For someone who still thought during her study years (as the child of two teachers) that she would never become a teacher, I am rather excited about teaching. In fact, I love teaching. But my journey to this point has been rather convoluted. In the late 1980s, after receiving my MA in art history, and even while studying, I worked as a culture journalist. I thought I had said goodbye to the University at my graduation ceremony in the spring of 1987 and was writing for the culture section of Helsingin Sanomat on visual art and other cultural topics.

The University did not want to let me go, however, and a few of years after my graduation I was invited to give a course in art history on modernism and contemporary art. I also applied for a PhD and began to picture future studies in the United States. I successfully applied for a Fulbright scholarship, taking me to New York University in 1990-91. Those were revolutionary times, both politically and theoretically—I had the opportunity to become acquainted with the then new queer thinking at its activist roots, and my teachers were the brilliant feminist art historians Maud Lavin, Therese Lichtenstein and the “mother” of performance history, RoseLee Goldberg. Their instruction made me interested in the idea of teaching for the first time and in the development of pedagogical methods.