Dissertation Defences

PhD Ceremony Andries Hiskes — Disability and its Affective Affordances: Deformity, Decay, Disruption, Distortion

Tuesday 16 April 2024, 10:00-10:45 | Academy Building, Leiden Please click here for more details Summary This dissertation explores the ways in which affective responses to disabled bodies are represented and how this invites us to read these bodies aesthetically. I argue that this affective impact can be understood as an affordance, a term I […]

Ahmed Nuri | Poetics of Modernity as Crisis. Tragedy and Parody in the Twentieth-Century Turkish Novel

This thesis examines the relationship between Turkish modernity and the twentieth-century Turkish novel. With this aim, it focuses on the strong link between the representations of the individual modernity experiences and the narrative modes employed in six selected novels published between the 1940s and the early 1980s: Ülker Fırtınası “Pleiades Storm” (1944) by Safiye Erol, Huzur “A Mind at Peace” (1949) and Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü “The Time Regulation Institute” (1961) by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Tuhaf Bir Kadın “A Strange Woman” (1971) by Leylâ Erbil, Ölmeye Yatmak “Lying Down to Die” (1973) by Adalet Ağaoğlu, and Sessiz Ev “Silent House” (1983) by Orhan Pamuk.

Andrés Ibarra Cordero | No Progress: Queer Chronotopes in Late Twentieth Century Fiction

This dissertation examines how a corpus of late twentieth-century literary narratives (British and Spanish novels) convey cultural representations of queer chronotopes. The analyses of this corpus are informed by the critical underpinning of scholars such as Carolyn Dinshaw (1999), Lee Edelman (2004), Heather Love (2007), and Elizabeth Freeman (2010). I examine how these chosen novels undermine normative views of how queer subjects identify over time, refusing hegemonic processes and rejecting liberal agendas of assimilation, as endorsed by post-Stonewall gay politics.

Judith Jansma | From Submission to Soumission: Populist Perspectives on Culture

Judith Jansma | University of Groningen
In today’s political discourse the idea of a culturally-grounded national identity has made a strong come-back. One can think of Theresa May’s (in)famous  statement that “citizens of the world are actually citizens of nowhere”, or Dutch Christian-democratic party CDA insisting on the integration of the national hymn in the primary school curriculum. Yet this adherence to national identity as a way to deal with complex societal challenges (globalization, multiculturalism) is performed to a much greater extent by populist parties associated with the far right. Their understanding of citizenship being based on the notion of “ethnos” rather than “demos” – leading to a strong “us vs. them” narrative – it should not come as a surprise that culture is an important tool to unite “us” and to exclude “them”.

PhD Ceremony | Jesse van Amelsvoort

We are happy to invite you to attend Jesse van Amelsvoort’s dissertation defense on Thursday 18 November 2021 at 14:00. Jesse will defend his dissertation entitled ‘A Europe of Connections. Post-National Worlds in Contemporary Minority Literature’ at the Grote of Jacobijnerkerk in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands.

Promotie – Kila van der Starre (Universiteit Utrecht)

Kila van der Starre (Universiteit Utrecht) Talen, Literatuur en Communicatie) verdedigt haar proefschrift Poëzie buiten het boek. De circulatie en het gebruik van poëzie op vrijdag 12 februari 2021 om 16:15 uur aan de Universiteit Utrecht. Poëzie buiten het boek Poëzie maakt deel uit van ons dagelijks leven. Mensen gebruiken gedichten om te rouwen, troosten, onderwijzen, herinneren, liefde te […]

Proefschrift: Erinnerung und Identität. Literarische Konstruktionen in Doeschka Meijsings Prosa

Doeschka Meijsing publiceerde romans, korte verhalen, poëzie en essays waarvan slechts enkele zijn onderzocht. Christina Lammer legde zich in haar proefschrift toe op de narratieve strategieën van Meijsing. Lammer onderzocht in hoeverre herinnering en identiteit in werking treden in een corpus van 33 verhalen, vrijwel het gehele proza van Meijsing.