Graduates share insights from their master's theses at Aarhus Festuge

Emil Kjær Bødker, MA in Musicology.

Thesis: Music as a Marker of Territoriality.

What is your thesis about?

My thesis is about how music can be used to control who is welcome and unwelcome at a specific location. Simply put, I have investigated how you can purposefully and deliberately scare people away (and perhaps attract others) with music. The thesis is structured around three cases: 1) The festival 'Musik i Lejet', which makes the neighbours flee from their homes. 2) The loud house music in Joe & The Juice, which ensures that only 'cool' people are in their shop. 3) Scare-away music at train stations, where a piece of clown music removes homeless people and other unwanted guests from the stations so that DSB's customers are not confronted with them. I found out that music is an effective means to take control of an area and remove unwanted people from it.

What motivates you to communicate your thesis in the public space at Aarhus Festuge?

First of all, I think it is an interesting topic that is important to share with others. Because we hear so often about how music makes us happy, creates communities, etc. (which is also true), but it can also be really annoying and scare people away from a location. It is good to include that angle. And once you start to notice how music can conquer an area, you can see it everywhere. I find great pleasure in that, and I would certainly like to pass that pleasure on if anyone is interested.

Do you have a few pieces of advice for the new students at Arts?

First and foremost, you should enjoy being a student. Your time as a student is a fantastic time, and you don’t always realise it until it’s over. It can be both great and difficult that for some exams (especially the big ones like the Bachelor's project and Master's thesis) there are such broad frameworks for what you can write about. But try to use it to your advantage and find a problem that interests you and explore it. Personally, I have always been fascinated by annoying music, and that has been reflected in many of my exam papers. But the most important advice of all comes here: Prioritise social events and enjoy the sun with your fellow students when it shines.

Emilie Elken Abildgaard Thomsen, MA in Rhetoric

Thesis: Tradwives’ rhetoric on social media

What is your thesis about?

My thesis is about tradwife rhetoric on Instagram and how a traditional way of being a woman is made attractive and meaningful. I investigate how words, images, and aesthetics make the home, motherhood, and the idea that women are naturally created for specific roles appear as an answer to some of the demands and expectations that come with modern female life—including through an Instagram-friendly aesthetic of lace and floral aprons, which helps make the ideal convincing.

What interested me in particular was the paradox that a traditional female lifestyle can be presented as attractive and liberating, even though it bears a striking resemblance to the lifestyle that women have spent decades trying to liberate themselves from.

What motivates you to communicate your thesis in the public space at Aarhus Festuge?

It is exciting to shift gears from academic thesis writing to public communication. When you suddenly only have six minutes instead of 70 pages, you are forced to find out what is actually the most important thing and what you want others to remember afterwards. And then it has the very concrete advantage that I will hopefully be able to explain to my family afterwards what I have actually spent the last six months doing.

I also think it is a good opportunity to show how broad a field rhetoric is. A thesis in rhetoric can look in an incredibly large number of ways, and mine ended up being about floral aprons and ideas about the good female life. And because the tradwife phenomenon already lives its life far outside the university, it also makes sense to me that the analysis does the same.

Do you have a few pieces of advice for the new students at Arts?

As far as possible, choose your exam papers based on something you genuinely find exciting, and preferably something that rubs up against your worldview. Then the papers become much more fun to write.

And show up for class. It is a huge privilege to be taught by talented people in subjects you have usually chosen yourself because you think they are exciting. And you won't get around to reading the day's syllabus and slides at home anyway, even though you probably have every intention of doing so.

The event will take place Wednesday 2. september 2026 from 16.00-17.00. 

Read more about the event here: www.aarhusfestuge.dk/2026/arrangementer/kulturspecialer-2026