Ghent Urban Studies Team

kristiaan versluys

biography

versluys Kristiaan Versluys is Full Professor of American Literature and Culture at Ghent University and the founding director of the Ghent Urban Studies Team. He obtained his Ph. D.-degree from Harvard University in 1979. He has published The Poet in the City: Chapters in the Development of Urban Poetry in Europe and the United States (1800-1930) and many articles on urban literature, in particular the literature of New York. He is a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium and a regular guest professor at the summer session of Columbia University, where he teaches a course entitled “New York in Recent Fiction”. In 2004-2005 he was a fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS), where he embarked on a study of the discursive responses to 9/11.

research interests

  • American Literature, especially the contemporary Jewish-American Novel
  • The literature of the city, especially New York
  • Current project : "9/11: the Discursive Responses."
  • Director of the Ghent Urban Studies team (GUST), an interdisciplinary research group, which studies the city both in its material and cultural aspects. GUST regularly organizes workshops and conferences, manages research projects and published The Urban Condition. Space, Self and Community in the Contemporary Metropolis (1999) and Post Ex Sub Dis: Urban Fragmentations and Constructions (2002).

recent publications

  • "New York as a Maze. Siri Hustvedt's The Blindfold (1992)," Postmodern New YorkCity. Transfiguring Spaces, eds. Günter H. Lenz and Utz Riese (Heidelberg : Winter Universitätsverlag, 2003), pp. 99-108.
  • "Ragtime and Jazz. Recapturing New York's Golden Age," Public Space, Private Lives. Race, Gender, Class and Citizenship in New York, 1890-1929, eds. William Boelhower and Anna Scacchi (Amsterdam : VU University Press, 2004), pp. 305-311.
  • "Saul Bellow," Engelstalige literatuur na 1945. Deel 2 : Proza. Andere Continenten, eds. Elke D'Hoker en Ortwin De Graef (Leuven : Peeters, 2004), pp. 51-67.
  • "Philip Roth," Engelstalige literatuur na 1945. Deel 2 : Proza. Andere Continenten, eds. Elke D'Hoker en Ortwin De Graef (Leuven : Peeters, 2004), pp. 183-198.
  • "Do We Have to Ditch the Canon," Reading without Maps? Cultural Landmarks in a Post- Canonical Age, ed. Christophe Den Tandt (Frankfurt: P.I.E. Peter Lang, 2005), pp. 33-40.
  • "'Nakedness' or realism in Updike's early short stories," The Cambridge Companion to John Updike, ed. Stacey Olster (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 29-42.
  • "9/11 as the End of Irony: Frédéric Beigbeder's Windows on the World," CinematoGraphies: Fictional Strategies and Visual Discourses in 1990s New York City, eds. Günter Lenz, Dorothea Löbbermann, Karl-Heinz Magister (Heidelberg : Winter Universitätsverlag, 2006), pp. 45-73.
  • "Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers: 9/11 and the Representation of Trauma," Modern Fiction Studies, 52, No. 4 (2006), pp. 980-1004.
  • "Herman Portecarero's Domino : een roman over New York," Spiegel der Letteren, 47, No. 2 (2006), pp. 219-232.
  • "9/11 as a European Event : the Novels," European Review, 15, No. 1 (2007), pp. 65-79.

memberships and functions

  • Associate Editor of English Studies
  • NIAS-fellow (2004-2005)
  • Member of the Flemish Academy of Arts and Sciences

doctorates

  • Bart Eeckhout
    "An impossible possible philosophers' poetry : Wallace Stevens and the Limits of Reading and Writing"
    (May 6, 1998)
  • Steven Jacobs
    "Sites and Sights. A Critical History of Urban Photography 1968-2000"
    (December 17, 2004)
  • Philippe Codde
    "Born into this Nightmare : The French Existential Repertoire in the Post-World War II Jewish American Novel. A Polysystemic and Text-Sociological Approach"
    (January 21, 2005)
  • Jeroen Lievens
    "The City in Postmodern Fiction. Contemporary Urban Studies and the Case of the ‘New Narratives"
    (June 16, 2006)
  • Bart Lievens
    "Walking the Border/Lost in the Borderlands: The discursive construction of diasporic identities in contemporary Jewish-American Literature" (co-promotor Prof. Gert Buelens)
  • Katrien Bollen
    "Going Downtown. A critical Aanlysis of the New York Downtown Literary Scene (1974-1984)"
    (co-promotor Prof. Bart Keunen) (starts in September 2007)

research projects

  • "The late twentieth-century metropolis: a paradigm shift" (BOF, 1995-1998) : a project of the Ghent Urban Studies Team. Researchers : Kristiaan Borret, Bart Eeckhout, Steven Jacobs. An interdisciplinary study (involving the study of literature and architecture) of the shift from a dense to a polynucleated cityscape. This project resulted in the publication of The Urban Condition. Space, Self and Community in the Contemporary Metropolis (Rotterdam : 010 Publishers, 1999), which also appeared in a Chinese translation.
  • "Spatial and social-cultural fragmentation in the contemporary metropolis" (FWO, 1998-2001) : a project of the Ghent Urban Studies Team" (FWO, 1998-2001). Researchers : Bart Eeckhout, Steven Jacobs, Trui Vetters, Judith Bodnar. A sequel to the previous project with a greater emphasis on spatial fragmentation and social-cultural segregation. This project resulted in the publication of Post Ex Sub Dis: Urban Fragmentations and Constructions (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers : 2002).
  • "The Cultural Formation of Urban Images in the Age of Globalisation." (BOF 2002- 2007) : a project of the Ghent Urban Studies Team. Researchers: Jeroen Lievens, Sien Uyterschout. A study of paradigm shifts in the urban novel, focusing on New York novels of the 1970s and 1980s.
  • "Siteseeing : an Interdisciplinary Investigation of the effects of globalisation on building, experiencing and representing urban space (FWO 2002-2005) : a companion project to the previous one. Researcher : Steven Jacobs. Concentrated on photographic representations of city spaces.
  • "Walking the Border/Lost in the Borderlands : de discursieve constructie van diasporische identiteiten in de hedendaagse Joods-Amerikaanse literatuur" (FWO, 2004-2007). Co-promotor : Prof. G.Buelens. Researchers : Bart Lievens, Sien Uytterschout, Leen Maes. A study of recent Jewish-American literature in the light of new theories on hybridity and identity formation.
  • "ICT in the Teaching of Literature" (Vlaamse Gemeenschap, 2003-2005). Co-promotors : Prof. G. Buelens, Prof. M. Demoor, Prof. J. De Vos, Prof. J.P. Vander Motten. Researcher: Geert Bonamie. The use of internet and computer technology in the teaching of literature.
  • "Going Downtown. A Critical Analysis of the New York Downtown Literary Scene (1974-1984)" (BOF 2007-2011): a project of the Ghent Urban Studies Team. Researcher : Katrien Bolle. Starts September 15, 2007. A study of avant-garde and subcultural writings in New York in the seventies and eighties and their crucial role in the literary history of the U.S.