Literature in conflict

Banned Books provides a survey of the conflict between literary creativity and control by society, in a wide historical, European context, from the first printing press to the 21th Century. A series of case studies of controversial texts and authors are discussed in connection to the regulations imposed to suppress or regulate the distribution of these works. We study official secular and religious censorship (like the Catholic Index), the development of copyright, as well as protests against “inflammatory”, “blasphemous”, or “amoral” texts, through authors such as Erasmus, Montaigne, Vondel, Spinoza, Stuart Mill, Nabokov and Rushdie. These authors used various literary strategies to avoid censorship and repression, like the use of metaphor, humor and satire, pseudonyms, et cetera

The course Contesting the Past provides a follow-up to Banned Books. It examines the ways in which literature contributes to public debate about the meaning of the past. In particular, we will examine the role played by literature and film in dealing with divisive and painful memories. Which cultural memories dominate our image of the past, and which events are suppressed? How does literature interact with other media in bringing marginalised stories to light? And in re-imagining the boundaries of nations? We will address these questions through the comparative study of novels and movies dealing with civil war (Spain, Northern Ireland) and with the legacy of colonialism (France/Algeria, Netherlands/Indonesia)

The relationship between art and politics is inextricably bound up with questions of domination and dissent. The autonomy of the work of art is measured in its ability to criticize the established order, even in the face of censorship and political and legal repercussions. In this course we will explore a range of literary and theoretical works, all of which are centrally concerned with the possibility or impossibility of resistance to state power and cultural hegemony. The course Literature and Dissent will look at acts of dissent in the context of the dominant geo-political moments of the 20th and 21st centuries, from the Third Reich to the Cold War, to late capitalism and the War on Terror. We will focus on the following questions: What is the relationship between dissident literature/art and other forms of political resistance? Can art bring about political change? What is the relationship between dissent, creativity, and innovation? What forms can dissent assume after the collapse of communism? How can we think of citizenship in terms of authorship.

In the course Human Rights and Literature you are introduced to the concept of human rights from an interdisciplinary perspective. You will read works of literature from African, American, Asian and European contexts and relate these to human rights as a legal, historical and philosophical concept. You are introduced to fundamental questions such as:

• What is the difference between moral and legal rights?
• What is the history of human rights as a legal concept?
• Are human rights universal?

You will read works of literature as shaped by human rights discourses, and as reflecting on human rights, legal rights and the figure of the human in the modern world. During the course, you will develop your own independent research projects on literature and human rights, or a concept related to human rights.