Projects
B-Magic. The Magic Lantern and its Cultural Impact as Visual Mass Medium in Belgium (1830-1940) KU Leuven
This project will write the as yet unwritten history of the magic lantern as a mass medium in Belgium. In doing so, it will make an essential contribution to the study of the country's cultural history as well as to international media historiography. It aims to rediscover the various functions of the lantern performance within the Belgian public sphere, in particular, its use in the transmission and negotiation of knowledge, norms and values ...
Restoring a Tangible Past. Antiquarian Mentalities and the Search for a New Political Culture in the Habsburg Low Countries (1570-1648). University of Antwerp
Hiëronymus Janssens (1624-1693), the Antwerp à la Mode Painter: Fashion and Dance in Southern Netherlandish Genre Painting, 1645-1685'. KU Leuven
Summary
This dissertation focuses on the genre paintings by the Antwerp artist Hiëronymus Janssens (1624-1693). Janssens is by far the only painter from the second half of the seventeenth century in the Southern Netherlands who specialised in the depiction of dance, corporality, music and leisure of high society. In contrast to his fellow Northern Netherlandish genre painters, there has barely been any scholarly attention paid ...
Gender, Nationalism, and Sports: Women's Cycling, Boxing, and Catch-Wrestling in Belgium and Mexico in the 1920s to 1990s. University of Antwerp
Murderers, whores and sodomites. Stigma and the Self in the Southern Netherlands (1750-1830). KU Leuven
Scholars in the history of the self often stress the importance of change in the late eighteenth century, noting an increasing stress on interiority, stability, wholeness and self-control. Their analyses are often based on sources pertaining to literate elites: learned philosophical tracts, memoirs and diaries, journals and novels. The aim of my dissertation is to analyse whether common people also took part in the new modes of selfhood, and ...
Between personal pleasure and public relevance. Private collectors in Antwerp, Brussels and Ghent and the emergence of a national artistic canon 1830-1914. University of Antwerp
'Be the first to throw a stone!' The reception of the pericope of the woman taken in adultery (John 7,53-8,11) in the patristic tradition. KU Leuven
The current proposal focuses on the reception of one of the most popular but yet mysterious New Testament narratives: The story of a woman taken in adultery (John 7,53-8,11). Missing in early manuscripts, scholarly debates have concentrated on the origin, the transmission and the insertion into the Gospel tradition. In doing so, a few but illuminative aspects have been neglected. The historical and literary context as well as their Sitz im ...