The following lists provide an idea of the range of lectures, workshops, and seminars we, with the help of our visiting scholars, have organized in previous years. Some of these events have generated publications that are publicly available. For details see the descriptions below.
2015-16
From Real to Surreal: Flemish Artists, Belgian Cinema 1910s-1980s.
Jan. 29, Feb. 21, Feb. 28, Mar. 6, 2016
All films shown in the Lifetime Screening Room.
Dodge Hall, Room 511
Use main campus entrance: 2960 Broadway
For more information, please visit: arts.columbia.edu/events
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Assessing Potential Pasts: Computation and Networks of the Golden Age of Dutch and Flemish Printmaking
A lecture by
Matthew Lincoln
Ph.D. Candidate in Art History at the University of Maryland, College Park
Friday, February 19, 2016
3:00 – 4:30 p.m.
612 Schermerhorn Hall
Followed by an openLab in the Studio@Butler at 4:30 p.m.
Co-sponsored by the Digital Humanities Center, the Department of Art History and Archaeology, the Office of the Dean of Humanities, Arts & Sciences, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University; and Public Books.
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*Their Promised Land*
February 3, 2016
8PM
602 Hamilton Hall
Columbia University
Ian Buruma discusses his new family memoir.
RSVP to [email protected]
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*Feminist to the Core event: Rubens Paints Rape with Professor Margaret Carroll*
December 7th
12PM
754 Schermerhorn Ext
Columbia University
Feminist to the Core puts feminists in conversation with the Columbia Core, inspiring new ways of seeing and thinking about the texts that are at the heart of the Columbia experience.
More info at irwgs.columbia.edu.
*Europe 1945-2015 from ‘Displaced Persons’ to ‘Asylum Seekers’ *
November 20, 2015
12:30-2PM
2nd Floor Common Room
The Heyman Center
Columbia University
Ian Buruma, Paul W. Williams Professor of Human Rights and Journalism, Bard College
Abram De Swaan, Queen Wilhelmina Visiting Professor, Columbia University; Emeritus Distinguished Research Professor for Social
Science, University of Amsterdam
Adam Tooze, Director, European Institute; Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Professor of History, Columbia University
Co-Sponsored by the Heyman Center for the Humanities
RSVP: europe.columbia.edu/events
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*Rembrandt & Printmaking: New Views on a Golden Age *
November 5, 2015
3:00-6:00PM
Buell Hall, Maison Francaise
Columbia University
In conjunction with the exhibition, Rembrandt’s Changing Impressions (on view in The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University through December 12) and IFPDA print fair, this symposium sparks a new and closer look at Rembrandt’s astonishing print practice, its context, and its contributions.
Speakers:
Hercules Segers and Rembrandt –
Direct Influence or Kindred Spirits?
Nadine M. Orenstein, Drue Heinz Curator in Charge, Department of Drawings and Prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
St. Jerome in Darkness and Light
Clifford S. Ackley, Ruth and Carl J. Shapiro Curator of Prints and Drawings, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Rembrandt and the Faust Tradition
Robert Fucci, exhibition curator
(Short Break)
Edme-François Gersaint as
Chroniqueur of Knowledge about Rembrandt’s Etchings
Erik Hinterding, Curator of Prints, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Desire and Disgust:
Collecting Rembrandt’s Etchings in Georgian England
Stephanie Dickey, Professor of Art History and Bader Chair in Northern Baroque Art, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario
Rembrandt as Experimental Etcher
Jan Piet Filedt Kok, former Curator of Prints and Director of Collections, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
This exhibition and related programming received generous support from the Netherland-America Foundation, the Dutch Culture USA program by the Consulate General of the Netherlands in New York, the IFPDA Foundation, and the European Institute at Columbia University.
2014-15
*The New Amsterdam History Center Lecture Series Presents “Patroons and Plowmen, Pietism and Politics: Dutch Settlers in the Hudson Valley in the 17th & 18th Century” a talk by Dr. Firth Fabend *
April 15, 2015
6:30-8:30PM
Deutsches Haus
Columbia University
420 West 116th Street
Firth Haring Fabend is an independent historian with a Ph.D. in American Studies from New York University. She is the author of the prize-winning works A Dutch Family in the Middle Colonies, 1660-1800 and Zion on the Hudson: Dutch New York and New Jersey in the Age of Revivals, both published by Rutgers University Press. She has also published many essays on the Dutch Colonial experience, as well as a historical novel, Land So Fair, set in the lower Hudson Valley in the eighteenth century. Most recently she is the author of New Netherland in a Nutshell: A Concise History of the Dutch Colony in North America. She is a Charter Fellow of the New Netherland Institute, and a Fellow of The Holland Society of New York and the New York Academy of History.
RSVP by April 10th to Ashley Annese: [email protected] (212) 233-2312. For more information, click here.
Space is Limited
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*’The more languages, the more English’: On the Language Constellation in the EU*
October 9, 2014
6:00-7:30PM
Second Floor Common Room, Heyman Center for the Humanities
Speaker: Abram de Swaan, Emeritus University Professor of Social Science, University of Amsterdam
Abram de Swaan is Emeritus University Professor of Social Science at the University of Amsterdam, where he has been Professor of Sociology since 1973. He was Dean of the Amsterdam School of Social Science Research since its foundation in 1987 until 1997 and has been its chairman since. He has been an editor of the general cultural review, De Gids (est. 1837) from 1969 to 1991 and contributed to many cultural and professional periodicals. For many years he contributed a weekly column to the national daily NRC/Handelsblad.
This event is sponsored by the Blinken European Institute and is part of the BEI Seminar.
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*How Fragile is Europe*
October 13, 2014
6:00-8:00PM
East Gallery, Buell Hall
Columbia University
The last few years have been rocky ones for Europe. The deep financial crisis has contributed to widespread skepticism among Europeans on the future of the integration process and its scope. As the new European Commission is installed, Europe’s economic recovery seems to be stagnating and its relation with Russia represents a source of continuing unrest. These issues and more will be introduced and discussed by the panelists.
Speakers:
Alexander Rinnooy-Kan, University Professor of Economics and Business, University of Amsterdam, and Queen Wilhelmina Visiting Professor, Columbia University
Paul Schnabel, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Utrecht University, and Queen Wilhelmina Visiting Professor, Columbia University
Discussants:
Sheri Berman, Professor of Political Science, Barnard College, Columbia University
Wim Blockmans, Professor Emeritus, University of Leiden and Emeritus
Rector, Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study
Victoria de Grazia, Professor of History, Columbia University
Register here.
This event is co-sponsored by the Blinken European Institute and Studies for the Dutch-Speaking World at Columbia University, Flanders House, and the Netherlands Consulate General in New York.
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*Summer Course for the Study of the Arts in Flanders*
The Age of Van Eyck in Context 2015
June 21, 2015 – July 1, 2015
Application Deadline: October 20, 2014
The programme consists of 10 full days of lectures, discussions and on-site visits, hosted by specialists in the field (see below for a list to date). The participation fee is 900 euro, and includes the full 10-day programme, 10 overnight hotel stays (Bruges, Ghent, Brussels) in a single-occupancy room, all transportation within the programme, all entry tickets, 2 receptions, 5 dinners and 5 lunches. Not included in the participation fee is the transportation to and from Belgium, 4 lunches and 4 dinners. Thanks to the generous support of the Flemish Government 2 grants of 450 euro each are made available for participants with limited financial means. And thanks to the generous support of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation’s History of Art Grants Program 2 US students and citizens are offered a grant that will fully cover the programme fee and round trip flights between Belgium and the US. In addition to a resumé and letter of motivation required for general applications, candidates for the grants are asked to send a one-page statement explaining their financial need and a letter of recommendation from a faculty member. Applicants will be informed of the outcome of the selection process in early December. All applicants should apply until October 20, 2014 by mailing to: [email protected]
More information on the Summer Course, including a Programme can be found here.
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*Postcolonial Citizens and Ethnic Migration: A Comparative Look at the Netherlands in the Age of Globalization*
Talk by Dr. Michael Sharpe
November 6, 2014
7PM
Deutsches Haus, 420 W. 116th St.
RSVP: [email protected]
Reception to follow the talk.
Michael Orlando Sharpe is Assistant Professor of Political Science at York College/City University of New York. He holds a Ph.D. from the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York. Additionally, Dr. Sharpe holds a Master of International Affairs degree from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and a Graduate Diploma in International Law and Organization for Development from the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, The Netherlands. Dr. Sharpe’s areas of specialization are comparative politics and international relations. His current research analyzes the factors that propel migrations of postcolonial citizen and coethnic immigrants and what limits or facilitates their political incorporation and political transnationalism in liberal democratic host societies. Dr. Sharpe focuses on post-colonial citizen Dutch Caribbean immigrants in the Netherlands and Latin American Nikkejin (Japanese descendant) immigrants in Japan. Dr. Sharpe’s work has appeared in the peer reviewed journals Dialectical Anthropology, Policy and Society, and the Japanese Journal of Political Science. He has been interviewed about his work on Dutch radio and given presentations about it to Japanese government officials. Dr. Sharpe serves on the editorial board of the scholarly peer reviewed journal Wadabagei: A Journal of the Caribbean and its Diaspora.
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*Commercial Practices and Institutions (1200-1700) The Low Countries and Southern Europe*
November 7, 2014
Flanders House, The New York Times Building
620 Eighth Avenue, 44th Floor
A workshop jointly sponsored by the Department of History, Columbia University, and the Nederlandse Taalunie under the auspices of the Queen Wilhelmina Visiting Professorship at Columbia University.
For more information, click here.
2013-14
Law, Torture and the Rights of our Subjects: Japanese Mercenaries and the Amboyna Incident of 1623
October 3, 2013
Room 403, Kent Hall
6:00pm
A talk by Adam Clulow, Senior Lecturer at Monash University and 2013-2014 Fung Global Fellow at Princeton University
In 1623, a group of Japanese mercenaries and English merchants were accused of plotting to seize control of a Dutch East India Company fort on the tiny island of Amboyna in modern-day Indonesia. They were arrested, tortured and after a short trial subsequently executed. Although the incident involved a comparatively small number of participants in a remote part of Southeast Asia, it quickly escalated into an international crisis that generated thousands of pages of legal materials as lawyers and government officials clashed over the events on Amboyna. This paper aims to move beyond the most basic issue of the conspirators’ innocence or guilt, which has preoccupied scholars for centuries now, and to use the incident to ask questions about the nature of European expansion into Asia in the early modern period.
Co-sponsored by the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture and the Blinken European Institute
An artisan ‘revolution’ in late medieval and early modern Europe?
October 4, 2013
Room 411, Fayerweather Hall
2:30-4:00 pm
Professor Maarten Prak of Utrecht University, The Netherlands, will be delivering a seminar paper entitled “An artisan ‘revolution’ in late medieval and early modern Europe?” on Friday, October 4. Professor Prak will introduce his paper but the seminar will be principally devoted to discussion of his work and its relationship to existing historiography on guilds, craft knowledge, and the changing commercial economy of the period.
All graduate students and faculty are invited. A copy of the paper is attached, and all participants are asked to read the paper in advance to assure a fruitful discussion.
Questions should be directed either to Professor Martha Howell (mch4) or Professor Pamela Smith (ps2270).
STUDIO @ Presents: Michel Van Der AA
October 25, 2013
Room 501, Schermerhorn Extension
7:30pm
Seating is free but limited. First come, first-seated.
In anticipation of the concert performance of Michel van der Aa’s ‘Up-Close’ (October 28) as part of the ‘White Lights Festival’ at Lincoln Center, Michel van der Aa will join colleagues and students at Columbia to talk about his new work, and to respond to audience questions.
Michel van der Aa (Netherlands, 1970) is a truly multidisciplinary figure in contemporary music. A unique voice, he combines composition with film and stage direction, and script writing. Classical instruments, voices, electronic sound, actors, theatre and video are all seamless extensions of his musical vocabulary. Among his most recent awards are the Mauricio Kagel Music Prize and the 2013 Grawemeyer Award.
‘STUDIO @’ is a program of experimental conversations and events spanning the fields of anthropology, literature, performance, sound, music and media arts. Curated by Rosalind C. Morris, it is jointly sponsored by the Department of Anthropology and the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University. Additional support for this event has been provided by the Taalunie Foundation through the Queen Wilhelmina Chair.
Amsterdam’s Atlantic: Public Opinion and the Making of Dutch Brazil, 1570-1720
November 8, 2013
12:30-2:00pm
Room 411, Fayerweather Hall
A discussion with Michiel van Groesen, Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Amsterdam and 2013 Queen Wilhelmina Visiting Professor at Columbia University.
Co-sponsored by the European History Workshop and Blinken European Institute
Workshop: Transmitting Knowledge in the Early Modern Dutch World
December 6-7, 2013
Deutches Haus
Two-day workshop focusing on the role of the Dutch Republic as a global hub of information and knowledge in the early modern world. Plenary lecture by Natalie Zemon Davis, with concluding remarks by Pamela Smith. Workshop program can be found here.
Asian Textiles and European Fashion 1400-1800
February 10, 2014
Room 411, Fayerweather Hall
4:00pm
A lecture by Professor John Styles
John Styles is Research Professor in History at the University of Hertfordshire in England. As former Head of Graduate Studies at the Victoria and Albert Museum, he wrote the historical themes for the V&A’s acclaimed British Galleries 1500-1900 and co-authored Design and the Decorative Arts: Britain 1500 to 1900. He specializes in the history of early modern Britain, especially the study of material life, manufacturing and design. His most recent book is The Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-Century England (2007). He currently holds a European Research Council Advanced Grant for a research project entitled ‘Spinning in the Era of the Spinning Wheel, 1400 to 1800’.
Supplying the court in the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Low Countries: the logic of the prince or the logic of the market?
February 21, 2014
Room 411, Fayerweather Hall
12:30–2:00pm
A talk by Peter Stabel, University of Antwerp. Lunch will be served.
A copy of the paper can be found here.
Co-sponsored by the European History Workshop
Belgium in World War I: German Occupation and the Flemish Movement, 1914–1918
February 24, 2014
Room 411, Fayerweather Hall
6:30pm
A talk by Ulrich Tiedau, University College London
Ulrich Tiedau is a Senior Lecturer in Modern Low Countries history and society at the Department of Dutch and an Associate Director of the Centre for Digital Humanities at University College London.
Europa after the Euro Crisis: Political Change, Public Discontent?
February 27, 2014
Room 707, International Affairs Building
6:00–8:00pm
Speaker: Luuk Van Middelaar, European Council
Discussant: Sheri Berman, Professor of Political Science, Barnard College
What is the state of Europe five years after the start of the global financial crisis? The countries of the European Union are still getting to terms with the economic and political after-shocks of the debt crisis that hit part of the continent. In the process of dealing with the crisis, power has shifted among member states and institutions; European public opinions are also realizing what it really means to share a currency, in good times as in bad. Does Europe face a fateful choice between federation and break-up, as some American commentators think? Or can it find its own way out?
Luuk van Middelaar is a Dutch political philosopher and currently the speechwriter and an advisor to the president of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy. He published his first book, Politicide, in 1999. Since its original publication, The Passage to Europe has received the Socrates Prize for the best Dutch philosophy book and the European Book Prize 2012.
Sponsored by the Blinken European Institute.
Comrade Baron: From the Vanished World of the Eastern European Aristocracy to Contemporary Eastern Europe
April 24, 2014
Deutches Haus (420 W. 116th St.)
7:00 pm
Speaker: Jaap Scholten, Dutch author
In Black and White: Picturing Curaçao’s Dutch Architectural Heritage
May 6, 2014
Room 411, Fayerweather Hall
6:00 pm
Speaker: Marsely L. Kehoe, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Art and Archeology, Columbia University
2012-13
The Dutch at War in Europe and in Asia, 1940-1950
Friday, February 8, 2013
12:00pm
Room 411, Fayerweather Hall
Lecture by Dr. Peter Romijn, Queen Wilhelmina Visiting Professor, as part of the European History Workshop.
Master Class: War, Mass Violence and Societies in 20th century European History
Saturday March 30, 2013
A class for master students, PhD students, and others working on subjects related to European wars and periods of mass violence in the 20th century.
The New State: The Experiment of the Dutch Monarchy in the 19th Century
Monday, May 6, 2013
7:00pm
Deutsches Haus (420 W. 116th Street)
Lecture by Dr. Ido de Haan, Professor of Political History, Utrecht University
Introductory remarks by Dr. Peter Romijn, Qween Wilhelmina Visiting Professor, University of Amsterdam: Of Kings and Queens, A Retrospective
Colloquium: Perpetrators as victims? Evading guilt and responsibility for crimes of atrocity
May 29, 2013
Organized by Professor Peter Romijn, Queen Wilhelmina Visiting Professor and Professor Elazar Barkan, Columbia University.
2011-12
Master Class in Medieval and Early Modern History
October 22, 2011
Taught by Queen Wilhelmina Visiting Professor Wim Blockmans, a day-long master class was held with eleven doctoral students focusing on medieval and early-modern history.
Five Dutch Days, Five Boroughs
November 2, 2011
The Dutch program participated for the fifth consecutive year in the annual Five Dutch Days Five Boroughs festival, with an introductory Dutch class held at Deutsches Haus. This was an opportunity for members of the public to learn more about the language and culture of the Low Countries, and to get interested in further study of the language.
The Impact of Art in the Low Countries and Italy, 14th to 16th centuries
December 15, 2011
This one-day workshop focused on the intersections between art and social structure or social tensions in the greater Low Countries during the period of the Renaissance. Queen Wilhelmina Visiting Professor Wim Blockmans delivered the keynote, “Diverse Audiences, Various Effects”; speakers included David Freedberg, Pierre Matisse Professor of the History of Art at Columbia University, as well as historians, specialists in art history, curators, musicologists, and literary scholars from Columbia, neighboring universities, museums and galleries in the region. The program included twelve papers and 50 participants came from various institutions in the New York area.
Workshop: Hadewijch’s Vernacular
April 5-6, 2012
Organized and led by Patricia Dailey, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature; Veerle Fraeters, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Antwerp; and Mary Suydam, Professor of Religious Studies at Kenyon College. During the two-day workshop, undergraduate and graduate students collaborated with faculty to work through some of the Middle Dutch terminology of the thirteenth-century Brabant mystic Hadewijch (ca. 1230), the first poet in the Middle Dutch language. The invited guests prepared handouts on the uses of specific Middle Dutch terms in Hadewijch’s writings, comparing some of them with Latinate terms while analyzing the nuances of the vernacular. The workshop culminated in the idea of founding an “international Hadewijch Society” as an internet presence to further the study of Hadewijch and to keep people up to date on current scholarship and events pertaining to her work.
An Evening with Mr. Tom Lanoye
April 10, 2012
Mr. Tom Lanoye, one of the most celebrated young authors in Belgium, presented his work to two Dutch literature classes.
Five Dutch Poets Day
April 13, 2012
A reading in Dutch and English by Mr. Joost Zwagerman, Mr. John Schoorl, Mr. Lucas Hirsch, Ms. Hélène Gelèns, and Mr. Erik Jan Harmens.The reading was an opportunity for students to meet in an informal setting with the five poets during the afternoon to discuss their work.
2010-11
Class visit by Ms. Joke van Leeuwen
October 18-19, 2010
Ms. Joke van Leeuwen, a Dutch/Belgian author of award-winning children’s books, poet and entertainer, taught one advanced class, one intermediate and one elementary class in Wijnie de Groot’s classroom.
Albert Eckhout in the New World
November 10, 2010
Lecture by Ms. Kiki Smit, History MA from the University of Amsterdam and then a Research Associate at the New York Historical Society, who discussed the gendered and racial aspects of Eckhout’s famous paintings of Native Americans and Africans in Brazil. This event was part of New York City’s “Dutch Days.”
Lecture by Professor Ernst van de Wetering
November 2010
Professor Ernst van de Wetering, a noted Rembrandt scholar, spoke to well-attended audience of 100 students, primarily from the Department of Art History. This event was part of New York City’s “Dutch Days.”
Five Dutch Days, Five Boroughs
November 2010
The Dutch program participated in the annual Five Dutch Days Five Boroughs festival, with an introductory Dutch class held at Deutsches Haus. This was an opportunity for members of the public to learn more about the language and culture of the Low Countries, and to get interested in further study of the language.
Religious Encounters in the Borderlands of Early Modern Europe
December 2, 2010
Ben Kaplan, Professor of History at the University of London, presented a case of Protestant-Catholic conflict over marriage and baptism in the Overmaas region during the 18th century, demonstrating that the tensions and conflicts in the seventeenth century over religious adherence persisted into the Age of Enlightenment, and showing how the peculiar borderland zone around Maastricht and Aachen, with Protestant and Catholic territories so close to each other, both eased some tensions but allowed the differences and conflicts to persist.
The Low Countries and Beyond: New work on the history of the Dutch-speaking world
April 21, 2011
A day-long seminar featuring panels on the topics of Economy, State and Society, Representations, and The Dutch in the World. Nine doctoral candidates and postdoctoral fellows from Columbia, Princeton, and the University of Ghent presented papers, each of which was commented on by a faculty member and subsequently discussed by all seminar members.
Lecture by Jaco Zuijderduijn
May 2011
Dr. Jaco Zuiderduijn, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Utrecht, explained a joint project at Utrecht concerning the early modern convention of putting the birth dates of sitters for portraits on the paintings themselves. His hypothesis was that the convention can be used as a proxy for numeracy itself, allowing not only a more precise estimate of the extent (and chronological development) of numeracy but also its distribution across social class.
2009-10
The Western World Economy of the Twentieth Century
October 2009
Lecture by Baron Herman Van der Wee, Professor Emeritus at the University of Leuven, one of Europe’s most distinguished historians of the western European economy and particularly of the place of the Low Countries in that history.
Cities in Revolt: The Dutch-American Atlantic, ca. 1650-1815
November 13-14, 2009
A two-day conference involving presentations by sixteen scholars, Cities in Revolt provided a forum for new scholarship on the intersections between the Dutch and Anglo-American Atlantic worlds in the long eighteenth century. The keynote speech, The Dutch Cities, Radical Enlightenment and the ‘General Revolution,’ 1776-1790, was given by Jonathan Israel of the Institute for Advanced Study. Panels included Seventeenth-Century Histories, Eighteenth-Century Memories; American Political Events in Dutch Atlantic Perspective; War, Trade and Politics in the Dutch-American Atlantic; Dutch and American Republicanisms; and Travelers and Friends in the Age of Revolution. The conference proceedings were published in the January 2012 issue of the Early American Studies journal and can be accessed here.
Five Dutch Days, Five Boroughs
November 2009
The Dutch program participated in the annual Five Dutch Days Five Boroughs festival, with an introductory Dutch class held at Deutsches Haus. This was an opportunity for members of the public to learn more about the language and culture of the Low Countries, and to get interested in further study of the language.
Welcome to the Woods
November 24, 2009
Dutch theater director, Mr. Erwin Maas, discussed his work with students of Dutch, who went to see his play, Welcome to the Woods, afterwards.
The Power of Space: Cities in Late Medieval/Early Modern Italy and Northern Europe
March 2010
This two-day workshop brought together a group of scholars from the U.S., France, Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Switzerland to share research on how cultural, social, political, and economic practices were constituted by spatial organization in cities of Italy (Venice, Lucca, and Naples among others) and northern Europe (Paris and its environs, Brussels, Ghent, Amsterdam, and Lille among others) during the late medieval and early modern centuries. Although recognized as the most commercialized parts of late medieval Europe, justly famous for their sociopolitical innovations and cultural achievements, the two regions differed in ways that have made comparative analysis difficult. In addition to pursuing questions particularly informed by anthropological work on the way space not only contains but also confers meaning, the conference intended to provide a frame for systematic comparison of these two regions. Proceedings of the workshop have been published in The Power of Space in late medieval and early modern Europe: The cities of Italy, Northern France and the Low Countries, edited by Marc Boone and Martha Howell and published by Brepols (Belgium).
What happened to Descartes when he arrived in the Dutch Republic?
March 22, 2010
A lecture by Klaas van Berkel, Professor of History at Groningen University, who argued that Descartes absorbed the materialist and mechanist ideas current in the Dutch Republic in the first two decades of the seventeenth century. These ideas came primarily through Descartes’ interest in medicine and particularly in medical dissection. Although Descartes disavowed such views in print, especially after the debates initiated by Heinrich Voetius, he seems to have discussed such ideas with many individuals, thus the characterization of Descartes as a materialist may possess more accuracy than previously believed.
Canons of quality in Seventeenth Century Flemish Portraiture
April 1, 2010
Lecture by Katlijne van der Stighelen, Professor of Art History at the University of Leuven.
Socially Unskilled? Emulative Portraits by Pieter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck
April 2, 2010
Lecture by Katlijne van der Stighelen, Professor of Art History at the University of Leuven.
Dutch History in a Globalizing World
June 4, 2012
Organized by Queen Whilhelmina Visiting Professors Marjolein ‘t Hart and Karel Davids, this workshop brought together several specialists in Dutch history and Dutch historical sociology from various universities in the U.S.
2008-09
Presentation by Professor Oscar Gelderblom
October 2008
Oscar Gelderblom, Associate Professor of History at the University of Utrecht, gave a presentation on credit crises in Dutch economic history, focusing in particular on the early 18th century. Given just as the current credit crises hit the headlines, the timely nature of economic historical studies could not have been clearer.
Myth and Reality: The Dutch during World War II
October 2008
Lecture by Mr. David Barnouw, Senior Researcher at the Netherlands Instituut voor Ooorlogsdocumentatie.
Film Screening: The Mothers’ House (2006)
October 8, 2008
Part I of the film series, Framing the Past, Filming the Future: A Programme of South African Film, curated by Queen Wilhelmina Visiting Professor, Francois Verster.
Film Screening: The Long Journey of Clement Zulu (1994) and What Happened to Mbuyisa? (1998)
October 22, 2008
Part 2 of the film series, Framing the Past, Filming the Future: A Programme of South African Film, curated by Queen Wilhelmina Visiting Professor, Francois Verster. The focus of the screening was documentaries on the brink of a new South Africa.
From Comic Colonials to National Heroes: Changing Perceptions of the Dutch in 19th-century American Art
November 2008
Annette Stott, Associate Professor of Art History and Women’s Studies at the University of Denver, gave a lecture that was coordinated with the annual City-wide celebration of Dutch heritage and culture, “5 Dutch Days.”
Five Dutch Days, Five Boroughs
November 2008
The Dutch program participated in the annual Five Dutch Days Five Boroughs festival, with an introductory Dutch class held at Deutsches Haus. This was an opportunity for members of the public to learn more about the language and culture of the Low Countries, and to get interested in further study of the language.
Film Screening: The City that Kills Somalians (2007) and Wa’n’wina (2002)
November 5, 2008
Part 3 of the film series, Framing the Past, Filming the Future: A Programme of South African Film, curated by Queen Wilhelmina Visiting Professor, Francois Verster. The focus of the screening was black personal documentaries from post-Apartheid South Africa.
Film Screening: Jesus and the Giant (2008), Ongeriewe (2006), Swing Left Frank (2007), and Meokgo and the Stick Fighter (2007)
November 19, 2008
Part 4 of the film series, Framing the Past, Filming the Future: A Programme of South African Film, curated by Queen Wilhelmina Visiting Professor, Francois Verster. The focus of the screening was recent short films from South Africa.
Film Screening: Africa Addio (1966)
December 2, 2008
Part 5 of the film series, Framing the Past, Filming the Future: A Programme of South African Film, curated by Queen Wilhelmina Visiting Professor, Francois Verster. The focus of the screening was the representation of Africa.
War, Worship, and Memory: Poetry from New Netherland
January 2009
Lecture by Joanne van der Woude, Assistant Professor of English and of History and Literature, Harvard University.
Rethinking Mercantilism
March 2009
The Dutch program supported the visit of Dr. Victor Enthoven, Senior Researcher at the Free University of Amsterdam, to present a paper and participate in the two-day conference, “Rethinking Mercantilism.” Enthoven presented a paper concerning the Dutch and their relationship to mercantilism amidst an international group of scholars working on the British, French, Spanish, German contexts as well as thematic issues of money, trade, demography, piracy, and ecology.
Selling Manhattan: Images of the New World in Old Amsterdam
April 1, 2009
Lecture by Frans Blom, Associate Professor of Dutch Literature at the University of Amsterdam.
Lecture by Professor Julie Hochstrasser
April 29, 2009
Julie Hochstrasser, Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Iowa, spoke on memory and the reconstruction of historical experience to Professor Pamela Smith’s undergraduate seminar “The World We Have Lost: Daily Life in Pre-Modern Europe.”
Lecture by Professor Julie Hochstrasser
May 1, 2009
Julie Hochstrasser, Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Iowa, spoke to a group of graduate students and faculty interested in material culture about tracing various objects around the Dutch early modern world.
2007-08
The Dutchness of Dutch Art
October 15, 2007
A lecture by Dr. Ludo Beheydt, Universite de Louvain, Belgium and the Universiteit van Leiden, Netherlands.
Lecture by Professor Benjamin Schmidt
November 2007
Benjamin Schmidt, Professor of History at the University of Washington, gave a lecture from his recent work on the Dutch imagination of the world in the early modern period, using portraits, illustrations from travel literature, maps, and the like. The event was connected to New York City’s “Dutch Days.”
The Economy and the State in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Low Countries: Cooperation, Competition, Interdependence
March 28, 2008
The day-long conference featured scholars from Barnard College, Brooklyn College, Columbia University, New York University, San Marcos State University, University of Antwerp, University of Ghent, University of Amsterdam, Utrecht University, University College London, and Yale University who presented papers examining the relationship between commerce and state-building in the late medieval and early modern Low Countries.
Lecture by Professor Thérèse de Hemptinne
March 28, 2008
Professor Thérèse de Hemptinne, Department of Medieval History at the University of Gent, delivered a paper on the problem of translation of Latin texts into Dutch and French in the twelfth-century Low Countries.
Primitivity, Animism, and Oriental Super Egos: Western Constructions of Indonesian Nationalism in the Dutch East Indies
April 2, 2008
A lecture by Frances Gouda, Professor of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam.
Immigrants in Europe: Politics, Media and Literature
April 18-19, 2008
A two-day conference on politics and literature of immigration in the Netherlands. The keynote speech was given by Professor Paul Scheffer, then in the Department of Urban Studies at the University of Amsterdam and now in the Department of Culture Studies at Tilburg University.
2006-07
Lecture by Professor Harold Cook
February 2007
Professor Harold Cook, then at Welcome Institute in London and now the John F. Nickoll Professor of History at Brown University, delivered a lecture on Dutch science in the Golden Age.
The Dutch Golden Age and the World
March 30-31, 2007
The Dutch are widely recognized as pioneers in the global expansion of Europe. However, study of the Dutch experience has tended to be sporadic and segmented. This is both a product and consequence of the peculiar circumstances of the Dutch Golden Age. Dutch expansion was preceded by the Spanish and superseded by the British, and the Dutch empire that emerged lacked the coherence and power of its rivals. This workshop brought into conversation a number of scholars working on various areas of Dutch involvement in the wider world of the Golden Age (late 16th–late 17th centuries). The goal was to begin to piece together a unified picture of Dutch activities at home and abroad during the Golden Age, or to at least study whether such an effort is possible.