The Study Group for Literature and Culture (Werkgroep Literatuur en Cultuur or WOLEC) offers lunch lectures in which our speakers tackle a broad range of subjects and methodologies. We host a variety of modules, from reading sessions to lectures to discussions, etc. Each year, we receive a number of guest lecturers and young researchers from the VUB and beyond.
WOLEC supports young researchers by offering them a platform to discuss their research, or an aspect thereof, with colleagues in an informal setting. We therefore organize accessible and small-scale presentation sessions throughout the academic year.
Moreover, WOLEC aims to disseminate scientific frameworks for the study of literature and to establish dialogue among young researchers through reading and discussion groups (topics include 21st-century frameworks, key notions and key texts for the study of literature). As a group of researchers, we highly value intellectual exchange; Not only with researchers within CLIC, but also with scholars affiliated to other research groups within the VUB community and by extension, with (inter)national universities.
To enrich its core scientific mission, WOLEC recently started organizing peer-coaching sessions scientific writing and workshops creative writing. In this way, we would like to offer doctoral students the chance to develop their writing skills and to approach literature from another angle.
We are delighted to keep you posted about our upcoming activities (on campus or online), to which you are warmly invited to attend. We also invite you to present your own research within one of WOLEC’s activities, depending on the format you see most fit.
Stay updated by subscribing to our newsletter and following us on social media.
UPCOMING LUNCH LECTURES (12:00 - 13:30, Room 5C03):
| 7/01/2025 12:00-13:30 5C03 | Carmijn Gerritsen (Radboud University) | "Aesthetic Experimentation and Contemporary Black British Women Writers' Negotiations of Identity and Cultural Memory" |
UPCOMING SCIENTIFIC WRITING SESSIONS:
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UPCOMING CREATIVE WRITING SESSIONS:
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PAST WOLEC SESSIONS:
| 10/12/2024 12:00-13:30 C2.07a | Charlotte Manzella (Universität Hamburg) | "Temporalities in Contemporary British Climate-Change Theatre" | |
| 5/12/2024 12:00-13:00 5C03 POSTPONED | Prof. Delphine Munos (ULiège) | "From Literal Metaphors to Self-translation: The City of Rome and the Italian language in the work of Jhumpa Lahiri" | |
| 19/11/2024 14:00-16:00 5C03 | Peer coaching session | Scientific writing | |
| 13/11/2023 13:00-14:30 C2.07a | Prof. Birgit Neumann (Heinrich-Heine-Universität) | “Negotiating the Digital in Contemporary Anglophone Novels – ‘Cure’ and ‘Poison’ for Black Collectivities?” | |
| 5/11/2023 12:00-13:30 5C03 | Prof. Pablo Gasparini (Universidade de São Paulo) | "Listening to Heterolingualism in Latin America: Hearing Scenes of the Acoustically Dissonant" | |
| 15/10/2024 12:00-13:30 5C03 | Iana Nikitenko (VUB) | "Youth Culture and Identity in Post-War German Radio Plays" | |
| 25/06/2024 12:00-13:30 5C.03 | Prof. dr. Theresah Patrine Ennin (University of Cape Coast, Ghana) | “The Life and Dea(r)th of Ghanaian Popular Fiction” | |
| 20/06/2024 12:00-13:30 5C.03 | Lise Van Acker (VUB) | “Theatre of the Extended Mind: Cognition in Contemporary Audio Drama” | |
| 11/06/2024 15:00-17:00 2C.07a | dr. Martin Schauss (University of Edinburgh) | Workshop: “Multimodal Ecopoetics & Creative-Critical Reading Practices" | |
| 11/06/2024 11:30-13:00 2C.07a | dr. Martin Schauss (University of Edinburgh) | “Intermedial Ecologies: The Resources and Energy of Ecopoetics” | |
| 23/05/2024 12:00-13:30 5C.03 | Brenda Bressan Thomé (UFSC-Brazil/VUB) | "19th-century women's travel writings in translation" | |
| 23/04/2024 12:00-13:30 2C.07a | dr. Mantra Mukim (Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow (EUTOPIA-SIF)/UMR Héritages, CYU Paris) | “Trouble in the Archive: Muktibodh's Long Poems and Risky Modernism” | |
| 25/03/2024 14:00 - 16:00 C2.07a | Peer coaching session | Scientific writing | |
| 14/03/2024 12:00-13:30 5C.03 | Tara Brusselaers (VUB) | “Putting Silence into Words: Multimodal Representations of Deafness in the Poetry of Raymond Antrobus” | |
| 27/02/2024 11:30-13:00 5C.03 | Alice Königstetter (Universität Wien, VUB) | ”Female Bodies in Neopatriarchial Spaces. Voices and Silences in Women's Fiction from Kuwait” | |
| 13/02/2024 12:00-13:30 C2.07a | Eleonore Grave (VUB) | “Posthuman Futures Landscapes: Reading Octavia E. Butler’s Pioneering Science Fiction through the Future’s Complex Temporality” | |
| 28/11/2023 | Christine Meyer (Université de Picardie) | ”Reframing Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz as a 21st-century Refugee Narrative: Burhan Qurbani’s New Film Adaptation of a Modern Classic” | |
| 23/11/2023 | Patrick McGuinness | Creative writing with Patrick McGuinness (University of Oxford) | |
| 09/11/2023 | Yanrong Wang (VUB) | ”Towards Hybridization: Postcolonial and Diasporic Identities in 21st-century Black Canadian Literature” | |
| 28/09/2023 | Introductory Session | Introduction of WOLEC for the new academic year, with WOLEC coordinators Jade Thomas and Iana Nikitenko. | |
| 06/06/2023 | Prof. Anna Kornbluh (U of Illinois Chicago) | PhD studenten en postdocs die verbonden zijn aan CLIC zullen met Prof. Kornbluh over literair formalisme in conversatie gaan. Elke student en postdoc zal een korte respons geformuleerd hebben op een specifiek hoofdstuk uit Prof. Kornbluh’s boek The Order of Forms: Realism, Formalism, and Social Space (2019). | |
| 01/06/2023 | Maria Gil Ulldemolins (UHasselt) | Creative writing: Clay Piñata - blindfolded spinning, worldly shards, and autotheoretical writing’s consequences | |
| 01/06/2023 | Ilaria Masseroni (VUB) | The reception of Jean Cocteau in the British Press | |
| 16/05/2023 | Andrew Hodgson (University of Birmingham) | New Forms of Art and Contagious Mental Illnes | |
| 09/05/2023 | Louise Benson James (UGent) | “Internal biology” in late-Victorian women’s literature | |
| 05/05/2023 | Els Moors | Creatief schrijven: workshop rond proza | |
| 28/04/2023 | Peer coaching session | scientific writing session 3 | |
| 27/04/2023 | Katrijn Van den Bossche (VUB) / Eszter Vass (Uni Konstanz) | Double Bill: Between Essay-Novel and Anti-Novel: Natasha Brown's Assembly (2021) / Blackness, identity, and trauma in seven methods of killing kylie jenner by Jasmine Lee-Jones | |
| 21/04/2023 | Mia You (Utrecht University) | Creative writing: Translanguaging Is My Love Language | |
| 19/04/2023 | Ramón Alvarado Ruiz (UASLP) | Infancia y violencia: nombrar las caras del monstruo desde la Literatura Infantil y Juvenil (LIJ) | |
| 28/03/2023 | Anja van de Pol-Tegge (VUB) | Belgische literaturen in Duitse vertaling: Culturele en historische verwevenheid van 1945 tot heden | |
| 27/03/2023 | peer coaching session | scientific writing session 2 | |
| 14/03/2023 | Caroline Levine (Cornell University) | Workshop oon Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network (2015) | |
| 17/02/2023 | Emrah Atasoy (University of Warwick) | Utopian & Dystopian Portrayals of the Future: Contemporary Türkiye | |
| 15/02/2023 | peer coaching session | scientific writing session | |
| 13/12/2022 | Timothy Sirjacobs (KUL) | 'De krachten bundelen (?): De ‘Collection bilingue’ (1972-1982), uitgegeven bij La Renaissance du Livre als intra-Belgische vertaaltransfer in de vroege fasen van de federalisering'. | |
| 29/11/2022 | Tara Brusselaers (VUB) | Multimodality in 21st-century poetry | |
| 17/11/2022 | Giacomo Toffano (VUB) | Conceptualizing hybrid-fiction in migration media content | |
| 03/11/2022 | Florian Deroo (VUB) | High Altitude: Mountain Sensations in the Interwar Travel Writing of A. den Doolaard | |
| 18/10/2022 | Camille Dasseleer (UC Louvain) | “To speak is to thread and the thread weaves the world”: The political potential of non-specific poet | |
| 30/09/2022 | Jade Thomas & Anthony Many | General infosession for the new academic year | |
| 22/06/2022 | Anthony Manu & Stefan Clappaert | Closing session creative writing for academic year 21-22 | |
| 20/05/2022 | Hans Demeyer (UCLondon) & Sven Vitse (UU) | Seminar over de hedendaagse roman met tussenkomsten van Stefan Clappaert (VUB), Jade Thomas (VUB), Helena Van Praet (UCLouvain), Florian Deroo (UGent/VUB), Dag Houdmont (ULB), Senne Schraeyen (VUB) & Hannah Cornelus (UGent). Materials here (1.41 MB) "pdf". | |
| 01/04/2022 | Senne Schraeyen (VUB) | Roger Raveel: Providing a New Vision on the Complex Rural Landscape | |
| 23/03/2022 | Katrien Vanhamel (VUB) | De Expo 58 in de kunstkritieken van Jan Walravens | |
| 24/02/2022 | Hannah Cornelus (UGent) | Ecological Interconnectivity in Contemporary French Fiction | |
| 27/01/2022 | Jade Thomas (VUB) | '(Re)Staging/Playing Slavery in the 21st-Century: A Case-Study of Jeremy O. Harris’s Slave Play (2018)' | |
| 16/12/2021 | Stefan Clappaert & Hannah Van Hove (VUB) | Creatief schrijven: oefeningen | |
| 10/12/2021 | Stefan Clappaert & Anthony Manu (VUB) | Denkkaders in de 21e-eeuwse literatuurwetenschap: Peter Stockwell - Cognitive Poetics: An Introduction (2002) | |
| 19/11/2021 | Anthony Manu (VUB) | Creatief schrijven: inleiding | |
| 17/06/2021 | Alexandra Saemmer (Paris 8) Master Class by the CLIC Lorand Chair Intermediality | Paper, Web and Stage: Cross-Medial Interactions between Database and Narrative | |
| 4/06/2021 | Bette Dam (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) | The narratives of contemporary war journalism | |
| 17/05/2021 | Laura Folica (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) Master Class by the Emile Lorand Chair in Spanish Literature | Social Networks of the Past. Mapping Hispanic and Lusophone Modernity through Literary Translation in Periodicals | |
| 10/05/2021 | Ezzahra Benlahoussine (Mohamed V University)
Irina Stanova (VUB) | City-as-Text, Text-as-City: Mestizage and Hybridity in Juan Goytisolo’s text Makbara
Containing an Epidemic: Reassessing W. S. Maugham’s The Painted Veil and Its Film Adaptations | |
| 16/04/2021 | Stefan Clappaert & Anthony Manu (VUB) | Denkkaders in de 21e-eeuwse literatuurwetenschap: leessessie Hans Demeyer & Sven Vitse - Affectieve crisis, literair herstel (2021) | |
| 19/03/2021 | Tessel Veneboer (UGent) | The queer potential of fragmentation: sexuality and identity in Kathy Acker's work | |
| 8/12/2020 | Chiara Zampieri (KUL) | Modern Etruscans | |
| 18/2/2020 | Moderator: Carolien Von Nerom (VUB) | Roundtable: Defining Narrative | |
| 18/12/2019 | Rachele Gusella (VUB) | “Every good artist makes their audience uncomfortable”: Street poetry as an expression of the political and social crisis in Western Europe | |
| 21/11/2019 | Giovanni Pietro Vitali (University College Cork/Marie Curie Research Fellow) | Last Letters from the World Wars. Analysing Texts of Conflict through a Digital Approach | |
| 15/5/2019 | Hannah Van Hove (VUB/FWO) | ‘Belonging nowhere’?: British experimental women writers and the politics of marginalisation | |
| 14/2/2019 | Mathias Meert (VUB/FWO) | Pantomime and/as Literature: Text, Theatricality, Genre | |
| 23/1/2019 | Helena Van Praet (VUB) | Materiality and Textuality in the Work of Anne Carson | |
| 18/12/2019 | Anthony Manu (VUB) | Humour in nineteenth-century lyric (H. Heine, A. de Musset, L. Eichrodt, G. Nadaud, W.S. Gilbert, P.A. De Génestet, F. HaverSchmidt and C. S. Calverley): adaptation and application of recent models for textual humour | |
| 21/11/2018 | Andrea Penso (VUB/FWO) | The Italian Reception of English Novels During the Long 18th Century: A Digital Approach | |
| 10/10/2018 | Carolien Van Nerom (VUB) | Meaningful Minimalism: Narrative Strategies in Operas by Philip Glass | |
| 13/6/2018 | Thomas Thoelen (VUB/FWO) | The ‘Techno-Logical’ Voice of Writing in Beckett’s The Unnamable | |
| 3/5/2018 | Zhuyun Song (VUB) | Chinese European literature in the theoretic field of postcolonial literature | |
| 14/2/2018 | Charles Derre & Michel De Gruijter (DBNL) | DBNL: Aspecten en functionaliteiten voor onderzoekers en docenten | |
| 4/12/2017 | Carolien Van Nerom (VUB) | Reading session: Philip Glass – from novel to minimalist opera | |
| 8/11/2017 | Janna Aerts (VUB) | Reading session: Henri Lefebvre. ‘Work and Leisure in Everyday Life’ (1958) | |
| 11/05/2017 | Stéphane Hirschi (Université de Valenciennes et du Hainaut-Cambrésis) | Chanson et intermédialité | |
| 27/04/2017 | Annelies Augustyns (Universiteit Antwerpen) | Urban Experience in the Third Reich: A Topopoetic Analysis of German-Jewish Autobiographical Literature from Breslau | |
| 01/03/2017 | Alyssa Verhees (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) | Ekfrasis voorbij: het kunstwerk als ding in het oeuvre van Stefan Hertmans | |
| 16/02/2016 | Marc Farrant (Goldsmiths, University of London) | “With so many millions of souls to count [...] what does it matter if they miss one?”: The Word of God in Coetzee’s Jesus Novels | |
| 16/01/2016 | Atinati Mamatsashvili (Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV)/Staatsuniversiteit Ilia Tbilisi) | Déconstruction de l’imaginaire antisémite : Klee, Heartfield, Beucler, Thomas
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| 08/12/2016 | Audrey De Landtsheer and Ellen Voets (VUB) | Presentation of Master Theses: ‘Evolution of the Portrayal of Women in Rewritings of Charles Perrault’s “Bluebeard”’ and ‘Differences and similarities in the portrayal of women in fairy tales written by female authors across the ages’ | |
| 24/11/2016 | Julio Monteiro (University of Brasília) | Literature, History, Memory: The Historical Novel in Suriname | |
| 04/11/2016 | Jan Vanvelk (KU Leuven) | The Animal, the Alien, the Machine: The Rhetoric of Humanity in H .G Wells | |
| 14/04/2016 | Mareike Sera (Humboldt Universität Berlin) | Next to nothing. Exhaustion and abundance in Jan Švankmajer's The Fall of the House of Usher (1980) and the writing of Henri Michaux | |
| 15/03/2016 | Bart Vervaeck (KU Leuven) | Een greep op het ongrijpbare. Over unnatural narratology | |
| 03/03/2016 | Douglas Atkinson (VUB) | De rol van stilistische en conceptuele negativiteit in het werk van Beckett | |
| 14/01/2016 | Bram Lambrecht (KU Leuven) | Ik, jij, wij. De morele exemplariteit van Alice Nahons poëzie | |
| 10/12/2015 | Claus Peter Neumann (Universidad de Zaragoza) | Loving the Goat: Edward Albee’s The Goat; or, Who is Sylvia as representative American tragedy | |
| 19/11/2015 | David Martens (KULeuven / MDNR) | Autoportrait de l'écrivain en vis-à-vis. L'entretien dans les collections de monographies de poche illustrées "Qui êtes-vous?" (La Manufacture) et "Les Contemporains" (Le Seuil) | |
| 29/10/2015 | François Staring (VUB) | Lezen hoe luisteraars verbeelden: associatieve beschrijving in de muziekroman van de twintigste eeuw | |
| 06/10/2015 | Birgit Neumann (Universität Düsseldorf) | Postcolonial Ekphrasis and Counter-Visions in Derek Walcott’s Tiepolo’s Hound – Contact Zones, Contests and Translations | |
| 03/06/2015 | Lesley Penné (VUB) | Grenslandschap in een land zonder grenzen - Heimat in de literatuur van de Duitstalige Gemeenschap | |
| 21/04/2015 | Janine Hauthal (VUB) | Fictions of Europe: Transnational Discourses in Contemporary British Literature | |
| 27/03/2015 | Nele Wynants (ULB/UA) | Philosophical Toys: Optical illusion at Play in Theatre and Performance | |
| 19/02/2015 | Audrey Garcia (Université Montpellier 3, RIRRA21) | Posture(s) transmédiale(s) au prisme du cas Cocteau | |
| 27/01/2015 | Anneleen Van Hertbruggen (UA) | Het nationaalsocialisme als politieke religie. Religieus taalgebruik in nazi-propagandapoëzie | |
| 28/12/2014 | Sophie Zimmer (Leo Baeck Institute London) | Jewish Topographies in post-1989 Berlin | |
| 27/11/2014 | Lieselot De Taeye (VUB/FWO) | Experimenteel realisme: documentaire aspecten in het Nederlandse en Vlaamse proza van de jaren '60 en '70 | |
| 22/4/2014 | Vik Doyen (KU Leuven) | Close reading of genetische tekstkritiek? Hoe bestudeer je het literaire werk van Malcolm Lowry? | |
| 17/3/2014 | Kila van der Starre - Arno Van Vlierberghe (MaNaMa Literatuurwetenschap) | ‘Een beminnelijke prater op visite.’ Nederlandstalige poëzie op geluidsdragers; | De ritmische impuls als kloppend hart in ‘Messiah’ (C.C. Krijgelmans) en ‘Het boek ik’ (Bert Schierbeek) |
| 20/2/2014 | Guy Dugas (Université Paul Valéry – Montpellier III) | Albert Memmi et le post-colonial au Maghreb (1957-2004) | |
| 10/2/2014 | Thomas Ernst (Universität Duisburg-Essen) | Literatuur en subversie: politiek schrijven in het hedendaagse Duitstalige proza | |
| 17/1/2014 | Kristiaan Versluys (UGent) | Het trauma van 9/11 in de Amerikaanse literatuur | |
| 2/12/2013 | Bart Keunen (UGent) | Sleutelbegrippen in de narratologie: de ‘chronotoop’ | |
| 31/10/2013 | Mathias Meert (VUB/FWO) | In gesprek met Beer-Hofmann. Auteursbeeld en schrijversbezoek als paratekst en ‘Erinnerungsraum’ | |
| 14/5/2013 | Chiel Kattenbelt (Universiteit Utrecht) | ‘The Experience of Temporality in Time-Based Media’ | |
| 15/4/2013 | Claire Swyzen (VUB) | ‘Textimonies’ in Documentary Theatre: From Authentic ‘Character’ to Post-Human ‘Data Body’ | |
| 11/02/2013 | Lars Bernaerts (VUB/UGent) | Sleutelbegrippen in de narratologie: ‘bewustzijnsvoorstelling’ | |
