Preliminary Programme

My paper explores the legacy of Maissi Erkko (1872-1936), a Finnish activist in women’s organizations and the anti-Russification movement. Her husband Eero Erkko was a politician and the editor-in-chief in a liberal newspaper Päivälehti. There was a strong ethos of a married couple working together for high-minded purposes among the Finnish intelligentsia in the late 1800’s. During their engagement, both Maissi and Eero Erkko had idealized and optimistic plans for their future. The reality turned out to be more prosaic. Eero spent long evenings in the editing office and restaurants, while Maissi took care of the household and looked after their three sons. Nonetheless, she stayed devoted to her cause and fought for women’s rights. She was also the co-founder of the women’s resistance movement against the Russification at the turn of the 20th century.
Russian authorities suspended Päivälehti in 1904. However, it was soon restarted under the name Helsingin Sanomat, which still is the largest newspaper in Finland. After Eero Erkko died in 1927, Maissi Erkko managed to get the holding of the newspaper company to her family. Maissi Erkko’s son Eljas Erkko became the factual leader of the newspaper. The newly started press baron was not pleased to see his mother interfering with the newspaper’s policy-making. Maissi Erkko was pushed aside and spent her last years desolated, bitter and feeling betrayed.
In spite of her essential role in the women’s movement and in the passive resistance movement, there is no academic research on Maissi Erkko. Some popular articles exist, and they emphasize her strength, courage and determination. In my paper I explore some of the unexamined blind spots of Maissi Erkko’s life. Profound analysis of her correspondence and diaries explains why she activated politically in the beginning of the 20th century. What were the circumstances, did something happen in her personal life or was it just the extreme political situation that made her act.
In her late 50s, Maissi Erkko was looking back and analyzed her early years with Eero Erkko. She saw her “young self” as adaptable, easily manipulated and weak. This seems surprising, and somewhat contradictory, considering the powerful ideals she promoted during their engagement. There is also an interesting conflict between her own self-reflection and the posthumous reputation of a “strong-minded powerful woman” that was constructed after her death and is still maintained.
Reetta Hänninen, PhD candidate, University of Helsinki
reetta.hanninen@helsinki.fi (Show less)

This paper presents an ethnographic dialogue between two women researchers who investigate Carnival, rituals, and performances from a queer and feminist studies perspective while negotiating intersubjectivity in transnational contexts. It discusses the questions and preliminary conclusions arrived at after exchanging and discussing field notes and analyzing each other’s research materials in search of a new common space and identity that has been created somewhere between Alabama (U.S.A.), Monterrey (Mexico), and Cádiz (Andalucia).
When they met at the 2017 ESSHC, Brazilian historian Isabel Machado was living in Monterrey, Mexico while writing about Mobile, Alabama’s Mardi Gras and Cypriot historian-anthropologist Katerina Sergidou was living in Greece while conducting research about the participation of women in Cádiz’s carnival. Since then (and as their collaboration evolved) Isabel has begun a new project investigating performances that defy gender normativity in Monterrey and Katerina has moved to Cádiz to participate in a feminist carnival group.
This paper presents an analysis of the dialogues and notes the two exchanged concerning their experiences as insiders/outsiders, being strangers, or “the ones that are not from here” and as una mas due to other identity markers. More specifically, It deals with negotiating identity, subjectivity, and positionality while encountering feminist interlocutors during fieldwork, and with the boundaries of critical feminist and multimodal ethnography.
Furthermore, they discuss their “performances of self” during their fieldwork, identifying both the material objects and performative acts employed in order to connect with interlocutors and participate in “ritual play.” Those dialogues provided an ethnographic mirror through which they re-experienced and re-interpreted their works.
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Cross-cultural teaching at a university in the Arab world is an exhilarating and enlightening experience. It provides expatriate educators with the unique opportunity to be submerged in a rich and dynamic culture that differs in countless ways from their own. But beyond the charm and intrigue, the experience also offers a host of unanticipated complexities that can challenge even the most experienced instructor. This paper will explore how an oral history project was created for undergraduate students in Saudi Arabia to facilitate their humanities and social science learning. The transference of cultural nuances, once the glue that bonded families and tribes through shared knowledge and experiences, has significantly diminished in some families since the discovery of oil. By using oral history, an Arabian tradition, as a teaching tool students have been reacquainted with their familial past while enhancing their general knowledge of the Arab world. (Show less)