Nike van Helden is an external PhD and Lecturer at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society. With a background in Latin American Studies, Nike has specialized in literary analysis, and Cuban literature in particular.

More information about Nike van Helden

Fields of interest

• Latin American cultural analysis
• Literature, Arts, Law and Politics
• Social philosophy, Political philosophy
• Literary criticism, Critical theory
• Cuban Studies, Caribbean Studies

Research

My research mainly focusses on the way in which fiction explores and presents the relationship between governance, (self-)expression and subjectivity. Much of my work therefore revolves around the question how and why certain types of expressions are rendered possible within a particular context, while others are rendered impossible. Within this framework I’m especially interested in the methods that are employed to challenge the hierarchy that thus emerges between different subjects.

My PhD research focusses on the effects of self-censorship within the literary field in Cuba, written and published between 1961 and 1971. Inspired by the later work of Michel Foucault, my study revolves around the connection between subject, freedom and (literary) expression. To explore this connection, my study includes close-readings of the “Palabras a los intelectuales”-speech (Castro, 1961) and the Cuban novels Celestino antes del alba (Arenas, 1967), Memorias del subdesarrollo (Desnoes, 1965) and Presiones y diamantes (Piñera, 1967). Through these close-readings, I analyze how literature explored and contested the cultural debates of the time.

In previous work, I have focused on the idea of subjectivity as well, analyzing the role of monsters in Adios a mamá (Arenas, 1995) and writing about the way in which the protagonist of Desde los blancos manicomios (Mateo Palmer, 2010) proposed to modify the Western literary canon to fit her Caribbean perspective.

In the X Congreso Internacional de la Asociación de Hispanistas del Benelux, which she helped to organize in 2023, this contact point between Western and non-Western perspectives played a central role as well. Evolving around the ideas of contact and contagion, the congress challenged the idea of culture as being something fixed and unchanging.

Curriculum Vitae

Education:

MPhil Latin American and Amerindian Studies, Leiden University, 2007-2008 (Literature).
Thesis title: Capturando al monstruo: Una relectura neobarroca de la tesina.

MA Latin American Studies, Leiden University, 2001-2006 (Literature)
Thesis title: Los monstruos de Reinaldo Arenas: Un estudio sobre los monstruos en Algo sucede en el último balcón, Monstruo I y Monstruo II.

Publications

Activities