Sklar - Bio

Howard Sklar, PhD

Department of English

University of Helsinki

A little bit about me...

In 2008, I completed my PhD through the Department of English at the University of Helsinki, Finland. The title of my dissertation is The Art of Sympathy: Forms of Moral and Emotional Persuasion in Fiction. I have also contributed essays on the dynamics of reader sympathy to academic journals (Poetics Today, Partial Answers) and essay collections (see the C.V. link above for a complete list of publications).

At the University of Helsinki, I will teach “Fiction, Ethics and the Significance of Reading” during the spring of 2011. Last spring, I taught “Disability Studies and Literature,” a course that relates closely to my current research. That research involves an examination of the ways that narratives—in fiction, film, autobiography, graphic novels, and interviews—represent the intellectually disabled. I also recently edited a special issue of Helsinki English Studies, the electronic journal of the Department of English at the University of Helsinki, with the theme “Emotions: Implications for Literary, Linguistic, and Translation Studies.” That issue appeared during the autumn of 2009. For additional information about my research interests, please see my page on the Department of Modern Languages/English Philology Unit website.

In addition to my university-related work, I teach English in the public schools of Espoo, Finland. I have been a secondary school English teacher, in the United States and in Finland, since 1987.

I live in Espoo with my wife and two teenage children.

I can be reached at howard.sklar@helsinki.fi.