On May 28^th, 2020 Comparative Literature doctoral student Iida Pöllänen successfully defended her dissertation, “Transnational Peripheries: Narratives of Countryside, Migration, and Community in American and Nordic Modernisms” (Professor Mark Whalan, director). During her time at Oregon, Pöllänen was awarded with both the Graduate Teaching Excellence Award and the Dan Kimble First Year Teaching Award.

Iida is the recent recipient of a highly competitive three-year postdoctoral fellowship from the Academy of Finland. The award includes a period of residency at Cornell, where she will work with Professor George Hutchinson, the leading scholar of the Harlem Renaissance in northern Europe.

Dr. Pöllänen has published the following articles:

• “Regional Modernisms in Finland and Sweden: From Rural Death Traps to the Utopian Countryside.” Utopian Studies. July 2019.
• “Suomalaiselta maaseudulta transnationaalisiinsfääreihin. Modernismitutkimuksen alueellinen laajentuminen.” (“From the Finnish Countryside to Transnational Spheres. The Spatial Expansion of Modernist Studies”). Joutsen/Svanen.Yearbook of Finnish Literary Research. November2018. https://journal.fi/joutsen-svanen/article/view/76521
• Collective Poetics: Community in the Modern American Short Story Sequence. Tampere University: Juvenes Print. December 2017. http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:uta-201712082898