Merlin Kirikal

Beginning in 2022 Merlin Kirikal has been a senior researcher at the Under and Tuglas Centre of the Estonian Academy of Sciences, as participating researcher under the aegis of the research project “Emergence of a Civilised Nation: Decadence and Transitionality in 1905‒1940” (PRG1667, see the project`s home page).

Merlin Kirikal practices a gender conscious approach to Estonian decadent and modernist fiction from the first four decades of the 20th century. She analyses decadent New Woman figures, including the gendered representations of creativity and desire, and the frictions between decadent sensibilities and women’s emancipation strategies. Her main interest lies on the constructions of femininity and masculinity, body, sexuality, and love in two Estonian decadent and/or modernist authors – a male writer Johannes Semper (1892–1970) and a female writer Alma Ostra-Oinas (1886–1960).