Celia Aijmer Rydsjö

Research Interests

My research interests lie at the intersection of literary studies, literary didactics, and cultural theory, with a particular focus on how literature can be understood, communicated, and used in relation to ethical, existential, and societal questions. An overarching concern in my work is how literary texts relate to historical change, cultural value systems, and human relationships to the surrounding world.

Ecocritical perspectives are an important part of my research, in which I examine literary representations of nature, environment, and materiality in relation to the ways humans understand and evaluate the world. I am particularly interested in how aesthetic expressions, cultural history, and genre conventions shape ideas about nature, emotion, and responsibility, and how such issues can be integrated into literature education at various levels.

A significant part of my research focuses on literary didactics, with an emphasis on subject‑specific approaches to literary reading. I am especially interested in literature’s potential to open ethical, existential, and critical conversations in educational contexts, as well as in how literary studies can contribute to Bildung in an era marked by globalization, climate crisis, and rapid media change. Within this field, I have also worked on questions concerning the role of the humanities and the significance of Bildung, both historically and in the present.

My research has also frequently taken a literary‑historical perspective, particularly on eighteenth‑ and nineteenth‑century literature and the emergence of modernism in art and literature. In this work, I have examined how aesthetic ideals are connected to social, historical, and economic conditions.

Teaching /supervision

I teach British, American, and postcolonial anglophone fiction, as well as cultural history, literary theory, and subject‑specific didactics. I also have extensive experience as a teacher and supervisor in academic writing. My teaching is conducted within the teacher‑education programme and in freestanding courses in English, from undergraduate to advanced levels. As a supervisor, I have primarily worked with students writing degree projects and essays with a literary‑studies orientation, but also within subject didactics.

Keywords

English-language literature, literary didactics, ecocriticism, teaching about sustainable development

Publications

Aijmer Rydsjö, C., & Andersson Hval, U. (2025). The expendable child: Intergenerational conflicts in contemporary climate fiction. Nordic Journal of English Studies, 24(2), 64–85. https://doi.org/10.35360/njes.v24i2.62125

Aijmer Rydsjö, C. (2021). “We do no harm, we say what we want, and we get paid for it”: Academic work and dignity in Stoner by John Williams. In A. Henry & Å. Persson (Eds.), Exploring work in English studies: A practice-based engagement. Palgrave Macmillan.

Aijmer Rydsjö, C., & Persson, Å. (2021). Afterword: Working to take English studies into the world. In A. Henry & Å. Persson (Eds.), Exploring work in English studies: A practice-based engagement. Palgrave Macmillan.

Andersson Hval, U., & Aijmer Rydsjö, C. (2021). Klimatkrisen i klassrummet: Klimatpsykologi och blivande ämneslärares reflektioner kring användandet av litteratur i undervisning om hållbar utveckling. Utbildning och lärande, 15(1). https://doi.org/10.58714/ul.v15i2.11242

Aijmer Rydsjö, C., & Jonsson, A.-K. (2016). Making it news: Money and marketing in expatriate modernist little magazines in Europe. European Journal of Periodical Studies, 1(1), 71–90.

Aijmer Rydsjö, C., & Jonsson, A.-K. (2016). Exiles in print: Modernism and little magazines in Paris 1921–1939. Peter Lang.

Aijmer Rydsjö, C., & Jonsson, A.-K. (2013). Published by us, written by us, read by us: Little magazine networks. Global Review: Archives & Networks of Modernism, 1(1), 39–67.

Aijmer Rydsjö, C., & Jonsson, A.-K. (2013). Transition and internationalism as praxis. In H. van den Berg & L. Gluchowska (Eds.), Transnationality, internationalism and nationhood: European avant-garde in the first half of the twentieth century. Peeters.

Aijmer Rydsjö, C., & Jonsson, A.-K. (2011). An addition to the bibliography of Virginia Woolf: The first translation into French. Notes and Queries, 58(4), 585–586.

Aijmer Rydsjö, C., & Jonsson, A.-K. (2011). An addition to the bibliography of Virginia Woolf: Early translation into French. Notes and Queries, 58(4), 586.

Aijmer, C., & Buelens, G. (2007). Henry James and senses of the past. In P. Rawlings (Ed.), Palgrave advances in Henry James studies. Palgrave Macmillan.

Aijmer, C. (2003). Houses of fiction: Henry James and the art of homelessness. Gothenburg Studies in English.