19.5. Sanna Turoma: Venäläinen imperialismi ja eurooppalaisen kolonialismin kritiikki: Nikolai Trubetzkoyn euraasialaisnarratiivit
Tutkimuskeskus Narraren monitieteellinen kertomuksentutkimuksen seminaari jatkuu tiistaina 19.5. klo 15.15. Vuorossa on Sanna Turoman esitys “Venäläinen imperialismi ja eurooppalaisen kolonialismin kritiikki: Nikolai Trubetzkoyn euraasialaisnarratiivit”
Tila: Pinni B4113 tai Zoom (Link). (Meeting ID: 668 4700 7494 Passcode: 045076)
Seminaari on avoin kaikille kiinnostuneille sekä paikan päällä että etänä. Osallistuminen ei vaadi ilmoittautumista!
Venäläinen imperialismi ja eurooppalaisen kolonialismin kritiikki: Nikolai Trubetzkoyn euraasialaisnarratiivit
Nikolai Trubetskoi (Trubetzkoy, 1890–1938) tunnetaan tieteenhistoriassa ennen muuta kielitieteilijänä, erityisesti fonetiikan eli äänneopin kehittäjänä. Hän osallistui maineikkaaseen Moskovan lingvistipiiriin ja oli perustamassa strukturalismin kehitykselle keskeistä Prahan lingvistipiiriä. Akateemisen toiminnan ohella Trubetskoi oli mukana venäläisemigranttien poliittisessa Euraasialaisuus-liikkeessä. Hänen ristiriitainen maineensa perustuu yhtäältä hänen uraansa edistyksellisenä kielitieteilijänä ja toisaalta autoritarismia ja antisemitisimiä kannattaneena mystikkona. Euraasialaisuus-aatteen johtohahmona Trubetskoi kehitteli näkemystä Euraasiasta kulttuurimaantieteellisenä alueena, jonka väestöjen etnografinen ja historiallinen yhteys loi pohjan Euroopasta eriävälle sivilisaatiolle. Varhaisissa kirjoituksissaan hän kritisoi erityisesti eurooppalaista kolonialismia. Trubetskoin näkemykset ovat olleet vaikutusvaltaisia Neuvostoliiton jälkeisellä Venäjällä, erityisesti imperialistisia ja nationalistisia aatteita kannattavan poliittisen ja akateemisen eliitin parissa. Trubetskoin euraasialaisuusnarratiiveja käsittelevä esitelmä perustuu euraasialaisuutta esittelevään kirjoitukseen S. Turoma, ”Euraasialaisuus imperiumin ja kansakunnan aatteena”, joka sisältyy teokseen Venäjän aatteet: ideoiden ja aktivismin historiaa (toim. S. Turoma, V. Oittinen & M. Perkiömäki, Gaudeamus, painossa).
Kertomuksentutkimuksen seminaari on kaikille avoin. Sen tavoitteena on herätellä moni- ja poikkitieteistä keskustelua aineistoista, menetelmistä, teorioista ja tutkimuksen tilasta. Seminaarissa keskustellaan meneillään ja aluillaan olevista kertomukseen liittyvistä tutkimuksista. Jokainen kerta sisältää alustuksen (noin 20 min) sekä keskusteluosuuden. Esitelmöijät ovat eri uravaiheissa olevia Tampereen yliopiston tutkijoita.
5.5. Sari Kivistö, Natan Elgabsi, Aleksei Rakhmanin & Ville Hämäläinen: The research group “Suffering and Meliorism in Literature and the Philosophy of Literature” within the Centre of Excellence on Meliorist Philosophy of Suffering (MePhiS)
Join us next Tuesday (5.5.) at 3.15 pm (Finnish time) as Narrare’s seminar series continues with an introduction of a research project: the research group “Suffering and Meliorism in Literature and the Philosophy of Literature” within the Centre of Excellence on Meliorist Philosophy of Suffering (MePhiS) by Sari Kivistö, Natan Elgabsi, Aleksei Rakhmanin and Ville Hämäläinen
Room: Pinni B4113 or Zoom (Link). (Meeting ID: 668 4700 7494 Passcode: 045076)
The research group “Suffering and Meliorism in Literature and the Philosophy of Literature” within the Centre of Excellence on Meliorist Philosophy of Suffering (MePhiS)
The research group Suffering and Meliorism in Literature and the Philosophy of Literature, part of the RCF Centre of Excellence in Meliorist Philosophy of Suffering (MePhiS, 2026–2033), investigates literature and the philosophy of literature as pathways toward a nuanced meliorist understanding of suffering. The literary-philosophical varieties of antitheodicy and the representations of meaningless suffering extend from the Book of Job through centuries of reinterpretations to modern and contemporary philosophy and/of literature. While classical works such as Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Camus’s novels, and Simone Weil’s writings exemplify philosophical literature on suffering, the scope of literary-philosophical investigations will be extended, among other issues, to literature articulating the melioristic idea of lessening evil and increasing the good through (often barely visible) human effort. The presentation offers a brief and general introduction to the research carried out within the project.
This talk is part of Research Centre Narrare’s Narrative Studies Seminar, which is open for all interested participants. The aim of the seminar is to allow for a multi- and interdisciplinary discussion on data, methods, theories, and the state of narrative research. Sessions consist of introductory presentations by researchers from different career stages and different fields studying narratives at Tampere University (up to 20 min), and general discussion.
5.5. Research Funding Workshop for Doctoral and Early Career Researchers
Narrare: Centre for Interdisciplinary Narrative Studies holds a funding workshop for doctoral and early career researchers on 5 May 2026 from 9.30-14.00 at Tampere University in room Pinni B4116. The interdisciplinary workshop will focus on qualitative research in fields working with narratives and is open to researchers from all faculties.
Please note the new date and location!
The funding workshop offers practical tips and insights on how to successfully apply for funding especially from the Finnish foundations (e.g., Kone Foundation, The Finnish Cultural Foundation) as well as support from both experts and peers.
In the first part of the workshop, Research Specialist Maija Ojala-Fulwood (SOC) gives an introduction to writing a successful funding application and to the services offered by the university. After this, Doctoral Researcher Nanna Numento (Literary Studies) and Postdoctoral Researchers Elise Kraatila (Literary studies) and Reetta Eiranen (Experiential history) share their personal experiences of successful funding applications for doctoral and early career postdoctoral research.
The second part of the workshop focuses on practical work. Participants have the unique opportunity to read and discuss funding applications that have been submitted to the Finnish foundations and get feedback for their own research ideas. For this part of the workshop, participants are expected to bring an abstract-length description (max. 2000 characters) of their own research idea or project either in English or in Finnish.
28.4. Nanny Jolma & Anna Kuutsa: The afterlife of parliamentary storytelling in social media: The portability of narrative features in the Finnish border security debate
Join us next Tuesday (28.4.) at 3.15 pm (Finnish time) as Narrare’s seminar series continues with “The afterlife of parliamentary storytelling in social media: The portability of narrative features in the Finnish border security debate” by Nanny Jolma and Anna Kuutsa
Room: Pinni B4113 or Zoom (Link). (Meeting ID: 668 4700 7494 Passcode: 045076)
The afterlife of parliamentary storytelling in social media: The portability of narrative features in the Finnish border security debate
Politicians tell stories in parliaments and increasingly on social media. However, little is known about the traffic of stories between these entirely different narrative environments. This presentation studies political narratives by examining both the uses of narrative features in the parliamentary debate and their afterlife on social media. Narratives have been argued as being increasingly important in political speech and public meaning-making in general, and a storytelling boom is recognized as characteristic of our time. Sharing compelling stories on social media has become an essential tool for politicians to communicate with the public. In this presentation, we extend the study of parliamentary narratives outside the institutional context by studying the sequences of plenary speeches that Finnish MPs share on Instagram. We examine how Finnish parliamentary narratives travel onto social media and are adapted to video posts on MPs’ Instagram accounts. Political meaning-making and persuasion take place both in plenary sessions and on social media platforms. However, when narratives originally used in parliamentary speeches are shared on social media, they enter a different context of story construction. Although divergent from the trending political content, these rather long, hardly edited videos offer a peculiarly illuminating case for examining how parliamentary and social media storytelling interact.
This talk is part of Research Centre Narrare’s Narrative Studies Seminar, which is open for all interested participants. The aim of the seminar is to allow for a multi- and interdisciplinary discussion on data, methods, theories, and the state of narrative research. Sessions consist of introductory presentations by researchers from different career stages and different fields studying narratives at Tampere University (up to 20 min), and general discussion.
24.4. Utopia and Futural Imagination in the East of Europe: A Research Workshop
A research workshop on figurations of utopian imagination in Central and Eastern Europe with Zsolt Czigányik (Budapest), Jaak Tomberg (Tartu) and Henri Vogt (Turku).
Date: 24 April 2026; 10-15:00
Location: Tampere University, Virta -building (Åkerlundinkatu 5), auditorium 109 & Linna -building, auditorium 4013
Organisers: Natalya Bekhta, Karolina Bagdonė and Svetozara Bozhilova
Welcome to the next research workshop in the project “Utopia and Eastern European Literature after 1989”! In this two-part interdisciplinary workshop we shall focus on the question, how the East of Europe imagines the future, in literary, cultural and political terms.
We are excited to host Zsolt Czigányik (Budapest), Jaak Tomberg (Tartu) and Henri Vogt (Turku) as guest speakers and discussants in the workshop. The first workshop session will be structured as a series of presentations, embedded into the programme of the international symposium “Future Narratives across Media.” The second session will follow after lunch and focus on the remaining questions and hypotheses of futural utopias, their relationship to nation studies, utopias in Western and Central Europe, and the major political and cultural transformations in post-Soviet Europe, drawing on the work-in-progress papers circulated in advance.
No registration is needed for participation but please get in touch with the organisers to receive the workshop reading materials. Please also note the change of location for the afternoon session.
PROGRAMME
Session 1 10.15–11.45
Virta -building (Åkerlundinkatu 5), auditorium 109
Zsolt Czigányik Utopia and the nation
Jaak Tomberg The End of History at the Beginning of History
Natalya Bekhta Narrating utopia
Discussant: Henri Vogt
Session 2 13.00-15.00
Linna -building (Kalevantie 5), auditorium 4013
Discussion of work-in-progress papers and open questions
***
Zsolt Czigányik (b. 1974) is Associate Professor in the Department of English Studies at ELTE University, Budapest, and is the secretary of the Utopian Studies Society / Europe. He was a Gerda Henkel Fellow at Central European University’s Democracy Institute. His research interests include utopian and dystopian literature (both Western and Central European), and the study of utopia from literary and social science perspectives, and contemporary literature. His publications include Utopia Between East and West in Hungarian Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) and Utopia and Democracy (2025), a volume he edited with Iva Dimovska.
Jaak Tomberg (b. 1980) is Associate Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of Tartu, Estonia, whose main areas of research are philosophy of literature, poetics, science fiction, literary utopias and the utopian imagination. His most recent book, „Kuidas täita soovi” (How to Fulfil a Wish; 2023) is on the fate and status of realism, science fiction, and the utopian imagination in a technologically saturated, globalized cultural reality. Besides academic research, Tomberg has written a lot of award-winning literary criticism, edited the Estonian experimental avant-garde journal VIHIK, translated fiction, and written plays. In 2014, he was awarded the Science Fiction Research Association’s Pioneer Award for the best essay-length article of the year.
Henri Vogt has been Professor of International Politics at the University of Turku, Finland, since 2010. He holds a D.Phil. in politics from St Antony’s College, Oxford, and an M.Soc.Sc. in political science from the University of Helsinki. One of the long-term focusses of his research has been the challenges of democracy and democratic consolidation in Europe, with “utopia” as one of the primary analytical angles employed (e.g. the monograph on postcommunist political transformation “Between Utopia and Disillusionment“, 2005). In recent years his scholarly output has primarily dealt with European polycrisis politics – in many respects an antithesis of “utopia”.
23.–24.4. Symposium: Future Narratives across Media
The event is organized on site at Tampere University, Finland, on 23–24 April 2026. You can also follow the symposium online via Zoom (click here).
Keynote speakers are Associate Professor Sjoerd-Jeroen Moenandar, University of Groningen (The Netherlands) and Associate Professor Marina Lambrou, Kingston University (UK).
In contemporary public discourse, from news media to political speech and various cultural commentators, our present era is commonly characterized as a time of deep uncertainty, turbulence and transition. Recent descriptors and media buzzwords like ‘polycrisis’ and ‘permacrisis’ denote a complex tangle of interconnected and mutually amplifying crises, back-to-back and seemingly never-ending. In this cultural climate, future-oriented storytelling and scenario-making flourishes across media, from dystopian and utopian fiction to policy briefs, science communication, marketing, and journalism. Used as a means for anticipating and preparing for possible future upheaval brought about by geopolitical conflicts, new pandemics, ramifications of new technologies, climate change, or other societal, political and economic developments, these future narratives play a significant role in public imagination at the moment. They may facilitate action in the present by enabling us to imagine possible futures, but may also delineate what kinds of futures we are capable of imagining as possibilities, individually and collectively.
The “Future Narratives Across Media” -symposium seeks to initiate an interdisciplinary conversation on this future-oriented media-cultural climate.
Symposium programme:
Day 1
23.4.2026
Tampere University, Linna -building (Kalevantie 5), auditorium K103
10.15–11.45 Session 1
Elise Kraatila Stories about a future Russian invasion in Finnish news media
Samuli Björninen Fact-based fictionality in future-oriented narrative scenarios – and how to talk about it
Markus Laukkanen Distributed media narratives: how online news websites construct overarching future narratives
11.45–13.00 Lunch break
13.00–14.00 Keynote
Marina Lambrou “The future is already with us”: reframing climate change and environmental degradation in a speculative short story
14.05–15.35 Session 2
Maria Mäkelä Simultaneity, Processuality, and Gentrification in Climate Protest Storytelling
Jouni Teittinen The bottom of it: Fantasies of the archive in Ian McEwan’s What We Can Know
Silvia Anastasijevic Futuristic Identities: Speculative Imaginaries of Humanity, Community, and Technology in Binti and The Tiger Flu
15.35–16.00 Coffee break
16.00–17.30 Session 3
Kirsi Sandberg Pragma-semantics of future-oriented knowledge in parliamentary rhetoric
Nanny Jolma, Anna Kuutsa & Mari Hatavara Future narratives in political debate: mind attribution and narrative positioning
Hanna Rautajoki Changing scenarios in the Finnish Government Reports on the Future
Day 2
24.4.2026
Tampere University, Virta -building (Åkerlundinkatu 5), Auditorium Virta 109
10.15–11.45 Session 4
Special session on Eastern European utopias organized by Natalya Bekhta
Zsolt Czigányik Utopia and the nation
Jaak Tomberg The End of History at the Beginning of History
Natalya Bekhta Narrating utopia
Discussant: Henri Vogt
11.45–13.00 Lunch break
13.00–14.00 Keynote
Sjoerd-Jeroen Moenandar Storyteasing: Conspiracy Theories and Narrative Literacy
14.05–15.35 Session 5
Cecilia Thirlway Formatted futures: the case of thought leadership storytelling
Christy Dena The Link Between Collective Action, Writing Discourses across Media, and Values
15.05–15.30 Coffee break
15.30–16.30 Session 6
Aino Kolehmainen The Past is Young and the Future’s Old: Dystopian Sounds and Scenarios in Ayreon’s Into the Electric Castle and Toehider’s Stereo Night Ash
Xaver Boxhammer Remediating Narratives of Lost Futures: Science Fiction Comics in Atomfall
Keynote abstracts:
Marina Lambrou: “The future is already with us”: reframing climate change and environmental degradation in a speculative short story
“The future is already with us, it’s just unevenly distributed” asserts William Gibson’, (1992) so how are we to imagine possible futures if it already overwhelms us in the present and will be assigned to the past tomorrow. In other words, we can argue that writing about the future is not journalism but science fiction or speculative fiction because the future is unpredictable. Nonetheless, we are already seeing the effects of speculative futures in today’s climate change, a process that was inevitable decades ago. To reflect on these points, this presentation will focus on Peter Carey’s (1980) short story “Do you love me?” analysed through the lens of climate change. Set in an unknown time and place, the story’s description of the disappearing coastline, mapped by the ‘elite- well paid, admired, envied, and having no small opinion of themselves’ (44) Cartographers, provides a metaphorical analogy of the decaying landscape and the devastating impact on people and places we can associate with climate change. Building on postcolonial theory, where in one of the two discursive worlds ‘thrives on spatial metaphors like mapping, location, cartography and landscape in fictional literatures’ (Soja, 2011:x), “Do you love me?” will be reframed as a story about climate change and what is lost, as well as what hope it may offer about our future.
Sjoerd-Jeroen Moenandar: Storyteasing: Conspiracy Theories and Narrative Literacy
Contemporary societal challenges such as climate change, energy transition, global inequality, and information polarization, are characterized by how complex, multifaceted, and resistant to simple solutions they are. Such complexity can be experienced as threatening, confusing, or frustrating, and that can make it tempting to opt for shortcuts in problem-solving and problematic linear thinking, of which conspiracy theories are an extreme example. In this talk, I will introduce narrative literacy – a critical, reflexive capacity to assess how stories shape our responses to complex societal issues – as a means to respond more fruitfully to such complexity. I will present mock disruptive narration – jocosely inventing narratives through which ‘everything suddenly makes sense’ – as an attractive tool to train such narrative literacy, as it offers a “cognitive playground” to playfully engage with complexity. Finally, I will propose that such narrative literacy is a propaedeutics to futures literacy.
The symposium is organized by the research project “Journalistic Future Narratives in and about NATO-era Finland” together with Narrare Centre for Interdisciplinary Narrative Studies at Tampere University.
14.4. Teemu Ikonen: Audionarratologia ja äänikielitaide
Tutkimuskeskus Narraren monitieteellinen kertomuksentutkimuksen seminaari jatkuu tiistaina 14.4. klo 15.15. Vuorossa on Teemu Ikosen esitys “Audionarratologia ja äänikielitaide”
Tila: Pinni B4113 tai Zoom (Link). (Meeting ID: 668 4700 7494 Passcode: 045076)
Seminaari on avoin kaikille kiinnostuneille sekä paikan päällä että etänä. Osallistuminen ei vaadi ennakkoilmoittautumista tai rekisteröitymistä!
Audionarratologia ja äänikielitaide
Esitelmä käsittelee Ikosen käynnissä olevan tutkimuksen lähtökohtia. Hankkeessa aineistona ovat Timo Humalojan kuunnelmasarja Eurooppalainen Odysseia (1979) ja kuunnelma Odysseus (1982). Esitelmässä pohditaan reittiä tyydyttävään teoreettiseen viitekehykseen tätä materiaalia ja äänen kielitaiteellisen käytön muitakin ilmiöitä varten. Pohdinta keskittyy äänikielitaiteen (Cayley 2014) käsitteeseen. Sen antia selvitetään kolmessa yhteydessä: suomalaisen äänikirjakeskustelun ongelmat (esim. Lindstedt 2021), ilmaisukeinojen väitetty rikastuminen äänikirjoissa viime vuosina sekä audionarratologian (esim. Bernaerts & Mildorf 2021) kritiikki.
Kertomuksentutkimuksen seminaari on kaikille avoin. Sen tavoitteena on herätellä moni- ja poikkitieteistä keskustelua aineistoista, menetelmistä, teorioista ja tutkimuksen tilasta. Seminaarissa keskustellaan meneillään ja aluillaan olevista kertomukseen liittyvistä tutkimuksista. Jokainen kerta sisältää alustuksen (noin 20 min) sekä keskusteluosuuden. Esitelmöijät ovat eri uravaiheissa olevia Tampereen yliopiston tutkijoita.
24.3. OTUDEM-hanke: Yhteiskuntahistoria 2020-luvun turvallistamispolitiikan vastakertomuksena
Tutkimuskeskus Narraren monitieteellinen kertomuksentutkimuksen seminaari jatkuu tiistaina 24.3. klo. 15.15. Vuorossa on Minna Harjulan ja Heikki Kokon esitys “OTUDEM-hanke: Yhteiskuntahistoria 2020-luvun turvallistamispolitiikan vastakertomuksena”
Tila: Pinni B4117 tai Zoom (Link). (Meeting ID: 668 4700 7494 Passcode: 045076)
Seminaari on avoin kaikille kiinnostuneille sekä paikan päällä että etänä. Osallistuminen ei vaadi ennakkoilmoittautumista tai rekisteröitymistä!
OTUDEM-hanke: Yhteiskuntahistoria 2020-luvun turvallistamispolitiikan vastakertomuksena
Esitelmä käsittelee kokemuksen yhteiskuntahistorian näkökulmaa narratiiveihin ja sitä, miten hyödynnämme vastakertomuksen ideaa Koneen säätiön rahoittamassa OTUDEM‑projektissa. Hanke pureutuu demokratian ja nykyisen turvallistamispolitiikan jännitteisiin historiallisen tarkastelun avulla. Turvallistamisella tarkoitetaan kehitystä, jossa kansallisen turvallisuuden nimissä oikeutetaan poikkeuksellisia ja usein kansalaisoikeuksia rajoittavia toimia.
Yhteiskuntahistoriallinen näkökulma toimii hankkeessa vastakertomuksena: se muistuttaa historiantutkimuksen roolista yhteiskunnallisena muisti‑instituutiona, joka järjestää kokemuksia, rakentaa menneisyyden pohjalta sosiaalista todellisuutta ja muovaa tulevaisuusodotuksia. Näin historia näyttäytyy nykyisyystieteenä, joka avaa vaihtoehtoisia tapoja käsitteellistää kriisejä ja haastaa turvallistamispolitiikan tuottamia narratiiveja.
Kertomuksentutkimuksen seminaari on kaikille avoin. Sen tavoitteena on herätellä moni- ja poikkitieteistä keskustelua aineistoista, menetelmistä, teorioista ja tutkimuksen tilasta. Seminaarissa keskustellaan meneillään ja aluillaan olevista kertomukseen liittyvistä tutkimuksista. Jokainen kerta sisältää alustuksen (noin 20 min) sekä keskusteluosuuden. Esitelmöijät ovat eri uravaiheissa olevia Tampereen yliopiston tutkijoita.
24.3. A research workshop with Stephen Shapiro: “How to Abolish the ‘novel’. Keywords in World-Cultural Studies”
A research workshop on the European literary periphery and world-literary theory with Stephen Shapiro (University of Warwick)
Date: 24 March 2026, 10.30-15:00
Location: Tampere University, Linna Building (Lecture hall 5026 & auditorium “K104 Väinö Linna -Sali”)
In this workshop we’ll discuss the latest questions in comparative literature today, with a particular focus on genre, peripheriality and the world-systems approach. The workshop will open with a talk by the guest speaker, following which we’ll have a discussion and a series of short 10-min inputs and case studies from teams working in the projects UTOPIA and AUTOSTORY.
The workshop is open to participation. No registration needed!
Join online via Zoom
For further enquiries contact Dr. Natalya Bekhta
Utopia and Eastern European Literature after 1989
***
PROGRAMME
24 March 2026
10.30-12:00 (Linna 5026)
Talk by Stephen Shapiro: “How to Abolish the ‘novel’: Keywords in World-Cultural Studies”,
followed by Q&A and discussion of workshop materials (see below).
12-13:00
Lunch break
13-15:00 (K104 Väinö Linna -Sali)
Continuation of discussion about genre and literary periphery; short presentations from the projects UTOPIA and AUTOSTORY:
Karolina Bagdonė on “small literatures” and the case of Lithuania
Natalya Bekhta on the novel in Ukraine
Kristina Malmio on the Finnish-Swedish case of Monika Fagerholm’s Diva
Tero Vanhanen & Iida Pöllänen on the genre of romantasy
***
Abstract
Stephen Shapiro: “How to Abolish the ‘novel’: Keywords in World-Cultural Studies”
The ongoing world-systems knowledge movement in literary and cultural studies has proposed that we need to decolonize our epistemology and liberate our academic disciplines from the categories that arose through the long dominance of centrist liberalism.
This talk will outline some of the perspectives and keywords of this approach to suggest that we need to refuse the axiom that all long-form fictions are best understood through the conceptual category of “the novel” or that the cultural productions of the (Western) core can register either the historical past or contemporary in advance of the rest of the world (the prejudice of consecrated “modernism”).
What would a study of culture from the non-dominant perspective (what Nietzsche called from “the frog’s perspective”) look like as a response to the contemporary university in crisis?
Stephen Shapiro is Professor of English and Comprative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick. He has also worked as a member of WReC (Warwick Research Collective), a group interested in moving beyond older models for literary and cultural studies. WReC published its first collective findings in Combined and Uneven Development: Towards a New Theory of World-Literature (Liverpool UP 2015). His research interests focus on writing and culture of the United States; Cultural Studies; literary theory; marxism, world-systems analyses; urban and spatial studies, and television studies. Stephen Shapiro is an author and editor of multiple books and critical editions, including How to Read Marx’s Capital (London: Pluto, 2008), The Wire: Race, Class, and Genre (ed. with Liam Kennedy, 2012), anthology Collected Writings of Charles Brockden Brown (2020), The Cambridge Companion to American Horror (ed. with Mark Storey, 2022) and Tracking Capital: World-Systems, World-Ecology, World-Culture (eds. Sharae Deckard, Michael Niblett, Stephen Shapiro, 2024). Future publications include a critical edition of the first American long-form fiction to mention male-male sexuality, Charles Brockden Brown’s The Memoirs of Stephen Calvert (Lever Press) and a WIP, The Twist: Capital, Data, and Cultures of the Intersectional Left.
WORKSHOP READING:
In preparation for the discussion, we read Stephen Shapiro’s “Zemiperiphery Matters: Immigration, Culture, and the Capitalist World-System” and an excerpt from Tracking Capital: World-Systems, World-Ecology, World-Culture (2024, eds. Sharae Deckard, Michael Niblett, Stephen Shapiro).
***
The event is funded by the Research Council of Finland (grant no. 361957). Organized in collaboration with AUTOSTORY project (grant no: 312136092911), NAME: Narratives at the Margins of Europe, and Narrare.
10.3. Annika Valtonen: Master Narratives and the ‘Ideal Immigrant Subject’: A Multimodal Narrative Positioning Approach
Join us next Tuesday (10.3.) at 3.15 pm (Finnish time) as Narrare’s seminar series continues with “Master Narratives and the ‘Ideal Immigrant Subject’: A Multimodal Narrative Positioning Approach” by Annika Valtonen
Room: Pinni B4117 or Zoom (Link). (Meeting ID: 668 4700 7494 Passcode: 045076)
Master Narratives and the ‘Ideal Immigrant Subject’: A Multimodal Narrative Positioning Approach
Authors: Annika Valtonen, Dorien Van De Mieroop & Melisa Stevanovic
Societally prevalent master narratives regarding immigration articulate features and forms of conduct that people moving across national borders are expected to embody in order to be constructed as ideal members of a society. These ideals are at the same time powerful and entrenched, yet also fluid and malleable, shifting with the zeitgeist and continually negotiated in interaction.
In this presentation, we study a corpus of narratives by people with migration background regarding their experiences of encounters with services, institutions and laypersons in Finland. These narratives originate from eleven video-recorded qualitative interviews with participants from heterogeneous migration backgrounds living in Finland. Drawing on narrative positioning analysis and multimodal discourse analysis, we analyse how the narrators multimodally position themselves vis-á-vis societally prevalent ideals attached to immigrants. In particular, we investigate how the narrators construct or subvert versions of what we term the ‘ideal immigrant subject’ – a normative set of ideal features attached to people with migration background that are produced and negotiated societally.
Our analysis demonstrates how the ideal subjectivity is oriented to as interactionally shared cultural knowledge. Conversely, challenging the ideal is treated as interactionally delicate, placing accountability on the narrator. Even in challenging the ideal subjectivity, elements of it are drawn on to position the self as morally competent. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for those who encounter people with migration background in their work, highlighting the importance of critical reflection in order to recognize and dismantle the unequal power structures embedded in these interactionally reproduced and negotiated ideals—both in interpersonal interactions and societally.
This talk is part of Research Centre Narrare’s Narrative Studies Seminar. The aim of the seminar is to allow for a multi- and interdisciplinary discussion on data, methods, theories, and the state of narrative research. Sessions consist of introductory presentations by researchers from different career-stages and different fields studying narratives at Tampere University (up to 20 min), and general discussion.
3.3. Nanna Numento: From Speculation to Speculative Agency: The Intertwining of Speculative Worldbuilding and Interactive Game Mechanics in Digital Fantasy RPGs
Join us next Tuesday (3.3.) at 3.15 pm (Finnish time) as Narrare’s seminar series continues with “From Speculation to Speculative Agency: The Intertwining of Speculative Worldbuilding and Interactive Game Mechanics in Digital Fantasy RPGs” by Nanna Numento
Room: Pinni B4117 or Zoom (Link). (Meeting ID: 668 4700 7494 Passcode: 045076)
From Speculation to Speculative Agency: The Intertwining of Speculative Worldbuilding and Interactive Game Mechanics in Digital Fantasy RPGs
Fantasy role-playing games, or RPGs, use different ways to create speculation. On one hand, the fantasy genre affords speculative worldbuilding and speculative mimesis, allowing the player to immerse themselves into a world full of fantastical thought experiments. The video game format, simultaneously, heavily builds on speculative mechanics, which are ways to create speculation in more ludic ways instead of narrative devices. This combination foregrounds speculation in the gaming experience of digital RPGs, encouraging the player to use their interpretive skills while playing and constructing the meanings of the game.
In my presentation, I describe these intertwining forms of speculation as speculative agency. Here, players move beyond mere speculation and begin to act based on it, which influences not only how the story unfolds, but also how the players understand the fictional world they help create. This kind of multifaceted and complex speculation also has significance beyond fictional worlds, since the themes discussed within the games as well as the communicative methods used in RPGs draw constant speculative connections between fiction and reality.
This talk is part of Research Centre Narrare’s Narrative Studies Seminar. The aim of the seminar is to allow for a multi- and interdisciplinary discussion on data, methods, theories, and the state of narrative research. Sessions consist of introductory presentations by researchers from different career-stages and different fields studying narratives at Tampere University (up to 20 min), and general discussion.
17.2. Markus Laukkanen: News about future turmoil: how a hypothetical war is narrated on Finnish news-media websites
Join us next Tuesday (17.2.) at 3.15 pm (Finnish time) as Narrare’s seminar series continues with “News about future turmoil: how a hypothetical war is narrated on Finnish news-media websites” by Markus Laukkanen
Room Pinni B4117 or Zoom (Link). (Meeting ID: 668 4700 7494 Passcode: 045076) at 3.15 pm (EET)
In this presentation, I take a look at narratives proliferating in Finnish news-media regarding the security future of Finland, Nato, and “the West” in an age of uncertainty and geopolitical turmoil. A corpus of more than 200 future-oriented texts published since Russian invasion of Ukraine illustrates an emerging journalistic practice of crafting future narratives to disseminate understandable knowledge of the future. Most of the texts included in the corpus narrate some aspect(s) of an imagined future invasion of Finland by Russia.
Future narratives constitute a crucial instrument that affords communicating about the future in a comprehensible way. However, the narrative form also brings with it notable difficulties in this regard. The future is multivalent, changeable, and ultimately unknowable. Because the narrative form is oriented toward retrospective meaning-making, it easily obliterates such qualities in whatever it depicts. In journalistic contexts, this dynamic can present significant challenges when it comes to adhering to epistemic and ethical standards. In the presentation I show how these challenges are (or are not) navigated in contemporary engagement-driven online news-media.