Symposium/Seminar: Storytelling, Experientiality, and Memory

25 March 2025, 13-15
Arcanum A259

SELMA Centre hosts a seminar for doctoral researchers related to the centre’s main topics of Storytelling, Experientiality and Memory. We would like to give this platform for younger scholars to present their work, network with each other, and share experiences and tips about getting started in academia. The event is bilingual: on paper is in Finnish, three in English. The topics include afroamerican literature, Korean cultural narratives, landscape studies, and oral testimonies.

Programme (chair: Liisa Merivuori)

13.00 Opening words and a brief introduction to SELMA by Hanna Meretoja & Maarit Leskelä-Kärki
13.10 Tuuli Kunnas: Kansallisvaltion rakentuminen ja kansalaisuuden merkitys afroamerikkalaisessa kirjallisuudessa
13.35 Young Joo Hong: “Hwa-byung” (anger disease) or Depression? Reading Pain Through a Cultural Narrative
14.00 Niina Hanhinen: The Case of Landscape in Hanneriina Moisseinen’s The Isthmus
14.25 Selma Ćatović Hughes: Exhumed Memories: Permeability of Oral Testimony in Reconstructing Intangible Narratives
14.50 End

15.00 Snacks & drinks in Arcanum 3rd floor coffee room
Please sign up to let us know how much food we’ll need! 🙂

Meet the speakers:

Tuuli Kunnas aloitti väitöskirjatutkijana Turun yliopiston Juno-ohjelmassa tammikuussa 2025. Hän valmistui filosofian maisteriksi Turun yliopistosta 2023. Väitöskirjassaan hän tutkii kansallisvaltioiden ja kansalaisuuden rakentumista afroamerikkalaisessa kirjallisuudessa.

”Väitöskirjassani tutkin kansallisvaltion rakentumista ja kansalaisuuden merkitystä afroamerikkalaisessa kirjallisuudessa tarkastelemalla yhdysvaltalaisen Gayl Jonesin (1949–) valittuja teoksia. Jonesin tuotannon merkittävyys afroamerikkalaisessa kirjallisuusperinteessä perustuu hänen teostensa maantieteelliseen ylirajaisuuteen. Jonesin Palmares-romaani (2021) ja runoteokset Xarque and Other Poems (1985) ja Song for Almeyda, Song for Anninho (2022) kuvaavat historiallista, paenneiden orjien 1600-luvulla perustamaa Palmares-valtion rakentumista ja tuhoa Brasilian länsirannikolla nuoren orjanaisen ja tämän jälkeläisten näkökulmasta. Samalla teokset kertovat Brasilian kansallisvaltion synnystä.

Olen kiinnostunut siitä, mitä uutta kaunokirjallinen kuvaus Palmaresista tuo jo olemassa olevaan tutkimukseen Palmaresin valtiosta. Mihin asemaan Jonesin kuvaus Palmaresista sijoittuu suhteessa Brasilian kansalliseen muistiin? Ja toisaalta, minkälaisia mahdollisuuksia amerikkalaisen kirjailijan kuvaus Brasilian historiasta tuo amerikkalaiseen historian ymmärtämiseen?”

Young-Joo Hong is a doctoral researcher at the University of Turku (cultural history). She has studied culturebound syndromes, depression, and related emotional discourses with great interest in an interdisciplinary environment. In her doctoral research, she examines the depression discourses in modern South Korea from the perspective of the history of emotions.

“This paper is part of my doctoral research, one of the thematic chapters that explores questions related to the theme of “Hwa-byung (anger disease)” in Korea to consider historical developments of the depression concept and its popular discourse in media. “Hwa-byung” has been termed a culture-bound syndrome, as it refers to a certain type of sufferings from the cultural pattern of anger suppression. While it has often been grouped together and labeled as a similar concept of mental illness with depression, however, it is to be understood in the context of Korea’s everyday vocabulary with reference to the understanding of experienced pain and cultural narrative.”

Niina Hanhinen is a fourth-year doctoral researcher in comparative literature. Her research interests include comics and other iconotexts, photographs, and cultural memory. In her current study she focuses on the works of Hanneriina Moisseinen, Nora Krug, and W. G. Sebald.

“In the presentation I will talk about the second chapter of my upcoming monograph Cultural Imageries of War and Migration in Iconotexts. I will focus on the sub-chapter “The Case of Landscape in Hanneriina Moisseinen’s The Isthmus”. My argument is as follows: instead of remaining a background the landscape is an agent on its own right in the post-humanistic graphic novel by Moisseinen. The imagery of war in The Isthmus is centred on the suffering of landscape (environment) and non-human animals which is re/presented in photographs dating back to 1939–1945 and Moisseinen’s pencil drawings and speech bubbles.

The Isthmus has raised interest in the academia and articles about it have been written by Leena Romu (2017), Aura Nikkilä & Anna Vuorinne (2020), and Alex Colliander (2024) focusing on its post-humanistic nature, use of documentary material, and connections to the Finnish folklore. My research continues on these lines but emphasizes the role of landscape; the theoretical background of the chapter is in comics studies, theory of photograph, and landscape studies.”

Selma Ćatović Hughes grew up in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Her ongoing research about memory began as a subconscious form of therapy, creating a collection of individual and collective voices that delve into issues of transitional justice accountability, difficult histories and identity. She is a doctoral researcher in Cultural History at JUNO.

“This paper draws an intricate roadmap written on memory pliability and poetic permeability of oral testimony, enhancing the juxtaposition between facts and individual recollection. It aims to analyze ruptures between the past and present in the context of Pierre Nora’s lieux de memoire where historical, cultural, and political traces continue to permeate the site of traumatic memory.

Published during the Siege of Sarajevo, an unearthed article featuring a photo of a group of soldiers exhumes stratified memories spanning three decades. Author’s investigative study to reconstruct elusive boundaries of a forgotten battlefield is unexpectedly transfigured into an exhaustive odyssey of identifying the soldiers from the photograph, including her own father who was killed at the frontlines.

Using auto/ethnographic methodology, a collection of oral testimonies, semi-structured interviews and site analysis retraces flashbacks of the past and offers a new framework for the invisible personal memories to become woven together into a more cohesive visual narrative. Negotiating author’s personal emotional interpretation, the relationship between the researcher and the interviewees demonstrates Abram’s oral history theory by extracting enshrouded experiences that have been suppressed, neglected and not given adequate platform to ascend into the present.”