Sirpa Salenius, native of Helsinki (Finland), has taught at the University of Tokyo and at American university study abroad programs in Rome and Florence before moving to Finland to teach English and American literature at the University of Eastern Finland in September 2016. Her conference presentations, lectures, and publications focus on Transatlantic Studies, in particular on American artists and writers in Italy. Her work looks at marginalization, race, gender, and sexuality, and the transgression of borders – social, cultural, and geographical. Her books include An Abolitionist Abroad: Sarah Parker Remond in Cosmopolitan Europe (University of Massachusetts Press, 2016), Rose Elizabeth Cleveland: First Lady and Literary Scholar (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), and an essay collection, edited together with Beth L. Lueck and Nancy Lusignan Schultz, Transatlantic Conversations: Nineteenth-Century American Women’s Encounters with Italy and the Atlantic World (University of New Hampshire Press, 2016). She has also co-edited an essay collection on Race and Transatlantic Identities, published by Routledge in spring 2017.