Projects
English phrases, French verbs: The interaction between loan word accommodation and grammatical change in Middle English KU Leuven
French heavily influenced the English lexicon, mainly during the Middle English period (1100-1500). However, it does not seem to have affected the grammar of English. This is because in Middle English society French functioned as a high-prestige but essentially second language. In such situations, transfer tends to mainly involve lexical borrowing. However, the effects of contact may go beyond direct transfer. Loan words need to be ...
English phrases, French verbs: Causes and consequences of loan word accommodation biases KU Leuven
When loan words enter their recipient language, they accommodate to the structure and paradigms of that language. The most common accommodation strategy cross‑linguistically is ‘direct insertion’, where recipient‑language inflections can be added directly to the loan verb stem. However, this PhD project has shown that – even under direct insertion – loan words can be biased towards specific inflectional and grammatical categories, and we have ...
His Fiction in the World, the World in his Fiction: Study of the Circulation and Reception of Ismail Kadare’s Fiction in the Anglophone Literary Landscape KU Leuven
The aim of this research project is to shed light on the circulation and reception of Ismail Kadare's works in English translation in the English-speaking literary field, and, by extension, in the field of world literature. This case-study illuminates the particular relationships that peripheral literatures entertain with major literary fields, and how the translation and reception of the former in the latter demonstrate the dynamics of ...
Harlem, Capital of World Literature? James Baldwin’s 21st-Century Career and the Dynamics of Contemporary World Literature KU Leuven
The academic study of world literature was boosted around the turn of the millennium by three field-defining accounts of the dynamics that make particular authors and oeuvres count as world literature (Casanova; Damrosch; Moretti). Now that world literature has consolidated itself as an academic object of study, it has entered a self-reflexive phase. This project is part of this “critical world literature studies” moment (Helgesson and ...
Harlem, Capital of World Literature? James Baldwin’s 21st-Century Career and the Dynamics of Contemporary World Literature KU Leuven
Biofictions of Border-Crossing: A World Literature for Outsiders KU Leuven
Following recent developments in the growing field of biofiction studies, this project analyses biographical novels with a social justice component from the perspective of World Literature. The selected corpus includes recent novels set in all continents and in various historical periods, allowing me to map the world-span of contemporary biofiction and its figuration of the dimension of deep time. While all these texts thematize ...
Multilingualism, translation and minor languages in contemporary world literature KU Leuven
Since its emergence in the 18th century, monolingualism has had a strong impact on literature and culture. Despite its avowed global perspective, world literature still leans towards monolingualism. Not only does it focus on writers who write in major languages, while peripheral regions and minor languages are off the map, but it also favours monolingual works. Multilingual texts are often considered untranslatable or incomprehensible, which ...
Sabbatical Pieter Vermeulen: World Literary Value KU Leuven
During this sabbatical period, I am working on a research project that studies how, within the field of contemporary Anglophone literature, value is assigned to literature in general and certain literary works in particular. Using insights from the domains of literary sociology and the field of valuation studies, the project aims to analyze how different actors in the literary field (authors, critics, publishers, and literary texts) ...
Electronic governance as a conductor for citizen engagement in public administration KU Leuven
Problem definition Electronic governance (e-governance) is considered one of the most critical and rapidly changing components of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) strategy in countries around the world. Government administrations have clearly acknowledged the importance of e-governance to successfully convey information and provide services to citizens, organizations, and policymakers in an effective and efficient manner. (1) At ...