Research Bio

Johan Klingborg studies nineteenth- through twenty-first-century Scandinavian literature, with particular focus on its intersections with technologies and media networks in the welfare states. He is an Assistant Professor in Swedish Literature and Culture in UC Berkeley's Department of Scandinavian. 

His first book, Verkar film (Mediehistoriskt arkiv, 2024), examines how moving images reshaped Swedish modernist literature as film became an integral part of everyday life in the 1930s. The book is available open access: https://doi.org/10.54292/mozbxizxzu.

Currently, he is at work on two projects. One studies literary depictions of workers reading and writing on the job, exploring how workplace technologies and the temporalities of labor have shaped modern reading and writing practices. The other focuses on constructions of the idea of the Nordic in Scandinavian beredskapslitteratur during World War II.

In addition to his academic work, Klingborg is a literary critic and regular contributor to the Swedish daily newspaper Expressen.

Research Expertise and Interest

Scandinavian literature, media history, literature of labor, history of reading, Nordic welfare states