Markku Salmela

yliopistonlehtori

Vastuuoppialat ja -alueet

englannin kieli, kirjallisuus ja kääntäminen (englanninkielinen kirjallisuus)

erityisosaaminen / kiinnostuksen kohteet: Yhdysvaltain kirjallisuus, postmodernismi, kirjallinen naturalismi, tilan ja maiseman representaatiot, groteski

vastaanotto: to 12-13

sähköposti: sähköpostiosoitehaku
huone: Pinni B 5042
puhelin: 3551 6125

Research interests

American literature, postmodernism, space and representation, urban fiction, literary naturalism, the grotesque.

Ongoing research

I’m in the early stages of exploring an area I call Naturalistic Elements in Postmodern American Fiction. This will entail several article-size projects analyzing some narrative, representational and philosophical echoes of literary naturalism in US fiction written in the latter half of the twentieth century. Such investigations allow me to combine my interest in naturalism with my primary area of expertise, post-1960 US fiction. One of the central concepts in this examination is landscape, which directly addresses the relationship between humans and their environment – a concern typical of naturalistic fictions.

I’m also currently involved in a project titled The Grotesque and the Unnatural. This collaboration with Jarkko Toikkanen has produced a one-day conference in March 2009 and a collection of articles published by Cambria Press. We are examining the grotesque as a literary phenomenon involving a negation of sorts, something that is both based on and in conflict with nature. The grotesque, as we have found, is much more than a stock method of subverting norms, and a great deal of its special character depends on the specific patterns of its relationship with natural processes.

Publications