Frederik Van Dam

The European Journal of English Studies is inviting proposals for special issues in volume 31 (2027).
👉 essenglish.org/messenger/bl...

Celebrated pianist and writer Alfred Brendel dies aged 94 Widely regarded as the ‘musicians’ musician’ Brendel was the first pianist to record all of Beethoven’s piano works during a much-garlanded career spanning 60 years

As if these days could not get any darker. www.theguardian.com/music/2025/j...

I don't think I'd be able to resist commenting on his suit.

In Karakter 89: een pleidooi voor contemplatie (Antoon Vandevelde), de laïcisering van KU Leuven (Marc Vervenne), Aby Warburg (Barbara Baert), chronische pijn (Iris Coppieters), hoe de indeling van een tekst ons doet denken (@frederikvandam.bsky.social), en meer!

📖 tijdschriftkarakter.be

Publication and issue: EJES (European Journal of English Studies Volume), 30 (2026): “Cabinets of Curiosities: Collecting, Displaying, Consuming”. Deadline for proposal submissions: 7 April 2025. #essecfp.
👉 essenglish.org/cfp-volumes-...

The Edinburgh Companion to Anthony Trollope is now out in paperback! Still feels and reads as if it was published yesterday. PAPER30 will give you a 30% discount when ordering directly from Edinburgh UP (edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-edi...).

Uses of literature.

Preparing for my next class on 18C literature. Ironic - or fitting - that I am turning to a French book?

ARNOLD | Kotlikoff to Retire: Who’s Next? We don’t need another technocrat to usher us into the future — Cornell needs to return to its roots, where our education is valued more than our future donations as alumni.

It's really heartening - to see student outspokenness about the negative effects of running universities like a business & making every aspect of life transactional. There's a growing call for a university education to be centered in intellectual life & not whims of job markets & donors.

Schrödinger’s pancake.

From The New School's 1919 course catalog: “courses of study have not been arranged under usual departmental headings — political economy, sociology, history, psychology, etc. — for this tends to obscure the constant connection and interplay of the various interests and activities of mankind.”

My mission? A two-day voyage along the Norfolk coast to deliver potatoes for a chip shop One man is trying to revive zero-carbon cargo routes by sailing produce along England’s eastern seaboard – and taking paying passengers along for the thrilling ride

I've been spending the past months learning how to sail. If the academic career doesn't work out, perhaps a different future beckons. www.theguardian.com/travel/artic...

Check out the #cfp for the special issue of Studies in the Novel @lydiacooper.bsky.social and I are guest editing on disease and disability in the novel. Please share widely and please consider auottong www.studiesinthenovel.org/submit/call-...

World in a Box: Cardboard Media and the Geographic Imagination Cardboard’s ubiquity rests on simple claims: I can hold that, and I can go there. But cardboard boxes hold a world of meaning — a global anatomy of commerce, consumption, disposal, and reuse.

I wrote for @placesjournal.bsky.social about cardboard boxes 📦 as logistical media and designed objects, as pandemic emblems, as capitalist equipment and detritus, as modules for all kinds of modernist imaginings, and as shapers of landscapes!

Next week Tuesday I'll be giving a short talk (in Dutch) at Pint of Science. Why do people craft stories about diplomats? Where can we find diplomacy in fiction, and fiction in diplomacy? Register (for free) at pintofscience.nl/events/nijme...

RIP Marjorie Perloff, 28 September 1931 – 24 March 2024.

What an extraordinary body of work.

A black-and-white image showing multiple tables and chairs, with the title: Branden Hookway Interface 2024 / Shannon Mattern, Olga Touloumi

This is happening next Tuesday, 5pm, at Princeton! Olga Touloumi and I are talking about tables as interfaces of diplomacy and assemblage! www.instagram.com/p/C5CdWVFOFb...

What is the OED's problem with intertextuality?

On Thursday I am moderating the second 'Serendipity Session' at the InScience Film Festival. Three academics will give shed some light on what darkness means in their research fields: dark emotions, dark vision, and dark tourism. Please come and join! www.insciencefestival.nl/nl/vertoning...

Exciting developments in Groningen. www.rug.nl/about-ug/lat...

In the past two years, I worked with @drchrislouttit.bsky.social and Joanna Hofer-Robinson to edit an EJES issue on 19th-century interstitial spaces. I am chuffed to announce that this issue has arrived at its port of call! More @ www.tandfonline.com/toc/neje20/c....

Have you checked out the latest issue of @19birkbeck.bsky.social? A fav new issue dedicated to Nineteenth-Century Infrastructures guest-edited by Joanna Hofer-Robinson and @nicolakirkby.bsky.social

Read it here: 19.bbk.ac.uk/issue/915/in...

On opening my pigeon-hole in the office, I found some Iberian ham. A Sicilian message?

Grad students looking for extra mentorship, please consider applying to the EML residency (online, March 2024).

Details at link:

environmentalmedialab.com/grad-scholar...

zines, y'all (h/t @kaibosworth.bsky.social) haters.noblogs.org/zines/

The article says that we've got rats in our uni building, but what I am hearing is that we need a squad of cats. www.voxweb.nl/nieuws/kou-e...

Screen shot of first page of special issue

If you missed the special issue on death, celebrity and material culture that Danielle Dove and I edited for Victoriographies in 2022, you can now access it for FREE throughout January!

www.euppublishing.com/toc/vic/12/1

I'm happy to announce a conference next June here at Buckingham on the life and works of Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens (to commemorate Collins's bicentenary). CFP is on the site, along with details of bursaries courtesy of @dickenssociety.bsky.social
www.collins-and-dickens.com