Doctoral defense in Educational Sciences: Þorsteinn Ö. Vilhjálmsson
Aðalbygging
Hátíðarsalur
Þorsteinn Ö. Vilhjálmsson defends his PhD thesis in Educational Sciences from the Faculty of subject teacher education, University of Iceland:
We Are Becoming More Like You: Inclusions and Exclusions at the Intersection of Queerness, Neoliberalism, and Nation in Iceland 1990–2010
The oral defence takes place Wednesday, October 30, at 1 pm in the Aula in the main building of the University of Iceland, as well as in live stream.
Opponents are Dr Jens Rydström Professor Emeritus at Lund University, Sweden and Dr. Justin Bengry, Assistant Professor at Goldsmiths, University of London, England.
Main supervisor was Dr Íris Ellenberger Associate Professor at School of Education, University of Iceland and co-supervisor Dr Michael Nebeling Petersen Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen.
Expert in the Doctoral Committee was Dr Riikka Taavetti Assistant Professor at the University of Turku, Finland.
Dr Elsa Eiríksdóttir head of the faculty of subject teacher education will conduct the ceremony.
All welcome
About the project:
In the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, Icelandic gays and lesbians described themselves as „sexual-political refugees“ from their country. Only two decades later, Icelandic LGBTQ+ people‘s human rights were seen as an export product to be brought as a gift to other nations. How did this change happen? Why did it happen? And what conditions were put for this entry of Icelandic LGBTQ+ people into the nation?
The doctoral thesis We Are Becoming More Like You: Inclusions and Exclusions at the Intersection of Queerness, Neoliberalism, and Nation in Iceland 1990–2010 argues that this change is intimately connected with the rise of neoliberalism. Under its influence, the imagined community of the Icelandic nation underwent subtle but radical changes as its definitions and internal boundaries were redrawn. Through this process, LGBTQ+ people were brought into the nation if they met certain conditions demanded by neoliberal ideology, such as responsibilization, monogamy and marriage, gratitude towards the national majority, and the forgetting of past injustice.
This process also involved exclusions. Some LGBTQ+ people were left behind outside of the national imaginary, while immigrants to Iceland and non-Western countries were stereotyped as homophobic, a process conversely strengthening Icelandic national pride. Thus, the new image that the Icelandic nation acquired during the research period—of being open, colorful, diverse, and tolerant—is intimately connected with the conditional inclusion of LGBTQ+ people. It is important to consider the dark side of this image: the subordination inherent in the demands made on Icelandic LGBTQ+ people for their inclusion into the nation; the self-glorification exhibited in the narrative of Iceland as a model for others; and the regulatory regime that the image of the happy, grateful, proud and nationally included LGBTQ+ subject imposes on others.
About the doctoral candidate
Þorsteinn Vilhjálmsson (born 1987) is an academic and a translator. His academic interests are interdisciplinary, spanning the fields of history, classics, queer studies, the history of sexuality and literary studies. He has written a number of articles on these topics in Icelandic and international journals and books. In 2016, he published a collection of translations of Greek and Latin poetry into Icelandic, Mundu, líkami: Óritskoðuð grísk og latnesk ljóð. Two years later, he edited the diaries of queer nineteenth-century scholar Ólafur Davíðsson, Hundakæti: Dagbækur Ólafs Davíðssonar 1881–1884.
Þorsteinn Ö. Vilhjálmsson defends his PhD thesis in Educational Sciences from the Faculty of subject teacher education, University of Iceland. The oral defence takes place Wednesday October 30th., at 1pm in the Aula in the main building of the University of Iceland as well as in live stream.