Agenda
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Wed04Mar202617:00Belvedere, Boekentoren, Rozier 9, UGent
Belvedere Lecture and Inaugural Lecture by Prof. Roland Greene
Show contentPlease join us for Prof. Roland Greene’s Inaugural Francqui Lecture and the 2025 Belvedere Lecture: New Perspectives on Early Modern Studies.
Greene’s lecture will trace the decline of universalism: the idea that certain themes, experiences, or values in literature are common to all humans, transcending specific cultural, historical, or geographical contexts. This doctrine ruled the study of literature until about 75 years ago. Its disappearance made possible new canons of experimental, ethnic, and Indigenous writing, but left literary studies with a crisis of authority—and a diminished place in public culture—that remains the topic of countless jeremiads. After sketching a provocative history of this transformative episode in the life of a discipline, Prof. Greene will offer ideas toward the rebuilding of literary criticism’s authority on a sounder basis than what it was established on—in effect, remaking its foundation with a new sense of ethics and justice.
The lecture will be followed by a Q&A with the audience and a reception.
Register before 04-03-2026 18:05.
Prof. Roland Greene is the Mark Pigott KBE Professor, Anthony P. Meier Family Professor of the Humanities, a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Stanford University, and Director of the Stanford Humanities Center. During 2026, he will be a Francqui International Chair at Ghent University.
His research and teaching are concerned with the early modern literatures of England, Latin Europe, and the transatlantic world, and with poetry and poetics from the Renaissance to the present. His most recent book is Five Words: Critical Semantics in the Age of Shakespeare and Cervantes (Chicago, 2013). His other books include Unrequited Conquests: Love and Empire in the Colonial Americas (Chicago, 1999); and Post-Petrarchism: Origins and Innovations of the Western Lyric Sequence (Princeton, 1991). Greene is the editor with Elizabeth Fowler of The Project of Prose in Early Modern Europe and the New World (Cambridge, 1997), and he is editor in chief of the fourth edition of the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (2012).
In 2015-16 he served as President of the Modern Language Association. His theme for the 2016 Annual Convention in Austin, Texas was Literature and Its Publics: Past, Present, and Future. At Stanford Greene is co-chair and founder of two research workshops in which most of his Ph.D. students participate. Renaissances brings together early modernists from the Bay Area to discuss work in progress, while the Poetics Workshop provides a venue for innovative scholarship in the broad field of international and historical poetics. Greene has taught at Harvard and Oregon, where for six years he was chair of the Department of Comparative Literature. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The Belvedere Lecture: New Perspectives in Early Modern Studies (https://www.belvederelecture.ugent.be) is a joint initiative of various research groups at Ghent University, including the Institute for Early Modern History, the Sarton Centre for History of Science, the Group for Early Modern Studies (GEMS), the Institute for Legal History, THALIA and RELICS
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Mon01Jun2026Fri05Jun2026Ghent University & Hotel Den Briel
Medieval and Early Modern Studies Spring School 2026
Show contentMateriality, Material Culture and Materialist Approaches
This Spring School is organised by Ghent University (Doctoral Schools), the University of Groningen, the Huizinga Institute and the Dutch Research School for Medieval Studies in cooperation with different research groups in the Low Countries. The main aim of this initiative is to stimulate contacts and exchange between PhD candidates and ReMa students in the interdisciplinary field of Medieval and Early Modern Studies bringing them together around a specific theme. The focus for this edition will be on materiality and material culture.
Topic
Material studies is a dynamic and rapidly evolving field in the study of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. It explores the materiality of “objects” (broadly defined), drawing on various disciplines, such as book history, art history, history of science, archaeology and archaeometry. This Spring School examines technical methods, cultural uses of objects and human–object interactions, from daily use to ritual. Materialist and ecocritical perspectives are specifically addressed. Through lectures, workshops and pitches, participants will actively engage with varied approaches to materiality and material culture in historical contexts.
Programme
Session I: Walk through Ghent: Urban Archaeology with Geert Vermeiren (City of Ghent)
Session II & III: – Materialist Thought and Approaches with Laura Georgescu (University of Groningen) and Adam Hansen (Northumbria University)
Session IV & V: The Materiality of Cultural Objects with Marieke Hendriksen (Huygens Institute, Amsterdam), Maximiliaan Martens (Ghent University) and Youri Desplenter (Ghent University)
Session VI & VII : Material Culture with Maxime Poulain (University of Tübingen) and Maïka De Keyzer (KU Leuven)
Session VIII & IX: Natural Environment and Sustainability with Marjolijn Bol (Utrecht University) and Sander Govaerts (Ghent University)
Registration
PhD students and ReMa students are invited to register for this course before 4 February 2026 through the following link: https://forms.gle/T7YHmVkAKXqXoN9BA Please note that there is a limited number of places available for this course. After the deadline you will soon receive more information about whether your registration can be confirmed or not. Some of the participating graduate/doctoral schools will cover tuition and lodging for their participating members (please wait for more information after your registration). Students working on Antiquity, or the Modern Period can attend as well but please note that this course will focus mainly on the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period.
Organising institutions and partners
This Spring School is organised by Ghent University (Doctoral Schools), the University of Groningen, the Huizinga Institute and the Research School for Medieval Studies in cooperation with the following research groups: the Groningen Research Institute for the Study of Culture (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen), the Group for Early Modern Studies (UGent), the Henri Pirenne Institute for Medieval Studies (UGent), the Centre for Urban History (University of Antwerp) the Amsterdam Centre for Studies in Early Modernity (UvA), the Institute for Early Modern History (UGent-VUB) and the Onderzoeksgroep Nieuwe Tijd (KU Leuven).
Organising committee
Marrigje Paijmans (UvA), Elizabeth Merrill (UGent), Bart Ramakers (RUG), Stefan Meysman (UGent), Maïka De Keyzer (KU Leuven), Marlise Rijks (VUB/UGent), Estel van den Berg (UGent) and Kornee van der Haven (UGent).
Posts & News
- Medieval and Early Modern Studies Spring School 2026
- Women and language in late Renaissance Florence: an analysis of private correspondence by Dr. Eleonora Serra
- GEMS News and Congrats – December
- Lecture: Roland Greene (Stanford U): Literary Studies After Universalism: A History and a Manifesto
- Reading Group: Moderata Fonte’s The Worth of Women (1600)
- GEMS News & Congrats – November