Research
Reading Culture and Politics among Women at Löfstad Castle 1750-1850
Löfstad Castle outside Norrköping has traditionally been in female ownership and the book collection expanded considerably during the early 19th century with Sophie Piper (née von Fersen) and Emilie de Geer. In my latest project “Reading Culture and Politics among Women at Löfstad Castle 1750-1850” I study these noblewomen’s book collecting and reading interests, not least in relation to the burning issues of the time about education and equality.
The construction and representation of gender, love and sexuality
I am also interested in the construction and representation of gender, love and sexuality, mainly in pre- and early modern literature but also in the modern period. In my dissertation, I studied Marguerite de Navarre's (1492–1549) works Heptaméron (1559) and the poetry of Gaspara Stampa (1523–1554), where these very configurations are under negotiation. I examine how different discourses of power, such as the church and Neoplatonic philosophy, operate in the construction of gender and sexuality and in what ways the literary texts relate to these. Who is allowed to desire whom and how is desire expressed? In short, I am interested in the possibilities for transcending prevailing norms that literary forms open up.
16th-Century Women Poets and Artist
With the Italian poets Tullia d’Aragona and Gaspara Stampa as the main examples, one of my subsequent projects aimes to map and analyze the real and virtual networks and cultural contacts of female 16th-century poets, and thereby deepen the understanding of the conditions and production of early modern women writers. This applies not least to questions about constructions and representations of emotions in the literary works and in the context that surrounds them.
In parallel with this, I also started a project with a transmedia focus on early modern literature and art. Through gender and affect theory perspectives, the meaning and representations of the senses are examined, also here in the works of d’Aragona and Stampa, but also Michelangelo and artists such as Lavinia Fontana and Elisabetta Sirani.
Conferences, Open Lectures and other Presentations in selection
- ”Tullia d’Aragona. Den romerska kurtisanen som blev filosof”, speaker at the 100 year jubilée of the Swedish Institute in Rome, Nationalmuseum Stockholm, May 9, 2025- Systrar, väninnor, krigare och hjältinnor, Helsinki Boo Fair, October 27, 2024
- En upplyst kvinna: Emilie de Geers läs- och kunskapspraktiker, ”Litteratur och kunskap”, National Conference for Comparative Literature, October 2–3, 2024
- Systrar, väninnor, krigare och hjältinnor, presentation, Forskartorget, Gothenburg Book Fair September 26, 2024
- “Reading Cultures and Politics Among the Women of Löfstad Castle 1750-1850”, conferensen Early Modern Women on Politics and Ethics, University of Gothenburg, October 5-7, 2023
- Bildningsbyrån – tänka mot strömmen: Virginia Woolf, modernistisk författare, Podcast, September 21, 2023. https://sverigesradio.se/avsnitt/bildningsbyran-tanka-mot-strommen-virginia-woolf-modernistisk-forfattare
- En bok, en forskare. Gaspara Stampa: en kvinnlig röst i renässansens kärlekslyrik, URPlay, Sveriges Radio, August 7, 2023. https://sverigesradio.se/avsnitt/gaspara-stampa-en-kvinnlig-rost-i-renassansens-karlekslyrik
- “I want you to bow to experience” The Importance of Experience and Free Will in Tullia d’Aragona’s Dialogo della infinità di amore, International Society for Cultural History, Verona, August 3-5, 2022
- En kvinnas röst i renässansens kärlekslyrik, Forskartorget, Gothenburg Book Fair September 23, 2022
- “Poet-Philosopher: Gaspara Stampa and the Early Modern Debate on Love”, lecture in series “Tuesday Ten Talks”, The Medici Archive Project, Friends of the Medici, Florence, June 21, 2022
