Op donderdag 27 mei 2021 ondertekenden Rita Rahman, voorzitter van de Werkgroep Caraïbische Letteren, en... Lees verder →
Hoe Nederland Indië leest
Op vrijdag 6 juli 2018 verdedigt Lisanne Snelders haar proefschrift Hoe Nederland Indië leest aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam. Zij onderzoekt aan de hand van de literaire cultuur de veelvormigheid van de herinnering aan Nederlands-Indië en legt de politiek bloot van de herinnering aan Nederlands-Indië. Ze stelt dat de culturele herinnering aan Nederlands-Indië gecompartimentaliseerd is. Verschillende perspectieven op de geschiedenis worden nauwelijks in samenhang begrepen, maar worden als het ware in afzonderlijke compartimenten geplaatst. Snelders bestudeert de compartimentalisering aan de hand van drie auteurs: Hella S. Haasse, Tjalie Robinson en Pramoedya Ananta Toer. read on…
(Post)koloniale literatuur nu ook pluricontinentaal bekeken
door Karwan Fatah-Black
Op het omslag van Shifting the Compass; Pluricontinental Connections in Dutch Colonial and Postcolonial Literature, geredigeerd door Jeroen Dewulf, Olf Praamstra en Michiel van Kempen, prijkt een kaart met daarop prominent een windroos in beeld en een tekening van een zeventiende-eeuws scheepje. Het vaartuigje oogt weifelend; hoewel het vóór de wind lijkt te gaan, wappert een van de zeilen doelloos langs de mast. Aan de randen van de kaart zien we drie onherkenbare continenten.
read on…Lezingenmiddag over Louis Couperus
Op vrijdag 27 september 2013 houdt de Werkgroep Indische Letteren weer een lezingenmiddag in Leiden. Dit keer is de middag geheel gewijd aan Louis Couperus, naar aanleiding van zijn honderdvijftigste geboortedag.
Leiden neemt afscheid van de (post)koloniale letteren
Recently published: Shifting the compass by Jeroen Dewulf, Olf Praamstra and Michiel van Kempen
Shifting the compass: Pluricontinental Connections in Dutch Colonial and Postcolonial Literature was recently published [January 2013] by Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
On the back cover:
‘While the inclusion of a hybrid perspective to highlight local dynamics has become increasingly common in the analysis of both colonial and postcolonial literature, the dominant intercontinental connection in the analysis of this literature has remained with the (former) motherland. The lack of attention to intercontinental connections is particularly deplorable when it comes to the analysis of literature written in the language of a former colonial empire that consisted of a global network of possessions. One of these languages is Dutch. While the seventeenth-century Dutch were relative latecomers in the European colonial expansion, they were able to build a network that achieved global dimensions. With West India Company (WIC) operations in New Netherland on the American East Coast, the Caribbean, Northeastern Brazil and the African West Coast and East India Company (VOC) operations in South Africa, the Malabar, Coromandel and the Bengal coast in India, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Malacca in Malaysia, Ayutthaya in Siam (Thailand), Tainan in Formosa (Taiwan), Deshima in Japan and the islands of the Southeast Asian archipelago, the Dutch achieved dominion over global trade for more than a century. Paraphrasing Paul Gilroy, one could argue that there was not just a Dutch Atlantic in the seventeenth century but rather a Dutch Oceanus. Despite its global scale, the intercultural dynamics in the literature that developed in this transoceanic network have traditionally been studied from a Dutch and/or a local perspective but rarely from a multi-continental one. This collection of articles presents new perspectives on Dutch colonial and postcolonial literature by shifting the compass of analysis. Naturally, an important point of the compass continues to point in the direction of Amsterdam, The Hague and Leiden, be it due to the use of the Dutch language, the importance of Dutch publishers, readers, media and research centers, the memory of Dutch heritage in libraries and archives or the large number of Dutch citizens with roots in the former colonial world. Other points of the compass, however, indicate different directions. They highlight the importance of pluricontinental contacts within the Dutch global colonial network and pay specific attention to groups in the Dutch colonial and postcolonial context that have operated through a network of contacts in the diaspora such as the Afro-Caribbean, the Sephardic Jewish and the Indo-European communities.’
Authors:
Olf Praamstra is extra ordinary professor in Dutch Literature in Contact with Other Cultures and head of the Department of Dutch Studies at Leiden University.
Michiel van Kempen is a extra ordinary professor in West-Indian literature at the University of Amsterdam.
Shifting the Compass
Shifting the Compass: Pluricontinental Connections in Dutch Colonial and Postcolonial Literature, geredigeerd door Jeroen Dewulf, Olf Praamstra & Michiel van Kempen, is de bundeling van de belangrijkste teksten die werden gepresenteerd op het gelijknamige congres in het najaar van 2011 in Berkeley, California.
De vijftien hoofdstukken geven niet een traditionele indeling naar de verschillende koloniale gebieden, maar kijken juist naar de verbindingslijnen tussen de voormalige koloniën. Zo schrijft Rudolf Mrázek over Boven Digoel in Indonesië en de Jodensavanne in Suriname. Ena Jansen neemt de slavernij in Zuid-Afrika en Curaçao onder de loep. Paul Hollanders bekijkt de animus manendi, de wil om zich permanent te vestigen, van koloniale planters (onder wie Paul François Roos).
Shifting the Compass: Pluricontinental Connections in Dutch Colonial and Postcolonial Literature, edited by Jeroen Dewulf, Olf Praamstra & Michiel van Kempen.
Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013. ISBN (10): 1-4438-4228-1/ ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-4228-0
Met bijdragen van Jeroen Dewulf, Adriaan van Dis, Rudolf Mrázek, Olf Praamstra, Manjusha Kuruppath, Lodewijk Wagenaar, Adèle Nel, Phil van Schalkwyk, Luc Renders, Ena Jansen, Nicole Saffold Maskiell, Barry L. Stiefel, Britt Dams, Paul Hollanders, Michiel van Kempen en Giselle Ecury.

30 mei 2012 – Nederlands Buitengaats
Rond 1900 geloofde de Amsterdamse hoogleraar Nederlandse taal en letterkunde, Jan te Winkel, nog in het bestaan van Nederlands als wereldtaal: “Ooit had Nederland de kans gehad om een rol van betekenis te spelen in Noord-Amerika – in de tijd dat New York nog Nieuw Amsterdam heette -, maar die kans hebben wij verspeeld.
read on…The 2011 Berkeley Conference in Dutch Literature
International Conference on Colonial and Post-Colonial Connections in Dutch Literature
September 15-17, 2011
University of California, Berkeley
Dutch literature is more than just literature about a tiny piece of land at the estuary of the Rhine. From the Caribbean to Southern Africa, from Southeast Asia to Western Europe, the Dutch language forms a common bond in a literature that was and is deeply marked by intercultural connections. In recent decades, considerable attention has been given to Dutch colonial and post-colonial literature, but the importance of intercultural connections within the Dutch colonial network has been neglected. What were the cultural and literary networks between Batavia, Galle, Nagasaki, and the Cape Colony? How did the slave trade connect authors in Willemstad and Paramaribo with Gorée and Elmina at the African West Coast? How did Jewish communities link Recife in Dutch Brazil to New Amsterdam on the American East Coast? And how did Amsterdam, Leiden or The Hague function as intellectual intermediaries between the Netherlands and its colonies?
This pluricentric perspective on Dutch literature remains relevant in modern times. After the colonial era ended, the Dutch language continued to produce literature that fostered intellectual bonds between the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, South Africa, and Western Europe. These intercontinental contacts were even intensified and grew in diversity when, three centuries after the first Dutchmen ventured out into the wide world, the world came to the Netherlands. Inhabitants of the former colonies first, followed by immigrants and refugees, transformed the Dutch literary landscape to the point that an international perspective on Dutch literature has become a necessity.
Organizing Committee
• Jeroen Dewulf | University of California, Berkeley
• Michiel van Kempen | Amsterdam University, the Netherlands
• Olf Praamstra | Leiden University, the Netherlands
• Siegfried Huigen | Stellenbosch University, South Africa
Conference Program
Thursday, Sept. 15:
2-3pm: Meeting at the lobby of the Berkeley City Club Hotel. Guided tour on the UC Berkeley campus by Jeroen Dewulf, Queen Beatrix Professor.
3-5pm: Guided visit to the UC Berkeley Doe Library by James H. Spohrer, Librarian for Berkeley’s Germanic Collections, followed by a visit to the UC Berkeley Bancroft Library, where a selection of Berkeley’s rare books collection dealing with the Dutch colonial expansion will be presented by Anthony Bliss, Berkeley’s Rare Books and Literary Manuscripts Curator.
5-6pm: Coffee break at the Free Speech Café.
6-7pm: Introductory lecture by Dutch-Aruban author Giselle Ecury Steps in History, Paces in Personal Lives: A Post-Colonial Family History from Aruba at the Institute of European Studies. Introduction by Michiel van Kempen (University of Amsterdam).
Friday, Sept. 16:
Faculty Club, Seaborg Room.
9-9.30am: Inauguration of the conference by Jeroen Dewulf (University of California, Berkeley): Colonial and Post-Colonial Connections in Dutch Literature.
Presentations Section 1. Chair Michiel van Kempen.
9.30-10am: Danny L. Noorlander (Georgetown University, Washington D.C.). The Reformed Churches of the Netherlands and the Regulation of Religious Literature in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Atlantic World.
10-10.30am: Barry Stiefel (College of Charleston/Clemson University, SC). A Press of Many Tongues: The Globalization of Dutch Jewish Literature during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.
10.30-11am: Coffee Break.
Presentations Section 2. Chair Olf Praamstra.
11-11.30am: Manjusha Kuruppath (Leiden University, the Netherlands). When Vondel Looked Eastwards: A Study of Representation and Information Transfer in Joost van den Vondel’s “Zungchin” (1667).
11.30-12pm: Jacqueline Bel (Free University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands). Nationalism and Postcolonial Literature from the Dutch colonies in the Netherlands: Noto Soeroto, Albert Helman, Anton de Kom, and Cola Debrot.
12-2pm: Lunch
Presentations Section 3.
2-2.30pm: Wilma Scheffers (The Hague, the Netherlands). Everything Starts with Knowledge: A Voice of Humanity in Colonial Times. W.R. van Hoëvell 1812-1879.
2.30-3pm: Rudolf Mrázek (University of Michigan). Beneath Literature? Imprisonment, Universal Humanism, and (Post)Colonial Mimesis. The Internment Camp Boven Digoel in New Guinea.
3-3.30pm: Coffee Break.
Presentations Section 4. Chair Siegfried Huigen (Stellenbosch University, South Africa).
3.30-4pm: Michiel van Kempen (University of Amsterdam). Complexities of canonization in former colonies.
4-4.30pm: Olf Praamstra (Leiden University, the Netherlands). A World of Her Own, the Eurasian Way of Living and the Balance Between East and West in Maria Dermoût’s Novel “The Ten Thousand Things”.
4.30-5pm: Pamela Pattynama (University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands). A Transnational Perspective on Marion Bloem’s Indo-Dutch Narratives.
Special evening program in the Berkeley City Club – Drawing Room – offered by the Netherlands America University League in California.
7.30pm: Welcoming by Em. Queen Beatrix Professor Johan Snapper (University of California, Berkeley).
7.45pm: Introduction to the speaker by Queen Beatrix Professor Jeroen Dewulf (University of California, Berkeley).
8-9pm: Keynote lecture by Dutch author Adriaan van Dis: Squeezed between Rice and Potato: Personal Reflections on a Dutch (Post-)Colonial Youth.
9–10pm: Wine and Cheese Reception.
Saturday, Sept. 17
Faculty Club Seaborg Room
Presentations Section 5. Chair Olf Praamstra.
9-9.30am: Christine Levecq (Kettering University Flint, MI). The Cultural Hybridity of the Dutch-Ghanaian Minister Jacobus Capitein.
9.30-10am: Adéle Nel and Phil van Schalkwyk (North-West University, South Africa). The Early Cape Colony: Karel Schoeman and/on Relationality.
10-10.30am: Luc Renders (University of Hasselt, Belgium). Better Than the Original: Christianity in Afrikaans Literary Texts by Colored and Black South African Authors.
10.30-11am: Coffee Break
Presentations Section 6. Chair Michiel van Kempen.
11-11.30am: Ena Jansen (Free University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands). Similar Pasts Remembered: South African and Dutch Caribbean Slavery Novels.
11.30-12pm: Siegfried Huigen (Stellenbosch University, South Africa). New Batavians and Orientalist Philology: Historiography in François Valentyn’s “Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën” (1724-6).
12-12.30pm: Lodewijk Wagenaar (University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands). A Theatrical Reflection of Colonial Relations in Dutch Ceylon: The 18th-Century Reports on the Annual Apparition of Cinnamon Peelers with the Dutch Governor in Colombo.
12.30-2.30p: Lunch
Presentations Section 7. Chair Siegfried Huigen.
2.30-3pm: Britt Dams (Ghent University, Belgium). Writing to Comprehend: The Role of Intertextuality in Johannes de Laet’s “Iaerlyck Verhael” on Dutch-Brazil.
3-3.30pm: Paul Hollanders (University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands). ‘Animus Revertendi’ versus ‘Animus Manendi’. The Will to Return versus the Will to Stay in Dutch Colonial Literature Applied to Colonists in Late 18th Century Surinam.
3.30-4pm: Hilde Neus (Paramaribo, College of Education). From Belle van Zuylen to Gertrude Stein, building modern literature.
4-4.30pm: Coffee Break
Presentations Section 8. Chair Jeroen Dewulf.
4.30-5pm: Florencia Cornet (University of South Carolina). 21st Century Curaçaoan Women Writers: Re-visiting, De-stabilizing and (Re) imagining the Kurasoleña.
5-5.30pm: Nicole Saffold Maskiell (Cornell University, NY). Bequeathing Bondage: Slave Networks in the Dutch Atlantic.
6-7.30: International premiere of the film on the life of the Dutch-Surinamese writer Edgar Cairo: ‘I Will Die for Your Head’ by Cindy Kerseborn. Introduction by Michiel van Kempen and Cindy Kerseborn. Room Dwinelle 142.
7.30-9pm: Wine and Cheese Reception offered by the Dutch Consulate in San Francisco. Room Dwinelle 370.
Any information, please contact jdewulf@berkeley.edu

Afscheid Gerard Termorshuizen
Met een colloquium over het amusement in de koloniale pers en de presentatie van het tweede deel van zijn Indische persgeschiedenis neemt dr Gerard Termorshuizen morgen, vrijdag 27 mei, afscheid van het KITLV. Op het colloquium wordt ook door verschillende sprekers het Caraïbisch gebied onder de loep genomen.
Het volledige programma: klik hier.
Het amusement in de koloniale pers
Op vrijdag 27 mei 2011 vindt in Leiden de presentatie plaats van Realisten en reactionairen; De geschiedenis van de Indisch-Nederlandse pers, 1905-1942 van Gerard Termorshuizen, met medewerking van Anneke Scholte. Aan die presentatie gaat een symposium vooraf, gewijd aan het amusement in de koloniale pers (Indië, Suriname, Antillen en Zuid-Afrika). Het symposium wordt georganiseerd door het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Leiden en de Werkgroep Indisch-Nederlandse Letterkunde, Leiden. Het programma is als volgt:
10.00 uur Ontvangst met koffie
10.30 uur Opening door Peter van Zonneveld
10.40 uur Gerard Termorshuizen: De Indischgast ‘zóó belust op schandaaltjes en personaliteiten’
11.00 uur René Vos: Hoezo tropenstijl, histoire intime en personaliteiten??? Verspreiding en receptie van Indisch krantennieuws in Nederland, ca. 1865-1930
11.20 uur Peter van Zonneveld: intermezzo
11.35 uur Harry Poeze: Veel ernst en weinig verstrooiing; Een Indonesische krant in Medan uit 1933
11.55 uur Huub de Jonge: Spot en provocatie. De strijd van het tijdschrift Aliran Baroe tegen misstanden in de Arabische gemeenschap in Indië
12.15 uur Thom Hoffman (acteur): intermezzo
12.45 uur Lunch
14.00 uur Olf Praamstra: ‘Kaatje Kekkelbek’, de Zuid-Afrikaanse pers en de literatuur
14.20 uur Wim Rutgers: Dicht en ondicht in en op de pers. Hoe Curaçaose periodieken hun lezers amuseerden
14.40 uur Theepauze
15.10 uur Michiel van Kempen: De Wirtenbergsche olyphant en het schriftje van Orlando. Amusement in tweeëneenhalve eeuw Surinaamse kranten
15.30 uur Angelie Sens: ‘Zonder Tom Poes zijn we onverkoopbaar!’ Getekende beelden in de Nederlandstalige Indische/Indonesische pers, ca. 1920-1957
16.00 uur Vragen en discussie
16.30 uur Sluiting
ca. 17.00 uur Presentatie Realisten en reactionairen; De geschiedenis van de Indisch-Nederlandse pers, 1905-1942. Sprekers o.a. Gert Oostindie en Vic van de Reijt
Plaats: Kamerlingh Onnes Gebouw (Lorentzzaal), Steenschuur 25. De Steenschuur (het verlengde van het Rapenburg) ligt op een kwartier loopafstand van het station. Parkeren is o.a. mogelijk op het parkeerterrein Haagweg. Daarvandaan rijdt een gratis busje naar de Steenschuur. De loopafstand is tien minuten.
Toegangsprijs voor symposium en presentatie: 25 euro inclusief lunch, koffie, thee en borrel. U kunt zich inschrijven op het bijgevoegde formulier.
De toegang tot de presentatie (omstreeks 17.00 uur), met afsluitende borrel, is gratis. Nadere informatie: tel. 0172-416272 (e-mail: secr.indletteren@12move.nl) of tel. 071-5272372 (e-mail: sitinjak@kitlv.nl)
Colonial and Post-Colonial Connections in Dutch Literature
The 2011 Berkeley Conference on Dutch Literature
September 15-17, 2011
Call for Papers
Dutch literature is more than just literature about a tiny piece of land at the estuary of the Rhine. From the Caribbean to South-Africa, from Southeast-Asia to Western Europe, the Dutch language forms a common bond in a literature that was and is deeply marked by intercultural connections. In recent decades, considerable attention has been given to Dutch colonial and postcolonial literature, but the importance of intercultural connections within the Dutch colonial network has been neglected. What were the cultural and literary networks between Batavia, Galle, Nagasaki, and the Cape Colony? How did the slave trade connect authors in Willemstad and Paramaribo with Gorée and Elmina at the African West Coast? How did Jewish communities link Recife in Dutch Brazil to New Amsterdam on the American East Coast? And how did Amsterdam, Leiden or The Hague function as intellectual intermediaries between the Netherlands and the different colonies?
This pluricentric perspective on Dutch literature remains relevant in modern times. After the colonial era ended, the Dutch language continued to produce literature that fostered intellectual bonds between the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, South Africa, and Western Europe. These intercontinental contacts were even intensified and grew in diversity when three centuries after the first Dutchmen ventured out into the wide world, the world came to the Netherlands. Inhabitants of the former colonies first, followed by immigrants and refugees, transformed the Dutch literary landscape to the point that an international perspective on Dutch literature has become a necessity.
The 2011 Berkeley Conference in Dutch Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, intends to bring together a selection of literary scholars and cultural historians from all over the world to debate Dutch literature within the framework of intercultural connections in Dutch colonial and post-colonial studies. Please send a ca. 500 word abstract for a 20 minute paper to Jeroen Dewulf at jdewulf@berkeley.edu by February 1, 2011. The conference will take place on the UC Berkeley campus and the proceedings will be subsequently published. Details about the conference will be presented shortly on the UC Berkeley Dutch Studies website, dutch.berkeley.edu.
Keynote speaker: Adriaan van Dis
Organizing Committee:
Jeroen Dewulf (University of California, Berkeley)
Michiel van Kempen (Amsterdam University)
Olf Praamstra (Leiden University)
Siegfried Huigen (Stellenbosch University)