Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka två samtida svenska filmfestivaler, Göteborg International Film Festival och Malmö Arab Film Festival, utifrån två teoretiska perspektiv på filmfestivalen med den mer övergripande målsättningen att bidra till ett spirande och stadigt växande forskningsfält kring filmfestivalen i den nationella kontexten. De aktuella festivalerna inringar i förhållandevis god mån den svenska filmfestivalflorans allsidighet; en omfångsrik historisk publik festival respektive en smalare tematisk nykomling.                       De teoretiska perspektiven innefattar festivalen betraktad som en del av ett internationellt nätverk utifrån Thomas Elsaessers och Marijke de Valcks definition, samt som en kulturell yttring av föreställda gemenskaper. Med utgångspunkt i dessa teoretiska positioner kommer festivalerna granskas med fokus på dess uppkomst, visioner och agenda, filmprogram, publik, ekonomisk beskaffenhet och liknande kontextualiserade förhållanden.                       För Göteborg International Film Festival utgör spridningen av filmkultur, de huvudsakliga fundamenten i dess målsättningar och agenda, i synnerhet med fokus på nordisk film, medan tematiken, den arabiska kulturen, utgör det bärande för Malmö Arab Film Festival. Göteborg International Film Festival uppvisar i samstämmighet med de nätverksteoretiska perspektiven på festivalen en mångfacetterad beskaffenhet av filmceremoni, marknadsplats, internationell plattform och tävlingsmästerskap, i kontrast till Malmö Arab Film Festival där festivalens textur är mer komplex än föreliggande bestämningar. Båda festivalerna har uppstått i den post-industriella staden och dess återskapande som centrum för kreativitet, kultur och kunskap.                       Malmö Arab Film Festival adresserar en uppenbar arabisk (föreställd) gemenskap i sitt tematiska fokus. Denna föreställda gemenskap kan emellertid även appliceras på Göteborg International Film Festival och dess bestämning som en internationell publik festival, med hänsyn till dess faktiska demografi med övervägande del lokala besökare.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T20:39:15Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 3985.pdf: 534165 bytes, checksum: bc850d12c643c658d0d1463a1229dcad (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-09-21 / Assuming that every nation is an imagined community concept created by Benedict Anderson in his book Imagined Communities I propose a discussion about the existence of different projects for the construction of a Brazilian nation, paying special attention to a "Sao Paulo state project". As guideline, I use the subaltern studies, which question the hegemonic centers' theoretical colonialism and the modernity dominant conceptions. This dissertation is based on the subaltern studies literature and on the selection of texts from the period chosen for this study: the years between 1870-1922. These analyses intend to show the existence of a "Sao Paulo project" for the nation, which demonstrates a "admiration" for the North- American racial segregation. This "admiration" was a common theme in many papers written after such project failed. / Partindo do pressuposto de que toda nação é uma comunidade imaginada , conceito cunhado por Benedict Anderson em sua obra Comunidades Imaginadas, proponho, nesta dissertação, versar sobre a existência de diferentes projetos para a construção da nação brasileira ressaltando, o que entendo ser, um projeto paulista para a nação. A referência utilizada encontra-se nos Estudos Subalternos, perspectiva que questiona o colonialismo teórico dos grandes centros hegemônicos e as concepções dominantes de modernidade. A fundamentação material deste trabalho está na literatura alusiva ao referencial teórico adotado e na seleção de alguns textos produzidos dentro do período que delimita o estudo proposto: os anos de 1870 a 1922. Buscamos com as análises aqui desenvolvidas acenar para a existência de um projeto paulista para a nação que, não sendo bem sucedido, deixará transparecer certa "nostalgia da segregação racial norte-americana presente em obras publicadas posteriormente.

This thesis is a journey through a layered Icelandic landscape, where the representations and imaginings of outside travelers are in focus. Departing theoretically from narratives of the land- scape, I will discuss how the Icelandic landscape has been created as an imagined geography, and analyze the stories, representations and images infusing its experience and re-creation. Through the hermeneutic method of interpretation, the thesis travels from medieval times to con- temporary with the help of a wide use of actors and their choice of imaginative transportation, including books, maps, diaries, artwork and magazines. The reader will explore a wide array of narratives, which also show how the landscape takes place and becomes imbued with meaning during the act of traveling and interaction with the landscape, whether in body or in mind. Fur- thermore, I discuss the narratives of the landscape through representational acts, and argue that these create meaning for both the individual and collective experience. Whilst the narrative of the landscape shifts depending on time, place and the individual’s experiential baggage, certain common paths have been identified and expanded upon. Yet, these exist within a rugged process where the landscape moves back and forward in Western imagination.

Despite the upsurge in fact-based and verbatim theatre in recent years (Fogarth and Megson 2009: 1), engagement with the form as a technique equally suitable for poetry has been especially limited. This thesis examines the deployment of verbatim methods in a series of poems which constitute the creative element, written in order to (re)present expressions of identity and ideas of imagined community during the 2011 riots in Birmingham. Located in the context of this particular disorder, United We Stand explores both individual and group experiences of the events that took place in Birmingham. The series of verbatim poems draws on data extracted from 25 semi-structured, life-story interviews with participants who lived or worked in the city during these incidents. In doing so, both the thesis and the creative practice that informs it critique Benedict Anderson s earlier model of the nation as an imagined community (1983; 1991; 2006). While quantitative network analysis is deployed to establish the ties between media channels and ordinary citizens that were maintained online through social networking, creative and reported responses published by these same media sources are analysed in relation to national narrative conventions (Billig 2001; Mihelj 2011). This demonstrates that new and popular media played a significant role in (re)presenting imagined communities in this setting. By providing evidence for the existence of these shifting imagined communities across various geographical, social and cultural scales, the thesis suggests that Anderson s decision to focus on the nation is problematic. It argues that his framework is partial and that a new definition of imagined community as both fluid and emergent is necessary. Literary context for the thesis is found in the origins and developments of verbatim; exploring early documentary theatre practice and contemporary verbatim productions by Richard Norton-Taylor, Alecky Blythe, and Gillian Slovo. Through an analysis of Bhanu Kapil Rider s The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers (2001), the thesis illustrates how existing poets have organised comparable methods in their own work. This culminates in a demonstration of practice as research by producing a ground-breaking body of work: United We Stand is a series of poems crafted through the deployment of verbatim methods. The thesis demonstrates that deploying verbatim methods in poetry is suitable for (re)presenting expressions of identity and ideas of imagined community in this context. By transforming the voices of ordinary people of Birmingham, United We Stand reflects the media narratives that precede it: the poems are a direct engagement with the same fluid and emergent imagined communities that they argue existed. More importantly, though, this thesis goes beyond contemporary techniques of verbatim and establishes the evolutionary nature of it as a poetic practice. The combination of verbatim methods and visual-digital tools that I deploy throughout United We Stand results in a new creative process which I have termed Digital Poetic Mimesis.

This study is an interpretive analysis of Zimbabwean political auto/biographical narratives in contexts of changing culture, race, ethnicity and gender identity images of the self and nation. I used eclectic theories of postcolonialism to explore the fractured nature of both the processes of identity construction and narration, and the contradictions inherent in identity categories of nation and self. The problem of using autobiographical memory to recall the momentous events that formed the contradictory identities of self and nation in the creative imagination of the lives of Ian Smith, Maurice Nyagumbo, Abel Muzorewa, Joshua Nkomo, Doris Lessing, Fay Chung, Judith Garfield Todd, Tendai Westerhof and Lutanga Shaba have been highlighted. The study concluded that there are narrative and ideological disjunctures between experiencing life and narrating those experiences to create approximations of coherent identities of individual selves and those of the nation. The study argued that each of the stories analyzed in this study contributed a version of the multiple Zimbabwean narratives that no one story could ever tell without being contested by others. Thus the study explores how white Rhodesian auto/biographies depend on the imperial repertoire to construct varying, even contradicting, images of white identities and the Rhodesian nation, which are also contested by black nationalist life narratives. The narratives by women writers, both white and black, introduced further instabilities to the male authored narratives by moving beyond the conventional understanding of what is ‘political’ in political auto/biographies. The HIV and AIDS narratives by black women thrust into the public sphere personalized versions of self so that the political consequence of their inclusion was not only to image Zimbabwe as a diseased society, but one desperately in need of political solutions to confront the different pathologies inherited from colonialism and which also have continued in the post-independence period. / English Studies / (D. Litt. et Phil. (English))

The aim of this study is to explore the Study in Sweden Facebook page, particularly about the use of nation branding identity and its representation on the social media channel during the period for application promotion for Swedish higher education institutions for Autumn semester 2018. Facebook page has been used as a centre for international marketing activities. With the purpose of promoting brand identity and the brand products, Facebook page has a significance as an online brand platform. Despite the importance of nation branding on online channel, few studies focusing on online channels for nation branding were conducted. Study in Sweden. The Study in Sweden Facebook page is used to promote Swedish higher education and Sweden, which also aims to imprint a positive image of Swedish education and Sweden as a country. Applying nation branding theoretical approach with qualitative content analysis, how nation branding identity is represented on the Study in Sweden Facebook page was investigated. In accordance with cultural approaches to nation branding, nation branding identity was labelled as binders of the imagined community further values of the nation. The study brought a focus on the relations between national identity and Swedishness concerning the core values of the nation. Facebook was investigated as communicator of the nation branding for representing the core values of Sweden.

Symbols in the hands of politicians can be a powerful tool of manipulation. The usage of symbols in speeches or texts can change a person’s will, without him or her ever knowing it. We have compared the usage of symbols in the articles surrounding the ratification of the constitution in 18th century America with that of today’s European Union, to see if any similarities between these two cases exists, and what implications this could have for the future of the EU. We have divided the symbols in both cases into different categories so as to enable us to compare the cases to each other. With the help of Masters Theory and the writings of Benedict Anderson and Murray Edelman we have concluded that there indeed exist some similarities between 18th century America and the EU. There seem have been some manipulation on the part of the politicians in order to rebuild the respective unions on more solid foundations. Could the European Union, on the basis of these findings, be assumed to take a course comparable with that of 18th century America?

This thesis explores how newly arrived students experience conditions for learning and inclusion in their lived transitions within the Swedish school system. The thesis deploys an ethnographic approach combining interviews with participant observation. The data comprise interviews with 22 students at three points in time and three cycles of participant observation over the course of 15 months (in three municipalities of different sizes). Deploying the concept of post-migration ecology, Study I maps the structural conditions that the educational landscape offers newly arrived students after migration to Sweden. The findings point to the emergence of a parallel school system through which the newly arrived students’ individual needs risk being overlooked. Study II uses a sociocultural perspective to compare the pedagogical and social resources offered in introductory and regular classes, concluding that introductory classes are characterised by weak challenges and strong support, whereas the opposite is true for regular classes. From a critical phenomenological perspective, Study III focuses on the individual students’ embodied experiences of being out of line in school (in a Swedish monolingual school setting). Paradoxically, the separate introductory class in this setting apparently offers a sense of inclusion, whereas the regular class is related to student experiences of exclusion. Study IV analyses temporal aspects of the students' lived transition to upper secondary school. Drawing on a phenomenology of blockage, it documents how extended periods in introductory programmes create a disjunction between the students' imagined and lived school careers. In brief, through analyses that encompass organisational and structural conditions, as well as lived experience, this thesis shows that the lived transitions of newly arrived students can be understood as instances of parallel school lives, a discontinued past and a postponed future. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 4: Manuscript.</p> / Newly arrived children and learning - a cross-disciplinary study on the learning conditions for newly arrived children in Swedish schools

In this thesis, depending on Benedict Anderson’s Studies of nationalism in his book The Imagined Communities, I will prove that in her historical fiction for children, Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands, the Palestinian writer Sonia Nimr is reviving and reforming Arab national identity. Anderson identifies the nation as a group imagined by its members; the people who perceive and identify themselves as equal members in this group. For the people to imagine their nation, Anderson states three tools: the map as a representation of the geographical space, the census as a representation of population identity categories that live in a particular land, and the museum as the representation of historical and the legal continuity of certain ethnicities in a certain geographical space. The three tools are thoroughly abstracted and used in Nimr’s book as we follow the footsteps of Nimr’s heroine in her travels, we see her drawing Arab historical map, when Palestine was a canton in the great Arab State. The social fabric Nimr weaves by the characters in her book reflects the real and the reformed census of Arab ethnicities and their social classes with the highlighting of the essential role of Arabic women in society. The narrated society of Nimr’s work reforms nation’s census which accords with the extended pan Arab geography of Arab nation. The nation imagining requirements are completed by visiting the history and wandering in the historical Arabic cantons and cities which materialize Nimr’s trail to perpetuate those important places in her textual museum, which she builds in her addressed work to children to answer their question about who we are and how we are the most eligible ethnicities to live on this land. Nimr does not promote a certain political agenda nor casts a holy cover on the past; by contrast, she teaches Arab children past lessons to revive and reform their modern Arab national identity as a remedy for the catastrophic national present.

The study centers around The Scandinavian Socialist Federation and its newspaper based in Chicago called Facklan. This newspaper and its association has not been thoroughly researched before in a qualitative manner and existed in a time when communism started to spread around the world which makes them both interesting to research. A qualitative text analysis will allow a study that aims to examine how the newspapers content built or strengthened a feeling of fellowship within the federation. This will be researched through three aspects – communist, swedish and as a federation. With a contextualizing chapter the study is set into a historical period. This enables the reader to understand the context around the federation and its newspaper. Furthermore the study uses Benedict Anderssons idea of imagined communities. The source that has been used to enable this study is a digital archive made by Minnesota historical society, in which Facklan is included. The results show that Facklan indeed did build or strengthen a feeling of fellowship amongst its readers. It did this primarily by connecting the Comintern´s ideas and values with the news around Sweden and the federation. It is difficult to point out how deeply this affected the federation but it most likely brought the divided federation closer together and possibly enabled the merging with another American-Scandinavian socialist federation.