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Literature

In all times and in all cultures people have been telling stories and performing songs and poetry, practices which have led to the written text that we identify as literature.

But what is literature? What does it look like, how is it written and how is it designed? And who decides what literature is? These are the questions that our field focuses on. The literary researcher comments, analyses, historicizes and interprets literature.

The cover illustration, by E. Gertrude Thomson, of The Nursery "Alice" by Lewis Carroll

Children's and young adult Literature

Stockholm University has Sweden's only professorship in literary studies, especially children's and young people's literature, as well as three senior lectureships in the research field. The professorship was established in 1983 and the first lectureship was appointed in 2012.

Children's and young adult Literature

John Bauer. Illustration till Emil Eliassons Broder Martin, i Bland tomtar och troll, 1913.

Comparative and transnational perspectives in and on literature

The writing and reading of literature have always been itinerant and transitional phenomena. Shaped by multidirectional flows of cultural influences, literary production and reception transcend national and linguistic borders, making the world’s literary histories profoundly intertwined.

Comparative and transnational perspectives in and on literature

Gender perspectives in and on literature

Like gender studies in general, the interest in gender theory in the field of literary studies spans many different issues, specialisations and historical eras.

Gender perspectives in and on literature

Literature and Philosophy

Modern literary analysis is often inspired by and engaged in philosophical questions and theories. Philosophy has, one might say, provided many different theoretical frameworks for literary studies.

Literature and Philosophy

Media, materiality and literature

Media-oriented literary studies are concerned with how literature is affected by its physical channels, but also how it relates to other art forms and media.

Media, materiality and literature

Modern and Contemporary literature

Research on modern and contemporary literature extends from around 1800 to the present day. It includes poetry as well as drama and prose.

Modern and Contemporary literature

Posthumanism and Ecocritisism

Posthumanist and Ecocritical perspectives are prominent within the research field of Literary Studies at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics at Stockholm University.

Posthumanism and Ecocritisism

Pre- and early modern literature

Research in pre- and early modern literature is a prominent field within Literary Studies at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics.

Pre- and early modern literature

Dante Alighieri fresk av Domenico di Michelino (1465). Wikimedia Commons.

The historicity and historiography of literature

In the research area of historicity and historiography, we study what it means to approach literature from the past, and how the narrative of the past is established and changed.