Aino Haataja

I received my BA and MA degrees (major in English, minors in French and pedagogical studies) from the University of Turku, and as part of my Master's Studies I went on an exchange to Dublin, Ireland, and studied at the English department of Trinity College Dublin. That is where I first read the author I now study, Maria Edgeworth. 

My doctoral thesis is titled "Exploring 'what is called the world': Aspects of Worldliness in Maria Edgeworth's Fiction". Building on the Armstrongian tradition of theories of the domestic woman and theories of the cultures of politeness and sensibility, I explore different aspects related to Edgeworth's negative valuation of the "world" understood as a sphere of aristocratic sociability. While this valuation is largely interpreted through the ideology of the domestic woman in existing criticism, this thesis aims for a broader contextualization and historicization of the phenomenon and explores other currents of intellectual history that influenced Edgeworth's treatment of the "world". These include what I would call Edgeworth's own philosophy of happiness, a classical philosophy of rural happiness, and her developing attitudes towards politeness as a check on the sincere feeling self.

More broadly, I have research interests in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writing by women, especially concerning depictions of sociability and moral philosophy in imaginative literature. 

I have taught medieval English literature to second-year students. It is a survey module, comprising a short weekly lecture and small group tutorials. We have read texts such as Beowulf and "The York Play of the Crucifixion". This teaching has been a great addition to my experience in foreign language teaching, and I have supplemented my language teacher studies with some modules and essays on teaching in higher education, digital tools in teaching, as well as thesis supervision.