Publication

JLGC 06: Landscape in Perspective: Representing, Constructing, and Questioning Identities

The sixth issue of the JLGC explores the formation, expression, and questioning of identity through and in landscape. Landscapes figure as allegory, sites of memory, and art.

Author: Sara Polak, Nynke Feenstra and Lieke Smits, eds.
Date: 13 February 2018
Links: Open Access download

Six of the best conference papers of 2017’s LUCAS Graduate Conference, titled ‘Landscape: Interpretations, Relations, and Representations’ are presented as articles in this sixth issue of the Journal of the LUCAS Graduate Conference. Each of these articles, written by international early-career scholars from various research backgrounds, explores the various ways in which people have interacted with, conceptualized, and artistically interpreted landscape throughout history.

All articles in JLGC 06 address issues related to the formation, expression, and questioning of identity through and in landscape. A new element of the fourth edition of the conference was the opportunity for artist-researchers to present their own art projects related to landscape. This led to a fruitful exchange of ideas, and shifted the focus from artistic objects as final products to the practice of creating art. Two artist papers, by Sophie Ernst and Robert Lundberg, are included in this issue. The article by Amaranth Feuth is focussed on landscape as allegory in literature, Karen Kriedemann and Kirsten Tatum explore how landscape is cultivated and designed, and Vera Kaps shows how a national exhibition can challenge conventional ideas of national identity through landscape.

For the cover of this issue we chose a detail of the painting Meanwhile (2014) by Dutch artist Nathalie Mannaerts. Her paintings refer to the outdoors, loggers, hunters, homemade cookies, and the reluctance to grow up. They are a reminder of a carefree childhood on the edge of a forest, where nature rules, a simple life is celebrated, and adventure is about to be undertaken. We hope that the reader can embark on a similarly adventurous journey through the landscape of articles in this issue.

Visit the artist's website for more information about her work: https://nathaliemannaerts.nl

Series Editor and Editorial Board

Sara Polak

Member of the editorial board of issue 3 of the JLGC, and Chair of the LUCAS PhD Council at the time of its foundation, Sara Polak is proud to be the journal’s Series Editor (since issue 5). She defended her doctoral dissertation, "This is Roosevelt’s World”: Franklin D. Roosevelt as a Cultural Icon in American Memory in 2015, and is now developing a new line of research on presidents, cartoon politics and the cultural and political impact of social media. Interdisciplinary between history, American studies, literary studies, and cultural studies, Sara has a keen interest in arts in twentieth century and contemporary society from a broad range of perspectives. She teaches modern literature in Leiden University’s English department, as well as North American culture for International Studies.

Nynke Feenstra

Since 2013, Nynke Feenstra has been dedicated to improve the accessibility of museums to people with sensory impairment. As freelance accessibility consultant she develops museum programmes and produces workshops on Deaf culture and accessibility. She holds a BA in Arts, Culture and Media from the University of Groningen and completed the ResMA Arts & Culture at Leiden University. As a guest PhD student she conducts her research Mechanisms of Inclusion: understanding how museums contribute to social inclusiveness at Leiden University. This research focuses on the development of a new methodology for inclusive museums that combines social empowerment whilst maintaining museums critical function.

Lieke Smits

Lieke Smits received her Bachelor’s degree in Art History from Leiden University and her Master’s degree in Medieval Studies from Utrecht University. In February 2015, she started her PhD project at LUCAS, titled ‘The Mystical Kiss of the Mouth: The Engaging Imagery of the Song of Songs (1100-1500)’. Her research interest include medieval religious culture and the relations between image and text. Lieke was part of the committee that organized the 2017 LUCAS Graduate Conference on Landscape and is also editor of the Leiden Arts in Society Blog.

Zeynep Anli

Zeynep Anli chose to study literature because she loved reading books. She earned her degrees in literature (BA in English Language and Literature and MA in Comparative Literature). With nine years of work experience as a language instructor and freelance translator under her belt, she now pursues her PhD project at Leiden University as an external candidate. Her research concerns English and North American feminist utopian novels of all-female populations. In this subgenre, she specifically focuses on representations of gender, sexuality and biopolitics.

Sophia Hendrikx

Sophia Hendrikx works as a PhD researcher at Leiden University and as a Rare Book Specialist at Rare Fish Books. Her PhD is part of the NWO funded ‘A New History of Fishes. A long-term approach to fishes in science and culture, 1550-1880’ project, which focuses on the development of ichthyology as a field of expert knowledge, and the role of ichthyology in zoology. Within this larger project her research concentrates on 16th-century ichthyology and takes Gessner’s Historia Piscium (1558) as its point of focus. Sophia is a member of the LUCAS PhD council, president of the Leiden Arts in Society Blog, and one of the organisers of the 2019 LUCAS Graduate Conference.

Renske Janssen

Renske Janssen is a PhD researcher in the research group ‘History and Culture of Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity’. She holds a BA in Greek and Latin language and culture and a ResMA in Classics and Ancient Civilizations (cum laude) from Leiden University, and is current working on her PhD research, titled ‘Religio Illicita: Roman legal responses to Christianity and Judaism in context’. Renske’s research focusses on the way in which Christian and Jewish groups were embedded in, and interacted with the Roman legal system. She is especially interested in the comparison between these two very famous examples of Roman religious policy (if such a thing exists), and laws on less well-known religious groups.

Looi van Kessel

Looi van Kessel is doing his PhD at the Leiden University Center for Arts in Society (LUCAS) in comparative literature. He holds a BA degree (cum laude) in comparative literature and a ResMA degree in Studies in Art and Literature (cum laude), both from Leiden University. His dissertation is on the postwar American author James Purdy. He is interested in the ways in which Purdy tries to undermine narratives and fantasies of stable identities by foregrounding their constructedness through aesthetic strategies such as melodrama and mise-en-scene. Looi has been a visiting scholar at Dartmouth College and the University of Texas at Austin and is currently co-editing a special issue of the Dutch Journal for Gender Studies entitled “Trans*: Approaches, Methods and Concepts”.

Erin Travers

Erin Travers is a Ph.D. candidate in the History of Art and Architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and is in residence at Leiden University as a Kress Institutional Fellow (2016-2018). She received her B.A. in History and the History of Art from the University of Victoria (2008) and M.A. in Art History from Queen’s University (2011). Addressing the body, social and cultural boundaries of conduct, and the role of imagery in the communication and production of knowledge in the early modern period, her current project examines the anatomical prints, drawings, and preparations of Jacob van der Gracht, Johannes van Horne, Frederik Ruysch, Govard Bidloo, and their contemporaries. Her dissertation argues that anatomical texts and images were designed to proclaim the author’s authority, mediate the perception of the viewer, and encourage disciplinary boundaries between art and science. Investigating the contents of art treatises, anatomical atlases and collection catalogues in the seventeenth-century Netherlands, she considers how the designs of these materials were adjusted to the setting in which they were viewed and the particular aims of the author or artist.

Anna Volkmar

Anna Volkmar is a PhD researcher in contemporary art and theory. She holds a BA in Art, Music and Film from Philipps University Marburg, Germany, and a ResMA in Arts and Culture (cum laude) from Leiden University. She is currently part of the NWO Graduate Programme Arts in Society with her dissertation project ‘Making the Nuclear Tangible: Artistic Responses to a Nuclear Anthropocene’. Her research explores the various ways in which art initiates or facilitates a critical debate on the societal and cultural implications of nuclear technologies. Anna co-organized the 2017 LUCAS Graduate Conference on Landscape.

Access

The Journal of the LUCAS Graduate Conference was designed to be downloaded in its entirety and read either as an eBook or on screen, both preferable in double page view. You can access a PDF of the full Journal via the first link in the overview below. It is also possible to download individual parts of the Journal, which you can find listed following the link to the full PDF.

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Get it at Leiden Open Access: https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/57565