The Literary Canon in Sweden. Consensus and Conflict in Educational Policy, Public Debate and Pedagogical Practice

The purpose of this four year research project is to map and analyze what is truly at stake in the ongoing struggles over the literary canon in Sweden, with a focus on the debate about and implementation of the Tidö Agreement 2022 (a collaboration between the Swedish government and the right wing party Sweden democrats).

The project is divided into three work packages – educational policy, public debate, and pedagogical practice (teacher training in Swedish).

Through these three combined empirical approaches, the project will be the first of its kind, and give a research based foundation for policies, debates, and educational practices regarding the canon.

Moreover, it is the first major research project to address and focus on the literary canon in Sweden in several decades.

The theoretical framework, consisting of cultural policy studies and axiology, is combined with a nexus analysis methodology.The project will be based on the following research questions:How are consensus and dissensus constructed by influential actors regarding a literary canon?

What, more specifically, are they (dis)agreeing upon?What values and functions are attributed to the canon, literature reading, and literature instruction by the different actors?Within which collaborating and counteracting discourses are the various actors situated?