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Laurens Ham

Utrecht University, Languages, Literature and Communication, Faculty Member

Utrecht University, Languages, Literature and Communication, Faculty Member |

Dutch Literature

Laurens Ham (1985) is a lecturer in Modern Dutch Literature, essayist and poet at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. He works on a project ('Veni', funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research) about the roles authors have played in Dutch literary (subsidy) policy since the 1960s: as activists, policy officials for the Dutch Foundation for Literature, public intellectuals, politicians and applicants. Furthermore, he writes a book-long essay about Dutch protest songs since 1977, in all pop genres ('Dutch pop', cabaret, punk, hiphop, and more).

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Papers

Naar een versterking van de veerkracht van de boekenwereld na COVID-19

Naar een versterking van de veerkracht van de boekenwereld na COVID-19, 2021

Dit rapport doet verslag van een onderzoek naar de vraag hoe de veerkracht van de boekensector ti... more Dit rapport doet verslag van een onderzoek naar de vraag hoe de veerkracht van de boekensector tijdens en na de coronacrisis zou kunnen worden versterkt. Het onderzoek toont de impact van de crisis op de
Nederlandse boekensector van maart 2020 tot en met december 2020, de eerste intense coronaperiode. Bureauonderzoek en interviews vormen de basis voor een reeks aanbevelingen die de veerkracht van de
boekenwereld zouden kunnen versterken.

In het eerste deel van het rapport wordt door middel van een bureauonderzoek naar rapporten en mediaberichten een overzicht gegeven van de belangrijkste economische en bedrijfsmatige consequenties van de coronacrisis vanaf maart 2020 tot en met december 2020, en van de steunmaatregelen om de schade te beperken.

Het tweede deel analyseert, door middel van interviews, de waarden waarmee de belangrijkste spelers in de Nederlandse boekensector hun handelingen legitimeren. Daarmee onderzoeken we of er in de boekensector vanuit een gedeeld waardenkader gewerkt wordt of niet. Sectoren waarin dat het geval is, zijn immers meer geneigd tot samenwerking en bijgevolg veerkrachtiger, zo suggereert onderzoek.

In het derde deel worden de kansen en kwetsbaarheden van de boekensector doorgelicht op drie terreinen: op het vlak van digitalisering; productie & distributie; en financiering & financiële kwetsbaarheid. Daarbij worden inspirerende initiatieven uit binnen- en buitenland bekeken en afgewogen, resulterend in zeven aanbevelingen.

Branding the Open-minded Nation. Dutch Authors at the 2011 Beijing Book Fair

Branding Books Across the Ages. Strategies and Key Concepts in Literary Branding, 2021

In 2011, the Netherlands was invited to be the guest of honour at the Beijing Book Fair. This fa... more In 2011, the Netherlands was invited to be the guest of honour at the Beijing
Book Fair. This fair attracted controversy that revealed the tensions that
exist between nation branding, public diplomacy, and literary autonomy:
while its sponsor, the Ministry of Culture, regarded the fair as a perfect
marketing opportunity, Amnesty International used the occasion to
protest repression in China. Dutch authors invited to participate in the fair
forged an alternative position by emphasizing their status as autonomous
artists. However, an analysis of the debate in the Dutch media shows that
both the Ministry, Amnesty International, the Dutch Foundation for
Literature, and many authors interpreted the contact between Chinese
and Dutch authors as a clash between an open(-minded) culture and a
closed one.

Nog nooit werd er zoveel gelezen. Democratisering in de Nederlandse boekenwereld van de late jaren zestig tot de late jaren zeventig

Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis , 2020

This article discusses the attempts to democratise Dutch book culture in the late 1960s and the e... more This article discusses the attempts to democratise Dutch book culture in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. Insights from the history of books, from literary studies and from cultural policy studies are brought together, for a better understanding of the influence that authors can have on book policies and on book market developments.
Three definitions of democratisation in the 1960s and 1970s are discussed. Firstly, democratisation functioned as a poetical metaphor: influential Dutch essayist Paul Rodenko introduced the terms ‘democratisation of the word’ and ‘democratisation of poetry’ as principles that set avant-garde poetry apart from older literary forms. The ‘democratisation of poetry’ in particular – the idea that all subjects and words could be poetic material, whether they be lofty or low – played a considerable role in discussions about mid-20th-century Dutch literature. The second definition of democratisation emphasised the growing importance of participation in policy and political concerns. From the late 1960s onwards, Dutch students, artists, and other groups in society demanded a voice in the policies they were subjected to. In the third place, democratisation was about making literature better accessible, especially for adult members of the working class and working class youth.
An important institution for setting this third type of democratisation in motion was the Stichting Collectieve Propaganda van het Nederlandse Boek (CPNB, the Organization for the Collective Promotion of the Dutch Book). In the mid sixties, CPNB developed a more popular style of promoting literature to the greater public, jumping on the bandwagon of the upcoming pop and television culture. Many publishers in these years embraced this type of democratisation too. In the course of the 1970s, a growing number of left-leaning authors began to problematise this tendency, which they considered as a cover-up for a further commercialisation the literary field. They feared that this popularisation strategy could be fatal for smaller publishing companies that brought less easily marketable work. The early 1980s saw a new focus in the CPNB policy: from then on, the CPNB in the yearly Dutch Book Week focused less on non-literary media and popular culture; it tried to present the written literary word in an appealing way.

Krijg je nog rente voor een lied? Stadsdichterschap als eer en verdienste sinds de middeleeuwen

by Laurens Ham and Remco Sleiderink

Nederlandse Letterkunde

This article presents the first diachronic overview of the economic, social and symbolic profits ... more This article presents the first diachronic overview of the economic, social and symbolic profits of ‘city poets’ (‘stadsdichters’) in the Low Countries. From the early fifteenth century onwards, there have been many (more or less) official relationships between city councils and poets. The prominence and the form of these relationships, however, diverged greatly in different periods: whereas official appointments were the standard in the fifteenth, sixteenth and the twenty-first centuries, the period in between saw a much more diverse landscape of informal appointments and relationships. After presenting a historical overview of the role of city poets throughout the centuries, this article focuses on two well-documented periods in which formal agreements were made between town governments and poets: the late Middle Ages and the start of the 21st century. We analyze political and financial agreements explicitly in relationship to the complexities surrounding the production of city poetry. City poetry, paid by public money, is bound to be controversial: in general because its status is subject to changes and political discussions, but also because this form of commissioned poetry is sometimes seen as a form of propaganda. Official city poetry seems to flourish most in societies with a stable political-religious climate (as in the Southern Low Countries in the fifteenth and sixteenth century) and/or with a keen interest in city marketing (as in Flanders and the Netherlands in the twenty-first century).

Naar een diachrone blik op de verdiensten van Nederlandstalige auteurs

by Laurens Ham and Remco Sleiderink

Nederlandse Letterkunde, 2020

This article argues that it is both important and viable to develop a diachronic perspective on t... more This article argues that it is both important and viable to develop a diachronic perspective on the profits of literary authors in the Low Countries. Up to now, conceptual and theoretical boundaries between different subdisciplines within Dutch literary studies have resulted in a compartmentalized, fragmentary narrative of the economic, social and symbolic profits of literary authors throughout the centuries. On the basis of a survey of the theoretical frameworks dominant in the subdisciplines of medieval, early modern and modern Dutch literature, we highlight the opportunities and difficulties for a diachronic perspective on financial advancement, focusing both on practice and discourse. In addition, we propose a schematic model that tries to overcome the difficulties and enables us to profit from the opportunities. This proposal allows for a sharper focus on both the practice of and discourse on literary authors’ economic gain from a diachronic perspective.

Echte schrijvers zijn niet te koop. Praktĳk en beeldvorming van het economisch profijt van de literaire auteur door de eeuwen heen

by Laurens Ham and Helleke van den Braber

Nederlandse Letterkunde, 2020

A grand narrative of Dutch literary authors' opportunities to economically profit from their writ... more A grand narrative of Dutch literary authors' opportunities to economically profit from their writing is yet to be written. The general assumption, however, is that these opportunities developed teleologically from a dominant system of patronage during medieval and early modern times, in which financial gains were marginal and in which author's independence of their supporters was constrained, to a system in which the commercial book market was dominant and where authors could be more self-supporting and thus more independent of supporters. This article argues that there is no such teleology. On the contrary: on the basis of an exploration of both practice and discourse of literary authors' profits from the Middle Ages to the present, we conclude that in every period, it was possible for authors to profit from their writing through either patronage, market or governmental support , and often through a combination of these sources. Moreover, in every period varying types of independence of literary authors was valued highly. Our analysis of the discourse on profits shows that the continuous tendency to disguise financial advancement could be related to the importance of authorial independence throughout the ages.

Niet produceren en niet concurreren, maar lachen, spelen, lachen. Een voorstel voor een ecologische poëzieanalyse van Sybren Polet

Spiegel der Letteren, 2019

Signalling a need for new poetry interpretation models in Dutch literary scholarship , we propose... more Signalling a need for new poetry interpretation models in Dutch literary scholarship , we propose an ecological-that is to say, an inclusive, complex and relation-based-approach of poetry. More specifically, this article focuses on the section 'Illusie & illu-minatie' of Sybren Polet's (1925-2015) eponymous poetry collection Illusie & illuminatie (1975). With an emphasis on the writing process (genetic criticism) and the political agency of the poems, the article interprets poetry as an active force in the world. Our close reading demonstrates the symbiosis of form and content in Polet's poetry, his striving for openness, the creative tension between changeability, utopia and human action in the poems, and Polet's poetic criticism of local policy.

'Elke tijd vraagt zijn eigen Max Havelaar'. Multatuli's debuutroman in de eenentwintigste-eeuwse jongerencultuur

Indische letteren, 2018

Zijn romans en kranten sinds 1950 eenvoudiger geworden?

Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse taal- en letterkunde, 2018

Did the language of Dutch novels and newspaper articles become less complex between the 1950s and... more Did the language of Dutch novels and newspaper articles become less
complex between the 1950s and the 2010s? Based on a corpus of 60 novels, published in three different decades, and 200 newspaper articles, published in two decades, an analysis of stylistic phenomena was conducted, using T-scan, a tool for automatic analysis of Dutch language. The analysis focused on four aspects of complexity: word and sentence complexity, cohesion and personalisation. This analysis showed that while the language of the newspaper articles did change on all levels between 1950 and 2000, the language of the novels did not change substantially. The language of the news articles is more complex than the language of the novels, across different decades. A further analysis of stylistic phenomena in novels revealed some interesting relations between language and content.

Melancholicus in een ontheiligde wereld. Tempel (2013) van Mustafa Stitou

Bundels van het nieuwe millennium. Nederlandse en Vlaamse poëzie in de 21e eeuw, 2018

Ik ben bevrijd, waarom voel ik me dan zo verloren? De cultuurkritiek van Marco Borsato (2)

Leest, 2018

Heeft er iemand nog het recht om vrijuit te gaan? De cultuurkritiek van Marco Borsato

Leest, 2018

Geld blijft tijd : Over de rol van schrijvers in het literatuurbeleid

Utopie van het stilgezette nu. Over Nederlandse punk en poëzie rond 1980

DW B, 2018

Circulating in Commonplaces: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Celebrity Status in the Netherlands

European Journal of American Studies, 2018

This article questions the supposed pervasive celebrity of the American author Harriet Beecher St... more This article questions the supposed pervasive celebrity of the American author Harriet Beecher Stowe in Europe in the nineteenth century, and investigates her authorial status in the Netherlands in the mid-1850s. To what extent could she be considered a celebrity in the Netherlands in this period? The article pays attention both to the institutional and to the ideological situation, which can either facilitate or hinder the development of a so-called “celebrity society,” and shows that textual representations of Stowe did indeed circulate, but that this circulation did not take on the massive scale that seems necessary for a celebrity status. Whereas Uncle Tom’s Cabin was, by Dutch standards, an incredible success, journalists were only marginally aware of the authorial figure of Stowe herself. This was in part a result of the lack of a professional literary and journalistic infrastructure in the Netherlands. From an ideological point of view, the phenomenon of literary celebrity was a controversial one in the nineteenth-century Netherlands, hampering the emergence of a celebrity society. Together, these findings help us to consider the existence of a possible “transatlantic” Stowe cult in a different light: in the peripheral Netherlands, such a cult did not emerge easily.

De poreuze grenzen van de jonge poëzie. Hoe poëzietalent ontstaat tussen hiphop en festivalcultuur

Kunsttijdschrift Vlaanderen, 2017

De hedendaagse poëzie van jonge dichters is vaak versmolten met de pop-, hiphop- en festivalwerel... more De hedendaagse poëzie van jonge dichters is vaak versmolten met
de pop-, hiphop- en festivalwereld en vindt deels of geheel buiten de
papieren wereld van uitgeverijen om plaats. Ook ‘productiehuizen’ die
jonge poëzie programmeren plaatsen zich graag in een multimediaal
domein. Auteurs komen zo in een luistercultuur terecht, maar is dat
een artistieke of een praktische keuze?

Terrorist, territorium : Abé Sahetapy en Astrid Lampe als dichters in een angstige wereld

DW B, 2017

Democratische experimenten. Over Xavier Roelens

Dichters van het nieuwe millennium. Nederlandse en Vlaamse poëzie in de 21e eeuw, 2016

In wederkerigheid van woorden : Zes dichters benaderen de werkelijkheid in taal

Gezellig, indianen verdrijven bij een kopje chocolademelk

De Groene Amsterdammer, 2016

Populaire bordspellen verbeelden de obsessies van een samenleving. Wat betekent het dan dat er mo... more

Naar een versterking van de veerkracht van de boekenwereld na COVID-19

Naar een versterking van de veerkracht van de boekenwereld na COVID-19, 2021

Dit rapport doet verslag van een onderzoek naar de vraag hoe de veerkracht van de boekensector ti... more Dit rapport doet verslag van een onderzoek naar de vraag hoe de veerkracht van de boekensector tijdens en na de coronacrisis zou kunnen worden versterkt. Het onderzoek toont de impact van de crisis op de
Nederlandse boekensector van maart 2020 tot en met december 2020, de eerste intense coronaperiode. Bureauonderzoek en interviews vormen de basis voor een reeks aanbevelingen die de veerkracht van de
boekenwereld zouden kunnen versterken.

In het eerste deel van het rapport wordt door middel van een bureauonderzoek naar rapporten en mediaberichten een overzicht gegeven van de belangrijkste economische en bedrijfsmatige consequenties van de coronacrisis vanaf maart 2020 tot en met december 2020, en van de steunmaatregelen om de schade te beperken.

Het tweede deel analyseert, door middel van interviews, de waarden waarmee de belangrijkste spelers in de Nederlandse boekensector hun handelingen legitimeren. Daarmee onderzoeken we of er in de boekensector vanuit een gedeeld waardenkader gewerkt wordt of niet. Sectoren waarin dat het geval is, zijn immers meer geneigd tot samenwerking en bijgevolg veerkrachtiger, zo suggereert onderzoek.

In het derde deel worden de kansen en kwetsbaarheden van de boekensector doorgelicht op drie terreinen: op het vlak van digitalisering; productie & distributie; en financiering & financiële kwetsbaarheid. Daarbij worden inspirerende initiatieven uit binnen- en buitenland bekeken en afgewogen, resulterend in zeven aanbevelingen.

Branding the Open-minded Nation. Dutch Authors at the 2011 Beijing Book Fair

Branding Books Across the Ages. Strategies and Key Concepts in Literary Branding, 2021

In 2011, the Netherlands was invited to be the guest of honour at the Beijing Book Fair. This fa... more In 2011, the Netherlands was invited to be the guest of honour at the Beijing
Book Fair. This fair attracted controversy that revealed the tensions that
exist between nation branding, public diplomacy, and literary autonomy:
while its sponsor, the Ministry of Culture, regarded the fair as a perfect
marketing opportunity, Amnesty International used the occasion to
protest repression in China. Dutch authors invited to participate in the fair
forged an alternative position by emphasizing their status as autonomous
artists. However, an analysis of the debate in the Dutch media shows that
both the Ministry, Amnesty International, the Dutch Foundation for
Literature, and many authors interpreted the contact between Chinese
and Dutch authors as a clash between an open(-minded) culture and a
closed one.

Nog nooit werd er zoveel gelezen. Democratisering in de Nederlandse boekenwereld van de late jaren zestig tot de late jaren zeventig

Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis , 2020

This article discusses the attempts to democratise Dutch book culture in the late 1960s and the e... more This article discusses the attempts to democratise Dutch book culture in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. Insights from the history of books, from literary studies and from cultural policy studies are brought together, for a better understanding of the influence that authors can have on book policies and on book market developments.
Three definitions of democratisation in the 1960s and 1970s are discussed. Firstly, democratisation functioned as a poetical metaphor: influential Dutch essayist Paul Rodenko introduced the terms ‘democratisation of the word’ and ‘democratisation of poetry’ as principles that set avant-garde poetry apart from older literary forms. The ‘democratisation of poetry’ in particular – the idea that all subjects and words could be poetic material, whether they be lofty or low – played a considerable role in discussions about mid-20th-century Dutch literature. The second definition of democratisation emphasised the growing importance of participation in policy and political concerns. From the late 1960s onwards, Dutch students, artists, and other groups in society demanded a voice in the policies they were subjected to. In the third place, democratisation was about making literature better accessible, especially for adult members of the working class and working class youth.
An important institution for setting this third type of democratisation in motion was the Stichting Collectieve Propaganda van het Nederlandse Boek (CPNB, the Organization for the Collective Promotion of the Dutch Book). In the mid sixties, CPNB developed a more popular style of promoting literature to the greater public, jumping on the bandwagon of the upcoming pop and television culture. Many publishers in these years embraced this type of democratisation too. In the course of the 1970s, a growing number of left-leaning authors began to problematise this tendency, which they considered as a cover-up for a further commercialisation the literary field. They feared that this popularisation strategy could be fatal for smaller publishing companies that brought less easily marketable work. The early 1980s saw a new focus in the CPNB policy: from then on, the CPNB in the yearly Dutch Book Week focused less on non-literary media and popular culture; it tried to present the written literary word in an appealing way.

Krijg je nog rente voor een lied? Stadsdichterschap als eer en verdienste sinds de middeleeuwen

by Laurens Ham and Remco Sleiderink

Nederlandse Letterkunde

This article presents the first diachronic overview of the economic, social and symbolic profits ... more This article presents the first diachronic overview of the economic, social and symbolic profits of ‘city poets’ (‘stadsdichters’) in the Low Countries. From the early fifteenth century onwards, there have been many (more or less) official relationships between city councils and poets. The prominence and the form of these relationships, however, diverged greatly in different periods: whereas official appointments were the standard in the fifteenth, sixteenth and the twenty-first centuries, the period in between saw a much more diverse landscape of informal appointments and relationships. After presenting a historical overview of the role of city poets throughout the centuries, this article focuses on two well-documented periods in which formal agreements were made between town governments and poets: the late Middle Ages and the start of the 21st century. We analyze political and financial agreements explicitly in relationship to the complexities surrounding the production of city poetry. City poetry, paid by public money, is bound to be controversial: in general because its status is subject to changes and political discussions, but also because this form of commissioned poetry is sometimes seen as a form of propaganda. Official city poetry seems to flourish most in societies with a stable political-religious climate (as in the Southern Low Countries in the fifteenth and sixteenth century) and/or with a keen interest in city marketing (as in Flanders and the Netherlands in the twenty-first century).

Naar een diachrone blik op de verdiensten van Nederlandstalige auteurs

by Laurens Ham and Remco Sleiderink

Nederlandse Letterkunde, 2020

This article argues that it is both important and viable to develop a diachronic perspective on t... more This article argues that it is both important and viable to develop a diachronic perspective on the profits of literary authors in the Low Countries. Up to now, conceptual and theoretical boundaries between different subdisciplines within Dutch literary studies have resulted in a compartmentalized, fragmentary narrative of the economic, social and symbolic profits of literary authors throughout the centuries. On the basis of a survey of the theoretical frameworks dominant in the subdisciplines of medieval, early modern and modern Dutch literature, we highlight the opportunities and difficulties for a diachronic perspective on financial advancement, focusing both on practice and discourse. In addition, we propose a schematic model that tries to overcome the difficulties and enables us to profit from the opportunities. This proposal allows for a sharper focus on both the practice of and discourse on literary authors’ economic gain from a diachronic perspective.

Echte schrijvers zijn niet te koop. Praktĳk en beeldvorming van het economisch profijt van de literaire auteur door de eeuwen heen

by Laurens Ham and Helleke van den Braber

Nederlandse Letterkunde, 2020

A grand narrative of Dutch literary authors' opportunities to economically profit from their writ... more A grand narrative of Dutch literary authors' opportunities to economically profit from their writing is yet to be written. The general assumption, however, is that these opportunities developed teleologically from a dominant system of patronage during medieval and early modern times, in which financial gains were marginal and in which author's independence of their supporters was constrained, to a system in which the commercial book market was dominant and where authors could be more self-supporting and thus more independent of supporters. This article argues that there is no such teleology. On the contrary: on the basis of an exploration of both practice and discourse of literary authors' profits from the Middle Ages to the present, we conclude that in every period, it was possible for authors to profit from their writing through either patronage, market or governmental support , and often through a combination of these sources. Moreover, in every period varying types of independence of literary authors was valued highly. Our analysis of the discourse on profits shows that the continuous tendency to disguise financial advancement could be related to the importance of authorial independence throughout the ages.

Niet produceren en niet concurreren, maar lachen, spelen, lachen. Een voorstel voor een ecologische poëzieanalyse van Sybren Polet

Spiegel der Letteren, 2019

Signalling a need for new poetry interpretation models in Dutch literary scholarship , we propose... more Signalling a need for new poetry interpretation models in Dutch literary scholarship , we propose an ecological-that is to say, an inclusive, complex and relation-based-approach of poetry. More specifically, this article focuses on the section 'Illusie & illu-minatie' of Sybren Polet's (1925-2015) eponymous poetry collection Illusie & illuminatie (1975). With an emphasis on the writing process (genetic criticism) and the political agency of the poems, the article interprets poetry as an active force in the world. Our close reading demonstrates the symbiosis of form and content in Polet's poetry, his striving for openness, the creative tension between changeability, utopia and human action in the poems, and Polet's poetic criticism of local policy.

'Elke tijd vraagt zijn eigen Max Havelaar'. Multatuli's debuutroman in de eenentwintigste-eeuwse jongerencultuur

Indische letteren, 2018

Zijn romans en kranten sinds 1950 eenvoudiger geworden?

Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse taal- en letterkunde, 2018

Did the language of Dutch novels and newspaper articles become less complex between the 1950s and... more Did the language of Dutch novels and newspaper articles become less
complex between the 1950s and the 2010s? Based on a corpus of 60 novels, published in three different decades, and 200 newspaper articles, published in two decades, an analysis of stylistic phenomena was conducted, using T-scan, a tool for automatic analysis of Dutch language. The analysis focused on four aspects of complexity: word and sentence complexity, cohesion and personalisation. This analysis showed that while the language of the newspaper articles did change on all levels between 1950 and 2000, the language of the novels did not change substantially. The language of the news articles is more complex than the language of the novels, across different decades. A further analysis of stylistic phenomena in novels revealed some interesting relations between language and content.

Melancholicus in een ontheiligde wereld. Tempel (2013) van Mustafa Stitou

Bundels van het nieuwe millennium. Nederlandse en Vlaamse poëzie in de 21e eeuw, 2018

Ik ben bevrijd, waarom voel ik me dan zo verloren? De cultuurkritiek van Marco Borsato (2)

Leest, 2018

Heeft er iemand nog het recht om vrijuit te gaan? De cultuurkritiek van Marco Borsato

Leest, 2018

Geld blijft tijd : Over de rol van schrijvers in het literatuurbeleid

Utopie van het stilgezette nu. Over Nederlandse punk en poëzie rond 1980

DW B, 2018

Circulating in Commonplaces: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Celebrity Status in the Netherlands

European Journal of American Studies, 2018

This article questions the supposed pervasive celebrity of the American author Harriet Beecher St... more This article questions the supposed pervasive celebrity of the American author Harriet Beecher Stowe in Europe in the nineteenth century, and investigates her authorial status in the Netherlands in the mid-1850s. To what extent could she be considered a celebrity in the Netherlands in this period? The article pays attention both to the institutional and to the ideological situation, which can either facilitate or hinder the development of a so-called “celebrity society,” and shows that textual representations of Stowe did indeed circulate, but that this circulation did not take on the massive scale that seems necessary for a celebrity status. Whereas Uncle Tom’s Cabin was, by Dutch standards, an incredible success, journalists were only marginally aware of the authorial figure of Stowe herself. This was in part a result of the lack of a professional literary and journalistic infrastructure in the Netherlands. From an ideological point of view, the phenomenon of literary celebrity was a controversial one in the nineteenth-century Netherlands, hampering the emergence of a celebrity society. Together, these findings help us to consider the existence of a possible “transatlantic” Stowe cult in a different light: in the peripheral Netherlands, such a cult did not emerge easily.

De poreuze grenzen van de jonge poëzie. Hoe poëzietalent ontstaat tussen hiphop en festivalcultuur

Kunsttijdschrift Vlaanderen, 2017

De hedendaagse poëzie van jonge dichters is vaak versmolten met de pop-, hiphop- en festivalwerel... more De hedendaagse poëzie van jonge dichters is vaak versmolten met
de pop-, hiphop- en festivalwereld en vindt deels of geheel buiten de
papieren wereld van uitgeverijen om plaats. Ook ‘productiehuizen’ die
jonge poëzie programmeren plaatsen zich graag in een multimediaal
domein. Auteurs komen zo in een luistercultuur terecht, maar is dat
een artistieke of een praktische keuze?

Terrorist, territorium : Abé Sahetapy en Astrid Lampe als dichters in een angstige wereld

DW B, 2017

Democratische experimenten. Over Xavier Roelens

Dichters van het nieuwe millennium. Nederlandse en Vlaamse poëzie in de 21e eeuw, 2016

In wederkerigheid van woorden : Zes dichters benaderen de werkelijkheid in taal

Gezellig, indianen verdrijven bij een kopje chocolademelk

De Groene Amsterdammer, 2016

Populaire bordspellen verbeelden de obsessies van een samenleving. Wat betekent het dan dat er mo... more

Op de vuist. Vijftig jaar politiek en protestliedjes in Nederland

Ambo Anthos, 2020

In Op de vuist volgt Laurens Ham het spoor van het Nederlandstalige protestlied van de jaren zest... more In Op de vuist volgt Laurens Ham het spoor van het Nederlandstalige protestlied van de jaren zestig tot nu.

Wat verbindt de ontregelende acties van Provo uit 1966 en de boerenprotesten van vandaag? Wat heeft het kroningsoproer van 30 april 1980 gemeen met betogingen tegen racisme van dit moment? Precies: muziek. Sociale bewegingen gaan in Nederland al van oudsher hand in hand met protestliederen en strijdmuziek. Het waren ‘godfathers’ Boudewijn de Groot en Armand die het genre op de kaart zetten en die met Bots, Normaal, Doe Maar, Typhoon, Akwasi en vele anderen een bonte stoet aan navolgers hebben gekregen. Maar is het protestliedje van toen nog hetzelfde als dat van nu? Allerminst.

Het protestlied veranderde mee met verschuivingen in het politiek-maatschappelijke landschap, en daarmee maakte de roep om protest en solidariteit langzaamaan steeds meer plaats voor expressie van identiteit. Zo verdeeld als Nederland er heden ten dage bij staat, zo divers zijn ook de protestliedjes die je nu hoort op radio, tv, YouTube en Spotify.

Door Prometheus geboeid. De autonomie en autoriteit van de moderne Nederlandse auteur

Moderne literaire auteurs zijn veel bezig met hoe ze overkomen. Ze creëren alter ego's, publicere... more Moderne literaire auteurs zijn veel bezig met hoe ze overkomen. Ze creëren alter ego's, publiceren egodocumenten en roeren zich in de media. Vaak wordt gedacht dat ze daarmee buigen voor de commercie. Door Prometheus Geboeid belicht een andere kant: schrijvers werken aan hun imago om zichzelf juist als vrije intellectueel te presenteren. Laurens Ham vertelt een cultuurgeschiedenis van het Nederlandse auteurschap tussen 1820 en 1970, waarin literaire kopstukken als Multatuli, Carry van Bruggen en W.F. Hermans naast vergeten auteurs als J.B.D. Wibmer en Annie Salomons staan. Aan de hand van klassieke romans, essays, pleitredes en egodocumenten biedt deze studie inzicht in de spanning tussen de zelfrepresentatie van auteurs en hun veranderende maatschappelijke positie. Krijgen auteurs vanaf de negentiende eeuw steeds meer vrijheid? Nee. Maar wie zich in de literaire wereld het minst aan maat-schappelijke normen gelegen laat liggen, wordt wel het meest serieus genomen.

Book Reviews: Lucien Custers, Alleen in wervelende wereld. Het leven van Johan Andreas dèr Mouw (1863-1919)

BMGN-Low Countries Historical Review, 2019

Book Reviews: Jeroen Jansen en Nico Laan (eds.), Van hof tot overheid. Geschiedenis van literaire instituties in Nederland en Vlaanderen

BMGN-Low Countries Historical Review, 2016

Review: Jacqueline Bel, Bloed en rozen: Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur 1900-1945 (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2015)

Journal of Dutch Literature, 2016

Review of Edwin Praat, Verrek, het is geen kunstenaar. Gerard Reve en het schrijverschap

TNTL, 2015

Review: Gijsbert Pols, Naturalistische Moderne – Arno Holz und Lodewijk van Deyssel (Münster: Nodus Publikationen, 2015)

Journal of Dutch Literature, 2014

De (de)constructie van de literatuurgeschiedenis. Over Geschiedenis van de moderne Nederlandse literatuur

Vooys, 2013

Voor de nieuwe mensch moet de oude wijken (review of Mary G. Kemperink en Willemien S. Roenhorst (ed.), Visualizing Utopia; and Mary G. Kemperink en Leonieke Vermeer (eds.), Utopianism and the Sciences, 1880-1930

Vooys, 2011