A piece of good news in these strange times: in two weeks’ time the exhibition “Photo-Lit: Photonovel Culture in Belgium” opens its doors at the University Library of Leuven! Continue reading
Latest Entries
Writing Manuals for the Masses: The Rise of the Literary Advice Industry from Quill to Keyboard
Writing is a solitary business, slow and extremely time-consuming, without any guarantee of success, symbolic or financial. Nevertheless, nearly everybody dreams of becoming a writer, even a published and successful one. But how to get there? Continue reading
The Way of All Flesh
Written by Prof. Jan Baetens I have no idea whether Yukio Mishima is (still) a key figure in queer and LGBTQ studies, but his lesser known 1963 novel The School of Flesh would be a good starting point of a broad and stimulating cultural analysis (original title: Nikutai no gakkō; I read the book in … Continue reading
“The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality” by Merve Emre
It is always great to read a piece of research that you would have wanted to write yourself: thoroughly researched, fascinating and funny. The Personality Brokers is such a book. The book starts off as a personal quest as well as an archival research into the origins of the famous Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a personality test frequently used by human resources and professional coaching. Continue reading
DETECt: the contribution of Digital Humanities to Cultural Studies research
DETECt is a large collaborative initiative that involves scholars, teachers, students, professionals of the creative industries, and the general public in investigating how practices of transnational production, distribution, and consumption in the field of popular culture have facilitated the appearance of engaging representations of Europe’s cultural identity.
The project researches the popular genre of crime novels and TV series, and in particular, tries to find out what explains the successful circulation of e.g. the European Noir. Continue reading
Metal Music Studies: why studying the world’s most controversial music is worth our time
During my bachelor years at KU Leuven, I was told that if I wanted to pursue my true passion, I should be ready to defend it tooth and nail. Certainly, that came true when I discovered metal music studies. What are those? And why are they worthwhile? This is a question that I, following my graduation from the Master of Cultural Studies in 2018/9, have strived to answer and defend. Continue reading
Every experience is unique, including those of children with autism
(Dutch article) Andries Haesevoets writes about the process leading up to writing his master thesis about theater and autism. A dissertation that would later win him the Passwerk Price. Continue reading
Blowing in the Books
A recent initiative by bookshop Crypte Tonique is the “blowbook”, a new type of small-sized visual narrative books that “reinvent” a special type of books launched by Dutch cartoonist Alfred Mazure during the Second World War, at a moment of great paper shortage. Yet blowbooks (and there are currently already four of them) are much more than just “little books”. Continue reading
The ART of REIMAGINING – Special Online Issue of the University Network of European Capitals of Culture
The European Capital of Culture (ECOC) initiative sheds an impressive light on the relevance of cities and their culture for the development of Europe. Every year two cities succeed with their candidacy and receive the title of being ECOC aiming at shaping an extraordinary year of the respective cultural capital as sustainable and ambitious as possible. Continue reading
Zoom Seminar: Instagram and the Politics of Streetstyle in Iran; An Overview of the Social Media Strategy Used by Fashion Designers
The seminar will focus on the rising female fashion designers in Iran and the way they take advantage of social media platforms, in particular Instagram, to push back the existing restrictions on the underground fashion activities in Iran, in order to advance their business plans by introducing their designs to a large audience, marketing, and acquiring artistic inspirations, while at the same time contributing -not always intentionally- to the anti- compulsory hijab campaigns. Continue reading
