"Selvgeografi: Placing the Works of Karl Ove Knausgard and Tomas Espedal"

The dissertation argues that while existing scholarship on  Knausgård and Espedal's writing, and particularly on Knausgård's, asks whether their texts are indeed novels -- or whether a new terminology has to be invented to deal with them -- an overlooked thematic aspect in the works of Knausgård and Espedal is their treatment of places. Drawing on the work of humanistic geography and phenomenological philosophy, Rühl's research shows how relationships between protagonists and places function in the texts' “writing of identity” -- a project central to Knausgård and Espedal's work.