Projects

Abstract

The early 20th century in Spain marked a significant shift in reading habits, exemplified by the rise of "kiosk literature": pocket-sized novellas written for the popular classes. Unlike the serialized 19th-century "folletíns," these novellas were standalone short stories, with the "novela rosa" being the top-selling genre. Traditionally, "novelas rosas" centered around a monogamous, heterosexual relationship and culminated with a betrothal and/or marriage. However, in the 1920s, left-wing women writers, particularly anarchists, reshaped this genre to address women's issues within the various frameworks of their political agendas. This project will explore the genre and anarcho-feminist thought of the "novelas rosas" in "La Novela Ideal" (1925-1938), published by the anarchist magazine "La Revista Blanca." Considered popular romance fiction, these novellas have been mostly overlooked by scholars. Nevertheless, this project will underscore their relevance for a deeper understanding of 20th-century Spanish and European feminism as well as the malleability of the romance genre.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Arbaiza Diana
• Fellow: De Clerck Emma

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Fan fiction, a form of literature driven by fans who craft new stories within existing canons, enjoys immense popularity. It thrives within convergence culture which denotes the increasing trend of a particular work spreading out across multiple platforms, leading to an intermedial canon. Examples like Harry Potter showcase how a unified narrative spans books, videogames, movies, and even fan-generated content. Most fan fiction is published and talked about online on platforms such as Archive of Our Own which makes it a valuable resource for computational literary studies. However, two main aspects of fan fiction are often neglected. 1) Even though fan fiction originated in print fanzines, there have been no large-scale studies of pre-internet fan fiction. This project therefore presents the first large-scale comparison of analogue and digital fan fiction. 2) In order to grasp the effects of convergence culture on fan fiction, this study will examine how a complex intermedial canon affects fan fiction. These questions will be computationally approached with a focus on the characters, as these take centre stage in these transformative works. Throughout the project, an open feedback line with fans of fandoms will be maintained, actively involving them in interpreting results. Their insights enrich analyses, ensuring a comprehensive understanding of the dynamic relationship between fan fiction and convergence culture.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Kestemont Mike
• Fellow: Allaert Mona

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Jan van Boendale (c. 1280-1351?) was a highly influential Middle Dutch author in the 14th century, combining a job as city clerk in Antwerp with writing didactic literary works. Despite being the first Dutch author on whom we have substantial biographical information, few studies have systematically (1) assessed the influence of his historical positionality on his author function or (2) considered his oeuvre as a whole. This is due to the complex issue of authorship in the texts of the so-called 'Antwerp School', which makes the delineation of Boendale's oeuvre a notorious 'cold case' in Dutch literary history. This project will first delineate Boendale's oeuvre using computational authorship verification methods. Next, it will use those works to assess how Boendale's positionality influenced his author function. It will approach his positionality from three distinct angles: Boendale as a clerk, as a city dweller, and as a man. These angles feed directly into my research questions: how his positionality regarding the three aspects influenced his literary writings. Each research question will have a distinct methodology (computational text reuse detection, topic modeling and word field analysis respectively), advancing the application of computational research methods in medieval literature studies. Key to this project is the awareness that the historical Jan van Boendale need not always have been congruent to his narrators, an aspect that has been overlooked in the past.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Kestemont Mike
• Co-promoter: Sleiderink Remco
• Fellow: Vandyck Caroline

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Adolescence is a time marked by bodily changes and often by insecurities about the body. Currently, most research on young adult literature or YA focuses on genres that treat bodies like problems. Following disability scholarship, which presents a positive focus on differences as an alternative to the pressure of the normative body, this project examines the portrayal of strange or non-normative bodies in young adult fairy-tale retellings. YA is a popular genre concerned with identity and the positive impact of representation, featuring protagonists with alternative bodies like a cyborg Cinderella or a disabled Beauty. Fairy tales already thematize the body and adolescence: happy endings often depend on the protagonists' bodies, like Cinderella's foot, and depict reaching adulthood through milestones like finding a partner. However, their normative patterns are challenged in fairy-tale retellings, which are an ideal genre to investigate the cultural conceptions of bodies. This project combines methods from disability studies (e.g. Garland-Thomson) and second-generation cognitive sciences (e.g. embodied narratology). Using concepts like crip time and chrononormativity, this project also analyses the relationship between temporality, specifically happy endings, and the body, to explore strange bodies as a dynamic concept that may provide adolescent readers with positive non-normative body images.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Joosen Vanessa
• Fellow: Goossens Lore

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The Franco-Flemish polyphony preserved in the recently discovered Leuven Chansonnier belongs to European heritage that stands artistically at the same level as the Flemish Primitives' paintings. However, the performance of the music contained in the fifteenth-century manuscript is jeopardized by the more than five centuries that separate medieval composers and today's musicians. From the initial results of the research conducted to bridge this gap, it appears important to transcend the case of the Leuven Chansonnier and to integrate it into its broader musical, literary, and historical context through multidisciplinary research. At the same time, the the research that this entails pushes the limits of traditional analysis. The response to this situation lies in data production through innovative technology and AI-driven processes. The methodology developed for this purpose is expected to prove applicable in other domains of the humanities. Starting from the case of the Leuven Chansonnier, "New Perspectives on Medieval and Renaissance Courtly Song" addresses a multifaceted set of questions. Specifically, it involves (1) multidisciplinary research into the broader societal and cultural context within which the Leuven Chansonnier and the extensive corpus of sources related to it were produced and circulated; (2) innovative research into the architecture and acoustics of the spaces in which the source corpus in general, and the Leuven Chansonnier in particular, were performed; and the transposition of the resulting data and insights into a contemporary performance context; (3) the integration of the achieved results and their dissemination both through academic and practice-oriented research and via international, national, regional, and local valorization platforms that aim to provide an authentic heritage experience to a wide audience.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Kestemont Mike

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

A major challenge in the study of medieval literature is the imperfect survival of material sources, i.e. the manuscripts which document these narratives. Many works are now lost and we risk underestimating the original diversity of this literature. In response to this, we have recently turned to methods from ecology: unseen species models, meant to gauge the number of undetected species in field surveys, can help us estimate the number of "forgotten" works from medieval literature. During this sabbatical, I will advance the current state of this research in two specific directions. This research will consider five interrelated corpora of vernacular chivalric fiction from the high Middle Ages in North-Western Europe. (1) lost translations: vernacular literatures, such as Middle Dutch, are often considered "derivative", because they heavily relied on translations from French. Unseen species models allow to estimate the number of lost translations, thus yielding novel insights into processes of latent cultural transfer. (2) survivorship bias: like "shy" species in ecology, some categories of works (e.g. chansons de geste) might been more likely to go undetected in the surviving sources. Using variants of unseen species models, we will gauge whether the survival of medieval literature has indeed been biased along the axes of subgenre or date of composition. In these subtasks, I will collaborate with authoritative domain experts in historic literature and cultural ecology at the local and (inter)national level.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Kestemont Mike

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

A major challenge in the study of medieval literature is the imperfect survival of material sources, i.e. the manuscripts which document these narratives. Many works are now lost and we risk underestimating the original diversity of this literature. In response to this, we have recently turned to methods from ecology: unseen species models, meant to gauge the number of undetected species in field surveys, can help us estimate the number of "forgotten" works from medieval literature. During this sabbatical, I will advance the current state of this research in two specific directions. This research will consider five interrelated corpora of vernacular chivalric fiction from the high Middle Ages in North-Western Europe. (1) lost translations: vernacular literatures, such as Middle Dutch, are often considered "derivative", because they heavily relied on translations from French. Unseen species models allow to estimate the number of lost translations, thus yielding novel insights into processes of latent cultural transfer. (2) survivorship bias: like "shy" species in ecology, some categories of works (e.g. chansons de geste) might been more likely to go undetected in the surviving sources. Using variants of unseen species models, we will gauge whether the survival of medieval literature has indeed been biased along the axes of subgenre or date of composition. In these subtasks, I will collaborate with authoritative domain experts in historic literature and cultural ecology at the local and (inter)national level.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Kestemont Mike

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project explores recent cultural-philosophical approaches to ethics and ontology in reflecting on contemporary debates on moral realism. In metaethics, cultural contexts have been largely neglected on methodological grounds. Metaethics is said to involve a step back from culturalhistorical backgrounds and social-political contexts, and to offer a crucial neutral background against which normative issues need to be understood. However, philosophers outside metaethics have been defending views that explicitly invoke cultural-historical contexts in developing novel approaches to moral realism. This project will study how authors such as Jane Bennett, Akeel Bilgrami, Charles Taylor, and Stephen White explicitly combine cultural-philosophical analysis with metaphysical inquiry in the debate on disenchantment as a world-making narrative. The project starts by investigating philosophical views which explicitly connect cultural diagnoses to issues of moral realism in developing such diverse concepts as "metaphysical imaginary," "ontostories" (Bennet 2001), "secular enchantment" (Bilgrami 2010, 2016, 2020), "moral ontology," "social imaginary" (Taylor 1989, 2007) and "weak ontology" (White 2000). Using these different concepts as heuristic devices for widening the current realist debate, the project continues to examine how the cultural-philosophical debate on disenchantment displays a highly original approach to the metaphysics of value, namely one that acknowledges the key role of narrative for metaphysical inquiry. Understanding moral metaphysics narratively is to understand it not as a mere "theory," that is, as a set of descriptive claims about certain states of affairs, but as a way of interpreting the world in seeking moral orientation. One major advantage of such "narrative ontologies" as compared with mainstream realisms is that they allow for cultural difference and historical development while still sustaining the realist claim that value is part of the world by understanding narrativity as a worldmaking practice. The upshot of developing this approach in full would be a deeply normative account of ethics duly informed by the philosophy of culture, yet without sacrificing a metaphysical understanding of moral truth, objectivity, and knowledge.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Cools Arthur
• Promoter: Herman Luc
• Fellow: Meijer Michiel

Research team(s)

• Center for European Philosophy
• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Research about community building and the reading act. How do we know that we read the same text? How can it be that te same text sounds differently to different readers? The projet is n the intersection of sociology and literary poetics. The research language is French. l

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Schuerewegen Franc
• Co-promoter: Peeters Kris

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project website

Project type(s)

• Education Project
• Research Project

Abstract

For authors writing about their youth in books for young readers, memories play a prominent role in the creative process. "Reimagined Memories" generates insights regarding the underexplored relationship between memory and imagination for approaches that consider episodic remembering, or recollections of experiences, as imagining the past. The project addresses this phenomenon from three angles: firstly, it rethinks how adult authors draw on memories of youth to create fiction. Focusing on Roald Dahl, Jamila Gavin, David Almond, and Jacqueline Woodson, "Reimagined Memories" charts how authors craft books at the nexus of memory and imagination. Secondly, the project transposes the study of writing processes, or genetic criticism, to children's literature studies: by examining an array of writing materials, we can trace how writers imaginatively incorporate memories of youth in their stories. Thirdly, this project contributes to filling the gap at the level of authorship in cognitive narratology, or the study of cognition in relation to narratives: although authors' thoughts during the writing process cannot be re-enacted, the paper traces of their creativity can be examined. Revealing mechanisms of reimagined memories unfolding on paper, this project forms an important contribution to literary studies by considering the narrative genesis of children's literature, while drawing on literary creativity to broaden the boundaries of knowledge regarding memory and imagination.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Joosen Vanessa
• Fellow: Silva Emma-Louise

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Disney's Mickey Mouse character is a global icon, transcending generations, cultures, and media. 'Reading Mickey' studies the domestication and reception of the Italian and French Mickey magazine from 1932 until 1968. Unlike the animated movies and albums, these magazines have not yet been fully examined, and even less so from a comparative perspective. These magazines present an opportunity to compare practices of adaptation, appropriation, and reception in children's press. In particular, I will explore how French and Italian publishers adapted the global figure to their local reader and how those local readers responded to that product in correspondence sections, by competing in challenges, and through forming Mickey clubs. From the 1940s, Americanised popular children's press was subject to political pressure, censorship, and competition from new media. Mickey was being hated and loved, and resurfaced post-WW2 to thrive through the 1950s. 'Reading Mickey' will explore the hypothesis that these magazines created a melting pot of local and global, making a magazine that was relatable for the Italian and French child. The project will glean new insights into the local appropriations of Mickey magazines and the under-researched response they solicited among child readers, while providing a broader understanding of transmedia and commercial strategies targeting children as consumers.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Joosen Vanessa

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Drawing on insights from childhood studies and age studies, interviews with theatre makers and children, as well as on my practical knowledge as a professional director of theatre for young audiences (TYA), this project analyses how adult theatre makers give shape to and embody child characters in contemporary British, Flemish, and Dutch TYA. The construction of the image of the child in art exposes underlying ideological and cultural assumptions about childhood. Literary scholars have extensively discussed the construction of the child on the page, or the so-called Literary Child, but so far there is a noticeable lack of scholarship on its sibling – which I propose to call the Stage Child – in both theatre studies and literary studies. The intergenerational representation of adults performing children creates an inherent tension. Since childhood only has meaning in relationship to adulthood, it is thus particularly relevant to scrutinize the construction of childhood in this medium. The main aims are to determine the representational strategies used by adults to embody staged children, and to lay bare how (cultural) differences in conceptions of childhood impact the staging and perception of child characters. Paying attention to the Stage Child will provide significant new insights on the construction of childhood in art, because the embodied nature of theatre offers different possibilities to reflect on or even criticize the delineation between adulthood and childhood.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Joosen Vanessa
• Fellow: Mertens Mahlu

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

In recent years, migration has become one of the defining features and preoccupations of European societies and a prominent literary theme. During the 1970s and 1980s, Spain experienced a wave of Moroccan migration that peaked at the beginning of the 1990s. Representations of Moroccan immigrants in Spanish media and literature have tended to be negative, shaped by a long history of tension between the two countries going back to al-Andalus, the Spanish-Moroccan War and the Spanish protectorate in Morocco. Recent years, however, have seen the emergence of a group of Moroccan immigrant writers who offer a more nuanced portrait of the figure of the immigrant and of the experience of migration. Most of these writers belong to what sociologists call generation 1.5, the generation that experienced the migration process as children accompanying their parents. This project examines how these authors represent generation 1.5 in their works and more specifically how they negotiate their multilingual environment, how they appropriate genres and oral traditions of both countries and how they depict the intergenerational dynamics of migration as well as its impact on subject formation. This interdisciplinary research, moreover, seeks to probe the relevance of the sociological concept of generation 1.5 to the field of literary studies.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Arbaiza Diana

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Today, queer teenagers are still more likely than their peers to develop mental health issues. Recent endeavours to combat those issues have been trying to show them that 'it gets better'. However, it is not only important to see whether queer adolescents can imagine happiness as a possibility in the future, but also how they perceive their own agency over such happiness in the present. This project aims to examine the literary portrayal of happiness in queer YA literature with specific attention to the characters' agency in their pursuit and experience of happiness. Research has shown that novels can empower readers if they can identify with characters that establish agency. In order to examine this potential in literature, this study will use a corpus of influential contemporary queer YA novels and first analyse their portrayal of happiness as a literary emotionality. In the next stage, those portrayals of happiness will be analysed in terms of agency to examine how these stories represent potential for empowerment regarding happiness. A focus on temporality will be a central aspect in both part of the analysis. As a result, this research not only contributes to literary research, but also aims to develop a toolkit for organisations that use literature to empower queer youth.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Joosen Vanessa
• Co-promoter: Eeckhout Bart
• Fellow: Claeys Lien

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Millions of people listen to true crime podcasts on a daily basis, but what explains their popularity? This project investigates the fact/fiction dichotomy in English-language true crime podcasts and analyses the role of poetic devices in suspending disbelief among their audiences. While previous research has examined the use of such devices in crime fiction, less attention has been given to their use in true crime podcasts, despite the genre's soaring popularity and its unique aural delivery. The project will apply computational methods from distant listening to an extensive dataset of true crime podcasts to assess whether true crime fiction makes heavier use of fictionality-signalling devices than other non-fiction genres, despite its focus on factuality. A comparative approach will be adopted, contrasting true crime podcasts with crime fiction novels and other (e.g. journalistic) podcast genres. In doing so, the project aims to verify the hypothesis that the specific poetics of the true crime podcast are able to enhance a sense of drama and suspense in their narratives by using techniques commonly associated with fiction. This, in turn, can increase the listener's willingness to suspend disbelief and accept the story as true. This macroscopic view of the contemporary true crime podcast will be supplemented with insights from Thing Theory to assess the role of inanimate objects in the genre's poetics (such as murder weapons or police files).

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Kestemont Mike
• Co-promoter: Smits Thomas
• Fellow: Verreyen Loren

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Growing Up Urban is the first in-depth research project devoted to literary constructions of the city in Dutch-language children's books published in Belgium in the early decades of the 20th century, as well as to the contextual, cultural historical factors that informed such constructions. The project analyses 40 urban children's novels, i.e. children's books set in cities that engage with city life, published by the leading, Antwerp-based firm L. Opdebeek in the period 1900-1940. This is a time when European cities were developing and modernizing rapidly and the urban child became a prime focus of societal and cultural engineering for various ideological movements. Inspired by the state of the art, foreign examples and preliminary findings, the project hypothesizes that L. Opdebeek's children's books actively engaged with the city and urban life in Flanders in positive, though complex, ways, and that they used the city to explore discourses of belonging, including questions of Belgian and Flemish identity. It investigates this hypothesis and related research questions through close reading the primary works and contextualizing them in archival material that sheds light on their creators, production, marketing and reception. Growing Up Urban thus sheds light on the entanglement of children's literature with urban discourses and transformative processes of urban modernity in early 20th-century Belgium. It uncovers a body of understudied Flemish books, authors and illustrators and contributes to a better understanding of the role that children's literature played in the Flemish movement. In answering to these research goals, the project calls into question the supposed anti-urbanism among contemporaneous Dutch-speaking Belgians and reassesses the Flemish movement's complex relationship with the nation state of Belgium, modernity and the city, as well as with childhood. Growing Up Urban strengthens existing interdisciplinary research between three research groups at the Faculty of Arts, as well as with prominent external partners in heritage and literature.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Joosen Vanessa
• Co-promoter: Absillis Kevin
• Co-promoter: Van Damme Ilja
• Fellow: Burki Ulrike
• Fellow: Ledegen Louise

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Although Spain played a major role in the development of the novel in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the genre almost entirely disappeared in the eighteenth as it was deemed an inferior form in Spanish literary theory of the period. As novels and novelists were not valued, Spanish writers frequently borrowed and freely modified material from foreign texts and sometimes passed off translations as their own work. As a result, literary critics have tended to overlook the Spanish novel of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century and to dismiss it as derivative. This neglect is unfortunate as translator-adaptors often appropriated texts in fascinating ways, cleverly rereading their models and creatively adapting them to a new readership. Sometimes they even reset them in Spain or added volumes of their own invention. This project seeks to offer the first systematic analysis of these free and unacknowledged translations. By comparing and contrasting models and appropriations, it will advance our understanding of the translation and literary practices in this period and of the history of the Spanish novel. It will also contribute to the study of the emergence of Spanish national identity by examining how these writers deal with cultural differences and "domesticate" foreign texts. Finally, the study will shed light on how the novel entered into dialogue with other genres such as history and poetry.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Arbaiza Diana

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

In recent years, the notion of misandry as a liberating defence mechanism against systemic misogyny has become the subject of debate, particularly in French media, following the publication of Pauline Harmange's 2020 pamphlet "Moi les hommes, je les déteste". The portrayal of feminists as man-haters is an anti-feminist stigma, claimed as a discursive strategy by certain feminists such as Harmange. This project aims to provide deeper insights into the controversy surrounding the topic of misandry by examining if, where and in what forms misandrist literary discourse is expressed in the works of French women writers who are associated with feminist movements in the second half of the twentieth century. Relying on the discipline of Critical Discourse Analysis, my research approaches misandrist expressions in literature as a discourse and, more specifically, as a form of gendered hate speech targeted against a structurally dominant group. With my research outcomes, I intend to raise awareness on the subject of misandry as a discursive strategy and demonstrate what implications and possibilities this literary discourse can have for feminist movements.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Schuerewegen Franc
• Co-promoter: Joosen Vanessa
• Fellow: Bortier Camille

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Recent debate about the preservation of literary works that present outdated or disfavored views, has shown that literary representation is a highly controversial issue. Books influence to a significant extent how we perceive reality, ourselves, and others. Nevertheless, we are still missing a comprehensive overview of representation in Dutch-language children's literature. My research aims to fill that gap by answering the question which biases regarding age, gender, ethnicity, and social class can be detected in illustrations to Dutch children's literature from 1800 to 1940. I will pay particular attention to the intersectional nature of these biases, the interplay between visual and textual elements in its construction and how it is given shape at a surface level. For this research, I propose a computational, data-driven method to analyze bias in a corpus of 3000 illustrated children's books. Certain machine learning models are proven to implicitly model social biases, an issue which is rightfully criticized for its undesirable – and at times unethical - effects in downstream applications. This project will turn this deficiency to our advantage, using it as a unique research possibility. I will employ a combination of distant viewing and reading methods to uncover patterns of biased representation in the dataset. The results of this analysis will then serve as a touchstone for more contextualized close readings.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Joosen Vanessa
• Fellow: Van der Eecken Paavo

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project represents a research contract awarded by the University of Antwerp. The supervisor provides the Antwerp University research mentioned in the title of the project under the conditions stipulated by the university.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

How does a novelist create and enhance suspense? How is suspense fine-tuned across multiple drafts and proofs, and what is the role of editors and proofreaders in such an undertaking? In this project proposal, the University of Antwerp has the unique opportunity to look over the shoulder of one of the masters of suspense, Stephen King, and to study the material evidence of the writing and publication process of his 1986 masterpiece IT. In doing so, the project will extend the range of genetic narratology by zooming in on the changes made across versions to the text's narrative pace, characterization and focalization so as to maximize suspense. Both the author's solitary work on his drafts and the subsequent collaboration with editors will be examined. The research group "Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism" (ACDC) has recently established contact with Stephen King about his personal archive, and has obtained digital facsimiles of all prepublication documents relating to IT. This corpus of about 10.000 images forms the primary research material; the documents consist of King's 3 drafts, his copy-edited submission typescript, proofs and galleys, and correspondence with his editor. In On Writing King stated that "to write is human, to edit is divine", and that "the editor is always right". The project has the opportunity to analyze this author/editor relationship and ascertain if, in the case of IT, the editor was indeed "always right".

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This research aims to reveal a decolonial critique of fashion museology by sharing genealogies of black women designers between 1939 and 1966. In it I reflect on the absence of black women designers in contemporary fashion history in France and Europe coming from my French/Ivorian designer-researcher background. I want to restore missing narratives by re-editing archival garments and jewellery, potentially reattributing designs to their owners by publishing a research book of portraits and photographs including restored pieces. Creating archives, crafting garments issued from collective fashion memory will help fill the blanks using speculation and fictions based on black women who played a role in fashion between France and Senegal. The artistic context is rewriting history through designing following artist Fabiola Jean-Louis. The theoretical context is decoloniality and Senegalese/French fashion histories. The period (1939-1966) delimits Rabi Diop's photographs arriving in Paris and the "Festival des Arts nègres" initiated by Léopold Sédar Senghor in Dakar. My methodology is based on critical fabulation, using imagination to connect with the past. The goal is to contribute to the decolonization of contemporary fashion history by acknowledging and re-creating a denied black fashion genealogy with contemporary fashion in France to propose new creative routes against eurocentric institutional universalism.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Gyssels Kathleen
• Co-promoter: Arbaiza Diana

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project proposes an interdisciplinary research in the fields of children's literature studies and translation studies. It aims to get a better understanding of multimodal children's literature in translation and intermedial adaptations in three languages. More specifically, Maureen Hosay wants to study how modes and media are combined in different versions, ranging from conventional interlingual translations to multimodal and intermedial adaptations in English, French, and Dutch. In the analysis of the case studies, Maureen Hosay will focus on the translations and adaptations of three contemporary multimodal works of children's literature that are very popular among young readers: We're Going on a Bear Hunt (M. Rosen, illustrated by H. Oxenbury), The Gruffalo (J. Donaldson, illustrated by Axel Scheffler) and The Story of Tracey Beaker (J. Willson, illustrated by N.. Sharratt). These children's books, written not long before the turn of the century (1989, 1991, and 1999 respectively), have been translated into numerous languages, and modally and medially adapted. Combining a bottom-up analysis of three case studies with a top-down approach based on insights of children's literature studies, translation studies, and adaptation studies, the project aims to develop a toolkit to supplement the current theoretical framework for studying children's literature in translation.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Joosen Vanessa
• Co-promoter: Mus Francis
• Fellow: Hosay Maureen

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

CLARIAH-VL constitutes the Flemish contribution to the European DARIAH (Digital Humanities) and CLARIN (Computational Linguistics) research infrastructures (ERICs). Building on the work of these landmark ERICs, CLARIAH-VL will join the efforts of their respective Flemish consortia towards further development and valorisation of high-quality, modular, user-friendly tools, resources, and services by and for humanities researchers. The infrastructure brings together 22 research teams representing a range of disciplines from the universities of Ghent, Antwerp, Leuven and Brussels and the Dutch Language Institute. CLARIAH-VL will continue catering to the highly diverse and multilingual composition of digital humanities data inherent in European long term history, culture, environment and society. To facilitate and (semi-)automate as many aspects of the workflows of humanities researchers as possible, each service component of the infrastructure will need to take full advantage of the most recent advances in the fields of machine learning, linked data and semantic technologies especially with regard to digital text and image analysis.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Daelemans Walter
• Co-promoter: Kestemont Mike
• Co-promoter: Soens Tim
• Co-promoter: Van Hulle Dirk

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Understanding the literary preferences of the past, and explaining historical shifts therein, is one of the core tasks of cultural studies and a prerequisite for producing valid literary histories. This activity is moreover closely related to the formation of canons (i.e. the "hitlist" of the most influential literary works in a given culture). This project is concerned with the medieval period (ca. 600-1450), in which the hand-copied codex was the primary vehicle of texts. In this project I will draw methodological inspiration from the emerging paradigm of cultural evolution, where agent-based models are developed that allow us to study the processes of selection that drive cultural change (such as canon formation). Additionally, the persistence of cultural information over long stretches of time is a key research topic of this project. In a new framework that we call Cultural Ecology, we import empirical methods from ecology and biostatistics to provide innovative quantitative models of cultural change and survival, in particular in the domain of literature.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Kestemont Mike
• Fellow: Kestemont Mike

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This research introduces a critical approach to "racial passing" and its complicity with image production. In sociology "passing" is a person's ability to be regarded as a member of an identity group different from their own e.g. racial identity, ethnicity, social class, sexual orientation. Someone who can pass for white is socially designated as one racial construct but performatively plays out whiteness. My research proposal grows out of a personal experience of racial passing. In my late 20s I learnt that in 1984 my mother was legally reclassified as white in apartheid South Africa She passed as white, or "played-white" (in South African vernacular) all of my childhood. Through this realisation along with a reflection on my image-making practice I embark on an investigation into passing, embodiment, self-presentation, and the aesthetic thresholds of identity. Current public debates on many European country's colonial history, its material and structural legacy, show there is no better moment to problematize this by encouraging a decolonial research approach to visual culture. Through my proposed research, I would like to extend this discussion further to the question of how colonialism is embodied in its subjects and images?

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Arbaiza Diana

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

In today's society, we can observe a gap between the complex gender identities, experiences and embodiments of transgender people and the dominant reductionist scenario of gender transition as a movement from a "wrong" body towards a "right" body. This project turns to fictional transgender narratives in Dutch literature, focusing on various narrative structures and their capacity to render visible a large range of transgender subjectivities. The literary imagination opens up possibilities for narrating the multidimensional embodied experience of transgender characters beyond the formal and social conventions of transgender autobiographies. The analysis of transgender narratives is based on a corpus consisting of fictional literary works published in the Netherlands since the mid-twentieth century, when the public discourse surrounding transgender people started to take shape. In that literary corpus, I will investigate how metaphors, storyworlds and specific modes of narration and focalization evoke complex subject positions. As a result, my research will not only contribute to the growing field of transgender studies, but also demonstrate the valuable role of narratological approaches in emancipatory projects.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Eeckhout Bart
• Fellow: Van den Bossche Sven

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Support for the digitization of the Bibliography of the History of Belgium 1. Existing digital data can be exported from the State Archives database into a structured file format: until now this output at the close of each volume is manually converted to a formatted format that is delivered to the publisher/printer for the purpose of typesetting the printed copy. This mechanical task should be automated using a conversion script. 2. Recently, older, printed volumes of the BGB-BHB have been digitized and converted to a structured bibliographic format (XML). These digital files must be (a) computationally parsed into a format that can be injected into the database (at the National Archives), to supplement the already existing data with bibliographic descriptions that until now have only been consultable in printed form. In doing so (b) the creation of possible duplicates must be avoided to the greatest extent possible, using duplicate detection techniques from computational linguistics.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Kestemont Mike

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The 1920s and 1930s witnessed a spurt in cultural activity in Spain. Women's horizons were expanding, which proved fertile ground for female literary production. It was particularly in the area of popular writing that women writers excelled. Many of these authors were activists, emerging from the camps of the radical left. This project will explore the genre and anarcho-feminist thought of the popular novellas in La Novela Ideal (1925-1938), a collection published by the anarchist magazine La Revista Blanca. Classified as romance fiction, these novellas have been neglected by scholars. However, this project will highlight their relevance for a deeper understanding of the interrelation between anarchist and feminist thinking as well as the malleability of the romance genre. Using advanced machine learning methodology, I will demonstrate how these novellas advanced debates that reappeared much later in the 20th and even the 21st century. This project will also underline their contribution to contemporary feminist thought, thus enriching current-day gender studies.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Arbaiza Diana
• Fellow: De Clerck Emma

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The proposed project aims to use language studies to better understand medieval translations of philosophical treatises. It therefore wants to investigate whether the combination of a philological study ('close reading') and computational data ('distant reading') can succeed in objectively ascribing certain currently anonymous translations to known medieval translators, or at least in grouping them as the works of one unnamed scholar. If this methodology results in the identification of translators or the grouping of translations, it helps to understand the intellectual environment in which the translations originated, to describe stability and change in the technical vocabulary of science and philosophy as an essential part of the European conceptual history, and to study the geographical and chronological transfer of these texts and concepts.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Kestemont Mike

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Prof. Marx teaches Comparative Literature at the prestigious Collège de France (Paris). He will be present in Antwerp during 3 months for 1/ an inaugural conference 2/ a series of Master Classes in comparative end French Literature, 3/ an international symposium on the thme of the "Probabibliothèque". Prof. Marx heeft de leerstoel Vergelijkende Letterkunde aan het prestigieuze Collège de France (Paris). Hij zal 3 maanden in Antwerpen verblijven voor 1/ een inaugurale lezing voor groot publiek, 2/ een reeks Masterclasses rond zijn werk, 3/ een internationaal symposium over het thema van de "Probabibliothèque".

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Schuerewegen Franc

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The hypothesis from which this project departs is that current representations of Chinese and Muslim minorities in the Philippine media resemble and are to an extent based on discourses forged during the colonial eras. We will examine this through an analysis of newspapers from three timeframes: (1) the end of the 19th century, (2) the period of the Commonwealth in the Philippines (1935-1942) and (3) the decolonization period (1946-1960). It will be later compared to contemporary media as examined by other projects. By exposing this connection we will contribute to studies on the coloniality of power in the contemporary Philippines and to contemporary decolonial movements both in the Philippines and Europe along with existing projects that will serve as platforms for dissemination: PhilPeriodicals and DigiPhiLit.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Ortuño Casanova María del Rocío

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Stories we live by: Collective narrative between memory and hope In this lecture series, Francqui professor Ann Rigney (University of Utrecht), will reflect on the narratives we share to make our lives meaningful.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

CONTEXT The wider context for this project is determined by: a) The unbalanced application of Digital Humanities to education in comparison to its growth as a research field, which is changing perspectives on the history of literature and has a great potential in contributing to understand discourses in context, cultural connections and the flow of topics across the time. b) The necessity to further develop distance learning didactics due to growing numbers of working students, the unavailability of specialists in certain areas, and possible future lockdown situations. c) The restriction of syllabi in Hispanic Studies around the world to studies on Spain and Latin America, leaving behind other historical Spanish speaking communities around the world and ignoring transnational and transcultural connections beyond national borders. MAIN OBJECTIVES This project focuses on the improvement of methods for teaching literature and covering a gap in syllabi in Hispanic Studies around the world. In this way, we intend to narrow the gap between research trends and educational practices in the Humanities. In particular, its main objectives are (1) facilitating the incorporation of Digital Humanities methods and resources to the teaching of Literature in Higher Education, (2) enabling the study of Philippine Literature in Spanish despite the lack of specialists in most of the universities in Europe and (3) improving the didactics of distance learning to get the students to acquire skills and practice them instead of being recipients of the information. RESULTS 1) Compile, examine and compare the syllabi and methodologies in literature teaching in different European countries identifying good practice in successful collaboration across borders. 2) Analyze the different types and resources of distance learning that involved universities are engaged in and identifying areas for development and improvement. 3) Contribute to the debate on transnationalism and on the importance of literature teaching by focusing on the interdisciplinarity of the Philippine Literature in Spanish, which helps to understand trends in History, Sociology, Anthropology, Art, English Studies, Asian Studies, Language evolution and Languages in contact. 4) Design guidelines and tools for the development and running of courses on Literature using Digital Humanities, on Distant Learning and on Philippine Literature in Spanish which can be used by any European university. 6) Contribute to the training of docents in methodologies of distance learning that allow an optimization of the efficiency to get closer to the actual classroom experience, and promoting open education. PARTNERS The transnational context in which this project is set is that of a network of 5 young universities from 3 different European countries: Universiteit Antwerpen (Belgium), Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (Spain), UNED (Spain), Université Paris Nanterre (France) and Université Clermont-Auvergne (France). We work in collaboration with an extensive network of colleagues around the world including Universidad Ateneo de Manila (Philippines) as associate partner. IMPACT At the European level, the project paves the way for diversifying the syllabi in Literature and the Humanities, the revalorization of literature, as well as narrowing the gap between research and education. It reaches well beyond the consortium, to have a strong impact on institutions that have expressed an interest in the project as can be in the annexes. It will be ensured with a range of multiplier events. In the short-term, the outputs of this project should provide institutions in Europe with the necessary tools and resources to incorporate Digital Humanities and Philippine Literature to their teaching. Sustainability of the project is guaranteed by the use of both, universities and European platforms to publish the expected intellectual outputs (guidelines, teaching materials, and MOOCs).

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Ortuño Casanova María del Rocío

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project
• Education Project

Abstract

This project offers technical services for the development of a digital scholarly edition of Samuel Beckett's work of fiction 'Comment c'est' / 'How It Is', one of the modules in the Beckett Digital Manuscript Project.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hulle Dirk

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Fairy tales represent an important site where relationships between age and gender are shaped and materialized by the use of clothing. Adulthood, body and age conceptions have recently been a central focus in scholarship on children's literature. Clothing in fairy tales is informed by the undressing and dressing of characters crossing different developmental stages: Cinderella's dress not only denotes a new social boundary but depicts her as having developed into a potential mating partner for the prince. This project examines fashion in folkloric and literary fairy tales and looks at age boundaries expressed by different modes of dress. Age represents one of the cardinal formative forces in fairy tales and decides how characters unfold in the course of the narrative. It is exactly the intersection between age and gender that drives the development of the characters in literary and folk tales. Clothing not only contributes to the construction of age and gender in fairy tales, but also marks a social distinction between the child's and the adult's body (Joosen 2018). In scholarship about age and gender in fairy tales, clothing has been rarely analyzed. While Catherine Orenstein, Lori Baker-Sperry, Liz Grauerholz and Carol Scott mention that clothing becomes the agent of many kinds of magical transformations of identity, they do not look at the relationship between age and clothing and their effect on gender identity. While Vanessa Joosen examines the construction of age and bodily conceptions in fairy tales, and Christina Bacchilega and Alessandra Levorato look at gender questions in fairy tale literature, there has been a complete gap in bringing the question of age and gender into discussion when looking at the use of clothing and accessories in fairy tales. The meaning that we attach to certain bodily features is socially and culturally determined (Ferguson 1994; Fraser and Greco 2004; Lesnik-Oberstein 2007, Joosen 2018). When thinking about age in children's literature, clothing represents new social and historical benchmarks. One might think of clothing as a social skin (Joosen 2018). Textile features and bodily features come into play when it comes to reading the body in terms of the social categories that constitute stages of life (Joosen 2018). This research project offers the first systematic, international, interdisciplinary and gender-connoted study of clothing and accessories in international folkloric fairy tales. Clothing informs new developmental stages of social and gender identities in fairy tales, while undressing as a form of unmasking in fairy tales often introduces the desire to pervert the process of aging in order to become young again; it refers back to jumping nakedly into the fountain of the youth in the 18th and 19th century (Just 204). The way people use and consume clothing as a process is fairly studied in sartorial studies (Turney & Franklin 2014, Almila 2016,) but has barely been examined and connected with respect to the study of fairy tales.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Joosen Vanessa
• Fellow: Wray Miriam

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

How to describe and analyse engagement with narrative? This project combines cognitive narratology, cognitive linguistics and social psychology for seminal research on this process. A 'storyworld' is a mental model constructed by the reader, which provides answers to the essential questions for the comprehension of a narrative: who did what to and with whom, when, where, why, and in what manner (D. Herman). 'Possible selves' are the selves we would like to become or want to avoid becoming (Markus and Nurius). 'Storyworld possible selves' are "imagings of the self in storyworlds" (Martinez) that may enhance the reader's involvement and that are activated by various narrative cues. This project investigates whether perceived fictionality and perceived non-fictionality will have a different bearing on the nature, construction and relevance of 'storyworld possible selves'. To answer the research question, the project will carry out a mixed-method empirical investigation in two stages. First a small group of experts will select relevant sections from _A Million Little Pieces_ (2003) by James Frey, which was published as non-fiction but eventually 'became' fiction after revelations about its lack of verisimilitude. In the second stage of the investigation, members of three small groups of readers will provide their reactions in relation to these sections. Group 1 will be told they are reading a memoir, group 2 they are reading a novel, and group 3 won't get any extra information.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The Carthusian monastery of Herne has had a profound impact on the cultural history of the Low Countries, as a true hotspot in the production, negotiation and dissemination of vernacular literature for lay audiences, in a time where most written texts were still in Latin. In a short time span (ca. 1350-1400), the members of the community collectively copied a fantastic collection of 25+ Middle Dutch and Latin manuscripts, many of which contain unique texts. The Herne monks, who took a monastic oath of silence, were unusually productive and modest scribes, as suggested by the remarkable lack of self-attributions in their material. It is somewhat anachronistic therefore that recent literary scholarship has almost exclusively focused on an elusive search for the identification of specific individuals in the monastery (such as the famous Bible translator of 1360). In this project, we propose to study the charterhouse as a tight textual community, driven by a shared goal. To this end, we will focus on the scribal practice in the monastery, as a privileged gateway into the collaborations between the monks. Using stylochronometry we will study the evolution of the copying practice of the individual scribes and convergences therein. Because a significant share of these manuscripts are still inaccessible to the scholarly community, we will apply handwritten text recognition to produce diplomatic transcriptions that scholars can search, analyze and edit further.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Kestemont Mike

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project facilitates data-level access to the collections of the KBR (Royal Library, Brussels) for Open Science (DATA-KBR-BE), notably by means of a study of the development of the 'feuilleton' as a genre in Belgian newspapers between 1830 and 1930.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hulle Dirk

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The study of Spanish colonial texts has been traditionally limited to the context of Latin America and conditioned by claims of difference in the Spanish colonial methods and discourses with regard to other European experiences. The distinct character of Spanish imperialism was typically argued to derive from practices of miscegenation and its divergent historical trajectory. The main objective of this study is to provide a theorization of the Spanish colonial discourse about the Philippines during the final years of the Spanish rule, in the last third of the nineteenth century. While other colonial powers were at their zenith in Asia, the Spanish colonial administration underwent significant readjustments at the same time as intellectuals wrote extensively about the nature of Spanish colonialism and its future in Asia. This project will analyse the literary representations of the islands in ten unknown narrative works of eight Spanish authors who travelled and lived in the Philippines. These literary articles and short stories aimed to produce knowledge in Spain about the remote colony, in line with other different political initiatives proposed by the Spanish government. The combination of all these administrative, economic, and social actions pursued a common twofold goal: to strengthen the relations between the metropolis and the colony in order to reinforce the Spanish control of the territory and prevent a possible revolution of the population of the islands – as it had previously occurred in the Latin American colonies-. Thus, in their works, the authors presented their personal experiences and considerations about the islands but offered a convenient image of the territory for the Spanish colonial interests. The research is based on a postcolonial approach, building upon different analysis of European colonial discourses about other colonized territories -mainly English and Spanish discourse about Africa and America-. This study will examine both the representation of the Filipino colonial subjects and the Spanish colonizers and it will be structured in different sections regarding the main topics described in the text: the influence of the environment, traditions and practices, gender issues - representations of masculinity and femininity-, education in the islands, and the role of the Spanish Church. The study of these subjects not only seeks to provide a holistic but detailed picture of the Spanish colonial discourse about the Philippines, but also intends to prove its close connection with the political and economic reforms implemented during this period. Finally, this research also attempts to rescue these unknown writings, which often have gone unnoticed by the critics despite their testimonial, social and literary value. The study of the Spanish colonial discourse about the Philippines in these works will provide a better understanding of the relations between the two nations, in their common colonial past and even during the years to follow.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Arbaiza Diana
• Fellow: Guillén Arnáiz Cristina

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

'Constructing Gay Identities and Communities through Literary Style in French Gay AIDS Literature between 1989 and 1999' investigates the way literary style creates identity and community in literature. Even though style has been used to analyze a (shared) identity outside literature, this knowledge has not found its way back into literary analyses. At the same time, (gay) identity and community are central to contemporary French debate. Between 1989 and 1999 different authors transformed their experiences in literature, hereby focusing on the life of gay men in contemporary France during the AIDS crisis. Focusing on such a short period of time allows a thorough analysis of the way style constructs identities and communities. My research starts with the idea that identity and community consist of different shared objects, for example a shared music genre, a specific interpretation of a film or a shared canon of authors. These shared objects also share a style, and by mentioning them the authors make a stylistic choice. An overview of the multiple interpretations of the notion 'style' does not yet exist, which is a gap that my research bridges. Moreover, my research creates a cartograph of different gay identities and communities as they are represented in the literary works of my corpus. By means of this cartograph, my research responds to generalizations of queer critics and conservatives.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Schuerewegen Franc
• Fellow: Delodder Maxim

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

My research project addresses artists' books and the politics of publishing, creating forms to uncover forgotten histories in this field, through a critical design approach which includes feminist tools. I will work on a series of hybrid publications (paper, digital, spatial, oral) to re·activate objects and histories and re·circulate them. The goal of the research project is to make untold narratives visible and activate the relation with historical, present and initiatives and narratives. How to tell these stories: through individual figures, groups of people, through objects? How to fill in the blanks — address the things that disappeared and integrate them? How to archive and transmit these stories? How to shift the traditional focus on monographic objects to collective ones, from books to "ephemeras"? The artistic context of this research is that of artists' books and artistic publishing. The theoretical context is art history, and more specifically the history of artists' books, as well as gender and postcolonial studies. The political context is that of activists working to shape the way we deal with knowledge and history (depatriarchising and de-colonialising). The research methodology is built on critical, research-based design methods. Throughout, intersectional feminist (design) tools will be used, notably an attention to who speaks for whom, in order to find a balance between speaking about/for and letting the primary source speak.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Arbaiza Diana

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This doctoral project articulates how surrealist creation methods and thinking tools influence and are used by contemporary artists today. Therefor a surrealist toolbox will be created (a non-exhaustive description of surrealist methods and thoughts) that forms a base for dialogue, interviews and collaborations with contemporary artist and art students today. By means of workshops and surrealist 'sparkling water-salons', specific themes, methods and international legacies of the surrealist movement are treated by students, experts and artists. Through collaborations with contemporary artists, the surrealist methods are practiced and analysed from the inside. These dialogues and collaborations result in a toolbox, a constellation of collaborative artworks, and a thesis with findings.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Eeckhout Bart

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This dissertation project will investigate the representations of race and gender in a selected corpus of Spanish literary works about the Philippines and Equatorial Guinea. These works were written during the early Francoism (1939-1959), a period in which Equatorial Guinea was still a Spanish territory while the Philippines, not a Spanish colony any longer, was the object of imperial nostalgia in Spain. Recent studies have examined the existence of a colonial consciousness in Spanish modern literature although imperialistic dreams became especially pervasive during the Francoist period. At that time, the idea of the former Empire became an organizing symbol of Spanish nationalism and agglutinated several groups with expansionist aspirations. The doctoral student would undertake this project in the context of larger research conducted by the promotor and co-promotor around Peninsular literary works about the Philippines and Equatorial Guinea written between the late 19th century and the independence of Equatorial Guinea in 1968. Studies about the intersections between Spanish (post)colonial identity and its cultural production have mostly concentrated on the portrait of Latin America, while Spanish literary works concerning former and current territories in Asia and Africa have been far less explored. Comparative approaches between the Spanish treatment of the Philippines and Equatorial Guinea are also scarce despite presenting significant parallels as peripheral colonies. Among other parallels, this dissertation will focus on the representations of race and gender, which in these two territories did not respond to the phenomenon of mestizaje developed in Latin America. As part of its analysis on racial representation, this dissertation will investigate how the discourse of La Hispanidad appeared in these literary works. A reactionary ideology deployed by Francoism, La Hispanidad was presented as an egalitarian spiritual community composed of the past and current Spanish colonial territories. This dissertation will explore how these literary texts racialized the colonial other and employed the rhetoric of La Hispanidad. It will examine the tensions, contradictions or rhetorical strategies derived of these discursive coexistence. For its theoretical framework, this dissertation will drew upon numerous scholarly works on gender, race and nationalism in colonial discourse (Burbank and Cooper 2010, Gilroy 1993, McClintock 1995, Stoler and Cooper 1997; Wilder 2007) as well as in recent scholarship (Fischer Tiné) that has remarked the relevance of undertaking colonial discursive analysis from the perspective of affect and emotion theories (Ahmed). The approach will combine a close and distant examination of representation in texts. The distant reading will be done with digital tools and the corpus will be digitized. As a first step, the student will perform a topic modelling of the corpus and then the student will proceed to do a close reading analysis to explain the results of the key topics obtained during the first step.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Arbaiza Diana
• Co-promoter: Ortuño Casanova María del Rocío
• Fellow: Vivó Capdevila Emilio

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

James Joyce is one of the twentieth century's most admired and mythologized writers of prose fiction. Although he produced a relatively small oeuvre, he was a voluminous writer of letters. Selections from his correspondence, which is addressed to many of the major figures of the modernist period, have been published in six volumes and approximately twenty-five articles. And yet, only half of the surviving corpus of Joyce's letters has been published to date: of the 3,793 items known to be extant, 1,868 remain unpublished. These contain a wealth of material of interest to scholars and non-academic readers alike. The proposed PhD project 'James Joyce's Unpublished Letters: A Digital Edition and Text-Genetic Study' will interrelate the correspondence of a major modernist writer, James Joyce, to the composition of his novels and will determine Joyce's place within his wide network of correspondents. Central to this literary-critical undertaking will be the creation and launch of a digital edition of Joyce's unpublished letters, to be hosted by the University of Antwerp. This edition will use Joyce's letters to link his reading and writing habits to his source texts and draft materials, and to locate the author's literary and epistolary output within an intricate network of Modernist authorship. As such, the project aims to reassess and extend our current knowledge of Joyce's writing process in the context of the New Modernist Studies.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hulle Dirk
• Co-promoter: Crowley Ronan
• Fellow: Batinic Josip

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

CAFYR starts from the observations that Europe has recently witnessed a few pertinent crises in intergenerational tension, that age norms and ageism frequently go unchecked and that they are part of children's socialization. It aims at developing pioneering research for understanding how age is constructed in cultural products. CAFYR focuses on fiction for young readers as a discourse that often naturalizes age norms as part of an engaging story and that is endorsed in educational contexts for contributing to children's literacy, social and cultural development. The effect of three factors on the construction of age in children's books is studied: the age of the author, the age of the intended reader, and the age of the real reader. CAFYR aims to lay bare whether and how the age and aging process of children's authors affect their construction of the life stages in their works. It will show how various crosswriters shape the stages in life differently for young and adult readers. It considers the age of young readers as varied in its own right, and investigates how age is constructed differently for children of different ages, from preschoolers to adolescents. Finally, it brings together readers of various stages in the life course in a reception study that will help understand how real readers construct age, during the reading process and in dialogue with each other. CAFYR also aims to break new theoretical and methodological ground. It offers an interdisciplinary approach that enriches children's literature research with concepts and theories from age studies. It combines close reading strategies with distant reading and tools developed for digital text analysis. It provides a platform to people of different stages in life, contributing to their awareness about age, and facilitating and investigating dialogues about age, with the aim of ultimately fostering them more.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Joosen Vanessa

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

CAFYR starts from the observations that Europe has recently witnessed a few pertinent crises in intergenerational tension, that age norms and ageism frequently go unchecked and that they are part of children's socialization. It aims at developing pioneering research for understanding how age is constructed in cultural products. CAFYR focuses on fiction for young readers as a discourse that often naturalizes age norms as part of an engaging story and that is endorsed in educational contexts for contributing to children's literacy, social and cultural development. The effect of three factors on the construction of age in children's books is studied: the age of the author, the age of the intended reader, and the age of the real reader. CAFYR aims to lay bare whether and how the age and aging process of children's authors affect their construction of the life stages in their works. It will show how various crosswriters shape the stages in life differently for young and adult readers. It considers the age of young readers as varied in its own right, and investigates how age is constructed differently for children of different ages, from preschoolers to adolescents. Finally, it brings together readers of various stages in the life course in a reception study that will help understand how real readers construct age, during the reading process and in dialogue with each other. CAFYR also aims to break new theoretical and methodological ground. It offers an interdisciplinary approach that enriches children's literature research with concepts and theories from age studies. It combines close reading strategies with distant reading and tools developed for digital text analysis. It provides a platform to people of different stages in life, contributing to their awareness about age, and facilitating and investigating dialogues about age, with the aim of ultimately fostering them more.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Joosen Vanessa
• Fellow: Joosen Vanessa

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

CLARIAH-VL: Open Humanities Service Infrastructure is the Flemish contribution to the European DARIAH and CLARIN infrastructures. It brings together and extends the portfolio of services enabling digital scholarship in the Arts and Humanities offered by the DARIAH-VL Virtual Research Environment Service Infrastructure (VRE-SI; Hercules & FWO 2015-2018) with the digital tools and language data that are offered through CLARIN-DLU/Flanders. The consortium which includes the network of Digital Humanities Research Centres at the universities of Antwerp, Brussels, Ghent and Leuven has been extended with the Dutch Language Institute (INT) – the CLARIN-ERIC certified B-Centre for Flanders. CLARIAH-VL will implement a modular research infrastructure embedding high-quality, user-friendly tools and resources into the workflows of humanities researchers in the five focus areas of linguistics; literature; socio-economic history; media studies; ancient history and archaeology. CLARIAH-VL aims to provide sustainable services, while fostering experimental development and innovation. Offering an open infrastructure which facilitates public humanities is a guiding principle for CLARIAH-VL. It will ensure the accessibility and relevance of the humanities to the general public, specific (heritage) community groups and policy makers. It will make it technically possible to share knowledge, including sharing and co-creating knowledge with non-specialist users, such as facilitating citizen science and crowdsourcing projects. Furthermore, by implementing international best practices in FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reusability) Research Data Management (RDM), CLARIAH-VL will pave the way to Flemish participation in the European Open Science Cloud.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hulle Dirk
• Co-promoter: Daelemans Walter
• Co-promoter: Kestemont Mike
• Co-promoter: Soens Tim

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The project's aim is to reassess the notion of 'intertextuality' by means of the case study of James Joyce's personal library and reading notes. When Julia Kristeva coined the term 'intertextuality' in the 1960s, she did so partly as a reaction to what she called 'critique des sources' ['study of sources']. Increasingly, the reader was seen as a crucial agent in the workings of intertextuality. By the beginning of the 21st century, the situation was formulated as a choice between two contending paradigms: influence on the one hand, intertextuality on the other. Current developments in the age of digital reproduction, notably 'text re-use' software, reinvigorate the influence/intertextuality debate with a new urgency. Intertextuality is less a matter of writing than a matter of reading, as Michael Riffaterre noted. He defined the concept of 'intertextuality' as the reader's perception of the links between one work and others, which preceded or followed it. This project builds on his definition, but adjusts one important detail: 'the' reader is a generalisation, which this project replaces by a concrete reader, a reader who is also a writer: James Joyce. The fact that we study not just a reader, but a writing reader, offers us the opportunity to use material traces to examine how intertextuality operates. In concrete terms, this will result in a monograph published by Oxford UP and a Digital Library of James Joyce, the first project to study the library in its entirety.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hulle Dirk

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Since the late 1960s, children's literature studies has developed into a vibrant field of research that unites literary, social and educational approaches to books for young readers (including fiction for adolescents). Over the same period, genetic criticism has grown into an area of study that surpasses traditional philology and text-critical analysis, focusing on the so-called avant-texte (documents preceding the publication of a literary work) as interesting literary material in its own right. To this date, the two fields of children's literature studies and genetic criticism have rarely engaged with each other. In this project, theoretically framed and in-depth genetic research is used to explore the construction of adolescence and the defining notion of the young addressee in the writing process of children's books. The project also pays attention the collaborative process that precedes the publication of a book for young reader – a process that always involves gatekeepers such as publishers, and sometimes also graphic designers and young readers themselves. It focuses on a canonical, particularly challenging author who has been both lauded and criticized for his approach to adolescent literature: Aidan Chambers. This British author won the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 2002 for his experimental approach to adolescent fiction. Chambers' Dance series (1978-2005), named after its best known title Dance On My Grave (1982), is considered a milestone. For this project, selected items from Chambers' notebooks, sources, manuscripts, typescripts and correspondence are transcribed and digitized. The researchers involved reconstruct and interpret the writing process of Aidan Chambers' Dance series, thus contributing to a better understanding of this seminal author's adolescent fiction. In doing so, they aim to supplement the field of children's studies with state-of-the-art approaches from genetic criticism, including tools from digital humanities, in order to get a better understanding of the creative processes of adolescent fiction in particular, and vice versa, to introduce the aspect of "age" (including the author's own age and the concept of the "young addressee") to genetic criticism. Finally, they also develop practice-based methodological reflections on doing genetic research with a living author. Chambers' writing process will be visualized and studied with Manuscript Web, a digital scholarly editing platform developed at the University of Antwerp to accommodate the needs of genetic editions, allowing the editor to process and visualize not only the scans and transcriptions of draft materials, but also the intricate relations between those documents. By plotting out genetic pathways between different types of documents (like personal library items, notebooks, manuscripts, or published versions), the user can follow the progression of the text as it developed over time. At the end of the project, an online, educational manual will be developed to help teachers and secondary-school pupils navigate the genetic edition of Chamers' works, raise their textual awareness and critical reading skills, and add further depth to their understanding of Chambers' books and children's literature in general.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Joosen Vanessa
• Co-promoter: Van Hulle Dirk
• Fellow: Davidson Andrea

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

From the late 1940s, cities in Spain began to grow rapidly. The mass migration of rural inhabitants resulted in the emergence of slums and shantytowns in the outskirts of the cities. The Franco regime, initially hostile to urban areas, which it saw as antithetical to its vision of society, sought to combat this phenomenon and developed a series of urban plans in an attempt to regulate—and segregate—the city. The urban discourses of the period were complex, however, and the government also encouraged, and facilitated, the construction of massive and uniform apartment complexes, which changed the face of the city. Unsurprisingly, cultural production in this period does not ignore these radical transformations. Throughout the Franco dictatorship, novelists and filmmakers interrogated aspects of the new city, often using novel forms and narrative techniques to do so, such as neorealism, science fiction, etc. The goal of this project is to analyse in what ways these narratives engaged with the Francoist city. It will argue that literature and film did not merely reflect the changing city. Rather, novelists and filmmakers actively participated in the creation of the imaginary around the city, by adopting, subverting and challenging urban discourses of the time. By looking at both Madrid and Barcelona, the project will seek to provide a full picture of the cultural reactions to Spain's large-scale urbanization during the Franco period.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Arbaiza Diana
• Fellow: Yoeli-Rimmer Nettah

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project focuses on a literary network active in Madrid in the decades following the Spanish War. Known as Ágora (1955-1973), the group ran a publishing house, a literary journal and a poetry prize and hosted a weekly soirée that attracted some of the most notable dissident writers and intellectuals in post-war Spain. Remarkably, the group was run by a woman, Concha Lagos, in a period when women were generally excluded from public life and relegated to domestic roles. After the Civil War, Franco implemented a policy of autarchy and isolationism. Scholars have often regarded the culture of this period as cut off from both Europe and the rest of the Spanishspeaking world. This project attempts to revise this inward-looking vision of post-war literature by showing how the Ágora circle managed to create a network of writers that extended not only throughout Spain but also beyond its borders, including Latin American, American, European and exiled Spanish authors. The goal of the project is to recuperate the exchanges among these writers and to trace the role of Ágora in creating a space for dissident literature and thought in post-war Spain. More specifically, it will examine how the circle promoted writers excluded from official literary circles (women, dissidents, etc.) and created contacts with foreign writers who helped to disseminate Ágora authors abroad and whose works were in turn translated and published by Ágora in Spain.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Arbaiza Diana
• Fellow: Navarrete Navarrete Maria Teresa

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

During this sabbatical (Oct 2018 - Sep 2019) I would like to realize the following editorial and book projects: - a monograph called 'Genetic Criticism' for Oxford University Press; -­ prepare an application for an ERC Proof of Concept on teleological and dysteleological methods of genetic criticism; -­ the coordination and edition of the 'Oxford Handbook of Samuel Beckett'; -­ edit 2 issues of the Journal of Beckett Studies; -­ direct the Beckett Digital Manuscript Project (www.beckettarchive.org), notably the production of the next two volumes (The Making of Samuel Beckett's Radio Plays; The Making of Samuel Beckett's Play and Film) -­ edit the first four volumes in the new series 'Elements of Beckett Studies' (Cambridge University Press).

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hulle Dirk

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

CATCH 2020 aims to provide a working infrastructure for the computer-assisted transcription of complex handwritten documents. It will do so by building on the existing Transkribus platform for Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) – which allows us to process handwritten textual documents in a way that is similar to how OCR processes printed textual documents.. Rather than producing flat transcripts of digital facsimile images, however, CATCH 2020 will produce structured texts, providing tools to add textual and linguistic dimensions to the transcription by combining the state of the art of the research field of textual scholarship with the state of the art of the research field of computational linguistics.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hulle Dirk
• Co-promoter: Absillis Kevin
• Co-promoter: Daelemans Walter
• Co-promoter: Kestemont Mike
• Co-promoter: Petré Peter
• Co-promoter: Soens Tim

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The Philippines, the only country in Asia with a major cultural production in Spanish, is geographically and has been historically a spot of intersection among routes between Asia and the Spanish Speaking world. This strategic position has had two consequences: (1) the multicultural composition of its national identity and cultural production, (2) that the country has been overshadowed as place of its own, to be only a transit point in international relations. By forgetting Philippine production, Hispanic studies have left behind a missing link that can contribute to explain the phenomenon of Hispanismo after 1898, and to trace the steps of cultural actors and mediators in the Spanish speaking world after the loss of the colonies, at the beginning of the new regime. This research aims to (1) map the literary field of the Philippines between 1872 and 1946 with special emphasis on the different ways of presence of international geo-cultural areas in it (2) to place the Philippine Studies in a wider interregional context of Hispanic Studies and Asian Studies. This is to be done using digital methodology, that allows considering a wide amount of data, to draw the literary field as Pierre Bourdieu considers it, with the international implications hinted by Pascale Casanova. In this way, we will be also bridging a traditional gap between Digital methodologies and critical applied research. The expected outcomes are: a database of cultural actors in the Philippine context, three articles to be published in journals, one international conference to be held in the University of Antwerp and a batch of digitized magazines and newspapers to be added to the repository being constructed by a VLIR-UOS funded project. This project should also set the grounds for future collaborations with other groups mapping the circulation of culture in the Spanish speaking world and Asia between the end of 19th and beginning of 20th centuries.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Ortuño Casanova María del Rocío

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This TEAM project funded by VLIR-UOS is a collaboration between the University of Antwerp and the University of the Philippines that combines an exchange of DH expertise and training with a specific digitization project of rare Philippine newspapers and magazines. The Universtity of Antwerp's project three promotors are Mike Kestemont, Dirk Van Hulle, and Rocío Ortuño. The project aims to improve the competitiveness of Philippine Humanities research in a globalized world, including the possibilities of student and professional mobility offered by the ASEAN confluence, by training faculty members and students in the field of Digital Humanities. The first and crucial step towards this objective (1) is the digitization of materials and the creation of a freely accessible environment with user friendly search facilities. Several periodicals published before World War II are in a precarious state of preservation and, located in Metro Manila, they are not accessible to all universities in the Philippines. By digitizing these periodicals and hosting them in a freely accessible online repository, they could be made available to all peripheral universities, and used in DH related research. Subsequently, (2) training in DH will be provided at different campuses of the University of the Philippines System. This training fits in the Philippine government's priority for promoting digital literacy both among scholars and the larger public. It also allows the University of the Philippines to participate in the global emergence and collaborative hallmark of DH.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Kestemont Mike
• Co-promoter: Ortuño Casanova María del Rocío
• Co-promoter: Van Hulle Dirk

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

AI Stories is a language technological project based around the paediatrics wards of two Flemish hospitals. The project intends to push forward state of the art natural language generation, in order to implement a system capable of autonomously telling stories, and revealing invaluable psychological data to healthcare staff. In turn, the same technology could be used by companies and sectors outside of healthcare. Such advances will facilitate educational and caring Artificial Intelligence software, and allow companies in those sectors to build and analyse usable systems. The paediatrics ward is an acute example of a socially challenging linguistic context for children, that also exists more generally. By researching there, and developing an intelligent system capable of prolonged dialogue, which incorporates the feedback of healthcare staff, a robust solution across care industries is achievable.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Kestemont Mike
• Co-promoter: De Smedt Tom
• Fellow: Burtenshaw Benjamin

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Approximately 1 of out of 1,000 neonates is diagnosed with a bilateral severe-to-profound hearing loss. Hearing aids, such as cochlear implants (CI), have opened up unprecedented perspectives for these children. Although CIs generally lead to remarkable gains in the spoken language proficiency of hearing-impaired children, their speech remains deviant from normal hearing children's speech, even after several years of device use. Adult speakers are able to discriminate between the speech of CI-children and that of normally hearing children. In other words, CI children's speech remains identifiable as the speech of a hearing impaired individual. Surprisingly, the exact characteristics on which adults base such decisions have so far remained elusive, which makes it difficult for clinicians to finetune speech rehabilitation programs. In this project, we aim to exploit recent advances in "Deep" Representation Learning to close in on these characteristics. Recent connectionist models (neural networks) have shown a promising performance in modelling raw audio signals, such as recorded speech. Through the careful inspection, visualization and interpretation of such models, we aim to uncover which specific features in the speech of cochlear-implanted children are responsible for the identifiability of their speech production.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Kestemont Mike
• Co-promoter: Gillis Steven
• Fellow: Nurzia Pietro

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

What if you could travel through time as easily as we travel through space? With the Time Machine consortium, we work towards a large-scale FET Flagship project to build a large-scale simulator capable to map more than 2000 years of European history. This big data of the past, a common resource for the future, will trigger pioneering and momentous cultural, economic and social shifts. Understanding the past undoubtedly is a prerequisite for understanding present-day societal challenges and contributes to more inclusive, innovative and reflective societies. Researchers from all over the world are spearheading joint forces within the Time Machine FET Flagship project to reinvigorate the past through one of the most ambitious projects ever on European culture and identity. The fundamental idea of this project is based on Europe's truly unique asset: its long history, its multilingualism and interculturalism.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Kestemont Mike
• Co-promoter: Daelemans Walter
• Co-promoter: Soens Tim
• Co-promoter: Van Damme Ilja
• Co-promoter: Van Hulle Dirk

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

What does it mean when the rhythm of a literary text is called 'snappy' or 'fluid'? And what are the characteristics of literature that is 'easily engraved on one's mind'? The rhythmical qualities of literature are often described on an intuitive basis, while using vague terms. This is especially true for Middle Dutch literature. The many rhymed texts of our literary history's earliest stages frequently receive labels like these. However, it is often unclear what is actually meant by them. With this research, it is my ambition to provide the highly necessary scientific backing to these intuitive – and therefore potentially biased – statements. Contrary to previous research, I will make use of computational techniques to investigate the rhythmical qualities of Middle Dutch literature. Because these techniques are unprejudiced, subjectivity can be ruled out. As a result, we will achieve a precise and understandable notion of the rhythmicities of literary texts. For the first time ever, we will be able to pinpoint precisely the reasons for certain intuitive observations. Also, by not restricting ourselves to the analysis of individual texts, we will compare the rhythms present in different genres of literature. Without losing ourselves in a jungle of vague impressions, we will therefore be able to put our finger on, for example, the rhythmical differences between the famous texts 'Van den vos Reynaerde' and 'Karel ende Elegast'.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Kestemont Mike
• Co-promoter: Willaert Frank
• Fellow: Haverals Wouter

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project does focus on the necessary links between reading and writing in the age of digital humanities. Text 'consumption' (Valéry) and text 'production' have always been very close to each other. New technologies for writing and reading do intensify the relations between poth poles. The project has special interest for research in the field of french and francophone literature. The 'postextual' dimension (Schuerewegen) if literary criticism (the word 'text' designates a proces, not a product) is used here as a central methodology. Reading is another name for writing .

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Schuerewegen Franc

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project
• Education Project

Abstract

A renewed interest in archival research is currently being referred to as 'the archival turn'. This is a welcome development, but hopefully the term will soon be unnecessary, for a 'turn' suggests that what is momentarily on the rise may just as quickly vanish again, like a fashion; and archival research is not a fashion. It has always been part of literary studies. What needs 'refashioning', however, is the way we can do archival research in the digital age. In textual scholarship, a distinction is being made between 'digital archives' and 'critical editions'. The proposed editorial model aims to bridge this gap and create a continuum between the two, by integrating a set of innovative tools.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hulle Dirk

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Ulysses (1922) is among the cardinal texts of literary modernism. As an émigré Irishman living on the Continent during and immediately after the First World War, James Joyce wrote the novel in 'Trieste-Zurich-Paris, 1914-1921', as its final line famously proclaims. Academic criticism has suffered, however, from focusing too narrowly on the individuals and social networks to which this European itinerary introduced the writer. Moreover, while generations of readers have noted the densely allusive nature of the novel, they have entirely overlooked the role that Joyce's migrations played in creating this multilayered, reiterative effect. My project unites place with the page. By focusing on the changing accesses to print culture that Joyce had in neutral Zurich, wartime and post-war Trieste, and peacetime Paris, I trace the immediate impact that relocation around Europe had on Ulysses. What books could have crossed Joyce's desk while he was reading and researching? What itineraries or trajectories did his reading material follow? My analysis relies on recent changes in our own access to the twentieth-century print record, brought on by the mass digitization underway since the turn of the millennium. The project combines over a decade of original research on Joyce's prepublication dossier with new insights gleaned from book history and the application of database technologies to literary manuscripts in order to explain how and why certain texts contributed directly to Ulysses.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hulle Dirk
• Fellow: Crowley Ronan

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The aim of AI Poems is to develop a software and surrounding service to give hospitalised children access to creative language, and utilise this knowledge to offer a concise and multilingual program to pediatric wards in Flanders and abroad. Using the latest Natural Language Processing technology, the software will produce poetic and visually appealing text, controlled by a child's input. The research project will test multiple forms of physical input, so that children with disabilities can use the program, but also to make the project creatively and socially appealing to a child. The project is partnered with University Hospital Antwerp (UZA) and University Hospital Leuven (UZLeuven), where research will be conducted in pediatric wards. The project will be avised and supported by; partners in Belgium, The Ghent Health Psychology Lab (GHP), Experimental Psychology at The Free University of Brussels (EXTO), The Computational Linguistics & Psycholinguistics Research Center at The University of Antwerp (CLiPS); and international partners, Natural Interaction at The University of Madrid, The Creative Language System Group at The University of Dublin, and Apple Computer.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Kestemont Mike
• Fellow: Burtenshaw Benjamin

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The INSIGHT project aims to advance the application of automated algorithms from the field of Artificial Intelligence to support cultural heritage institutions in their effort to keep up with their ongoing annotation initiatives for their expanding digital collections. We will focus on recent advances in Machine Learning, where the application of neural networks (Deep Learning) has recently led to significant breakthroughs, for instance, in the fields of Natural Language Processing and Computer Vision. We will determine how state-of-the-art algorithms can be used to (semi-)automatically catalogue and describe digital objects, especially those for which no, little or incomplete metadata is available. The project focuses on making the digital collections of two federal museum clusters in Brussels ready to be exported to Europeana, i.e. the Royal Museums of Fine  Arts of Belgium and Royal Museums of Art and History.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Kestemont Mike
• Co-promoter: Daelemans Walter
• Co-promoter: Van Hulle Dirk

Research team(s)

• Institute for the Study of Literature in the Low Countries (ISLN)
• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

In authorship studies, scholars use quantitative techniques from stylometry to attribute anonymous texts to known authors on the basis of writing style. Intertextuality – the phenomenon where authors integrate and/or allude to other texts in their own work – poses an interesting issue here: should all 'intertext', such as citations or allusions, be removed from a text before we can reliably analyze its style? This project challenges the traditional view in stylometry that such 'Fremdkörper' are pure noise and seeks to verify the hypothesis that intertext constitutes a crucial aspect of an author's individual writing style. To this end, we analyze a representative corpus of 12th century Latin literature, circling around the impressive oeuvre of Bernard of Clairvaux, in which (biblical and other) intertextuality plays a dominant role. This project will employ recent advances in 'deep' representation learning which allows to model texts from the character-level upwards.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Kestemont Mike
• Fellow: Manjavacas Enrique

Research team(s)

• Institute for the Study of Literature in the Low Countries (ISLN)
• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

During my stay as Fellow-in-Residence at NIAS in Amsterdam, I intend to deepen the critical understanding of the many ways in which Wallace Stevens' writings simultaneously relate to the world and may be considered relevant to world literature. I will do so by developing a variety of complementary angles that will be pursued over three interrelated book projects. My first and main goal is to write a book whose working title is "Wallace Stevens' World Wide Web." My second goal consists of a collection of essays on "Wallace Stevens and France" that I will be coediting for Editions Rue d'Ulm/Presses de l'Ecole normale supérieure. This will explore Stevens' uses of French, the influence of French poetry and painting on his writings, the reception of his work in France, French translations of his poetry, and the relevance of French theorists for reading his work. My third and final goal is to finish an annotated selection of 101 poems by Stevens that I have been translating into Dutch over the years.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Eeckhout Bart

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This was the Van Dyck chair 2016, which is less concerned with research than it is with teaching. I taught two courses in the Comparative Literature department at UCLA, an introductory course on narratology to juniors and seniors, and a seminar on narrative and space to PhD students.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

In the Humanities, scholars study the products of the human mind, such as language, paintings, music, etc. Texts too are an important research object across many field in the Humanities. Until recently, most textual analyses in the Humanities were carried out manually by individual experts, via "close reading" or the careful, sustained reading of small sets of works. With the advent of personal computing in recent decades, an increasing number of texts are becoming available in digitized, electronic forms. This allows scholars to analyze much larger text collections via computer programs. "Distant Reading" is nowadays often used to denote such "macro"-forms of digital text analysis in the Humanities. Mining insights from large text collections via Distant Reading proves to be challenging. Therefore, it does not come as a surprise that, as the size of the datasets increases, we see that research methods often become less sophisticated. In many "Big Data" studies, we see for instance that scholars do little more than computing word frequencies across texts. If we want computers to become smarter and be able to read texts like humans can (cf. Artificial Intelligence), we therefore need to develop more complex forms of "Artificial Reading". Interestingly, we see that humans always have highly personal interpretations of texts, because they are influenced by their specific background. Many computer programs read texts in a more generic way and forget about the individual background that human readers have. Universities, as well as many large tech-companies in the world, such as Facebook or Google, are therefore currently developing smarter computer algorithms, which can automatically learn from stimuli in the outside world, just as humans would. These computer programs are called "Deep Learning" in computer science and have proven to be extremely successful in many real-world applications (e.g. face detection in pictures on social media). Surprisingly, these techniques have been rarely applied in Humanities research. The broad aim of this project is to transfer these promising "Deep Learning" methods to digital text analysis.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Kestemont Mike
• Fellow: Kestemont Mike

Research team(s)

• Institute for the Study of Literature in the Low Countries (ISLN)
• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This research project is meant to contribute to the process of reading the canonical modernist poet Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) as a transnational and global poet. It seeks to provide a more systematic focus to such readings, present a variety of relevant data not yet available to Stevens scholarship, evaluate what is critically at stake in transnationalizing the poet, and recalibrate current theories on world literature and ecocriticism by confronting them with Stevens' complex poetic thinking in this regard. The project will investigate Stevens as a "world poet" from a variety of complementary angles that may be organized into three main parts, consisting of two large case studies each: "Wallace Stevens in the World" (which is to be based on archival research into the poet's library and correspondence), "The World through Wallace Stevens" (which will draw on theories of world literature and ecocriticism), and "The World after Wallace Stevens" (which will involve case studies about Stevens' influence on a cluster of non-American poets, on the one hand, and the painter David Hockney, on the other).

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Eeckhout Bart
• Fellow: Jamieson Anna

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project studies the manner in which the Greco-Latin cultural tradition interacts with the Jewish-Christian one in the work of James Joyce and in the way this work has been read by literary critics, philosophers and theologians.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Lernout Geert

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This is a fundamental research project financed by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO). The project was subsidized after selection by the FWO-expert panel. It builds a scientific community that focuses on the organisation of two types of recurrent events: training initiatives and networking events to keep up to date with recent cross-disciplinary advances in the application of digital methods in Humanities research and provide a platform to exchange innovative technologies across different humanities disciplines.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hulle Dirk

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This is a fundamental research project financed by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO). The project was subsidized after selection by the FWO-expert panel. It focuses on the textual condition, translation and litearary historiography.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hulle Dirk

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The project has a two-fold objective. First, it wants to come up with a hermeneutic tool to interpret lists found in modern novels, i.e. is novels written from the second half of the nineteenth century up till now. Second, it wants to use this tool to trace the development of literary listing from the first modern Dutch novel (Multatuli's Max Havelaar 1860) to the present day (Grunberg 2010).

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

My proposal stems from state-of-the-art criticism that attempts to bring Stevens and postwar American poetry together in order to uncover continuities and affinities that should help us move beyond the reductively applied and frequently unhelpful labels of high modernism, late modernism, and postmodernism.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Eeckhout Bart
• Fellow: Janssen Lesley

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project will attempt to apply post-classical narrative theories about narrative interest to contemporary U.S. fiction that evokes the diverse cultural dialogue about belief. As a means of investigating the ways in which narrative interest is affected by the transmission of cultural material during the reading process, the literary corpus of this dissertation will consist of popular and critically-acclaimed American writers who choose to thematize their religious beliefs - Marilynne Robinson, Allegra Goodman, Louise Erdrich, and Fae Myenne Ng.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc
• Fellow: Milota Megan

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project represents a formal research agreement between UA and on the other hand the client. UA provides the client research results mentioned in the title of the project under the conditions as stipulated in this contract.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hulle Dirk

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project applies the notion of the 'extended mind' to Modernist literature, by combining cognitive narratology with genetic criticism. A writer's interaction with his or her manuscripts is regarded as part and parcel of the 'extended mind'. This interaction during the writing process can have direct results for the evocation of a character's thought process. Modernism's interest in characters' cognitive processes has often been presented in terms of an 'inward turn'. The project reassesses this view on Modernism.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hulle Dirk
• Co-promoter: Herman Luc
• Co-promoter: Lernout Geert

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

For this reason ten leading European institutions from universities and academies closely collaborating with the private sector and cultural heritage institutions intend to form one of the most innovative training networks for a new generation of scholars in the field of digital scholarly editing. DiXiT training programme offers a combination of network-wide training modules (Camps & Conventions) and local specialist training in connection with individual research projects, which not only will stand out in Europe, but will be able to compete with the worldwide leading centres and networks in the field of Digital Humanities research, cultural heritage, software and publishing industries. Moreover, DiXiT will help to create a training trajectory for the emerging supradisciplinary field of Digital Humanities and thus anchoring it in an institutionalized, structured education scheme.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hulle Dirk

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The dissertation, "The Multiple Languages of Modernism: Joyce, Beckett, Nabokov, and the Making of Modern Fiction," shows that there are important differences between multilingual and monolingual writers and documents the creative tension resulting from writing that is informed by more than one language. I argue that a deeper awareness of the way in which multilingual literature diverges from that of monolinguals not only sheds new light on these three authors and their writings but on the workings of language in multilingual fiction, and ultimately on the workings of language in literature generally. Joyce, Nabokov, and Beckett were all thoroughly multilingual. Although multilingualism takes a different form in each of their works, for all three authors a multilingual background is indissolubly connected to the writing, both on the formal level of the text (the use of foreign words, multilingual puns, a play with accent and pronunciation) and as theme and content. Through close readings of texts by Joyce (Ulysses and Finnegans Wake), Nabokov (Король, дама, валет (King, Queen, Knave), Lolita and Ada) and Beckett (Watt in English and French), of letters (both published and unpublished), interviews, recollections of the writers by their contemporaries, recordings, (auto) biographies, and notebooks, I demonstrate the effect that multilingualism has on the written language of the three writers, and on their relation with English.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hulle Dirk
• Fellow: Kager Maria

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

In the past few decades, the disciplines of textual scholarship and genetic criticism have insisted on their respective differences. Nonetheless, a rapprochement would be mutually beneficial. This research project endeavours to innovate scholarly editing with the combined forces of these two disciplines.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hulle Dirk

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project investigates to what extent and in what manner attitudes toward non-heteronormative sexualities can be explained by attitudes toward gender. The corpus of analyzed texts consists of book and film reviews from the period 1960 until today. For each compared region (Flanders, The Netherlands, the U.S.), two written media (a newspaper and a weekly) will be analyzed.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Eeckhout Bart
• Co-promoter: Dhoest Alexander
• Fellow: Savenije Tim

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This research project is meant to contribute to the process of reading the canonical modernist poet Wallace Stevens as a transnational and global poet. It seeks to provide a more systematic focus to such readings, present a variety of relevant data not yet available to Stevens criticism, evaluate what is critically at stake in transnationalizing this poet, and recalibrate current theories on world literature, ecocriticism, and cultural topography by confronting them with Stevens' complex poetic thinking in this regard. Borrowing its main title from the poem in which Stevens looked back on his own poetic career, "The Planet on the Table," the project will investigate Stevens as a "world poet" from a variety of complementary angles that may be organized into three main parts: "Wallace Stevens in the World" (which is to be based on archival research), "The World through Wallace Stevens" (which will draw on theories of world literature, ecocriticism, and a combination of rhetorical analysis and cultural topography), and "The World after Wallace Stevens" (which will involve case studies about translations, adaptations, and the poet's afterlife on the internet).

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Eeckhout Bart
• Fellow: Janssen Lesley

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project will attempt to apply post-classical narrative theories about narrative interest to contemporary U.S. fiction that evokes the diverse cultural dialogue about belief. As a means of investigating the ways in which narrative interest is affected by the transmission of cultural material during the reading process, the literary corpus of this dissertation will consist of popular and critically-acclaimed American writers who choose to thematize their religious beliefs - Marilynne Robinson, Allegra Goodman, Louise Erdrich, and Fae Myenne Ng.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc
• Fellow: Milota Megan

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project investigates a pivotal response in contemporary American fiction to the representational aporias of canonical postmodernism. In answer to their literary forebears-self-conscious writers such as John Barth or Thomas Pynchon, who turned toward irony, metafiction and fragmentation¿Richard Powers and David Foster Wallace revalorize narrative as the ideal vehicle for the creation of meaning. They envision the "novel of information" (Powers 2008) as a text that combines diverse fields of knowledge so as to enable the reader to develop a personal and yet integrated perspective on the world. The central question that consequently needs to be addressed is: how can their novels create the illusion of totality without being totalitarian? This question will be answered on the levels of form and content. Drawing on recent instances of reader-oriented narratology, the project first intends to show how various formal aspects of The Gold Bug Variations (Powers 1991) and Infinite Jest (Wallace 1996) can entice the reader to continuously reconstruct his or her mental representation of the narrative. This cognitive approach will be further developed in a thematic analysis, which will focus on the novels' many passages about mental mapping as potential beacons in the reader's search for coherence.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc
• Fellow: Staes Toon

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The aim of this project is to offer a new perspective on Abbott's theory by linking Beckett's autography to his manuscripts, thus returning to the term's original definition of 'signature'. As such this project aims to determine why Beckett incorporated the author's writing process into his works, and what this can tell us about his poetics. Moreover, by clearly separating the author's writing process from the narrator's, the project aims to delineate the distinction between autography and autobiography.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hulle Dirk
• Fellow: Dillen Wout

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

'The Making of Samuel Beckett's Stirrings Still / Soubresauts and Comment dire / what is the word' is the first volume of the Beckett Digital Manuscript Project (BDMP). This electronic genetic edition of Samuel Beckett's works is a cooperative project of the Universities of Antwerp and Reading, under the auspices of the Center for Manuscript Genetics, the Beckett International Foundation and the Harry Ransom Center, and with the support of the Samuel Beckett Estate. The project consists of: - 26 electronic modules, covering Beckett's complete works. Each module consists of digital facsimiles and transcriptions of all extant manuscripts of one of Beckett's works, with apparatus variorum. - 26 corresponding monographs in print, with bibliographical descriptions of the documents and the reconstruction of the textual genesis.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hulle Dirk

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This is a fundamental research project financed by the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO). The project was subsidized after selection by the FWO-expert panel.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project investigates a pivotal response in contemporary American fiction to the representational aporias of canonical postmodernism. In answer to their literary forebears-self-conscious writers such as John Barth or Thomas Pynchon, who turned toward irony, metafiction and fragmentation¿Richard Powers and David Foster Wallace revalorize narrative as the ideal vehicle for the creation of meaning. They envision the "novel of information" (Powers 2008) as a text that combines diverse fields of knowledge so as to enable the reader to develop a personal and yet integrated perspective on the world. The central question that consequently needs to be addressed is: how can their novels create the illusion of totality without being totalitarian? This question will be answered on the levels of form and content. Drawing on recent instances of reader-oriented narratology, the project first intends to show how various formal aspects of The Gold Bug Variations (Powers 1991) and Infinite Jest (Wallace 1996) can entice the reader to continuously reconstruct his or her mental representation of the narrative. This cognitive approach will be further developed in a thematic analysis, which will focus on the novels' many passages about mental mapping as potential beacons in the reader's search for coherence.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc
• Fellow: Staes Toon

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

In "Devorando a lo cubano"¨a gastrocritical approach, i.e. an interpretation based on culinary references in a dialogue with other approaches, is applied to a series of narrative texts that are dealing with Cuba in the nineteenth century and in the so called Special Period in Cuba (from 1990 on). "Cinco ensayos sobre narrativa dominicana contemporánea" treats issues as the city, diasporaq and the historical trauma caused by Trujillo's dictatorship.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Maeseneer Rita

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project represents a research contract awarded by the University of Antwerp. The supervisor provides the Antwerp University research mentioned in the title of the project under the conditions stipulated by the university.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Joosen Vanessa

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The project aims to demonstrate the importance of Spanish American canonical writers in relation to individual poetics and to reveal the constellations and recurrent elements in the way of rewriting canonical texts by men and women. The concept of a Spanish American canon (transnational and national) can be questioned by the comparative approach. At the same time the purpose is to formulate a critical reflection on the formation of the canon and on the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion. The applicability of sociological-literary theories concerning the formation of the canon (Bourdieu, Casanova) will be checked.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Maeseneer Rita

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The marginalia in Samuel Beckett's personal library in his apartment in Paris are the core of this research project. The aim is to (1) investigate the relevance of extant reading traces for the interpretation of Beckett's works; (2) chart the lacunae in Beckett's extant library. The project will result in a monograph 'Samuel Beckett's Library', to be published by Cambridge University Press.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hulle Dirk
• Co-promoter: Lernout Geert

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The project focuses on the (hitherto largely unexamined) oeuvre of the American author Rebecca Brown. It comprises, firstly, an intertextual component centering on Brown's minimalism and positioning her work within contemporary English literature; and, secondly, a sociological study that will examine what makes her worldview such an unpopular one as well as track the influence of the current American literary market on the reception of Brown's work."

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Eeckhout Bart
• Fellow: Xhonneux Lies

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

William Gaddis's The Recognitions and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow are often referred to as the two most important examples of the post-war "Encyclopedic Novel" in The United States. They succeed in creating an encyclopedic illusion of totality, but simultaneously undermine this totality. As such, they can be connected to Denis Diderot's definition of the encyclopedia as a dynamic delineation of knowledge. Is it, therefore, useful to try and classify both novels within the confines of a generic definition? Since both novels focus on the dynamic between the constant construction and deconstruction of totality, they rather make us reconsider the validity of all totalizing systems.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc
• Fellow: Van Ewijk Petrus

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

As part of the 'Beckett Digital Manuscript Project', this project builds on Edouard Magessa O'Reilly's work, to realize an electronic genetic-critical edition of Beckett's novel 'Comment c'est/How It Is', encoded in XML (eXtensible Markup Language), to reunite the 14 manuscript versions of Comment c'est (facsimiles and transcription) with their multiple English translations. The edition will offer transcriptions, facsimiles, and a critical apparatus to aid the reader in moving through the text and will be accompanied by a monograph analyzing the genesis of the text.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hulle Dirk

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

An electronic genetic-critical edition of Comment c'est/How It Is, encoded in XML (eXtensible Markup Language), to reunite the 14 manuscript versions of Comment c'est (facsimiles and transcription) with their multiple English translations. The edition will offer transcriptions, facsimiles, and a critical apparatus to aid the reader in moving through the text and will be accompanied by a monograph analyzing the genesis of the text.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hulle Dirk
• Co-promoter: Lernout Geert

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

In an effort to analyze the "post-postmodern" tendency in contemporary American fiction, this research project focuses on the writings of Richard Powers and David Foster Wallace. Convinced that irony is not the only adequate response to the loss of all Grand Narratives (Lyotard), both authors posit the novel form as a way to confront the postmodern solipsism of their literary predecessors. Contrary to the fragmentary and overly self-referential texts of such canonical authors as Donald Barthelme or John Barth, Powers and Wallace want to narrativize information in such a way that local knowledge can still be represented in a tentative global model. A theoretical and (post-classical) narratological approach to their work is required to investigate how such a model can find its origin.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc
• Fellow: Staes Toon

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project represents a research contract awarded by the University of Antwerp. The supervisor provides the Antwerp University research mentioned in the title of the project under the conditions stipulated by the university.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Tritsmans Bruno

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project amounts to a collaboration between S. Weisenburger and L. Herman, which will result in a monograph on Thomas Pynchon's novel _Gravity's Rainbow_ (1973). Weisenburger and Herman form part of a Royal Flemish Academy cluster on trauma in English and American literature. In their book, Weisenburger and Herman will deal with Pynchon's narrativization of the oppression of the non-white individual in the twentieth century.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This postdoctoral research project charts the most important tendencies in the Flemish and Dutch reception of Grimm's fairy tales. It compares the translations, adaptations, illustrated versions and parodies of "Snow White" with Grimm's source text and interprets the stylistic, structural and thematic shifts in the light of dominant and changing attitudes towards the fairy tale, fantasy literature, children's literature and translated literature.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Lernout Geert
• Fellow: Joosen Vanessa

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project investigates the most important tendencies in the Flemish and Dutch reception of Grimm's fairy tales. It compares the translations, adaptations, illustrated versions and parodies of "Snow White" with Grimm's source text and interprets the stylistic, structural and thematic shifts in the light of the dominant and changing attitudes towards the fairy tale, fantasy literature, children's literature and translated literature.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Lernout Geert
• Co-promoter: Van Hulle Dirk

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Lernout Geert

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The investigation seeks to provide answers to the following four main research questions: (1) The literary-historical question about specific shifts that allow us to situate the phenomenon of the contemporary historic novel on New York City within (American) literary history overall. (2) The genre-typological question about the role of quest and search plots in the corpus. (3) The documentary question about the ways in which writers use historic sources. (4) The political-ideological question about the possibly subversive or critical potential of the fictional worlds developed by writers.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Eeckhout Bart
• Co-promoter: Herman Luc
• Co-promoter: Stabel Peter

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Publication in the 'Classiques Garnier' (Paris) of the complete poetic writings of Max Elskamp (1862-1931), the Belgian Symbolist writer who lived in Antwerp. It concerns the first scientific edition of the work of a Belgian author in a prestigious collection which imposes the most strict criteria on his collaborators in edition of literary, historical and philsosophical texts.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Berg Christian

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Vandewaetere Sara

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Pelckmans Paul
• Fellow: Willockx Dietlinde

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

William Gaddis's The Recognitions and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow are often referred to as the two most important examples of the post-war "Encyclopedic Novel" in The United States. They succeed in creating an encyclopedic illusion of totality, but simultaneously undermine this totality. As such, they can be connected to Denis Diderot's definition of the encyclopedia as a dynamic delineation of knowledge. Is it, therefore, useful to try and classify both novels within the confines of a generic definition? Since both novels focus on the dynamic between the constant construction and deconstruction of totality, they rather make us reconsider the validity of all totalizing systems.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc
• Fellow: Van Ewijk Petrus

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Rasson Luc

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The aim of this project is 1. to reconstruct the composition process of multilingual works of literature; 2. to work out an adequate method of scholarly editing for multilingual works; and 3. to show how genetic criticism can contribute to the interpretation of these works. To this end, an initial distinction will be made between two types of multilingual works. For each type, the late works by one author will serve as case-studies.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hulle Dirk
• Co-promoter: Lernout Geert

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project is intended to start up and develop a critically responsible investigation, based on an adequate knowledge of state-of-the-art evolutions in the field of textual genetics and entirely in line with the research profile of the University of Antwerp in the field of English and American literature, into the textual genesis of the poetry of the American modernist poet Wallace Stevens (1879-1955).

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Eeckhout Bart

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This research project has to lead to the development of a three-dimensional open model which is able, on the basis of a shared and generally acceptable framework, 1) to draw up the boundaries of different forms of refraction within a single consistent taxonomy, inexistent today; 2) to develop and exploit new sub-corpora, underrepresented today in research on parody; and 3) to study and to compare for the first time in a consistent manner several forms of parodic discourse.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Pelckmans Paul
• Fellow: Peeters Kris

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Early on James Joyce lost his Catholic faith and this loss became a central theme in his work. But his interest in faith and its absence remained central in his thinking and writing, and this can for the first be document through a thorough study of his manuscripts and notebooks.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Lernout Geert

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The promotors will focus their research on the diversity of ways in which culinary contexts as defined in the project are present and represented in the Mexican and Hispano-Caribbean literature in a diachronic perspective. They will check a number of hypothesis based on issues that are nowadays very important in literary production (gender, identity, intertextuality, marketing, poetics) in order to define and circumscribe in a scientific way the culinary contexts in literature that are sometimes considered as 'light' by some scholars. At the same time the project contributes to reflect on the 'utility' of a 'gastrocritical' approach. See the website: http://www.ua.ac.be/contextosculinarios

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Maeseneer Rita

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project represents a research contract awarded by the University of Antwerp. The supervisor provides the Antwerp University research mentioned in the title of the project under the conditions stipulated by the university.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Lernout Geert
• Fellow: Lernout Geert

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Ever since children's literature gained its status as a part of literature worthy of academic study, fairy tales have received much attention from critics and scholars, especially the tales that were collected by the Grimm Brothers. 'Adult' literary theories such as feminism, psychoanalysis, structuralism and post-structuralism have provided interesting new perspectives on the old texts. At the same time there was, and still is, a lively interest in fairy tales on the part of writers and illustrators. Authors invent new tales or rewrite older ones, and the original stories are often published with new, inventive illustrations. In my PHD I investigate the relationship between the theoretical discussion of fairy tales and fictional adaptations or rewritings based on these tales. Both genres often express the same ideas, but have to make use of their own typical characteristics and constraints. Since children have no access to literary criticism, fairy-tale retellings can partly fill in that gap: very often they offer the reader a critical perspective on the Grimm tales.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Lernout Geert
• Fellow: Joosen Vanessa

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The aim of this project is to study the writing process of Samuel Beckett's late bilingual writings by analysing the manuscripts according to the methodology of genetic criticism. The results of this research will be made accessible in the form of five articles and an electronic genetic edition (with XML-encoded transcriptions of all the drafts and a critical apparatus) of Not I / Pas moi, Still / Immobile, Stirrings Still / Soubresauts, and Comment dire / What Is the Word.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hulle Dirk

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Different connotations (historical, social, ethnic, religious, ...) and interpretations of culinary contexts (as coined by Alejo Carpentier) are analysed in a number of Cuban works of the XIXth and XXth century (Cuba and diaspora). In this multisdisciplinary approach the relation of culinary references with gender, identity, intertextuality will be the major issues, besides of the influence on the poetics of the studied authors and the commercial effect.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Maeseneer Rita

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hecke An

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The concept of the Sublime in the philosophical tradition of Edmund Burke and as elaborated by Immanuel Kant in the 18th century first developed into a central paradigm in the Romantic era when the demand for strong passions in literature and literary criticism was running high. Yet adaptations to and variants on the original idea,which underwent an evolution of its own, became just as important in many postmodern writers¹ practice and a dominant feature of many critics' discussions of these authors' work. The purpose of this dissertation is to provide a definition of the Sublime as it functions in the novels of the postmodern American writer Don DeLillo on the basis of existing theories of the concept. Our central aim is to use this definition as the cornerstone of a new framework or model for an analysis of central recurrent themes in DeLillo¹s oeuvre and to add in that way to a better understanding of the author¹s work. To make sure we have provided the necessary background to keep this discussion clear, we shall first survey the Sublime from its origin to its present-day appearances and focus on Don DeLillo's most important themes with reference to different critical analyses of his books.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc
• Fellow: Vervenne Jasmine

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Berg Christian

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Duhamel Roland

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

We propose to study the relationship between word and image in contemporary Puerto Rican literature. Painters, writers and graphic artists have collaborated in the island since 1950, when they were officially associated to produce educational material. This symbiosis has developed until today, fruitfully linking the visual arts with poetry, autobiography and even with urban art. It allows us to study very diverse literary, linguistic, ethnic and cultural traditions. We are interested in examining its ideological evolution through time.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Maeseneer Rita

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

A literary-historical research project of influence and reception of French writer Marcel Schwob (1867-1905) in Belgium and the Netherlands. Research at the 'Fonds Marcel Schwob' (Bibliothèque de l'Institut de France, Paris).

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Berg Christian

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: de Rijcke Elke
• Co-promoter: Berg Christian

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The aim of my research is to explore and study the common features and the differences of the reception of Joyce in Eastern Europe, primarily until his acceptance in the middle of the 1980s. Therefore, I wish to examine the three critical periods from the following angles: their historical background; the significance of the influence of the Western reception; the dates, the number and other circumstances relating to the translations; Joyce's creative reception; Joyce's place in the national curriculum; whether Joyce was ever regarded as a `classic modern' writer; the publication of his works; the publication of foreign criticism on Joyce in translation; the contribution of Eastern European Scholars to Joyce scholarship in general.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Lernout Geert
• Fellow: Goldmann Marta

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This research proposal investigates a possible complement for the largely accepted theory of the "dilemme du roman" (G. May, 1963). A threefold criticism of May's theory -a) the concept of a "crise du roman" due to its official proscription in 1737 for invraisemblance and immoralism doesn't match its exponentially growing success; b) the lack of theoretical writings in favour of the novel leads to an imbalance in the confrontation between novel practise and contemporary novel criticism; and c) the a priori evacuation of parodical authors such as Caylus or Vade relies on a presupposition, namely that the novel has to formulate a serious answer to its proscription -leads to a triple hypothetical framework within which the role of parody in the novel debate about 1737 is evaluated: 1) the novel's success ensures it of another, more pragmatic legitimacy in the eyes of editors and public, which makes the aesthetic legitimacy less important; 2) the evolution of the novel is determined by the practise of novel writing itself rather than by theoretical precepts; and 3) the in criticism under- represented parodical corpus may have played a crucial role in the novel's response to its prohibition because it allows to criticise techniques that are found unbelievable (2) and because it permits an neutralising absorption of the proscription criteria in favour of the already achieved pragmatic legitimacy (1).

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Rasson Luc
• Fellow: Peeters Kris

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Ever since children's literature gained its status as a part of literature worthy of academic study, fairy tales have received much attention from critics and scholars, especially the tales that were collected by the Grimm Brothers. 'Adult' literary theories such as feminism, psychoanalysis, structuralism and post-structuralism have provided interesting new perspectives on the old texts. At the same time there was, and still is, a lively interest in fairy tales on the part of writers and illustrators. Authors invent new tales or rewrite older ones, and the original stories are often published with new, inventive illustrations. In my PHD I investigate the relationship between the theoretical discussion of fairy tales and fictional adaptations or rewritings based on these tales. Both genres often express the same ideas, but have to make use of their own typical characteristics and constraints. Since children have no access to literary criticism, fairy-tale retellings can partly fill in that gap: very often they offer the reader a critical perspective on the Grimm tales.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Lernout Geert
• Fellow: Joosen Vanessa

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Thematics of 'dolorisme', retribution and expiation in French and Belgian Francophone Literature (1850-1950).

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Berg Christian

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The Irish writer James Joyce (1882-1941) ranks among the most important authors of the twentieth century, a status he owes mainly to the technical innovations he introduced in his two major novels, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. The interior monologue, stylistic parodies and the mythological framework in the former and the extreme multilingual experiment in the latter book have made Joyce the most influential writer of the modernist generation who has not only decisively shaped modernism but whose influence continues to mark contemporary literature. Since the early eighties, scholars in Ireland, the United States and Belgium have effected a return to the thorough genetic study of Joyce's two majors works. For both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake scholars have begun to study the drafts and notebooks that document the genesis of these two central works. In organizational terms, the impact of genetic studies on what has been called the 'Joyce Industry' has been considerable: there have been regular appearances of 'genetic' panels at all the international Joyce conferences in the last twenty years, a series of conferences in Paris and Antwerp, articles in the specialized journals, collections of essays and books. In the case of Finnegans Wake the most recent tangible result has been the publication of the first six volumes of the so-called Buffalo Notebooks, workbooks in which Joyce collected materials from a wide variety of sources for use in Finnegans Wake. Simultaneously, a lot of work has already been done on the Ulysses notebooks and manuscripts, in a project that joins the expertise of two young scholars in Buffalo with that of Michael Groden, and for which both Daniel Ferrer and Geert Lernout act as advisors. This project has just received a Mellon Grant for a feasibility study for a fully annotated web-based, hypertext archive (the 'Ulysses Archive'), containing the approximately 11,000 pages of manuscripts for James Joyce's novel Ulysses (held in different libraries in the United Kingdom, Ireland and the United States) and about 5,000 pages of commentary about the manuscripts and the novel. This project aims to be ready by June 2004 when the International James Joyce Foundation will host a conference to celebrate the Bloomsday centenary in Dublin. Daniel Ferrer and Geert Lernout propose to write a comparative study of the note-taking process employed by Joyce during the genesis of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. Despite the importance of Joyce in the theory of intertextuality and although in the last fifty years a great number of articles and books have been written on the importance for Joyce of individual writers or books, more general work on Joyce's note-taking has had to wait until the late seventies when the primary documents became more generally available in the James Joyce Archive. Since then scholars have been able to study closely a wide variety of sources that were excerpted by Joyce in his notebooks and then 'harvested' by him and introduced into the drafts of his work. The recent discovery of new notebooks and drafts for Ulysses and Finnegans Wake will allow us to compare Joyce's actual writing strategies.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Lernout Geert

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Development of an electronic prototype of 1 chapter of James Joyce's `Ulysses' (chapter 3, `Proteus') with three reading texts, including the possibility of collation, the complete genetic record with facsimiles, topographic and linear transcriptions (in XML) of all available manuscripts, a search engine, and multimedia annotations.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hulle Dirk

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The project will examine current discourses on the Balkans in Austrian culture from the 18th to the 20th century: which images of the self and the other have been created, esp. what Bosnia-Hercegovina is concerned which used to be an annexed part of Austria-Hungary from 1878 to 1918. Can you compare these images to similar ones described in colonial literatures.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Duhamel Roland
• Co-promoter: Gyssels Kathleen

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project attempts to chart the chronology of James Joyce's Work in Progress, i.e., the genesis of Finnegans Wake. In his letters (especially the correspondence with Harriet Shaw Weaver), Joyce often mentions what he is reading or what he is writing. These two activities ' the absorption and the production ' roughly correspond to two kinds of genetic material: the more than fifty notebooks (preserved in Buffalo, NY) and the drafts (most of which are preserved in the British Library). Apart from the dating of this material evidence of the writing process, the timeline will offer a detailed textual account of this dating. The aim of this project is a reconstruction ' as complete and accurate as possible ' of this complex writing process, which lasted seventeen years.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Lernout Geert

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project intends to establish an overview, as complete as possible, of the intertextuality in Primo Levi's works. In the first place the part intertextuality plays in the holocaust testimony will be examined in depth: the appearance of literary authorities in the framework of a 'unique' drama leads to a historicization of the events. Furthermore, the intertextuality discovered in Levi's works serves as a case for the intertextuality practice: in Levi's works a permanent tension is at work between the new text and the original one: the latter is absorbed, but also partly rejected, thus revealing the intertextuality mechanism. Finally the internal connection between Levi's different works will be demonstrated through the repetition of intertextual practices.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Geerts Walter

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Selection and edition of a collection of papers presented at the International James Joyce Symposium in Trieste. All contributors to the conference will be asked to contribute and then a selection will be made. The "plenary lectures" (by Carla Marengo Vaglio, Thomas F. Staley, Margot Norris, Zack Bowen en Edward Said) will of course be included. The selected papers will be copy-edited and an extensive text by the editors will introduce the theme and the contributors.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Lernout Geert

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Dominican literature has been neglected in comparison with other Hispanic Caribbean Literatures. The aim is to study contemporary Dominican writing (nineties). Concerning those writers on the move (in a literary, geographic, cultural and even linguistic sense), I will focuss more specifically on the issue of racism and migration as reflected in literature, the tendencies in Dominican short stories of the nineties, new approaches by Dominican authors living on the island or in New York.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Maeseneer Rita

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The concept of the Sublime in the philosophical tradition of Edmund Burke and as elaborated by Immanuel Kant in the 18th century first developed into a central paradigm in the Romantic era when the demand for strong passions in literature and literary criticism was running high. Yet adaptations to and variants on the original idea,which underwent an evolution of its own, became just as important in many postmodern writers¹ practice and a dominant feature of many critics' discussions of these authors' work. The purpose of this dissertation is to provide a definition of the Sublime as it functions in the novels of the postmodern American writer Don DeLillo on the basis of existing theories of the concept. Our central aim is to use this definition as the cornerstone of a new framework or model for an analysis of central recurrent themes in DeLillo¹s oeuvre and to add in that way to a better understanding of the author¹s work. To make sure we have provided the necessary background to keep this discussion clear, we shall first survey the Sublime from its origin to its present-day appearances and focus on Don DeLillo's most important themes with reference to different critical analyses of his books.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc
• Fellow: Vervenne Jasmine

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Critics have begun assess the importance of computing on the discipline of scholarly editing. We want to investigate, using the concrete example of James Joyce's 'red-backed' notebook, the possibilities and limitations that an electronic representation of genetic evidence has to offer.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Lernout Geert
• Co-promoter: Van Hulle Dirk

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Music features prominently in the contemporary American encyclopedic novel, which tries to evoke the whole of American reality. This research project is focused on the function of music (both as a theme and as an aspect of form) in major examples of this genre, specifically in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (1973) - the matrix for the younger generation of encyclopedists - and David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest (1996), the most visible recent instance of the genre.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Research about the traditional historical novel (Lukacs) and the testimonial novel (larger than the concept "testimonio") in the Caribbean and Centroamerican narrative prose. An analysis of the personages with special focus on the minorities, research about discursive strategies, reflection about the (meta)historical issues, relation with general tendencies in the genre of the Latin American Literature are some of the issues that will be studied.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Maeseneer Rita

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

While The Great American Novel only lives on as a cliche, some American authors nevertheless attempt totalizing novels'but not without calling the concept of totalization into question. Using The Recognitions by William Gaddis en especially Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon as a matrix, recent American encyclopedic novels are analysed with reference to their historical context, their techniques of representation, and their manipulation of the reader.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc
• Fellow: Herman Luc

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

How do "literature" and "the media" interrelate ? Should we see "Literature" as "a medium" ? And where do we have to place "literature" in the contemporary media-configuration ? The phenomenon "hypertext" deserves special attention in this project.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Schuerewegen Franc
• Fellow: Schuerewegen Franc

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Around the turn of the century the epistemological conditions of the dealing with the human body radically changed. Both in the humanities and the exact sciences a new image of mankind emerged which led to a reconceptualization and reformulation of the functions of the human body: this body is no longer considered the vehicle or container of the soul but an autonomous entity capable of interacting with the latest technologies. Modernist writers and artists were fascinated by the mixture (or interaction) between the living and the mechanical, wo/man and the machine. A new hybrid being was created: the human machine or mechanized wo/man, a technological or prosthetic being. This evolution was supported by a new kind of thinking, i.e. prosthetic thinking, in which all extensions of the human body (tools as weIl as senses) are considered as prostheses. The issue of the prosthetic body therefore cannot be separated from a thorough historical and epistemological foundation which covers the entire twentieth century and requires substantiation with theoretical as weIl as practical contributions.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Geerts Walter

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project