The teaching staff’s research mainly includes the following areas, which are also reflected in their teaching: eighteenth-century aesthetics, Romanticism, Gothic transformations, education, history of drama, contemporary performing arts and the modern breakthrough. The subject has a long tradition of working with gender theory and now also includes critical perspectives on aspects including sexuality, and the relationship between the human and non-human world.

Researchers have diverse interests and may work across several of the areas listed above. The Ratatǫskr Research Group for Literary Animal Studies External link. was founded in 2019 and is the hub for a wider northern European network that aims to investigate relationships between human and non-human animals in cultural narratives. Since 2022, Comparative Literature has been involved in Art Forest External link., a close cooperation between Comparative Literature, Aesthetics and Art History that aims to create a platform where aesthetic subjects can address the issues surrounding climate change.

Current research projects include Stefano Fogelberg Rota’s project on Baltic Queen: Christina’s Legacy in the Baltic Area During the Swedish Great Power Era, och Claudia Lindén’s project Bear traces: A Study of the Bear in National Romantic Literature Around the Baltic Sea External link.. Current doctoral projects are: Emma Kihl’s reading of Agneta Enckell through the philosophy of Isabelle Stenger; Maria Mårsell’s examination of the theme of peace in female writers in the Baltic Sea region c. 1900; Mårten Michanek’s thesis on the resistance to school in children’s literature; Claudia Gioia on the relationship between Swedish and Soviet proletarian literature in the 1930s; and Linnea Karlsson, who highlights discourses surrounding racial biology in the writings of Stina Aronson.

Completed research projects include “The (dis)connected refugee”; Estetikens århundrade i nytt ljus: estetisk heteronomi från Shaftesbury till Schelling och Vara/djur: Relationer mellan människor och ”produktionsdjur” i kulturens gestaltningar. External link. Completed doctorates have covered the teaching and learning of literature (Niklas Öhman) and queerness in the work of Herman Hesse (Oscar von Seth).

Comparative Literature is an active research subject, where teaching staff are published both nationally and internationally. Over the years, it has hosted international conferences and symposiums. The higher seminar series regularly presents texts by teachers and doctoral students, as well as leading national and international guest speakers.

Recent monographs by the subject’s researchers include Ann-Sofie Lönngren’s Following the Animal. Power, Agency, and Human-Animal Transformations in Modern, Northern European Literature External link. (2015) and Amelie Björck’s Zooësis. Om kulturella gestaltningar av lantbruksdjurens tid och liv. External link. (2019). Södertörn Academic Studies has published Comparative Literature’s latest anthology, Squirrelling: Human–Animal Studies in the Northern-European Region. External link. (2022). Other anthologies published by the subject are Kulturmöten: en festskrift till Christine Farhan External link. (2020) and Med kärlek: En festskrift till Claudia Lindén. External link. (2023).

Comparative Literature’s doctoral education is affiliated with the research areas of Critical and Cultural Theory and Studies in the Educational Sciences.