Berit Åström – författare

Kinship in the Fiction of N.K. Jemisin: Relations of Power and Resistance examines the work of N.K. Jemisin through the lens of critical kinship studies. In a world increasingly suffering the effects of climate change, currently undergoing a sixth mass extinction, and where anti-democratic, racist, and misogynist movements are gaining ground in many societies, there is an urgent need to re-imagine our most intimate relations and the webs of kinship that form our societies, but also connect us to the more-than-human world. The essays in this collection shed new light on the ways in which Jemisin's fiction does such re-imaginative work and explores both the contemporary moment and the potential for a future that is other than our present.

Although single fathers as primary careers are on the rise, most single-parent households in the US are headed by women. These women are a lucrative market for parenting books and most of these books are aimed at single mothers raising sons. This intersectional study analyses the way in which these advice books draw on mother blame language, misconceptions of neuropsychological research and traditional conceptualisations of masculinity and femininity to convince the mother readers that they are unable to raise a son to be a man. The study further connects the advice books to a cultural backlash against ideas of ‘involved fatherhood’ and ‘caring masculinity’, exploring how the authors argue for a return to traditional family structures.

Although single fathers as primary careers are on the rise, most single-parent households in the US are headed by women. These women are a lucrative market for parenting books and most of these books are aimed at single mothers raising sons. This intersectional study analyses the way in which these advice books draw on mother blame language, misconceptions of neuropsychological research and traditional conceptualisations of masculinity and femininity to convince the mother readers that they are unable to raise a son to be a man. The study further connects the advice books to a cultural backlash against ideas of ‘involved fatherhood’ and ‘caring masculinity’, exploring how the authors argue for a return to traditional family structures.

Through a range of materials, methodologies and national perspectives, chapters make up three sections to cover single mothers, single fathers and solo mothers (single women who became parents through assisted reproductive technologies).

This edited volume addresses how single mothers and fathers are represented in novels, self-help literature, daily newspapers, film and television, as well as within their own narratives in interviews on social media. With proportions varying between countries, the number of single parents has been increasing steadily since the 1970s in the Western world. Contributions to this volume analyse how various societies respond to these parents and family forms. Through a range of materials, methodologies and national perspectives, chapters make up three sections to cover single mothers, single fathers and solo mothers (single women who became parents through assisted reproductive technologies). The authors reveal that single parenthood is divided along the lines of gender and socioeconomic status, with age, sexuality and the reason for being a single parent coming into play.Chapter 11 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This anthology explores the recurring trope of the dead or absent mother in Western cultural productions.

This anthology explores the recurring trope of the dead or absent mother in Western cultural productions.

In recent years Anglo-Saxonist scholars have widened the scope of their studies to include not only various aspects of Anglo-Saxon society and literature, but also, selfquestioningly, their own discipline. Through an in-depth study of the scholarship on The Wife's Lament and Wulf and Eadwacer, this thesis examines the roles of these scholars in the critical history of the two poems. The poems are two of the most haunting and at the same time cryptic texts of the entire Old English corpus. Because of these characteristics, the research they inspire is wide-ranging, imaginative and sometimes provocative. The thesis focuses mainly on two aspects of scholarly research: the emergence of a professional identity among Anglo-Saxonist scholars and their choice of either a metaphoric or metonymic approach to the material. A final chapter studies the concomitant changes within Old English feminist studies.