The working-class parent as life writing

Martina Jonsson’s PhD dissertation project The working-class parent as life writing explores how working-class parents are depicted in life writing in a Swedish context by their adult children the last hundred years. The focus of the study is literary works, but the term life writing is used in its broad sense to analyse stories about working-class parents in various forms of media. The case studies within the project focus on the stories’ content, form, and reception.

Central questions are: How has the narrator perspective adult children’s depictions of their working-class parents through storytelling evolved through history? How do developments in society and the media landscape affect the narrative about the working-class parent and what can be told about it? What can be learned about Swedish history and society through these stories?

The dissertation project in Media and Communication Studies is situated in the crossroads between Working-Class Literature Studies, Sociology of Literature, Media and Communication Studies and Studies in Life Writing. The project breaks new ground by focusing on the narrative perspective adult children’s depictions of their working-class parents through storytelling, the stories’ media forms, and reception; and how these aspects relate to the definition of working-class literature. At the core of it all lies the question: Who can speak for the working class?