Helena Wahlström Henriksson

Prodekan vid Vetenskapsområdet för humaniora och samhällsvetenskap; Historisk-filosofiska fakulteten

Mobiltelefon:
072-999 92 55
E-post:
helena.henriksson@gender.uu.se
Besöksadress:
Dag Hammarskjölds väg 7
Postadress:
Box 256
751 05 UPPSALA

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Professor vid Centrum för genusvetenskap

Telefon:
018-471 72 98, 072-999 92 55
Mobiltelefon:
072-999 92 55
E-post:
Helena.Henriksson@gender.uu.se
Besöksadress:
Villavägen 6A
752 36 UPPSALA
Postadress:
Box 527
751 20 Uppsala

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Kort presentation

Helena Wahlström Henriksson is Professor in Gender Studies and Docent in American literature. Her research interests include cultural studies, feminist theory, family/kinship studies, masculinity studies, childhood studies, life writing, literature, (digital) media, and postcolonial studies.

Biografi

Fil Kand English and Comparative Literature 1991

Fil Dr American Literature 1997

Docent (Associate Professor) American Literature 2010

Professor Gender Studies 2016

Visiting Professor at TIAS, Turku University 2024-2027

Forskning

My research combines literary and cultural studies methodologies with the critical perspectives of feminist theory, masculinity studies, and critical studies of family and kinship. It has focused on US culture, as well as Swedish, Nordic, and European contexts.

My doctoral thesis, Husbands, Lovers, and Dreamlovers: Masculinity and Female Desire in Women’s Novels of the 1970s (1997), is a feminist study of women’s liberation novels in the US. Masculinity and female heterosexual desire are contextualized historically and discursively, and fiction is read alongside non-fictional texts from the 1960s and 70s on sexuality, sexual liberation, and women’s liberation.

Primarily, my research since then has focused on understandings of family and kinship, exploring fatherhood, motherhood, and childhood, particularly orphanhood. New Fathers?: Contemporary American Stories of Masculinity, Domesticity, and Kinship (2010) analyses fatherhood and fathering in non-nuclear families in US fiction and fictional film.

Making Home: Orphanhood, Kinship, and Cultural Memory in Contemporary American Novels (2014; paperback ed 2021; collaboratively written with Prof. Maria Holmgren Troy, Karlstad University and Dr. Liz Kella, Södertörn University, and financed by the Swedish Research Council 2009-2012) investigates the orphan figure in contemporary American novels, and the ways that this figure is linked to both literary and social histories of various groups of orphan children in the US.

Another collaborative project, was Mother Anyway: Literary, Medical, and Media Narratives about Motherhood. Within the framework of that project, I investigated, for example, narratives about breastfeeding in handbooks for new parents, and representations of maternal bodies in men’s life writing. (Anna Williams PI; financed by the Swedish Research Council 2017-2020)

Single Parents in Swedish Media: On ”Lone” Parenthood 2010-2020 was a project where I worked with Professor Disa Bergnehr (Linnaeus University) to explore how single parents figure in Swedish newspapers, film and television, and life writing (Funded by RJ 2020-2024).

I am currently particularly interested in thinking about how gender, class, and time (lifetime, clock time, pasts, presents, and futures, everyday time, time as age, ageing and generations, and more) figures in family relations.

My main work-in-progress is a monograph about sons' stories about their mothers' lives, and the mother-son relationship over time, tentatively titled Sons and Mothers in Contemporary European Life Writing: Filial Stories, Maternal Subjects. Arguably, these literary stories offer complex and nuanced understandings (which we might want to call "theorizations") of sonhood (and hence masculinities) that the research has not yet explored. (Funded by RJ Sabbatical 2026)

I initiated and chaired The Swedish Network for Family and Kinship Studies 2014-2019 (funded by FORTE 2016-18) and chair the FAMKIN research group at the Centre for Gender Research.

Helena Wahlström Henriksson

Publikationer

Senaste publikationer

Alla publikationer

Artiklar i tidskrift

Böcker

Doktorsavhandlingar, monografi

Kapitel i böcker, delar av antologi

Konferensbidrag

Rapporter

Samlingsverk (redaktörskap)

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