Tuire Valkeakari
Professor
Education:
Ph.D. - English. University of Helsinki, Finland.
Ph.D. - African American Studies & American Studies. Yale University.
Brief Biography:
Professor Valkeakari has worked at Providence College since September 2006. She is the author of two books: Precarious Passages: The Diasporic Imagination in Contemporary Black Anglophone Fiction (University Press of Florida, 2017) and Religious Idiom and the African American Novel, 1952–1998 (University Press of Florida, 2007). Her articles have appeared, for example, in Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, MELUS, Studies in American Fiction, Studies in Canadian Literature/Études en Littérature Canadienne, Scandinavian Studies, and in various essay collections. The courses she teaches regularly include “Twentieth-Century African American Literature,” “Global and Postcolonial Literature,” and “Toni Morrison.”
For Professor Valkeakari's CV, including a detailed list of publications, scroll down and click on "Click here for more information."
Area(s) of Expertise:
Black Anglophone literature, especially African American and African-Caribbean fiction and autobiography; American literature; global/postcolonial literature; African American culture and history; race and ethnicity.
Selected Publications:
Valkeakari, T. (2023) “Olli Jalonen’s Literary Explorations of Time, Space, and Existential Meaning” . Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction.(64:2 ), 296–313.
Valkeakari, T. (2021) "Updating Camus: The Absurd, Revolt, and Strangerhood in Riikka Pulkkinen's Vieras". Scandinavian Studies.(93:1), 60-80.
Valkeakari, T. (2021) “Katja Kettu’s Rose on poissa as Transcultural Trauma Fiction”. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction.(62:3), 269–284.
Valkeakari, T. (2019) "The Photographer-Flâneur as Facilitator of Urban Connectivity in John Edgar Wideman’s Two Cities". Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction.(60:2), 222-235.
Valkeakari, T. (2017) In Mielikuvituksen maailmat/Worlds of Imagination: Explorations in Interdisciplinary Literary Research; Merja Polvinen, Maria Salenius, and Howard Sklar (Ed.), . "John Wideman's Brothers and Keepers and Edwidge Danticat's Brother, I'm Dying as Family Memoirs and Narratives of Black Captivity." 249-267. Turku, Finland: Eetos.
Valkeakari, T. (2017) Precarious Passages: The Diasporic Imagination in Contemporary Black Anglophone Fiction. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.
Valkeakari, T. (2015) “‘Railway Spine,’ Trains, Migration, and Mobility in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake” . ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews .(28:3-4), 202-207.
Valkeakari, T. (2014) In Living Language, Living Memory: Essays on the Works of Toni Morrison; Kerstin W. Shands and Giulia Grillo Mikrut (Ed.), . "After Eden: Constructs of Home, House, and Racial Difference in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy." 107-126. Huddinge, Sweden: Södertörn University.
Valkeakari, T. (2014) “‘New Negro’ Men, World War I, and African American Masculinity in Guy Johnson’s Standing at the Scratch Line” . MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States.(39:4), 50-68.
Valkeakari, T. (2013) "A Journey to ‘Partial Cosmopolitanism’ in Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost”. Studies in Canadian Literature/Études en Littérature Canadienne (SCL/ÉLC).(38:2), 67–87.
Valkeakari, T. (2007) Religious Idiom and the African American Novel, 1952–1998. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.
Valkeakari, T. (2006) “Huck, Twain, and the Freedman’s Shackles: Struggling with Huckleberry Finn Today”. Atlantis.(28), 29–43.
Valkeakari, T. (2005) "The Politics of Perception in Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno and Charles Johnson’s Middle Passage". Studies in American Fiction.(33), 229–250.
Valkeakari, T. (2005) In Reading Women: Literary Figures and Cultural Icons from the Victorian Age to the Present; Janet Badia and Jennifer Phegley (Ed.), . “‘Luxuriat[ing] in Milton’s Syllables’: Writer as Reader in Zora Neale Hurston’s Dust Tracks on a Road.” 192–214. Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press.
Selected Presentations:
Valkeakari, T. NeMLA (Northeast Modern Language Association) 2024. , Boston, MA - "The Materiality of Art as Potential and Surplus in Olli Jalonen’s Yhdeksän Pyramidia and Karatolla." March, 2024
Valkeakari, T. NeMLA (Northeast Modern Language Association) 2021. , Virtual - "Katja Kettu’s Rose on poissa as Transcultural Trauma Fiction." March, 2021
Valkeakari, T. SASS (Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study) 2019. , Madison, Wisconsin - "Updating Camus: The Absurd, Revolt, and Strangerhood in Riikka Pulkkinen’s Vieras." May, 2019
Valkeakari, T. NeMLA (Northeast Modern Language Association) 2018. , Pittsburgh, PA - "Family Formation as a Metaphor for Black British Identity Formation in Post-Windrush Fiction." April, 2018
Valkeakari, T. (Im)Possible Cities: First International Conference of the Association for Literary Urban Studies. , Tampere, Finland - "The Photographer-Flâneur as Facilitator of Urban Connectivity in John Edgar Wideman’s Two Cities." August, 2017
Valkeakari, T. NAAS (Nordic Association for American Studies) 2017. , Odense, Denmark - "John Edgar Wideman’s Brothers and Keepers and Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying as Family Memoirs and Narratives of Black Captivity." May, 2017
Valkeakari, T. Ethics of Storytelling: Historical Imagination in Contemporary Literature, Media and Visual Arts. University of Turku, Finland - "The Sexual Politics of a Migration: Black Caribbean Women in Post-Windrush Fiction" June, 2015
Valkeakari, T. NAAS (Nordic Association for American Studies) 2015. , Oulu, Finland - "New York City, Nova Scotia, and the Revolutionary Atlantic World in Lawrence Hill's The Book of Negroes." May, 2015
Valkeakari, T. ACLA (American Comparative Literature Association) 2014. , NYU, New York City - "A Journey to ‘Partial Cosmopolitanism’ in Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost." March, 2014
Valkeakari, T. Twenty Years Since the Nobel Prize: Anniversary Symposium on the Works of Toni Morrison. Södertörn University, Huddinge, Sweden - "After Eden: Constructs of Home, House, and Racial Difference in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy." October, 2013
Valkeakari, T. NeMLA (Northeast Modern Language Association) 2013. , Boston, MA - "The Shifting Ground: Land and Migration in Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory and Create Dangerously." March, 2013
Valkeakari, T. Swedish Association for American Studies. , Uppsala, Sweden - "Black, Caribbean, Canadian: Jamaican Women Immigrants in Toronto in Cecil Foster’s Sleep On, Beloved" September, 2012
Valkeakari, T. MELUS (Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States) 2012 and the U.S. Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies. , San Jose, CA - "George Lamming's Dialogue with French Existentialism in The Emigrants." April, 2012
Valkeakari, T. ACLA (American Comparative Literature Association) 2012. , Brown University/RISD, Providence, Rhode Island - "War and African American Veterans in Toni Morrison's Sula and Tar Baby" March, 2012
Detailed CV
