Henk de Smaele professor

Research Henk de Smaele

Research team

Expertise

I am currently doing and/or supervising research on (1) the political history of masculinities and sexualities (from a broad, international perspective); (2) encounters between 'Europe' and 'the Middle East' (19-20th centuries); (3) international adoptions of children in Belgium; (4) the diplomatic role of the International Council of Women and transnational 'humanitarianism'; (5) contemporary history of universities.

"Ceci n'est pas de la politique": revisiting political agency in the conservative Parisian women's press (1815-1851). 01/01/2025 - 31/12/2025

Abstract

This research proposal aims to revisit political agency in the conservative Parisian women's press, and questions how fashion journals functioned as a forum for women editors and writers and their female readership to engage with politics between 1815 and 1851. Current research into the 19th-century women's press tends to focus on a handful of progressive women writers and periodical editors. Moreover, reproducing the self-fashioning strategies adopted by the periodical press to avoid censorship, conservative women's magazines are often mistakenly seen as apolitical and conformist within existing scholarship. This proposal's first objective is to pinpoint the identities of female editors, journalists and authors, who were involved in the French women's press and to retrace the complex gendered networks behind these journals. As a second and main objective, this research will reconstruct the myriad ways in which women's magazines used the innocent cover of French fashion periodicals to more or less subtly "meddle in politics" during the Restoration, July Monarchy and Second Republic. Through an in-depth and comparative historical discourse analysis of the most popular women's magazines, this research will provide a comprehensive oversight of the different types of political interventions in the conservative women's press. Given their hegemony within 19th-century fashion journalism, Parisian magazines will prove to be the ideal test case for this study.

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  • Research Project

Gender, Nationalism, and Sports: Women's Cycling, Boxing, and Catch-Wrestling in Belgium and Mexico in the 1920s to 1990s. 01/11/2023 - 31/10/2026

Abstract

In today's media attention on female athletes, an image exists that women have only recently become more involved in sports due to feminist activism, gender equality, and marketing strategies. But this image does not correspond with reality. While largely hidden from the historical record, women and popular sports have long gone hand in hand. Yet, the existing body of scholarship on sports and nationalism focuses almost exclusively on its relationship to masculinity. This has not only obscured women's early participation in sports but also failed to grasp the complex link between the growing popularity of sports, national identities, and the participation and exclusion of female athletes. This research project seeks to rectify this blind spot in historiography by examining the history of women's cycling, boxing, and catch-wrestling in Belgium and Mexico between the 1920s and 1990s. Drawing on diverse sources, from written and visual historical sources to oral histories, this project provides visibility to largely forgotten historical actors and includes their voices in the historical record. By employing a transnational and intersectional approach to history, it investigates women's sports participation, national responses, and how this has been tied to the gendering of sports and national identities. This allows for a more complex understanding of the interactions between the local, national, and international domains and challenges euro-centrist visions in history.

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  • Research Project

Gendering Political Exile: Women's political migrations to Belgium (1918-1958) (WOMENEXILE). 15/12/2020 - 15/12/2025

Abstract

There is relatively little historical research on women in political exile. However political exiles have long been of interest to historians, female political exiles suffer from a lower visibility, since the figure of the political exile like that of the activist, has been built on the model of masculinity. This is also the case in Belgium. The National Archives of Belgium conserves thousands of files concerning these migrant women. These files produced by the Belgian Services in charge of immigration [Aliens' Police (the predecessor of the current Immigration Office) and Office of the Commissionner general for refugees & stateless persons] constitute an exceptionally rich and under-exploited material for studying the nature and chronology of political migration to Belgium in the twentieth century, and for investigating the political, social and cultural dimensions of the interactions between these immigrants and Belgian civil society. An online database of these women exiled in Belgium will be created and hundreds of those forgotten destinies will be exhumed, studied and presented to the public. This project will be a crucial step to open up these exceptionally rich sources for future researches and to contribute in this way to the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of migration studies in Belgium as well as internationally. The objectives are not merely academic however: reconstructing and recounting the life stories of these women in exile (in the period 1918- 1958) will also enrich and feed contemporary debates on migration, diversity and today's 'refugee crises', as well as on gender and the position of women within activism.

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  • Research Project

To fight at the margins: the history of women in boxing and lucha libre in Mexico (1930-2000). 01/11/2020 - 31/10/2023

Abstract

This research project examines the participation of women in boxing and the wrestling sport of lucha libre in Mexico between 1930 and 2000. It responds to the relative lack of academic attention for the complex mechanisms and effects of gender transgressions by women (i.e. women taking up roles that have culturally been coded as masculine), which have served as motors for historical change and emancipation. My innovative approach confronts the findings from a more conventional historical research practice based on newspaper and archival sources with the qualitative analysis of narratives obtained from oral history interviews, which allows me to investigate both the socio-cultural constructions that impacted women's involvement in boxing and wrestling in Mexico, and the ways in which individual women experienced and navigated such discourses. Central attention is paid to the relations of power in the field of boxing and lucha libre in Mexico, and how these are tied up with gender, ethnicity, social class and commercialisation. This enables me to move beyond the dichotomy within current academic debates about women in combat sports in the Anglo-American and European context, that either constructs this participation as a form of liberation or, due to its perceived sexualisation, as a continued form of exploitation. This project provides new insights about discourses of self-sexualisation, employs an intersectional approach, and decentralises western perspectives in history.

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  • Research Project

Plenum 2.0. Bringing a highly-valued and widely-used research tool up-to-date. 01/01/2020 - 31/12/2021

Abstract

In 2010, Power in History created Plenum.be, an internet-resource on which the Proceedings of the Belgian House of Representatives for the years between 1844 and 1999 were made available and fully searchable; Today, this widely used but technically deficient tool urgently needs a thorough update. With the project, we specifically want to 1) develop a new project database, in order to deliver robust search performance, 2) design a new project website, 3) re-process the available text corpus with state-of-the-art OCR software, 4) identify the structure of the parliamentary debates (different speakers and speeches), 5) create a new server for the project, hosted at the central UAntwerpen server room. As such, we want to enhance considerably the availibility of this tool for both academic and non-academic researchers, and to create possibilities for innovative forms of discursive analysis (also at an international and interdisciplinary level).

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  • Research Project

Post-Communist Sexualities: Social Construction of Homosexual Male Identities in Bulgaria. 01/10/2019 - 30/09/2022

Abstract

Homosexual practices were completely outlawed in Bulgaria under socialism and they were prosecuted by the communist state. After 1989, the issue of homosexuality entered public discourse but support for homosexuality, and in particular male homosexuality, encountered strong resistance from the mainstream media. This resistance was driven by the homophobic attitudes of political and religious elites, which resulted in high levels of discrimination and abuse against sexual minorities and a lack of political will and measures to address these issues. Ironically, the expansion of the EU in 2007 shifted the perspective on homosexuality, confronting the Bulgarian government with numerous issues in the process of transposing the EU directives regarding the rights of LGBTQ people. Challenging certain theories which do not pay attention to the regional specificities in the process of construction of homosexual identities, this study will be one of the first to explore the social construction of homosexual male identities in Bulgaria and it will make an important contribution to the existing literature on the topic of gay identities. Using oral histories and semi structured in-depth interviews, the main objective of the study is to investigate the social construction of homosexual male identities, focusing on the experiences and the exigencies have been faced by three generations of gay men in Bulgaria. These include (a) Bulgaria's socialist past, (b) the enlargement of the EU in 2007, and (c) global processes, the Internet and social media. Furthermore, the study promises to challenge the existing concepts of gay identity, gay community and gay activism by investigating to what extent Western notions of gay identity and gay community are relevant in the Bulgarian context and how these notions have been experienced on a local level.

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  • Research Project

Consuls between the Nation and Global Capital: A Comparative History of Belgian, Italian, and U.S. Economic Diplomacy in Ottoman Salonika, 1823–1912. 01/10/2018 - 30/09/2019

Abstract

This project centers on Western economic diplomacy in the Ottoman Empire during the long 19th century, an era of capitalist globalization. Most of the scholarship privileges macro-historical approaches and overemphasizes the roles of the so-called five Great Powers to the detriment of other states with which the Ottomans maintained intense economic and diplomatic relations. This project proposes a comparative micro-history of three aspiring powers whose relationships with the Ottoman Empire have rarely been studied, namely Belgium, Italy and the United States. It examines the mediating roles of their consular representatives in furthering foreign trade, finance and investments in the seaport of Salonika, the Empire's main industrial center. Calling attention to this powerful (but neglected) group of local go-betweens reveals the process of foreign capitalist penetration into the Ottoman lands to be more conflicted, contradictory and transnational than is usually surmised. Most consuls were deeply embedded in Ottoman urban society and had stakes in the banks, merchant houses and companies they advised. Microhistorical study shows that their interests were colored by conflicting allegiances across national boundaries and a concern to maintain and reinforce their local powerbases. Ignored in the literature, the study of these intermediaries, balancing on a tightrope between the nation and global capital, is crucial to complicate Euro-American interests in the Ottoman lands.

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  • Research Project

'Performing with square and compass': 19th-­century Belgian masonic music and ritual as performed and studied through re-­enactment. 01/01/2018 - 31/12/2019

Abstract

This research projects aims to study nineteenth-century Belgian masonic music, in close relation with the rituals the compositions are meant to accompany. In this research, for the first time the focus is on the musical experience in an important organisation like that of the Freemasons, and also for the first time, the method of re-‐enactment is used to really capture the performative aspect of the musical performances and the experience of the masonic ritual. Through the creative method of re-enactment, which is also an important part of the artistic output of this project, not only the literal 'text' of this music and the corresponding ritual is read, but also the 'action', which can lead to new insights into the masonic music scene. In this manner, the creative capacities of staged performances, based on thorough historical research, are used to gain deeper insight into the use and the experience of nineteenth-century ritual masonic music.

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  • Research Project

BOF Sabbatical Leave - Henk de Smaele. 01/10/2017 - 30/09/2018

Abstract

This sabbatical leave (including a 6 month Visiting Fellowship at Birkbeck College, University of London) will be used to work on a monograph provisionally titled: A Political History of the Nude: Citizenship, Sexuality and the Body in the Modern West. Since the nineteenth century, images of the male nude have become exceptional in European mainstream visual culture, while representations of female nudity are widespread and have become generally accepted. The image of the desirable and passive woman fitted well into the general discourse on sex-differences and reinforced gender inequalities. Women were considered more beautiful and desirable but less independent and rational than men. Women were mistresses of the house, while men were at home on the forum and - if necessary - on the battlefield. It is however striking that the short periods of revival of the public male nude coincided with the resurgence of 'republican' (as opposed to 'liberal') political ideas. Male nudes were numerous in neoclassical history painting during the French Revolutionary era. They returned in the socialist art of the late nineteenth century, in the fascist and national-socialist propaganda of the 1930s. In these contexts, the nude male body was an image of strength, power and 'manliness'. Republicanism rarely contributed to the political emancipation of women however. Why then was the image of the male nude considered a threat in liberal political cultures, while it was favoured in republican cultures? What was the link between liberalism and the disappearance of the male body? And why was the naked citizen so crucial for republicans?

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  • Research Project

Uprooted Childhoods: Practices of Transnational Child Displacements (Belgium, 1945-1980). 01/10/2016 - 30/09/2020

Abstract

In the course of the 20th century, violent conflicts, ethnic struggle and humanitarian crises caused an extensive number of children being transferred from one country to another. Philanthropic and nationalist objectives, the children's 'best interests', but also a growing 'demand' from childless couples lay at the basis of these displacements. This project aims to investigate how post-war cases of transnational child displacements were organized in Belgium against the backdrop of international evolutions on thinking about childhood. It will study (from a transnational and postcolonial perspective) the consecutive waves of children who were relocated to Belgium. As such, the project will launch research on the history of transnational adoption and foster care, while at the same time it will improve our understanding of the ideologies of childhood and family, as well as nation and ethnic identity, in post-war Belgium.

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  • Research Project

Pink Perils and Postwar Blues. Homophobia and Early Cold War Culture in Western Europe (1945-1965). 01/10/2016 - 31/08/2020

Abstract

As has been demonstrated by recent research, a wave of homophobia known as the 'lavender scare' hit the United States in the aftermath of the Second World War. A similar lavender scare affected Western Europe during the early Cold War era, but to date no study exists that investigates (a) how it affected various European countries differently, (b) to what extent this was a transnational phenomenon galvanized by the growing Americanization of European society, and (c) in what ways it was related to broader social and cultural changes on both the national and the international level. Primarily using a combination of criminological and so-called 'homophile' journals emanating from a selection of West European countries (i.e. the Netherlands, Belgium, France, West-Germany, Switzerland and Austria), this project sets out to answer the question of how and why homosexuality became the focus of intensive scrutiny during the period between 1945 and 1965. By means of an NVivo-database, the aim is to develop an integrated picture of how the fear of homosexuals fitted within a broader array of fears that haunted societies destabilized by war and anxious to regain their equilibrium in a rapidly changing world.

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  • Research Project

The Photo Archive Fritz Mayer van den Bergh: High Society's visual culture, then and now. 01/01/2016 - 31/12/2017

Abstract

The research group Thinking Tools from the Antwerp Academy for Fine Arts, proposes, in collaboration with the Antwerp Museum Mayer van den Bergh, a historical and artistic research project for the Museum's unpublished photo collection. The (photo) historical research into this yet to be disclosed collection and its background in visual culture then and now is also organized as a didactic project, and formulated as a challenging assignment for the BA students Photography. Charlotte Lybeer and Els Vanden Meersch create new artistic work (photography‐film) inspired by the photo archive.

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  • Research Project

Ottoman Diplomats to Belgium: An Online Digitalization Project of Diplomatic Sources 01/02/2014 - 31/12/2014

Abstract

'Ottoman Diplomats' offers online access to diplomatic reports from the Ottoman Legation in Brussels (1848-1914). They are made available here for the first time in high-quality photographic reproduction, together with key information on every dispatch (author, recipient, date, summary). The project mainly aims to: (1) stimulate new research on Ottoman diplomacy, and (2) encourage revisionist histories of Belgium that engage with Ottoman sources.

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  • Research Project

Diplomacy, identity and cultural encounters: Belgian envoys in Ottoman Istanbul (1838-1914). 01/10/2013 - 30/09/2015

Abstract

This research investigates Belgium's diplomatic representation in Istanbul during the second half of the nineteenth century. Its primary concern lies with diplomatic 'practices', rather than (only) with the institutional, political and economic dimensions of Belgian diplomacy. The so-called 'soft' elements of diplomacy – (court)protocol, etiquette, diplomatic culture – will be studied in correlation with processes of identity formation. One of the analytical tools for this research is the concept of 'cultural encounter'. As for the sources, a wide variety of materials will be utilized, ranging from diplomatic dispatches, over private correspondence and memoirs, to travel journals and newspapers. By analyzing actual diplomatic encounters in their historical specific setting, this project aims (1) to enrich our knowledge of the history of Belgian-Ottoman relations from a new perspective, (2) to offer some insights into the 'culture of diplomacy' in late Ottoman Istanbul, and (3) to contribute to the revision and de-dramatization of some of the findings in grand meta-narratives (like 'Orientalism' and the 'Clash of Civilizations'), that distort and essentialize East-West relations. .

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  • Research Project

Practices of displacement: adoption and foster care of biracial children during and after Belgian colonialism. 01/10/2013 - 30/09/2014

Abstract

This research aims to analyse the practice of child displacements during and after the colonial era. Following the initial attention of psychologists and sociologists, historians are increasingly involved in the study of international and transracial adoptions. In Belgium, historical research about transracial child displacements and adoptions is lacking. By using the case of the displacements of biracial children from the (former) Belgian colonies, as one of the first transracial adoptions, this projects aims at furthering our insights in the early stages of the - currently institutionalised - practices of transracial adoptions. Additionally, transracial adoption will be investigated as a site of cultural encounter, as mixed race children epitomized 'the other' both in colonial as in post-colonial society.

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  • Research Project

Belgian investments in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th and 20th century. 01/10/2013 - 30/09/2014

Abstract

Through its new focus on 'other' players on the international stage, such as small Industrial powers like Belgium instead of the Great Powers, this research aims to shed light on the effect of these consortiums in the Ottoman lands, and in so doing, to rething the nature of European financial penetration in the region, at the height of the Age of Empire.

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  • Research Project

KASKA - The tradition of the future / the future of the tradition. 01/07/2012 - 30/09/2013

Abstract

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

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  • Research Project

Queer sounds: The function and meaning of music in the formation and evolution of an LGBT subculture in the city of Antwerp (1960-2010). 01/01/2012 - 31/12/2015

Abstract

This project aims to contribute to a better understanding of the function of music in processes of subcultural identification, focusing on the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) community in Antwerp. It is widely accepted that music plays an important role in the formation and self-definition of minorities and subcultures, but its function in the LGBT community has not been extensively investigated yet. Moreover, Flemish LGBT culture and its history have hardly come up for academic analysis to date. Our aim is, first, to find out what musical repertoire and which musical functions were shared within the LGBT scene, focusing on the largest Flemish urban centre Antwerp, between 1960 (the start of the LGBT movement in Antwerp) and 2010. Secondly, we will analyse how this repertoire and its uses operate as subcultural capital and contribute to the formation of one or more LGBT subcultures.

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  • Research Project

Architecture in Antwerp: from Academy to University. 01/01/2012 - 31/12/2013

Abstract

This research project aims at studying the educational program and the training of architects at the Antwerp Royal Academy of Arts (founded in 1663) and its successors (from 1952 onwards the National Higher Institute of Architecture and Urbanism, and since 1996 the Department of Design Sciences of the Antwerp University College Artesis). The other architectural related programs are included in the study: urbanism and spatial planning, interior architecture and conservation of the built and un-built heritage. Also the buildings in which the education took place, are the scope of this research. The result of this interdisciplinary research projects consists of a publication with thematic essays.

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  • Research Project

Diplomatic Encounters : A Cultural History of the Belgian Legation in Ottoman Istanbul (1865-1909). 01/10/2011 - 30/09/2013

Abstract

This research investigates Belgium's diplomatic representation in Istanbul during the second half of the nineteenth century. Its primary concern lies with diplomatic 'practices', rather than (only) with the institutional, political and economic dimensions of Belgian diplomacy. The so-called 'soft' elements of diplomacy – (court)protocol, etiquette, diplomatic culture – will be studied in correlation with processes of identity formation. One of the analytical tools for this research is the concept of 'cultural encounter'. As for the sources, a wide variety of materials will be utilized, ranging from diplomatic dispatches, over private correspondence and memoirs, to travel journals and newspapers. By analyzing actual diplomatic encounters in their historical specific setting, this project aims (1) to enrich our knowledge of the history of Belgian-Ottoman relations from a new perspective, (2) to offer some insights into the 'culture of diplomacy' in late Ottoman Istanbul, and (3) to contribute to the revision and de-dramatization of some of the findings in grand meta-narratives (like 'Orientalism' and the 'Clash of Civilizations'), that distort and essentialize East-West relations. .

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  • Research Project

The function and meaning of music in the formation and evolution of a LGB subculture in the city of Antwerp (1960-2010) 01/07/2011 - 30/06/2015

Abstract

This project aims to better understand the function of music in processes of subcultural identification, focusing on the LGB (Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual) community in Antwerp. It is known that music plays an important role in the formation and self-definition of minorities and subcultures, but its function in the LGB community has not been extensively researched. Moreover, Flemish LGB culture and its history have hardly been academically researched to date. Our aim is to first find out which musical repertoire and which musical functions were shared within the LGB scene, focusing on the largest Flemish urban centre Antwerp, between 1960 (the start of the LGB movement in Antwerp) and 2010. Secondly, we will analyse how this repertoire and its uses operate as subcultural capital and contribute to the formation of one or more LGB subculture(s). A combination of qualitative methods (archive research, document analysis, in-depth interviews with informants and participants in LGB culture) is used to get a holistic view on historical processes and evolutions in these musical cultures. This project brings together insights from media studies, LGB/queer studies and history, aiming to bridge the distance between these disciplines in a specific case study.

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  • Research Project

Diplomatic encounters: a cultural-historical analysis of Belgian-Ottoman relations (1838-1914). 01/10/2010 - 30/09/2011

Abstract

In the literature on contacts between Europe and the East in the nineteenth century, the period appears invariably (and correctly) as the age of European colonial and imperial rule. Therefore, European relationships with non-European Others are described along hierarchic lines of dominance and oppression. It may be questioned, however, whether these relations can always be reduced to similar oppositions between a superior patronizing West and an inferior silent East. In this respect, the diplomatic contacts between Belgium and the Ottoman Empire during the nineteenth century offer an interesting case for the study of intercultural relations without a priori assumptions about the hierarchic dichotomy 'West versus Rest'. By using a twofold research perspective ¿ zooming in on the otherness-experiences of both the Belgian diplomats in Istanbul and the Ottoman envoys in Brussels ¿ this project therefore aims at 1) throwing new light on the complex dynamics of these diplomatic encounters; and 2) rethinking the ways in which the relationships between Europe and the East have been generally represented.

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  • Research Project

Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens: the life and works of a Belgian organist in the context of 19th century organ practice. 01/01/2010 - 31/12/2011

Abstract

Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens (1823-1881) is currently seen as a key figure to the development of 19th century organ music. His influence as a teacher, virtuoso and composer reached far beyond the Belgian borders. But there is a striking contrast between Lemmens' fame and the small amount of information to be found about him. A thorough artistic investigation of his influence and meaning within the European organ context, focused on his École d'Orgue basée sur le plain-chant romain (1862) can be of particular interest for the practical research on 19th century organ music in Belgium.

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  • Research Project

Iconographic practices and traditions of European explorers in Central Africa (1870-1930). 01/10/2009 - 31/08/2010

Abstract

This research project analyses and contextualizes from a historical and anthropological point of view a variety of iconographic traditions and practices (photography, drawing, painting, etc.) of some late nineteenth and early twentieth century European explorers during and after their scientific, economic, or humanitarian expeditions in Central Africa, in a time of intense explorational activity and international colonial competition.

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  • Research Project

The evolution of architectural education in Antwerp 1919-1977. 01/01/2009 - 31/12/2010

Abstract

The subject of this research is the evolution of architectural education in Antwerp from 1919 to 1977. The underlying idea is that the training of an architect underwent important changes in the course of the twentieth century, in close relation to both the development of a regional interpretation of international modernism and the evolution of the professional framework of the architectural practice. The profound study of these changes will create a broader basis to further research concerning the architects and the patrimony of the modern movement in Antwerp.

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  • Research Project

Speaking for others. A pragmatic analysis of the first person plural in the discourse of the Chamber of Deputies in Belgium, France, Great Britain and The Netherlands, 1870-1940. 01/10/2008 - 30/09/2012

Abstract

By means of a systematic and comparative enquiry into the use of the first person plural in four Western European Chambers of Deputies, this research project investigates transformations in the phenomenon of political representation during a period of rapid democratization, as well as developments in the range of identities expressed in this process.

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  • Research Project

An invisible policy? Actors interacting in the municipal architectural policy in Flanders, 1950-1980. 01/10/2008 - 13/01/2012

Abstract

This project studies municipal public architecture in Flanders in the period 1950-1980. In literature this period is known for its fading interest in public architecture and the lack of any qualitative public policy. In this project this statement is questioned and investigated by broadening the traditional biographical (architect-designers) and typological methodological approach and explicitly includes the study of the interaction between the various actors in the public building process.

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  • Research Project

A New Order, a New Man. Masculinity and Fascism in Belgium, c. 1930-1945. 01/07/2008 - 31/12/2012

Abstract

This research project probes into the influence of fascist ideas on the masculine ideal in Belgium (c. 1930-1945). This study aims at a deeper insight into the relationship between gender and twentieth-century politics by investigating the construction, reception and political use of male images in (1) the youth movement, (2) the visual arts and (3) the new cult of the body.

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  • Research Project

Achilles and Adonis. A Study of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Reception and Significance of Richard Westmacott's Wellington Monument in Hyde Park, London. 01/01/2008 - 31/12/2009

Abstract

In 1822 a monument was erected near Hyde Park Corner commemorating Wellington. The monumental nude Achilles (by Richard Westmacott) soon fell victim however to ridicule and satire. In stead of the hero Achilles, the audience saw an Adonis. This transformation of Achilles into Adonis fits well into the Western, liberal political culture, in which there seems to be no place for representations of the male nude.

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Male homosexuality in Brussels, 1867-1967. A study of practices and discourses. 01/01/2007 - 31/12/2010

Abstract

Through the investigation of court files which deal with male same sex sexual acts which took place in Brussels between 1867 (the introduction of the Belgian Penal Code) and 1967 (the emergence of a gay movement), this project wants to determine: (1) which elitist and popular disocurses on homosexuality were prevalent and how these discourses influenced the shaping of the sexual identities of the people involved; (2) the significance of urban development for the construction of non-heterosexual lifestyles and identities; (3) the influence of political transformations and power shifts on homosexual life and identities.

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Islamic identities in Flanders (1964-present). 01/10/2006 - 30/09/2010

Abstract

In this project, publicly accessible and elicited discourse produced by muslims is studied from the perspective of linguistic pragmatics, cultural history and ethnography. The research will be carried out in view of an analysis of the islamic political identities that are developing in muslim communities in Flanders since 1964.

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Couture Norine: The embodiment of th Belgian Avant-Garde, 1918-1952. 01/10/2006 - 30/09/2009

Abstract

This project wishes for the first time to offer a thorough study of the couture house Norine. To this end, instead of opting for one exclusive perspective or method, an attempt is made to envisage the complexity of the phenomenon. Seeing as little research is available on which to base such a study, the project will in the first instance contain the necessary 'factual material': the limited biographical information available on the couple Van Hecke-Deschryver needs to be elaborated and a chronological overview of the rise and fall of the couture house also needs to be provided. An overview of all known designs and creations also needs to be drawn up, which will allow for a sketch of the house's evolutions in style. Alongside this, it is the intention to describe the position that Norine occupied within the Belgian and international world of the artistic avant-garde, as well as within the world of fashion itself.

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  • Research Project