The purpose of this essay is to examine how the Supernatural and the occult are portrayed inpopular culture. To be able to do this, I have chosen to perform a discourse analysis of the twofirst novels in the L. J Smith series The Vampire Diaries. The novels are called TheAwakening and The Struggle.I apply the following questions in my analysis to narrow down the perspective further.?In what situations are Supernatural used in the books and what part does it play??How does the Supernatural affect the main characters and how is this portrayed in the novel??How is the Supernatural portrayed depending on the gender of the character?I will focus mostly on the vampires since they generally are the ones who introduce theSupernatural elements into the story.I am applying gender theory in my discourse analyses of the novels, to hopefully be able togive a wider picture of the Supernatural in relation to gender in the novels.I begin with analyzing the main discourses in the story, revolving around the Supernatural.Secondly I analyze what impact the Supernatural has on the main character.

Titel: Supernatural- Fans, tolkningsprocesser och meningsskapandeNivå: C-uppsats inom Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskapFörfattare: Marie Louise Öhman och Johanna ÖstlundHandledare: Anna EdinExaminator: Eva Åsén EkstrandDatum: juni 2013Syfte: Studera fansens tolkningar, engagemang och meningsskapande med fokus på den amerikanska TV-serien Supernatural.    Teori: Analysera fansens tolkningsprocesser utifrån Stuart Halls Encodning/Decoding- modell och de tre tolkningssätten, dominant, förhandlande och oppositionell läsning.  Metod: Kvalitativundersökning. Med ett antal enkätfrågor som besvarades av 43 respondenter. För att nå ut till fansen annonserade vi efter respondenter via internetforumet Tumblr.Resultat/slutsatser: Av våra respondenter gjorde majoriteten en förhandlande läsning av TV-serien.

This essay analyses the existence of a literary tendency in Sweden the last decade, which shares many similarities with magical realism. The study includes the work of three writers: Majgull Axelsson with Aprilhäxan; John Ajvide Lindquist with Hanteringen av odöda and Låt den rätte komma in; and finally a short story of Alejandro Leiva Wegner, ?Elixir?.Focus for this work is to expose how these writers use Supernatural events/people as a strategy to create a new identity and to effect social criticism, strategies that are common to magical realism.The aim of this work is therefore to clarify generalities about magical realism as a genre and give it a place in Swedish literature and in a changing Swedish society. Furthermore this essay defines a unique term for the genre as adapted to the Swedish reader and with some characteristics of its own: ?övernaturlig realism? (Supernatural realism)..

My essay explores how people talk about a woman´s Supernatural ability in relation to normality and abnormality. In order to find this out I´ve made interviews with people inclose relations to Hildur Lawergren. Hildur lived all her life in Fole on Gotland where she was often interviewed in local papers and on the radio about her predictions on the coming weather. She used melted candles to make her predictions. The candles were melted down on Christmas eve.

This academic essay explores the possibilities to knowledge of God in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. The essay takes its departure from question 12 in the Summa Theologiae, specifically articles 12 and 13 that deal with natural knowledge of God and Supernatural knowledge, respectively. It also presents objections made by modern philosophers against these ways of knowledge along with a rebuttal of these objections. Lastly, a conclusion is offered and ends with a reflection on how Aquinas' teaching on human knowledge of God in earthly existence compares with his teaching on the knowledge human beings will have in heaven and what consequences that has for our present knowledge..

The purpose of this study is to investigate the distribution of medieval ballads as semiotics of intertextuality in modern Swedish literature, here represented by August Strindberg, Erik Axel Karlfeldt, Kerstin Ekman and Katarina Frostenson. They are famous authors from different epochs, ranging from the period called ?the modern breakthrough? in the 1880s until the postmodernism of the present time. My aim is to expose their attraction to medieval balladry, and their different ways of using form, language and style from this old poetry in poems, prose and plays, explicit as well as implicit..

This academic essay explores the possibilities to knowledge of God in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. The essay takes its departure from question 12 in the Summa Theologiae, specifically articles 12 and 13 that deal with natural knowledge of God and Supernatural knowledge, respectively. It also presents objections made by modern philosophers against these ways of knowledge along with a rebuttal of these objections. Lastly, a conclusion is offered and ends with a reflection on how Aquinas' teaching on human knowledge of God in earthly existence compares with his teaching on the knowledge human beings will have in heaven and what consequences that has for our present knowledge..

The following study is a qualitative combination of textual analysis and interviews concerning the subject of slashfiction. Slash is a sub-category to fanfiction, which essentially means non-professionally authored short stories about already existing characters and environments, for example from TV-shows, movies or books. These stories are available on the internet. The main point is to pair two of the male characters together in a sexual relationship. According to previous studies, 90 percent of all fanfiction writers are female and this percentage is probably even higher when it comes to slash.I have looked into what these stories can be an expression of, by analyzing the construction of gender, sexuality and relationships using the following three questions:Is slash a quest for an ideal equal and romantic relationship?Do these stories represent a resistance against established norms regarding gender and sexuality?What role does transcendence of boundaries play in slash? I have used stories that are derived from the American TV show Supernatural, which generally try to explore the relationship between its protagonists, the brothers Sam and Dean Winchester.  The result gives a somewhat divided picture of slash, as some stories clearly break with traditional gender norms while others seem to uphold them..

This essay aims to analyse the form of two radio documentary shows and compare them to, what I mean are a traditional, Swedish radio documentary form. The radio shows are Radiolab distributedby National Public Radio and WNYC, Övernaturligt (Supernatural) produced by TredjeStatsmakten Media AB and P3 Dokumentär (P3 Documentary) distributed by Sveriges Radio. Alarge part of the essay is dedicated to develop a method to analyse form in specific radio shows. Mymethod consists of two parts:1. A defining of sounds in a spreadsheet that map out the different sound elements over time.2.

The relationship between fandoms and religion has become an increasingly popular topic to study within the field of the sociology of religion. In previous studies, there have been different views concerning whether or not fandoms should be regarded as religious from a functional perspective. This issue is especially interesting considering the decreasing popularity of traditional religion in some aspects. The aim of this essay is to study how Harry Potter fandoms are described in previous studies. The study aims at discerning both the empirical data and how the data is interpreted. The material in this study consists of three previous studies about the communities centered around Harry Potter fandoms.

Lucie Lagerbielke (1865-1931) is a fairly unknown writer who lived and worked in Stockholm. All her life she was writing with a strong aim to tell her truth and she had an aspiration to change the world for the better.  Her main points of views in her authorship were; oneness, the power of love, a belief in a supreme purpose to be served, religious mysticism and the interest in understanding and to prove the transcendent on a scientific basis. In my discussion I relate to Rita Felski and her expression the popular sublime, a term she applies to illustrate a sublime way of writing that was common in women popular fiction in the late nineteenth-century. This romantic literature with escapist tendencies was popular among the ordinary readers but very seldom met with success with the professional critics.Focus in this BA thesis is the spiritual Lagerbielke and in what way she wants to change the society. I have analyzed two of her novels, Daniel- ett lifsöde and En sällsam upplefvelse with intention to examine how she used her novels to plead for her cause.By making such an analysis I come to the conclusion that both her novels have the purpose to emphasize her philosophy of life.

Gothic literature has a tradition of dealing with dark subjects, themes and motifs, as well as depicting fear in different shapes and forms. Dani Cavallaro describes dark fiction in terms of the "aesthetic of the unwelcome". The philosopher Edmund Burke separates the beautiful from the sublime and writes that everything that is capable of producing a terror of pain and death is a source of the sublime. In her essay "On the Supernatural in Poetry", Ann Radcliffe draws a clear line between the concepts of terror and horror and distinguished them as fundamentally different. In this essay, I define the terms horror and terror by following up the research surrounding Radcliffes statement.

The aim of this essay is to analyze the relationship between the title and the music in a selec-tion of piano pieces by Torsten Petre. Based on the work list, a categorization of the piano titles has been made and the categories have been named ?emotions, moods and minds?, ?na-ture?, ?mankind?, ?dances and similar titles?, ?Supernatural beings, fairy creatures and popu-lar belief?, ?foreign countries and foreign culture?, ?nationalism and tradition?, ?artifacts?, and ?miscellaneous?. Two pieces from the category ?emotions, moods and minds? Skizzer för piano, third series Op.

Vi har valt att undersöka barn och ungdomars musikkonsumtion samt studerat närmare hur de uppfattar produktband i förhållande till det vi valt att kalla kreativa band. För att få en bakgrund kring resonemang som produktband och kreativa band ges en kortare presentation av musikindustrin. Här får läsaren en inblick i hur ett produktband tas fram och lanseras. Med produktband menar vi ett band som framställts primärt för att generera vinst åt företaget som skapat bandet, något som är stort inom dagens musikindustri, men långt ifrån en nyhet. För att få en djupare inblick i hur konsumenterna av produktmusik förhåller sig till produktband och dess musik har vi genomfört två undersökningar.

Since time immemorial, nature has been conceived of as a female entity. This ancient concept is also a recurring element in contemporary Swedish horror fiction. The purpose of this thesis is to compare the feature of nature in the selected works of Anders Fager, Andreas Marklund and Frida Arwen Rosesund and in what ways these respective depictions rely on a tradition where nature is gendered female. The theoretical starting-point for this comparative study is ecocriticism and its subcategory ecofeminism, which are modes of literary criticism where the role of nature in general, and its female connotations in particular, are appreciated as significant literary features. For executing an analysis that goes beyond what is explicit, the exploration of these three writers? texts also adopts a psychoanalytical perspective.