Brownbag Work-in-Progress: Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto
Grand Narratives and Cultural Ideals:
Explorations of the Nostalgic 1950s
The 1950s is often represented as the Happy Days when life was simple and pleasant, as an era of happy families and increasing prosperity. In the research project Happy Days? Finnish folklorists and historians examine reminiscences and representations of the 1950s. The aim of the project is to deconstruct nostalgic popular images of the 1950s and thus to provide a more complex picture of the decade. As part of this research project I am studying the everyday day life of Finnish working-class women in the 1950s and looking at different kinds of materials. One of them is a collection of posters by the Workers' Co-operative movement. In my presentation I will introduce some of the research findings by the project members and connect them to the questions related to the poster material.
PhD Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Her research interests include life narratives, gender and labor history as well as dialogic ethnography. Currently she works in a research project Happy Days? the Everyday life and Nostalgia of the Extended 1950s funded by the Academy of Finland.