3rd IJsewijn Lecture & Laboratorium

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Leuven, 22-23 May 2025

The 17th Jozef IJsewijn Lecture will take place on Thursday 22 May 2025, at 5pm, in the Justus Lipsius Room of the Erasmushuis (8th floor; Blijde Inkomststraat 21, 3000 Leuven), and will be delivered by Professor Aline Smeesters (UCLouvain). The lecture will be followed by a reception at 6pm in the big hall of the Erasmushuis on the ground floor. Attendance is completely free, but registration will be required through the link at the bottom of this page. The title of this year’s lecture is The Leuven quodlibetal tradition (1427–1652), at the crossroads of scholastic and humanistic expectations.

Abstract

The lecture will give an overview of the tradition of quodlibetic disputes held at the Leuven faculty of arts almost since its foundation. Every year in December, these disputes were held with great ceremony, attracting an audience of students and professors from all faculties. A patient reconstruction has enabled to document around 40 cases dating from 1427 to 1652, featuring various important intellectual figures such as the future pope Adrian VI, Juan Luis Vives, Petrus Nannius, Johannes Molanus, and Libert Froidmont. Over the course of the 16th century, these disputes, initially marked by a traditional scholastic frame, gradually became full-fledged oratorical performances, sometimes known as Saturnalia. Louvain’s quodlibets offer a fascinating vantage point for observing the tensions and compromises that ran through a rapidly changing academic world. I will focus on early 16th-century debates on the best way to start a disputatio or a declamatio.

The next day, on Friday 23 May 2025, the 3rd IJsewijn Laboratorium will be held at the Couvreurzaal (M01.E50; Edward Van Evenstraat 4, 3000 Leuven, on the Social Sciences Campus). The Laboratorium will have a full-day program devoted to ongoing Neo-Latin research, and has two main aims: (1) showcasing state-of-the-art research in Neo-Latin studies, in terms of both subject and methodology, and (2) bringing together young scholars with established researchers, including the Jozef IJsewijn Lecturer. There is, in other words, no specific thematic focus, and everyone is encouraged to present work-in-progress, paying due attention to both successes and pitfalls in Neo-Latin research, and how to build on, or deal with, them. For 2025, participants are encouraged to engage with Neo-Latin from or about Leuven in the context of the 600th anniversary of KU Leuven, founded in 1425. We aim to have one special session devoted to this theme. The scientific committee will make a competitive selection of abstracts, as we have a maximum of 10 paper slots.

The Laboratorium aims to create an active exchange among the participants, in order to address and discuss promising research perspectives. All sessions will be plenary, including a research pitch by local Neo-Latin students. Each session will last one hour and include two presentations of 15’ each, followed by 30’ discussion time. Presenters will be asked to pre-circulate their materials and ideas in a way they see fit (e.g. a Neo-Latin text with translation and/or commentary, a short paper summarizing the main points of their work-in-progress, an advanced paper not yet submitted for publication, a poster file, …). The only prerequisite is that these materials contain two to three questions you want to see addressed during the discussions. The pre-circulated materials will be shared only with those registered for the workshop and will serve to encourage in-depth discussions. The main workshop language will be English. Abstracts are due 15 December and should be sent to Adriaan Demuynck (adriaan.demuynck[aet]kuleuven.be) and Raf Van Rooy (raf.vanrooy[aet]kuleuven.be). The abstract deadline has exceptionally been extended to 6 January 2025.

The registration fee for the IJsewijn Laboratorium will be €35 to cover catering. (BA and MA students of KU Leuven are exempted from paying the Laboratorium’s fee.) Please register by 1 May through this form.

The preliminary program can be accessed here.

Organizing committee:
Marijke Crab (KU Leuven Libraries), Nicholas De Sutter (KU Leuven), Adriaan Demuynck (KU Leuven), Raf Van Rooy (KU Leuven)

Scientific committee:
Susanna de Beer (Leiden University), Gianmario Cattaneo (Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale), Marijke Crab (KU Leuven Libraries), Ingrid De Smet (University of Warwick), Nicholas De Sutter (KU Leuven), Martine Furno (Université Grenoble Alpes / ENS Lyon), Christian Laes (University of Manchester / University of Antwerp), Han Lamers (University of Oslo), Marc Laureys (Universität Bonn), Vasileios Pappas (University of Ioannina), Maxim Rigaux (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona / Ghent University), Florian Schaffenrath (Ludwig Boltzmann Institut für Neulateinische Studien, Innsbruck), Toon Van Houdt (KU Leuven), Raf Van Rooy (KU Leuven)

29-30 mei: workshop ‘How to investigate student notes from the Renaissance (ca. 1300–1600)?’, Leuven

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On 29–30 May 2020, the KU Leuven Faculty of Arts will host a workshop entitled “How to investigate student notes from the Renaissance (ca. 1300–1600)?”. This workshop frames within an ongoing research project (2018–2022) on the teaching of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew in the 16th-century Southern Low Countries, supervised by Jan Papy and Raf Van Rooy and supported by Toon Van Hal and Pierre Van Hecke. Questions that will be addressed include, but are not limited to:

  • the method of analysis: How should we analyze student notes from the Renaissance? What tools can help us? How can we determine whether a body of notes reflects either oral courses or personal reading?
  • the method of presentation: How can we edit them in a meaningful way? What other channels and digital media can be used to disseminate and communicate the results?
  • the form and typology of student notes: How are they set up and why this way? What kinds of notes are there? What tendencies can we discern?
  • the historical value of student notes: What can they teach us? And what not?
  • the context of the student notes: How and to what extent do they reflect classroom practices? How are they related to printed text, if at all? On what support are they written? To what extent are humanist ideals and scholarship perceptible in the notes?

Papers will be 20’ speaking time and 10’ discussion time. The conference languages are English and French. The registration fee will amount to 35 EUR. Confirmed keynote speakers include Ann Blair (Harvard), Asaph Ben-Tov (Erfurt/Kent), Martine Furno (Lyon), Anne-Hélène Klinger-Dollé (Toulouse), and Luigi Silvano (Turin).

For more information, see: https://sites.google.com/view/leuvenstudentnotes2020.

6 december: 40e Erasmus Birthday Lecture en masterclass door Grantley McDonald (Universiteit van Oxford en Universiteit van Wenen), Trippenhuis, Amsterdam

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Erasmus Birthday Lecture 2019, 6 december in Amsterdam, door Grantley McDonald over ‘Erasmus and the Beginnings of English Medical Humanism’: https://www.knaw.nl/en/news/calendar/grantley-mcdonald-erasmus-and-the-beginnings-of-english-medical-humanism

Masterclass van Grantley McDonald voor (R)MA-studenten en promovendi, 6 december in Amsterdam: https://www.knaw.nl/en/news/calendar/masterclass-grantley-mcdonald

9 november: 39e Erasmus Birthday Lecture en masterclass door Yasmin Haskell (Universiteit van Bristol), Trippenhuis, Amsterdam (aanmelding noodzakelijk; deadline voor de masterclass is 20 oktober).

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Erasmus Birthday Lecture 2018, 9 november in Amsterdam, door Yasmin Haskell: https://www.knaw.nl/en/news/calendar/yasmin-haskell-erasmus-and-the-health-of-scholars-physical-emotional-spiritual

Masterclass van Yasmin Haskell voor (R)MA-studenten en promovendi, 9 november in Amsterdam:
https://www.knaw.nl/en/news/calendar/yasmin-haskell-passions-for-and-of-learning-in-the-early-modern-period

13 februari: masterclass James A. Parente (University of Minnesota), ‘Transnational Literary History in a Multilingual Age’

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In this masterclass Prof. Parente will speak about Transnational Literary History in a Multilingual Age. After general discussion and a lunch break participants can discuss their own themes with professor Parente. The session after lunch will also be open for participants who have not sent in questions.

Date:                       13 February 2018
Time:                       11-14.30hr
Venue:                     Amsterdam, Het Universiteitstheater, Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, 1012 CP Amsterdam, room 1.01A
Open to:                  scholars, PhD students, (R)MA students, scholars
Credits:                   1 ECTS (for PhD and RMa students only)
Coordination:         Prof. Lia van Gemert
Registration:           Send an e-mail to goudeneeuw-fgw[at]uva.nl (maximum participants in this event: 25)
Register before:     5 February 2018

Literary history once again appears en vogue. With increasing frequency, there have been “new” histories of French (1989; 2010), German (2005), American (2009), and modern Chinese literature (2017), an “atlas” (atlante) of Italian literature (2010-2012), a spatial literary history of Denmark (2010), a new literary history of Al-Andalus (2000), and three separate encyclopedias of Neo-Latin writing (2013, 2015, 2017). A new paradigm for writing European literary history has also been exemplified by David Wallace (2016). Most notably, the final installment of the 10-volume, 8,000-page history of Dutch literature (GNL)was completed in late 2016. The Master Class will explore this renewed interest in literary history, the ways in which the traditional narratives of literary history have been questioned, discarded, or revised, and the recent challenges to writing literary history in the age of global connectivity. We will question the function of literary history, discuss its continued utility, and explore alternatives for writing history for the early modern period in which national and linguistic boundaries were still in flux. Special attention will be paid to the construction of transnational and multilingual narratives for the Low Countries.

James A. Parente, Jr. (Ph.D., Germanic Languages and Literatures, Yale University) is a Professor of German, Scandinavian and Dutch literature at the University of Minnesota and Director of the Minnesota Center for German and European Studies. He is a specialist in early modern (1400-1750) German, Dutch, and Nordic literatures and cultures, and early modern Neo-Latin literature. He is the author of Religious Drama and the Humanist Tradition: Christian Theater in Germany and the Netherlands, 1500-1680, and has edited/ co-edited two anthologies of critical work on the early modern Holy Roman Empire, and another on modern Scandinavian literature. He has published widely on early modern German, Dutch and Neo-Latin literature, especially drama; Renaissance humanism; gender and sexuality in the German Empire; the Dutch Golden Age; early modern Danish literature, and Henrik Ibsen. He is currently working on translational literary relations between the German Empire, the Netherlands, and Nordic Europe, and on the historiography of Europe in the early modern period.

Co-organizers and related events:

  • co-organizers; ACSGA (Van Gemert)
  • related event: Golden Age Seminar, 13 February 2018 by prof. James Parente, Jr., 15.30-17.00, VOC-zaal Bushuis, Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam. The title of this lecture is: Border Crossings and the Emergence of Dutch Literature.

Programme:

day planning (incl. coffee and tea, and lunch breaks)

  • 11:00             Room open, coffee and tea
  • 11.15-12:30  Lecture with general discussion
  • 12:30-13:15  Lunch in Museumcafé (Oude Turfmarkt 129): participants take care and pay for their own lunch
  • 13:15-14:00  Discussion on themes that the participants have sent in or bring up during the masterclass

Preparation and proposed readings and assigment:

  1. Participation in first and second part of the masterclass (so before and after lunch)
  2. A clear description of the questions you have for prof. Parente, linked to a clear description of your research theme and the steps you have already taken or would consider to take. The maximum number of questions is 3. Questions must be sent in before 5 February (to e.m.p.vangemert[at]uva.nl and cc to goudeneeuw-fgw[at]uva.nl.
  3. The Golden Age seminar in the afternoon is not obligatory for obtaining the 1 EC credit.

Reading for preparation (pdf’s will be sent after we have received your registration at the registration address):

  • Bloemendal, Jan. “Introduction: Bilingualism, Multilingualism and the Formation of Europe.” In Bilingual Europe: Latin and Vernacular Cultures, Examples of Bilingualism and Multilingualism, c. 1300-1800. Ed. Jan Bloemendal. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Pp. 1-14.
  • Deneire, Tom. “Neo-Latin Literature and the Vernacular.” In A Guide to Neo-Latin Literature. Ed. Victoria Moul. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. 35-51.
  • Gelderblom, Arie Jan and Anne Marie Musschoot. Ongeziene blikken: Nabeschouwing bij de “Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur.” Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2017. Pp. 7-38.
  • Schenkeveld-van der Dussen, M. A., ed. Nederlandse literatuur, een geschiedenis. Groningen: Nijhoff, 1993. “Woord vooraf,” pp. v-viii.
  • Wallace, David. “Table of Contents” and “General Introduction”, in: Europe: A Literary History, 1348-1418. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. viii-xiii + [table of contents: xxvii-xlii].

After general discussion and a lunch break participants can discuss their own themes with professor Parente.

Please sent your questions by 5 February to Prof. Lia van Gemert e.m.p.vangemert[at]uva.nl and cc to goudeneeuw-fgw[at]uva.nl.

See also: http://acsga.uva.nl/content/events/events/2018/02/masterclass-prof.-james-a.-parente.html.

17 november: 38e Erasmus Birthday Lecture en masterclass door Peter Mack (Warwick), Oost-Indisch Huis, Amsterdam

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38ste Erasmus Birthday Lecture door Peter Mack (Warwick): ‘Paraphrase, Paradox and Amplification in Agricola and Erasmus’

The 38th Erasmus Birthday Lecture lecture will be concerned with Erasmus’s Paraphrases on the New Testament (1517-24), especially the paraphrases on Romans and Mark. It will consider the ways in which the Paraphrases and their paratexts make use of rhetorical techniques described in De copia (1512) and De ratione studii (1511). It will discuss the ways in which Erasmus reads the Bible texts and makes them available to his imagined audience. It will compare the Paraphrases with Rudolph Agricola’s Oration on Christ’s Nativity (1484) and Philipp Melanchthon’s Loci Communes (1521). The lecture was conceived as a tribute to Fokke Akkermann (1930-2017), teacher of Latin in Groningen, pioneering Agricola scholar, editor and translator of Spinoza, and long-term collaborator of the Erasmus edition.

Peter Mack is Professor of English and Comparative Literature aan de Universiteit van Warwick en voormalig directeur van het Warburg Institute in Londen. Professor Mack is een autoriteit in de geschiedenis van de retorica in de renaissance met een brede expertise op het gebied van de middeleeuwse en vroegmoderne ideeëngeschiedenis en literatuurgeschiedenis. Hij publiceerde ondermeer: Renaissance Argument: Valla and Agricola in the Traditions of Rhetoric and Dialectic (1993), Elisabethan Rhetoric (2002), Reading and Rhetoric in Montaigne and Shakespeare (2010), A History of Renaissance Rhetoric 1380-1629 (2011) and Rhetoric’s Questions, Reading and Interpretation (2017).

Datum: 17 November 2017,
Tijd: 16:15-17:15, gevolgd door borrel.
Plaats: VOC-zaal, Oost-Indisch Huis, Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam
Toegang is gratis, maar graag aanmelden via https://www.knaw.nl/en/news/calendar/38th-erasmus-birthday-lecture-by-peter-mack-2017.

Voorafgaand aan de lezing geeft Peter Mack een masterclass voor gevorderde studenten en promovendi:

 

Masterclass door Peter Mack: ‘Rhetoric as a Guide to Interpretation’

This class will examine the possibility of using the doctrines of rhetoric not for generating new texts but for analysing existing texts and images. Rhetoric invites us to think about the relationship between speaker, audience and subject-matter and provides a range of techniques for finding ideas and words suitable for persuading that audience. The class will  consider the possible hermeneutic applications of a range of rhetorical teachings and will discuss the interpretation of a renaissance poem, a scene from Hamlet, passages from Salman Rushdie’s  The Moor’s Last Sigh, and paintings by Rembrandt (Bathsheba, 1654, Louvre) and Cézanne (Mont St Victoire, 1904-6, Zurich) in this light.

The teacher will provide all participants with around 50 pages of material to read in preparation for the class.

For more information and to apply (ultimately by 3 November), see https://www.knaw.nl/en/news/calendar/peter-mack-rhetoric-as-a-guide-to-interpretation.

4 november: 37e Erasmus Birthday Lecture en masterclass door Kathy Eden, Trippenhuis, Amsterdam

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Op vrijdag 4 november 2016 houdt Kathy H. Eden, hoogleraar Engelse literatuur en hoogleraar klassieke talen aan Columbia University, de 37 Erasmus Birthday Lecture met de titel ‘Erasmus on Dogs and Baths and Other Odious Comparisons’. De lezing wordt gehouden in het Trippenhuis, Kloveniersburgwal 29 in Amsterdam, en begint om 16.15 uur. Toegang is gratis, maar u wordt verzocht zich aan te melden via het online formulier. Zie het programma voor meer informatie.

Dit jaar is er voorafgaand aan de lezing, van 11.00 tot 13.30 uur, een masterclass voor gevorderde studenten en promovendi, die ook door Eden wordt gegeven. Als u daarvoor in aanmerking komt, kunt u zich vóór 15 oktober aanmelden via het online formulier. Er is een maximum van 15 deelnemers. Kijk voor meer informatie en aanmelding op de website van het Huizinga Instituut.