Johan Klingborg, visiting PhD Candidate from Stockholm University, presents his ongoing doctoral project, “Seems Like Film: Swedish Literature in the Film Network 1929–1940.” The talk will be held on December 7 at 3:00 pm in the Buchanan Tower, room 997.
Abstract: Around 1930, film found its way into Swedish literature. To a striking degree, the new generation of modernist authors—among others, Artur Lundkvist, Karin Boye, Harry Martinson, and Eyvind Johnson—started to remediate the film medium in their works. This coincided with the emergence around Stockholm of a significant film network. In the 1930s, following the development of new technologies (such as the 16-mm film) and the emergence of a wide range of institutional cinemas (e.g., educational film, newsreel, advertising film), film began to be projected in schools, workplaces, and in the streets. Arguably for the first time, moving images became a comprehensive aspect in people’s everyday lives in Sweden. In my dissertation, I turn to literature in order to explore this film network, and in reverse study the network as an epistemological prerequisite for Swedish literary modernism as such.
