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Lecturer of the YearProgram Initiated in 2006
Arnold Alanen
 Chosen as 2009-2010 LOY Arnold Alanen, Professor Emeritus of Landscape Architecture at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, will be the third Finlandia Foundation Lecturer of the Year (LOY). He follows in the footsteps of film director Ben Strout (Fire and Ice: The Winter War Between Russia and Finland) and the duo of Susan Saarinen and Mark Coir (The Saarinen Family Design Legacy in Finland and America). Alanen is at the height of his career as a distinguished cultural landscape historian. He has written extensively on vernacular architecture, settlement patterns of Finnish immigrants throughout North America, and cultural resource preservation. A third-generation Finnish American, he speaks and reads Finnish and has been a Fulbright Fellow in Finland as well as Visiting Professor at the University of Helsinki. He is well known in Finnish-American circles through his numerous, popular, and well-illustrated presentations at FinnFests. His lecture will pull together the insights of a long career into the Finnish immigrant story and the world the immigrants built in North America. “From Finland to North America: Buildings, Landscapes, and Cultural Change” is the title of his lecture. How did the sauna change when it crossed the Atlantic Ocean? What ideas about wilderness, clearings, farmsteads, trees and wetlands did the immigrants bring with them? What did they discover about making places in North America? Wherever possible, Professor Alanen will arrive early to research and include actual local Finnish buildings into his lecture. Professor Alanen will be available for LOY presentations in late summer, fall, and winter/spring of 2009-2010. Interested chapters can begin to talk places and dates with him on board the FinnFest cruise ship Westerdam this May. He will be on board, giving several talks on the Alaskan Finnish experience. For further questions about the LOY program, or to schedule an LOY presentation with Alanen, contact Jon Saari, the LOY Coordinator, at jsaari@nmu.edu.
2006 LOY Ben Strout Fire and Ice 2007 - 2008 LOYs Mark Coir and Susan Saarinen |
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