Research team
Expertise
1. Modern literatures in English (emphasis: American 20th-century literature). 2. Modernist poetry: Wallace Stevens. 3. LGBTIQ studies and queer theory, more particularly in the realm of interdisciplinary cultural studies (esp. contemporary literature in English and recent history) and with regard to the interactions between academic and activist work. 4. Multidisciplinary urban studies (as a member of the Urban Studies Institute) with emphasis on New York City and literary urban studies. 5. Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts (as chair), with special attention to multidisciplinary research in music. 6. Literature and philosophy; literature and architecture; literature and music. For more details: see my personal webpage at UAntwerp.
Sabbatical 2025-2026 (B. Eeckhout).
Abstract
Under the collective heading of Contemporary Culture and the Built Environment, I plan to work on two projects, one scholarly, one popularizing. The scholarly project entails the writing of two articles to be submitted to literary-critical journals for peer-reviewed publication. These articles will contribute in the long run to the writing of a monograph provisionally entitled Queer Dwellings: Architecture and Sexuality in the Novels of Alan Hollinghurst. The working titles for the articles are "The Porous Architectural Boundaries of Sexual Privacy in Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty" and "Reading Desire through Built Space: The Case of Alan Hollinghurst's Our Evenings." These will be submitted to online journals that are Diamond Open Access. The popularizing project involves the completion of a book manuscript in Dutch for a wide readership provisionally entitled Vloeibaar New York: Een cultuurgeschiedenis, 1880-2020 (Fluid New York: A Cultural History, 1880-2020). This multidisciplinary book, whose manuscript is expected to be 40% complete at the start of the sabbatical, offers an exceptionally diverse compilation of more than 70 cultural and artistic portraits, divided into nine historical periods, for which on every occasion major figures and works are discussed from eight different cultural realms: architecture, photography, film, art, music, theater, fiction, and poetry. This is a unique project that should lend itself to various additional forms of outreach.Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Eeckhout Bart
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project
Singing the cello - vocality as a principle of Romantic instrumental playing in Schumann´s work.
Abstract
As part of ongoing artistic research of sound within the field of historically informed performance practice of the Romantic era, vocality in Romantic cello playing within Schumann´s music will be examined. In support of a cellistic and performance-practice-based exploration, using R. Schumann´s Cello concerto in a Minor, Op.129., as a case study, this project will – alongside various aspects of 19th-century musical culture – mainly address the vocal ideal of German Romanticism: a fundamental, guiding, and aspired-to principle of expression in this era, which will be studied both in terms of its influence on Romantic cello playing and on Schumann´s instrumental compositions. Although Schumann's oeuvre has been studied multiple times in the past, many previous studies have taken an essentially instrumental approach, engaging with the composer's music primarily from the perspective of instrumental technique rather than considering it from a broader point of view. The present research proposes a new perspective on Schumann's work by contextualizing his instrumental music and engaging with it through the lens of Romantic vocal ideal. In doing so, the project seeks to gain new scientific and artistic insights into vocality in Schumann's aesthetics, its connection with his instrumental compositions, and its implications in Romantic cello playing. The research draws on various study fields, such as 19th-century vocality and period-specific musical and cellistic conditions, traditions and expressive practices. Methodologically, the project combines body-based practicing methods, stylistic and transdisciplinary experiments, studies of source material and other academic and artistic research techniques, in order to gain insights into the research topic from multifactuous perspectives. The aim of the research project is to expand the current understanding of the connection between the vocal ideal and instrumental performance in 19th-century music, to generate new scientific insights into this sonic language and to offer new artistic access to that music.Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Eeckhout Bart
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project
Analogy and the Erotics of Interpretation.
Abstract
This doctoral research investigates the function of analogy and metaphor as transformative agents in the interpretation of nineteenth-century piano music. Through a combination of artistic experimentation and theoretical reflection, it examines how analogical processes operate within musical performance, mediating between the symbolic and the material, the conceptual and the embodied. Drawing on the writings of Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, and Paulo de Assis, the project situates itself at the intersection of musical semiology, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and performance studies. Barthes and Kristeva's theories of signification, corporeality, and desire inform an understanding of musical experience as both intellectual and sensuous, while de Assis's work provides a model for experimental methodologies that link artistic practice with theoretical inquiry. The research introduces the tentative concept of the transmutational metaphor, describing how analogy generates and reshapes musical meaning through performative engagement. A central theoretical strand, The Erotics of Interpretation, explores the interplay between reflection and sensation, proposing an embodied and affective model of interpretation that unites thought, gesture, and desire. Three artistic case studies structure the investigation: A Thousand Hammerklavier Sonatas (daily metaphor-driven reinterpretations of Beethoven's Op. 106), Transfigured (a study of Romantic piano transcription and analogical transformation), and Stanislavski's Magical "If" in Music Performance (applying acting techniques to imaginative and affective engagement). By integrating artistic practice with advanced theoretical studies, the project reconsiders the performer's role as a generator of meaning and advocates an experimental, nomadic approach to musical interpretation.Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Eeckhout Bart
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project
From Stage to Page: An Experimental, Performance-led examination of the relationship between Musical Performance and Musical Analysis.
Abstract
Motivic and voiceleading approaches to musical analysis have clear utility for the performer. Yet we have an underdeveloped understanding of how these score-based approaches to analysis interact with forms of knowledge intrinsic to performance. This is an obstacle for musicians seeking to use analysis creatively, and for pedagogical innovation. This project will develop a framework for understanding how different forms of knowledge emanating from performance practice interact with musical analysis. Focusing on 19th century piano repertoire my project poses three research questions; 1) How might we theorise the interaction of knowledge derived from score-based analysis and forms of knowledge intrinsic to performance? 2) How might the interaction of analytical and performer-centred knowledge lead to new creative opportunities in performance? 3) How can the opportunities generated by the interaction of analysis and performer-centred knowledge be exploited to produce original performances? To answer these questions, the project exploits powerful and underutilised practice-based research methods, that mobilize subjective perception to attain deeper understanding of mental and bodily performance processes. These are fortified by experimental performance approaches which generate new artistic products, alongside scrupulous auto-ethnographic documentation the process and outcomes, leading to a new theorisation of the multifaceted interrelation of performance and analysis.Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Eeckhout Bart
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project
Happiness and Agency in Queer Young Adult Literature: An Exploration of Empowering Scenarios in Literary Emotionality
Abstract
Today, queer teenagers are still more likely than their peers to develop mental health issues. Recent endeavours to combat those issues have been trying to show them that 'it gets better'. However, it is not only important to see whether queer adolescents can imagine happiness as a possibility in the future, but also how they perceive their own agency over such happiness in the present. This project aims to examine the literary portrayal of happiness in queer YA literature with specific attention to the characters' agency in their pursuit and experience of happiness. Research has shown that novels can empower readers if they can identify with characters that establish agency. In order to examine this potential in literature, this study will use a corpus of influential contemporary queer YA novels and first analyse their portrayal of happiness as a literary emotionality. In the next stage, those portrayals of happiness will be analysed in terms of agency to examine how these stories represent potential for empowerment regarding happiness. A focus on temporality will be a central aspect in both part of the analysis. As a result, this research not only contributes to literary research, but also aims to develop a toolkit for organisations that use literature to empower queer youth.Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Joosen Vanessa
- Co-promoter: Eeckhout Bart
- Fellow: Claeys Lien
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project
The Biopolitics of the Dressed Male Body: Understanding Normative Embodied Masculinities in Everyday Life in Belgium and Italy
Abstract
The overall aim of this project is to explore the relationship between clothing and masculinity in non-conforming men's everyday life sartorial practices. Specifically, it will look at the impact of gendered norms on the articulation, policing, and experience of the dressed male body in public space in both Belgium and Italy. This research will consider the dressed male body as a pivotal element in the biopolitics of masculinity by examining the importance of dress practices in biopower's disciplinary and regulatory interventions on the body, a dimension which has been all too often overlooked. This will be done through an ethnographic wardrobe studies investigation. By bridging material culture and embodied research, the project will consider to which extent norms of masculinity restrict the self-expression of the dressed male body, and how this embodied knowledge affects the everyday act of getting dressed. As research on the relationship between men and fashion in everyday life is an area still in need of greater investigation and understanding, this project will extend and expand our understanding of the dressed male body, emphasizing the fundamental role of dress practices as identity-making practices in the biopolitics of masculinity. As such, it aligns with recent scholarly and mainstream concerns with the changing nature of masculinity and with the backlash towards more inclusive forms of male embodiment.Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Dhoest Alexander
- Co-promoter: Eeckhout Bart
- Fellow: Brajato Nicola
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project
La Grande Bouffe – challenges in the performance of musical.
Abstract
Without humor, comedy is a big drag. Nonetheless, operetta – the comical musical theater genre par excellence – became permeated with nostalgia after World War II. Sentiment would overtake works in which frivolity, vulgarity and caricature had once predominated. Eventually, operetta became too sweet for the jaws of time and disappeared from the professional cultural landscape. The current slow comeback of the genre throughout Europe uncovers a hiatus in the oral transfer of knowledge regarding operetta performance practices, particularly in the way in which music can be used in a comical way. Consequently, this doctoral research aims at increasing the insight into the humor techniques that are present in the musical score of an operetta, as well as in the interaction between music and libretto, to arrive at a compilation of possible practices for the purposes of operationalizing those humor techniques in the performance of operetta. Three Belgian Belle Époque operettas represent the central case studies: Beulemans marie sa fille by Arthur Van Oost, La Part du Feu by Charles Mélant, and Une ruse de Pierrette by Eva Dell'Acqua.Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Eeckhout Bart
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project
Born in the Wrong Story: An Embodied Approach to Transgender Narratives in Dutch Fiction.
Abstract
In today's society, we can observe a gap between the complex gender identities, experiences and embodiments of transgender people and the dominant reductionist scenario of gender transition as a movement from a "wrong" body towards a "right" body. This project turns to fictional transgender narratives in Dutch literature, focusing on various narrative structures and their capacity to render visible a large range of transgender subjectivities. The literary imagination opens up possibilities for narrating the multidimensional embodied experience of transgender characters beyond the formal and social conventions of transgender autobiographies. The analysis of transgender narratives is based on a corpus consisting of fictional literary works published in the Netherlands since the mid-twentieth century, when the public discourse surrounding transgender people started to take shape. In that literary corpus, I will investigate how metaphors, storyworlds and specific modes of narration and focalization evoke complex subject positions. As a result, my research will not only contribute to the growing field of transgender studies, but also demonstrate the valuable role of narratological approaches in emancipatory projects.Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Eeckhout Bart
- Fellow: Van den Bossche Sven
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project
Reshaping Masculinities: Dress, Body and Identity in the Antwerp Fashion Scene.
Abstract
This research project is the first ever to directly address the relationship between fashion, body and gender identity in the well-known Antwerp fashion scene. Specifically, it will focus on the creative practices of four designers from different generations (Raf Simons, Ann Demeulemeester, Bernhard Willhelm and Glenn Martens) and investigate how they all contributed to reshaping the idea of male aesthetics through a critical approach to menswear. The research is innovative for its multidisciplinary approach at the intersection of fashion studies, men's studies and queer studies. It will combine theories on the construction of masculinity with insights into the role of fashion in creating and questioning embodied gender norms. Methodologically, it will primarily draw on the analysis of visual and audio-visual materials (i.e. fashion show videos and images, catalogues, look books, magazine editorials, etc.) provided by the MoMu fashion museum and other archives, combined with interviews with the designers and relevant personalities from the Antwerp fashion scene. Because of its multidisciplinary character, this project will contribute to several fields: it will strengthen the existing literature on Belgian fashion by providing new insights from a masculinity perspective, put Belgium on the fashion studies map, and add a totally new angle to men's and queer studies in Belgian academia.Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Dhoest Alexander
- Co-promoter: Eeckhout Bart
- Fellow: Brajato Nicola
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project
100 year surrealism – In dialogue with surrealist creation methods.
Abstract
This doctoral project articulates how surrealist creation methods and thinking tools influence and are used by contemporary artists today. Therefor a surrealist toolbox will be created (a non-exhaustive description of surrealist methods and thoughts) that forms a base for dialogue, interviews and collaborations with contemporary artist and art students today. By means of workshops and surrealist 'sparkling water-salons', specific themes, methods and international legacies of the surrealist movement are treated by students, experts and artists. Through collaborations with contemporary artists, the surrealist methods are practiced and analysed from the inside. These dialogues and collaborations result in a toolbox, a constellation of collaborative artworks, and a thesis with findings.Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Eeckhout Bart
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project
Wallace Stevens in the World.
Abstract
During my stay as Fellow-in-Residence at NIAS in Amsterdam, I intend to deepen the critical understanding of the many ways in which Wallace Stevens' writings simultaneously relate to the world and may be considered relevant to world literature. I will do so by developing a variety of complementary angles that will be pursued over three interrelated book projects. My first and main goal is to write a book whose working title is "Wallace Stevens' World Wide Web." My second goal consists of a collection of essays on "Wallace Stevens and France" that I will be coediting for Editions Rue d'Ulm/Presses de l'Ecole normale supérieure. This will explore Stevens' uses of French, the influence of French poetry and painting on his writings, the reception of his work in France, French translations of his poetry, and the relevance of French theorists for reading his work. My third and final goal is to finish an annotated selection of 101 poems by Stevens that I have been translating into Dutch over the years.Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Eeckhout Bart
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project
Wallace Stevens as a World Poet.
Abstract
This research project is meant to contribute to the process of reading the canonical modernist poet Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) as a transnational and global poet. It seeks to provide a more systematic focus to such readings, present a variety of relevant data not yet available to Stevens scholarship, evaluate what is critically at stake in transnationalizing the poet, and recalibrate current theories on world literature and ecocriticism by confronting them with Stevens' complex poetic thinking in this regard. The project will investigate Stevens as a "world poet" from a variety of complementary angles that may be organized into three main parts, consisting of two large case studies each: "Wallace Stevens in the World" (which is to be based on archival research into the poet's library and correspondence), "The World through Wallace Stevens" (which will draw on theories of world literature and ecocriticism), and "The World after Wallace Stevens" (which will involve case studies about Stevens' influence on a cluster of non-American poets, on the one hand, and the painter David Hockney, on the other).Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Eeckhout Bart
- Fellow: Jamieson Anna
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project
E-identity: Social media and identity from the perspective of diasporic LGBTQs.
Abstract
The internet, and social media in particular, create new opportunities and pose new challenges for the ways people think about themselves as well as manage the expressions and performances of their identities. In this research project I aim to refine and extend the latest theories on social media and identity, especially about 1) fixating the fragmented self (van Zoonen 2013), 2) collapsed contexts (boyd 2011) and 3) the multiplication of contexts (Papacharissi 2011), by investigating those phenomena from the perspective of diasporic LGBTQs (Polish post-accession immigrants to the UK). I will examine what diasporic LGBTQs and their social media's uses can teach us about the relationship between the internet and identity, as well as what opportunities and difficulties social media create to a group that faces different challenges of exclusion and discrimination. I will first use a quantitative survey to map the diversity of social media used by Polish LGBTQs in the UK. However, because I am primarily interested in meanings of daily media practices, it is qualitative methods, and in-depth interviews in particular, which will form the core of my methodological toolkit. At the same time, to trigger more and better quality data I will combine traditional qualitative methods with such innovative approaches as think-aloud protocols (which require from participants to talk about the activity in which they are involved) and digital methods (the methods of the medium under scrutiny).Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Dhoest Alexander
- Co-promoter: Eeckhout Bart
- Fellow: Szulc Lukasz
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project
Revising Mid-Twentieth-Century American Poetics: Correspondences in the Poetry and Prose of Wallace Stevens, John Ashbery, and Frank O'Hara.
Abstract
My proposal stems from state-of-the-art criticism that attempts to bring Stevens and postwar American poetry together in order to uncover continuities and affinities that should help us move beyond the reductively applied and frequently unhelpful labels of high modernism, late modernism, and postmodernism.Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Eeckhout Bart
- Fellow: Janssen Lesley
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project
Homonegativity and Gender Deviance: A Comparative Analysis of the Relationship between Ideas on Gender and Sexuality in Flanders, The Netherlands, and the United States.
Abstract
This project investigates to what extent and in what manner attitudes toward non-heteronormative sexualities can be explained by attitudes toward gender. The corpus of analyzed texts consists of book and film reviews from the period 1960 until today. For each compared region (Flanders, The Netherlands, the U.S.), two written media (a newspaper and a weekly) will be analyzed.Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Eeckhout Bart
- Co-promoter: Dhoest Alexander
- Fellow: Savenije Tim
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project
The Planet on the Table: Wallace Stevens as a World Poet.
Abstract
This research project is meant to contribute to the process of reading the canonical modernist poet Wallace Stevens as a transnational and global poet. It seeks to provide a more systematic focus to such readings, present a variety of relevant data not yet available to Stevens criticism, evaluate what is critically at stake in transnationalizing this poet, and recalibrate current theories on world literature, ecocriticism, and cultural topography by confronting them with Stevens' complex poetic thinking in this regard. Borrowing its main title from the poem in which Stevens looked back on his own poetic career, "The Planet on the Table," the project will investigate Stevens as a "world poet" from a variety of complementary angles that may be organized into three main parts: "Wallace Stevens in the World" (which is to be based on archival research), "The World through Wallace Stevens" (which will draw on theories of world literature, ecocriticism, and a combination of rhetorical analysis and cultural topography), and "The World after Wallace Stevens" (which will involve case studies about translations, adaptations, and the poet's afterlife on the internet).Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Eeckhout Bart
- Fellow: Janssen Lesley
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project
Queer sounds: The function and meaning of music in the formation and evolution of an LGBT subculture in the city of Antwerp (1960-2010).
Abstract
This project aims to contribute to a better understanding of the function of music in processes of subcultural identification, focusing on the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) community in Antwerp. It is widely accepted that music plays an important role in the formation and self-definition of minorities and subcultures, but its function in the LGBT community has not been extensively investigated yet. Moreover, Flemish LGBT culture and its history have hardly come up for academic analysis to date. Our aim is, first, to find out what musical repertoire and which musical functions were shared within the LGBT scene, focusing on the largest Flemish urban centre Antwerp, between 1960 (the start of the LGBT movement in Antwerp) and 2010. Secondly, we will analyse how this repertoire and its uses operate as subcultural capital and contribute to the formation of one or more LGBT subcultures.Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Dhoest Alexander
- Co-promoter: de Smaele Henk
- Co-promoter: Eeckhout Bart
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project
The function and meaning of music in the formation and evolution of a LGB subculture in the city of Antwerp (1960-2010)
Abstract
This project aims to better understand the function of music in processes of subcultural identification, focusing on the LGB (Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual) community in Antwerp. It is known that music plays an important role in the formation and self-definition of minorities and subcultures, but its function in the LGB community has not been extensively researched. Moreover, Flemish LGB culture and its history have hardly been academically researched to date. Our aim is to first find out which musical repertoire and which musical functions were shared within the LGB scene, focusing on the largest Flemish urban centre Antwerp, between 1960 (the start of the LGB movement in Antwerp) and 2010. Secondly, we will analyse how this repertoire and its uses operate as subcultural capital and contribute to the formation of one or more LGB subculture(s). A combination of qualitative methods (archive research, document analysis, in-depth interviews with informants and participants in LGB culture) is used to get a holistic view on historical processes and evolutions in these musical cultures. This project brings together insights from media studies, LGB/queer studies and history, aiming to bridge the distance between these disciplines in a specific case study.Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Dhoest Alexander
- Co-promoter: de Smaele Henk
- Co-promoter: Eeckhout Bart
Research team(s)
Project website
Project type(s)
- Research Project
Who's In? Who's Out? A comparative analysis of sexual and gender minority self-representations in cyberspace in Poland, Scotland and Turkey.
Abstract
This research project explores how members of sexual and gender minority communities (activists, editors and media users) represent themselves using online media. In particular, the project aims to explore representational practices among different sexual and gender minorities (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex and/or queer persons) and in different national, cultural and religious contexts (Poland, Scotland and Turkey).Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Dhoest Alexander
- Co-promoter: Eeckhout Bart
- Fellow: Szulc Lukasz
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project
Positioning Rebecca Brown's work within contemporary English literature.
Abstract
The project focuses on the (hitherto largely unexamined) oeuvre of the American author Rebecca Brown. It comprises, firstly, an intertextual component centering on Brown's minimalism and positioning her work within contemporary English literature; and, secondly, a sociological study that will examine what makes her worldview such an unpopular one as well as track the influence of the current American literary market on the reception of Brown's work."Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Eeckhout Bart
- Fellow: Xhonneux Lies
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project
The Contemporary Historic Novel about New York City.
Abstract
The investigation seeks to provide answers to the following four main research questions: (1) The literary-historical question about specific shifts that allow us to situate the phenomenon of the contemporary historic novel on New York City within (American) literary history overall. (2) The genre-typological question about the role of quest and search plots in the corpus. (3) The documentary question about the ways in which writers use historic sources. (4) The political-ideological question about the possibly subversive or critical potential of the fictional worlds developed by writers.Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Eeckhout Bart
- Co-promoter: Herman Luc
- Co-promoter: Stabel Peter
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project
The Study and Dissemination of the Poetry of Wallace Stevens from a Text-Genetic Perspective.
Abstract
This project is intended to start up and develop a critically responsible investigation, based on an adequate knowledge of state-of-the-art evolutions in the field of textual genetics and entirely in line with the research profile of the University of Antwerp in the field of English and American literature, into the textual genesis of the poetry of the American modernist poet Wallace Stevens (1879-1955).Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Eeckhout Bart
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project