Between 1840 and 1940, more than one million people emigrated from Sweden to America. The fact that so many chose to leave to seek a better life across the Atlantic was a major trauma for the Swedish nation. Filmmakers were not slow to pick up on an exodus that proved to be of lasting importance for the Swedes' national identity. In Welcome Home Mr Swanson, film studies scholar Ann-Kristin Wallengren analyzes the ways in which Swedish emigrants and Swedish-American returnees are depicted in Swedish film between 1910 and 1950, continuing on to recent films and television shows. Were Sweden's emigrants seen as national traitors or as brave trailblazers who might return home with modern ideas? Many of the Swedish films were distributed to the United States, and Wallengren discusses the notions of Sweden and Swedishness that circulated there as a result. She also considers the image of Swedish immigrant women in American films - a representation that bore little resemblance to the Swedes' idealized view. Wallengren shows how ideologies of nationality had a prominent place in the films' narratives, resulting in movies that project enduring perceptions of Swedish national identity and the American way of life.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• 1. The movies and emigration to America
  • An introduction
• 2. Betraying the nation
  • Emigration to America
    • Attitudes to emigration
    • The movies and anti-emigration propaganda
    • Emigranten, Amuletten, and other emigration films
    • The criminal emigrant
    • Good emigrants in documentaries
• 3. Celebrating Swedishness
  • Representing the Swedish American
    • Swedish American returnees
    • Stereotypical signs of Americanization
    • ‘Very welcome home, Mr Swanson’—the dream of the dollar millionaire
    • The Swedish American woman
    • The Swedish American as modernizer
    • Swedishness and other ethnicities
    • Advancing on America
    • Visitors in later years
    • Film and the nation—concluding remarks
• 4. Preserving Swedishness in the New World
  • Swedish film in Swedish America
    • Culture and Swedish American identity
    • Distribution and screening
    • Sweden films
    • Heritage films
    • Comedies, dramas, and all things Swedish
    • Loving Edvard Persson
    • Swedish Americans and films from their homeland—concluding remarks
• 5. Becoming an American citizen
  • The Swedish American woman in American film
    • Swedish Americans and ethnicity in American film
    • The Swedish female emigrant
    • Deterrence: the white slave trade and Traffic in Souls
    • The Swedish female stereotype, or, Sweedie, the Swedish Maid
    • Citizens and politicians—Annie was a Wonder and The Farmer’s Daughter
    • Citizenship, Swedish performativity, and cinema since 1950
• 6. Concluding words
• Notes
• Sources and literature