lambda nordica is a peer-reviewed open-access academic journal of LGBTQ studies. The oldest of its kind in the Nordic region, the journal is dedicated to interdisciplinary research in lesbian/gay/bi/trans* and queer studies.
Archives
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Sex at the Borders: Queering Transnational HistoriesVol. 29 No. 1 (2024)
RESEARCH ON QUEER HISTORY often focuses on national contexts. This special issue rather contributes to the field of transnational histories of sexuality and explores contacts and movements within and between Nordic and Baltic contexts. To consider local sexual histories as by necessity translocal, the issue moves across the Finnish Gulf between Estonia and Finland (Põldsam & Taavetti), further across the Gulf of Bothnia between Finland and Sweden (Juvonen), then across the Sweden–Norway border at Hälle on European route E6 (Larsson) and finally circles back to Finland (Paasonen & Pajala). Read together, these articles suggest that sexuality offers an intriguing basis for rethinking the relations between the national and the transnational and their connections to libidinal intensities, sexual politics and world-making. They provide a somewhat unusual map of recent histories of sexuality, which through constant movement across borders – be they geographic, legislative, moral or desirous – figure and refigure national contexts and their interconnections in partly novel ways.
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Open issueVol. 28 No. 4 (2023)
This open issue begins with an editorial by Elisabeth Lund Engebretsen and Erika Alm. Departing from the cover art, it reflects on territorialization, spatial occupation and disruptive visibility as ways to conceptualize focal strategies in past and present queer liberatory projects. The issue’s three research articles each speak to this theme of territorialization in its many queer manifestations, in transnational yet localized contexts: Sweden (Malmquist, Lundberg & Wurm on queer minority stress), Finland (Lassinaro on queer antimilitarism and environmentalism), the US (Forbes & Clarke on sex panic and policing), as does the Cover Art by Kongsness & Sterud (Norway) and Lino E Silva’s We’re Here contribution (Brazil). Three reviews – on a handbook in queer and trans feminisms in performance, a PhD thesis on intimate partner violence in lesbian and queer relationships, and an essay collection on queer memories – conclude the issue.
Cover art by Ann-Christin Kongsness & Marte Reithaug Sterud
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The Tensions and Temporalities of Pride Politics - Transnational Travels and Situated LocalesVol. 28 No. 2-3 (2023)
The idea of Pride continues to travel across the globe to promote visibility and validity of LGBTI+ people. Pride politics are at once challenged and cherished, bringing forth critical questions about the agendas and tactics of its ever-increasing popularity. This special issue aims to scrutinize the tensions and temporalities of Pride politics. Engaging in a systematic scrutiny of Pride politics in various local sites, the contributions highlight issues such as the ambivalences of Pride politics, their global repercussions, public visibility and inclusion in Pride, and the potential of Pride to offer a critical political agenda built on broader coalitions among marginalized groups. The argument is that in times when state homophobia and anti-LGBTI+ hate speech is on the rise transnationally, Pride politics can regain their radical political meaning through inclusion of and solidarity with other critical, yet marginalized, voices.
Cover art: Pride Street/ Gleðigatan by Elías Rúni.
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Open issueVol. 28 No. 1 (2023)
This first issue of 2023 is an open issue which includes three research articles: “Transbekymringens cisnormative økonomi: Nye grænser for køn i diskurser om behandling af trans-børn” by Mons Bissenbakker and Tobias Raun, ”’Jag söker gemenskap’: Svenska sextidningar som transmöjliggörande rum under 1960-talet” by Signe Bremer, and “Tracing Sexual Otherness in Sweden: The Opacity of Digital Kink” by Jenny Sundén. Taken together they are indicative of the methodological and theoretical scope of contemporary queer studies – they range from digital ethnographic to discourse analysis of media material and archival research. The double bind of visibility is a common theme in all of them. Visibility is thematized also in this issue’s essay, authored by Olov Kriström, “Bokbål och höjda hyror: Queerhistoriens villkor sedda genom en bibliotekskatalog.” The issue concludes with a review section containing two reviews of recently defended dissertations and a review of a collection of letters from the turn of the twentieth century.
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Anti-gender politics and queer theoryVol. 27 No. 3-4 (2022)
This special issue examines contemporary anti-gender politics. In what ways can queer-theoretical approaches to anti-gender politics offer meaningful insights into and new perspectives on how to respond to and complicate the analysis of reactionary mobilisations, inside and outside of the academy? Whereas recent years have seen a wealth of scholarly publishing on antigender campaigns, there have been relatively few concerted engagements that seek to analyse such campaigns and their effects through the lens of queer theory itself. This special issue examines contemporary anti-gender politics and contains a number of promising theoretical lenses from sociological, psychoanalytic, queer, trans, gender and feminist scholarship that may contribute to an understanding of their complexities. It offers careful critiques and highlights some of the limitations of existing approaches, including those of one-dimensionality, historical presentism, racism, nationalism and femonationalism.
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Open issueVol. 27 No. 2 (2022)
This open issue includes research articles on LGBTQ people’s experiences of heteronormativity in Swedish Christian free-churches (Charlotta Carlström) and on queer heritage, explored through an analysis of a Finnish community art project (Visa Immonen). Piotr Sobolczyk’s essay scrutinises exotifying readings of contemporary Polish queer literature, while Masha Beketova’s We’re here thematises the colonial hegemony of English in European academia. Erika Alm and Elisabeth Lund Engebretsen's Editorial urges a (re)turn to queer scholarly work on the use of the spectre of LGBT in nationalist movements in Russia, and to work that show how femonationalism and homonationalism legitimise anti-multiculturalism and Islamophobia in a Europe at War. Three reviews of newly published PhD dissertations and books conclude this issue.
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SKEVVol. 26 No. 4-1 (2021)
Det här temanumret gör en inventering av hur begreppet skev används i forskningen idag, och fortsättar utforskandet av hur skev kan förändras och utvecklas. Användningen av skev är inte samstämmig, vare sig historiskt eller i det här numret, vilket innebär att begreppet är levande och under diskussion.
För att analysera skev manlig sexualitet skriver Hélène Ohlsson om1800-talsskådespelaren Gustav Fredrikson. Elisabeth Stubberud, Helga Eggebø och Norman Anderssen undersöker hbtq-personers livsberättelser i 2010-talets Norge. Fanny Pérez Aronsson tar upp samkönad sexualitet hos pojkar i nordamerikansk latinolitteratur. Desirée Ljungcrantz diskuterar och ägnar sig åt skevt poetiskt akademiskt skrivande. Dominik Dziedzic skriver om den skeva gosseskildringen hos författaren Viktor Rydberg. Slutligen föreslår Maria Lönn en skev och dekolonial metod som sätter kroppen och det sinnliga i centrum.
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Queering Health and BiomedicineVol. 26 No. 2-3 (2021)
This special issue of lambda nordica on Queering Health and Biomedicine queries the processes of biomedicalization, the structures of biomedical knowledge and the force of biomedicine as an institution of social control, and aims to expand the object of biomedical and health research and practice to the specific experiences and bodies of queer people, along with others who do not fit into dominant normative frameworks. The issue poses questions like: How is biomedicine constructed and practiced in relation to embodied differences? What are the affective textures of biomedical encounters and practices? How are biomedical interventions invoked and represented in visual and literary culture? The special issue showcases scholarship from the Nordic Network Gender, Body, Health.
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Open issueVol. 26 No. 1 (2021)
THIS OPEN ISSUE includes research articles on hook-up app research (Paul Byron and Kristian Møller), kink memes in digital fandom cultures (Silja Kukka), and on how youth health clinics in Sweden approach clients with vulvar pain (Renita Sörensdotter). Magdalena Górska’s We’re Here contribution concerns the political significance of breathing. The introductory editorial by Elisabeth Lund Engebretsen and Erika Alm, takes a critical look at recent EU and pan-Nordic initiatives to improve LGBTQI+ rights and welfare. Five reviews of recently published PhD dissertations, books and anthologies conclude this issue. This issue’s cover art is by Norway-based artist Ahmed Umar, who also presents his work and vision in a short experimental section titled Cover Art.
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Nordic queer cinemaVol. 25 No. 3-4 (2020)
THIS SPECIAL ISSUE, edited by Anu Koivunen, Katariina Kyrölä and Ingrid Ryberg, explores queer world-making, utopian visions, and tensions between sexual and national belonging in Nordic and Baltic cinema cultures. Film culture has been key in building the image of Nordic LGBTQ friendliness, and “diversity” has become a catch phrase for various national film institutes, while queer film scholarship has long recognized the problems with politics of visibility. Going beyond the language of diversity, the featured articles and essays in this issue discuss recently produced queer, trans and non-binary films across the region, addressing aesthetics and politics of representation as well as contexts of production. Underlining the high stakes in the cinematic imagining of alternative queer and trans worlds, contributors ask: who and what are the subjects that can inhabit and become legible within national, regional, sexual, gendered and racialized categories?
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Open issueVol. 25 No. 2 (2020)
LAMBDA NORDICA no. 2 2020 is an open issue that spans a wide range of subjects, with research articles on such different topics as the examination of homonormativity, homonationalism and homocolonialism in queer struggles (Katharina Kehl), the naturalization of gender classification as an instrument for the state to manage populations (T. Odland), and the representation of female masculinity in action narratives and science fiction (Anna Bark Persson). The issue also offers an essay that revisits the queer, dyke and feminist interest in the Eurovision Song Contest (Tiina Rosenberg), and two We’re here texts with reflections on structural inequality through the lens of the unfolding global Covid-19 pandemic, detailing the deadly consequences of racist capitalism for queer people of colour (Di Wang) and problematizing comparisons between the Covid-19 pandemic and the HIV/AIDS pandemic (Lena Gross). Cover art by visual artist Ester Fleckner, Germany and Denmark, working from the perspective of queer epistemology.
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Queer Concepts for the 2020sVol. 25 No. 1 (2020)
In this final double special issue edited by Jenny Björklund and Ulrika Dahl, lambda nordica takes stock of the queer moment and looks forward into the new decade. A range of scholars offer short entries on crucial concepts that they propose will help us develop queer studies and research on LGBTQI+ issues in the 2020s. While it would be unqueer to lock in precise definitions of terms or to suggest that these concepts will solve all the world’s problems, contributors both revisit familiar terms and point us in new directions. Taken together this issue is a lexicon of interrelated and relational concepts and queer phenomena that offers a complex map of the present and of the vast knowledge of queer scholars. The outgoing editors also offer some reflections of their decade with lambda nordica.
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Queer Kinship RevisitedVol. 24 No. 2-3 (2019)
In the 2000s, we have witnessed both a queer baby boom and a virtual explosion of research on LGBTQ families, reproduction, and kinship both in and beyond the Nordic region. This special issue revisits the question of queer kinship and offers original research articles and essays on how family and kinship is understood and practiced in Sweden, Poland, Denmark, the U.K., and Israel. Topics discussed range from futurity and community to food and love, gay fatherhood to polyamorous parenthood, donor kinship to transgender conception and revolution; addressing both the pains and pleasures of queering kinship. While the question of what is queer about queer kinship remains, with “Queer Kinship Revisited,” lambda nordica once again offers queer additions to critical kinship studies in a complex world.
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Queer nordisk *bygdVol. 24 No. 1 (2019)
This special issue on queer Nordic ruralities is guest-edited by Evelina Liliequist and Anna Olovsdotter Lööv. The articles deal with a wide range of themes: the forest and the garden in the poetry of Eva-Stina Byggmästar, erotic encounters between humans and nature spirits in Finland-Swedish folk legends, and queer readings of the notes of a grandmother who used to work as a teacher in the northern inland of Sweden in her twenties. The We’re Here section consists of a discussion between academics, who among other things address questions of how to reach beyond the urban hegemony in academic research on queer ruralities. The guest editors also centrally seek to reclaim and queer the Swedish spatial concept ‘*bygd’ as a way to queer rurality. Taken together this special issue makes visible a specific geopolitical context while also contributing to a growing field of Nordic rural queer studies.
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New nordic queer researchVol. 23 No. 3-4 (2018)
This issue of lambda nordica began from a familiar framing in these times: What is “new” in queer studies? The issue presents a number of emerging scholars, and topics that are being pursued in PhD theses and postdoctoral projects in a range of disciplines, as well as reflections on new queer art.
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Queer readings/Reading the queerVol. 23 No. 1-2 (2018)
What is the status of queer readings today? This issue of lambda nordica is a double special issue on queer readings, which has departed from this question, and the contributions show that queer reading practices are highly relevant as well as wide in scope. They display a variety of different queer approaches to literature and texts, and the contributors focus on different genres as well as texts from different time periods. The issue confirms that queer readings is a vital field with the critical potential to challenge norms and power structures, but also to discover new ways in which power operates.
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Open IssueVol. 22 No. 4 (2017)
Issue 4/2017 of lambda nordica is true to our interdisciplinary and Nordic focus. Dag Heede analyses ancient myths in two fin-de-siècle Danish plays. Linda Sólveigar Guðmundsdóttir and Unnur Dís Skaptadóttir discuss LGBQ migrants’ experiences of racialization and feelings of (un)belonging in Iceland. Tove Lundberg, Lisa Nordlund, and Julia Narvola explore how psychology, especially as a clinical practice, can benefit from including feminist and norm-critical approaches. We’re Here offers a collective and multilingual essay on the conditions for knowledge production in the current political situation.
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Postcolonial Queer EuropeVol. 22 No. 2-3 (2017)
LAMBDA NORDICA 2–3/2017 is a special issue dedicated to questions of colonialism, nationalism, racism, and fascism and why they matter for LGBTQ studies and livelihoods in contemporary Europe. Featuring ve articles and one essay, our contributors offer both new concepts and original research on a range of topics from queer of color performance to homophobic rightwing nationalism in Armenia, from antiracist organizing to homonationalist development practices, and from state violence against racialized subjects to de ant activist objections. Put together, this volume contributes to a growing discussion about who the subjects of LGBTQ studies are and who belongs in Europe and how.
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Open IssueVol. 22 No. 1 (2017)
The first issue of 2017 is an open issue with a Nordic focus; the authors come from Finland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and they explore queer themes and issues in the Nordic region. While the authors deal with the Nordic region, they remain careful not to reproduce geopolitical categories in the telling of queer stories. The articles reflect some of the diversity of Nordic queer studies by addressing a wide range of themes: gender dysphoria in autobiographical texts by Finnish trans people, queer automobility in interwar Sweden, and homoerotic poetry by Norwegian writer Åsmund Sveen. In the We’re Here section Kaisa Ilmonen, Mathias Danbolt and Elisabeth Lund Engebretsen take issue with the status of queer studies in the Nordic region.
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Queering histories and temporalitiesVol. 21 No. 3-4 (2016)
Queers in history and queer history are hardly new topics to those of us concerned with LGBTQ studies. As we come to terms with, or research, what it means to live in bodies and movements that are outside what is considered ”normal”, many of us find comfort in realizing we are not alone, nor are we the first. The articles in this special issue demonstrate the continued importance of approaching histories and temporalities in a critical way. The contributors come from the Nordic countries as well as other parts of the world, and they represent a diversity of perspectives on histories and temporalities. They bring out with clarity that viewing history from queer perspectives means being critical of stories of success, since the usually hide the marginalization of people who are excluded from the success. They also highlight the importance of remembering and documenting the past; several contributions deal with questions of queering the archive and the very idea of queer archives.
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Queering FemininityVol. 21 No. 1-2 (2016)
THE TIME HAS COME for lambda nordica to both queer and query femininity and to make a contribution to Nordic Critical Femininity Studies. While (queer) femininity continues to have a bit of bad reputation, it is gaining growing interest internationally. Offering articles and essays in both Swedish and English, this issue features new work by leading and emerging scholars and offer a range of new and creative approaches to (queer) femininity. How can the notion of an inevitable glitch offer us a theory of femininity as broken technology? What can make up and the made up contours and surfaces of Russian femininities teach us about ”natural whiteness”? What does the pariah from feminine fame manifested in a 19th century theater divas reveal about ideal forms? And what might a focus on trans*feminine experience of femi-negativity and transmisogyny bring to a broader field of femininity studies? Along with creative writings on new gurlesque literary figures and a juicy reconsideration of what statistics on bisexuality bring to reconsidering femininity, this collection shows that femininity is far from a superficial topic.
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Queer AgingVol. 20 No. 4 (2015)
In a culture fixated on youth and health there is something inherently queer about aging. But what does it mean to age queerly and how do queers experience aging? In this special issue, a growing research field and urgent matter for many queer researchers, we present articles and essays, which take these questions as their point of departure. Authors address a range of themes; the article section includes a theoretical contribution on the issue of positive aging and an article on how older lesbians feminists experience close relationships and community. In the essay and We’re Here section the contributors offer autobiographical and moving accounts of the timely subjects of queer widowhood and the aging queer body. Put together we hope that this special issue will spark new thoughts, raise additional research questions, and contribute to continues discussions on age among queer researchers and activist.
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Gender Trouble 25 yearsVol. 20 No. 2-3 (2015)
Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble (1990) has been called the single most important work in shaping the development of queer and feminist theory in recent decades. Celebrating the 25th anniversary of Gender Trouble, this special issue of lambda nordica specifically takes stock of some of the impact it has had in Nordic queer and feminist studies. We present work by scholars from different fields and academic generations and with different takes on the significance of Judith Butler’s interventions and contributions. With four articles and three essays, this double issue thus offers both theoretical insights and personal reflections. Some shed new light on themes from Gender Trouble such as performativity and the question of ontology, while others show the impact and uses of Butler’s ideas and concepts on both academic and activist practices.
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lambda nordica 20 yearsVol. 20 No. 1 (2015)
Issue number 1/2015, now in your hand or on your screen, is a special one, in that it is the first of two anniversary issues this year, the second will be an issue dedicated to the 25th anniversary of Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble. As the cover indicates, and just in time for Stockholm Pride, this issue celebrates the journal itself; which, depending on how we count, is either turning 20 this year or turned 25 last year (see further, Söderström, this issue). No small feat for a small journal! As with every open issue of lambda nordica,we present quite a diverse set of articles. Topically, they extend new per-spectives on some of the many themes that have characterized the field of LGBTQ studies over the years; living with HIV, Swedish lesbian let-ter archives, and the implications of Norwegian asylum law for LGBTQ claimants.
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KinshipVol. 19 No. 3-4 (2014)
This Special Issue edited by Ulrika Dahl together with guest editor Jenny Gunnarsson Payne offers new perspectives on the timely themes of queer kinship and reproduction and is drawn from the workshop Reproducing Kinship, Queering Reproduction: Familial Bonds in the Age of Assisted Reproductive Technologies organized in Stockholm in 2013. The articles and essays by anthropologists, sociologists, and media scholars critically engage and extend the so far largely Anglo-American dominated field of queer kinship and reproduction studies. Presenting empirical data from case studies in Finland, Russia, Greece, and Sweden, topics such as lesbian motherhood, queer will-writing, gay men and transnational surrogacy, queer biology, and kinship theory are addressed.
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Queer activism in Southern EuropeVol. 19 No. 2 (2014)
La primera revolucíon es la supervivencia, or ”the first revolution is survival,” is a sentence from the (first) Spanish queer group, La Radical Gai, which was founded in 1991 in Madrid and was very active throughout the decade. More than twenty years later, we claim the same. We, unhappily, share the activists’ anger (and also many ideas) that motivated their emergence and protest in the streets in the context of the AIDS crisis. The guest editorors of this special issue are interested in analyzing social mobilizations and resistances enacted by queer and feminist groups in this very unfriendly context. The contours of what is generally described as LGBTIQ politics in Southern Europe present significant theoretical and political challenges to anyone interested in a range of topics, including social movements’ experiences and outcomes, sexual citizenship, and intimate life. One thing remains clear – there are no linear accounts, in the same way as there are no single-issue demands or strategies.
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We're hereVol. 19 No. 1 (2014)
Det första numret 2014 är ett öppet nummer, men artiklarna har ett tydligt teoretiskt fokus. Tobias Raun fokuserar på hur teoretiker analyserar och begripliggör transidentiteter och transpersoners levda erfarenheter, och João Manuel de Oliveira tar sin utgångspunkt i den samtida åtstramningspolitiken i Spanien och Portugal och visar hur queer- och feministiska teorier sprider sig och utvecklas på nya sätt bortom sina ursprungliga kontexter. Därtill skriver Tiina Rosenberg en essä om Queer Nations manifest, och Pia Laskar skriver i den första We’re Here-sektionen genom att ta upp diskussionen om villkorat och indraget bistånd till länder som inte respekterar LHBT-rättigheter.
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Trans health (care)Vol. 18 No. 3-4 (2013)
This special issue, guest edited by Ulrica Engdahl and Katherine Harrison, takes as a starting point the recent United Nation resolution that affirms human rights to trans persons (TGEU 2011), and brings attention to human rights violations based on gender identity. The aim is to focus specifically on the health care context as a key space in which issues of rights, responsibilities and care are highlighted. The articles highlight the importance of depathologisation of trans and point to ways to improve social and health care services for trans people. The authors are both scholars and activists and discuss among other things cultural representations of trans lives, attitudes towards self-medication, trans peoples’ experiences of different kinds of caregivers, and attitudes among psychologists towards trans clients.
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RepresentationsVol. 18 No. 2 (2013)
Representations, such as texts and images, not only reflect an existing reality but are processes generating meaning in themselves. They convey knowledge and further the formulation of identities, in particular for minorities. Literature and other cultural representations are a valuable source of information for many LGBTQ persons, and the broader public’s understanding of what it’s like being lesbian, gay or transgender has for instance been influenced and shaped by novels, movies and TV series. This issue of lambda nordica contains two articles and one essay discussing contramporary and historic representations of non-normative sexuality. The texts demonstrate how lesbian relationships, as well as the silence surrounding them, are depicted in the neo-Victorian novel The Sealed Letter; how male asexuality is explained in “threads” in an online forum; what significance sexuality may have on citizenship; and how male same-sex desire was described in pictorial artwork in the renaissance.
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ActivismVol. 18 No. 1 (2013)
A special issue on Activism, guest edited by Fanny Ambjörnsson and Janne Bromseth. This special issue of lambda nordica, guest edited by Fanny Ambjörnsson and Janne Bromseth, is concerned with queer activism in Sweden. Departing from themes such as Pride parades, queer porn film festivals and protests, it addresses how resistance to heteronormativity takes shape in public space. Simultaneously, it calls attention to and historicizes the everyday dimensions of contemporary activism. Thus, the articles are not only concerned with the period in which queer activism developed in Sweden – generally understood as from the mid-1990s and onwards – but also point to significant links to the lesbian feminist movement which queer can be understood to be part of in the Swedish context. All articles are in Swedish but include abstracts in English.
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"In transition"?: Central/Eastern European sexualitiesVol. 17 No. 4 (2012)
lambda nordica is happy to present the new issue ”In transition”?: Central/Eastern European Sexualities,” in collaboration with guest editors Robert Kulpa and Joanna Mizielinska.
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No Strindberg issue - Dedicated to Siri von Essen (1850-1912)Vol. 17 No. 3 (2012)
Strindbergsåret 2012 – 100 år sedan den svenske dramatikern dog – har uppmärksammats på såväl teatrar som i press, television och den akademiska världen. Med detta nummer av lambda nordica vill vi ge vårt bidrag till denna tilldragelse, genom att uppmärksamma den spänning mellan norm och avvikelse, makt och motmakt, som Strindbergsåret synliggör. Detta har varit utgångspunkten för detta nummer, som tillägnas Siri von Essen och har haft Ann-Sofie Lönngren som gästredaktör. I numret hittar du artiklar av Liv Saga Milton och Cecilia Berggren samt essäer, recensioner och två nekrologer.
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Crip TheoryVol. 17 No. 1-2 (2012)
I lambda nordicas temanummer om cripteori tillämpar forskare från alla nordiska länder och en brittisk forskare cripteori på empirisk forskning inom humaniora och samhällsvetenskaper. Med få undantag är forskarna unga, i början av sin akademiska bana. Detta beror inte bara på att cripteorin själv är ett ungt område utan även på en medveten strävan hos lambda nordicas redaktörer att låta nya perspektiv komma till tals. Redaktörer är Jens Rydström (lektor vid Lunds Universitet, gästredaktör) och Dirk Gindt (avgående ordinarie chefredaktör).