Farewell to Fulbright Fellow Mari Hatavara
Farewell to Fulbright Fellow Mari Hatavara
June 18, 2024
“Narratives are crucial to our life, how we understand our own identity and the minds of others, communicate views on and visions for society, and generally make sense of the world,” says Mari Hatavara, the Denbo Center’s first Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence.
Hatavara is Chair Professor of Finnish Literature and director of Narrare: Centre for Interdisciplinary Narrative Studies at Tampere University in Finland. She specializes in the analysis of narratives across fictional and non-fictional narrative environments, ekphrasis (the rhetorical literary description of a scene or work of art), and with the use of computational approaches to natural language processing. Hatavara was invited to Knoxville by Denbo Center Director Amy Elias, a fellow specialist in narrative studies, and by Lois Presser, a professor of sociology and Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at UT. She was in residence at the Denbo Center for five months, from January through May 2024.
During her residency, Hatavara participated in the academic life of the Denbo Center, conducted research using the resources at UT Libraries, and gave four presentations. Hatavara was a featured speaker in the Denbo Center’s annual Distinguished Lecture Series, for which she gave a public lecture on “Computational Recognition of Narratives.” She also visited Elias’s graduate class, “Creative Entanglements: Narrative Expertise in a Time of Interdisciplinarity” (ENGL 690). In March, Hatavara ran a workshop for UT faculty on how to build an interdisciplinary research center, using her home center, Narrare, as an example.
Amy Elias, Mari Hatavara, and Lois Presser at the Denbo Center in May 2024
Hatavara’s fellowship culminated in a presentation with Professor Presser on “Narrating Serious Harm: A Narratological and Victimological Inquiry.” Presser had previously met Hatavara during her own Fulbright residency at Tampere University. Their joint project merges narrative analysis with the fields of criminology and the social sciences to illuminate important points of contact between event and experience as exhibited in interviews with victims of sexual harassment and sexual violence. “My ongoing collaborative research with Mari on narratives of serious victimization is much enriched by her expertise in narrative theory,” says Presser. Hatavara agrees that their collaboration has been rewarding. “Working closely with Professor Presser provides me the best possible access to the field. I want to bring that knowledge back to my home university in Finland to further diversify our work on narratives there.”
In addition to her scholarly work, Hatavara also used her time in East Tennessee to explore the region and to participate in campus life. “It’s very impressive to hear about the research carried out here, and I admire the professors’ dedication to their students,” she said. “The college’s many faculty social events are wonderful, too, and have helped me connect with people across arts and sciences. Besides the academic advances, I hope to take with me some of the inspiring, inviting atmosphere I so much enjoy encountering here at UT.”
Elias is grateful for Hatavara’s contributions to the UT community and pleased with the Denbo Center’s experience hosting its first Fulbright scholar. “We will continue this program in the future,” she says. “We will work with ORIED, Global Engagement, and other offices on campus in addition to the College of Arts and Sciences to attract international scholars working in the arts and humanities and to bring new international perspectives to our students and faculty researchers.”