Projects
Contemporary Dance in a Contemporary Church: Choreographic Reenactment as Liturgical-Theological Practice-as-Research KU Leuven
The interaction between dance and religion has become a research area of considerable growth and innovation. However, Catholic theologians do not participate in this research area, and choreographers hesitate to work with Christian rituals. Yet, during the twentieth century there have been precedents of “liturgical dance”. Especially in Belgium, liturgical dance was rooted in a fruitful collaboration between artistic modern dance and the ...
Britain in Europe: The Emergence of Post-Insular Identities and Transcultural Discourses in Contemporary British Literature Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Ni Una Menos': Gender Violence through the Lens of the Contemporary Latin American Chronicle (1994-2015) Ghent University
Since the 1990s, many Latin American authors have turned to the chronicle to discuss one of the most poignant social issues of the continent: gender violence. According to the United Nations, Latin America is one of the deadliest regions for women outside of warzones. The thriving contemporary Latin American chronicle is a genre that combines journalism and literature. Chronicle authors claim to offer an alternative to the hegemonic ...
Beyond Petroleum. Reimagining Energy in Contemporary Film and Literature KU Leuven
Like climate change, the shift to alternative energy sources is not just a technological challenge but a cultural issue too, necessitating a rethinking of dominant values, narratives and cultural ideas. One important development is the emergence of the ‘energy humanities’, a subfield that examines how cultural artefacts like movies and literary texts reflect on particular sources and uses of energy. Upon closer inspection, however, the field ...
Choreografies of precariousness. A Transdisciplinary Study of the Working and Living Conditions in the Contemporary Dance Scenes of Brussels and Berlin Ghent University
CoP will investigate contemporary dancers’ socio-economical position and its influence on their production processes in Brussels and Berlin. The project will discuss to what extent one may speak of precariousness in the contemporary dance scenes of these two cities, which can be seen as creative capitals of Mid- and Western Europe.
Authority and auctoritas. Italian poems on contemporary wars as an interface of powers (1530-1630) KU Leuven
This thesis investigates the interaction between different kinds of authority in Italian, narrative heroic poems, written between 1530 and 1630, on contemporary Habsburg wars in Europe.
The analysed corpus consists of approximately forty poems, that concern the siege of Tunis (1535), the Guelders wars, (1542-3), the Smalcaldic conflict (1546-7), the war of Cyprus (1570-71), and the military campaign in the Low Countries commanded by ...
Is the Future Ours? Exploring Literature and Politics in Contemporary Mexican Fiction Through the Bildungsroman KU Leuven
This project aims to make an important contribution to the study of contemporary Latin American literature by challenging the idea that it has turned away from politics. The generations of writers born in the 1960s and 1970s have been described as apolitical because of their focus on individuals who are often passive or self-centered, and because of their rejection of former, more politicized literary models. In contrast, I will show how ...
Beyond Petroleum. Reimagining Energy in Contemporary Film and Literature Ghent University
Like climate change, the shift to alternative energy sources is not just a technological challenge but a cultural issue too, necessitating a rethinking of dominant values, narratives and cultural ideas. One important development is the emergence of the ‘energy humanities’, a subfield that examines how cultural artefacts like movies and literary texts reflect on particular sources and uses of energy. Upon closer inspection, however, the field ...
Narrative, Metaphor and Metamorphosis: The Ecological Potential of Contemporary Children's Literature Ghent University
Situated at the intersection of the study of children’s literature, ecocriticism and cognitive literary criticism, this project revisits the question of the transformational potential of children’s literature in light of the imaginative challenges raised by the Anthropocene, a newly identified epoch in which the geological make-up of the earth has been transformed by human impact. Starting from the assumption that, in order for substantial ...