Postcolonial Literary Studies
ID
MSCA-19-Bekers01
Supervisors
Project description
Elisabeth Bekers’ research focuses on literature from the African continent and its diaspora, with a particular interest in image and knowledge production, canon formation and intersectionality. Currently, she is working on Black British women’s literature and, as part of an international network, on the ways in which Europe has been imagined in literature from across the globe. She is the author of Rising Anthills: African and African American Writing on Female Genital Excision, 1960–2000 (University of Wisconsin Press 2010) and co-editor of several volumes and special issues, including “City Portraits: Literary, Filmic and Intermedial Constructions of Metropolitan Identity” (Journal of Intermedial and Literary Studies, 2019), “Critical Interrogations of the Interrelation of Creativity and Captivity” (Life Writing, Taylor and Francis 2018), a bilingual book on Brussels and literature entitled Brussel schrijven/ Écrire Bruxelles (ASP-VUB Press 2016), “Imaginary Europes: Imaginary Europes” (Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Taylor and Francis 2015; selected as SPIB by Routledge 2017) and a Matatu volume on Transcultural Modernities: Narrating Africa in Europe (Rodopi/Brill 2009).
Researchers interested in an advanced project on postcolonial literature, literature of migration or women’s literature, or researchers working in the areas of postcolonial theorising, feminist/intersectional criticism or imagology are welcome to discuss ideas in the context of a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship submission. Researchers fascinated by image construction, knowledge production and canon formation are also invited to get in touch.
About the research Group
Centre for Literary and Intermedial Crossings
The Centre for Literary and Intermedial Crossings brings together researchers in the field of literary, theatre and performance studies. CLIC offers scholars an interdisciplinary network to stimulate research along three key concepts: Media, Genres and Spaces.
MEDIALiterature, theatre and performance traditionally belong to specific medial systems. However, these systems often interact in hybrid, intermedial ways. Definitions of intermediality range from a broad view on crossings between distinct media such as literature and theatre, to a more specific focus on the incorporation of one medium in another (e.g. the use of images or documentary material in literary texts). Methodological issues, too, challenge both practitioners and scholars.
GENRESThe generic classification systems of literature and media, based on stylistic and structural features, are never neutral or ahistorical categories. They produce and communicate meaning, and also change over time, in response to specific socio-cultural but also political and economic contexts. Authors and artists often consciously renew, transgress or mix genre conventions, and thus influence the reception of literature and theatre.
SPACESSpace has become an ever more influential and highly diversified theoretical category – ranging from the urban space of modernism to the contact zone of postcolonial theory and the rhizomatic network of the megalopolis. Through imaginary topographies and theatrical scenographies, transnational and multilingual identities are negotiated and disputed, as are new forms of politically committed artistic production.