People

Research

My research interests cut across cultural memory studies, comparative literature, translation studies and post-socialist memory cultures in Eastern Europe. My reseacrh is situated at the intersection of various artistic media such as literature, film and art. Her areas of expertise also include theories of subjectivity, autobiography and self-writing, world literature, transnational literature, and multilingualism.

I have been a visiting scholar at the University of Bologna and the Free University of Berlin, a Juris Padegs Research Fellow at Yale University (2013–2014), and a Kone Fellow at Helsinki Collegium (2019). I am the coordinator of the research network Narrative and Memory: Ethics, Aesthetics, Politics (with Hanna Meretoja, www.narrativeandmemory.com). In 2020–2024 I am the principal investigator of an European Research Council Starting Grant Translating Memories: The Eastern European Past in the Global Arena.

Publications

Books
2015
Co-edited book (with Linda Kaljundi and Ilona Pikkanen)
Novels, Histories, Novel Nations: Historical Fiction and Cultural Memory in Finland and Estonia.
Finnish Literature Society.

2009
Monograph
Unresolved Dialogues: Subjectivity and Memory in post-Soviet Estonian Novel (in Estonian).
Under and Tuglas Literature Centre.

2005
Edited book
Metamorphic Kross: Insights into Jaan Kross’ Fiction (in Estonian).
Under and Tuglas Literature Centre.

Special issues

2021
(with Hanna Meretoja) Cultural Memorial Forms. Memory Studies 14(1)

2020
Entangled Cultures in the Baltic Region. Journal of Baltic Studies 51(3)

Selected Peer-Reviewed Articles

2021
“Born Translated Memories: Transcultural Memorial Forms, Domestication and Foreignisation.”
Memory Studies 14(1): 41-57.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698020976459

2020
“Entangled Memories of Human Rights in Kristina Norman’s Video Art: Space, Visual Frames, Politics of Art.” Journal of Baltic Studies 51(3): 451-464.
https://doi.org/10.1080/01629778.2020.1779097

2019
“Transcultural Memorial Forms in Post-Soviet Estonian Narratives of the Gulag.” In Anja Tippner, Anna Artwinska (eds), Narratives of Annihilation, Confinement and Survival: Camp Literature in a Comparative Perspective. De Gruyter, 51-70.

2019
“Broken Lineages, Impossible Affiliations: The Russian-Baltic Subject in Andrei Ivanov’s Zola and Peotäis põrmu.” In Heidi Grönstrand, Markus Huss, Ralf Kauranen (eds), The Aesthetics and Politics of Linguistic Borders: Multilingualism in Northern European Literatures.
Routledge, 48–63.

2017
(with Daniele Monticelli) “Battling Around the Exception: A Stateless ‘Russian’ Writer and His Translation in Today’s Estonia.” In Brian J. Baer and Susanna Witt (eds), Translation in Russian Contexts: Culture, Politics, Identity. Routledge, 321-335.

2015
“Cultural Memory, Travelling Forms and the Boundaries of the Nation: The Free Man in Eduard Bornhöhe’s The Avenger.” In Linda Kaljundi, Eneken Laanes, Ilona Pikkanen (eds), Novels, Histories, Novel Nations: Historical Fiction and Cultural Memory in Finland and Estonia.
Finnish Literature Society, 121-139.

2015
(with Linda Kaljundi and Ilona Pikkanen) “Introduction: Historical Fiction, Cultural Memory and Nation Building in Finland and Estonia.” In Linda Kaljundi, Eneken Laanes, Ilona Pikkanen (ed), Novels, Histories, Novel Nations: Historical Fiction and Cultural Memory in Finland and Estonia. Finnish Literature Society, 26-75.

2013
“Anecdotalization of Memory in Jaan Kross’s Paigallend.” In Gabriele Rippl, Philipp Schweighauser, Tiina Kirss, Margit Sutrop and Therese Steffen (eds), Haunted Narratives: The Politics and Poetics of Identity Formation and Twentieth Century Life Writing.
University of Toronto Press, 187-210.

2008
“Confession: the Performative Production of Gender and Memory in Tõnu Õnnepalu’s Border State.” In Anja Schwarz and Sabine Lucia Müller (eds) Iterationen: Geschlecht im kulturellen Gedächtnis. Querelles. Jahrbuch für Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung, 13.
Wallstein, 133-154.