166 Savery Hall

Translator Lola Rogers will speak on Sofi Oksanen’s novel Puhdistus (Purge). The Forum for the presentation and discussion is Professor Stecher-Hansen’s course on War and Occupation in the Nordic-Baltic Region (EURO/SCAN 445).

Lola Rogers is a graduate of the Masters program in Finnish language and literature at the University of Washington and has received continuing education from FILI-Finnish Literature Exchange in Helsinki. She has worked as a freelance literary translator full-time since 2007. Her translations have appeared in PEN America Journal, Words Without Borders, Books from Finland, and World Literature Today. Her translation of Sofi Oksanen’s novel Puhdistus (Purge) was published by Grove / Atlantic in 2010, and her translation of Riikka Pulkkinen’s 2010 novel Totta (True) will be published in March, 2012 by Other Press.

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Limits to Capital? The Finnish Novel after the Neoliberal Turn

The lecture gives a brief introduction to capitalism as a thematic field in the contemporary Finnish novel, focusing on two examples that are interesting both in a literary sense and as thematicizations of the social construction of subjectivity: the novels of Arto Salminen and Kiltin yön lahjat (Good-Night Gifts, 1998) by Mari Mörö. These novels are read as literary reactions to a global and local context in which tension has grown between commodification and other modes of the social. While neo-liberalism asserts that merely one mode of relationality, the seller–buyer relation, is desirable, these texts remind us of the need for empathy, solidarity and other non-instrumental relations.

Jussi Ojajärvi is a Visiting Scholar in The Program in Literature at Duke University a fellow of the Academy of Finland.

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In Raitt Hall, Room 314

The Greatest Finn in Foucault’s Cycle: Troublesome Sexuality and The Butterfly of the Urals presented by SANNA KARKULEHTOUNIVERSITY OF OULU / RICE UNIVERSITY

This paper examines the case of the ‘Gay Marshal’, the late Marshal C.G.E. Mannerheim, president of Finland, supreme commander of Finnish military forces during World War Two, and often voted the ‘Greatest Finn’ in polls. Karkulehto explores the reception of the puppet-animation film Butterfly of the Urals, in which Mannerheim wears a purple corset and enjoys a relationship with a male servant. The film incited a media war. Drawing on her forthcoming book, The Foucault Cycle and the Media Market of Sex, Karkulehto shows how the films reception involves Foucault’s Cycle: while sexuality fascinates and attracts large audiences, it is both present and absent in the media, viable only under certain conditions, rules, and restrictions.

Sanna Karkulehto is University Lecturer of Literature at the University of Oulu. She is currently a visiting scholar at Rice University in The Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality.

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The Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study and the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies welcome papers, panels, and roundtable presentations for the first joint conference of Scandinavian and Baltic Studies in the United States. The deadline for abstract submission is December 11, 2009.

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Alternative Conceptions of Body and Gender in 19th-century Finnish Magic Narratives
Communications 202

Laura Stark is Professor of Ethnology at the University of Jyväskylä.

Scholars in archaeology, folklore studies and the history of religions have suggested that concepts and mentalities existing in Scandinavia and Finland during the Iron Age and Medieval period show large-scale similarities, even if specific expressions of these mentalities differed from culture to culture. In the interior of Finland, verbal and ritual traditions containing many layers of premodern mentality survived until the 20th century, which can be explained in part by the fact that some regions of the Finnish-Karelian culture area were not influenced by Christianity until the 14th-16th centuries. The longevity of the older worldview means that folklorists have been able to contribute to discussions regarding the mental world of the pre-Christian and Medieval Scandinavian eras.

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Runeberg’s Golden Theme: “The Swan”

Professor Nummi’s lecture focuses on “The Swan,” a key poem in Johan Ludvig Runeberg’s (1804-1877) first collection of poetry, Dikter I (1830). The lecture situates the poem in its specific cultural context— the birth of the Finnish nation. Runeberg was Finland’s first promising poet and his “Dikter I” the first important collection of lyrical poetry after 1809. In that year, Finland passed from Sweden to the Russian Empire and the tsar declared the new autonomous grand duchy “a nation among nations.” The analysis of the poem focuses on themes of transition in literary ideas, and on the role of the poet in founding a poetic tradition.

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Northern Europe: From the Cold War to Cooperation

Matti Anttonen, Minister and Deputy Chief of Mission for the Embassy of Finland in Washington D.C.,asks: What has made Northern Europe the most dynamic region in post-cold-war Europe? What role did enlargement of the EU and NATO play? How do EU-Russia relations develop during the period? Is the Russian economic model sustainable and will Russian energy help to cut energy prices in the US? Is the Scandinavian model truly facing a crisis? What role does Finland play in all this? Lecture to be followed by Q & A and discussion.

Matti Anttonen served as Deputy Director General of the Eastern Division of the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1996 to 2001. He has also served as Director for Russian Affairs at the Ministry. In the early period of Finland’s EU-membership, Anttonen was responsible for EU-Russia relations and Russia-related trade policy in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From 1991 to 1994, he dealt with trade policy questions at the Finnish Permanent Representation in Geneva. From 1987 to 1991, he was posted at the Finnish Embassy in Moscow.

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