The OSL Award winners of 2018 are Anne-Fleur van de Meer and Alex Rutten. They received their prize during the annual OSL Research Day in Groningen on October 12, 2018. Each year, OSL rewards two of its members with an OSL Award for the publication of an excellent scholarly book and article. The Awards are […]
Utrecht, 7-11 januari 2019, 3 EC
Valorisatie wordt in de wetenschap steeds belangrijker. En dan gaat het er niet alleen over dat je onderzoek aansluiting vindt bij maatschappelijke thema’s, maar ook dat je aan het brede publiek duidelijk kunt maken waar het over gaat en wat er interessant aan is. In deze korte, intensieve schrijfcursus leer je in verschillende tekstgenres je onderzoek te presenteren. Hoe kun je in een opiniërende column de aansluiting zoeken bij de actualiteit? Welke offers moet je (niet) brengen wanneer je in de media komt of een boek schrijft voor een publieksuitgeverij? Hoe kun je je onderzoek ‘framen’? De cursus bestaat uit schrijfoefeningen en discussies.
Utrecht, May-June 2019, 5 EC
When they first encountered novelistic realism, writers all over the world felt it encouraged a new kind of vision: an invitation to write about things that had never been written about in order to make people see those things as for the first time. Yet at the same time realism observes rules of verisimilitude that suggest the new can be understood in terms of the already known. We will examine the meaning realism acquired as it made its way around the world by looking first at two Western texts to suggest the history of realism—novels by Balzac and Updike—and then at six more realist novels from other traditions, that is, from Africa, India, and China.
Amsterdam, March-April 2019, 5 EC
This course focuses on contemporary debates in life writing as a newly emerging field across disciplines. Life writing is an umbrella term for a wide range of writings about one’s own or someone else’s life, such as biography, autobiography, memoir, diary, bio-fiction and travel writing. In the course we will explore various life stories of men and women in the 20th and 21st centuries, who each had their own unique set of life experiences, beliefs and perceptions. This will help gain a richer understanding of how individuals move through, interact with, and are affected by the major events of their time — and how their lives are narrated, either by themselves or by others.
University of Amsterdam, April-May 2019, 3-6 EC
Scholars working in computational literary studies make use of computer software that helps them to analyze digital textual data. Software can support the exploration of a much larger amount of data in systematic ways than was possible before. In this course, students will get introduced to the most important current approaches in computational literary studies, ranging from the analysis of style and methods for the verification and attribution of authorship to various forms of ‘distant reading’ and discourse analysis.
Utrecht, Jan 23-25, 2019 (5 EC)
This Ravenstein Seminar will inquire into the implications of the so-called material turn for memory studies including the new challenge to engage in new ways with work in the field of critical heritage studies. We will explore the complex entanglements of matter and memory, inquiring into the ways in which people remember materially, using things as aides-mémoire, but also how things remember in and for themselves, thing-memory being integral to the life of materials. In part because the material turn is the result of “a different image of thought in which everything has turned” (St. Pierre et al.), the Ravenstein Seminar “Memory Studies and Materiality” also specifically aims to reconnoitre the methodological implications of the material turn in and for memory studies, reflecting on the methods with which we can study the entanglement of memory and materiality and how we can do material memory studies.
Leiden, Oct-Dec 2018 (5 EC)
Although political, sociological, ethnographical or anthropological perspectives from, on and about Africa are frequently examined and discussed, African artistic domains remain relatively underexposed in the Netherlands. This is remarkable, especially when taking into account that African artistic practices are booming – both at home and around the world. In this seminar we will investigate a range of African literary texts. We will organize our discussions around three thematic clusters: 1) memory and identity; 2) travel and encounter; and 3) translation and adaptation. The seminar is not meant to represent Africa as a continent as such, but aims to study African literary production from an interdisciplinary perspective, drawing on the knowledge and expertise of different academics active in the field of African literature.
The third OSL Research Day will take place on October 12, 2018 in Groningen. We invite scholars from all Dutch universities to explore affinities in their research interests and possibilities for future collaboration around a number of research topics such as “Literature and Law”, ” Tourism and Travel Culture”, “Arts and the Public Sphere” and “Memory and Resistance in Times of Crisis”. With a keynote lecture by prof. Esther Peeren on “Reading Rural Imaginations”
January 28 – February 1 | University of Groningen
Since the narrative turn, the interest in the concept of narrative and its values has become widespread, both inside and outside the academy. There is a growing interest in narrative fiction as an ‘experimental values laboratory,’ studying both the value of narrative fiction in society and the values that are circulated through narrative fiction. Outside the academy, storytelling has become the focus of interest in many professional practices, such as psychology, counselling, medicine and health, and journalism, where it is used as a tool to piece together broken lives and make sense out of chaos and destruction. Narrative thus appears to be everywhere.
In the academic year 2018-19, OSL offers the following courses and seminars for RMa students and PhD candidates: Deleuze Seminar “Matters of Life and Death” (Sept 2018-May 2019; 2 or 5 EC); RMa/PhD) Seminar “Perspectives on African Literature” (Oct-Dec 2018, 5 EC; RMa/PhD) Seminar “Postcolonial Remembrances: Violence and Identity in Literature and Film” (Nov 2018 – […]