The study explored the question of how Kosovar-Albanians living in Sweden identify themselves; whether they felt that they belonged in Sweden, Kosovo or both places, and; the transnational ties they maintain with Kosovo. The study participants included six individuals  with Kosovar-Albanian origins, half of them born in Sweden and the other half who had immigrated to Sweden from Kosovo. The data for the study was collected using semi-structured interviews. The findings of the study suggest that both immigrants born in Sweden to first generation Kosovar immigrants and those born in Kosovo but immigrated to Sweden had fluid and dual identities. Sometimes they identified as Kosovo-Albanians, sometimes they identified as Swedish while at other times they identified as both. Those born in Sweden indicated that they felt that they belonged in Sweden, while those born in Kosovo did not have a clear sense of belonging. The study established that the sense of belonging was determined by the perception of others. Native Swedes did not think the immigrants belonged in Sweden because of their Kosovo-Albanian heritage while those in Kosovo felt that the immigration process had changed the immigrants thus they did not belong in Kosovo. The study established that both the first and second generation immigrants maintained transnational ties with Kosovo.

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Une question posée en 1970 par la critique française est le point de départ de ce travail : « y-a-t-il des écrivains en Albanie? » Cette thèse s'emploie à creuser les différentes strates de la réception des écrivains albanais en France. En partant de l'interrogation sur les attentes de lisibilité envers la littérature albanaise, nous analysons le processus de sa réception. En considérant d'une part cette réception avant la publication du Général de l'armée morte, qui s'avère être une non-réception et, d'autre part, le succès immédiat de ce roman de Kadare, nous mettons en évidence l'horizon d'attente d'une œuvre albanaise dans la France de 1970.Par le biais de la notion de lisibilité, nous démontrons la réception en termes d'émergence de la littérature albanaise et le processus de création du personnage Kadare, par la vulgate critique. Ce personnage deviendra par la suite le moule réceptacle dans lequel devront se couler les autres écrivains albanais. La caractéristique principale de ce moule semble être la considération des écrivains albanais comme des témoins du traumatisme historique du pays. Pourtant, les écrivains récusent ce statut d’homo politicus, ils se revendiquent homo poeticus, détruisant ainsi le moule, à commencer par Kadare lui-même. Ceci permet le passage d'une vulgate réductrice à une réception créatrice de la littérature albanaise. Opérée par l'écrivain français Éric Faye, la réception créatrice permet une forme de consécration de la littérature albanaise qui, nourrie depuis toujours par les grands noms de la littérature européenne, devient, à son tour, impulsion créatrice pour un écrivain européen. / The starting point of this work is a question of the ’70s French literary critics : “Are there writers in Albania ?” This work aims to analyze the different layers of the process of reception towards Albanian writers in France during the last 40 years.We analyze the process of albanian litterature reception starting from the question about readability expectations towards it. Considering firstly the reception before the publication of the General of the dead army and secondly the immediate success of this Kadare’s novel, we underline the expectation features towards the Albanian literature in France during the ’70s. Using the concept of readability as a background, we show that this reception encompasses two main features : Albanian literature as an emergent literature and the creation process of a prototypical character named ’Kadare’ from the French vulgate critic. This character will become the pattern to which all Albanian writers would henceforth have to fit.From the perspective of the critic, the main feature of this pattern seems to be the consideration of Albanian writers as witnesses of the historical trauma in their country. The Albanians writers, on the other hand, challenge this status of homo politicus and declare themselves as homo poeticus, breaking the pattern, starting from Kadare himself. This allows a shift from a simplistic vulgate to a creative reception towards Albanian literature. Operated by the French writer Eric Faye, creative reception can be seen as a form of consecration of the Albanian literature, since Albanian literature which has always been nourished from the great names of European literature becomes itself a creative impulse for a European writer.

This doctoral thesis examines the representations and dynamics of crime and inner punishment in a range of European literary works of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: F.M. Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (Преступлeние и наказaние, 1866), L. Rebreanu’s Ciuleandra (1927) and P. Ackroyd’s Hawksmoor (1985), while tracing the developments of crime fiction and the changes in criminal legal system over the span of one hundred and nineteen years. Utilising the methodology of comparative literature, I argue that the interiorized punishment - which I identify, after Foucault, as a new episteme - is a narrative thread that runs through all three novels, and informs much other writings in the same period. Informed by different socio-cultural, temporal, political, and stylistic backgrounds, each novelist utilizes distinct narrative techniques and strategies to configure their protagonists in such a way that permits the reader to get an insight into their psyches. The present study locates the literary tendency to fuse the character of the protagonist/hero and the perpetrator/anti-hero into one narrative entity and examines the literary representation of the factors that trigger the guilt or need for punishment in this entity. To this end, I focus on the narrative structure, temporal framework, geographical setting as well as the protagonists’ relations with other characters within the texts. The idea of self-punishment, its representations and manifestations, is explored through the lens of psychoanalytical theories of Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, Jacques Lacan and Otto Rank. My psychoanalytical readings of the texts are furthermore complemented by the theoretical frameworks offered by Mikhail Bakhtinʼs theory of polyphony, Linda Hutcheonʼs account of historiographic metafiction and relevant philosophical perspectives such as Søren Kierkegaardʼs and Jean-Paul Sartreʼs existentialisms.

This thesis examines Albanian foreign policy from a small state point of view.The main argument is that Albania as a weak small state developed close relations with the regional and great powers and align with them in order to compensate its weakness. An historical analysis of the Albanian foreign policy line since its establishment portrays a continuity in this trend except the short isolationist period. The study has three main objectives, firstly, it aims to provide an analysis of the small state foreign policy and small state &ndash / great power asymmetric relations within the framework of Albania&rsquo / s relations with various regional and great powers. Secondly, to elaborate the relevance of the enduring weakness of Albania on its foreign policy making in particular with its relations and alliances with the great powers. In this sense, an analysis of the Albanian foreign policy shows a pattern of shifting alliances in different time periods and under different regimes as part of foreign policy line. Thirdly, to make the historical account of Albania&rsquo / s alliances and relations with the great powers in terms of continuity and change in its foreign policy line. Albania&rsquo / s post-Cold War era foreign policy indicates a continuity in this line as it approaches the US as the great power to align with as well as one of two main pillars of its foreign policy along with the Euro-Atlantic integration. In this context, the contemporary Albanian-US relations constitute the last phase of the Albanian foreign policy trend.

This history of Dostoevsky’s reception in France draws from critical responses, translation analysis, and the comparative analysis of adaptations as well as intertextual dialogues between fictional, critical and philosophical texts. It begins from the earliest translations and critical accounts of the 1880s and 1890s, such as Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé’s seminal moralist reading. It then traces modernist responses and adaptations from the turn of the century to the twenties. Existential readings and re-translations dating from the arrival of émigré critics and religious philosophers in the wake of the Russian Revolution are examined, assessing the contribution of these émigré readings to emerging existential readings and movements in France. Finally, French existentialist fiction is analysed in terms of its intertextual dialogue with Dostoevsky’s work and with speculative and critical writings of French existentialist thinkers on and around the philosophical reflections expressed in Dostoevsky’s fiction. By following specifically the existential and existentialist branches of Dostoevsky’s French reception, an overlooked aspect of the history of French, Russian and European existentialisms comes to the fore, reframed within a pivotal period in the history of European intercultural exchange, and of transmodal literary and philosophical discourse.

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This thesis describes the means of expressing the category of definiteness in Albanian. Inasmuch as this category has not been comprehensively analyzed in this language so far, the starting point of the thesis is the description of this category in English which, by contrast, has been subject to a detailed analysis by many authors from different aspects both theoretical and practical. Keywords: Albanian, English, definite article, definite form, reference, contrastive description

Western-origin women’s lifestyle magazines have enjoyed great success in post-Soviet Russia, and represent part of the globalisation of the post-Soviet media landscape. Existing studies of post-Soviet Russian women’s magazines have tended to focus on either magazine content or reader interpretations, their role in the media marketplace, or representations of themes such as glamour culture or conspicuous consumption. Based on a discourse analysis of the three Russian women’s lifestyle magazines Elle, Liza and Cosmopolitan, and interviews with 39 Russian women, the thesis interrogates femininity norms in contemporary Russia. This thesis addresses a gap in the literature in foregrounding a feminist approach to a combined analysis of both the content of the magazines, and how readers decode the magazines. Portrayals of embodied femininity in women’s magazines are a chief focus, in addition to reader decodings of these portrayals. The thesis shows how certain forms of aesthetic and cultural capital are linked to femininity, and how women’s magazines discursively construct normative femininity via portraying these forms of cultural capital as necessary for women. It also relates particular ways of performing femininity, such as conspicuous consumption and beauty labour, to wider patriarchal discourses in Russian society. Furthermore, the thesis engages with pertinent debates around cultural globalisation in relation to post-Soviet media and culture, and addresses both change and continuity in post-Soviet gender norms; not only from the Soviet era into the present, but across an oft-perceived East/West axis via the horizontalization and glocalisation of culture. The thesis discusses two main aspects of change: 1) the role now played by conspicuous consumption in social constructions of normative femininity; and 2) the expectation of ever increasing resources women are now expected to devote to beauty labour as part of performing normative femininity. However, I also argue that it is appropriate from a gender studies perspective to highlight Russian society as patriarchal as well as post-socialist. As such, I highlight the cross-cultural experiences women in contemporary Russia women share with women in other parts of the world. Accordingly, the research suggests that women’s lifestyle magazines in the post-Soviet era have drawn on more established gender discourses in Soviet-Russian society as a means of facilitating the introduction of relatively new norms and practices, particularly linked to a culture of conspicuous consumption.

This paper investigates on the self-identification and feeling of belonging among the “Kosovo Albanian” “descendants” in Sweden. This is a study performed through semi-structured interviews of six volunteering participants, born and/or raised in Sweden, whose parents migrated after the 1990 which was the period of Bosnian and Croatian war that caused tensions in the Balkans. The concept of belonging together with the concept of identity, seen as self-identification, personal and collective identity, have guided through the findings of this paper. The result is that, regarding this sample, age of migration, and place of birth seems to matter in more easily defining identity and belonging.