Abstract   Autobiographies by politicians are growing as a genre in Sweden and since 1991 female politicians have gradually become active writers in the genre. This thesis is concerned with the effect of gender on how autobiographies by politicians are being received in editorials and reviews in Swedish daily press. By using theories by Judith Butler, Paulina de los Reyes, Raewyn Connell and John Chr. Jørgensen both a quantitative and a qualitative study are carried out. Based on an analysis of editorials and reviews of all political autobiographies published 1991–2013, I find that male politicians get both a higher number of and longer editorials and reviews than female politicians. This difference is growing over time. In addition to the quantitative study, the thesis also provides an intensive study of editorials and reviews from six selected autobiographies. The specific focus in this part is how questions of gender and gender-equality are treated; how and to what extent the background and personal life of the writing politician are described and if the autobiography is valued based on literary values and/or the reviewers personal opinions. I find that gender does have an impact on all these subjects and that it intersects with mainly class concerning the background and personal life of the politician.

Skönlitteratur är mycket omdiskuterat i dagens samhälle, och i juli 2016 pågick en debatt om huruvida skönlitterär läsning är nödvändig i skolan för att höja de svenska Pisa-resultaten. Den här uppsatsen ämnar att ta reda på varför skönlitteratur är så omdiskuterat, genom att göra en litteratursociologisk analys av argumenten för och emot skönlitterär läsning i skolan. I uppsatsens undersökningsdel går jag igenom de olika argumenten, analyserar dessa och i viss mån jämför dem med varandra. Denna typ av analys har tydliggjort att kopplingen mellan åsikter om skönlitterär läsning och samhälle är stark, och att det i många fall är svårt att utröna vad det är som egentligen diskuteras: vikten av att läsa skönlitterärt eller vikten av att skapa ett stabilt samhälle.

Den svenska bokmarknaden är en ständigt föränderlig sfär. En plats där kreativa författare, böcker och företagsekonomi möts och står sida vid sida. Bokens värdekedja är en delikat förbindelse som vid minsta förändring kan ge långtgående effekter på bokmarknadens struktur, dess konkurrens och i slutändan även påverka konsumenterna. I föreliggande uppsats undersöks den mediala debatten under tiden för samgåendet mellan två huvudkonkurrenter, Akademibokhandeln och Bokia, som avtalade om en sammanslagning år 2012. Det litteratursociologiska perspektivet rörande litteratursamhället utgör den grundläggande teorin för undersökningen och utgår ifrån de villkor som finns för produktion, distribution och konsumtion av litteratur. Bokens värdekedja har under de senaste åren varit utsatt för förändring och har gått från att inbegripa ett antal olika parter till att i viss mån övertagits helt av de stora bokkoncernerna. Fenomenet går under benämningen vertikal integration. Denna avsmalning och centralisering av bokmarknaden illustreras väl av samgåendet mellan Akademibokhandeln och Bokia. Studien av samgåendedebatten, dess olika läger och argument har empiriskt kartlagts genom att en mängd material från bransch- och dagspress, samt offentliga utredningar och myndighetsbeslut inhämtats och analyserats. Involverade parter skapade en förhållandevis saklig debatt med fokus på de konkreta utmaningarna och de möjliga framtida problemen med samgåendet. Huvudfrågan i debatten var om samgåendet mellan Akademibokhandeln och Bokia skulle komma att förändra bokmarknaden till det bättre, eller om det enbart var en akt i desperation som alla bokmarknadens aktörer sedermera skulle tvingas ta konsekvenserna av. Sammantaget är uppsatsens resultat att ägarfrågor kopplade till maktkoncentration inom bokbranschen är konnoterade med synnerligen starka känslor och åsikter. Debatten tangerade även vid frågan huruvida bokmarknaden skall vara en jämlik arena för distribution och konsumtion av litteratur, eller om marknadsmässiga krafter helt ska få sätta dagordningen och hur en sådan ordning kan garantera litteraturens egenvärde framför de dollargröna siffrorna i en balansräkning.

The object of this master´s thesis is to investigate how the Swedish person literary society movement acts. The Swedish history contains the well-known popular movements with their 19:th century roots. Today, some of them have turned into factors of power. Does the literary society movement have the chance to take over as such en established popular movement? What is their entire aim? My hypothesis is that the person literary societies bring the literature forward through collective memory making. As a theoretical background, I studied research upon literary tourism and collective memory. Heroic worship and person adoration often have been considered naive from a scientific point of view. For my field survey, I interviewed members of societies associated with Ester Ringnér-Lundgren, Carl Johan Love Almqvist, Carl Michael Bellman, Birger Sjöberg and Per Anders Fogelström. I found out that the person literary society movement might be a factor of power in creating discourses from different aspects of their respective authors. The Bellman society aspires to change people´s opinions upon Bellman, while the other ones principally want to make their authors visible. The person literary societies exist in an intermediate position between the academic comparative literature and the biographical. Their other main tasks are publishing, socializing and being responsible for places related to their authors. Foucault´s notion heterotopia (a place between reality and utopia) is applicable to the experience of participating in a person literary society meeting, according to my investigation. The person literary societies also create and maintain les Lieux de Mémoire. According to Nora, this notion signifies turning points where history meets memory. From one of my informants, I perceived a tension between the traditional popular movement society and the computer age. The relationship towards social media and internet differs among the person literary societies in my study. A possible explanation might be the average age of thier members. The society of the youth novelist Ringnér-Lundgren measures an average age of 50, while the other ones mostly consist of people reaching their retirement age. The Fogelström society stands out in attracting immigrants and in working towards the public. Taking part in the Book and Library Fair is the most common collaboration between the societies and the ALM sector. This is a two years master´s thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies.

Multiple researchers argue that many authors of children’s books are influenced by the prevailing view of the child and childhood, in both subject selection and ways of writing. The aim of the study is to investigate how societies norms and values are reflected in picture books, written between 2010-2018. What kind of childhood is portrayed in the chosen literature? How does the illustrations and text interact to reflect the children’s characters and perspective? After an extensive selection process with several criteria, five picture books were finally chosen for analysis. With tools from researches Nikolajeva and Rhedin I’ll be focusing on illustrations, personality and environmental descriptions, as well as narration and point of view. The conclusion shows indications that the child's vision, which is portrayed in the picture books, goes hand in hand with the image of the child as subject and actor, a researching child actively in their own development. It is also possible to see traces of the multi-contextual view of children and the image of the child that is emphasized in the preschool curriculum. Another clear pattern is that the picture books reflect family constellations, gender, culture, diversity and ethnicity in a way that largely extends beyond underlying prejudices and stereotypes. / Ett flertal forskare hävdar att många barnboksförfattare påverkas av den rådande barnsynen samt barndom i både ämnesval och sätt att skriva. Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur samhällets normer och värderingar återspeglas i bildböcker, skrivna mellan 2010-2018. Vilken syn på barn gestaltas i den valda litteraturen och hur kommer den till uttryck? Hur interagerar illustrationerna och texten för att spegla barnens karaktärer och perspektiv? Efter en omfattande urvalsprocess med ett flertal kriterier valdes slutligen fem bildböcker för analys. Med verktyg från forskarna Nikolajeva och Rhedin kommer jag att fokusera på illustrationer, person- och miljöskildring samt berättarröst och synvinkel. Slutsatsen visar indikationer på att den barnsyn som speglas i bilderböckerna överensstämmer med bilden av barnet som subjekt och aktör, ett forskande barn aktivt i sin egen utveckling. Det är också möjligt att se spår av den mångkontextuella barnsyn samt den bild av barnet som framhävs i förskolans läroplan. Ett annat tydligt mönster är att bildböckerna speglar familjekonstellationer, kön, kultur, mångfald och etnicitet på ett sätt som i stor utsträckning sträcker sig bortom underliggande fördomar och stereotyper. Anknytningen mellan dagens samhälle och modernare bilderböcker är väl förankrad, och tydliga avtryck från samtiden syns i samtliga analyserade bilderböcker.

The main objective of this essay is to present the views of nine Swedish publishers and four other agents in the literary field regarding the possibilities of and obstacles to publishing fiction in an electronic format. Furthermore, whether or not electronic publishing is today actually a viable alternative. A substantial part of the essay functions as background to our interview findings and is based primarily on material originating from the Sociology of Literature field. The introductory chapter expounds the methodological and theoretical basis of the essay and is followed by a chapter placing our study in a larger, international media, context. Chapter three deals with the past decades’ restructuring of the publishing sector, the professional functions involved in traditional publishing and Pierre Bourdieu’s theories on the cultural and economic forces at work in the literary field. The fourth and fifth chapters present the many roles of the traditional printed book, as well as new media for the distribution and consumption of literature, and looks at the kind of partnerships evolving between agents in e-publishing. The main emphasis is, however, placed on the following sections: Chapter six, which exemplifies a few of the existing national and international web publishers; and chapter seven, which presents our examination based on qualitative interviews with publishers and other agents connected with the Swedish book industry. The essay finishes with a discussion of our findings and concludes that, despite new media and textual carriers, the traditional book remains the main player regarding the production, distribution and consumption of serious fiction, as far as the traditional Swedish publishers are concerned. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The purpose of this thesis is to form an idea about the qualitative value and meaning of reading fiction in a psychological perspective and over a lifetime. Seven women, 68-79 years old, were interviewed about their reading habits of fiction in their lifetime. The material is presented as life stories. I use an inter-nordic research project called the SKRIN project which looks upon reading habits from an individualistic and psychological perspective. I also refer to an American study which focus on reading development with roles readers take in different ages of life written by J A Appleyard. I use a Canadian paper which deals with reading fiction for emotional knowledge written by Catherine Sheldrick Ross. I touch upon two other fields of research; reading in the perspective of gender and reader-response criticism. The method I use is a combination of qualitative interviews, life history method and studies of literature. The study shows that literature of significant meaning is the fictional moods of realism, poetry, romance and detective stories. Particularly memorable books belong to the fictional moods realism and romance. Realism is important for identification, social understanding and social connection. Poetry is read for many reasons among them therapy in crisis. Reading romance appears to be of decisive importance psychologically for women. Detective stories are primarily read for relaxation and escape from reality. Many of the women in the study have been helped by books in different situations in life. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The aim of this bachelor thesis is to investigate how gender stereotypes appear in Swedish picture books. The investigation consists of literature studies and the method used is a text –and picture analysis. By using this method, it allows us to interpret both text and pictures in the books. It is carried through by consultation of Yvonne Hirdmans theory of how men and women are two different things and that man in this relation constitutes the norm. We will compare three picture books from 1973 with three picture books from 1993, to see if stereotypes are of the same kind or if any differences appear. We will also examine how the picture books reflect the contemporary sex equality in the society of 1973 and 1993. Do men and women follow stereotypes in the form of different looks, characteristics, feelings and activities? The result indicates that gender stereotypes still appear in picture books. Through the analysis, it appears that girls to a grater extend are described as more girlish in the picture books from 1973, than in 1993. It also appears that the male characters don’t depart from the gender stereotype norm. / Uppsatsnivå: C

Today, the definition of literature has changed. Walter J. Ong talks about the secondary spoken language that has surfaced as a result of new technical innovations to our writing tools. This also transforms our attitude towards literature and we can see a return to literature based on verbal characteristics. According to Hans Hertel the verbal renaissance reflects a modern man need to come closer to each other and create togetherness. This master thesis adheres to these views and states that Poetry Slam is a manifestation of these theories. It also argues that Poetry Slam can not only be viewed upon as a literary movement. Besides providing literary teaching practices for large quantities of individuals, performing Poetry Slam also facilitates personal development. The master thesis is an interview based study, which aims to ascertain the importance of Poetry Slam as literature and its effect on the identity defining processes of those participating in Poetry Slam contests. The foundation for the essay’s line of questioning is based on the literary theories of Pierre Bourdieu. It also incorporates the theories of identity creation in a modern day society by Thomas Ziehe. The subjects interviewed have a thorough understanding on how to assess verbal art forms. It is also a common understanding that poetry is a wider art form than literature. Despite this, there is a positive interpretation and evaluation of the literature in question. Several of the subjects supplying the underpinning information firmly believes that participation in Poetry Slam sessions will further their carriers as poets. This consequently leads to a conflict between their goals and the aim and purpose of Poetry Slam. / Uppsatsnivå: D

This master thesis is discussing ten pony books from 2006 in relation to the heterosexual matrix. It contains a rather extensive research overview regarding horse riding from a gender perspective, pony books, traditional feminist studies of girls’ books and queer readings of girls’ and children’s literature. The aim of the empirical study is two folded; firstly to show how the girl protagonists’ horse riding is presented in terms of masculinity and femininity (as defined by Natalie Koivula), secondly to analyze the relations between the girls appearing in the books from a queer perspective attempting to find some queer leakage in the depictions. The theory applied is based on Judith Butler and the method is derived from the tradition of queer readings and feminist counter readings. The results show that the protagonists construct masculinity as well as femininity, often combined, which question the assumption that girls and women can only construct femininity and furthermore illustrate that the division between femininity and masculinity is not as natural as is often assumed. The analysis also demonstrates that some of the girls express intense emotions for other girls and show a stronger bond towards other girls than towards boys. However, the relations between the girls are often normalized in accordance with the heterosexual matrix. The conclusion of the thesis is that the pony books can be both liberating from current heterosexual gender norms and reinforcing this societal order. Another important conclusion is that the liberating potential varies greatly between the books. / Uppsatsnivå: D