On gender, diversity, and feminism
By Serdzhan Ibryam Hasan
Magical realism, a literary mode in which supernatural or extraordinary events are presented as ordinary parts of everyday reality, is often understood not only as a literary genre but also as a political strategy for engaging with a history marked by violence, erasure, and silence.
by Noa de Kievit
Colonial archives are never neutral repositories of the past. Rather, they are shaped by regimes of visibility and erasure that determine which subjects can appear as knowable historical actors and which lives remain partially absent from the historical record.
by Serdzhan Ibryam Hasan
The figure of the “witch” has historically functioned as a socio-political construct used to discipline individuals who threatened dominant religious, patriarchal, and racial orders. In early modern contexts such as the Salem witch trials, accusations of witchcraft operated as mechanisms of social control through which women who transgressed religious and patriarchal expectations were marginalised and punished.
By Noa de Kievit
In classical Greek epics, heroism is traditionally defined through martial glory, public recognition, and the pursuit of immortal fame. In The Song of Achilles (2011), however, Madeline Miller reimagines this tradition by shifting the focus of the Trojan-war myth from battlefield triumph to emotional intimacy and queer desire.
by Serdzhan Ibryam Hasan
Melibea Obono’s novel, La Bastarda (2016), centres on Okomo, a young Fang woman whose lesbian identity is suppressed by the heteropatriarchal norms that pervade family and communal life in Equatorial Guinea.
by Serdzhan Ibryam Hasan
The Waves (1931) is widely regarded as one of Virginia Woolf’s most significant experimental modernist novels. Published in 1931, the novel traces the experiences of six characters, Bernard, Jinny, Louis, Neville, Rhoda, and Susan, from childhood to adulthood as they confront the death of their friend, Percival.
by Mila Polderman
Roald Dahl is perhaps one of the most famous children’s book writers, with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) and Mathilda (1988) being just two examples of his successful works. Many of his books were also adapted into movies, one of the most recent being The Witches (2020).
And our next article is on someone you probably all know: the writer Charlotte Brontë. As you probably know, Charlotte … More
Which types of characters populate the fictional society of Dutch literature? When thinking about literature in terms of demographics, questions arise with regards to the literary representation of certain social groups. Why are certain professions for characters in recent Dutch novels so popular? And what does that say about the potential emancipatory and progressive powers of literature?
Raffia 