Annelies Schulte Nordholt is a University Lecturer at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society.

More information about Annelies Schulte Nordholt

Fields of interest and recent research

My research started at the crossroads of Philosophy and French Literature, with my doctoral dissertation on Maurice Blanchot (Droz, 1995), especially on his dialogue with Hegel and Emmanuel Levinas. The work of Blanchot has always stayed with me, directing my research towards a focus on the question of literary creativity. My second book was on the genesis of the creative self in Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu, involving a study of such themes as mourning, memory and oblivion (L’Harmattan, 2002). From there it was a small step towards the memory of the Holocaust and its aftermath in French-Jewish writers, especially those who were not a direct witness, i.e. second generation authors such as Patrick Modiano, Georges Perec and Henri Raczymow, on whom I published a comparative study, Perec, Modiano, Raczymow. La génération d’après et la mémoire de la Shoah (Rodopi, 2008) besides many articles.  

My most recent book, Georges Perec et ses lieux de mémoire  (Brill, 2022) is on Perec’s experimental work ‘Lieux’, a multimedia project archiving his personal sites of memory through writing and photography. My work on ‘Lieux’ aims at exploring how personal and collective memory roots in urban places. 

Curriculum Vitae

After two years of studies at the ‘classes préparatoires’to the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, I continued my studies at the University of Amsterdam, where I graduated in Philosophy (1987) and in French language and literature (1986). From 1988-1992 I was an NWO funded “onderzoeker-in-opleiding” at the same university, where I obtained my PhD cum laude on the dissertation Maurice Blanchot. L’écriture comme expérience du dehors in 1993. From 1994-1998 I worked as an NWO postdoc at the University of Leiden on a monograph on Proust, after which I was a Research Fellow of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), working on a monograph and a collective volume on French Holocaust literature. Since 2007 I work as an Assistant Professor at Leiden University.

Tuition

BA Franse taal en cultuur:
- regular courses: Expression écrite; Introduction à la littérature française de 1800 à nos jours ; Métamorphoses du roman 1850 à nos jours; co-taught : Francophonies et littératures francophones ; Poésie et théâtre ; French Worldwide (Honours).
- Seminars : Paris dans la littérature ; Les mémoires de la Seconde Guerre mondiale en France ; Baudelaire ; Lire Camus au 21^e siècle ; Marcel Proust aujourd’hui : roman, cinéma, bande dessinée.

MA Literary Studies/ track French literature and culture:
- Les mémoires de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale en France : théorie, littérature, cinéma ; Marcel Proust à travers la critique et le cinéma ; Georges Perec et la pensée du quotidien ; Baudelaire poète et critique d’art.
- Co-taught courses : European Modernism;

MA Literary Studies, track Literature in Society: Literature in Society: Narrative, Fiction, voice; Remapping the City in Modern Literature and visual cultures.

Key Publications

Monographies and co-authored volumes

• Georges Perec et ses lieux de mémoire. Le projet de Lieux, Leiden – Brill, 2022, 268 p. See my blog on this book : https://www.leidenartsinsocietyblog.nl/articles/georges-perec-and-his-sites-of-memory
• Ecritures francophones du Maroc, in Relief. Revue électronique de littérature contemporaine, vol. 13 no. 3 (June 2020),  A. Schulte Nordholt & E. Radar eds. : https://revue-relief.org/issue/view/290

Articles

1. “Blanchot, Proust et le livre à venir”, Revue d’études proustiennes 2017, 2 no. 6, « Proust et le livre à venir », Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2017, pp. 435-450.
2. « Heinz d’Henri Raczymow. Une écriture du silence », Cédille. Revista de Estudios franceses,  2015, no. 5, pp. 215-231, republished by Sifriatenou, 26 January 2020 : https://sifriatenou.com/2020/01/26/2059/
3. « Hélène Cixous et l’écriture de la postmémoire. Gare d’Osnabrück à Jérusalem », in Contourner le vide : écriture et judéités après la Shoah, Francesca Dainese & Elena Quaglia eds., Giuntina, Firenze,  2020, pp. 81-94.
4. « Perec, Raczymow and their sites of memory”, in Jewish Shadows over the City of Lights. Paris in Post-War Jewish Literary Memory, Sara Horowitz a.o., eds., 2021.
5. « Levinas and the poetic word : writing with Baudelaire ? », Levinas and Literature. New Directions,  Michael Fagenblatt & Arthur Cools ed., De Gruyter, 2021, pp. 133-146

Supervision of dissertations

Lingyun Lai: A Developmental Cognitive Approach to Proustian Happiness and Arts (with prof. dr. C.J.M. Zijlmans)
Célestin Leba: La poétique de l’essai dans l’œuvre d’Edouard Glissant  (with prof. Dr. Y. van Dijk).

Co-supervisor (with prof. dr. Paul J. Smith) :

• Pieter Snoey, Maumort. Het literaire testament van Roger Martin du Gard, thesis defended on 19 April 2022.
• Céline Zaepffel, Vers une hégémonie lafontainienne : la fable ésopique illustrée dans la pédagogie française (1500-2020), thesis defended on 16 December 2021.
• Ingrida Baktutyte, La réception de la littérature française en Lituanie dans le contexte de l’identité nationale,  thesis defended in January 2020.
• Nicolaas van der Toorn : Le jeu de l'ambiguïté et du mot : ambiguïté intentionnelle et jeu de mots chez Apollinaire, Prévert, Tournier et Beckett ;  thesis defended on 19 January 2019.

Research dissimination

1. Studium Generale lecture series on Baudelaire (2020-21): https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/studium-generale/terugkijken/charles-baudelaire
Digital exhibition on The Flowers of evil  in the Netherlands : Online tentoonstelling - De bloemen van het kwaad: Charles Baudelaire in Nederland - Universiteit Leiden
2. Studium Generale lecture series on Proust (2021-22) : https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/studium-generale/terugkijken/marcel-proust See also the podcast: (24) Radio Horzelnest - Aflevering 43: Marcel Proust - YouTube

Ancillary activities

Member of the editing board of Marcel Proust Aujourd’hui/Today and of Relief. Revue électronique de littérature française.

As a Chair of the Dutch Marcel Proust Association I co-organize three or four lectures and cultural activities a year, for a general public.

See also

Publications