Association for Low Countries Studies in the UK & Ireland
Summer Bulletin 2021
Dear Members of the ALCS,
We hope this Summer Bulletin finds you all (reasonably) well after the disruptive year and a half we've had. Here in the UK, we have experienced the combined joys of the pandemic and Brexit. The full impact of the latter on our Dutch Degree Programmes, the compulsory Year Abroad for language undergraduates and Anglo-Dutch cultural and academic exchanges in general is still unclear.
What is clear, however, is that the new UK Turing Scheme will not replace the Erasmus programme because of its global scope on the one hand, and its lack of reciprocity on the other. Turing will a bursary scheme and not an exchange programme. The ALCS will continue the conversations with the Dutch sections at UCL and the University of Sheffield, with Dutch and Flemish MP's, the Nederlandse Taalunie and with the diplomatic representations of Flanders and the Netherlands in the UK in order to ensure student, staff and research exchanges and to mitigate the consequences for EU funding applications.
Moreover, as the latest UCML (University Council for Modern Languages) and British Council report on Trends in Modern Languages University Admissions confirms, UK secondary schools and universities have seen yet a further decline in the uptake of languages. As a result, many institutions are looking at rationing their offering. An unfortunate example of this are the planned closure of the Department of History, Language and Translation at Aston University and the recent changes in the organisation of modern languages and cultures at the University of Sheffield. This trend away from the Arts and Humanities subjects also informs the UK government's recently announced cuts in funding of performing and creative arts subjects. None of these developments bode well for Dutch in the UK and we will keep monitoring developments closely.
Despite all these uncertainties and while Covid-19 keeps testing our patience, the ALCS can look back on a good year in Dutch Studies: our online Postgraduate Colloquium 'City Lights' brought together young researchers from all parts of the world, we awarded three ALCS Essay Prizes and a Research Grant, we have enjoyed our collaborations with New Dutch Writing and welcomed Surinamese-Dutch author Tessa Leuwsha on our annual UCL-Sheffield Literary Translation Project. You can find more about this below.
Looking forward, we are pleased to announce that the 14th biennial ALCS Conference and our first Dutch Language Summer Course are planned for summer 2022. Both will take place at the University of Edinburgh. Details and a Call for Papers wil follow later this year. And, as you will see below, there are more good things to come!
Last but not least, we would like to thank you for your continued support and wish you a well-deserved summer break!
With warm wishes, also on behalf of the ALCS Executive Committee,
Christine Sas (Chair) & Filip De Ceuster (Director)
Looking forward...
New MOOC - Dutch Advanced
Four international Dutch scholars -- among whom ALCS Chair Christine Sas (UCL) -- have developed a new interactive course for advanced learners of Dutch. The MOOC is built around 12 talks by the Universiteit van Nederland and the Universiteit van Vlaanderen, and is freely available online!
Tutors of Dutch can offer this course as a self-study package (all exercises are self-correcting), or embed it into their language modules. Ready-made speaking and writing tasks are free to download for teachers on Mijn NVT (Taalunie).
Nederlands voor gevorderde anderstaligen was created by Sofie Royeaerd (Masaryk Universiteit, Brno), Truus De Wilde (Freie Unversität Berlin), Christine Sas (University College London) and Esther Ham (Indiana University Bloomington), with the support of the Nederlandse Taalunie.
Spring 2022 Taalunie Writer in Residence is Rashif El Kaoui!
Dutch at Sheffield and UCL Dutch are very much looking forward to welcoming Flemish novelist, playwright, actor, podcaster and rapper Rashif El Kaoui as their next Writer in Residence. El Kaoui was awarded the El Hizjra Literatuurprijs 2016. In spring 2022, he will visit London and Sheffield to work with students on the English translation of one of his texts.
ALCS Essay Prize & Research Grant Winners 2021
UNDERGRADUATE ESSAY PRIZE 2021
We are pleased to announce two Undergraduate Essay Prize winners this year: Anna Mihilic (UCL) and Megan Strutt (University of Sheffield).
In Language Attitudes in Wallonia towards English and Dutch, Anna Mihilic explores the symbolic value of Dutch and English among university students in the French-speaking part of Belgium.
Megan Strutt's essay, Emancipation, Power and Religion in Guus Kuijer's 'Het boek van alle dingen', looks at the representation of tensions between traditional and more modern family values in the Orthodox-Protestant family of the protagonist in Kuijer's famous youth novel.
POSTGRADUATE/EARLY CAREER PRIZE 2021
The winner of the Postgraduate/Early Career Prize is Irving Wolters (UCL). His essay, Genesis of the Canon of Dutch Literature: The Bibliotheca Neerlandica, explores how a Dutch government initiative in the 1950s and 60s can be considered as the start of active canon building through translation sixty years ahead of it's time.
ALCS RESEARCH GRANT 2021
The ALCS is pleased to award a Research Grant to Davide Martino (Cambridge University). His research project, Hydraulic philosophy in three early modern cities (work title), looks at the uses and perceptions of water in the early modern cities of Augsburg, Florence, and Amsterdam.
The next deadline for ALCS Grants is 15 December 2021. Applications can be sent to our Treasurer, Dr Jenny Watson: jenny.watson@ed.ac.uk.
Looking back...
ALCS Postgraduate Colloquium 'City Lights', 8-9 July
Our 3rd ALCS Postgraduate Colloquium 'City Lights' took place on 8-9 July 2021. This year's edition was curated by Adam Sammut (Univesrity of York) and brought together young scholars from all over the world to explore urban space and civic identity in the Low Countries.
The programme featured pannels on sense and the city, the early modern book trade, the built environment, urban politics and modern times. It also included a virtual 'show and tell' event showcasing the Dutch collections in the Short Title Catalogue and the British Library. Keynote speaker was Elisabeth de Bièvre, author of Dutch Art and Urban Cultures, 1200-1700 (Yale University Press, 2015).
ALCS Grant Winner Elise Watson Reports on her research trip to Antwerp...
In 2019, history scholar Elise Watson (University of St Andrews) was awarded an ALCS Research Grant to visit several archives in Antwerp to consult 17th-century documents concerning the trade in catholic books between the Northern and Southern Netherlands.
UCL Dutch, Dutch at Sheffield, Queen's College Oxford and the Stephen Spender Trust take Creative Translation into Schools
Dutch at Sheffield and UCL Dutch, together with Queen's College Oxford’s Translation Exchange and the Stephen Spender Trust, developed a new outreach project for Dutch in Primary and Secondary Schools.
Guided by their teachers and professional literary translators, students of Dutch at UCL and at the University of Sheffield have developed creative translation workshops for schools to demonstrate that even engaging with an unknown language can unlock your creativity and make you aware of your existing language skills. The interactive project wants to show young people that studying languages and cultures in higher education is rewarding and fun.
Over a few sessions, students were trained to become Creative Translation Ambassadors to deliver their own workshops in local schools and online. The results are a few ready-to-go padlet workshops that any teacher can work with, irrespective of whether they know Dutch or not. The workshop materials comprise of instructions and material for the workshop leader, worksheets for the participants and useful short videos about for example being a professional translator, how to pronounce typical Dutch sounds or why study languages...
Taalunie Writer in Residence Tessa Leuwsha - Translation Project at Sheffield & UCL
In February and March 202, students of Dutch at Sheffeld and UCL welcomed Surinamese-Dutch author Tessa Leuwsha. Together with literary translator Jonathan Reeder, they worked on an English translation of extracts from Leuwsha's novel Plantage Wildlust (2020).
Plantage Wildlust tells the tale of a young Dutch couple that travel to Suriname to run a coffee plantation. The tension in the novel is palpable as the individuals struggle to rise above the role that history and society have assigned for them.
The translation was published on the prestigious cultural website the-low-countries.com. Sheffield student Megan Strutt wrote an introduction to the text, while another student, Elinor Sheridan, published a blog (in Dutch) about the project on the website of the Internationale Vereniging voor Neerlandistiek. Cherry on the cake was a full page devoted to Leuwsha, her novel and the translation project in De Ware Tijd, Suriname's national newspaper.
The Literary Translation Project is funded by the Nederlandse Taalunie and the Dutch Foundation for Literature.
ALCS post Erasmus+ Programme...
Together with the Nederlandse Taaunie, the Dutch sections at UCL and the University of Sheffield, and the diplomatic representation of the Netherlands and Flanders in the UK, we are looking at ways to ensure fruitful student exchanges with Dutch and Flemish universities and companies.
While a post Brexit world and a global pandemic don't make it easier to study or work in Europe, we cannot stop the positive energy from flowing. Here are two students of Dutch, reporting from their Covid Year Abroad in the Netherlands and Belgium...
Dutch Crossing
Our flagship journal Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies continues to develop successfully. At present it has a very healthy h-index of 9 according to Harzing's Publish and Perish.
The complete journal run from 1977 to the present day is now available online.
Does your library have a subscription to Dutch Crossing? If not, please encourage them to do so!
Stay in touch: alcs.ac.uk
