Bøger udgivet af Södertörns högskola

This report examines the historical image of Sweden in the United States against the backdrop of recent debates on how Sweden is portrayed abroad. The Swedish–American relationship is important for Sweden – culturally, economically, and politically. This is highly relevant given current security concerns and Sweden’s recent NATO application.The USA is also a key arena for the global dissemination of perceptions about Sweden, which is critical in today’s increasingly polarized media landscape. The report does not aim to present a comprehensive overview of the entirety of American image of Sweden but focuses on events and occasions where attention to Sweden and Swedish affairs has both quantitatively intensified and qualitatively changed.

Vilken betydelse kan konsten ha mot bakgrund av pågående klimatförändringar? Hur gestaltas människans omvandlingar av jorden, havet och atmosfären i konst och visuell kultur?Här introduceras forskningsfältet ekologisk konstvetenskap i Sverige. Läsaren får möta konstvetenskapens fossila sammanhang, miljö- och havshumaniora, gestaltade istider och gränsöverskridande artivism. Författarna utforskar vidare trädgårdars påverkan på biologisk mångfald, landskap som tecken på exploatering av naturresurser samt nya sätt att metodiskt närma sig ekokritik och ekologiskt tänkande inom konst- och bildvetenskap.Syftet med boken är att ringa in, exemplifiera och utveckla en ekologisk, hållbar konstvetenskap, som på kreativa och konstruktiva sätt ytterst kan bidra till att värna jordens ekosystem.

As the population increases, urban environments across the globe are expanding and becoming denser. In conjunction with this, neoliberal capitalist policies impact how urban land is used, and who is given access to it. Changes in the urban landscape do not go uncontested, however. The rise of collective gardens is one example of action where people challenge dominant rationales of urban land use. These gardens emphasise collective management and publicly-oriented educational and cultural programming. They are also places where alternative norms of urban life are nurtured. What are these alternative norms, how are they nurtured, and what does this tell us about contemporary experiences of urban life in the context of neoliberal capitalism?

The idea of the Viking is a figure with wide appeal and a large presence in popular culture. The Viking motif also has long-standing associations with normative masculinity, reactionary values, and even white supremacy. This study examines a common but understudied arena of the popular Viking: popular fantasy literature. More specifically, it looks at a recent subgenre called gritty fantasy. First developed in the 2000s, gritty fantasy is deeply invested in and revolves around contemporary concerns regarding masculinity, masculine failure, and narratives of masculinity in crisis. The study emerges from queer engagements with masculinity and the method of queer reading, asking how to understand the seemingly ubiquitous masculinity of the Viking and its popularity beyond an assumed direct relation to men or men’s concerns, and how this relates to ideas about the Nordics and the North.

Friendship between men is a key theme in most novels by Hermann Hesse, one of the most widely read German-language authors of the twentieth century and recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946. Hesse’s protagonists are usually depicted as outsiders who come to know themselves in an intimate bond with another man. The friend is almost always portrayed as rebellious, beautiful, enigmatic, and inspiring, and comes to play a key role in the protagonist’s personal development and journey through life. Outsiders and Others draws on queer theories and queer concepts to explore how characters in Hesse’s fiction intersect with and connote queerness—such as homoeroticism and nonconformism—and argues that the friendships at the center of Hesse’s stories are queer friendships that challenge heteronormative conceptions of relationality, sexuality, and desire. With readings of the novels Peter Camenzind (1904) and Der Steppenwolf (1927), this dissertation demonstrates that queerness is an essential element in Hesse’s frequent depictions of friendship. Oscar von Seth (born 1981) is based at the Department for Comparative Literature at Södertörn University, Stockholm. His research interests include queer theory, masculinities, and representations of disability, animality, and race in literature. In addition to his academic work, he is the author of the novel Snö som föll i fjol (“Yesterday’s News,” Calidris, 2017).

Omförhandlingar: Den offentliga konstens roll efter millennieskiftet är ett resultat av en uppdragsforskning som Statens konstråd beställt av ämnet Konstvetenskap på Södertörns högskola. Boken tar avstamp i den komplexa situation som omgärdar offentlig permanent och tillfällig konst, beställd och sanktionerad av privata eller offentliga medel, eller tillkommen på enskilda initiativ. Här diskuteras konstens roll som pågående projekt eller just konstverk, dess funktion som värdeskapande, trygghetsskapande, minnesmärke liksom som del av korta deltagandeprocesser och som verkande över lång tid.

The two topics highlighted in this volume, entrepreneurship and co-operatives, and education within these fields, may be regarded as essentially disparate themes. However, looking more closely it is apparent that these have some interesting intersections. The main focus relates to innovation and entrepreneurship among co-operatives, the public sector, and the private sectorThis work is a product of the collaboration between Södertörn University in Stockholm, Sweden, and Moshi Co-operative University in Moshi, Tanzania. In both countries we aim to understand, how enterprises with different ownership forms and other kinds of state and private organizations contribute to economic growth or decline. The volume is an overview of research about entrepreneurship and co-operatives but also of education in these areas. The intention is to contribute to the promotion of research on these topics in both countries and enhance future collaboration between the two Universities.