitherto published academic studies pertaining to the novel.

This paper has outlined the literary didactics project that was conducted in a Swedish Upper Secondary class, EFL English 6 course during my work placement. The project consisted of me tasking the students with reading Coetzee´s novel Disgrace and to work with assigned assignment that I had created around the novel for the purpose of the project. I introduced post-colonialism and critical feminist theory to the students and related the two theories to the novel. The lessons aimed to introduce literary theory through the utilising of Coetzee´s novel Disgrace, 

In the result section of this essay, I presented and analysed the lessons and the students` performances during the different assignments, discussions, and written assignment. I analysed the students to see how they responded to the novel and how they were able to reflect on their reading by utilising critical literacy and transactional theory. Moreover, I discussed the importance of a multi-purpose classroom and how beneficial it is for students to utilise their classmates as learning tools. Furthermore, I analysed and reflected on the limitations of the project and what could be improved. 

One of the aims of this essay was to develop the students´ reading and listening comprehension and speaking competence, as the students are required, by the English 6 curriculum, to work with literature and theoretical subject areas to acquire insight about different cultures, historical conditions and to develop their knowledge of the English language.

In conclusion, this project has demonstrated how students can use literary theory to learn and broaden their understanding of historical and social issues and aspects. Moreover, this project has demonstrated how through literary theory students can work with several of the English 6 curriculum´s core content. This project and essay have showed how one can successfully embed formative assessment by using literature as a teaching tool. 

This essay argues that utilising Coetzee´s novel Disgrace may be useful when introducing and teaching literary theory in Swedish Upper Secondary EFL English 6. 

This thesis focuses on the presence of Black women characters in domestic contexts in the early poetry of African American poets Nikki Giovanni and Rita Dove and examines the strategies these women employ, individually and in close relationships, in order to empower themselves and sustain those around them. It provides a joint exploration of the work of two major contemporary poets from a literary and interdisciplinary perspective, mapping instances of the poetic expression of Black feminist politics. The theoretical approach builds on a range of understandings of empowerment, strategy, and the central importance of home in an African American context, as conceptualized primarily in the work of Black feminists, in particular Patricia Hill Collins and bell hooks. Structurally, the study follows the cycle of a woman’s life from girlhood to old age. Thus, poems involving the empowerment strategies of girls at home are explored first. They are followed by poems where the domestic lives of adult women and then elderly women are addressed, with a focus on their respective empowering strategies. Discussed last are strategies of empowerment evident in the interactions of (largely) Black women of different generations in poems depicting intergenerational contacts and relationships.

Homeplaces created by Black women have historically been experienced as sheltering African Americans from the perils of the dominant white society and thereby Black women’s domestic experiences have generally been linked to privilege rather than to confinement and victimization. In the poems, when at home, Black women utilize different strategies to assert themselves and each other, implicitly or explicitly, emerging strong and resilient, even though sometimes they may merely derive satisfaction from their poor circumstances. Strong connections to the past and a sense of belonging, partaking in legacies and storytelling, as well as memory, imagination, dreaming and hiding, are recurring elements of their empowerment processes. However, their enjoyment of loving bonds and their sharing of African-derived knowledges and ways of being emerge as the most significant aspects contributing to their empowerment.

Cormac McCarthy's The Road takes place not before or during but after the end. The novel follows a man and his son as they seek to survive in what remains of the world after some unspecified cataclysmic event. There is almost nothing left: no society, no food, no animals, no hope. Many readers will feel that the question the novel poses is why anyone would wish to continue living under such circumstances. But although that question might be more urgent post-apocalypse, it is in fact one that can always be asked: what, if anything, makes human life valuable and worthwhile? The novel provides answers to these questions, but these answers are contradictory. The reader is left with a choice between powerful arguments for both faith and despair. In The Road, hope is associated with Christianity and hopelessness with an atheistic understanding of the world. Nonetheless, the novel makes it clear that faith is no easy option. This article will begin by discussing the importance of Christian imagery in the novel, focusing on the key symbolic dimensions of fire and darkness, before going on to show how both Christian and atheistic readings are not only made possible, but actively put forward by the text. It will be argued that the novel presents a powerful challenge to both Christian and atheistic views of the world, without ever actually rejecting either.

Shakespeare’s Henry V and Richard III both practise mendacity, but while Henry V celebrates Henry’s capacity for deceit, the king’s lies are condemned in Richard III. The plays show how similar patterns of behaviour in early modern England could be represented as either virtuous or evil by means of rhetoric, while the similar behaviour of the two kings suggests a broad awareness of the necessity of deceit as a political skill. These two plays also draw attention to their own rhetorical distortions in ways which have appeared troubling to many modern critics, but which exemplify humanist ideas about education through rhetorical ‘lies’.