Zugl.: Paderborn, Univ., Diss., 2008.

Zugl.: Paderborn, Univ., Diss., 2008

Zugl.: Trier, Univ., Diss., 2005 / Hergestellt on demand

In 2011 the Swedish translation of Jonathan Franzen's novel Freedom was published in Sweden. The novel tells the story of a middle class family, their relatives and friends, set within a context of political events. As well as in the US, the novel was soon praised by Swedish critics as a generation novel, that illustrates "the way we live now". Around that time a debate about family ideals rose in Sweden. The debate pointed towards discourses about family norms, related to motherhood and divorce. Because of the reception of Freedom as depicting a 'typical' family in contemporary culture, Freedom is used as material in this thesis, to study the construction of family ideals. In this study the family ideal is defined as white, middle class and heterosexual, and an intersectional approach as well as Critical Discourse Analysis is used. The aim of this thesis is to study the family ideal as it is reproduced in Freedom, and compare the results to Social Sciences of Gender, Class and Critical Whiteness Studies. The thesis also studies both the American and the Swedish reception of Freedom, in relation to its content. The study found that a traditional family ideal is constructed, through different discourses. The study also found that subject positions in different social categories are constructed in opposition to each other according to gender, class and whiteness norms.

Spectacles of justice preoccupy contemporary American culture. Legal culture---including the Watergate trials, the Lewinsky scandal, and OJ Simpson's trial for alleged murder---assumes a central place in the American imaginary. Configurations of the law are not limited to media reportage and televised docudramas. Nor are arbitrations confined to law faculties and the spaces of formal courts. Working through depictions of due process in different ways and in different zones, contemporary American writers point up the prevalence of legality in everyday life. Whether on college campuses, in TV studios and suburban homes, or at theatres and racetracks, justice mediates interpersonal relations. Personal narratives proliferate as modes of self-justification. Everyone has a right to represent her side of a story. As interpretations of reality, however, none of these stories can claim absolute justness. No one has a monopoly on the law or victimhood. / This dissertation inspects how Jonathan Franzen, Don DeLillo, and Jane Smiley present the inconsistencies of the law. These American novelists emplot global escapes into their work as a means to inform notions of liberty and jurisprudence. For these writers, freedom requires the recognition of contradictory---and unanticipated---narratives. "Justice Theory" emerges where media, gambling, performance, and suburban studies intersect with ethics, globalism, and narratology. In Franzen's novel The Corrections and essay collection How to Be Alone, self-validation requires the appreciation of the stories of others. In DeLillo's later works, particularly the plays The Day Room and Valparaiso, justice materializes in terms of isolation and the will to alter personal stories. For Smiley, as construed in her long novels The Greenlanders and Horse Heaven, dynamic responsive actions attend risky, unpredictable encounters in competitive milieus like the racetrack. These authors reveal that executions of justice and the perpetration of injustice involve varied consequences. The law is not only about punishment and recompense. Rather, legality directs the consequences of its applications toward the ideal of justice, which evolves alongside the subjects that it serves and the stories that they relate.

As more and more critics now write about postmodernism in the past tense, the 'New Sincerity' of a group of late twentieth-century American writers, led by David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, and Richard Powers, has been championed as one of its successors. In response to these increasingly widespread views, this dissertation argues that much more can be learned about these three writers when we stop thinking of their work within this 'end of postmodernism' discourse. Instead of attempting to make claims about its novelty, this thesis conducts a literary-historical inquiry into the New Sincerity, arguing that its roots extend across postmodernism and reach back to regionalism, in particular from the midwestern provinces that all three authors grew up in and that occupy a central place in their work. Though regionalism's subject matter, small-town America, is commonly believed to have died in the postwar period, it is this 'death of the prairie town' and its symbolic afterlife that have opened up new literary possibilities outside the realm of conventional regionalism. The powerful feelings of loss and nostalgia that its death has engendered are precisely those of which Wallace, Franzen, Powers, and the New Sincerity in general make creative use. The thesis examines how they do so in a series of three extended chapters, each of which focuses on one author. The first chapter pays careful attention to Wallace's re-imagining of the Midwest over the course of his career and reveals how he constantly deviated from the literary trajectory he had outlined in his essay 'E Unibus Pluram,' a key text in the 'end of postmodernism' discourse. The second chapter explores what role the Midwest plays in Franzen's authorial self-presentation and his contradictory attempts to balance 'high-art' status with an anti-elitist image. The third and final chapter gets to the root of Powers's problems with flat characters by examining how he all too readily relies on the Midwest and its stereotypical associations with all-American goodness in his attempts to create endearing characters. Here, as well as in the other two chapters, it is the construction of a symbolic 'heartland' that plays a central role in the creative process behind the author's New Sincerity writing.

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Programmet för skolan är baserat kring en enad volym med en sammanhängande form där dagsljusinsläpp mot ett centralt rum gör interiören öppen och luftig. Byggnaden har fyra våningar, inklusive markplan, samt ett källarutrymme för byggnadens teknikrum. På entréplan finns många av skolans servicerum och administration samt träslöjdsal och idrottssal. Första och översta våning inhuser hemvister för årskurs F till 6. Bibliotek, musiksal och bildsal är placerade på byggnadens översta våning. Ambitionen för skolan är att ge elever och personal en skola med en större närvaro i stadsmiljön. Med ett öppet program och en stor trappgång uppmot årskurs F till 6 blir entrén en viktig upplevelse av byggnaden. Exteriören ansluter till den befintliga Anders Franzéns park som färdigställdes 2014. En omläggning och breddning av Kanalvägen tillgodoser parkering och leveransyta för trafik till och från skolan. Interiören menar upphöja entrén i byggnaden med hjäp av en öppen foajé/ allrumsyta och en visuell koppling till skolans övre, tre plan. Skolans huvudtrapp har en funktion som en flak gradäng och menas kunna utnytjas som en plats för elever att mötas i och umgås vid. Ljus släpps in genom stora fasadpartier av glas till klassrum, hemvister och allrum. De centrala korridorerna genom byggnaden har, utöver skenljus, en långsträckt takslits som ger dagljus till centrumrummen och gradängen Hållbarheten i byggnaden kommer ur dess flexibla program. Genom att frångå behov av bärande interiöra väggar är planen i hög grad förändringsbar. Då läroprogrammen är samlade på de två mellersta våningsplanen kan de pedagogiska rummen ändras utan att påverka serviceytor eller övervåningen/atriumet. Byggnaden har en total yta på 5800 kvm vilket har tillgodosett ett större bibliotek, en foaje med allrum, gradängtrappen och en större idrottsal. Framförallt Idrottssalen är en yta som skulle kunna hållas öppen utanför skoltid och användas av både elever samt boende i närområdet. / The school program is based around a single volume with a coherent form where daylight openings towards a central space makes the interior open and airy. The building has four floors, including ground plan, as well as a basement space for servicerooms. On the ground floor lies the school’s service rooms and administration, as well as a carpentryhall and sports hall. First and second floors house homes for year 0 to 6. Library, music hall and artsrooms are located on the top floor of the building. The ambition for the school is to give students and staff a school with a greater presence in the urban environment. With an open programs and a big staircase up to grade 0  to 6 makes the entrance an important experience of the building. The exterior joins the existing Anders Franzéns park which was completed in 2014. A reorganization and broadening of Kanalvägen provides parking and delivery space for traffic to and from school. The interior means raising the entrance to the building with the help of an open foyer/ entrence room and a visual connection to the school’s top three levels. The school’s main staircase has a function as a flak stand and is meant to be used as a place for pupils to meet and hang out. Light is emitted through large facade portions of glass to classrooms, student abode and family rooms. The central corridors through the building has, in addition to lighting, an elongate roof slit that gives daylight to the central space and stand. The durability of the building comes from its flexible program. By depriving the need for bearing interior walls, the plan is largely changeable. As the learning programs are compiled on the two middle floors, the educational rooms can be changed without affecting the service areas or the upstairs/atrium. The building has a total area of 5800 sqm, which has accommodated a larger library, a foyer with entrence room, stand-staircase and a larger sports hall. Especially the sports hall is an area which could be open outside school hours and used by both students and residents in the surrounding area.