Research focus 1: Wallace Stevens

Bart Eeckhout is an international expert in the writings of the American modernist poet Wallace Stevens (1879-1955). He has published 7 books in the field of Stevens criticism:

as well as 13 (co)edited thematic issues of The Wallace Stevens Journal:

  • "International Perspectives on Wallace Stevens" (Fall 2001)
  • "Wallace Stevens and British Literature" (Spring 2006)
  • "Stevens and the Everyday" (Spring 2012)
  • "Wallace Stevens and W. H. Auden" (Fall 2013)
  • "Helen Vendler’s Stevens" (Fall 2014)
  • "Re-triangulating Yeats, Stevens, Eliot" (Spring 2018)
  • "The Bogliasco Seminars: A Collective Reading of Neglected Poems" (Spring 2019)
  • "Stevens into Music" (Fall 2019)
  • "Stevens’s Letters, Part 1" (Fall 2020)
  • "Stevens’s Letters, Part 2" (Spring 2021)
  • "Stevens as World Literature, Part 1" (Spring 2022)
  • "Stevens as World Literature, Part 2" (Fall 2022)
  • "Harmonium at 100" (Fall 2023)

In 2011, Eeckhout became Editor of The Wallace Stevens Journal, an election that accompanied the journal’s transition to the Johns Hopkins University Press, where it is part of Project MUSE. In 2024, he passed the torch to Andrew Osborn and became one of the journal's Associate Editors.

Eeckhout has (co)organized several international conferences on Stevens (in Oxford, New York, Antwerp, Paris, Stockholm, Bogliasco, and at the Huntington Library) and is an Officer of the Wallace Stevens Society. He has supervised two dissertations on the poet, one in Stockholm (Gül Bilge Han; defended 2015) and one in Antwerp (Anna Jamieson; defended 2020).

He is currently still finishing a hefty volume of annotated Stevens translations into Dutch.

Research focus 2: LGBTIQ+ studies

Eeckhout’s second main research emphasis is on interdisciplinary LGBTIQ+ studies. As an LGBTIQ+ activist (he sat on the Board of Directors of çavaria for fifteen years) he seeks to stimulate collaboration between the worlds of activism and academia. Within academia he has collaborated closely with colleagues in media studies (Alexander Dhoest) and history (Henk de Smaele). He is also a founding member of A*, the Antwerp Gender & Sexuality Studies Network.

Individually or collectively, he has supervised (or continues to supervise) several dissertations in the field, with topics ranging far and wide:

  • ​Lies Xhonneux on the American lesbian writer Rebecca Brown (defended 2013)
  • Lukasz Szulc on online LGBT self-representations in Poland and Turkey (defended 2015)
  • ​Inge Somers on gender aspects in the theory of interior architecture/design (defended 2017)
  • Nicola Brajato on queer masculinities in the Antwerp fashion scene (defended 2023)
  • Sven Van den Bossche on transgender narratives in Dutch fiction (ongoing at UAntwerp & UGhent)
  • Lien Claeys on happiness and agency in queer young adult literature (ongoing at UA.

Together with Alexander Dhoest and Lukasz Szulc, Eeckhout has edited LGBTQs, Media and Culture in Europe (Routledge, 2017).

Research focus 3: Urban studies

Eeckhout’s third main research background is in interdisciplinary urban studies, including the correlation between literature and architecture. He is a member of the steering group of the Urban Studies Institute at the University of Antwerp.

As a member of the Ghent Urban Studies Team (GUST) he previously coauthored and coedited two books in urban studies, The Urban Condition: Space, Community, and Self in the Contemporary Metropolis (010 Publishers, 1999; translated into Chinese) and Post Ex Sub Dis: Urban Fragmentations and Constructions (010 Publishers, 2002).

He has published widely on urban topics in literary-critical, sociological, architectural, and cultural studies journals and books. His principal research focus in this regard has long been New York City, where he has studied (Columbia University), taught as a guest lecturer (Fordham University & the Gallatin School of NYU), and stayed as a research fellow (NYU).

Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts

For the academic years 2017-2026 (three terms), Eeckhout serves as Director of the Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts (ARIA). In this context, he currently supervises four dissertations: one by a composer on synaesthesia (Umut Eldem), one by a pianist on musical phrasing (Nadav Katan), one by a literary writer on surrealism (Vincent Van Meenen), and one by a conductor and cellist on revitalizing 19th-century operettas (Stijn Saveniers).

International fellowships and honors

Eeckhout has been a Francqui Fellow of the BAEF, a Marjorie Hope Nicolson Fellow at Columbia University, a Fulbright-Hayes Fellow at Fordham University, a Residential Fellow of the Bogliasco Foundation, a Salzburg Seminar Fellow, a Fletcher Jones Foundation Fellow of the Huntington Library, and twice a Residential Fellow at NYU.

During the academic year 2016-2017, he was Fellow-in-Residence at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS) in Amsterdam.

In 2021, Eeckhout was elected as Member of the Class of Humanities of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (KVAB).