Facts

Contact person:
Magnus Persson
Financer:
  • Vetenskapsrådet
Responsible at MaU:
Magnus Persson
External project members:
  • Ylva Lindberg - Jönköping University
Time frame:
01 January 2025 - 31 December 2028
Faculty/department:
Research subject:

Project description

The purpose of this four year research project is to map and analyze what is truly at stake in the ongoing struggles over the literary canon in Sweden, with a focus on the debate about and implementation of the Tidö Agreement 2022 (a collaboration between the Swedish government and the right wing party Sweden democrats).

The project is divided into three work packages – educational policy, public debate, and pedagogical practice (teacher training in Swedish). Through these three combined empirical approaches, the project will be the first of its kind, and give a research based foundation for policies, debates, and educational practices regarding the canon.

The theoretical framework, consisting of cultural policy studies and axiology, is combined with a nexus analysis methodology. The project is based on the following research questions:

  • How are consensus and dissensus constructed by influential actors regarding a literary canon?
  • What, more specifically, are they (dis)agreeing upon? What values and functions are attributed to the canon, literature reading, and literature instruction by the different actors?
  • Within which collaborating and counteracting discourses are the various actors situated?