Elin Abrahamsson and Tuva Haglund have received grants from the Swedish Research Council

Elin Abrahamsson (University of Gothenburg, project leader), and Tuva Haglund (Uppsala University) have received grants from the Swedish Research Council for the research project ”Far from Disposable: An Empirical Study of Readers’ Attachments to The Legend of the Ice People”. The project is based at the University of Gothenburg, in collaboration with Uppsala University.

Project description:

The popular romantic 1980’s book series The Legend of the Ice People has long been out of print, not accessible in libraries or bookshops. Despite this, the novels have been in circulation for forty years, attracting new generations of readers over time. This project will focus on the (long-term and new) readers of The Legend of the Ice People, to study their attachment to these books, asking what it means (and takes) to form and maintain a connection with literature, over time as well as right now in contemporary media culture. Such knowledge is essential for creating conditions that foster inner reading motivation in young readers and support adult readers in deepening their relation to literature. The project is a qualitative empirical study, collecting a broad selection of reader statements by self-reports, digital posts, and interviews. It relies on an interdisciplinary theoretical framework, composed of feminist cultural studies, queer theory and postcritique, employing the concept attachment to explore the social, emotional and phenomenological aspects of reading. The project will be implemented over three years in three sub-studies that examine the books’ circulation among readers, varied forms of rereading, and readers’ relations to changing cultural and media contexts for reading romance literature. It will result in four peer-reviewed journal articles, a popular scientific summary, and a final symposium.