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GEMS warmly invites you to the book presentation of two recently published volumes on early modern Dutch literature in international contexts: Spanish Drama on the Dutch Stage: Transgressive Emotions in the Seventeenth Century (Brill, 2025) by Dr. Tim Vergeer, and Dutch Brazil in the Early Modern Imaginary: From Description to Classification of Lands and Peoples, 1624-1654 (Brill, 2026) by Dr. Britt Dams.

Tim Vergeer, Spanish Drama on the Dutch Stage: Transgressive Emotions in the Seventeenth Century (Brill, 2025)

Between 1568 and 1648, the Dutch revolted against the occupying Spanish Empire. Simultaneously, Dutch theatregoers eagerly flocked to adaptations of Spanish comedia nueva. This study shows how and why plays by Lope de Vega, Calderón, and others were, paradoxically, theatrical blockbusters in the Dutch Republic and Flanders. Using techniques such as spectacle, illusion, and tableaux vivants alongside violence, incest, and cross-dressing, the comedias were emotional whirlwinds of love, honour, and revenge. Examining historical texts and stage practices from Amsterdam, Antwerp, and Brussels, Tim Vergeer demonstrates that this vastly understudied genre offered audiences a voyeuristic escape from the emotional norms of early modern life.

Tim Vergeer, Ph.D., is a scholar of historical literature and, particularly, early modern Dutch and Spanish theatre. His expertise includes onstage emotions, colonial identities in drama, Queer readings of plays. He also publishes widely on early modern theatrical practices. More recently, he has been exploring the feminine perspective in Dutch poetry. He is a visiting professor at Ghent University.

Britt Dams, Dutch Brazil in the Early Modern Imaginary: From Description to Classification of Lands and Peoples, 1624-1654 (Brill, 2026)

Between 1624 and 1654, Dutch representations of Brazil evolved from wonder-filled travel narratives to increasingly systematic forms of observation and classification. Drawing on four key texts—Nieuwe Wereldt, Iaerlijck Verhael, Rerum per Octennium in Brasilia, and Historia naturalis Brasiliae—alongside maps, West India Company records, and illustrations, this study traces the emergence of new ways of describing the colonial world. It shows how information gathered by planters, soldiers, artists, and Indigenous intermediaries shaped the classification of landscapes, plants, animals, and peoples, transforming description into a powerful tool of colonial knowledge and governance in Dutch Brazil.

Britt Dams is a literary scholar specializing in early modern, colonial, and postcolonial literature, with a particular focus on seventeenth-century Dutch Brazil. She received her PhD in Literature from Ghent University in 2015 with a dissertation entitled Comprehending the New World in the Early Modern Period: Descriptions of Dutch Brazil (1624–1654). She teaches Portuguese and French at Ghent University’s Language Centre and is affiliated with the Ghent Centre for Early Modern Studies (GEMS). She also teaches comparative literature, with a special emphasis on colonial and postcolonial studies, at Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, where she is a member of the Institut de Recherche Intersite d’Études Culturelles (IRIEC). She has published widely on early modern travel writing, colonial discourse, and representations of Brazil in journal articles and edited volumes.