Workshop Tutors of Dutch: 28 June 2018

Henriette Louwerse

workshopA recent ALCS survey has shown that Dutch is getting increasingly popular within Institution wide Language Programmes. We are keen to support the IWLP tutors, which is why we are organising a half-day workshop for Tutors of Dutch in the UK and Ireland.

This ALCS Workshop is first and foremost an opportunity to meet colleagues from other institutions, to swap ideas and share good practice. But we have also invited an expert, drs. Vera de Bot (Universiteit Amsterdam). Vera is an experienced Dutch Language tutor (Sheffield, Philadelphia, Amsterdam), author of Dutch course books, and a master at new techniques, games and suggestions to engage language learners.

Programme

12.00 Arrival, Registration and Lunch
Chancellor’s Room, Firth Court, University of Sheffield
13.00 Workshop Part 1
14.45 Tea/Coffee Break
15.15 Workshop Part 2
16.30 Evaluation and Planning
16.45 Workshop finishes
17.00 Opening of ALCS Conference: Picturing Reality
Opening Lecture by Prof Lotte Jensen (Nijmegen)
18.15 Wine Reception

This workshop, lunch, refreshments, reception and lecture are all free of charge. 

We also have a small pot to help out with travel costs if your institution does not cover your travel expenses. If you want to make use of that, please contact ALCS@ Sheffield.ac.uk.

All tutors of Dutch at University Language Centres in the UK and Ireland are welcome to apply. Please register for our Workshop here.

ALCS Conference 2018: Picturing Reality

Henriette Louwerse

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12th Biennial Conference of the ALCS

 Low Countries: Picturing Reality

University of Sheffield
28 – 30 June 2018

With the 12th ALCS Conference Picturing Reality, which will take plave at the University of Sheffield, we want to map and analyse a wide range of areas of interchange or zones of contact in a Low Countries context. We want to approach ‘traditional’ or binary pairings such as fiction and truth, art and life, imagination and history through a lens of complementarity and not only in terms of contamination and opposition. We regard adaptation and translation as exemplary contact zones.

We can boast a truly international conference with speakers from 4 continents and 11 different nations. 

The (draft) Programme can be found here

Click here for our online registration which is now open till 1 June 2018

Selected papers will be published in the ALCS Journal: Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies

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The Centre for Dutch and Flemish Studies will host the 12th ALCS conference as part of the festivities celebrating 70 years of Dutch Studies at the University of Sheffield.

 

ALCS Research Grant: Anna Geurts

Henriette Louwerse

The ALCS sponsored Dr Anna P.H. Geurts’ research visit to The Hague in August 2017. Anna Geurts reports.

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Page from a local illustrated notebook from the Harz, used by a Dutch visitor in the summer of 1869.

‘My ALCS grant allowed me to travel to the Netherlands in order to examine primary as well as secondary literature for my project on the history of Dutch travel in the nineteenth century. I have examined a range of secondary literature on the history of transport technology in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague, and copied several published pieces of travel writing, such as Henrica Françoise Rees van Tets’s book Voyage d’une hollandaise en France en 1819 – written in French by a well-travelled lady from a Dutch family of politicians, painters and art dealers; and the quite different account of Johannes van Oostendorp who was drafted as a soldier to help suppress the Belgian Revolution of 1830.

I also visited the Dutch National Archives to photograph manuscript travelogues from across the nineteenth century, ranging from an aristocratic boy visiting his father at work in the southern Netherlands, to journeys to Switzerland, Italy, Germany and France, including even one cycle trip, made at a time when bikes were rare even in the Netherlands.

I will use these sources in my book on Dutch travellers’ interactions with space and place, as well as an article about the changing experience of distance and an article about the significance of gender in nineteenth-century travel.

I am also looking for a publisher to print a set of four particularly fascinating manuscript accounts, which I have discovered.

I would like to thank the members of the ALCS for their generous support, and am looking forward to the moment when I can present my findings – in English as well as Dutch!

‘A Source of Great Pleasure’

Henriette Louwerse

The ALCS are conducting an investigation in ‘the state of’ Dutch language and culture studies in the UK. The full report will follow soon, but ahead of the hard facts and naked truths, we want to share some stories of colleagues we have uncovered in the process. First up is Claire van Wengen. She is tutor of Dutch with the College of Open Learning (COL) at Edinburg University.

“I have had the good fortune of growing up and going to school in the Netherlands (Oegstgeest) and studying in London. I am bilingual with Dutch and English. I have lived in Edinburgh for almost 30 years now. I trained as a French teacher (Durham University) and I hold an MSc in Language Teaching from Edinburgh University (2013).

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Clarie van Wengen (back row, second left) with COL students of Dutch

About fifteen years ago I discovered that my true calling and passion lay in teaching Dutch so that is what I do now. I started teaching one evening class at the University of Edinburgh in 2002 and have managed to expand the small department from the original two classes (at that time there was another Dutch teacher) to four classes. From October 2017 instead of having two Beginners’ classes and a Dutch 2 and Dutch 3 we will have one Beginners’ class and also a Dutch 4 class.

The students are all incredibly enthusiastic and I was delighted to be nominated for the Best Overall Teacher Award by a number of my students. They said lovely things such as ‘Claire has fostered a genuine community around her Dutch language lessons’ and ‘Claire is extremely knowledgeable with endless patience for her students. Lessons are varied and always appropriately adapted to the needs of the class and the individual students’.

Every year I give a party for all my Dutch students and their partners and children. It is always tremendous fun and it’s wonderful to see all my students (both children and adults) connecting with each other and laughing and talking. Quite often long lasting friendships are formed which is a source of great pleasure.”

Dutch courses offered by Centre for Open Learning, University of Edinburgh

Programme 2nd Postgraduate Colloquium in Low Countries Studies (London, 6th-7th July 2017)

Jenny Watson

senate_houseIn just under two weeks postgraduate students of Dutch and Flemish history, literature, translation studies and sociology will come together for the second edition of the ALCS Postgraduate Colloquium. This international meeting is designed to foster links between British and Irish Low Countries Studies and scholars from other countries, and to support the next generation of researchers in our field. The conference will take place in the medium of English and we welcome anyone with a curiosity about the Netherlands and Flanders or any of the topics up for discussion. This year’s papers are particularly exciting, with strong themes of identity, ideology and transnationality emerging. The keynote will be given by our chair, Henriette Louwerse (University of Sheffield).

The conference fee of £15 is payable by those receiving research funding or in full-time work, all students and unwaged researchers are welcome to join free of charge. If you would like to attend, please email pglowcountriesstudies@gmail.com so that we can factor you into our catering arrangements. Details of excursions and dinner plans to follow.

Full Call for Papers

ALCS Postgraduate Colloquium
Senate House, London

Thursday 6th July

09.30-10.00: Arrival and Registration
10.00 – 11.00:  Keynote Henriette Louwerse (University of Sheffield): ‘Multicultural Present and Colonial Past: The Case of the Netherlands’

11.00 – 11.30: COFFEE

11.30 – 13.00 Panel 1 Chair: Nick Piercey (Manchester Metropolitan University)

Rianti D. Manullang (University of Leiden): ‘The Stories of Indigenous Bataks in Sumatra through the “Imperial Eyes“ of the Colonial Travelers’

Paola Gentile (KU Leuven): ‘The Image of the Netherlands in Italian Literary Translation – A Socio-imagological Approach’

13.00 – 14.00 LUNCH

bl_logo_20014.00 – 15.00 Panel 2 Chair: Marja Kingma (British Library)

Zsuzsa Toth (University of Debrecen): ‘The Reception of Jo van Ammers-Küller by the Hungarian Press in the First Half of the 20th Century’

Cristina Peligra (Newcastle University): ‘Re-presenting Identity and Colonial Legacy. Comparing English and Italian translations of Hella Haasse’s “Indische Romans”’

15.00 – 15.30 Research Training and Q&A Introduction to the British Library Dutch Collections by Marja Kingma

15.30-15.45 COFFEE

15.45 – 16.45 Panel 3 Chair: Henriette Louwerse

Cyd Sturgess (University of Sheffield): ‘Fashioning queer femininities in Josine Reulin’s Terug naar het eiland (1937)’

Joske van de Vis (University of Leiden): ‘The Bakhtian Analysis of Tonnus Oosterhoff’s Digital Poems’

17.00 – 19.00 Free Excursion (details to follow)

19.00 DINNER (Optional, self-funded)

Friday 7th July

09.30 – 10.00 COFFEE

10.00 – 11.30 Panel 4 Chair: tbc

Carmen Verhoeven (Utrecht University): ‘Divided by Mars, united by Rhetorica: Concord and discord on the Mechelen rhetorician contest of 1620’

Marion Prinse: ‘Processes of Radicalisation in pre-WWI Flemish Nationalist Literature’

11.30-12.30 Activity (tbc)

12.30 – 13.30 LUNCH

13.30 – 14.30 Panel 6 Chair: Cyd Sturgess (University of Sheffield)

Karen van Hove (KU Leuven): ‘Pornography, yes or no? – Literary and pornographic interactions’

Jenny Watson (University of Sheffield): ‘Father literature – a transnational trend, a trans-temporal phenomenon?’

14.30 – 16.00 Workshop/postgrad training Questioning the Canon, Building the Discipline.

16.00 -18.00 CLOSE AND DRINKS (Optional, self-funded)

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