PHD-kandidater ved IF

Engelsk

prosjekttittel: engelsk språktest

My study is a two-fold study of the validity of the National Tests of English (NTE), which are taken by Norwegian pupils in grades 5 and 8. I focus specifically on the substantive and structural aspects of validity, which, broadly speaking, deal with the processes involved in answering test items (exercises), and the scoring bands respectively. My main methodology for testing the substantive validity of the tests is to conduct classroom studies in order to establish whether or not pupils go through the processes that the tests are intended to trigger. In order to test the structural validity, I will conduct a study with a panel of raters who have experience with the NTE. Raters will be asked to study around 180 test items and will assign mastery level descriptors that they feel are appropriate to the items. These will be cross-checked against grade levels that are currently used in the NTE in order to establish whether or not the band scores are a true reflection of the difficulty of the test items.

Veileder:

Reza Habibi

Prosjekttittel: A genetic Study of Psychoanalytic Sources in Samuel Beckett's creative Process: Murphy and Watt.

Thanks to the the focal presence of depth psychology and psychoanalysis within Samuel Beckett’s writing over the past decades, the principal focus of my PhD thesis will be a genetic study of the play 'Krapp’s Last Tape' and the novels 'Murphy' and 'Watt', two of whose protagonists, except for Krapp, spend time in a mental asylum. In addition to their clear chronological and thematic links to the ‘Psychology Notes’, my reason for focusing on these texts is that the hitherto unpublished manuscripts for both novels are now being made available. From a ‘source-hunting’ point of view, therefore, my intertextual, source-based study will draw more specifically on Beckett’s ‘Psychology Notes’ as a crucial scholarly tool to understand the thematic genesis and creative process of a given text.

Veileder: Erik Tonning

Helle Haakonsen Lapeniene

Project title: Corpus Acephalous: Violence and Eroticism in the Artistic

Production of Djuna Barnes. An examination of visual and textual images in the work of the moderniswriter and artist, Djuna Barnes, to address the possibility of destabilizing dominant structures and frameworks related to notions of visuality and representation. The project connects this issue to violence and eroticism in aesthetic practice and theory, as well as Barnes' work, and conceptualizations of subversion, transgression, andsublimation.

Veileder: Zeljka Svrljuga

Julia King

Prosjekttittel: Mapping Book and Manuscript Exchange Around Syon Abbey, 1415-1535

Project description: As part of the larger project “The English Cult of St. Birgitta: Reception and Influence, 1380-1530”, this investigation serves two purposes. It identifies the lines of family, religious, and occupational affinity along which late medieval English books travel, and it situates Syon Abbey—and by extension Birgittine texts—within late medieval English book culture. A large-scale study of networks of book production and exchange in fifteenth-century England is necessary in order to synthesize and connect the extant information about Syon Abbey and about late-medieval English book ownership in general, thus creating a clearer picture of late medieval religious book networks and Syon’s place in those networks. Using network analysis and the digital humanities application Gephi to digitally visualize the available data about fifteenth-century English book transmission and ownership, the project will include a digital “map” of documentary and codicological evidence of book ownership and transmission using existing library catalogues, booklists, and evidence found in the books themselve

Veileder: Laura Miles

Nafeesa Nichols

Prosjekttittel: Popular Spaces: Space and Gender in Four Contemporary South African Novels

The aim of the project is to conceptualize the appropriation of popular culture as the aesthetic center of these novelists’ engagement with the production of popular spaces with regard to gender. The project will study the authors’ thematic preoccupation with the production of space; the ways the texts’ explorations of space production are simultaneously explorations of gender and its intersections with race and class. Moreover, it will examine the employment of popular culture as a significant element of the quotidian narrative and thus link its use to an expanding definition of ‘the ordinary.’ In so doing, the dissertation will argue that these texts offer important alternatives to dominant narratives of South African spaces and it will contribute to a growing body of literary examinations of such counter-narratives.

Veileder: Zeljka Svrljuga

Wassim Rustom

Prosjekttittel: Literature as Site of Contention over Logics of Use: From Wordsworth to Joyce.

The project takes as its starting point the thesis that neither literature nor “use” or “usefulness” are stable entities or concepts, but exist historically and are shaped through historical discourses and practices. The aim is therefore to examine specific ways in which the emergence of modern literature from the late eighteenth century might have been tied up with a negotiation of what “use” means, how it is conceived and how it regulates human practices, starting with the art of writing. The project centres on work by William Wordsworth, Walter Pater and James Joyce, and radiates to include discussion of relevant intellectual, literary and aesthetic tendencies of the period in question.

Veileder: Erik Tonning

Siri Vevle

Prosjekttittel: The Illuminated Book as Contemplative Medium; William Blake's Concept of Fourfold Vision in the Major Prophecies"

The project seeks to analyze the function and meaning of Blake's concept of Fourfold Vision as developed in the later part of his career. The aim is to shed light on the concept by examining it through a series of 'frames' (J. Culler), and examine the concept's connection to earlier intellectual traditions, such as medieval theology, with a particular emphasis on the practice of exegesis, and the monastic 'memoria' tradition; enlightenment philosophy, especially Berkeley's theory of vision; Romantic ideas on imagination (Coleridge), as well as recent theoretical developments; philosophy on the function of the concept; cognitive theory, with particular focus on conceptual blending as creative act (Lakoff, Turner, and others ), and the notion of cognitive fluidity. An important aspect throughout the discussion is the role and activity of the reader.

Veileder: Stuart Sillars

Andrea Rinaldi

Modernism and Christianity-prosjektet

Prosjekttittel: Ezra Pound and Religion. Christianity, Occultism and Political Religion.

Veileder: Erik Tonning

Nahum Welang

Prosjekttittel: Black Filiality, WhiteFeminism and the Purgatorial Existence in Between: the Reimagination oIdentities in Contemporary American Culture

My project, a multidisciplinary cultural studies discourse, focuses on the exclusionary practices Black American women endure within thecategories of race and gender. Their intermediate existence between racial and gendered identities is uniquely underscored by the role white patriarchy and black hyper masculinity play in the marginalization of black female voices and the prioritization of white women’s interests within and beyond mainstream feminist spaces. In order to legitimize this intermediate existence of black women, a space I liken to purgatory, my project develops the triple consciousness theory (TCT). TCT, inspired by W.E.B. Du Bois’ double consciousness, argues that black women view themselves through three lenses and not two: America, blackness and womanhood. The phenomenon of three components wrestling in one body is emphasized in Gilles Deleuze’s fold concept. Deleuze, a central figure in postmodern French philosophy, reimagined the fold, aconcept originally based on Kantian and Leibnizian principles, as the folding of design in human thinking. Although folding is an internal lived-in existence in relation to one’s self “instead of being a product of a relation to something else” (Davidson 130), it allows for engagement with the external in order to “unfold and merge, but not without new folding being created in the process” (Davidson 130).

Similarly, Black women in contemporary American culture are engaging with a plethora of platforms (literature, social media, television,movies, music etc.) to “unfold and merge” with the three external components of themselves in order for “new folding,” the production of new liberated and reimagined identities, to take place. The meteoric rise of these dynamic communication platforms in our contemporary time as given black women ample opportunities reimagine skewed perceptions of black womanhood.

Veileder: Lene Johnnessen

Fagområde: Engelsk fagdidaktikk

Raees Calafato

Prosjekttittel: Language awareness and metalinguistic knowledge of native speaker and non-native speaker teachers of English and French in Norway and Russia

While language learning has evolved to include diverse modes of independent study where the teacher is either wholly or partially absent, many learners continue to learn a foreign language with the help of teachers, whose experiences, beliefs and knowledge can play a decisive role in promoting successful learning outcomes, as well as influence learners’ motivation to acquire additional foreign languages. Yet, one aspect of language teachers’ experiences, including their educational background and professional development, that has received comparatively little attention to date is their proficiency in multiple languages. One group that has been most affected by this lack of attention is non-native speaker teachers, who are, by their very nature, proficient multilinguals since they, unlike native speaker teachers, are able to teach their acquired languages. At the same time, the status of non-native speaker teachers in foreign language education remains a hotly debated issue, even giving rise to professional movements like the “NNEST movement” (non-native speaker teachers of English).

Research on the multicompetence of non-native speaker teachers to date has been notably restricted to attitudinal studies rather than on assessing the ways in which their knowledge of multiple languages, i.e. their multilingual background, affects their language awareness and teaching ability. Several studies have shown, for example, that multilinguals possess more metalinguistic knowledge than monolinguals, which makes language acquisition easier. My project, as a result, seeks to address this gap by conducting comparative research on native and non-native speaker teachers of English and French at secondary schools in Russia and Norway. The aim is to assess how Russian and Norwegian teachers (when compared with native speaker teachers) benefit from their purportedly better cognitive capacities (as proficient multilinguals) when identifying and correcting morphosyntactic errors and verbalizing associated rules (metalinguistic knowledge). I will also investigate how effectively non-native and native speaker teachers use their awareness of language when teaching English and French to their students, and to what extent teaching an L2 (English) differs from teaching an L3 (French) in terms of teachers’ metalinguistic awareness and their ability to use this to promote successful student learning outcomes.

Veileder: Asta Haukås

Kimberly Skjelde

Prosjekttittel: Vocabulary Assessment: Measuring written receptive vocabulary knowledge among Norwegian EFL learners.

Vocabulary knowledge is a complex dimension of second language acquisition, and also a central part of all foreign language learning. The purpose of this PhD project is to investigate written receptive vocabulary knowledge among Norwegian learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). Focus is placed on an investigation of academic English vocabulary knowledge and Norwegian/English cognates found in this vocabulary.

Research will be conducted in classroom environments pertinent to a study centered in didactics. Quantitative analyses of data gathered from diagnostic tests form the basis of the project. However, these will be complemented with questionnaire data and qualitative analyses of group work.

One aim of the study is to provide empirical evidence to help educators and students better set vocabulary learning goals for Norwegian EFL learners. A second aim is to further our knowledge of cognate advantages or inhibitions in academic vocabulary among speakers of a North Germanic language.

Veileder: Aud Solbjørg Skulstad

Andre Storto

Prosjekttittel: Development of Multilingual and Multicultural Identity in the school subjects Foreign Languages and English as an in-depth study.

This four-year longitudinal study aims to investigate to what extent the Foreign Language subjects in the Norwegian school curriculum foster the development of multilingual abilities and multicultural competence amongst schoolchildren in the 8^th, 9^th and 10^th grades of lower secondary school. I am particularly interested in studying how the networks propitiated by the knowledge of foreign languages end up expanding the students’ repertoires and fostering their multicultural abilities in situated contexts of language use.

Veileder: Asta Haukås

Engelsk språk

Jalaludeen Ibrahim

Project Title: Quotative System of Contemporary Nigerian English

My project focuses on investigating the ways in which speakers of contemporary Nigerian English (NE) re-create their own speech and the speech of others in narrative discourse and free conversations, specifically with regard to the acquisition and spread of English quotatives. The following quotatives are the primary focus: “be like”, “say”, “go”, “think”, “tell”, “be all”, “be all+like” and “zero”. This study examines how speakers’ choice of quotatives is conditioned by both linguistic and extra-linguistic factors. The linguistic factors considered are the tense and aspect of the quotative (present and past tenses), grammatical person of the subject (first person singular, first person plural, second person, third person singular and third person plural) and type of quote (something clearly said, something thought but not said, and expressing gestures or non-lexicalized sound). The extra-linguistic factors to be considered are the social variables age, region, gender and social class.

The findings from this study have the potential to analyse how misunderstandings in international communication between speakers of NE and others can arise due to the way quotatives are used in this variety. It will thus help avoid misunderstandings in international communication with Nigerians and further advance professional and private communication in English in Nigeria and beyond

Veileder: Dagmar Haumann

Fransk

Fagområde: Fransk språk

Anders Didriksen

Fagområde: Fransk språk

Prosjekttittel: Logisk-semantiske instruksjonar i franske argumentative konnektorar: Ei kjelde til implisitte topoi, enthymem og syllogismar

Veileder: Kjersti Fløttum

Anne-Kate Ellingsen

Prosjekttittel: Retoriske strategier i debatten om atomenergi i Frankrike

Prosjektet har som mål å kartlegge de retoriske strategiene og de språklige praksisene som blir brukt i argumentasjonen som har utviklet seg i den franske debatten om klima, da særlig i forbindelse med bruken av atomkraft som energikilde.

Veileder: Kjersti Fløttum

Solveig Lygren

Prosjekttittel:Havet, vannet og sårbarheten: En studie av hav- og vannmotivet i samtidslitteraturens klimanarrativ

Mitt Ph.D.-prosjekt er en studie av samtidslitteraturens fremstillinger av klimaspørsmålene og det litterære språkets rolle i klimadiskursen. Med utgangspunkt i romaner fra tre ulike språkområder (det franske, engelske og norske), vil prosjektet studere hvordan havet og vannet som litterære grunnmotiv får ny betydning i den klimaorienterte samtidslitteraturen, der disse motivene er uløselig knyttet til klimaendringene. Et overordnet mål er å vise hvordan skjønnlitteraturen kan øke vår forståelse for klimasituasjonen og hvordan den kan påvirke holdninger.

Veileder: Øyvind Gjerstad

Fransk fagdidaktikk:

Irina Tiurikova

Prosjekttittel:Developing multicultural and multilingual identity of lower secondary school students through the FLL.

Abstract: The research focuses on the interplay between intercultural competence development and multicultural identity negotiation. It starts from the point that potential benefits of multicultural knowledge, such as more competent intercultural interaction, creativity and capacity to integrate competing perspectives, are more likely to be found in the individuals who identify themselves as multicultural and multilingual. The research is designed as article-based thesis and investigates the following research questions: 1. To what extent do the lower secondary school students learning foreign languages identify themselves as multilingual and multicultural? 2. How does their self-identification as multilingual and multicultural influence on their intercultural competence development?

Veileder: Åsta Haukås

Fagområde: Fransk litteratur

Vanessa Aurelie Ndi Etondi

Prosjekttittel: Womanism and existentialism in novels by Leonora Mian

My project deals with women studies, literature, intersectionality, postcolonialism and textual analysis. In the theoretical framework of africana womanism by Clenora Hudson-Weems and existentialism by Simone de Beauvoir, I examine the female characters in "Le cycle de l'ombre et la lumière" of the novelist Léonora Miano. My monograph is supported by five novels that I read through textual analysis methods. I intend to prove that Miano's female characters symbolise any woman of African descent (the Black one), should she evolve in an african, a european or an american setting. Whether being essentialist and family centered or existentialist and self-centered, their fictional struggles and beliefs help to enlighten the daily fights of the real Black women.

Veileder: Helge Vidar Holm

Gunn Inger Sture (Ageing-prosjektet)

Prosjekttittel: Marcel Proust – métaphores temporelles, mémoire, vieillissement.

Ph.d.-prosjektet mitt er knytt til forskingsprosjektet «Aldring i kulturhistorisk perspektiv: litteratur, medisin, psykologi, juss» og tar for seg aldring i Marcel Proust sitt romanverk À la recherche du temps perdu (På sporet av den tapte tid). Tid og minne er viktige tema i dette verket, og metaforen har ein viktig plass i Proust sin estetikk. Prosjektet undersøker kva metaforar for tid, minne og aldring i À la recherche du temps perdu kan fortelja oss om det aldrande sjølvet slik Proust utforskar og konstruerer det.

Veileder: Margery Vibe Skagen

KLIMAPROSJEKTET:

Runa Falck Langaas

Prosjekttittel: Fra fest i Kyoto og Paris til hverdag i Norge

Prosjektet skal gjennom en flermetodisk tilnærming undersøke hvorfor nordmenn (ikke) tar hensyn til kunnskap om klimaendringer i valg av levemåte. Hvilke holdninger har befolkningen til hvorvidt klimaendringene er noe som berører deres hverdag, og i hvilken grad opplever enkeltindivider å selv kunne gjøre noe med klimaproblemet? Er det samsvar mellom holdningene som blir uttrykt av befolkningen, politikere og miljøbevegelsen? Prosjektet belyser utfordringene med å omsette kunnskap om klimaendringer til klimapolitikk, og særlig hvilken rolle sosiale medier og holdninger i befolkningen spiller i dette forholdet

Veileder: Kjersti Fløttum

Italiensk

Japansk

Kinesisk

Russisk

Fagområde: Russisk litteratur

Irina Anisimova (post.doc.)

Prosjekttittel: Power and Subversion: Russian Culture in Transition

Veileder: Ingunn Lunde

Johanne Berge Kalsaas

Prosjekttittel: ‘Disruptive digital discourse’ and the diaspora: Representations of Norway in Russian-language ideological trolling and its reception by Russian-speakers in Norway

While Russian digital disruption in the West has been studied extensively from military and security perspectives, this project addresses the need for a comprehensive discourse analytical approach. It aims to look at ideologically-based internet trolling not as a strategic, but semiotic process. Central to this approach, is the concept of discourse reception. How is Russian trolling – specifically about neighbouring NATO-member Norway – decoded, evaluated and potentially implemented as ideological attitudes? Recognized as a vital target for Russian digital disruption abroad, the study looks specifically at receptions by the diaspora.

Veileder:

Stehn A. Mortensen

Prosjekttittel: Readings under the Influence: Posthumanism and Intoxication in Vladimir Sorokin.

In my project, I investigate the literature of Vladimir Sorokin (b. 1955), with emphasis on a selection of his latest texts, in particular Telluria from 2013. The project aims to examine how Sorokin’s authorship makes use of a poetics of intoxication in generating new variations on the image of man. In his writing, the shift from a stable conception of the human to unfamiliar, protean formations, is set into motion by the potent effects of what one might call “literary drugs.”

Veileder: Ingunn Lunde

Fagområde:Russisk språk

Benedikte Fjellanger Vardøy

Prosjekttittel: Holdningar til russiske dialekter blant dialekttalarar

Til skilnad frå i norsk eksisterer det i russisk ei forventing om at einskal snakka standardspråk i svært mange samanhengar, dersom ein eigentleg har dialektbakgrunn. Russiske dialekter er godt kartlagde, medan sosiolingvistiske tilnærmingar til dialektbruk er så godt som fråverande.

I mitt doktorgradsprosjekt vil eg finna meir ut om kva dei som snakkar andre variantar av russisk enn standardspråket sjølve, tenkjer om dialektbruk. Gjennom ein analyse av dei lokale sine holdningar til dialekt vonar eg å avdekkja grunnar til at folk vel å snakka som dei gjer i ulike samanhengar.

Veileder: Ingunn Lunde

Spansk og latinamerikastudium

Fagområde: Latin-amerikansk kultur

Ann Cathrin Corrales-Øverlid

Prosjekttittel: Peruvian Women in California: Culinary Entrepreneurship, Transnationalism and Empowerment

The project is a qualitative case study based on oral sources, and focuses on a group of Peruvian female entrepreneurs in the culinary sector in California. It seeks to explore how these women’s migratory projects and entrepreneurship have contributed to reinforce, challenge or change gender relations and gender regimes, on an individual level, on a family level as well as in the local community. The project aims to build up a biographical profile of these women, to be able to identify who they are and what characterizes their businesses and entrepreneurship. Moreover, it intends to identify transnational dimensions and practices in the women’s lives and entrepreneurship, as well as to analyze what impact these have on the entrepreneur, her family and her community of origin.

Veileder: Synnøve Ones Rosales

Alissa Vik

Prosjekttittel: The role of music in the negotiation of Peruvian national identity: A study of popular music discourse in Lima.

The main objective of this project is to explore how Peruvian identity is negotiated through musical discourse. Additionally, the project seeks to explore to what extent different ethnic identities are represented in the music played and listened to in Lima and to what extent ethnic stereotypes are reinforced through musical discourse. The project also aims to document the music that is valued and the music that is listened to in the Peruvian capital. This project is an interdisciplinary study of musical discourse, and the theoretical framework and methodology are based on critical discourse analysis, ethnomusicology, and popular music studies. The data for this project, in the form of interviews with musicians and the wider population about music and identity, group discussions, and musical texts and performances representing Peru’s main musical traditions, will be collected during fieldwork in Lima.

Veileder: Miguel Quesada Pacheco/Thomas Solomon

Spansk litteratur:

Soledad Marambio

Prosjekttittel: The fragmentary writings of Venturini, Ocampo and Molloy: Late pieces against death

In this project I work with the late writings of Sylvia Molloy, Silvina Ocampo and Aurora Venturini. I argue that with old age, these Argentinian authors became freer and more experimental, defying conventions for writing fiction and non-fiction, disturbing the notion of tight-knit and univocal life narratives. Doing this, they expose the way memories are elaborated and strung together when presented as a coherent narrative construction. At the same time, they scrutinize the process of story-telling to inquire about identity creation and explore ideas of temporality, decline, and fear as a way of knowing and owning the process of aging.

Veileder: Margery skagen

Marta Sánchez Salvà

Prosjekttittel: Remodeling things: The Human and the Nonhuman i Salarrué´s works.

My project focuses on the works of the writer and painter Salarrué, one of the founding figures of early 20th-century literature in El Salvador. Most studies from previous research assume that Salarrué’s oeuvre can be divided into two groups almost independent from each other, into a regional or folkloric category, on the one hand, and a fantastic or theosophical on the other. This division overlooks the recurrent theme of hybridity and change in bodies and forms throughout his texts and paintings. The aim of my project is twofold. First, it intends to analyze the materiality in Salarrué’s narrative and paintings, how human and non-human agents interact and mix with each other. Second, it wants to find out what Salarrué’s remodeling of forms has to say of his cultural context and the modernizing process taking place in El Salvador in the first half of the 20th century

Veileder: Kari Soriano Salkjelsvik

Fagområde: Spansk språk

Jose Alejandro Huidobro-Goya

Prosjekttittel: Carl Lumholtz en México: Escritura etnográfica, fotografía y viaje científico: la confluencia de saberes entre Noruega, Estados Unidos y México en la mirada de un antropólgo noruego decimonónico

Veileder: Maria Alvarez-Solar

Ingunn Hansejordet

Prosjekttittel:Grammatikkstrategiar i framandspråk.

Veileder: Åse Johnsen

PHD-kandidater ved IF

Hovedinnhold

Engelsk

Fagområde: Engelsk fagdidaktikk

Fransk

Fagområde: Fransk språk

Fagområde: Fransk litteratur

Italiensk

Fagområde: Italiensk litteratur

Fagområde: Italiensk språk

Japansk

Fagområde: Japansk språk

Kinesisk

Russisk

Fagområde:Russisk språk

Spansk og latinamerikastudium

Fagområde: Latin-amerikansk kultur

Fagområde: Spansk språk

Tysk

Fagområde: Tysk litteratur