Piia Posti

I am senior lecturer in comparative literature in the field of postcolonial studies and have worked at Linnaeus University since 2007. I have a PhD in English literature from Stockholm University, 2005. In my doctoral thesis I explored landscape, visuality and exile in the fiction of Australian writer Gerald Murnane. I have previously worked at the Department of English at Stockholm University.

Teaching

I teach courses in children’s and young adult literature, the history of literature (eighteenth century literature, non-European and postcolonial literature), and master courses in comparative literature and postcolonial studies.

I also teach summer courses and in 2019 I created a course on The Nobel Prize, the Swedish Academy and the women. The course provides a background to the Swedish Academy as a cultural institution and considers how literary scholars can shed light on the 2017-2018 scandal through gender studies and cultural sociology. In 2021, I was asked to contribute to the documentary The Prize of Silence (broadcasted by Viaplay in December 2021).

I also teach and am co-creator of the summer course Jane Austen – yesterday and today. In my section of the course I consider Austen’s fiction from a postcolonial perspective through the theme of slave-trade and the links between the country house and British imperialism.

Another upcoming summer course (2022) that I am co-creating is a course on "feelgood".

Research

My research interests are postmodern and postcolonial theory and fiction, children’s literature, cultural sociology, and popular culture. I am affiliated with the Linnaeus University Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies.

I am also an active member of the Centre for Childhood Research in Literature, Language, and Learning (CHILLL). In this area I combine postcolonial theory with the study of children’s literature by exploring the legacy of the travel narrative in contemporary Swedish children’s literature. Recently, I have also developed an interest in girlhood studies.

A third leg of my research is popular culture, more specifically the phenomenon of “feelgood”. I am currently editing an anthology on feelgood studies with Associate professor Maria Nilson (Linnaeus University), for which I am also writing a chapter on Christmas narratives in feelgood fiction.

Current projects

Postcolonial studies

• Jane Austen, slave-trade, and Mansfield Park

Children’s literature

• Fiction for girls and girls in science – focus Lena Anderson

Feelgood literature

• Entrepreneurship in feelgood literature – focus Ewa Klingberg
• Christmas narratives in feelgood
• Forthcoming anthology in feelgood studies, 2022. Editors: Maria Nilson & Piia Posti