UCL Dutch

UCL Dutch aims to reward academic excellence among new students of its postgraduate programme by offering a study expense bursary for new students starting the MA in Dutch Studies in September 2012. The bursary covers up to £600 towards study expenses like books, research travel and other research related expenses.

When Jacques Presser’s Ondergang (1965, in English: Ashes in the Wind : The Destruction of Dutch Jewry, 1968) first appeared, twenty years after the end of World War II, the book hit Dutch society like a bomb. What people knew in general but had forgotten, passed over in silence or repressed during two decades, was here described in every gruesome detail: the systematic humiliation, isolation, despoliation, and extermination of Dutch Jewry.

UCL Dutch has been recognised as an Examinations Centre for the Certificaat Nederlands als Vreemde Taal, the official, international exam of Dutch as a Foreign Language by the Nederlandse Taalunie (Dutch Language Union, the Dutch-Flemish-Surinamese equivalent to the British Council).

After two special issues on new approaches in Netherlandic art history, for which we would like to thank Christine P. Sellin from the American Association for Netherlandic Studies (AANS) heartily for her meticulous guest-editing, this first issue of Dutch Crossing in 2012 is a ‘regular’ issue without an over-coupling theme. This is not to say that no connections could be made between the individual contributions, quite on the contrary.

A FREE FESTIVAL at: Serpentine Bar and Kitchen from 9-5pm and at the Kensington Gore Hotel from 5pm until late.

The Anglo-Netherlands Society has created these awards to recognize and reward outstanding work in the field of Dutch Studies at UK universities. The Society promotes the social, artistic, literary, educational, scientific and other non-political interests common to the UK and the Netherlands.

In the light of the important new element in REF2014 that is Impact, in the shape of the impact  statement and impact case studies, the Institute for Germanic and Romance Studies (IGRS) is proposing a regular series of workshops for colleagues in Modern Languages to come together to discuss their ideas and strategies. All colleagues in Modern Languages are welcome to attend these events, and we would also appreciate further offers, from throughout the UK, of talks/case studies to discuss at future workshops.On this occasion we welcome the following, who will speak for 15 minutes in this order, followed by discussion:

Dirk Schoenaers, Research Associate at UCL French, has won the 2011 Prize in the early career researcher category with an article on ‘The Middle Dutch Translation of Froissart’s Chronicle (c. 1450): Historiography in the Vernacular and the Ruling Elite of Holland’.

A panel discussion with Abdelkader Benali (Netherlands) and Hisham Matar (Libya) chaired by Jo Glanville (Index on Censorship)

Got a question on Dutch literature or just curious to know? On the 11th January members of the Dutch department will be holding an hour live hang out from 2–3pm on Twitter. Just follow Litro magazine (#litromagazine) on Twitter and get your questions answered and your curiosity satisfied.

The excellent employment prospects of graduates with Dutch and intercultural skills, as taught by the department (see Careers with Dutch) have been corroborated by the recent report on “Labour Market Intelligence on Languages and Intercultural Skills in Higher Education” by Sean Mulkerne & Anne Marie Graham (May 2011), commissioned by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and the University Council for Modern Languages (UCML).

Ulrich Tiedau has been appointed a UCL Knowledge Transfer and Enterprise Champion for 2012. This part-time appointment was made by the Office of the Vice-Provost (Enterprise) and is financed by the Higher Education Innovation Fund. 

The November 2011 issue of Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies focuses on Crossing Boundaries and Transforming Identities: New Perspectives in Netherlandic Studies. Guest-edited by Christine Petra Sellin from the California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, CA, it comprises of select art history papers from the fifteenth biennial Interdisciplinary Conference on Netherlandic Studies, held at UCLA in Los Angeles in June 2010.

Ulrich Tiedau (UCL Dutch) has been elected to the Executive committee of the University Council for Modern Languages (UCML), as representative for Area Studies.

Etty is a touring one-woman theatrical play based on the diaries and letters of Etty Hillesum, adapted and performed by Susan Stein. Directed by Austin Pendleton. Using only Etty Hillesum’s words, Susan Stein’s adaptation brings us to 1943 when Etty, a young Jewish woman, is about to be deported out of Holland.

Convenors: Anne Goldgar (KCL), Ben Kaplan (UCL), Ulrich Tiedau (UCL)

The Low Countries history research seminars meet on Friday afternoons in the Institute of Historical Research at 5 pm. Please note: due to refurbishment work at the IHR, seminars this year we will meet in alternative locations (SH = Senate House: room 104 (Torrington Room), in the South Block on the 1st floor; ST = Stewart House, adjacent to Senate House, at 32 Russell Square, on the 2nd floor).

The UCL Dutch and Flemish Society welcomes everyone! Do you have a Dutch or Flemish background? Are you studying Dutch? Or are you just interested in Dutch and Flemish culture?

Abdelkader Benali, one of the Netherlands’ leading writers will be Dutch Writer in Residence 2011/12. The Writer in Residence, supported by the Nederlands Letterenfonds, will engage with students and staff in the department and actively contribute to undergraduate and postgraduate teaching.

The June 2011 issue of Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies focuses on Crossing Boundaries and Transforming Identities: New Perspectives in Netherlandic Studies. Guest-edited by Christine Petra Sellin from the California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, CA, it comprises of select art history papers from the fifteenth biennial Interdisciplinary Conference on Netherlandic Studies, held at UCLA in Los Angeles in June 2010.

Visit us on the UCL Open Day on 30 June 2011.

The revised lists of the European Science Foundation’s European Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH) have been published and Dutch Crossing : Journal of Low Countries Studies, edited at the UCL Dutch department, has made the leap into the highest category INT1 "International publications with high visibility and influence among researchers in the various research domains in different countries, regularly cited all over the world." on the list for history. Lists for art history and other subjects will be published later this year.

Nicholas Piercey, finishing PhD student at UCL Dutch, will give a lecture in the Institute for Historical Research's Sports and Leisure History Seminar series on:

Football Club Membership in Rotterdam in 1914: Walking through the Historic City in Search of the Individual

23 May 2011, 5.15pm in the IHR Pollard Room. Missed it? You can listen to the podcast. 

When four centuries and three decades ago the Low Countries formally declared their independence from the Habsburg monarchy, there can be little doubt about the central role played by William of Nassau, Prince of Orange (1533–1584), in the English-speaking world sometimes better known as William the Silent. His Apology (1580) paved the way for the following Act of Abjuration (1581), declaring the forfeiture of Philip II’s right to rule over the Low Countries. Similar to William’s leadership in the rebellion his and subsequently his sons Maurice’s and Frederick Henry’s, role for the forming of the Dutch nation is uncontested and visible not only in the honorary title pater patriae (‘Father of the Fatherland’) bestowed on William by his compatriots during his lifetime, but also commemorated in the national anthem of the Netherlands, the Wilhelmus, to the present day.

UCL Dutch, as part of the VirtualDutch initiative, a collaboration of UCL and the universities of Sheffield, Cambridge and Nottingham, offers tutor-supported Dutch language courses that are entirely taught over the internet.

In this workshop in the Painless Introduction series, Simon Mahony and Ulrich Tiedau will discuss the promise, potential and challenges presented by new initiatives in the construction and delivery of open educational resources (OER). 

Nicholas Piercey, completing research student in the Department of Dutch, will give a talk about Football in two Dutch Cities, 1910-1920: A personal history of a PhD. Nick’s research aims to provide a representation of the culture surrounding football in the two cities during this time, incorporating studies of the media, concepts of football-morality, town planning, education and sporting development and the individual.

He will be presenting some of the main findings of his research and reflecting on the process of researching and writing up a doctoral thesis. All welcome, including students contemplating PhD research.

Wednesday 9 February at 4pm in room 111, Foster Court

Professor Reinier Salverda, Director of the Fryske Akademy, KNAW (Frisian Academy, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science) will speak on Choosing one’s words when translating a political novel.
Research Seminar Series, UCL Dutch, 2010/11, term II

Edited by Jane Fenoulhet and Cristina Ros i Solé

For most language learners, mobility is now the starting-point rather than the end-point of language learning. Rather than learning a language in order to go abroad, learners are used to moving from country to country, from culture to culture. This volume of essays explores the different attitudes to language learning generated by globalisation and shows how the local still has an impact on the language-learning classroom. The contributors have collaborated through the Languages of the Wider World Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning based at University College London and the School of Oriental and African Studies. The essays in the book span both reflection on language learners’ shifting identities and the pedagogies of a range of less widely taught languages in which the national language has acquired fresh emphasis in the context of globalisation. How might the tension between mobility and localisation best be exploited to the benefit of language learners?

The book will be launched at 5.30pm on Thursday 20 January 2011
in room G24, Foster Court (ground floor) – UCL, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT
RSVP: c.ros@ucl.ac.uk by Monday 17 January 2011

An Evening with Joost Zwagerman, Dutch Writer in Residence at UCL 2010/11

Joost Zwagerman, the celebrated Dutch writer, columnist en TV personality will read from his work and discuss the multicultural Netherlands of today.

The third and last issue of Dutch Crossing: Journal for Low Countries Studies for 2010 has a decidedly 20th century focus. On the brink of a new decade we want to look back at the previous century with its major catastrophes that affected the Low Countries like most of Europe and the world. World War I in many respects was the ‘seminal catastrophe of the 20th century’ as George Kennan put it, the end of the ‘long’ 19th and the beginning of the ‘short’ 20th century. As in other parts of Europe this certainly also holds true for Belgium. While its northern neighbour, the Netherlands, by a combination of good fortune and careful political manoevering managed to avoid being dragged into the war, Belgium became its first and one of its main victims. The German occupation from 1914 to 1918 had not only devastated large parts of the country but also, for the first time, planted a seed of contention between parts of the Flemish movement and the Belgian nation state.

Jane Fenoulhet, Professor of Dutch Studies at UCL, will deliver her inaugural lecture on

Joost Zwagerman will be Dutch Writer in Residence at UCL in 2010/11. The Writer in Residence, supported by the Nederlands Letterenfonds, will engage with students and staff in the department and actively contribute to undergraduate and postgraduate teaching.

Students and lecturers from around the UK and Ireland will be gathering in London in November to celebrate Dutch and Flemish culture. UCL Dutch will be hosting the biennial Dutch Student Day 2010, bringing together more than 100 students and staff from the universities of Dublin, Newcastle, Sheffield, Nottingham, Cambridge and London for two days of culture, workshops and fun on 10–11 November 2010.

Building on the success of the OER Low Countries history project, Ulrich Tiedau, Lecturer at UCL Dutch and Associate Director of the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities, has been award a £46,000 research grant in phase 2 of JISC’s and the Higher Academy’s Open Educational Resources programme (UKOER).

The latest issue of Dutch Crossing, the international peer-reviewed research journal on interdisciplinary Low Countries Studies, edited at UCL Dutch, has just been published (vol. 34, no. 2, July 2010).

Together with the Scandinavian department, UCL Dutch has produced a series of videos on interactive learning, the student experience, and the Year Abroad in both departments. Find out what it’s like to study an ‘alternative language’ at UCL and follow us on YouTube EDU or iTunesU.

On June 11th, Professor Fenoulhet will be appointed a member of the Raad voor de Nederlandse Taal en Letteren (Council for Dutch Language and Literature), the body which provides policy advice to the Committee of Ministers from the Netherlands and Flanders overseeing the Dutch Language Union. The Language Union is an intergovernmental body responsible for matters concerning the Dutch language and culture at home in the Low Countries and around the world.

Professor Fenoulhet was appointed Officier in de Orde van Oranje-Nassau in Queen Beatrix’ birthday honours list published on April 30th. The ceremony took place at the Residence of Ambassador Waldeck, and Professor Fenoulhet was guest of honour at the Koninginnedag (Queen’s Birthday) reception held in the Great Hall at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea.

The latest issue of Dutch Crossing, the international peer-reviewed research journal on interdisciplinary Low Countries Studies, edited at UCL Dutch, has just been published (vol. 34, no. 1, March 2010). This volume of Dutch Crossing is a special issue, guest-edited by Esther Mijers from the University of Reading and showcasing some of the exciting postgraduate research that is currently being undertaken in the field of early modern Dutch history. Four of the five articles are based on papers delivered at the second annual Early Modern Studies Conference at the University of Reading; the fifth article, by Megan Lindsay Cherry, began life as a paper at the Low Countries Seminar at the Institute for Historical Research in London. While the articles are all connected chronologically to the long seventeenth century, it is clear that the research has moved on from the traditional themes of the Dutch Golden Age.

Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies, the international peer-reviewed research journal edited by UCL Dutch, has received an honourable mention at the 2009 Journal Awards of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ). The journal, which was established 33 years ago, was recognised in the category of Phoenix Award for Significant Editorial Achievement. Journal editor Ulrich Tiedau received the prestigious award on the 125th convention of the Modern Language Association (MLA) in Philadelphia on 28 December 2009.

On 28 January it is national poetry day (nationale gedichtendag) in the Netherlands and Flanders. In order to celebrate this we would like to ask you to bring your favourite poem (possibly in a foreign language you are familiar with, this doesn't have to be Dutch) and share it with the rest of us during our next Koffie-uurtje on Monday 25/01  in Room FC111 (Dutch seminar room). Dutch Honorary Professor Reinier Salverda (director of the Fryske Akademy) will be there too and read to us in Frisian. If you are interested in looking up some Dutch poems here are some websites you could go to:

Virtual Dutch, a collaboration of four British universities that teach Dutch, aims to reward academic excellence among new students of its distance-learning programmes in Dutch Cultural Studies:

On 11 December 2009, the first English language history of the literature of the Netherlands and Flanders since the 1970s and the most substantial ever published was launched in the National Gallery, London. Written by a team of Dutch and Flemish scholars, it offers a comprehensive and authoritative account of the literature of the Dutch-speaking area from the medieval period up to the present day.

The Royal Academy of Arts hosts a landmark exhibition of the work of Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890). The focus of the exhibition is the artist’s remarkable correspondence, with over 35 original letters on display in the main galleries of Burlington House, together with around 65 paintings and 30 drawings that express the principal themes found within his letters. The exhibition will offer a unique opportunity to gain an insight into the complex mind of Vincent van Gogh.

Go Dutch!, a major new campaign to raise awareness of Dutch literature in translation has been launched with the backing of a number of UK publishers and Arts Council England. Developed by the Amsterdam-based Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature (NLPVF) and Midland Creative Projects (based in Birmingham), the initiative aims to raise the profile of individual contemporary Dutch writers and their books in the UK, as well as drawing attention to Dutch literature as a whole.

The latest issue of Dutch Crossing, the international peer-reviewed research journal on interdisciplinary Low Countries Studies, edited at UCL Dutch, has just been published (vol. 33, no. 2, October 2009).

With this first issue in a new form Dutch Crossing is entering its 33rd year of publication. We have changed publishers and used the occasion to completely overhaul the journal (for more detail see Ulrich Tiedau's editorial). One of the most fundamental developments is that Dutch Crossing from this year onwards will be available both in print and online, via IngentaConnect, one of the large journal aggregators.

The UCL Department of Dutch invites you to a lecture by novelist and academic Isabel Hoving on “The Good, the Bad, and the Wild: Social Responsibility, Theoretical Sophistication and Writerly Obsession”, Monday 16 March 2009, 5pm, followed by a reception at 6.15pm. Venue: UCL Foster Court room 124.

As part of the individual strand of JISC’s and Higher Academy’s Open Educational Resources pilot programme, Ulrich Tiedau, Lecturer at the Dutch department, has been award a £20,000 research grant. The project will turn a comprehensive survey course in Early Modern Low Countries history, from the late Middle Ages to the end of the 18th century, into a multimedia and Web 2.0 enriched OER, published on the internet and freely available for anyone. In doing so it will create an important teaching and learning resource not only for the strategically important and vulnerable subject area Dutch Studies (as part of Modern Foreign Languages, as defined by HEFCE) but also for all learners with an interest in this European neighbour region of the UK, whose early modern history was closely intertwined with that of Britain (e.g. for students of British or European history). Consequently, a special focus of the OER will be put on relations between the Low Countries and the Anglophone world.

Professor Theo Hermans was elected an Honorary Member Abroad (‘Buitenlands Erelid’) of the Royal Academy of Dutch Language and Literature (Koninklijke Academie voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde) with effect from January 2009. The Academy, which was founded in Ghent in 1886 and whose patron is the Belgian King, consists of some fifty ordinary, extraordinary and honorary members in Flanders, and twenty-five honorary members abroad. Professor Hermans is one of two such members elected from the English-speaking world.