This essay analyzes the role and power of edible meat in the Swedish translations of Pow! by Mo Yan and The Vegetarian by Han Kang. The focus is on the main characters and their relation to meat-eating, their choices of eating or not eating meat, and the way meat influences their lives. Through the characters' habits of eating the analysis also explores their animality to further investigate power-dynamics. The result shows that both main characters in the novels suffer under the influence that meat has over them. They both decide to stop eating meat in order to regain control over their lives, by changing their eating habits they are able to become different from what they used to be. In Pow! Xiaotong is able to learn how to better control his animalistic desire. In The Vegetarian Yeong-hye's attempts to reform life and gain freedom are never enough, and she ends up trying to starve herself to death as a last way out.

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I Dune: Messiah (1969) sker en förändring av klimatet, en terraformning som människan initierar. Vatten introduceras i rikliga mängder på planeten Arrakis och detta påverkar planetens ekologi såväl som människans kultur. Uppsatsen granskar Frank Herberts roman genom att teoretiskt utgå ifrån ett ekokritiskt perspektiv och tematiskt ifrån vatten, dess varande och relation till människan samt planeten. Människans medvetenhet av sig själv som en art på planeten och sin kulturella koppling till både planeten och vatten är centralt i analysen. Klimatförändringen som sker när människan terraformar planeten och hur detta påverkar människan behandlas också. Även postkolonialism väger in i analysen.  I Dune: Messiah är vattnet, människan och planeten starkt kopplade till varandra. Människan utgår från sin antropocentriska världssyn och betraktar planeten som en plats vilken kan förbättras till människans fördel. Eftersom fremenfolkets kultur är djupt grundad i naturen skapar terraformningen av planeten en identitetskris. Kulturen blir kopplingen som får människan att vilja bevara planeten som den är. Vattnets värde kulturellt men även som valuta gör den till en maktskapande vara. För människan är terraformningen en strävan mot förbättring, vilket speglar de teman av stora strukturer som finns genomgående i Dune-serien. Den här långsiktiga visionen som Frank Herbert målar upp, avbildar människan med en större medvetenhet, en möjlighet att tänka stort. Jag menar (likt andra inom ekokritiken) att detta större tänkande är en väg framåt som ger mänskligheten ett större perspektiv – därmed förståelse av – ekologiska förhållanden. / In Dune: Messiah (1969) the climate changes due to terraforming caused by humans. Water is introduced on the planet Arrakis, and this affects the planet’s ecology as well as the people’s culture. This paper is an exploration of Frank Herbert’s novel, theoretically anchored in ecocriticism and thematically in water, its nature of existence, relationship to humankind and the planet. Humanity’s awareness of themselves as a species on the planet, and their cultural connection to both the planet and water is central to the analysis. The climate-change which occurs when humanity terraforms the planet and how this affects humankind is also touched upon. Post-colonialism also plays a role in the analysis. Water, people, and the planet are strongly connected to each other in Dune: Messiah. Humans see the planet as a place which can be improved to their own benefit due to their anthropocentric worldview. Because the Fremen culture is deeply rooted in nature, an identity-crisis occurs when the planet is terraformed. It is culture that enables humans to want to preserve the planet as it is. Water is a resource that creates power due to its cultural and economical value. The terraforming is humanity aiming for improvement, which mirrors the themes  of larger structures that can be found continuously in the Dune-series. This long-term vision which Herbert paints, pictures humans with a broader consciousness, a capability to think in a larger magnitude. This I (as others within ecocriticism), consider to be a path forwards which offers a broader perspective – therefore an understanding of – ecological conditions.

H. Rider Haggard's imperial gothic novel, She, A History of Adventure (1887), is a narrative of ruins that speak of a vanished past and presage ends: of empire, of history, of culture. Haggard's novel follows two British adventurers as they travel to Africa in search of a mysterious woman that a potsherd--a ruin in miniature--tasks them with killing. There, they encounter ruin after ruin: pots, roads, caves, canals, sculptures, and more. These ruins serve as sentinels, as walkways, and as homes; they signal, warn, resist, witness, remind, and--not least--exist in a landscape that is anything but empty. Though seemingly inert, the ruins are actants possessing agency and able to influence the people and objects around them. But in Haggard's novel of colonization and conquest, these ruins do not act alone. Instead, they form an assemblage, a group of vibrant materials that collaborate and collude to resist twin onslaughts from ancient Egypt and Victorian Britain. Two accounts thus emerge from the encounter of human and ruin. In one, the ruins establish a symbiotic relationship with their would-be possessor. In the other, the ruins reject the men who seek to make the artifacts part of the narrative of imperialism. In this way, the ruins in She become counteragents of empire, as heroic as Haggard's human characters and worthy of recognition for the pivotal role they play in the novel.

This study came forth from a rereading of Ariel (2015) by Sylvia Plath and "The Laugh of the Medusa" by Hélène Cixous. Medusa was there, in the title, in the unsaid, but not so much directly in the text, she is only mentioned a few times in Cixous' works. You could still read Medusa in the works, but take away the title and you probably wouldn't to the extent that you do. That's how the questions arose, what do people do when they use Medusa in their works? Why do they decide to revive her?  The purpose of this study is to analyse, from a feministic perspective, what poets invoke when using Medusa in their works. The poems analysed are ”Medusa” by Sylvia Plath, ”Medusa” by Carol Ann Duffy, and ”Medusa with the Head of Perseus” by Torrin A. Greathouse.  Medusa, the Gorgon, used and abused, is a symbol for the silenced women. A woman is usually seen as an object by the patriarchal society, something they can do whatever they want with, Medusa included. This study is to show that women can take back their own bodies from the men, however many years it takes, however many people it takes.  Medusa is not a monster; she is just another victim of men’s oppression.