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The purpose of this thesis is to explore the importance of the orphan hero in film and his resonance with the American people. It explores the orphan and the American identities, the archetypes found in myths, and the hero in American culture. The three heroes (Batman, Anakin Skywalker, and Harry Potter) represent certain aspects of orphan heroes: the capacity for sacrifice and the need to resist focusing on oneself. The type of hero each becomes has its source in the response he takes to his orphanhood. These young men suffered great loss early in their lives, but found the strength to sacrifice themselves for others, the ultimate sign of a hero.

The subject of this dissertation is the introduction and reception of science fiction literature in Sweden 1950–1968. Apart from considerations on science fiction as a genre and market category, and a brief survey of science fiction published in Sweden before the year 1950, the dissertation scrutinizes the Swedish publishers’ attempts at introducing both domestic and translated science fiction, the reception of the genre in Swedish literary criticism, the magazines Häpna! (1954–1966) and Galaxy (1958–1960), and the foundation of a Swedish science fiction fan culture. Science fiction was established as a category on the Swedish book market in the early 1950s, with several attempts to launch single works or whole series of mainly translated fiction. Between 1952 and 1968, roughly 30 publishing firms published over 160 books marketed as science fiction, with an apex in the late 1950s. Few publishers were successful, however, and most of the series were discontinued within just a few years of their inception. Meanwhile, in Swedish literary criticism, science fiction was increasingly perceived as a deficient form of commercial entertainment. A few of the exceptions were Harry Martinson (1904–1978), with his space epic Aniara (1956), and the translated author Ray Bradbury (b. 1920), who came to be considered as surpassing the boundaries of the genre. With the magazine Häpna!, a Swedish science fiction fan culture was contrived, with fans forming clubs, arranging conventions, disseminating fanzines, and, eventually, starting their own publishing firms and magazines. In the Swedish literary system, science fiction became a semi-separate literary circuit of production, distribution and consumption, and, concurrently, a growing autonomous subfield of cultural production, with its own forms of specific symbolic capital, doxa, and instances of consecration.

Famine and destitution stemming from the Second World War had spread across the European continent and parts of Asia by mid-1945. Recognizing the need for recovery and survival in those regions, President Harry S. Truman at the recommendation of several Cabinet members, summoned ex-President Herbert Hoover for advice on how the United States should proceed in offering aid beyond the earlier efforts of the United Nations Rehabilitation and Relief Administration and other relief sources. After an absence from the White House and official government participation for many years, Hoover readily provided crucial advice on addressing famine relief in Europe and Asia based on his previous humanitarian leadership during and after the First World War. Recognizing that further action needed to be taken, Truman asked Hoover, as Honorary Chairman of the Famine Emergency Committee (FEC), to go to Europe and Asia to personally assess the famine relief needs. Hoover and several colleagues travelled 50,000 miles to thirty-eight different nations from March and into June 1946 to witness and evaluate famine needs in the afflicted nations, or arrange for food supply resources from various other countries; making a second trip to a struggling Germany and Austria in 1947. This thesis initially examines the narrative of the period between Hoover's reentry into public service, as requested by Truman, and the chronicle of the FEC missions. At the same time, it considers the purposes of the FEC missions, from both Hoover's and Truman's perspectives, and despite differing political viewpoints, the efforts of the two leaders to merge their activities into a common goal. The aim, amid early Cold War challenges, was to encourage both freedom and democracy in Europe and elsewhere, while sustaining free market economies and guarding against the spread of communism. As Hoover focused his efforts on American based humanitarian aid through the mechanism of food relief to promote economic prosperity, stability, and political freedoms, Truman endeavored to protect democracy as expressed in the Truman Doctrine. Both standpoints coalesced in a synthesis of anti-communism, global stability, and U.S. geopolitical interests. This thesis also will analyze the friendship that developed between Hoover and Truman during the FEC missions. This helped lead to further collaboration between the two leaders, as the President asked the ex-President to assist in the creation of the First Hoover Commission, leading to a Second Hoover Commission under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Despite ongoing political dissimilarities and occasional disagreements, the friendship of Hoover and Truman strengthened and endured for the remainder of the lives.

<p>Är Gud är död? Det påstod i alla fall Nietzsche vid förra sekelskiftet. Nu, när vi stigit in ett nytt sekel, och Nietzsche sedan länge är död, kan vi konstatera att för många på jorden är Gud i högsta grad levande. Här i Europa är det ändå tydligt att Gud, är på väg att tyna bort, särskilt i Sverige betyder Gud, religion och traditionella värderingar väldigt lite. Internationella undersökningar visar att vi svenskar är det mest sekulariserade folket i världen. Jung menade, för mer än femtio år sedan, att vi västerlänningar har tappat vår kapacitet för religiösa erfarenheter genom att vi har förlorat kunskap om vad religion ”egentligen” är, ett mänskligt grundbehov. Han menade att när människor är i livskriser kommer de närmare sin egen erfarenhetsgrund, då får de yttre historiskt och kulturellt burna symbolerna och myterna existentiell mening och bärkraft. De korresponderar med något inom människan, något givet.</p><p>Måste man hamna i en livskris för att ta sina egna livsfrågor och andliga längtan på djupt allvar? Ja kanske, många som söker sin andlighet har drabbats av någon större kris i sitt liv. Syftet med denna uppsats är att försöka finna hur den ”vanliga” människan, som har hamnat i en livskris i Gävle, ser på andlighet och hur de har funnit andlighet. Jag använde en kvalitativ metod och jämförde med tre experter på området. Den slutsats jag har kommit fram till genom detta arbete är att andlighet är en underutnyttjad resurs, som kan mätta vår vardag, att den som vet ”varför man lever”, uthärdar nästan varje ”hur man lever”, alltså funnit livets mening.</p>

Modernitet och intermedialitet is the first major study of the Swedish modernist writer Erik Asklund (1908-1980) and his works. The thesis consists of an introductory chapter and three close readings of Asklund’s early novels Kvinnan är stor (The Woman is Great, 1931), Lilla land (A Small Country, 1933), and Fanfar med fem trumpeter (A Fanfare with Five Trumpets, 1934). In these novels, Asklund depicts modernity in Sweden in the 1930’s. Exploring the modernity of the 1930’s in Asklund’s novels, especially the contemporary media situation turns out to be one of the most important aspects. Asklund wrote stories about film, music and various forms of visual culture, (photography, for instance). These different forms of art and media play an important role for Asklund’s writings, not only thematically, but also narationally. In my analyses, I put forward different theoretical aspects of intermediality. In this context, the ideas of Werner Wolf have been especially useful to my examinations of the intermedial aspects in Asklund’s works. In the novel Kvinnan är stor, Asklund tells the story about the young woman Lydia, who moves from the countryside to the big city of Stockholm. She then learns to decode the modern urban society, and becomes a modern woman. In Kvinnan är stor, intermediality is expressed mainly through various connections to film and photography. The modernization of Sweden in the early 20th century was much a question of the countryside becoming modern. In Lilla land, Asklund depicts this process. The novel is one of the first works ever focusing the forming of the Swedish welfare state project. The story is told in a cinematic or filmical way. The third novel to be analysed in the thesis is Fanfar med fem trumpeter. This is one of the first Swedish jazz novels. Asklund tells the story about five young unemployed men in Stockholm who form a jazz orchestra, and make a career. The novels characters experience everyday life as “medialized”; they compare reality with music, film, and photography. These novels, as well as all Asklund’s writings from the 1930’s, are important contributions to the “story about Sweden becoming a modern country”. This “story” consists of the novels, short stories and poems written in the early decades of the 20th century in Sweden.

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