Birgitta Lindh Estelle
Senior Lecturer
Department of Literature, History of Ideas, andAbout Birgitta Lindh Estelle
Presentation
Birgitta Lindh Estelle, Associate Professor in Comparative Literature with a specialization in theatre, is a scholar and a teacher at LIR. Her thesis Befrielsen är nära. Feminism och teaterpraktik i Margareta Garpes och Suzan Ostens 1970-talsteater (2006) dealt with Swedish feminist theatre in the 1970’s, by two successful theatre practioners and women activists. In the more recent research project ‘Emotion and Liberation– sentimental and melodramatic elements in women’s socio-realistic plays of the modern breakthrough’ Lindh Estelle has continued researching feminist stories for the theatre, this time in the late nineteenth century. The result has been published in the monograph Som en vildfågel i en bur. Identitet, kärlek, frihet och melodramatiska inslag i Alfhild Agrells, Victoria Benedictssons och Anne Charlotte Lefflers 1880-talsdramatik (Like a wild bird in a cage: Identity, love, freedom and melodramatic elements in Alfhild Agrell’s Victoria Benedictsson’s and Anne Charlotte Leffler’s plays of the 1880s, 2019). She has also contributed to two collaborative research projects financed by the Swedish Research Council. In both projects Lindh Estelle studied the reception of women’s playwriting. The results are published in Swedish Women’s Writing on Export: Tracing the Transnational Reception in the Nineteenth Century (2019), in Nordic Theatre Studies and in the anthology I avantgardets skugga. Brytpunkter och kontinuitet i svensk teater kring 1900 (In the shadow of the avant-garde: Turning points and continuity in Swedish theatre around 1900). Lindh Estelle is a qualified teacher, with two teacher's degrees. At LIR she teaches Theatre Studies and Comparative Literature. She also writes theatre reviews in Svenska Dagbladet, one of Sweden's major daily papers.
Research Interests
- Theatre historiography and Swedish theatre history (19th and 20th century)
- Aesthetics and ideology
- Theatre and gender
- Analysis of plays and performances
- Reception and theatrical criticism
- Transcultural Exchange
Current Research
I have continued working with a theatre historical project in which I trace Anne Charlotte Leffler's play Sanna Kvinnor (True Women) (1883) across the European theatrical landscape 1883-1925. Performances at very different venues are included, such as the staging of the play in a gym in a small Swedish town, amateur-performances by a worker’s club in Copenhagen and rehearsals at an avant-garde theater in London: How was the play received and used in different contexts? How did a play by a female playwright from a minor language area travel? The project aims at writing theatre history from a European fringe and gender fringe perspective. By doing so the picture of European theatre activities and their conditions during the decades around the turn of the 1900s will be broadened. This research is a continuation of the two projects "Turning Points and Continuity" and "Swedish Women's Writing on Export", which are described below.
Furthermore, I am involved in a research collaboration linked to the EU- network “Women Writers in History”. It focuses women writers’ roles as European cultural intermediaries and their contributions to the development of modernity through their works, in particular of matters of intimacy, such as love, sex, friendship and mother-child-relationships. The European dissemination and reception of their works are also included in our research. The cooperation has so far resulted in two anthologies and a periodical issue: Women Writing Intimate Spaces. The Long Nineteenth Century at the Fringes of Europe (Brill 2022), Representations, Scenes and Scenarios of Intimacy in Women's Writing (Pro Unversitaria 2023) and Intimacy, Censorship and Gender, Primerjalna Knjizevnost 46:1 2023.
Earlier Research
1. Turning Points and Continuity: The Changing Roles of Performance in Society 1880-1925
Within the frames of the research project ”Turning Points and Continuity” I investigated how the play Sanna kvinnor (1883)[True Women 1890] by Anne Charlotte Leffler was recieved at Scandinavian Theatres and in news paper-reviews in the two laste decades of the 19th century. Methods of dealing with reviews as source material are developed. An analysis of how the affective reactions of the reviewers structure the evalutiaons of the opening night at the Royal Dramatic Theatre is conducted. Another analysis highlights what happened to the feminism of the play when the popular male actor Emil Hillberg made the antagonistic role his bravura performance.
Seven scholars from different disciplines has taken part in the research project ”Turning Points and Continuity”, which was led by Prof. Lena Hammergren at The University of Stockholm. The over all aim was to revisit and re-interpret a period celebrated as the breakthrough of modern theatre by approaching archival material from an appreciative look at the many aesthetic layers that worked in tandem with the emergence of the early avant garde. The research project received funding from The Swedish Research Councils (VR) 2014-2016. The results of the project is published in I avantgardets skugga. Brytpunkter och kontinuitet i svensk teater kring 1900 (2019) [In the shadow of the avantgarde. Turning points and continuities in Swedish Theatre around 1900] and in Turning Points and Continuities. Reformulating Questions to the Archives, (special issue of) Nordic theatre Studies 2017:1
2. Swedish Women's Writing on Export in the 19th century
The research was performed in cooperation with a group of researchers at LIR ( Prof. Åsa Arping, Prof. Jenny Bergenmar, Prof. Gunilla Hermansson and Prof. Yvonne Leffler). It concerns the reception of Swedish women authors in the 19th century. The aim of our common project was to map and analyze Swedish Women authors’ transnational networks and international breakthroughs, and to develop theory and methods for the purpose. The research results have been published in Swedish Women’s Writing on Export. Tracing the Transnational Reception in the Nineteenth Century (2019). My contribution mapped the European reception of Anne Charlotte Leffler’s plays in translations and theatre productions. The research project received funding from the Swedish Research Councils (VR) 2014-2016.
3. Emotion and liberation – sentimental and melodramatic elements in women’s socio-realistic plays of the modern breakthrough
The aim of the project was to reintroduce Swedish drama of the modern breakthrough, by illuminating how elements of a sentimental and melodramatic theatrical tradition are constructed in naturalistic plays on marriage by women playwrights in the 1880’s. How do sentimental and melodramatic elements contribute to the emphasis on emotion and how is emotion in turn connected to ideas of emancipation? What discourses on gender and modernity do the sentimental and melodramatic features help generate?
The gender critical dramatic works by Alfhild Agrell, Victoria Benedictsson and Anne Charlotte Leffler were popular at Scandinavian Theatres in the 1880's and generated interest in other parts Europe mainly during the 1880’s and 1890’s. Nevertheless, their plays have been depreciated because of the sentimental and melodramatic features. In my study I reclaim the sentimental and the melodramatic and maintain that such elements have a purpose in the gender discourses of the plays. A mode of interpretation that focuses on the function of the sentimental and melodramatic features is important in order to show the distinctive dramaturgical and thematic character of these plays, and to illuminate the role of their authors as cultural intermediaries of ideas about gender and marriage.
The results have been published in the monograph Som en vildfågel i en bur. Identitet, kärlek, frihet och melodramatiska inslag i Alfhild Agrells, Victoria Benedictssons och Anne Charlotte Lefflers 1880-talsdramatik 2019 [Like a wild bird in a cage: Identity, love, freedom and melodramatic elements in Alfhild Agrell’s Victoria Benedictsson’s and Anne Charlotte Leffler’s plays of the 1880s] The research was financed by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ) 2012-2014
4. The thesis Befrielsen är nära. Feminism och teaterpraktik i Margareta Garpes och Suzanne Ostens 1970-talsteater (Liberation is at Hand. Feminism and Theatre Practice in Margareta Garpe’s and Suzanne Osten’s Theatre of the 1970’s)
The thesis appeared in 2006 and deals with three of Garpe’s and Osten’s productions, of which Jösses flickor! Befrielsen är nära (Gosh Girls! Liberation is At Hand 1974) is the most well- known. The thesis illuminates the linkage in these productions between avant-garde theatre and the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970’s. It highlights the manner in which Garpe and Osten used the medium of the theatre to raise consciousness in audiences, creating new patterns of identification for women. It also explores the ways in which the identity politics of the Women’s Liberation Movement influenced and developed the use of theatrical strategies. Structures of communication in the production, the performances and the reviews in daily newspapers are explored. The thesis was part of the research project “The Power of Art: the Texts of the Swedish Women’s Liberation Movement 1970 – 2000”, which was funded by the Swedish Research Council and concluded in 2005.
Networks and cooperation
I participate in the European project Women Writers in History. The primary aim of the network has been to develop a database on the reception of women’s literature before the 20th century. Within the network European scholars cooperate in projects on women’s literature, the transnational dissemination and reception of it and on women’s roles as intermediaries of ideas. I am also involved in Nätverket för humanistiska 1800-talsstudier [Network for nineteenth- century studies in the humanities]
Teaching
Since autumn 2006, I have been involved in teaching elementary, advanced and teacher training courses in Theatre Studies and Comparative Literature. In 2011-2012, I was the Director of Studies in Literature and in 2013 I was the Director of Studies in Theatre Studies. During the period 2006–2009 I taught courses in Literature, Creative Writing and Dramaturgy at the University of Skövde in Sweden.
In 2006-2012 I wrote theatre reviews in the Swedish daily paper Svenska Dagbladet and have since 2021 started doing so again.