The call for the 2025 OSL Awards is now open!
Just like last year, the awards consist of five categories: ‘published scholarly book’, ‘published article’, ‘PhD dissertation’, ‘ReMA thesis’ and ‘valorization‘. The Awards are intended to acknowledge original and innovative contributions to the field of literary studies and to highlight the work of talented OSL students and scholars. Each OSL Award comes with prize money of € 500,-.
27 October 2025 | Utrecht University
While serving as a meeting occasion for the entire OSL community, the 2025 OSL Research Day will take the shape of a symposium focusing on a specific theme – namely the intersections of Medical Humanities and Affect Theory, examining how literature and cultural narratives mediate experiences of illness, embodiment, and care. The symposium asks: how do literary and artistic representations of illness shape the way we suffer, heal, and endure? How does affect – pain, anxiety, hope, frustration – structure the experience of illness and medical intervention? How do different genres, from lyric poetry to the illness memoir, from fiction to medical case studies, construct or challenge dominant narratives of health and disability?
The first overview of the OSL academic program for 2025-2026 is now available! For most of the activities taking place in Semester 1, registration will open on September 4th, 2025 (more details will be shared in our August newsletter). If you have any questions, you are welcome to send an email to osl[at]rug.nl.
Monday, 2 June 2025 | Utrecht University
The talk will be followed by a discussion moderated by lieks hettinga (Gender Studies), Jaap Verheul (Screen Media) and Mia You (English Literature). The program is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be provided.
Friday 13 June 2025 | VU University
The full program of this year’s OSL PhD Day is now available! Focusing on “Crossing Borders” as its overarching theme, the event will consist of a keynote lecture by Dr Yasemin Yildiz (UCLA), two panels with presentations by OSL PhDs and ReMAs, and an interactive workshop on interdisciplinarity.
21 May 2025 | University of Amsterdam
On 21 May, Ukrainian author Andrei Kurkov will give the seventh State of European Literature. He is the celebrated author of many books, such as the bestselling novels Death and the Penguin and Grey Bees. In recent non-fiction books as Diary of an Invasion and Our Daily War, he documents from up close the war in Ukraine. He continues to write for media across Europe and the United States on the history, culture, and current situation in Ukraine.
25 June 2025 | Amsterdam
Gilmore’s recent work, in short, charts a history of how women use life narrative to transform conditions of suffering, silencing, and injustice into accounts that enjoin ethical response. As part of her visit to the Netherlands, OSL, in collaboration with Open University and the Netherlands Research School for Gender Studies, will host Professor Leigh Gilmore a masterclass in the afternoon of June 25th.
1 May 2025 | Utrecht University
For this workshop, Montreal-based “transborder poet and translator of poetry and poetics” Erín Moure will lead participants in a discussion on creative and collaborative translation, as well as how her own work develops a ‘biopoetics.’ Participants will also be invited to participate in translation exercises, as well as share their translations for collective feedback. Following the workshop, participants are asked to attend a public reading in the same location (BAK), featuring Moure alongside Dutch poet/translator/editor Frank Keizer.
2 & 11 June 2025 | University of Amsterdam
In this workshop, after a theoretical and methodological introduction, some exemplary voices from various historical periods and geographical areas will be presented: from Sappho to Catullus, from Abū Nuwās to Hafez, from Michelangelo to Shakespeare, from Lorca to Cavafy. We will then work on specific case studies – Frank O’hara, Morrissey and Patrizia Cavalli – to examine through close readings their poetics and reception.
14 March 2025 We are delighted to announce the winners of the 2024-2025 edition of the OSL Awards! The Awards are intended to acknowledge original and innovative contributions to the field of literary studies and to highlight the work of talented OSL students and scholars. Please find the full list below: ReMA Thesis First […]