This thesis is about the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) and her works, with emphasis on her painted self-portraits. The objective is to place Frida Kahlo’s pictorial production in relation to a place and time specific context and test the theory of Frida Kahlo’s self-portraits as a project connected to a general striving towards a new formulation of national identity. The majority of Frida Kahlo’s pictorial production coincides with a historically delimited era in which there was a break from earlier role models and ideals, politically, culturally and ideologically. This phase was an artistically dynamic period with a redefining view of art and the history of the nation, a visualisation of the mythology and symbolism of the Indian cultures of origin, and an emphasis on the Indian ethnicity of the nation. Two chapters describe the ideological context in which Frida Kahlo’s works were created. The visual markers around which the post-revolutionary national discourse came to revolve are identified and certain concepts related to race are examined. The subsequent chapters are devoted to Frida Kahlo’s pictures. One chapter examines how her pictorial production in the 1920’s emerged in a dialogue with contemporary art theory. One chapter deals with body thematics based on the naked female body, and elements of sex education are put in relation to an ongoing debate on sex education in Mexican schools. Thereafter new features are explored that are introduced in her self-portraits during the late 1930’s and that came to be consistent features in her continued production of self-portraits. In the concluding section of the thesis, the self-portraits are discussed from a more general perspective. Some of the myths upon which earlier biographical interpretations were based are questioned. Instead, the thematics of suffering found in the self-portraits are related to the reconstruction of the nation’s ethnic identity and problematic issues based on the 16th century Spanish Conquest of the indigenous Indian population. In her complex imagery, Frida Kahlo refers to a broad spectrum of disparate pictorial traditions, stylistic epochs, categories of motifs and symbolic imagery, and to historical, religious and mythical female personages such as Malintzín, la Chingada, Sor Juana, and the Virgin of Guadalupe. These references from different epochs represent the two fundamental components of Mexico’s cultural heritage – the Spanish and the Indian – and these are merged in Frida Kahlo self-portraits so that they thereby communicate a construction of identity based on a national heritage. The time perspective of the discussion reaches backwards to before the Spanish Conquest in the 16th century and forwards to the contemporary Chicana/Chicano movement north of the border to the United States.

This thesis is about the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) and her works, with emphasis on her painted self-portraits. The objective is to place Frida Kahlo’s pictorial production in relation to a place and time specific context and test the theory of Frida Kahlo’s self-portraits as a project connected to a general striving towards a new formulation of national identity. The majority of Frida Kahlo’s pictorial production coincides with a historically delimited era in which there was a break from earlier role models and ideals, politically, culturally and ideologically. This phase was an artistically dynamic period with a redefining view of art and the history of the nation, a visualisation of the mythology and symbolism of the Indian cultures of origin, and an emphasis on the Indian ethnicity of the nation. Two chapters describe the ideological context in which Frida Kahlo’s works were created. The visual markers around which the post-revolutionary national discourse came to revolve are identified and certain concepts related to race are examined. The subsequent chapters are devoted to Frida Kahlo’s pictures. One chapter examines how her pictorial production in the 1920’s emerged in a dialogue with contemporary art theory. One chapter deals with body thematics based on the naked female body, and elements of sex education are put in relation to an ongoing debate on sex education in Mexican schools. Thereafter new features are explored that are introduced in her self-portraits during the late 1930’s and that came to be consistent features in her continued production of self-portraits. In the concluding section of the thesis, the self-portraits are discussed from a more general perspective. Some of the myths upon which earlier biographical interpretations were based are questioned. Instead, the thematics of suffering found in the self-portraits are related to the reconstruction of the nation’s ethnic identity and problematic issues based on the 16th century Spanish Conquest of the indigenous Indian population. In her complex imagery, Frida Kahlo refers to a broad spectrum of disparate pictorial traditions, stylistic epochs, categories of motifs and symbolic imagery, and to historical, religious and mythical female personages such as Malintzín, la Chingada, Sor Juana, and the Virgin of Guadalupe. These references from different epochs represent the two fundamental components of Mexico’s cultural heritage – the Spanish and the Indian – and these are merged in Frida Kahlo self-portraits so that they thereby communicate a construction of identity based on a national heritage. The time perspective of the discussion reaches backwards to before the Spanish Conquest in the 16th century and forwards to the contemporary Chicana/Chicano movement north of the border to the United States.

This thesis is about the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) and her works, with emphasis on her painted self-portraits. The objective is to place Frida Kahlo’s pictorial production in relation to a place and time specific context and test the theory of Frida Kahlo’s self-portraits as a project connected to a general striving towards a new formulation of national identity. The majority of Frida Kahlo’s pictorial production coincides with a historically delimited era in which there was a break from earlier role models and ideals, politically, culturally and ideologically. This phase was an artistically dynamic period with a redefining view of art and the history of the nation, a visualisation of the mythology and symbolism of the Indian cultures of origin, and an emphasis on the Indian ethnicity of the nation. Two chapters describe the ideological context in which Frida Kahlo’s works were created. The visual markers around which the post-revolutionary national discourse came to revolve are identified and certain concepts related to race are examined. The subsequent chapters are devoted to Frida Kahlo’s pictures. One chapter examines how her pictorial production in the 1920’s emerged in a dialogue with contemporary art theory. One chapter deals with body thematics based on the naked female body, and elements of sex education are put in relation to an ongoing debate on sex education in Mexican schools. Thereafter new features are explored that are introduced in her self-portraits during the late 1930’s and that came to be consistent features in her continued production of self-portraits. In the concluding section of the thesis, the self-portraits are discussed from a more general perspective. Some of the myths upon which earlier biographical interpretations were based are questioned. Instead, the thematics of suffering found in the self-portraits are related to the reconstruction of the nation’s ethnic identity and problematic issues based on the 16th century Spanish Conquest of the indigenous Indian population. In her complex imagery, Frida Kahlo refers to a broad spectrum of disparate pictorial traditions, stylistic epochs, categories of motifs and symbolic imagery, and to historical, religious and mythical female personages such as Malintzín, la Chingada, Sor Juana, and the Virgin of Guadalupe. These references from different epochs represent the two fundamental components of Mexico’s cultural heritage – the Spanish and the Indian – and these are merged in Frida Kahlo self-portraits so that they thereby communicate a construction of identity based on a national heritage. The time perspective of the discussion reaches backwards to before the Spanish Conquest in the 16th century and forwards to the contemporary Chicana/Chicano movement north of the border to the United States.

Hur ser en nordisk identitet ut? Några exempel på överskridanden av normbundna föreställningarSession: Främjande av och motstånd mot normerings- och normaliseringsprocesserKonstbilden är av tradition ett manligt kodat medium, länkat till en historisk konstruerad konstnärsmyt om det skapande manliga geniet och en hierarkisk uppdelning i tekniker och motivkategorier. Samtidigt är konstbilder kraftfulla verktyg i förmedlingen av könsbundna normer, konstruktionen av identiteter och föreställningar kring sexualitet och etnicitet. Visuella markörer för t.ex. hudfärg, etnicitet, plats och historiskt arv fungerar som led i normaliseringsprocesser av nordisk identitet. I denna studie undersöks hur samtida konstnärer bearbetat ett historiskt visuellt arv med ett överskridande av normbundna föreställningar om kön, sexualitet, plats, nordisk identitet och av konstbilden som ett på förhand könskodat medium.

Swedish teacher education was reformed at a national level in 2001. This thesis takes as its point of departure one of the many sites where new teachers are educated in Sweden, the Teacher Training Programme at Göteborg University. The purpose of the thesis is to analyse how norms for new teachers are sustained within teacher training, and what teacher subjectivities emerge from them. The main theoretical influences are poststructuralist discourse theory and postcolonialism. Important concepts used in the thesis are power, normalisation, and decentered subjects. A discourse analytical approach is used to analyse the ethnographic material, interviews, policy and regulation documents, and media material forming the empirical base of the study. Field work was conducted for three semesters in the Teacher Training Programme between the years 2002-2005. The courses attended were all part of the common field of education (AUO), a novelty of the reformed education where student teachers aiming for different age groups, take courses together. Individual and group interviews were made with eleven student teachers. Some shorter interviews with teacher educators and organisers of courses were also conducted. Four different regulating norms about new teachers are interrogated in the thesis. These are norms about: the personal teacher, the flexible and independent teacher, the teacher as an individual, and finally the norm about the diverse teacher.

The interrogation of these norms show that there exists a constant power struggle within the Teacher Training Programme. The norms are not hegemonic, but they nevertheless set a standard through which teacher subjectivities emerge. The main argument in the thesis is that the norms are formulated through a discourse of use-value, which demands of new teachers that they are personal, flexible, independent and diverse in a manner that coincides with the logic of use-value. As a consequence, important questions of power were rarely addressed, remaining norms of swedishness, heterosexuality, and middle-class values unchallenged. This meant that a privileged subject position was construed, suited for those new teachers who pass as Swedish, heterosexual and middle-class.

Få män arbetar som pedagoger i förskolan. En anledning till detta sägs ibland vara att män skrämts bort av debatten kring sexuella övergrepp i förskolan. Frågan är dock hur debatten påverkar de män och kvinnor som faktiskt vill arbeta som förskollärare. I den här artikeln undersöks denna fråga med utgångspunkt i en intervjuundersökning med tjugo förskollärarstudenter i slutet av sin utbildning. Resultaten visar att både kvinnor och män tvingas förhålla sig till diskursen om sexuella övergrepp. Detta sker på sätt som inte alltid följer dominerande föreställningar om kön.