Research Vivian Liska

Abstract

Today, it has become difficult, but necessary to think about what it means to dwell. At the heart of questions about space, belonging and identity, the meaning of dwelling confronts the contemporary researcher with complex questions of great urgency. This project aims to produce an original contribution to the debate on dwelling. Three key problems can be identified in today's debate: 'how do we experience dwelling?' 'is dwelling necessary?' and 'what is the space of dwelling?'. Answering these questions demands a close examination of the lesser known texts of Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas and Martin Buber, in order to rethink the experience of hospitality, the necessity of refuge, and the dwelling space itself. At the nexus of these questions is the necessity of reexamining where we dwell, and with whom. A philosophical reflection on these issues may produce an innovative response to questions at the heart of current debates, and thus to formulate a creative and provocative conception of dwelling for the current situation.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Liska Vivian
• Co-promoter: Cools Arthur
• Fellow: Froy Thomas

Research team(s)

• Institute of Jewish Studies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The Scientific Research Network "Literatures without Borders. A Historical-Comparative Study of Premodern Literary Transnationality" will be funded by the Flemish Research Fund (FWO) for a period of 5 years (with possible extensions). The aim of the network is to strengthen the links between 16 research units (Flemish and international) through the funding of workshops (or seminars / webinars), conferences and publications. The research unit RELICS (Researchers of European Literary Identities, Cosmopolitanism and the Schools) will act as its core unit and will be responsible for the overall coordination of the endeavour. Grown out of the literary department at Ghent University, RELICS has in the meantime grown out to be an international, open and multidisciplinary network of scholars who share an interest for the dynamic role of Latin as a cosmopolitan literary and cultural language in Europe. The focus of the project is on premodern literatures after Antiquity with a transnational character and within the geographical boundaries encompassing North Africa, the Middle East and Europe: Latin, Byzantine Greek, Arabic and Hebrew-Jewish-Ladino. In addition to the important question of how these four literatures came to be in contact with each other, four key questions were put forward in the project application: 1. How do these literatures demonstrate —implicitly or explicitly— their awareness of their transnational function and their supralocal literary culture? 2. Which literary-cultural actors were responsible for exercising this influence? 3. In what ways is the transnational functioning of the four literatures reflected within and shaped by aesthetic and narrative tendencies? 4. Can a conceptual framework be devised that better characterizes, defines, and understands premodern literary transnationalism? The 16 involved partners are: • RELICS (Ghent University) • Institute for the Study of the Transmission of Texts, Ideas and Images in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance-LECTIO (Catholic University Leuven) • Greek and Cultural Studies (Catholic University Leuven) • Institute of Jewish Studies (University of Antwerp) • East-Asian and Arabic Studies (Catholic University Leuven) • Centre for Literary and Intermedial Crossings (VUB Brussels) • Mamluk History and Culture (UGent) • Centre for Medieval Literature (University of York and University of Southern Denmark) • Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies (University of Amsterdam) • Retracing Connections: Byzantine Storyworlds (Uppsala University) • Islamolatina-La percepcion del Islam en la Europa latina (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) • TransLatin (Huygens Institute ING Amsterdam) • Jewish Studies in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Open University of Israel) • Arabic Language Networks from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean (Durham University, UK) • Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (University of Kent) • Ludwig Boltzmann Institut für Neulateinische Studien(Universität Innsbruck)

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Liska Vivian

Research team(s)

• Institute of Jewish Studies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

As a Fulbright researcher, I will analyze the Flemish emphasis on samenleven ("living together") and its significance for the Jewish communities of Antwerp. To better understand how urban Antwerp's diverse and overlapping communities (Satmar, Lubavitch, etc.) "live together" peacefully, I will conduct historical and philosophical research, and interview Antwerp's Jewish leaders and the city officials with whom they interact. My Fulbright research project asks, "What is it that makes these distinct and divided Jewish communities into 'the' Jewish community of Antwerp?" and "Who gets to say 'we' in Antwerp?" In studying both what connects Antwerp's Jews (1) to one another and (2) to their city, my research will contribute to scholarship on community formation and cultural integration in other urban centers in and outside of Belgium. By centering my research on how Antwerp's Jews live together remarkably well despite their heterogeneity, I hope to better understand if there is a distinctly Jewish relationship to samenleven and how it might inform community policy (and shape policy outcomes). From September to December 2022, my focus will be on developing a micro-history and conducting place-based research to contextualize what "we" means in Antwerp. From January to February 2023, I will sketch the Jewish relationship to this "we" and samenleven by using phenomenological methods. I will then conduct my interviews. My dissertation will then develop these empirical and qualitative findings into a study of the importance of samenleven for 20th and 21st century continental thought and history.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Liska Vivian

Research team(s)

• Institute of Jewish Studies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

I am proposing to conduct research and produce a dissertation chapter on elegy in the late-work of the twentieth century German-language poet, Paul Celan, while at the Institute of Jewish Studies in Antwerp, Belgium. The Institute itself will provide necessary support for the project in terms of bibliographic and archival materials, as well as academic mentorship by Celan scholar and Institute director, Professor Vivian Liska. Working with other Ph.D. candidates in residence, I plan to workshop my ideas and enhance my professional network of up-and-coming Jewish Studies scholars. Additionally I will work with undergraduates in a tutorial on post-1945 poetry. The Institute's central location in Europe is critical for the pan- European field of Celan Studies, providing easy access to conferences in honor of the 50 year anniversary of the poet's death during the proposed research period. The Institute is also within two hours travel of both of the major Paul Celan archives, in Paris, France, and in Marbach, Germany. Through my time at the Institute, I hope to produce a work of scholarship that enhances both the study of this important literary figure as well as the study of elegy and the literary representation of loss more broadly.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Liska Vivian

Research team(s)

• Institute of Jewish Studies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Over the past three decades, the study of Holocaust literature has become an academic sub-discipline in its own right. In view of the global proliferation of (as well as new threats to) Holocaust memory, this multilateral project addresses the cultural, sociological and biographical diversity of positions occupied by contemporary – Jewish and non-Jewish – writers engaging with the Shoah. In spatial terms, the project is organised around an East-West axis that encompasses three major (German, Russian and English) and three minor languages (Polish, Dutch and Hebrew) and six corresponding geographical areas (Germany, Russia, the US, Poland, the Low Countries and Israel). In adopting the first quarter of the 21st century as its primary time frame, the project offers an integrated comparatist framework that seeks to reconcile the time-and-place specificity of Holocaust representation and the simultaneous circulation of certain literary tropes, genres and strategies across and beyond linguistic and national borders.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Liska Vivian

Research team(s)

• Institute of Jewish Studies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This research project aims to contribute to the understanding of the representation of the German-Jewish urban experience in life writing from Breslau during the Third Reich, on a contextual and a textual level. The relation between 'Aryan' and 'Jew' in the Third Reich was structured in, and through, space. Breslau's urban space is therefore neither simply a negative constraint nor merely a passive surface onto which Nazi anti-Semitism in the city is mapped. As will be shown in this research project, spatial form and spatial strategy were an active element of segregation and destruction. Urban space should therefore be regarded as more than a social given, it is, within the context of persecution, a narrative construction in Jewish writing that incites to imaginative figurations of alternative, resisting spaces. Thus, one needs to take into account that mental processes are constructed through space, which is articulated in written and spoken language. Accordingly, informed by insights from geocriticism (Westphal), the literary analysis of the representation of German-Jewish heterotopias will shed new light on the experience of racialized segregation and the textual specificity of Jewish life writing during National Socialism.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Liska Vivian
• Co-promoter: Sepp Arvi
• Fellow: Augustyns Annelies

Research team(s)

• Institute of Jewish Studies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The Hebrew Bible, among its other functions, relates the journey of a people looking for a home. In biblical studies this concept of home is inseparable from the notion of exile. Previous scholarship has extensively researched the exilic experience, relying on socio-historical frameworks as well as literary and postmodern theory. In the majority of these studies, home is generally represented by its absence; it is considered a social category evoked by the text but ultimately existing outside of it. Building upon these insights, the current project takes a different starting point: it considers the actual home space, rather than the lack thereof. It also proposes a different approach, i.e. Text World Theory, focusing on the textual-conceptual home generated by the biblical text rather than on text-external reality. By means of a cognitive-stylistic analysis the study aims to gain insight into the biblical home space both in non-exilic and in exilic situations. Three specific aims steer the project: i) to determine the linguistic-literary characteristics of the textual home in the Hebrew Bible; ii) to analyze the modifications to this notion of home in relation to changing physical circumstances; and iii) to shed light on the role of cities in establishing a home in the text. Contributions will be twofold: i) the project offers insight into 'textual homes' and 'texts as homes' in the Hebrew Bible; and ii) it develops a Text World Theory framework tailored to the biblical text.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Liska Vivian
• Fellow: Vermeulen Karolien

Research team(s)

• Institute of Jewish Studies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

One of the most debated topics in the philosophy of literature is the relation between literature and truth. Philosophers have articulated this relationship in many different ways, but it is remarkable that they have often investigated this relation starting from the realist novel of the 19th century. Yet the novel has undergone an important transformation with the rise of the modernist novel. This means that many of the philosophical theories on the novel's truth-value are unable to give an account of the meaning of literary artworks of the 20th or 21st century. Therefore, this project aims to investigate the novel's truth-value starting from the modernist novel. In particular, this project focuses on hermeneutic and deconstructionist theories on (modernist) literature and its relation to truth.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Cools Arthur
• Co-promoter: Liska Vivian
• Fellow: Verheyen Leen

Research team(s)

• Center for European Philosophy

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This research project aims to contribute to the understanding of the representation of the German-Jewish urban experience in life writing from Breslau during the Third Reich, on a contextual and a textual level. The relation between 'Aryan' and 'Jew' in the Third Reich was structured in, and through, space. Breslau's urban space is therefore neither simply a negative constraint nor merely a passive surface onto which Nazi anti-Semitism in the city is mapped. As will be shown in this research project, spatial form and spatial strategy were an active element of segregation and destruction. Urban space should therefore be regarded as more than a social given, it is, within the context of persecution, a narrative construction in Jewish writing that incites to imaginative figurations of alternative, resisting spaces. Thus, one needs to take into account that mental processes are constructed through space, which is articulated in written and spoken language. Accordingly, informed by insights from geocriticism (Westphal), the literary analysis of the representation of German-Jewish heterotopias will shed new light on the experience of racialized segregation and the textual specificity of Jewish life writing during National Socialism.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Sepp Arvi
• Co-promoter: Liska Vivian
• Fellow: Augustyns Annelies

Research team(s)

• Institute of Jewish Studies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This research project aims to contribute to the understanding of the representation of the German-Jewish urban experience in life writing from Breslau during the Third Reich, on a contextual and a textual level. The relation between 'Aryan' and 'Jew' in the Third Reich was structured in, and through, space. Breslau's urban space is therefore neither simply a negative constraint nor merely a passive surface onto which Nazi anti-Semitism in the city is mapped. As will be shown in this research project, spatial form and spatial strategy were an active element of segregation and destruction. Urban space should therefore be regarded as more than a social given:. In the context of the Holocaust, one needs to take into account that mental processes are constructed through space, which is articulated in written and spoken language. Accordingly, the analysis of the representation of German-Jewish heterotopia will shed new light on the experience of racialized segregation and the textual specificity of Jewish life writing during National Socialism.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Sepp Arvi
• Co-promoter: Liska Vivian
• Fellow: Augustyns Annelies

Research team(s)

• Institute of Jewish Studies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

One of the most debated topics in the philosophy of literature is the relation between literature and truth. Philosophers have articulated this relationship in many different ways, but it is remarkable that they have often investigated this relation starting from the realist novel of the 19th century. Yet the novel has undergone an important transformation with the rise of the modernist novel. This means that many of the philosophical theories on the novel's truth-value are unable to give an account of the meaning of literary artworks of the 20th or 21st century. Therefore, this project aims to investigate the novel's truth-value starting from the modernist novel. In particular, this project focuses on hermeneutic and deconstructionist theories on (modernist) literature and its relation to truth.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Cools Arthur
• Co-promoter: Liska Vivian
• Fellow: Verheyen Leen

Research team(s)

• Center for European Philosophy

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Previous studies, especially critical-spatial analyses, have drawn attention to the construction of space in the Hebrew Bible. They have shown that space is more than its material and static appearance, but as much a functional construct. The current project aims to gain insight into a particular aspect of a particular type of ancient space: the stylistic construction of the city of the enemy in the Hebrew Bible. Biblical passages discussing Babel and Nineveh, selected as prototypical enemies, will form the focus of a cognitive-stylistic analysis. The project has three specific goals: i) to analyze how language contributes to the concept of space, here the urban space of the enemy; ii) to determine whether there are systematically recurring lexical and/or stylistic patterns within this concept; iii) to analyze the relationship between the space of the enemy and the friendly space of Jerusalem. The contribution of the project is threefold: i) it offers insight into the ancient concept of the city of the enemy in the Hebrew Bible; ii) it enhances the understanding of the linguistic construction of this space and fills a methodological gap; iii) it offers a new way of researching the Hebrew Bible, relying on the style of its textual material.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Liska Vivian
• Fellow: Vermeulen Karolien

Research team(s)

• Institute of Jewish Studies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Critical political theology is a discipline that develops political theory based on religious ideas and vice versa. There is a great deal of work being done on critical political theology from a Christian perspective, but very little from a Jewish one. My project aims at helping to create such a field of Jewish political theology that has relevance for current philosophical debates on religion and politics. The first step in this process is retrieving und uncovering critical political theologies that were already present in Jewish thought, but have remained unrecognized.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Liska Vivian
• Co-promoter: Cools Arthur
• Fellow: Baert Dennis

Research team(s)

• Institute of Jewish Studies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This research project intends to give a comprehensive account of Blanchot's relation to Kafka. Its main goal is to gain in-depth insight into the role and significance of Kafka's work in Blanchot's own fictional writings, literary theory and analyses of contemporary culture.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Cools Arthur
• Co-promoter: Liska Vivian

Research team(s)

• Center for European Philosophy

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. German-Jewish Thought and its Aftermath. A Tenuous Legacy A synopsis of the book References to the Jewish tradition play a crucial role in the conceptualization of modernity by major thinkers of the past century. My book traces the changing form, fate, and function of several key concepts of this tradition such as Exile, Remembrance, Redemption, Law and Tradition itself – in three different periods: modernism, postmodernism in its deconstructive variant, and the current period that begins at the turn of the twenty-first century. Aspects of the Jewish tradition invoked in the works of early twentieth century thinkers and writers profoundly influence their conceptualization of modernity. This influence initially takes the form of a complex and ambivalent questioning of the Enlightenment, a critique that is neither regressive or conservative nor progressive, but that generates alternative ideas of the modern subject in its apprehension of itself, of the other, of history, of the transcendent and,last but not least, of tradition itself. The postmodernist thinkers constituting the second phase of my study still draw heavily on the Jewish dimension of their modernist predecessors. More recently, however, their views have been challenged or dismissed from various positions during the third phase, which is sometimes designated as "post-theory" but does not, as yet, have a consensual appellation. The modernist authors and thinkers I consider – Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem, Paul Celan and others – constitute the group of German-Jewish proponents of a Jewish modernity designated by Stephane Moses as "critical modernity" in opposition to a "normative modernity". The correlations between the Jewish tradition and modernity established and developed in the writings by these German-Jewish authors were taken up in diverse ways in the poststructuralist context during the decades from the nineteen seventies to the nineties. Here I refer to both Jewish and non-Jewish, predominantly French thinkers such as Emmanuel Lévinas, Maurice Blanchot, Jean-François Lyotard, and Jacques Derrida. By the turn of the twenty-first century, however, a number of influential thinkers such as Giorgio Agamben, Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou all claim to generate a new mode of thinking that differs from the approaches of both their modernist and their postmodernist precursors. Simultaneously, thinkers and scholars of Jewish Studies are distancing themselves from the modernist German-Jewish thinkers and criticize what they conside to be their overly assimilated, Westernized and Eurocentric views As a result of all these developments, the encounter of the Jewish tradition and European modernity that marked the first generation of thinkers and was still present in the second, risks getting lost. In my book I will explore these current developments and the challenge they pose to the understanding of modernity developed from Kafka's generation through Derrida's.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Liska Vivian

Research team(s)

• Institute of Jewish Studies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

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

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Liska Vivian

Research team(s)

• Institute of Jewish Studies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Recently, a large number of studies have been devoted to the influence of Martin Heidegger's thought on his Jewish students, given his brief allegiance to national-socialism. Most of these studies however seem to neglect the importance of a phenomenon that he himself has pointed out as being an important ground on which he based his decision to support this political movement, i.e. the emergence of modern technics. This research will therefore try to establish that the philosophical writings of some of the most prominent of these students -Hannah Arendt, Günther Anders, Herbert Marcuse, and Hans Jonas- should be understood as a critical interpretation and re-appropriation of Heidegger's early writings on the division between technique and technology.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Liska Vivian
• Co-promoter: Cools Arthur
• Fellow: Van Camp Nathan

Research team(s)

• Institute of Jewish Studies

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: Liska Vivian

Research team(s)

• Institute of Jewish Studies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This interdisciplinary research project takes its cue from the paradoxical reception of Kafka's work in philosophy and literary criticism. While the latter, though bent on the particularities of Kafka's writing, mostly emphasizes the universal meaning of his work, the former, traditionally concerned with universals, refers to Kafka's work as a means of illustrating an experience of singularity. Taking this paradox as a starting point, the project aims at revealing the discrepancies between the literary object and its accompanying discourses. More specifically, it plans to give renewed attention to the ways in which the literary dimension of Kafka's work relates the singular and the universal, a characteristic that has been neglected both in philosophical references to Kafka attempting to recover the singular in conceptual terms, and in literary criticism's tendency to regard his work as an expression of a universal condition humaine. The research project will pursue this goal through an analysis of key 20th-century philosophical works that have interrogated Kafka's work. This study will evaluate the philosophical reception of Kafka's work against the backdrop of analyses of the nature of literary language, the peculiarities of the narrative organization of literary discourse and the theme of modernity in his work.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Liska Vivian
• Co-promoter: Cools Arthur

Research team(s)

• Institute of Jewish Studies

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: Liska Vivian

Research team(s)

• Institute of Jewish Studies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Recently, a large number of studies have been devoted to the influence of Martin Heidegger's thought on his Jewish students, given his brief allegiance to national-socialism. Most of these studies however seem to neglect the importance of a phenomenon that he himself has pointed out as being an important ground on which he based his decision to support this political movement, i.e. the emergence of modern technics. This research will therefore try to establish that the philosophical writings of some of the most prominent of these students -Hannah Arendt, Günther Anders, Herbert Marcuse, and Hans Jonas- should be understood as a critical interpretation and re-appropriation of Heidegger's early writings on the division between technique and technology.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Liska Vivian
• Fellow: Van Camp Nathan

Research team(s)

• Institute of Jewish Studies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The purpose of this Chair is to promote the study of the History of Judaism and Hebraism from the perspective of the Jewish-Christian dialogue, leading to a better understanding of the impact of this tradition on contemporary European culture and of its contribution to the interreligious dialogue.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Liska Vivian

Research team(s)

• Institute of Jewish Studies

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Technology is omnipresent in our society, not only through the quantitative dissemination of devices and machines, but also and mainly through the qualitative change our way of thinking and acting is subject to. Although this technicisation of society is mainly a modern phenomenon, we can find both in Plato and Aristotle many references to techné. Through the neoplatonic and neoaristotelian tradition, and mainly through Heidegger's revisiting of this theme, the conceptual framework of this Greek view on techné continues to influence contemporary philosophy of technology. This dualist heritage makes that modern and contemporary interpretations often view technology as a phenomenon which is external to man and culture. This research project intends to to develop an alternative view on technology through Jewish thought which could prove especially fruitful to think the developments in contemporary technology.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Liska Vivian
• Fellow: Van Camp Nathan

Research team(s)

• Institute of Jewish Studies

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

In my research project I would like to suggest a more complex notion of the relation between film and modernity than is usually assumed. Most accounts of this relation are based on the `modernity thesis' (David Bordwell's term), which states that film is like modernity, a part of modernity as well as a consequence of modernity. Like modernism - the aesthetic response to modernity - that presented itself as the embodiment of the `new' and a radical break with the past, film was primarily regarded in terms of innovation and rejection of the old world. In the course of turning away from earlier art forms modernism rejected and repressed sentimentalism, one of the dominant and influential artistic expressions of the nineteenth century. In the field of literature recent research has uncovered the mechanisms of this rejection and has unearthed authors, works and literary modes that carry important traces of the sentimentalist tradition while being at the same time fully 'modern.' In a groundbreaking study Suzanne Clark has fruitfully explored the marginalized workings of sentimentalism in the work of female authors and, in coining the deliberate oxymoron 'sentimental modernism', has successfully widened the canon and the concept of modernism. I want to show that the concept of a 'sentimental modernism' is even more relevant for film than it is for literature, since film inherently appeals to mass audiences and plays more directly and openly on emotive responses and an affective impact than the written word. The tension between modernism and sentimentalism in early cinema thereby constitutes a major dimension of the `vexed dialogue' between high modernism and avant-garde cultures on the one hand and the popular medium of film on the other. Early American films scripted by women are a particularly striking case in point. The remnants of American sentimentalism, which had given women artists a voice, albeit within the boundaries of suitable topics, traditional forms and from a restricted (domestic) sphere, manifest themselves not only in literature but also in film. This is not entirely surprising, since the writing women of Hollywood (responsible for half of the films produced between 1915-1930) can be considered as either having been recruited from the descendants of Hawthorne's `scribbling women' or at least as having been influenced by them. Thus women screenwriters ' also looking to give audiences what they wanted - turned to sentimental, popular, melodramatic (sensational, affecting) and familiar short stories, novels and plays for adaptations. When writing their own original material they also tended to turn to crowd-pleasing, inclusive and `friendly' narratives while at the same time displaying fundamentally modernist features such as modes and techniques of production, a fascination with modern technologies and subjects (WWI, emergence of flappers, capitalism), as well as formal modes of montage and dissolves and modern, mostly urban settings. My paper will explore this interaction between modernism and sentimentalism and argue for the importance of a 'sentimental modernism' for a better understanding of classical Hollywood cinema. I will illustrate my analysis with selected films by screenwriter Frances Marion, one of Hollywood's best-paid and highly successful professional women screenwriters, whose work is paradigmatic for such an alternative approach to modernist film.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Liska Vivian
• Fellow: Brouwers Anke

Research team(s)

• Institute of Jewish Studies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Liska Vivian
• Fellow: Van Camp Nathan

Research team(s)

• Institute of Jewish Studies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Liska Vivian
• Fellow: Vermeulen Karolien

Research team(s)

• Institute of Jewish Studies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Purpose of the research project is an analytic study of the relationship between on the one hand the compositional strategies in the free-atonal works by Arnold Schönberg, and on the other hand the characteristics of the affiliated German poetry. By means of a thorough analysis of both the musical score and the poems (form, structure, content) set to music, it will be investigated to what extent certain aspects of the contemporary poetry may have given direction to the musical composition.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Liska Vivian
• Co-promoter: Mortelmans Tanja

Research team(s)

• Institute of Jewish Studies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

A study of the theological and ethical aspects of the philosophical work of Walter benjamin, notably his theory of Eingedenken (commemoration, mourning). Prof. Hanssen will relate Benjamin's work to that of other ethical thinkers (Kierkegaard, Buber and Levinas) and she will investigate to what extent Benjamin's motif of Eingedenken, developed during his exile in Paris, was taken over in the theories of the Gennan sociologist Juergen Habermas and the theologian J. B. Metz.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Liska Vivian

Research team(s)

• Institute of Jewish Studies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project analyzes the characteristics, functions and effects of the child's perspective in Holocaust literature. It is neither noncommittal nor coincidental that a large number of texts about the Holocaust chooses this narratological strategy. The child, associated with innocence, ignorance and vulnerability, contrasts maximally with the extreme; calculated violence of the Holocaust.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Liska Vivian
• Fellow: Vloeberghs Katrien

Research team(s)

• Institute of Jewish Studies

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

In my research project I would like to suggest a more complex notion of the relation between film and modernity than is usually assumed. Most accounts of this relation are based on the `modernity thesis' (David Bordwell's term), which states that film is like modernity, a part of modernity as well as a consequence of modernity. Like modernism - the aesthetic response to modernity - that presented itself as the embodiment of the `new' and a radical break with the past, film was primarily regarded in terms of innovation and rejection of the old world. In the course of turning away from earlier art forms modernism rejected and repressed sentimentalism, one of the dominant and influential artistic expressions of the nineteenth century. In the field of literature recent research has uncovered the mechanisms of this rejection and has unearthed authors, works and literary modes that carry important traces of the sentimentalist tradition while being at the same time fully 'modern.' In a groundbreaking study Suzanne Clark has fruitfully explored the marginalized workings of sentimentalism in the work of female authors and, in coining the deliberate oxymoron 'sentimental modernism', has successfully widened the canon and the concept of modernism. I want to show that the concept of a 'sentimental modernism' is even more relevant for film than it is for literature, since film inherently appeals to mass audiences and plays more directly and openly on emotive responses and an affective impact than the written word. The tension between modernism and sentimentalism in early cinema thereby constitutes a major dimension of the `vexed dialogue' between high modernism and avant-garde cultures on the one hand and the popular medium of film on the other. Early American films scripted by women are a particularly striking case in point. The remnants of American sentimentalism, which had given women artists a voice, albeit within the boundaries of suitable topics, traditional forms and from a restricted (domestic) sphere, manifest themselves not only in literature but also in film. This is not entirely surprising, since the writing women of Hollywood (responsible for half of the films produced between 1915-1930) can be considered as either having been recruited from the descendants of Hawthorne's `scribbling women' or at least as having been influenced by them. Thus women screenwriters ' also looking to give audiences what they wanted - turned to sentimental, popular, melodramatic (sensational, affecting) and familiar short stories, novels and plays for adaptations. When writing their own original material they also tended to turn to crowd-pleasing, inclusive and `friendly' narratives while at the same time displaying fundamentally modernist features such as modes and techniques of production, a fascination with modern technologies and subjects (WWI, emergence of flappers, capitalism), as well as formal modes of montage and dissolves and modern, mostly urban settings. My paper will explore this interaction between modernism and sentimentalism and argue for the importance of a 'sentimental modernism' for a better understanding of classical Hollywood cinema. I will illustrate my analysis with selected films by screenwriter Frances Marion, one of Hollywood's best-paid and highly successful professional women screenwriters, whose work is paradigmatic for such an alternative approach to modernist film.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Liska Vivian
• Fellow: Brouwers Anke

Research team(s)

• Institute of Jewish Studies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

In my research project I would like to suggest a more complex notion of the relation between film and modernity than is usually assumed. Most accounts of this relation are based on the `modernity thesis' (David Bordwell's term), which states that film is like modernity, a part of modernity as well as a consequence of modernity. Like modernism - the aesthetic response to modernity - that presented itself as the embodiment of the `new' and a radical break with the past, film was primarily regarded in terms of innovation and rejection of the old world. In the course of turning away from earlier art forms modernism rejected and repressed sentimentalism, one of the dominant and influential artistic expressions of the nineteenth century. In the field of literature recent research has uncovered the mechanisms of this rejection and has unearthed authors, works and literary modes that carry important traces of the sentimentalist tradition while being at the same time fully 'modern.' In a groundbreaking study Suzanne Clark has fruitfully explored the marginalized workings of sentimentalism in the work of female authors and, in coining the deliberate oxymoron 'sentimental modernism', has successfully widened the canon and the concept of modernism. I want to show that the concept of a 'sentimental modernism' is even more relevant for film than it is for literature, since film inherently appeals to mass audiences and plays more directly and openly on emotive responses and an affective impact than the written word. The tension between modernism and sentimentalism in early cinema thereby constitutes a major dimension of the `vexed dialogue' between high modernism and avant-garde cultures on the one hand and the popular medium of film on the other. Early American films scripted by women are a particularly striking case in point. The remnants of American sentimentalism, which had given women artists a voice, albeit within the boundaries of suitable topics, traditional forms and from a restricted (domestic) sphere, manifest themselves not only in literature but also in film. This is not entirely surprising, since the writing women of Hollywood (responsible for half of the films produced between 1915-1930) can be considered as either having been recruited from the descendants of Hawthorne's `scribbling women' or at least as having been influenced by them. Thus women screenwriters ' also looking to give audiences what they wanted - turned to sentimental, popular, melodramatic (sensational, affecting) and familiar short stories, novels and plays for adaptations. When writing their own original material they also tended to turn to crowd-pleasing, inclusive and `friendly' narratives while at the same time displaying fundamentally modernist features such as modes and techniques of production, a fascination with modern technologies and subjects (WWI, emergence of flappers, capitalism), as well as formal modes of montage and dissolves and modern, mostly urban settings. My paper will explore this interaction between modernism and sentimentalism and argue for the importance of a 'sentimental modernism' for a better understanding of classical Hollywood cinema. I will illustrate my analysis with selected films by screenwriter Frances Marion, one of Hollywood's best-paid and highly successful professional women screenwriters, whose work is paradigmatic for such an alternative approach to modernist film.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Liska Vivian
• Fellow: Brouwers Anke

Research team(s)

• Institute of Jewish Studies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Liska Vivian
• Fellow: Seeldrayers Parcifal

Research team(s)

• Institute of Jewish Studies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The central focus of this study is an investigation of the image of `Flanders' in Nazi-Germany. This image will be analysed from different perspectives on the basis of a varied corpus of books and magazines published in German between 1933 and 1945: with respect to contents (recurrent themes and motifs, synchronic incon-sistencies and diachronic changes), with respect to discursive strategies (and their use of imagery, genres, narratological structures, pragmatic strategies, intertextual references') and with respect to the specificity of fiction in the construction of this image. The results will be put into perspective by embedding the image building process in its historical and political-ideological framework.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Liska Vivian

Research team(s)

• Institute of Jewish Studies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Liska Vivian
• Fellow: Vloeberghs Katrien

Research team(s)

• Institute of Jewish Studies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Liska Vivian
• Fellow: Haagdorens Liesbeth

Research team(s)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Liska Vivian
• Fellow: Van linthout Ine

Research team(s)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Liska Vivian
• Fellow: Vloeberghs Katrien

Research team(s)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

In order to explore literary modernism as period and poetics, as concept and canon from a viewpoint which does justice to the modernist heritage and simultaneously renews its relevance in our contemporary context, the project analyses the reciprocal impact between literary theories (formalism, oststructuralism, gender studies etc.) and modernist poetics.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Liska Vivian

Research team(s)

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project