Knausgård Beyond Autofiction: Special Issue

deadline for submissions: 
May 1, 2018
full name / name of organization: 
Scandinavian Studies
contact email: 

SPECIAL ISSUE OF SCANDINAVIAN STUDIES

Theme: Knausgård Beyond Autofiction

 

Ever since the 2009 publication of the first volume of his six-volume autobiographical novel Min kamp (My Struggle), Karl Ove Knausgård has intrigued readers and scholars alike. In Knausgård’s native Scandinavia, the initial focus was on the autobiographical aspect of the novel, which led to the perception of My Struggle as part of a literary trend of autofiction - a term originally coined by the French author Serge Doubrovsky in 1977. The critical and scholarly focus on questions of genre, autobiography, and autofiction might be explained by the geographical and temporal proximity of the Scandinavian scholars to Knausgård, as well as the fact that Min kamp appeared at a time when these issues were already being widely discussed. Since My Struggle has now been published throughout most of the world, and almost a decade has passed since the initial moment of reception in Scandinavia, we would like to encourage an expansion of the boundaries of Knausgård research beyond the generic focus of the early academic reception. Therefore, we invite abstracts for a special issue of Scandinavian Studies with the theme of “Knausgård Beyond Autofiction.” We are looking for articles on Knausgård’s writings before, after, and including My Struggle, by scholars in any area of literary studies or the humanities, that address a range of social, historical, and aesthetic issues including gender and masculinity, affect, childhood, collective/historical memory, views of art and realism, contemporary Nordic politics, Hitler and Nazism, as well as Knausgård’s engagement with theory, philosophy, and literary predecessors.

 

Deadline for a 300-word abstract is May 1st 2018, and deadline for submission of chosen articles is October 1st. Please send abstracts to the editors of the special volume.

Dean Krouk, University of Wisconsin-Madison: krouk@wisc.edu

Claus Elholm Andersen, University of Wisconsin-Madison: ceandersen2@wisc.edu