The recent rise in global migration movements and the simultaneous attempts to prevent migrations to the Global North in general and Europe in particular have produced numerous images and narratives that try to record and convey these events and their actors.

A wealth of expertise in the fields of philosophy, (art) history, the arts, literature, film and cultural sciences, religious studies, linguistics and multidisciplinary area studies results in a unique Faculty of Humanities.

Taking as a point of departure the Italian American community in Boston and its process of collective remembrance surrounding Saint Anthony’s Feast, we address the limits and potential of montage.

Markus Altena Davidsen’s PhD dissertation is the first major study of Tolkien Religion. In it, he analyses the religion that is based on the stories by acclaimed British fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien. He also discusses how fiction itself can become religious. Davidsen will defend his dissertation on…

Despite not focusing on a particular theme, the academic contributions in this book include essays of history and literature ranging from the Middle Ages to 1970s, from Europe and America to the Ottoman Empire and Turkey.

Channi Li defended her thesis on 15 October 2019.

The Modern Devotion: pone of the most influential religious initiatives in the late medieval Low Countries.

The first of the two volumes of this co-authored study has just been published by Metzler. The study explores the history of the concept ‘barbarism’ from the 18th century to the present and illuminates its foundational role in modern European and Western identity.

Shifting the Compass: Pluricontinental Connections in Dutch Colonial and Postcolonial Literature

This project aims to revisit the ways in which religious minorities in the Middle East participated in, contributed to, and opposed the Arab nationalism of the post-war years, when the British and French ruled the region via the Mandates. Research question: How did religious minorities in the Middle…

De lichtheid van literatuur: Engagement in de multiculturele samenleving (The Lightness of Literature: Engagement in the Multicultural Society) is a plea for the social relevance of literature. The book delves into an age-old debate about literature and social engagement, which has recently been reinvigorated…

Since my master's thesis on the landed property of the Frisian monasteries in the Middle Ages I am highly interested in the do ut des-aspects of the relation between religious houses and the lay world. Key words here are: property, power, patronage and the role of religious institutions in the 'salvation…

A technique originally developed for satellite imaging can now be used to recover pictographic texts from underneath the surface of a five hundred year old Mexican manuscript.

Nadine Akkerman's book Invisible Agents is the very first study to analyse the role of early modern women spies. The book foregrounds the agency of early-modern women, offering a corrective to the gender bias implicit in modern historiography.

The chief aim of this study is to explore how classical Persian poetry and the Persian mysticism that is interwoven with the poetry have been used in the new politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran, especially during the Iran-Iraq war.

Wenxin Wang defended her thesis on 26 October 2016

Terms used by literary critics in characterizing the style of novels are often impressionistic (‘baroque’, ‘austere’, ‘vivid’, ‘cerebral’ etc.). Foundations for such evaluations are usually not provided. A scientific way of studying and explaining style is lacking in present day Dutch Studies. Suzanne…

African oral literatures, new media and technologies: challenges for research and documentation

What is the difference between a minister saying that something is possible or that it is not impossible ?

This dissertation is concerned with the study of the less than twenty remaining precolonial Mesoamerican codices. By considering these rare and fragile pictographic and hieroglyphic books from the cultural biography perspective, many different aspects of these books can be studied.

The linguistic project constitutes the connection between the two other subprojects. It consists of two parts.

Mining the unusually rich diaries, memoirs, and poems written by Netherlandish Catholics, Judith Pollmann explores how Catholic believers experienced religious and political turmoil in the generations between Erasmus and Rubens.

Lecture

How has interreligious encounter in Ogbómòsó created multiple religious belongings and identities among individuals and groups?

The MA South Asian Studies at Leiden University is designed for students with an interest in studying South Asia from a range of perspectives including its history, literature, art, media, culture, religions, philosophy and philology.