Dr. Johan Klingborg is a Professor in the Department of Scandinavian. He works on nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first-century Scandinavian literature, and his research largely focuses on its intersections with media networks. Dr. Klingborg received his PhD in Literary Studies from Stockholm University in 2024.
Firstly, can you introduce yourself? What are your main interests in the Department of Scandinavian, and how were you originally drawn to academia?
My name is Johan Klingborg. I grew up in Stockholm, Sweden and that’s also where I worked before this, at Stockholm University. My background is in cinema and literary studies, but I also worked in publishing before starting my PhD program. I always loved reading growing up. My parents weren’t academics, but my mother always read to me and my brother when we were little. That probably laid the foundation for my interest in books. I also had some wonderful teachers in elementary and middle school that made it joyful to read and write — I’m very grateful for that.
Can you describe some of your current or recent projects?
I finished my first book about a year ago, Verkar film: 1930-talslitteraturen i det svenska filmnätverket (Seemingly Film. 1930s Literature in the Swedish Film Network) It’s about how Swedish literary modernism in the 1930s was reshaped as moving images became part of peoples’ everyday lives. Around this time, films started being screened in schools, workplaces, the military, on the streets, and in lavish new movie theatres. Similar to how we live our lives through digital media today, this film network reconfigured people’s attention and ways of seeing, and my book shows how the literature of the time responded to these dynamics.
Right now, I’m working on a project that explores how reading in the 20th and 21st centuries has been shaped by labor rationalization processes. Specifically, I’m looking at scenes in Scandinavian literature of workers reading on the job. I try to analyze how time-management technologies in workplaces over the last 100+ years — from the assembly line to digital tracking systems — fashion these characters’ reading habits. My hypothesis is that the temporalities of modern labor in a sense coincide with the temporalities of reading. Of course, today we might ask whether reading is on the verge of being subsumed by rationalization altogether, since many now seem to regard it as a chore – a kind of labor that can be delegated to ChatGTP just as cleaning by some is delegated to cleaners.
Would you say that your work normally considers the contemporary? I noticed that your projects are about the 20th century, but seem to relate back to contemporary examples.
Yes, exactly. I work in a tradition or field called media archaeology. The modus operandi in that field is to start from contemporary media dynamics, and then go back in time and see how this moment came to be, or see how aspects of today’s media networks can be found in the past.
I saw that in addition to your academic work, you also write literary criticism for a Swedish newspaper. How do you see your academic work and your public-facing work engaging with each other? Would you say that these are two completely separate modes of writing, or do you notice them influencing one another?
I appreciate having the opportunity to write in different forms and in different modes. For one of the Swedish newspapers that I have been writing criticism for, the format is extremely short: it can be book reviews of only 400 words, which of course is very different from a scholarly article. In general, I think writing in different modes and for different audiences makes people develop their academic writing too. The academic writers that I enjoy reading the most are ones who also write for the general public. Their academic writing tends to be a little less jargony and therefore more accessible.
Are you teaching any courses for undergraduates this Spring?
I will be teaching a class on August Strindberg, a hugely influential cultural figure of the late 1800s and early 1900s. He is mostly known as a playwright and novelist, but he also experimented with painting and photography, and had an obsession with alchemy and occultism! No one who has read him remains neutral — you either love or hate him, and even if you hate him you can’t stop engaging with his works. In the class, we’ll also look into global adaptations of his works: Indian films, South African stagings, South Korean animations, graphic novels, and so on – before students get the chance to creatively reimagine one of Strindberg’s works themselves.
Speaking of adaptation, I was also wondering about your thoughts on translation and language-learning. Are there any particularly complex aspects of the Swedish language that are hard to translate to English? Why would you recommend that students take courses in languages other than English?
The classic example of a Swedish word that is difficult to translate is lagom, which essentially means “just the right amount” — not too much, not too little.
I think it’s incredibly valuable to learn other languages. Swedish specifically is relatively easy to learn for an English speaker because the grammar isn’t very complex, compared to German for example. Of course, pronunciation can be tricky — I’ve yet to meet an American who is able to flawlessly say the Swedish word for seven, sju. But our Swedish lecturer Maria is amazing so if anyone can teach you, it’s her! I recommend signing up for her classes today.
Since this is your first semester teaching at Berkeley, I was wondering how you found the transition to living in Berkeley. Have there been any surprises?
Apart from all the bureaucracy — getting a visa, driver’s license, social security number, and so on — the transition has been very smooth. It’s so beautiful here, and a lot more sunshine in the fall compared to what I’m used to. A pleasant surprise has been the off-leash dog culture. My partner and I have a dog, Moose, and there are so many trails here where he can be off-leash which he loves.
What book would you recommend to everyone reading this interview?
I wanted to recommend an academic book by Leah Price, What We Talk About When We Talk About Books: The History and Future of Reading. It’s a wonderful book — very accessible but also very smart. I like academic books that surprise me, and this one did. It shows that many of today’s concerns about distracted reading and our supposed inability to sustain attention are not as new as we think. While today’s situation may feel extreme, people have skimmed through books and multitasked while reading since the dawn of mass literacy. Distractions seem to be an inherent part of reading, not simply a deficiency in individual readers.
A Swedish book I would recommend is the novel Kallocain by Karin Boye. It’s recently become available in English translation, but was originally published in the 1940s. It’s a dystopian science fiction novel in the vain of Brave New World and centers around a truth serum. It’s often read as an allegory of the Soviet and Nazi regimes, and the dynamics of authoritarianism. A great book from one of the most important Swedish novelists.