Research
I'm an Associate Professor in Comparative Literature and a Guest Researcher at Kufo, the Research Group for Culture Studies.
My research spans many areas but often dwell on the relations between aesthetic form and material bodies. My Ph.D thesis (2010) examined how Strindberg's often sloppy way of writing left traces in his so called Chamber Plays, and the hermeneutical problems it caused. In the monograph Dödsporr. Etik, estetik, våld (Death Porn. Ethics, Aesthetics, Violence; 2016) I investigate the connections between ethics and aesthetics in relationship to representations of violence in various media: novels and autobiographies, cinema, hardcore porn, video games and popular music. I'm the guest editor of an issue of Swedish journal Aiolos (#56 2017) dealing with "Black Ecology", and am currently working on two book projects: one on literature and nature with a particular focus on Swedish poet and botanist Sten Selander; and one on meat in video games.
Sometimes, I dabble in literary criticism and translation; and from time to time I publish drafts and notes at my blog.
Selected publications
Monographs:
Dödsporr: Etik, estetik, våld (Faethon, 2016), 267 pp. [Death Porn: Ethics, Aesthetics, Violence]
The Mold of Writing: Style and Structure in Strindberg’s Chamber Plays (Örebro University, 2010, diss.), 219 pp.
Articles:
“Att äta digitala djur: Spel, våld och ideologi”, Tidskrift för litteraturvetenskap 4 (2015), s. 29-41 ["Eating Digital Animals: Games, violence, ideology"]
”Giving Life Harmoniously: Animal Inversion in Cattle Decapitation”, Helvete: A Journal of Black Metal Theory 2 (2015), s. 73-92
“Cinematic Shots and Cuts: On the Ethics and Semiotics of Real Violence in Film Fiction”, Journal of Aesthetics and Culture 3 (2011), s. 1-15
Book chapters:
“Pornografins ansikten: Om våld och intimitet som representationell strategi”, Våldsamma fantasier, ed. Magnus Ullén (Karlstad: Karlstad universitet, 2014), pp. 135-166 [”Faces of Porn: On violence and intimacy as representational strategies”]
“Ädelrötan: Strindberg och slarvet”, Strindbergiana 29, ed. Per Stam, David Gedin & Anna Cavallin (Stockholm: Atlantis 2014), pp. 109-120 [”Noble Rot: Strindberg and sloppiness”]
”The Palpable Lolita: Form and Affect from the Perspective of Poetics”, Narrative Ethics, red. Jakob Lothe & Jeremy Hawthorn (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2013), pp. 239-252
”Måste vi läsa bibeln för att förstå Strindberg? Till frågan om kammarspelens intertextualitet”, Tron är mitt lokalbatteri. Religion och religiositet i August Strindbergs liv och verk, ed. Martin Hellström (Skellefteå: Artos, 2012), pp. 193-216 [“Do We Have to Read the Bible in Order to Understand Strindberg? Regarding intertextuality in the Chamber Plays”]
“Notes on the Conceptualization of Style as Embodied Idiolect in French Structuralism”, Disputable Concepts of Narrative Theory, ed. Göran Rossholm & Christer Johansson (Bern: Peter Lang 2012), pp. 269-278
“The Affluence of Literature”, Narrativity, Fictionality and Literariness: The Narrative Turn and the Study of Literary Fiction, ed. Lars-Åke Skalin, Örebro Studies in Literary History and Criticism 7 (Örebro: Örebro University 2008), pp. 113-129