When Markku Henriksson was growing up in Finland, the song (Get Your Kicks on) Route 66 was one of only two he could recognize in English or Finnish. It was not until 1989 that Henriksson would catch his first glimpse of the legendary highway. It was enough to lure Henriksson four years later to the second international Route 66 festival in Flagstaff. There he realized that Route 66 was the perfect basis for a multidisciplinary American Studies course, one that he has been teaching at the University of Helsinki ever since.
Forming the soul of this work and yielding a more holistic and...