Dr. Sharon Franklin-Rahkonen will present “The Changing Image of Finland among Finnish-Americans” at the joint conference of the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study and the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies in Seattle, Wash., on April 23, 2010.
Dr. Franklin-Rahkonen, of the Department of History, examines ways that Finnish-Americans have viewed Finland and Finns over the past century. She considers what little remains of a Finnish cultural identity among first-, second-, and third-generation Finnish-Americans. She demonstrates that despite this loss, Finnish-Americans still cherish their hyphenated identity and have strong ideas of what being Finnish means that can contrast starkly with how Finns (in Finland) view themselves and what they consider to be Finnish identity.
