Med jämna mellanrum hör och läser vi i massmedia larmrapporter om barns och ungas läsning. Det är ofta en dyster bild som förmedlas. Men vad handlar studierna verkligen om? Vad räknas egentligen som läsning? Visar alla undersökningar samma tendens? Vem har egentligen tillfrågats i de här studierna? I samtalet pratar vi om hur den som arbetar på folkbibliotek med läsfrämjande och litteraturförmedling kan förhålla sig till medierapporteringen. 

How can a Literary Scholar be Transformed Into a Literary Didact?: A Case Study on Competence Provision and Competence Development

This article highlights issues that deal with the relationship between comparative literature and literature in education. Our point of departure is a problem with competence maintenance within the subject of comparative literature in relation to teacher education. We address areas such as collaboration between comparative literature and literature in education and the role of thehumanities in the Swedish educational system. Previous publications on the relationship between comparative literature and literature in education, as well as interviews with active researchers, form the basis for a case study in which we do an overview of ways to acquire competence in literature in education. The context consists of local strategies, visions and perceptions of competence, as well as UKÄ’s (Swedish Higher Education Authority) national evaluations of subject teacher education in Swedish. Our results demonstrate that the fields have moved closer to each other in different ways, and we suggest that increased collaboration between comparative literature and literature in education  would be mutualy beneficial and that the specific expertise of both fields together would strengthen the role of teaching literature and the subject of Swedish in schools and teacher training. The results also indicate that it is crucial for literary scholars to approach issues related to literature in education in their research. A more literature-oriented didactic is needed when teaching future teachers to strengthen the students’ literary competence and raise questions about the meaning and function of literature – and humanities – in schools. The future professionalism (faglighet) of teachers in literary studies and literature in education should therefore focus on what unites the fields and be open to each other’s specific research competencies. Increased cooperation can contribute to strengthening the role of the humanities and Bildung in schools, above all by clarifying its importance for the future teachers that we teach.

Nordic Gothic traces Gothic fiction in the Nordic region from its beginnings in the nineteenth century, with a main focus on the development of Gothic from the 1990s onwards in literature, film, TV and new media. The volume gives an overview of Nordic Gothic fiction in relation to transnational developments and provides a number of case studies and in-depth analyses of individual narratives. It creates an understanding of this under-researched cultural phenomenon by showing how the narratives make visible cultural anxieties haunting the Nordic countries, their welfare systems, identities and ideologies. Nordic Gothic examines how figures from Nordic folklore function as metaphorical expressions of Gothic themes and Nordic settings are explored from perspectives such as ecocriticism and postcolonialism. The book will be of interest to researchers and post- and- undergraduate students in various fields within the Humanities.