Sunday, October 16th - morning session (11:00 - 13:00) 

In collaboration with: Climate Imaginaries at Sea, an ARIAS coalition

Guests: Daphina Misidjan, Aura Satz, Walden Collectief: Thomas Lamers, Mikki Stelder, Annelinde Bruijs and Dominic Kraemer.

Moderation: Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca

Climate Imaginaries at Sea | Rehearsing Disaster

Climate Imaginaries at Sea | Rehearsing Disaster offers an exchange between research practices that focus on the urgencies and imaginaries of climate change in Dutch waterscapes. 

Water. A transformative being. It affects everything it comes to pass on its way and is affected by what it encounters. Robin Wall Kimmerer is well-aware of how many ‘things’ are considered ‘beings’. Following that logic, one would not speak of a ‘bay’ but of water ‘being a bay’. Similarly, sometimes water is ‘being a river’, sometimes it is ‘being a sea’. Water could also be a tsunami, a life source, an obstacle or a habitat.

During this symposium panel, water transforms into different beings as it flows past the different lenses through which these artists-researchers explore sea level rise. Encountering human-made structures and non-human animals, resistance and embrace. 

Climate Imaginaries at Sea explores possible futures in and around water through a range of artistic and participatory research practices, brought forward by three collaborating research groups from the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, the Academy of Theatre and Dance and the Rietveld Academie. Under the umbrella of ARIAS - platform for Research through the Arts and Sciences - and including a network of partners like Tolhuistuin and the Institute for Sound & Vision, the coalition develops ways of responding to Amitav Ghosh’s statement that“the climate crisis is also a crisis of the imagination.”

Revolt! Degrowth! Decolonize! Global Climate Agendas, Local Struggles

On October 7, 2022 you are cordially invited to the public program Revolt! Degrowth! Decolonize! Global Climate Agendas, Local Struggles. Together we will engage in conversation about our contemporary climate crisis and its colonial and capitalist underpinnings. About how its effects are disproportionately affecting indigenous people, people of color or poor people in the Global South, even as these communities are least responsible for the crisis.

We will be joined by KITLV researchers, scholars, artists, and activists. Central questions we will address are: What is the role of scholars, artists and activists in addressing the climate crisis? How can we call government, science and the corporate sector to account for their responsibility for this catastrophe? Revolt! Degrowth! Decolonize! forms the beginning of a longterm commitment in which KITLV wants develop a research agenda that contributes to an intersectional and decolonial perspective on climate justice.

Speakers: Alicia Schrikker, Idris Fredison, Lysanne Charles, Yogi Permana, Yvonne Kunz, Daphina Misiedjan, Raki Ap, Tibisay Sankatsing Nava, Chihiro Geuzebroek, Selçuk Balamir, Ilone Hartlief, Talissa Soto, Diana Suhardiman.

Moderator: Maurice Seleky.

Music: Shishani.

Curated by: Mikki Stelder

Language: English.
Livestream via: https://www.facebook.com/kitlv

Academic Symposium: The Future of the (Dutch) Colonial Past: From Dialogues to New Narratives

as part of The Golden Carriage exhibition at Amsterdam Museum.

Date: Saturday, 29 November

Time: 09:30 - 11:00am

Location: Lutherse Kerk

For conference website click here

Roundtable with:

Julian Isenia

Rolando Vasquez

meLê yamomo

Barbara TItus

Mikki Stelder

More info following shortly.

22nd Meeting of the Platform for Postcolonial Readings

Keynote Lecture: Mikki Stelder

Date: November 19th, 10.15-17.00
Location: Leiden University
Registration: here
Credits: 1 or 2 ECTS
Organizers: Liesbeth Minnaard, Lieselot De Taeye, and Marrigje Paijmans

Acknowledging that the decolonisation of academia in Flanders and the Netherlands has scarcely begun, and that the grammar of race is intricately entwined with humanities research and its objects of study, we dedicate this meeting of the Platform for Postcolonial Readings to a thorough examination of the multiple layers of whiteness that mark Neerlandophone literature as well as Dutch literary studies. We aim to address the invisibility of whiteness, probing whiteness as a key component of the grammar of race in Dutch and Flemish society and as an unmarked and under-analyzed presence in many works of Neerlandophone literature. In exposing and exploring the many shades of this Dutch and Flemish whiteness, recognising yet also moving beyond the highly discursive notions of white privilege and white innocence, we hope to fathom what whiteness has meant and continues to mean in Neerlandophone literature.

Our meeting starts with a keynote lecture by dr. Mikki Stelder, whose expertise ranges from Dutch colonial and racist entanglements, in particular those concerning the maritime trade and slavery, to their re-narrations in the present. Their lecture is followed by a discussion of their ideas on historicizing Dutch white innocence and by a joint close reading of selected essays on the topic of whiteness in the Low Countries. In the afternoon, we continue our exploration of shades of Dutch and Flemish whiteness by means of three  contributions on the meeting’s topic by (junior) researchers working in this field. We conclude our meeting with a joint on-the-spot analysis of some fragments from the novel Gebroken wit (2019) by Astrid Roemer.

The meeting is open to all researchers – junior and senior – working in the fields of Low Countries Studies, postcolonial and globalization studies. Participation is free of charge, but please register with NICA on this webpage (https://www.nica-institute.com/events/shades-of-pale-exploring-whiteness-in-neerlandophone-literature/). Active participation by Research Master students may be credited with 1 or 2 EC (without/with presentation). When registering, please indicate whether you would like to earn 1 or 2 ECTS for your participation. For more information, contact Platform co-ordinator Liesbeth Minnaard (e.minnaard@hum.leidenuniv.nl) or guest organisers Lieselot De Taeye (lieselot.detaeye@ugent.be) or Marrigje Paijmans (m.g.paijmans@uva.nl).

Programme

• 10.15 Walk-in and registration with coffee
  Venue: Vrieshof 4, room 005
  

• 10.30 Welcome & round of introduction
  By Platform coordinator Liesbeth Minnaard, Leiden University
  

• 10.45 Introduction to the meeting’s topic
  By guest-organisers Lieselot De Taeye, Ghent University, and Marrigje Paijmans, University of Amsterdam
  

• 11.00 Keynote lecture Dutch Maritime Imagination. A Cultural Oceanography
  By Mikki Stelder, University of Amsterdam
  

• 12.00 Discussion of readings
  Readings in preparation of discussion (the readings will be sent to all registered participants):
  

  • Sara Ahmed, “A Phenomenology of Whiteness.” Feminist Theory 8 (2007) 2: 149-168.

  • Elleke Boehmer and Sarah De Mul, “Introduction: Postcolonialism and the Low Countries.” In: idem (ed.), The

  • Postcolonial Low Countries. Literature, Colonialism, Multiculturalism. Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2012. 1-22.
    Hugo de Groot, “Introduction.” Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty.
    

• 13.00 Lunch
  Venue: Lipsius building, room 207
  

• 14.15 Further Food for Thought and Discussion: Paper Presentations
  Moderated by Platform co-ordinator Elisabeth Bekers, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
  

• 14.15 Aafje de Roest (Leiden University)
  “‘Pretty fly for a white guy’ – Constructions of Whiteness in Contemporary Dutch Hip-Hop”
  

• 14.45 Sibo Kanobana (Ghent University):
  How the Flemings Became White. A Black Perspective on Flemish (Colonial) Literature
  

• 15.15 Lieselot De Taeye (Ghent University):
  Anxious White Missionaries. Conversion Narratives in V.Y. Mudimbe and Jacques Bergeyck’s Novelistic Work
  

• 15.45 Coffee break