Stories From Finnish America

Monday, 4 November 2024
18:00

Join us to learn about Kayleigh Karinen’s ‘Stories From Finnish America’ project that highlights Finnish American culture and heritage in the United States. Kayleigh aims to connect the past and present by creating a platform for contemporary Finnish Americans, Finnish enthusiasts, and their stories. The project has two main components:

• Community engagement through social media content on Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook.

• Contributing to scholarly research on Finnish as a heritage language in the Upper Midwest region of the United States.

Supported by the Finlandia Foundation National, Kayleigh’s research was presented at the Workshop on Immigrant Languages in the Americas Academic Conference in 2023 and was published in July 2024. The published paper titled ‘“I’m Silently Correcting Your Pronunciation of Sauna”: Language Attitudes and Ideologies in Finnish America’ is available online.

In this presentation, you will learn about Kayleigh’s journey to Finland and the inspiration behind her ‘Stories From Finnish America’ project and gain insights into her academic research on Finnishness in the Upper Midwest. Join us for a presentation that highlights both personal and scholarly perspectives on Finnish American culture and heritage.

Kayleigh will also teach us a Finnish folk dance that is popular in the United States.

All are welcome, and no previous knowledge on Finnish American topics is required. There will be time for questions at the end.