A selection from Stockholm University publication database

• World Literatures: Exploring the Cosmopolitan-Vernacular Exchange

  2018. .

  Book (ed)

  Placing itself within the burgeoning field of world literary studies, the organising principle of this book is that of an open-ended dynamic, namely the cosmopolitan-vernacular exchange.

  As an adaptable comparative fulcrum for literary studies, the notion of the cosmopolitan-vernacular exchange accommodates also highly localised literatures. In this way, it redresses what has repeatedly been identified as a weakness of the world literature paradigm, namely the one-sided focus on literature that accumulates global prestige or makes it on the Euro-American book market.

  How has the vernacular been defined historically? How is it inflected by gender? How are the poles of the vernacular and the cosmopolitan distributed spatially or stylistically in literary narratives? How are cosmopolitan domains of literature incorporated in local literary communities? What are the effects of translation on the encoding of vernacular and cosmopolitan values?

  Ranging across a dozen languages and literature from five continents, these are some of the questions that the contributions attempt to address.

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• Rhythms of Writing: An Anthropology of Irish Literature

  2017. Helena Wulff.

  Book

  This is the first antrhopological study of writers, writing and conteporary literary culture. Drawing on the flourishing literary scene in Ireland as a basis, Helena Wulff explores the social world of contemporary irish writers, examining fiction, novels, shorts stories as well as journalism. 

  The making of a writer's career is built on the "rhythms of writing": long hours of writing in solitude alternate with public events such as book readings and media appearances.  

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• The Anthropologist as Writer: Genres and Contexts in the Twenty-First Century

  2016. .

  Book (ed)

  Writing is crucial to anthropology, but which genres are anthropologists expected to master in the 21th century? This book explores how anthropological writing shapes the intellectual content of the discipline and academic careers. First, chapters identify the different writing genres and contexts anthropologists actually engage with. Second, this book argues for the usefulness and necessity of taking seriously the idea of writing as a craft and of writing across and within genres in new ways. Although academic writing is an anthropologist's primary genre, they also write in many others, from drafting administrative texts and filing reports to composing ethnographically inspired journalism and fiction.

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• Gifts, Unwanted and Ungiven

  2022. Helena Wulff. Anthropology and Humanism 47 (2), 402-408

  Article

  Against a backdrop of gift-giving and reciprocity as keys in building and confirming social relationships in the field, this fictional narrative reveals a string of gift-giving events that did not work out. This outcome is rarely reported on in anthropology, but here one gift was returned immediately, another promised but never produced. There is also the anti-climactic nature of a parting gift when it is time for the fieldworker to exit the field. The setting is Dublin’s literary world, and the fieldwork includes a number of appreciated gifts, though not always in the form of an equal exchange of objects. The occurrence of unwanted and ungiven gifts that recur through the narrative are thorny reminders of the fragility of friendship in the field. The characters in the narrative are composite except for cameo appearances of named writers. 

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• Writing Anthropology

  2021. Helena Wulff.

  Other

  Writing is key in anthropology, as one of its main modes of communication. Teaching, research, publications, and outreach all build on, or consist of, writing. This entry traces how anthropological writing styles have evolved over time according to changing politics in the discipline. It starts out in the late nineteenth century, showing how early writings in the discipline aimed to be objective. While writing anthropology in a literary mode goes a long way back, it was not until the 1970s that writing began to be collectively acknowledged as a craft to be cultivated in the discipline. This led to a boom of experimental ethnographic writing from the 1980s, as part of the ‘writing culture’ debate. The idea behind experimental narratives was that they might convey social life more accurately than conventional academic writing. Today, literary production and culture continue to be a source of inspiration for anthropologists, as well as a topic of study. Anthropological writing ranges from creative nonfiction to memoirs, journalism, and travel writing. Writing in such non-academic genres can be a way to make anthropological approaches and findings more widely known, and can inspire academic writing to become more accessible. Recent developments in anthropological writings include collaborative text production with interlocutors and artists. However, the tendency for experimentation is also held in check, as publishing in academic publication formats and featuring in citation indices is crucial for anthropologists’ careers. Still, as our writing moves increasingly online, there is a growth of flexible formats for publishing, including online books, essays on current affairs, and conversations in journals.

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• Foreword

  2020. Helena Wulff. A Literary Anthropology of Migration and Belonging, vii-xii

  Chapter

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• Writing Truth to Power: Jonas Khemiri’s Work in Stockholm and New York

  2019. Helena Wulff. Anthropology and Humanism 44 (1), 7-19

  Article

  This article explores the work of Swedish writer Jonas Hassen Khemiri, of partly Tunisian origin, in terms of cultural translation and comparison between Stockholm and New York. I discuss three texts by Khemiri in different writing genres: first, an open letter to Sweden’s Minister of Justice, which went viral in 2013 and was also published in the New York Times , about racial profiling in Stockholm; second, the play I Call My Brothers , written in response to a failed terrorist attack in Stockholm in 2010 and staged in New York; third, the award‐winning novel Everything I Don’t Remember (2016b) selected as a 2016 Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year by Joyce Carol Oates. Why would Khemiri’s open letter, play, and novel that address new issues of power, stereotypes, and physical appearance in Sweden matter in the United States, with its deep‐rooted diversity? The conclusion is that the international success of these pieces has nothing to do with Sweden or an interest in Swedish contemporary life but can be understood as local variations on the global themes of terrorist crimes and racial profiling.

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• Disaporic Divides: Location and Orientations of "Home" in Pooneh Rohi's Araben

  2018. Helena Wulff. World literatures, 119-128

  Chapter

  This chapter draws on a literary anthropological project which explores the social world of the young generation of diaspora writers and their work (fiction, plays, journalism) in Sweden. It uncovers experiences of racism in a country which boasts an ethnically inclusive policy while identifying instances of literary cosmopolitanism from within. Pooneh Rohi´s novel The Arab (2013) circles around the idea of home in terms of homelessness, and the designation “stranger” as the protagonist leads his lonely life in snow-covered Stockholm where he moved decades ago from Iran. For “the Arab” is actually Persian, but is taken to be an Arab in the Swedish context. Sweden is not home to him, he is homeless in his heart. A young woman in the novel is also from Iran, but she is so well integrated that people think she was adopted. Her childhood memories from Iran are now a mirage from the past, a fading scent of salt from the sea. Later, her longing for “that part of the room that is invisible in the mirror” gets stronger.

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• Diversifying from Within: Diaspora Writings in Sweden

  2018. Helena Wulff. The Composition of Anthropology, 122-136

  Chapter

  Helena Wulff´s chapter begins with an essay drawing on her ongoing literary anthropological study of diaspora fiction writers and their work in Sweden who, she argues, are diversifying the country from within. The essay engages with the work of Pooneh Rohi born in Iran, who is a new voice while Jonas Hassen Khemiri, of Tunisian background, is an established writer. In addition to writing fiction, they sometimes do journalism. By uncovering often cruel experiences of racism in a country which boasts an inclusive policy, yet has an expanding anti-immigration party (the Sweden Democrats) diaspora writers have an impact on political and cultural debate in Sweden, also because they take on the role as public intellectuals. In her Commentary, Wulff explains how Text came about, how it goes back to her intellectual history that was founded during her upbringing when she first became a habitual reader, and later with her education in comparative literature and anthropology that eventually would make her an anthropological writer. Inspired by her research on the ballet world where desire and technique are key for creativity to spring up, Wulff suggests that this is the case in anthropological writing, as well. As to the recent genealogy of the essay, it is an account of preparations for a major multi-disciplinary research program on world literatures which was funded in 2016.      

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• Foreword New York: Lexington Books

  2018. Helena Wulff. Apprenticeship Pilgrimage, vii-xi

  Chapter

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• Greater Than Its Size: Ireland in Literature and Life

  2017. Helena Wulff. Small Countries, 301-316

  Chapter

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• Manhattan as a Magnet: Place and Circulation among young Swedes

  2017. Helena Wulff. America observed, 31-50

  Chapter

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• Introducing the Anthropologist as Writer: Across and Within Genres

  2016. Helena Wulff. The Anthropologist as Writer, 1-18

  Chapter

  Taking existing conversations in anthropology as a point of departure, the mission of this volume is twofold: first, to identify different writing genres that anthropologists actually engage with; second, to argue for the usefulness and necessity for anthropologists of taking  writing as a craft seriously and of writing across and within genres in new ways. This introductory chapter contextualizes anthropological writing historically and theoretically, moves on to my own experience of writing cultural (dance) journalism as one instance of broadening anthropological writing, and concludes by offering an overview of ways of writing anthropology as discussed in the following chapters: in relation to the making of an anthropological career, ethnographic writing, journalistic and popular writing, and writing across genres. 

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• Jazz i Ghana: musik som kosmopolitism

  2015. Helena Wulff. Kulturella perspektiv - Svensk etnologisk tidskrift 24 (2), 34-38

  Article

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• In Favour of Flexible Forms: Multi-Sited Fieldwork

  2015. Helena Wulff. Social Anthropology 23 (3), 355-357

  Article

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• The Pains and Peaks of Being a Ballerina in London

  2015. Helena Wulff. A World of Work, 207-220

  Chapter

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• Ireland in the World, the World in Ireland

  2015. Helena Wulff. American Anthropologist 117 (1), 142-142

  Article

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• Dance, Anthropology of

  2015. Helena Wulff. International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, 666-670

  Chapter

  Dance as a topic for systematic anthropological investigation was established in the 1960s. As the Western category of dance did not always work in a cross-cultural perspective, bounded rhythmical movements were identified, as well as dance events. Dance is an expression of wider social and cultural situations, often indicating transition or conflict, as well as unity. Dance anthropologists study all forms of dance, Western and non-Western, ranging from ritual dance and social dance to streetdance and staged dance performance. Dance and movement are understood in relation to theories of the body and gender, and to ethnicity, nationalism, and transnationality.

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