My research is organized around the question: How does textual form figure in the way people construct, imagine, and regulate their social worlds?

I am co-editor of the Blackwell Companion to Tove Jansson, with Jussi Ojajärvi, Kasimir Sandbacka, Ralf Kauranen, and Kukku Melkas (in press, expected spr. 2027). I am also co-editor of Nordic Noir, Adaptation, Appropriation with Linda Badley and Jaakko Seppälä. I am author of The Cinema of Aki Kaurismäki: Contrarian Stories (Wallflower, Columbia University Press, 2013). I co-edited Scandinavian Crime Fiction, co- with Paula Arvas (University of Wales Press, 2011). Other books include Crime and Fantasy in Scandinavia: Fiction, Film, and Social Change (University of Washington Press, 2008) and  Transnational Cinema in a Global North: Nordic Cinema in Transition (2005), co-edited with Trevor Elkington. I have written articles on Aki Kaurismäki, Stieg Larsson, Leena Lehtolainen, Henning Mankell,  Finnish cinema, Nordic cinema, and film authorship, among other topics. I have served as associate editor of the Journal of Scandinavian Cinema and review editor of Scandinavian Studies. And I have served as editor of the book series New Directions in Scandinavian Studies since 2017. 

I am working on two books. The first is Nordic by Northwest, with Marko Liias. It is a general-interest book on the US-Finnish, Finland-Washington State relationship based on more than 30 qualitative interviews. The table of contents is organized into 20 keyword chapters, which detail dimensions of relationship. (Expected ms. June 2026.) The second book is The Nordic Turn: Traveling Toward Pluralism This book examines life writing by Nordic and American authors who compare the Nordic countries and the United States, offering a nuanced critique of the Nordic Model. Since the 1980s, the Model’s universalist ideals have increasingly been seen to privilege dominant groups, inhibit pluralism, and seed cultural tensions. These dynamics have been largely overlooked in social science research. This project analyzes the conceptual foundations of universalism and pluralism in the life writing and its travel stories to develop a cultural framework relevant to scholars in Scandinavian studies, literary and cultural studies, European studies, international studies, and comparative politics. (Expected ms. June 2027.)