Piia Posti

I am senior lecturer in comparative literature in the field of postcolonial studies and have worked at Linnaeus University since 2007. I am currently Head of the Department of Film and Literature.

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.

For the summer semester in 2022 I co-created Sweden's first university course on feelgood literature together with my colleague Maria Nilson.

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 have co-edited an anthology on feelgood studies with Associate professor Maria Nilson (Linnaeus University), for which I also wrote chapters on feelgood as a literary genre and on Christmas narratives in feelgood fiction. The anthology Speglingar av feelgood. Genre, etikett eller känsla? was published in april 2022. Recently I have written an article on Feelgood literature as entreprenurial robinsonades for the 20th century woman (published 2024).

Current projects

Postcolonial studies

• Jane Austen, slave-trade, and Mansfield Park

Feelgood literature

• Entrepreneurship in feelgood literature – focus Ewa Klingberg

Commissions

Current commissions

• Head of the Department of Film and Literature, 2023-.
• Member of the reference group for The Cultural University at Linnaeus University, 2024-.
• Member of the Education Board at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, 2022.

Previous commissions

• Representative of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities in the reference group for the project The Linnaeus University Recruiting Process, Autumn 2023.
• Internationalisation coordinator at the Department of Film and Literature, 2015-vt2023.
• Chairperson for the Internationalisation Group at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, 2018-vt2023.
• Representative of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities in The Linnaeus University Committee for Internationalisation, 2018-2020.
• Programme coordinator for Språk, kultur och kommunikation, 2010-2013.