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According to the principle of sufficient reason we should always try to give sufficient reasons for the truth (or high probability) of our opinions. All such attempts lead to a trilemma of justification: they force us to choose between infinite regress, logical circle, or dogmatism. According to the principle of critical testing we should always try to test our opinions critically. It is reasonable to claim that opinions that has survived critical tests are true. Such truthclaims are conjectural and do not confront us with any trilemma of justification. Scientific theories can be tested through observations and experiments. Statements about observations and experiments can be tested by experience. Although Critical Rationalism is a philosophical position, it can also be critically discussed. If we follow the principle of critical testing, no trilemma of justification arises when we claim that it is reasonable to accept Critical Rationalism. This opens the way for a critical philosophy stressing the fallibility of human knowledge.

The literary subgenre of Female Gothic primarily explores the specific fear and suffering of women trapped, oppressed and disciplined by patriarchy. As long as the text is identifiable as fiction, the reader may remain at a safe distance from the terrors described, but by using her imagination and empathy, she can experience the feelings of the frightened heroine by proxy. In addition, the Gothic novel provides the female reader with an opportunity to recognize the perilous position of being a woman in any society permeated by gender inequality, and thus experience a fear closely linked to her own particular circumstances. One can consequently argue that the Female Gothic is able to induce two kinds of fear - one with an indirect and potentially pleasurable impact and one with a direct, unpleasant impact on the female reader. In this chapter I explore how certain recurring themes in the Female Gothic, such as the repetition compulsion described by Michelle A. Massé, are employed in the autobiographical fiction (autofiction) by Swedish author Carina Rydberg. By using Rydberg as a case study, and by juxtaposing her works to more traditional Gothic novels, I will argue that the combination of autofictional and Gothic elements fundamentally changes how and why the female reader experiences fear. As the autobiographic details peel away the protection fiction provides, the reader is forced to either face the reality of female oppression, or use the singularity of autobiography to distance herself from the terrifying collective trauma of gender inequality. In either case, the hybrid of autofiction and the Gothic precludes the pleasurable experience of sublime terror specifically associated with classic Gothic fiction. Instead, the reader is forced to choose between denying all feelings of fear or acknowledging her own situation as a woman in a gender divided culture.

This dissertation examines the role of the spatial in four works of digital interactive literature. These works are Dreamaphage by Jason Nelson (2003), Last Meal Requested by Sachiko Hayashi (2003), Façade by Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern (2005) and Egypt: The Book of Going Forth by Day by M. D. Coverley (2006). The study employs an original analytical method based on close reading and spatial analysis, which combines narrative, design and interaction theories. The resulting critique argues that the spatial components of the digital works define reader interaction and the narratives that result from it. This is one of very few in-depth studies grounded in the close reading of the spatial in digital interactive literature.

Over five chapters, the dissertation analyzes the four digital works according to three common areas. Firstly, the prefaces, design and addressivity are present in each. Secondly, each of the works relies on the spatial for both interaction and the meanings that result. Thirdly, the anticipation of responses from a reader is evaluated within the interactive properties of each work. This anticipation is coordinated across the written text, moving and still images, representations of places, characters, audio and navigable spaces. The similar divisions of form, the role of the spatial and the anticipation of responses provide the basic structure for analysis. As a result, the analytical chapters open with an investigation of the prefaces, move on to the design and conclude with how the spaces of the digital works can be addressive or anticipate responses. In each chapter representations of space and representational space are described in relation to the influence they have upon the potentials for reader interaction as spatial practice. This interaction includes interpretation, as well as those elements associated with the ergodic, or the effort that defines the reception of the digital interactive texts.

The opening chapter sets out the relevant theory related to space, interaction and narrative in digital literature. Chapter two presents the methodology for close reading the spatial components of the digital texts in relation to their role in interaction and narrative development. Chapter three assesses the prefaces as paratextual thresholds to the digital works and how they set up the spaces for reader engagement. The next chapter takes up the design of the digital works and its part in the formation of space and how this controls interaction. The fifth chapter looks at the addressivity of the spatial and how it contributes to the possibilities for interaction and narrative. The dissertation argues for the dominance of the spatial as a factor within the formation of narrative through interaction in digital literature, with implications across contemporary storytelling and narrative theory.

This work aims to examine pachakuti as the patent mytheme found in three poems written by different indigenous poets: “Todo está dicho” (“Everything has been said”) by Fredy Chakangana, “La Tórtola, pájaro melancólico” (“The turtledove, Melancholic bird”) by Lorenzo Ayllapán, and “Vivir-Morir” (“To live-to die”) by Vito Apüshana. Pachakuti is a key concept in Andean literature, both in mythological and cosmological tales, and in contemporary indigenous narrative. Pachakuti is interpreted to symbolize a re-balancing of the world through a chaotic chain of events that manifests itself as a catastrophe or an upheaval of the order of things. As pachakuti becomes a recurrent motif (patent mytheme) in the chosen poems, it is explored to show a different narrative perspective of collapse and extinction, as well as to expose how earth-beings (latent mytheme) acquire their own agency in the poems and denounce modern forms of extractivism (such as deforestation and water contamination). Through the earth-beings’ voices the poems contribute to reveal new perspectives about collapse and extinction anchored in indigenous narratives from the Global South.

This essay’s main goal is to analyse Rosario Castellanos’s play El eterno femenino, published in 1975. Castellanos was an essayist, a poet, and novelist and played an important role for the feminist movement in Mexico during her time. In her work, she presents a stereotyped image of the Mexican woman and her history. Using humour and irony, she creates a satire which plays with the myth of the eternal feminine and ridicule gender stereotypes. This literary analysis is based on a feminist perspective. By examining the work through its social and political context and putting it in dialogue with the feminist literary theories, the primary aim is to receive a better understanding of the importance of the work. Having in mind the historical context of the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s in Mexico and the modern feminist literary criticism which took off in the late 1960s, the investigation focuses on the relation between the play and the situation of the Mexican women and their position in society as well as the aspects of the understanding of gender historically. The results show us how the woman is presented, in the traditional roles of the Mexican society, as the virgin, the married woman, the mother and the housewife in a humoristic way. The connection between the work and the feminist wave in Mexico during the 1970s is seen through the protagonist Lupita who becomes aware of a historical and contemporary oppression. Castellanos creates a fictional universe where the woman can finally tell her own story. We discover the traditional role of women as well as their battle against it.

The sagas of Icelanders contain a great wealth of personal names both of historical and fictional nature. Personal names function both as identifiers for individuals but also evoke associations that supersede the name’s lexical or identifying meaning, for example, cultural or social associations such as age, ethnicity, and ideology. This article examines personal names as a source within a source and appraises the use of literary and socio-onomastics in the context of the Íslendingasögur using the example of the elusive difference between “Icelanders” and “Norwegians” in the sagas. The onomastic analysis is based on seven shorter tales and explores the differences in personal names in Icelandic and Norwegian individuals. Based on the onomastic data gathered, this article concludes that there are certain regional differences in name-giving visible in the sagas and that saga authors either had authentic onomastic material at hand or tried to emulate realistic personal names.

This master’s degree essays aim was to analyse and to compare the descriptions of Sami people in three different types of sagas: Legendary Sagas, Sagas of Icelanders and Kings’ sagas. For this contribution, four Legendary Sagas, two Sagas of Icelanders and two Kings’ sagas were examined. The working hypothesis was, that sagas that were written closer to the narrative time were to be more realistic than episodes in sagas that were written significantly later. The results of the analysis of these sagas indicate that there are no significant differences between the different types of sagas and that the presentation of Sami people in these sagas is more affected by the writers worldview and intentions than the time they were written.

The Íslendingasögur provide a great wealth of personal names, both of historical and possibly fictional nature, which allows for an examination of historical and literary name-giving practices before and during the saga-writing age. Prosoponyms – personal names – in Old Norse sources have only been studied to a limited extent and very rarely in the context of the Íslendingasögur, which is surprising given the sheer amount of personal names mentioned in the Sagas.

Personal names do not only function as identifiers for individuals but also serve as mirrors of the society and culture using them. Personal names are reflections of the community that gives these names to individuals. As such, these personal names can express family ties and affiliations to a certain group of people, and both individual and communal identity. It is therefore worth examining the personal names in the Íslendingasögur from the perspective of socio-onomastics to explore the social, cultural and identity related implications of name-giving traditions and practices, especially in the context of Icelandic identity. 

The Íslendingasögur often denote an elusive difference in Scandinavian/Norwegian and Icelandic identity and naming traditions are not to be forgotten as a contributing factor of these differences in perceived identity. 

A socio-onomastic analysis of the personal names mentioned in the Íslendingasögur has not only the potential for further insight into the sense of community and Icelandic identity during the saga-writing age but also furthers the advancement of historical and literary socio-onomastics in the field of Old Norse Studies. 

This thesis discusses how Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials can be interpreted using Louis Althusser’s concept of ideology. The dæmon is a distinct feature of the world of His Dark Materials and one that is of central importance to the narrative. The dæmon’s shape, which is in the form of an animal, has a profound effect on the lives of characters. The narrative presents this shape as a representation of the inner nature of each character. However, a closer look reveals that this shape is also strongly correlated to each character’s class. Althusser’s theories on ideology, hailing, and interpellation are here used to explain how the dæmon’s shape comes to be determined by the character’s class (is hailed and interpellated as a subject into ideology) and to show that the correlation between class and shape begins even before the dæmon’s shape becomes permanent. The thesis also aims to prove that the ideology presented in the narrative functions to make each character accept the shape his or her dæmon has settled into and to suggest some possible consequences of this, such as the confirmation and reaffirmation of the rigid class structures, which creates a society that is not defined by choice despite nature but by absence of choice because of class.

Denna studie undersöker romanen „Beschreibung einer Krabbenwanderung“ av Karosh Taha med hjälp av postkoloniala teorier. I analysen fokuseras på hur huvudaktören Sanaa möter normer och synvinklar i sina diskurser med andra hybrida subjekt i det Tredje rummet (Artikulationsraum), omförhandlar tankesätt och transformeras mot nya möjligheter och därmed ett mer självständigt, oberoende liv. Analysen baseras på Homi Bhabhas postkoloniala hybridiseringsteori med fokus på det Tredje rummet (Artikulationsraum). I arbetet presenteras en allmän beskrivning om postkoloniala teorier samt begrepp och litteraturvetenskapliga studier och deras användning i studier av litteratur som utspelar sig i migrantmiljö. Därtill följer ett avsnitt med en mer detaljerad förklaring av Bhabhas teori om det Tredje rummet. Genom close reading analyseras texten avseende hybrida egenskaper samt diskurser som förs bland nyckelaktörer i tre olika Tredje rum. Med hjälp av wide reading belyses den kulturella och historiska kontexten. Analysen har lett fram till slutsatsen att Taha skapat ett modernt och konstruktivt narrativ om postkoloniala förhållanden och om migration.

Sammanfattning

Bakgrund På 1960-talet blev hem- och konsumentkunskap ett obligatoriskt ämne för både flickor och pojkar. Sedan dess har både styrdokument och läromedel förändrats flertalet gånger. Majoriteten av lärare använder läromedel som stöd till sin planering, vilket även eleverna kan gynnas av. I slutet av 1990-talet diskuterades miljöfrågan av FN som ansåg att hållbara val behövde implementeras i skolundervisningen, både för vuxna och för barn, för att det skulle bli en nödvändig förändring globalt. Med det i åtanke är det av intresse att se hur miljöperspektivet har förändrats i läromedlen under de senaste 60 åren.

Syfte Syftet är att undersöka hur läromedel i hem- och konsumentkunskap, med fokus på klimat- och miljöperspektivet, har förändrats över tid i grundskolan för årskurserna 7–9. Hur har klimat- och miljöfrågan i läromedlet sett ut och vad har begreppet ‘miljö’ inneburit i läromedlen vid de olika årtiondena?

Metoder De bäst lämpade metoderna för denna studie är dels diskursanalys då de miljörelaterade begreppen i läromedlen haft varierande betydelse, dels har vi använt en kvantitativ metod för att belysa progressionen i läromedlen. När man använder sig av både en kvalitativ och kvantitativ metod kallas det för en mixad metod vilket vi valt att använda för att öka studiens trovärdighet. Vid en undersökning av en text och hur de för studien aktuella begreppen förhåller sig till varandra är det en praktisk & kritisk diskursanalys som utförs.

Resultat Studien har visat att de miljörelaterade diskurserna haft en omfattande progression då de tidiga läromedlen har sitt fokus på boendemiljön medan de senare har utvecklats och fått en bredare innebörd. Först från år 1994 tydliggör böckerna dels hur konsumenterna med hjälp av miljömärkningar kan göra hållbara val, dels vad som sker med miljön globalt omförändringar uteblir.

Slutsats Kan brister av miljörelaterade begrepp i de tidiga läromedlen föranlett till den omfattande klimatpåverkan? Undervisningen bör förmedla vilka förändringar vi behöver tillämpa för att leva mer hållbart. Därmed behöver miljörelaterade frågor ha en central roll i lärostoffet, med stöd av ämnesadekvat innehåll i läromedlen.

The depths of the forest carry ancient secrets. In the novel Stallo (2012), written by Stefan Spjut, trolls go unnoticed – hiding in plain sight through metamorphosis. They shapeshift into animals that are already known to exist and with telepathic abilities they nestle their way into the minds of the characters. Through these qualities the trolls in the novel continuously transgress and dissolve the world as the characters know it. In the novel the reader gains information only through a human perspective. The anthropocentric narrative presents a world similar to the reader’s – one built up around strict frameworks and sets of species. Where man is viewed as separate from nature and where all living creatures are expected to behave in a certain way. I argue that by dissolving these frames, the trolls in Stallo act as an implication to question through which lens the reader view the world. What I aim to show in the following essay is how Stallo, through the portrayal of trolls and their ecological transgressions, can be considered as criticism towards a view of nature as something separate to man and therefore also a criticism towards an anthropocentric view of the world. 

Orienting Towards the Phenomenal Woman: Presenting Mia Skaringer in Her Stage Show Horny as Hell and Really Holy The article presents the Swedish comedian Mia Skaringer and analyzes her one-woman stage show Horny as Hell and Really Holy from 2010. The analysis combines feminist scholar Sara Ahmed's theory of emotion with Simone de Beauvoir's theory of the situated body, but is also influenced by one of the early theatre phenomenologists, Bert O. States, who combined phenomenology and semiotics in a 'binocular vision'. The article scrutinizes the way Skaringer narrates her personal story in the performance, employing such concepts as personal genealogy and intermedial bricolage. Above all, it addresses Skaringer's ironical treatment of the hardships of being and becoming a woman, which Simone de Beauvoir problematized back in 1949 when she declared that woman is the 'second sex'. Drawing on Ahmed's theories of stickiness and circulating objects of emotion, the article investigates how Skaringer uses her situated body in the performance.

I uppsatsen har jag undersökt gestaltningen av katten i Einar Norelius Petter och hans 4 getter, Sven Nordqvist Pettson tältar samt Mats Jonsson Världens räddaste katt. Syftet var att undersöka gestaltningen av katten och dess relation till människan och andra djur för att få fram synen på katten som speglas i böckerna. För att undersöka detta har jag gjort textnära läsningar av bilderböckerna. Jag har även använt mig av människa-djurstudier i undersökningen av relationen mellan människa och katt. Studien visar på att gestaltningen av katten skiljer sig åt i graden av antropomorfisering som har svängt från att vara helt eller delvis antropomorfiserad till att inte ha några antropomorfa drag. Hierarkin mellan människa, katt och andra djur som getter, möss och hönor var genomgående lika i samtliga verk där människan står högst och getter och hönor står lägst. Katten befinner sig i mitten av hierarkin och står djurvännen närmast i sin roll som sällskapsdjur. Gestaltningarna förmedlar en syn på katten som en uppskattad följeslagare, (lek)kamrat och ett sällskap av värde.

A study has been undertaken of the biblical prefaces of Mikael Agricola. All the prefaces are based on those of Luther and/or translations of the same in the Swedish Bible of 1541 (GVB).

The New Testament prefaces, like GVB, keep closely to the originals. There are however visual differences — in punctuation, capital letter usage and paragraphing. The literal translation makes the material very suitable for a study of Agricola's use of capital letters and punctuation in comparison with the Lutheran Bible and GVB. The material is too limited for any conclusions to be drawn about the principles underlying paragraphing.

Agricola, like Luther (from 1539 onwards) and GVB, sometimes uses capital initial letters in the substantive designations of

God and Christ

the Holy Spirit

the Bible and its books

the Church and its sections

occupations

nationalities

Adjectives relating to the above groups may also have capital initials. Personal pronouns relating to God or important persons may also be written with capital initials. Unlike the originals, Agricola's texts may also give prominence to other pronouns than the personal, to verbs, adverbs, numerals and intensifies.

The punctuation corresponds partly with present usage: complete clauses are usually separated by punctuation marks. One basic difference is that in Agricola, Luther and GVB breathing pauses for reading aloud are indicated with commas or full stops. As Agricola stressed his utterances differently from his models, it follows that his punctuation differs from theirs.

Agricola's prefaces to Old Testament writings are also based on Luther's, but only two of them are direct translations. Agricola's exclusions and additions have been studied. The former include many of the brief descriptions of contents in Luther's prefaces. The additions are interesting; sometimes Agricola does not accept Luther's brief biographical summaries about the authors of various biblical books, and uses instead Hieronymus' prefaces in Vulgata. He also refers to the old Jewish work on the human condition, Seder Olam. Agricola's longest preface, to the Psalms, is very much his own. A few pages are devoted to Agricola's summary of commentaries on the Psalms made by two Fathers of the Church — Augustinus Aurelius and Basilius the Great. Here Agricola makes generous use of the popular stylistic device of the time — amplification, an accumulation of more or less synonymous expressions for the same idea. Even in sentences directly translated from Luther and GVB, Agricola often extends the amplifications.

Agricola's four rhyming prefaces are not based on any model at all. They were written in the Germanic doggerel metre, and have much in common with late mediaeval rhyming chronicles. Agricola's often drastic way of expressing himself makes delightful reading.

Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka vilka femininiteter de kvinnliga huvudkaraktärerna i Kittyböckerna uppvisar och om dessa skiljer sig åt mellan böckerna från 1960-talet och de från 2000-talet. Metoden som används är diskursteori och jag valde ut sex Kittyböcker som analyseras genom att identifiera viktiga tecken som diskurserna består av. Resultatet visar att fyra femininiteter formas tydligt i böckerna: Den Duktiga Flickan, Flicknormen, Hjältinnan och Pojkflickan. Den Duktiga Flickan utmärks bland annat genom nodalpunkten duktig, Flicknormen genom sin romantiska sida, Hjältinnan genom sitt ledarskap och Pojkflickan framträder genom sin pojkaktighet. Femininiteterna skiljer sig bara marginellt åt mellan 1960-talet och 2000-talet.

This article deals with 121 exercises in self-trans-lation by the Colombian poet Amílcar Osorio, which were found in his personal archive. In these poems, at first sight English translations from his poetry book Vana Stanza, we can actually observe exercises of self-translation, but also in-cursions into concrete and visual poetry. We consider Vana Stanza to be an incomplete work that only partly portrays Os-orio's poetic production. In the archive, we manage to expand on the poet’s experimental explorations in which a dialogue not only between different semiotic systems but also between two languages is evident.

In the eerie world of Gothic literature, sound represents a source of fear, anxiety, and discomfort, and it mostly affects its listeners through the invisible character of the experience. Sound is integral to nineteenth-century Gothic short stories with their panoply of liminal and polyphonic oppositions, as well as a claustrophobic feel of spaces, fearful listeners, and the return of the repressed. The meaning of sound in the perceived environment entangles discussions about the way Gothic literature represents and registers sound in its connection with space and listener. This thesis examines literary soundscapes, or a combination of sounds and sound patterns, in Gothic short stories of nineteenth-century writers Edgar Allan Poe, Samuel Warren, Matthew Phipps Shiel, Edith Nesbit, Phoebe Yates Pember, William Mudford, William Maginn, John Galt, and Charles Lever. Through close reading of the material, my study explores how sound engages with space and listener in four settings: houses, bedrooms, torture chambers, and burial grounds. By linking the auditory dimension and the spatial features, it is argued that soundscapes establish a system of communication that is essential for the formation and reconstruction of the listener’s sense of identity through empowering or disempowering acoustic trials. The four types of Gothic settings structure the dissertation, where each chapter has a story by Edgar Allan Poe as its nucleus. First I analyze the acoustic landscape of a house in its representation and influence on the listener. The acoustic diversity and multi-dimensionality of Gothic houses transgress into the imaginary acoustic landscapes and endanger the listeners. Next, I examine the private audible space of a (bed)room. The stories feature the uncanny sound of a heartbeat that becomes a destabilizing force and communicates the return of the repressed. I proceed to the interrelationship of sound, torture, and the victim in the (in)voluntary torture chambers. Finally, I focus on the burial grounds through the perspective of the protagonist confined in the limitations of the body and the surroundings. In its plurality of forms, sound becomes a key to self-image and self-assertion through the transformative acoustic experience. Gothic houses, rooms, and torture chambers represent a mutable and controlling power with an agency of living, breathing, and tormenting animated entity. The study reveals the forms of listening aggravated with physical or mental affliction that both engage with and destabilize medical frameworks. I expose temporality in Gothic soundscapes and underscore liminality as endemic both to the facets of Gothic soundscapes and the interconnection between the visual and the aural. In the coda, I highlight the reinvention of Gothic soundscapes in animated adaptations that intertwine aesthetic enjoyment and interpretative judgement.  

This is a close study of the LIFE photo-essay "A Writer's Land of Primitive, Eloquent Beauty: Storied World of Africa" (1961) by Eliot Elisofon. His double-faced essay contains eighteen photos, which he took during an extended travel on the continent in September-December 1959, and fourteen literary extracts from the Western canon that accompany the visual material. I identify the socio-political context and the visual/literary conventions within which the photos were taken, explore the photo-essay's racist story-telling and panoptic and mythological viewing of Africa and allege, tentatively, the LIFE essay's duplicitous role in Cold War American politics of the time. The LIFE essay solidified time-worn mythological concepts of Africa championing them as pseudo-historical facts with particular regions as their strongholds. East Africa was depicted as Animal Eden; Apartheid's South Africa, as balanced Boer Freedom; Congo, as the Land of Savagery; West Africa, as Nakedness. The purpose of the LIFE essay, I demonstrate, was to trivialize and demonize the post-colonial process in Africa. Eliot Elisofon's 1959 travel contained three other projects, two of which (a coverage of "new" Nigeria and extensive aerial expeditions) were implicated in the same LIFE narrative of Cold War stewardship. I discuss these two only provisionally.

The article discusses and examines Larsson’s thus far five crime fiction novels to investigate how the formation of identity are connected to the peripheral North – the “real” North of the globally popular crime fiction subgenre Nordic Noir. Certain key concepts will be used to examine the novels: hyperlocalisation, neo-romanticism, anthropomorphism, borders, and history. This article will argue that in Åsa Larsson’s novels, place and its nature, borders and history are crucial in identity formation, and the place with its nature, climate and animals is an active agent in all the narratives.

This study examines the three novels

Cat s Eye, The Robber Bride, and Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood. It focuses on the female characters and their relationships to each other: Their friendships are formed in a patriarchally structured environment and are therefore arenas for defending and controlling the norms of such a structure. The women continually watch each other and themselves, and through the power exercise of watching, femininity is constructed. Atwood describes acts of dialogic storytelling as a means to find options to gendered behavior.

Silence, voice and power are the main themes in this essay. The purpose is to analyze how the silence is used as an instrument for control, and how it can be used strategically to take power, but also as a resistance against the power. The novel The Vegetarian by Han Kang and the autobiography novel on verse, brown girl dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson are the core of this essay. This essay focuses on how the characters break the silence, and how they use the silence strategically to find their voice in a society that systematically works to keep women, children and men silent.

     The silence works in specific ways in all kinds of situations, to explore the complexity of the power dimensions a comparative analysis allows the themes to emerge and enlighten each other’s diversity. With help from Rebecca Solnit in Alla frågors moder, Audre Lorde in Your silence will not protect you and Michel Foucault’s Diskursens ordning, among other voices, the essay aims to search for how the silence can work as a strategy and what it means to speak. The essay shows how the oppressing silence is broken in brown girl dreaming, and how the voice becomes the power, but also how the silence was used in the African-American Civil Rights Movement as an act of resistance. The essays also analyze the female main character in The Vegetarian, who makes a journey from an oppressed woman where the patriarchal men violate her silence and forcing her to speak, to an existence where silence, life and growth thrives.

    The silence has its own language and sometimes, it’s louder than words. 

This study examines which historical themes that occur in four textbooks used toteach German in grade nine in Sweden. The study also examines the presentation of the historical themes in said textbooks. The methods used consist of the factual textanalysis and the critical discourse analysis. The results show that the identifiedhistorical themes focus on the history of Germany and the historical period from the first world war to the reunification of Germany. The results also show that thetextbooks have different presentations of different historical themes. Some historical themes that are presented in similar ways across the textbooks are however that resistance is illuminated in descriptions of Nazism and that famous historical persons are positively described. In light of the results, the conclusions, among others, are that the textbooks use a careful description of Nazism but a positive description of German culture.

David Hamilton responded to questions Williams e-mailed to him to prepare for an interview; but they were never able to visit. His answers reveal a view that values built upon throughout his life have shaped his approach to formal evaluation and research AND his life choices as well.

In fiction written from the outside, i. e., not by the indigenous population, an Arctic setting has long been used to emphasise the tough and heroic qualities of predominantly male main characters. The primary genres have been adventure stories and thrillers, with the region depicted as a natural rather than a social world. But there is also a counter-tradition where the Arctic is perceived as the route to or the place of an alternative world. Such utopian, or Arctopian works, appear in the nineteenth century when Arctic exploration maintained public interest and seem to reappear in the form of so-called cli-fi or climate fiction today. The works usually describe new forms of social organisation, and as a result, they contribute to changing persistent ideas about the Arctic as pristine nature. At the same time, genre characteristics rely on conventional ideas of the Arctic as empty space, which means that fantasies of the region continue to play a comparatively important role, despite increasing knowledge about actual conditions.

The Irish women writers who published in the first fifty volumes of the Nineteenth Century are connected by class, education and social networks. Their contributions demonstrate that they negotiated a public space where a female perspective was neither invited nor necessarily encouraged. In many cases, the writers utilised the Victorian audience's fascination with travel, enclosing their political and social messages in the popular format of the travelogue. In other cases, they addressed philosophical and moral questions in an idiosyncratic, personal manner or in semi-fictional form. There is no evidence of any particular feminine technique, however, and certainly no consensus of opinion, neither regarding Irish or gender politics. Studying them as a collective and foregrounding the publication channel rather than the thematic or political content however highlights some of their unconscious strategies as well as their diversity of outlook and style, broadening the understanding of how women fashioned their public roles.