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Louise Thanem Wallenberg

About me

I have a PhD in film studies and I am professor of fashion studies. 

Teaching

I teach qualitative methods on the master level in fashion studies and I am in charge of the thesis course that runs during the last semester on the MA-programme. In addition, I supervise bachelor students, master students and PhD candidates. 

Research

In my research, which is interdisciplinary, I combine theoretical perspectives, qualitative methods and materials belonging to the areas of fashion studies, film studies, gender studies and queer theory. I am also interested in work life questions and in organizations and I often collaborate with scholars in the Humanities and the Social Sciences.

Research projects

Cultural Colonialism

Project that have been awarded funding from the Area Committee for Humanities, Stockholm University, call for proposals to promote new research and education collaborations in profile areas.

Research

Publications

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

  • Now about all these women in the Swedish film industry

    2023. Louise Wallenberg (et al.).

    Book

    In the aftermath of the MeToo movement, during an ongoing pandemic, and in the midst of repeated demands for a 50/50 split between men and women in above-the-line positions, this book analyzes and interrogates the politics of gender focusing on the Swedish film industry, often considered to be the most "gender equal" film industry worldwide. While this gender equality (with a considerable proportion of women behind the camera) is much due to policies carried out of the state funded Swedish Film Institute, women filmmakers in Sweden still struggle with the same problems as do women in other national film industries. These problems entail having smaller production and distribution budgets than men and working in an environment involving recurring scandals of gender discrimination and sexual harassment.

    This open access book looks behind the statistics and explores the often complex cultural, legal, and political conditions under which women have entered a male-dominated industry and discusses women’s strategies and efforts to promote change while providing evidence on how women’s presence has challenged the industry by provoking critical reactions and introducing new ways to portray women on screen. Using a wide range of different sources (e.g. archival material, laws, contracts, films, biographical materials, and interviews), the book tells the history of the rise of gender equality efforts undertaken by the Swedish Film Institute and investigates women’s possibilities to manage the rights to their work. It offers compelling portraits of pioneering women who have worked in or in relation to the industry and looks at the experiences of women currently working in the film industry.

    Read more about Now about all these women in the Swedish film industry

  • Ingmar Bergman at the Crossroads: Between Theory and Practice

    2022. .

    Book (ed)

    Ingmar Bergman’s rich legacy as film director and writer of classics such as The Seventh Seal, Scenes From a Marriage and Fanny and Alexander, has attracted scholars not only in film studies but also of literature, theater, gender, philosophy, religion, sociology, musicology, and more. Less known, however, is Bergman from the perspective of production studies, including all the choices, practices and routines involved in what goes on behind the scenes. For instance, what about Bergman’s collaborations and conflicts with film producers? What about his work with musicians at the opera, technicians in the television studio, and actors on the film set. What about Bergman and metoo? In order to throw light on these issues, art practitioners such as film directors Ang Lee and Margarethe von Trotta, film and opera director Atom Egoyan, and film producer and screenwriter James Schamus, are brought together withacademics such as philosopher and film scholar Paisley Livingston, musicologist Alexis Luko, and playwright and performance studies scholar Allan Havis, to discuss Bergman’s work from their unique perspectives. In addition, this book provides, for the first time, in-depth interviews with Bergman’s longtime collaborators Katinka Faragó and Måns Reuterswärd, who both have first-hand experience of working intimately as producers in film and television with Bergman, covering more than five decades. In an open exchange between individual and institutional perspectives, this book aims at bridging the often-rigid boundaries between theoreticians and practitioners, in turn pointing Bergman studies in new directions.  

    Read more about Ingmar Bergman at the Crossroads

  • Women’s Agency in the Swedish Film Industry: Annoying little Buggers and Passionate Team Players

    2022. Maria Jansson, Louise Wallenberg. Journal of Scandinavian Cinema 12 (3), 201-216

    Article

    The article is based on transcripts of interviews with twenty women directors in the Swedish film industry conducted in 2018 and 2019, focusing on narratives from women working under varying conditions and in several genres who have actively chosen various strategies to manage their work situation. We contextualize their actions and choices to unpack how their work and efforts fit into an industry still dominated by men and influenced by a culture of masculinity idealizing the male genius. In the first section, we discuss how the women experienced their first encounters with the industry and what strategies they developed at this stage. In the second section, we discuss women’s deliberations about how to make work on the set manageable and productive. In the final section, we investigate various strategies related to work opportunities and the possibilities for women to realize their visions and their passion for making films.

    Read more about Women’s Agency in the Swedish Film Industry

  • The final cut™: Directors, Producers and the Gender Regime of the Swedish Film Industry

    2021. Maria Jansson (et al.). Gender, Work and Organization 28 (6), 2010-2025

    Article

    Focusing on Sweden, this article departs from the proposition that film production and the film industry are governed by institutional arrangements that produce and reproduce gender and gender relations. The article is based on interviews with directors and producers and analyses how Swedish directors and producers describe their roles and relationship, relating this to how these roles are shaped by the law, film policy, and financial arrangements. The article argues that the Swedish film industry rests on a gendered division of labor, that the professions of director and producer are constructed in relation to masculinity, and that the gender equality measures undertaken are not sufficient to come to grips with the gender inequalities in the industry.

    Read more about The final cut™

  • The humanities are not our patient

    2021. Torkild Thanem, Louise Wallenberg. Management Learning 52 (3), 364-373

    Article

    When inviting contributions to a special issue of this journal titled ‘Management Learning and the Unsettled Humanities’ the guest editors did not simply encourage contributors to explore possibilities ‘for reciprocal integration’ between the two realms. Stressing that ‘the humanities . . . [are] facing a complex crisis on their own’, they stated that ‘the humanities . . . need to be enriched, nuanced, and critiqued through . . . the ideas and perspectives of organisational research’. While we may agree that all is not well in the humanities and share their scepticism towards ‘just prescribing the value of the humanities to ameliorate the ills of management education’, we are less confident that the humanities need management learning as much as we need them. As long as learning and scholarship in management and organisation studies continues to suffer from too much management, we doubt that ‘management education [may help] . . . unsettl[e] . . . the human within the . . . humanistic . . . disciplines’. Rather, students of management and organisation still have plenty to learn from the humanities, not least from its rich portrayal of human lives. It is on this basis we draw the conclusion that the humanities are not our patient.

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  • Art, Life and the Fashion Museum: for a more solidarian exhibition practice

    2020. Louise Wallenberg. Fashion and Textiles 7 (1)

    Article

    This article departs from the century-long understanding that fashion connects ‘life and art’, an understanding once advocated by Hans Siemsen in his avantgarde journal Zeit-Echo, to discuss how the museum constitutes an important space, or arena, where this connection is taking place. The museum as we know it is a space dedicated to displaying objects of art—and to some degree, of everyday life objects—and as such it constitutes a space for the linkage between the aesthetic and the profane, between art and life. However, as will be argued, as a space that has increasingly become dedicated to fashion—as a cultural, social and not least economic phenomenon—the museum does not embrace its full potential in displaying and problematizing fashion’s close and real relation to actual life, and especially, the very lives that produce it. The museum and its curatorial practices, it will be argued, ought to strive less to offer its audiences spectacular displays of extravagant designer fashion—and instead dare to deal with the urgent quest for and necessity of a reformed fashion industry in which textile and garment workers can actually lead safe and liveable lives.

    Read more about Art, Life and the Fashion Museum

  • Studying women in Swedish film production: Methodological considerations

    2020. Maria Jansson (et al.). Journal of Scandinavian Cinema 10 (2), 207-214

    Article

    This article presents methodological reflections on feminist production studies, with examples from an ongoing multidisciplinary project about women in Swedish film. Topics addressed include using interviews to understand production, the challenges connected to analysing women’s experiences, and the ethical dilemmas related to interpreting them

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  • "There is always something that one can do": Social Engineering and Organization in the Family Politics of Alva Myrdal

    2019. Louise Wallenberg, Torkild Thanem. Power, Politics and Exclusion in Organization and Management, 39-50

    Chapter

    This chapter introduces the work and writings of 20th-century Swedish politician, diplomat and public intellectual Alva Myrdal. Myrdal’s social democrat family politics was based on a bizarre combination of feminist and eugenic social engineering, which shaped the organization of the Swedish welfare state and advanced women’s participation in the labour market. According to Myrdal, a person’s abilities were a question of nurture more than nature; rather than being given at birth, they were shaped and nurtured by social and economic conditions. Alva Myrdal may be seen as the key architect of a modern and egalitarian “gender system” that has increasingly, albeit imperfectly, shaped the lives and careers of Swedish women and men. Myrdal was a tempered radical who achieved radical change through mainstream institutions. She may have dressed and looked like a femocrat, but her unselfish devotion to social progress is in stark contrast to contemporary femocrats who seem to care about little but their own careers.

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  • Fashion and Modernism

    2019. .

    Book (ed)

    Art and fashion have long gone hand in hand, but it was during the modernist period that fashion first gained equal value to – and took on the same aesthetic ideals as – painting, film, photography, dance, and literature. Combining high and low art forms, modernism turned fashion designers into artists and vice versa.

    Bringing together internationally renowned scholars across a range of disciplines, this vibrant volume explores the history and significance of the relationship between modernism and fashion and examines how the intimate connection between these fields remains evident today, with contemporary designers relating their work to art and artists problematizing fashion in their works.

    With chapters on a variety topics ranging from Russian constructionism and clothing to tango and fashion in the early 20th century, Fashion and Modernism is essential reading for students and scholars of fashion, dress history, and art history alike.

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  • A decade of challenges and possibilities: Establishing fashion studies at Stockholm University

    2018. Louise Wallenberg. International Journal of Fashion Studies 5 (1), 169-180

    Article

    This article offers a recount of the establishment and the development of the Centre for Fashion Studies at Stockholm University, Sweden, inaugurated in 2006. The centre, which was initially located in conjunction with the Department of Art History and later at the Department of Media Studies, has often been referred to as the very 'first' fashion studies institution ever to be positioned within the university (and not within a design school context). The article reflects on the possibilities, challenges and difficulties that creating and developing a space for a 'new' field have entailed - both within the local context (in this case, a rather traditional university context) and within a larger scholarly context (which, to a large extent, is dominated by Anglo-American institutions). Where does one look for inspiration? With whom does one create alliances to be able to offer a solid fashion studies ground (when there is none)? Also, how does one create curricula that both include and deviate from the 'canon' of previous fashion studies so that the Anglo-American dominance becomes less prominent?

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  • Beyond Fashion’s Alluring Surface: Connecting the Fashion Image and the Lived Realities of Female Workers in the Fashion Industry

    2018. Louise Wallenberg, Torkild Thanem. Symbols and Organizational Practice, 72-84

    Chapter

    Many western countries are increasingly dependent on the wealth generated by fashion companies while emerging economies such as Bangladesh and Vietnam are dependent on the jobs produced through the manufacturing of garments for fashion companies. And while women in western countries remain the main targets of fashion, its artefacts and images cannot be produced without the labour of underpaid women – whether sweatshop garment workers or under-aged models, many of whom are exploited and exchangeable. This chapter connects the separate worlds of fashion image and the reality of textile and modelling labour by exploring how fashion imagery is imbricated in the organization of its production process.

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  • Mago's magic: fashioning sexual indifference in Ingmar Bergman's 1960s cinema

    2017. Louise Wallenberg. Film, fashion, and the 1960s, 169-189

    Chapter
    Read more about Mago's magic

  • What’s Wrong with Queer? Between Queer Dialogue and Separatist Safe Spaces

    2017. Louise Wallenberg, Torkild Thanem. Feminists and queer theorists debate the future of critical management studies, 195-201

    Chapter

    In this short piece we take issue with the current separatist tendencies that are being expressed in certain parts of the queer community. We illustrate how this compares with central ideas in proto-queer thought and queer theory, and how it risks undermining the possibility of a queer dialogue and queer politics. 

    Read more about What’s Wrong with Queer? Between Queer Dialogue and Separatist Safe Spaces

  • Just doing gender? Transvestism and the power of underdoing gender in everyday life and work

    2016. Torkild Thanem, Louise Wallenberg. Organization 23 (2), 250-271

    Article

    While previous research in organization studies has utilized transgender to show how gender is done, overdone and undone, this literature lacks empirical grounding, and the theoretical arguments dominating it tend to idealize the transgressive power of transgender while reducing transgender to hyperbolic drag and stereotypical passing. To further advance the understanding of transgender within and around organizations, this article presents a qualitative study from a Northern European country to investigate how male-to-female transvestites do and undo gender in everyday life and work. In contrast to extant research, we found that participants did transgender and undid gender by underdoing gender, that is, by combining feminine, masculine and ungendered practices and attributes in ways that made passing and drag insignificant. As transvestites simultaneously expressed masculine and feminine forms of embodiment, we argue that they may more obviously challenge, though not dismantle, dominant forms of gender and identity than suggested by previous accounts. We conclude by discussing broader implications for the understanding of gender, identity, power and resistance in organizations.

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  • Monstrous ethics

    2015. Torkild Thanem, Louise Wallenberg. The Routledge Companion to Ethics, Politics and Organization, 433-446

    Chapter
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  • Traversing the gender binary: exploring 'new' Scandinavian trans cinema

    2015. Louise Wallenberg. Journal of Scandinavian Cinema 5 (2), 169-182

    Article

    In 2002, Norwegian film-maker Even Benestad’s documentary Alt om min far/All About My Father (2002), featuring Benestad together with his transvestite father, premiered at several film festivals. The film soon won several awards, and was nominated for many more. It can be classified as a foundational piece within a Scandinavian context: it blazed the way for other more genuine, more serious, representations of transgender issues on film. Investigating the trans cinema that has come out of Scandinavia in the aftermath of Benestad’s film, this article relates this cinema to the New Queer Cinema and to recent social changes regarding political, medical and legal discourses and possibilities for transgender individuals. The films discussed include Alt om min far/All About My Father (Benestad, 2002); En soap/A soap (Christensen, 2006); Ångrarna/Regretters (Lindeen, 2010); Pojktanten/She Male Snails (Bergsmark, 2012); Ta av mig/Undress me (Lindgren, 2013); and Nånting måste gå sönder/Something Must Break (Bergsmark, 2014).

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  • What can bodies do? Reading Spinoza for an affective ethics of organizational life

    2015. Torkild Thanem, Louise Wallenberg. Organization 22 (2), 235-250

    Article

    Recent attempts to develop an embodied understanding of ethics in organizations have tended to mobilize a Levinasian and “im/possible” ethics of recognition, which separates ethics and embodiment from politics and organization. We argue that this separation is unrealistic, unsustainable, and an unhelpful starting point for an embodied ethics of organizations. Instead of rescuing and modifying the ethics of recognition, we propose an embodied ethics of organizational life through Spinoza’s affective ethics. Neither a moral rule system nor an infinite duty to recognize the other, Spinoza offers a theory of the good, powerful and joyful life by asking what bodies can do. Rather than an unrestrained, irresponsible and individualistic quest for power and freedom, this suggests that we enhance our capacities to affect and be affected by relating to a variety of different bodies. We first scrutinize recent attempts to develop an ethics of recognition and embodiment in organization studies. We then explore key concepts and central arguments of Spinozian ethics. Finally, we discuss what a Spinozian ethics means for the theory and practice of embodied ethics in organizational life.

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  • Modernism och mode

    2014. .

    Book (ed)

    I Modernism och mode diskuteras modets starka och mångfacetterade betydelse för modernismen och dess olika uttryck under perioden 1900-1960 i tio icke tidigare publicerade essäer författade av såväl svenska som internationella forskare. Boken, som är den första omfattande svenska publikationen i ämnet, visar hur mode inom modernismen ges en uttalad och proklamerad position som konst under en tid då den kommersiella modeproduktionen mer och mer kopplas till massproduktion och -konsumtion. Boken belyser bland annat Isaac Grünewalds och Sigrid Hjerténs modemedvetna själviscensättning, modedesignern Jean Patous kreationer mellan konst och business, Elsa Schiaparellis surrealistiska modedesign, modets roll inom den italienska futurismen och ryska konstruktivismen, Magos modernistiska filmkostym, filmen som modernistiskt allkonstverk och modets filosofiska betydelser i förhållande till modernism och modernitet.

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  • Modets materialitet är på modet: Recension av "Modets bildvärldar: Studier med utgångspunkt i Röhsska museets modesamling"

    2013. Louise Wallenberg. Respons : recensionstidskrift för humaniora & samhällsvetenskap (5)

    Article

    Röhsska museet i Göteborg har inriktat sig på att vara ett modemuseum och dess samlingar diskuteras i sex essäer i denna antologi, som är en blandning mellan coffee table book och akademisk studie. Boken är inte invändningsfri men skapar utan tvivel intresse för museets samlingar.

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  • Nordic Fashion Studies

    2012. .

    Book (ed)

    Fashion means much more than dress. There are fashions in all aspects of life, from the time and manner of taking meals to the ways in which people sit. Clothes are animated by bodies moving in space, through gesture and deportment, and attitudes towards work and leisure that have changed dramatically across culture and time. The dressed body occupies space in coded ways that are learned through socialisation and that are also subject to fashion. They occupy spaces that take on different functions and meanings. This anthology explores the multi-dimensions of fashion, from the market to the imagination. Fashion, a series of experts argue, is relational and weighty, yet still figures in the media and popular imagination as nebulous and opaque. This anthology seeks to overturn that popular view, introducing readers to new ways of conceptualising their interest and participation in fashion past and present.

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  • Buggering Freud and Deleuze: Towards a queer theory of masochism

    2010. Torkild Thanem, Louise Wallenberg. Journal of Aesthetics and Culture 2, 1-10

    Article

    Both Freud’s and Deleuze’s understandings of masochism limit the transgressive and subversive forces of masochism by taking sexual difference for granted. Drawing on Newton’s fashion photography for Wolford and on feminist interrogations of Freud, Deleuze and masochism, this paper therefore seeks to develop an alternative, queer theory of masochism as sexual indifference. Viewing masochism as sexual indifference opens up movements of desire beyond the heterosexual matrix of male masochists and female mistresses. This is therefore an exercise in buggery. In the first half of the paper we bugger Freud’s understanding of masochism with Deleuze’s diverging understanding of masochism. In the second half we bugger Deleuze’s understanding of masochism with other parts of his own work, with feminist critique, and with Newton’s photography.

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  • Stilleristic Women: Gender as Masque and Ambivalence in the Work of Mauritz Stiller

    2000. Louise Wallenberg. Aura: Film Studies Journal 6 (4), 36-46

    Article
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  • Paris Is Burning: En studie i kvinnlighet som konstruktion blottlagd via dragpraktiken

    1997. Louise Wallenberg. Dialoger, 262-291

    Chapter
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