No description available.

Bachelor Thesis in Religious Science III, by Karin Angleborg.Karlstad University, 2013. Mentor: Sören DaleviOriginal Sin and the Child- In a Historical and Late Modern Swedish ContextThe purpose of this thesis is to analyze how the view of the child in relation to the Original Sin has developed during Christian history, and what the late modern Swedish debate has contributed with.Question formulation:1. What is the historical view on Original Sin and its relation to the child?2. Which voices has participated in the late modern Swedish debate about Original Sin and the relationship between Original Sin and the child?3. How can the late modern Swedish debate about the Original Sin and its relation to the child be understood in relation to the historical perspective?A qualitative textual analysis is used as a method to answer the purpose and questions of this thesis. Different theologians from both a historical and a late modern Swedish context are analyzed for the thesis in order to identify the tendencies that influence the Original Sin debate. The results of the analysis include identification of two common themes within the historical perspective, themes which are also present in the late modern Swedish debate.

This thesis on the Swedish voluntary women’s defence organisation Riksförbundet Sveriges lottakårer (SLK), studies how the board and the members of SLK discussed the problems and the meaning of voluntary defence work during the 1960s and 1970s. Furthermore the thesis aims to engage with previous research and give an explanation to why people may be interested in voluntary defence. Views varied greatly within SLK: some meant that the voluntary grounds of participation gave a sense of elite status to the organisation; however others saw voluntary work as untenable, since more women at the time had both work and family obligations. Another issue was professionalisation versus socialisation. While some members wanted to see a centralisation and professionalisation of the organisation, others found it more important to safeguard the social functions and independence of the local corps unit. The results suggest that gender structures as well as individual agency create multiple reasons and meanings behind voluntary defence work.

Den här uppsatsen visar hur fyra kvinnliga författare debutromaner, från 1891-2000, har blivit mottagna. Undersökningen diskuterar hur kritiker förhåller sig till verken och författarnas kön. Undersökningen vill visa på hur kritikernas förhållningsätt till kvinnliga författare har förändrats under ett sekel. Vidare studeras vilka tendenser som påvisar att författarna har blivit recenserade med utgångspunkt i traditionella könsmönster.   Vår teoretiska utgångspunkt är genus och uppsatsens metodologiska tillvägagångssätt utgörs av Ruth Wodaks definition av kritisk diskuranalys (CDA).  Resultatet visar att normen kring kvinnans ställning i samhället präglar hur litteraturkritiken bemöter kvinnliga författare. Den förändring som har skett under hundra år avspeglas även i mottagandet av romanerna.   Summeringen är kritiken har tidigare haft ett tydligt fokus på författarens kön och en förmyndarartad hållning. I recensionerna av de senare verken från sent 50-tal och framåt är istället innehållet och språket i fokus och författarens kön har en underordnad betydelse.

This project revolves around the political part poetry that is printed in newspapers can have. It focuses on a Swedish tradition directly translated into “daily verses” where an author writes a political poem every day in a newspaper. How do a political agenda take shape in a poem written in a short period of time and published in a forum like a newspaper? With the use of an analysis and comparison of two separated authors with different opinions in three specific political areas these questions is answered. The authors are Lotta Olsson Anderberg and Caj Lundgren and the political areas studied are gender equality, international political relations and nationalism. The project finds three specific answers to the question. First with the help of tools like metaphors, quotes, rewritten source material and hinting of well known references the political poetry addresses the reader in a direct way. Second these poems use the rhetorical strategy of focusing on the absurd in the opposition rather than arguing for the own political standpoint, turning the tables in an ironic way. The third answer is also the help of a tradition within itself that helps the readers understand the politics. A subgenre understood with help of the forum and the fact that the reader knows the poem will be political just by the headline “daily verses”. This shows that the poetic form called “daily verses” is to be regarded as political poetry.

The aim of this paper is to examine the didactic potential of the books: Kitty and The Witch Tree Symbol, Kitty and the Mystery of the Stolen Books, Yes, See Lotta and Dear Lotta. All these booksbelong to the B.Wahlström series of girls' books, a literary genre that has been looked down upon overtime and considered harmful to read because of the fact that they where too stereotypical. The reason forthis is that the characters are far too gender stereotypical and can have a negative impact on young girls.The essay intends to investigate how these books, despite being girls' books can be used as tools in theschool's value base work, especially regarding gender equality, equality, norms and stereotypes. It alsoexplores how the selected books can be used in the classroom to address gender and sex issues.To answer the aim of this paper, a qualitative method, close reading, has been used. During the closereading, there has been a specific focus on how the feminine characters, in particular how the femaleprotagonists' Kitty and Lotta, are portrayed. The theoretical approaches used to analyse the books aredidactic potential, defined by Malin Alkestrand, and the gender system, defined and explained byYvonne Hirdman. The result of the analysis was that there is a didactic potential in how Kitty and Lottaare being described since their characterization on several occasions can provide an opening fordiscussing fundamental values in school. The study also showed that the books selected for this analysishad scenes that may work as a tool in a classroom context to address and discuss the topic of sex andgender.

This thesis explores three female photo artists who are also professors of photography: Tuija Lindström, Annika Elisabeth von Hausswolff and Lotta Antonsson. It analyzes three photographic works of art, one by each artist, using semiotics as a method and with feminist and photo historical theory. As artists and professors of photography, Lindström, von Hausswolff and Antonsson, all three with a clear visual language and purposeful artistry, from the early 1990s to today, have filled an important role in the art of photography. Through their artistry, they have driven the feminist and patriarchal social criticism debate about the role of women forward. The essay demonstrates how the feminist critique of gender roles and the view of women as well as the postmodernism that developed in the art schools and within the photo art scene during the early 1980s and 1990s laid the foundation for these photo artists´artistry and expression.

This study investigates the production of political meaning in the Scandinavian tradition of the dagsvers (newspaper poem), that is a particular kind of poetry published in daily newspapers, commenting on public debates and recent events. The dagsvers is a neglected literary genre in the history of Swedish literature. The often explicit political stance and message of the dagsvers separate this genre from many other forms of modern and contemporary poetry, and the present study focuses on this political dimension. I examine the uses of forms, themes and symbols in dagsvers published between 1949 and 2013 that give the poems their meaning and their political dimension. Furthermore, I analyse how the very newspaper medium contributes to and directs the interpretation of the poems. The main questions pertain to how context, such as the newspaper´s political agenda, and elements in the text create the meaning and function of the dagsvers. Analysing verse examples with the help of theories of Jacques Rancière and Lars Furuland, the study demonstrates how the context and the literary forms, themes and symbols impact the shape of the political dimension of the dagsvers.

Serial killers are present in most Media today: TV-shows, books, magazines, news shows and music. Research about them has been made in many fields, such as criminology, psychology and psychiatry. There is also research about the serial killer as a cultural being. In my paper I have looked into the serial killer in fiction. I have chosen to compare two novels that deal with the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. The novels are Lotta Lotass’ Min röst skall nu komma från en annan plats i rummet and Joyce Carols Oates’ Zombie. By examining how the novels relate to the actual case and how they describe the violence and the person,I wanted to see if fiction can give a contrasting picture of how serial killers are usually described. I wanted to know if itis possible for fiction to represent serial killers as persons rather thanas inhuman monsters. My paper shows that although the novels differ in a lot of aspects, they both manage to contrast the picture of Dahmer. Zombieis more loosely based on Dahmer than Min röst, but focuses more on the violence. The Dahmer character in Zombie is more psychologically complex than the one in Min röst, but they both manage to describe the characters as human and they both avoid the stereotypical representation of serial killers.

ABSTRACTIn the autumn of 2017 361 testimonies of sexualized violence and abuse from women, previously or currently active in the Church of Sweden, were published under the hashtag #vardeljus as a part of #metoo. Neither the church nor theology can ignore or avoid the subject after this publication. However, despite this obvious need to address #vardeljus theologically, there has been a lack of theological reflection within a Swedish context. Indeed, the questions of if and how theology continue to contribute to the legitimation and maintenance of structures that enable sexualised violence and how theology can help women exposed to sexualised violence remain largely unanswered. This study therefore aims to provide some answers. Firstly, it seeks to identify what needs are expressed in the testimonies from #vardeljus by examining the theological conclusions about these, as drawn by Anne Sörman, from a feminist theological perspective. Secondly, it analyses whether contemporary interpretations of original sin by Lutheran theologians Eva-Lotta Grantén and Anna Karin Hammar contain useful, relevant, and sufficient resources to meet these demands and acknowledge women who experienced sexualised violence in church environments. Thirdly, this study contributes to the future shaping of theology by concluding which complements are needed to ensure that theological interpretations of sin, such as for example those by Grantén and Hammar, are relevant also for women subjected to sexualized violence. By using feminist theological textual analysis, where key themes as represented by Susan Frank Parsons, Sólveig Anna Bóasdóttir, Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker are defined and used, this study queries whether these needs are acknowledged and met in interpretations of original sin by Grantén and Hammar. In this examination their usage of such theological concepts as original sin, sin, accountability and guilt are weighted against the #vardeljus-experiences of sexualised violence in order to establish whether original sin is a concept suitable for acknowledging women and including them in theology. Grantén and Hammar attempt to make original sin a useful and understandable concept for contemporary believers, although they differ in their interpretations of this concept. Grantén considers that original sin entails guilt which primarily concerns and affects the relation between an individual and God and only secondarily interhuman relationships. Hammar argues against the usage of original sin and guilt and instead proposes to use destruction and (original) accountability as contemporary-friendlier alternatives. However, neither Grantén, whose main concern is to study original sin as a cause to the existence of sin and evil, nor Hammar, who applies a more consequence-directed approach, manages to adequately acknowledge or adapt their interpretations after women’s experiences of being victims to sexualised violence. This study concludes that if contemporary interpretations of original sin aren’t supplemented with interpretations that illuminate differences within a group where everybody is a sinner, acknowledge women as victims, emphasise the need of identifying and holding perpetrators accountable, and, at the same time, offer tangible help to victims, then the resources that the concept of original sin offers are neither helpful nor relevant to women that are victims of sexualised violence.