Syftet med studien är att öka kunskap om dansen betydelse inom demensvården. Studien är baserad på en översikt över befintlig litteratur inom ämnena dans och demens. Litteraturstudien kompletteras även med en intervju, ett exempel från demensvården i Linköpings kommun. Resultaten kommer att presenteras under tre huvudteman; psykologiska effekter, fysiologiska effekter och sociala effekter av dansens betydelse inom demensvården. Senare är analysen baserad på samma övergripande teman och kommer att analyseras utifrån teorier om livskvalitet och symboliska interaktionism..

By conducting a text analysis this study analyzes possible similarities in the portrayal of story characters between historical Norse myths and contemporary film productions. The chosen historical texts are two stories from Norse mythology which render a myth about Thor and a giant named Hrunge as well as the myth Trymskvädet. The selected movies are two of the comic company Marvel?s productions about super heroes ? Thor and The Avengers. Different categories that this study compares are how the characters are defined by their possessions or artefacts, the actions and the choices which the characters make, and also how their relations, roles and origins are being portrayed.

This study deals with questions about male and female, power and church, related to the Mariologies of three prominent leaders in the Church of Sweden in the last century: Erling Eidem, Paulina Mariadotter and Cristina Grenholm. The mentioned topics are important for conservative High Church people as well as for radical feminists, and they are therefore necessary to address in the context of discussions about the church´s identity and the search of greater unity.Each Mariology is related to contemporary ideas about the relations between male and female, and to the tradition of the church as the leaders themselves see it. During the years 1920-2010 the relations between the sexes changed a lot as a result of the impact of modernity, which also affected how people perceived the relationship between the individual and the tradition/authorities. The present study concludes that there is a connection between Mariology and contemporary ideas about male and female. However, the Mariologist´s attitude to the tradition of the church seems to decide which perspective is allowed to dominate.

The gender theory of Judith Butler is based on both philosophical and psychoanalytic notions of the self. Although greatly inspired by both early and contemporary psychoanalytic thinking, Butler has also questioned some of its core notions such as the meaning of gender complementarity and conceptions of desire. In a dialogue in Studies in Gender and Sexuality she discusses these and other theoretical and ethical issues with the influential psychoanalyst and gender theorist Jessica Benjamin. The exchange is a unique example of an attempt at dialogue and theoretical reflection between a prominent contemporary gender theorist and psychoanalyst. It reveals disagreements and theoretical difficulties I will show to be directly attributable to radical differences between Butler's and Benjamin's conceptions of the self.

The aim of this thesis is to study the Swedish art field during the 1980s, from the perspective of the artistic production of Lars Nilsson. During this decade he became one of the most well known young artists associated with postmodernism.The thesis is divided into three parts, where the first part examines different influences and aspects of the art of Lars Nilsson, as well as the contexts he was a part of. This is performed through a chronological as well as a categorizing presentation, based upon different exhibitions where Nilsson participated during the 1980s.In the second part the subject is the Swedish art field, and how Lars Nilsson came to be part of a a new established category of a young generation of artists, mostly born in the 1950s, who were associated with youth, postmodernism and contemporaneousness. This part also puts attention to the importance of Lars Nittve, then art critic and curator, in introducing postmodernism, as well as establishing this new categorization of artists in Sweden.The last part of the thesis studies four different group exhibitions, and how they all exemplify how "a younger generation of artists" were to be connected with notions of postmodernism and contemporaneousness through curatorial practice. Lars Nilsson participated at the thirst three of these exhibitions.

The purpose of this master`s thesis is to examine how the contemporary changes in society display itself in the network Ecumenical Forum of European Christian Women EFECW and to increase the understanding of networks. My main questions are: What does the networks structure look like? What does the networks relationships look like? How is identity created in the network and what types of identities is created? The objectives are reached by using two methods, qualitative inquiries and document analysis. The inquiries were carried out to nine members in the network of different countries. The theoretical framework of the thesis is Manuel Castells theories of the network society, and the study is also placed in context by a presentation of previous research on the field.

The aim of this study is to compare the modernist novels Astarte (1931) by the Swedish writer Karin Boye with Estación, Ida y vuelta (1930) by the Spanish author Rosa Chacel and the reception of these literary works in contemporary academic research. The theoretical ground of the study consists of feminist and critical theory, with traits of discourse analysis.Astarte and Estación were in large part forgotten and ignored by the Western Canon of literature during most of the 20th century, but have lately gained more attention as important modernist novels by researchers (from the feminist, poststructuralist or hermeneutic theoretical fields) who primarily examine the experimental forms figured by the texts in relation to the deconstruction and shattering of human homogenous ?essence?.The results found in the study show that the literary forms of both novels can be associated with a kind of illusion rapture, which relate to the modernist inclination to what Frederic Jameson calls artificial narrative; a form technique that points back at itself to emphasize its own characteristic of being a constructed and subjective illustration of reality. The contemporary interest in these artificial literary forms expressed by Astarte and Estación is therefore probably a consequence of the vibrant academic debates carried out during later decades concerning the conception of human gender and identity as construction and performance. .

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine boys?/young men?s forming of masculinity and gender identity and how discussions around gender stereotypes and conceptions represents themselves in contemporary youth novels. Gender theory based upon R.W. Connell?s theoretical framework which discusses masculinities in plural is used.

This thesis examines the use of history, historical narratives and the relation to Venezuelan historical consciousness in Libro Rojo, a publication of The Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). It consists of four parts: an introduction, a declaration of principles, statutes and finally what is called the programmatical bases (bases programaticas) of the party.A starting point for this thesis is that this is an under prioritized area of research about the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela. It aims to show the centrality of history in these fundamental documents of the biggest left-wing party in Latin America.The thesis finds that symbolically charged historical figures ? mainly national icons of Venezuela´s struggle for national liberation - are mobilized to back up contemporary aspirations and influence public perception of what kind of future is possible and desirable. Libro Rojo structures the relationship between past, present and future in order to influence historical consciousness.It also finds that Libro Rojo constructs a vision of socialism which aims to show that the ideas and actions of Venezuela´s symbolically charged historical figures are compatible with the ideas of 19th and 20th century western Marxism.

Adapting the concept of the ?popular cultural memory? and its necessary ?context knowledge? established by Karin Kukkonen, this bachelor thesis seeks to examine how this memory is ?at work? and expresses itself in contemporary fiction, by doing an intertextual reading of the swedish author Amanda Svensson's debut Hey Dolly. Within the intertextual structures of Hey Dolly the reader encounters allusions and references that address almost everything from contemporary popular culture to established authors in the swedish canon, mainly as means for the characters to help them express their emotions and thoughts, by ?choosing? from already available content of popular culture to use and modify. The intertextuality alluding to the popular cultural memory does at the same time address the concept of the ideal reader throughout the novel.

The main purpose of this study is to explore and develop how the Christian conception of love as agape can be understood in light of feminist concerns, and how it can be cultivated in light of psychological research. Traditionally, agape has been defined as unconditional self-sacrifice for the sake of the other. Feminist theologians have highlighted repeatedly that an ethical principle of self-sacrifice might not be liberating for groups who have already internalized pressure to sacrifice their own needs for others. The main research questions are: 1) How may agape be understood in light of feminist concerns about its traditional interpretations? 2) How could a Christian community cultivate a form of agape that is responsive to feminist concerns? In order to answer these questions, the first part of the dissertation examines feminist concerns regarding discussion of agape, and then uses these concerns as a lens for analysing four themes in contemporary accounts of agape: community, care, humility, and mentalization.

This essay constitutes an attempt to expose, with reference to contemporary animal research, the limits of Martin Heidegger?s concept of the being of animality in Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik (1929/30) and to propose some possible ways to think, within the philosophical style of this particular work, the being of those animals that most distinctly transcends Heidegger?s concept. The essay seeks to address the following question: Do the results of contemporary animal research expose ways of being within animality that withdrawal from Heidegger?s concept of the being of animality in general, and if so, how should we think these new ways of animal being? The motivation to ask this question, I argue, are immanent to Heidegger?s thinking in at least three ways: 1) Because of his standpoint that philosophy cannot, in any meaningful way, create an ontological concept of animality without an orientation towards the results of the positive sciences; 2) Because of the unfinished and tentative character of Heidegger?s analysis, a character that is such that it should be seen, according to Heidegger himself, as an essential point of departure for further thinking; 3) Because of Heidegger?s view that the being of the animal are such that it involves the withdrawal of this very being from any originary access, a withdrawal that necessitates an infinite return to the question concerning the being of the animal. The essay wants to be a continuation of lines that are present in Heidegger?s open-ended thought on this theme rather than to be an external critique that approach the text, which is most often the case, as a closed point of view which we are forced to affirm or reject.

By conducting a text analysis this study analyzes possible similarities in the portrayal of story characters between historical Norse myths and contemporary film productions. The chosen historical texts are two stories from Norse mythology which render a myth about Thor and a giant named Hrunge as well as the myth Trymskvädet. The selected movies are two of the comic company Marvel?s productions about super heroes ? Thor and The Avengers. Different categories that this study compares are how the characters are defined by their possessions or artefacts, the actions and the choices which the characters make, and also how their relations, roles and origins are being portrayed.

The conditions for art in Romania have gone through big changes since the collapse of the regime in December of 1989. Under the Communist regime the artists had to work within a dualistic system completely unlike the one that developed in the West during the same period.Similar to the other countries of the former Eastern block, the communist Romanian state had understood the great potential that art has as a form of propaganda. Thus the regime secured full control over the art that would be allowed into the public space. In response to the confines set on the artistic expressions, a non-official art began to develop alongside the official art of the state.These two layers of Romanian art history were dissolved when Ceausescu?s regime finally came to an end in 1989.

Through discourse analysis of twelve Library and Information Science theses, covering the period between 1975 and 2007, this thesis examines representations of homosexuality and homosexual identities. By using queer theory as a point of reference aspects such as essence/construct, equality/difference, notions of gender and views on the historical and contemporary situation of homosexuals are brought to the fore in the analysis. It is shown how the material unequivocally posits the contemporary situation of homosexuals favourably in comparison to a past signified by prejudices and oppression. This can be seen as an implicit essentialism in the texts, though ambivalences open up the possibility that it in some cases may be only strategically used while explicitly adhering to constructionist views. In linking concepts of a homosexual difference to prejudices, frequently involving notions of inverted gender performances or sexual ?extremes?, the discourse of progression posits normalcy and assimilation as positive values.