FORMS: Cultural Narratives and Literary Forms: Investigations in Anglophone and Comparative Literary Studies

In FORMS I explore the reciprocal relations between cultural narratives
and literary forms. I do so in my ERC CoG project “Meritocracy and
Literature: Transcultural Approaches to Hegemonic Forms (MERLIT)”
(WP 1). MERLIT studies how social narratives of meritocracy are
reflected in literary and artistic forms (plays, novels, travelogues, films,
art manifestos). Through colonisation and globalisation, such narratives
have travelled widely. With my team of 5 researchers I ask: How do
meritocratic narratives shape literary forms and how they are shaped
by them in turn? How are they written and culturally circulated?
Through its study of forms, MERLIT will allow insights into the 'spirit' of
a particular age and context but also into shifts in the articulation of
value, merit and success over time, from the 17th to the 21st century.
MERLIT enables tangential activities related to its different subprojects
and the larger focus of FORMS: A symposium I coorganise on “Minor
Forms” in Accra, Ghana (Dec 2023) will enable further exchange with
Global South perspectives (WP 2); My collaborative research into
narratives of care (historical and recent) will be developed into a
research network (WP 3); My supervision of form-oriented theses on
female, migrant and other marginalised literary voices will generate
further proposal processes (e.g. FWO) (WP 4). With these components I
will embed and consolidate my larger research area FORMS at VUB, the
FACLW and its research centres (e.g. CLIC).