Pekka Kolehmainen profile picture
Pekka
Kolehmainen
Turku Institute for Advanced Studies (TIAS)
PostDoctoral Researcher, John Morton Center
FT
Research project "The Conceptual Language of Antifeminism and Reactionary Realignment in the United States" as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies, 2022-2025

Contact

+358 29 450 5982
+358 50 470 8572
Assistentinkatu 7
20500
Turku

Areas of expertise

U.S. Cultural History
Right-Wing Studies
Intellectual History of U.S. Conservatism
Culture Wars
American Studies
Popular Culture Studies
Rock Music Studies

Biography

I'm a Postdoctoral Fellow at the John Morton Center for North American Studies (JMC) and the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies (TIAS). My research focuses on antifeminism as a bridge between different reactionary movements in U.S. history, with a specific focus on the co-optation and redefinition of concepts that antifeminists use in their ideological rhetoric. I have a Ph.D. in Cultural History (2022), where my dissertation studied the use of rock as a political concept in the U.S. culture wars. I have also studied U.S. gun culture and its ideological rhetoric. My research interests lie in the field of right-wing studies and the Culture Wars and in the intersections of ideology and popular culture.

 

Teaching

I teach at the North American Studies minor program, with courses focusing on the Culture Wars in the United States and the history of U.S. conservatism. I have also taught research approaches to the study of popular culture.

Research

My TIAS project examines how antifeminism has served as a conceptual bridge between different reactionary movements across ideological and temporal boundaries in the United States, from the 1970s to the present day. I argue that through a shared language of “aggrieved entitlement,” different reactionary movements have been able to find common ideological ground based on opposition to either real or imagined forms of feminism. The project’s approach is conceptual historical: antifeminism is seen to operate as an ideological force by seizing and redefining the meaning of terms and concepts—ranging from “feminism” and “gender” to more specific examples such as “intersectionality” and “postmodernism”—and mobilizing these new meanings for explicitly reactionary political ends. Through a conceptual historical framework, the project tracks the key concepts antifeminism has used at different stages of its spread and explores a vital ideological realignment taking place over the decades in the United States.



Publications

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