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Beyond the ivory tower: Co-operation with a local upper secondary school

Mar

25

2015

When I was in upper secondary school (‘lukio’ in Finnish), two of my teachers organized a “Rome Club” (‘Rooma-kerho’), which could be taken as an optional course. In order to receive credit for the course, we needed to take part in a variety of activities, one of which was attending guest lectures by researchers and ...

The Department by the River

Dec

9

2014

As mentioned earlier in the Tale of Two Departments, there are two Departments of English here in Turku. Situated as we are on the University Hill, our department is known as the Department Up the Hill, while our Åbo Akademi sister department (right at the brink of the river Aura) is known as the Department ...

Turku #PoPsymp 2014: International symposium of linguistics and book history

Nov

13

2014

Linguistics met book history on 24–25 October 2014 as twenty-odd participants gathered in the Turku Main Library for an invigorating two days of presentations and discussion on the interaction of linguistic and material issues in the study of historical text. Linguistics Meets Book History: Seeking New Approaches (aka the PoP symposium), was organised by the ...

Seven Wonders of the Frankfurt Book Fair

Oct

17

2014

Have you ever considered how brain waves can be transferred into poetry? Don’t worry. The Helsinki-based Brains on Art collective has solved the problem for us. With the help of a tinfoil hat – i.e. a sensor helmet – and computer magic, brain waves create poems. This is first of the wonders I found in ...

Festschrifts and academic festivities

Jun

27

2014

One catch-phrase nowadays is that universities are dynamic. Indeed, there are many changes going on during each academic year. But there are also traditions that are valued by the academic community. For instance, the academic year has the opening ceremony in September and the graduation ceremony, publiikki, in June where new MAs are celebrated. In ...

A Day to Remember 1

Jun

3

2014

What happens when three professors of the School of Languages and Translation Studies retire at the same and give their valedictory addresses in the same room? There is of course a full house, with colleagues, collaborators, students, friends and family in attendance. The addresses are full of memories from the professors’ long careers, both personal ...

”Once upon a Time There Was University: Yliopistoon! To the University!”

May

22

2014

In the summer of 2005, I happened to read a Finnish detective novel by Matti Hälli, titled Sopimatonta kuolla yliopistolla (1943) [It Is Unbecoming to Die at the University]. The text intrigued me so much that I wrote a short piece on it to the University Employee Unions’ magazine, Acatiimi. What was then just an ...

A Tale of Two Departments

May

17

2014

The two English Departments in Turku, Åbo Akademi and Turun Yliopisto, congregated, as has been the custom over the years, for a joint retreat, this time on the island of Seili in the Turku archipelago. Seili, of course, is the island historically (in)famous for its leper colony and later its mental institution. For the last ...

Bridging North America: Inauguration of the John Morton Center

Apr

30

2014

The recently launched John Morton Center for North American Studies held its inaugural event on Tuesday, April 29, in the University of Turku’s Calonia building. The Center’s new director and powerhouse Benita Heiskanen did not rest on her laurels in starting the center’s activities: in the past three months she has already, with the help ...

Hard Work Made Easy

Feb

7

2014

On the last day of January, 2014, a fifty-strong crowd gathered in the Tauno Nurmela auditorium to listen to the defence of Elina Siltanen’s doctoral dissertation “Hard Work? Reciprocal Communication in Contemporary American Experimental Poetry”. The opponent who discussed the dissertation with Siltanen was professor emeritus Charles Molesworth (Queens College, The City University of New ...