We warmly welcome you to submit papers to the nordic conference "Norlit 
2017: Nordic Utopias and Dystopias" with papers or panels on Nordic 
children's literature.

yours,

Docent Mia Österlund,
Åbo Akademi University, Finland




First Call for Papers
NorLit 2017
Nordic Literatures 2017
June 8-10, 2017
University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland
Nordic Utopias and Dystopias
The Nordic countries have often been considered ideal states as regards 
their organization of society, including, among other things, their 
education systems, gender equality, and a strong concern for nature. 
 From the late twentieth century onwards, an increasing interest in 
Nordic literature, film, and design - genres where social themes have 
been strongly highlighted – can be noted internationally. This discourse 
of the Nordic societies can be considered to contain both utopian and 
dystopian aspects. According to Ruth Levitas in her seminal work on 
utopian theory, The Concept of Utopia (1990), contemporary research of 
utopias is characterized by multiplicity. Levitas claims that the modern 
concept of utopia can be understood in accordance with criteria such as 
form, form and content, function, function and form,  as well as by 
avoiding definitions altogether. If the concept is defined in terms of 
both form and content and, further, in accordance with Thomas More’s 
paradigmatic work Utopia (1516), the literary invention of utopia 
indicates that utopias are good places to be found nowhere. By depicting 
better societies and civilizations utopias are not only critical of 
society: they also seem to question the very idea of an ideal society 
altogether (Hewitt, 1987). In this respect utopias – be they understood 
as cultural genres, satires, political topoi, or ideologies – contain a 
dystopian potential or tendency. The opposite is, however, also the 
case. From Ernst Bloch’s definition of utopia as a site where the 
principle of hope is always at work, it must be concluded that the 
dystopia also carries a utopian potential. The ultimately good or bad 
society that does not exist anywhere can of course not be or become 
real. Nevertheless, what actually may be identified in most social, 
cultural and political undertakings and developments, are utopian 
tendencies as well as dystopian aspects.
We invite scholars in the fields of literature, culture, history, the 
social sciences and other related fields, to submit proposals for 
individual papers, panel-, poster-, or roundtable sessions, which relate 
to the general conference theme, defined in the widest possible sense.
Possible topics include (but are not limited to):



-Constructions of the Nordic welfare state
-The welfare discourses of the 1920s and -30s in the individual Nordic 
countries
-Transformations of the Nordic welfare discourses in the new millennium
-The ‘folkhem’ (the people’s home)
-Ecocriticism (e.g. mining landscapes; degraded landscapes; narratives 
of end preservation and the Ur-mountain as a cultural space; wild woods 
and cultural landscapes)
-Nordic “other spaces” (e.g. the sauna)
-The colonization of the Sapmi
-Nordic desire
-Nordic noir and Nordic nature
-The image of the Nordic in non-Nordic literature
-“Scandichic”
-Arctic territories
-The concepts of utopia and dystopia
-Nordic lightscapes and darkscapes
-The Nordic children’s idyll
-Refugees and the Nordic countries
-“Intersectional diplomacy”
- The idea of Ultima Thule

Keynote-speakers will be announced shortly!

Deadline for paper, poster or panel proposals:  October 1, 2016.
              E-mail your proposal to: [log in to unmask]

Organizing committee: Pia Maria Ahlbäck (Åbo Akademi University), Lena 
Gottelier (University of Turku), Tiina Käkelä-Puumala (University of 
Turku), Miikka Laihinen (University of Turku).











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