Dutch Authors Research Articles

The Colonial Java Town and Beach: Chronotopical Analysis of Augusta de Wit’s Two Travelogue Chapters

When the twentieth century was around the corner, the plurality of residents and newcomers grew in numbers, forming a dynamic and heterogeneous urban society in colonial Java. Augusta de Wit was one of the Dutch authors who wrote about Java during her stay there in her book form travelogue titled Java: Facts and Fancies. Her experience in Java had left an influence on her, which is shown in her fiction works. One of them is the short story Vijandschap that portrays mostly the rural and idyllic life of a coastal community, yet includes the participation of the town (Batavia) as a commercially promising place. This qualitative study aspires to illuminate how the rural beach community reconciled with the town and to confirm what she means by natural beauty by focusing on two chapters “The Town" and “On the Beach.” It is conducted by employing a close reading method and Torop’s chronotopical analysis consisting of topographical, psychological, and metaphysical chronotopes in Augusta de Wit’s perspective while considering the notion of tropicality. This study discovers that there is a relational function of town as a dynamic marketplace to the local folks on the beach and a “space of home” for the Europeans, while the beach as fruitful home to the native beach community and a soothing recreational place to de Wit. Moreover, natural beauty is not confined to nature solely, but includes the locals alongside their character and habits, who are an intrinsic tropical part of Java.

Authorship position as a proxy for contextual knowledge

Current health sciences literature is predominantly disseminated by, through and for Western scholars, resulting in underrepresentation of contextual knowledge in health policies worldwide. Commonly, this literature is evidence-based, build on principles of universality, neglecting and disregarding the importance of contextual and local expertise. Using a global health research question applied to three countries, Maastricht University Library’s collection was evaluated to explore the extent of contextual knowledge by authorship positions. Preliminary results showed that while Dutch articles had more local authors on first and/or last authorship positions compared to Bangladesh and Tanzania, they had no Dutch authors in middle positions, as opposed to Bangladesh and Tanzania (23% and 16%). This indicates a need for further understanding of geographic authorship position customs.
 Key words: Global health; Information dissemination; Information sources; Health information exchange; Diversity, Equity, Inclusion

Holocaust als non-fictie in de hedendaagse Nederlandse en Vlaamse jeugdliteratuur

The past two decades have seen a growing proliferation and generic (intermedial) diversification of Holocaust-related fiction and non-fiction in the Dutch language. At the hands of Dutch and Flemish authors of the third generation as well as writers who do not have a personal connection with the Holocaust, genres as diverse as the historical novel, picture books, the graphic novel, comic books and informational books have become the platform for creative engagement with the Shoah. In view of the growing temporal distance separating contemporary readers from the actual events of the Holocaust children’s literature, we saw its informative function being reinforced and revaluated. In this paper, I review Dutch and Flemish children’s literature about the Holocaust created in the 21st century. Special attention is paid to the literary methods and interventions used by authors in order to authenticate the narrative and frame it as non-fiction. These strategies demonstrate the further change in child images: the child is increasingly becoming a full-fledged participant in society and is as such entitled to historical truth, even if this truth is horrifying.

Biodiversity Management: A Bibliometric Analysis of Scopus Database Publications

The concept of biodiversity encompasses the diversity of life and the preservation of natural ecosystems to foster species’ evolution. Humans entail biodiversity for survival, well-being, and comfortable living. This study investigates the publication growth and trends of the worldwide research domain in biodiversity management. The Scopus database was utilised to retrieve 949 articles for this investigation. The analysis consisted of six primary parameters: (1) publication dispersion, (2) geographical distribution, (3) author-affiliated institutions, (4) source titles, (5) prolific authors, and (6) keywords. The results indicated a recent increase in annual publications on biodiversity management. The United States is significant in publishing extensively in this discipline. Dutch authors have published more works in this scientific field than authors from other regions. With 29 available publications, the CNRS Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France is the most prominent organisation. This study determined that Biodiversity and Conservation is the leading publication for biodiversity management. The keywords “climate change”, “invasive species”, “protected area”, “biodiversity conservation”, “species richness”, “restoration”, “conservation”, “ecosystem services”, “biodiversity”, and “sustainability” are the primary linked research subfields in biodiversity management. Notably, the keyword “biodiversity management” has a significant nexus strength to “conservation”. The interpretation of these results reveals that biodiversity management is directly related to conservation and gives a more substantial relationship to biodiversity. This paradigm has proven useful in evaluating recent research trends and assisting academics and researchers with biodiversity management and policy advance.

Reader and author attitudes towards brand placement in fiction

The present research explores readers’ and authors’ general attitudes towards brand placement in fiction. An online survey of Flemish readers (n = 500) and Flemish and Dutch authors (n = 97) measured attitudes towards the use of brand names and the practice of paid brand placement in fiction. Readers also reported their attitudes with regard to placement in film and TV programs. The results demonstrate that readers are favorable towards brand use in fiction. They also view the practice of paid placement as acceptable, perceive it as appropriate in most fiction genres, and are largely indifferent to the use of placement disclosures. Albeit perceptions are favorable across media in absolute terms, attitudes towards brands and paid placement in fiction, compared to film/TV programs, are less positive. Demographic characteristics and individual differences in reading motivation also predict readers’ placement attitudes. Further, the results reveal that authors also perceive (paid) placement in fiction as acceptable, yet they appear more reserved about the practice than readers in our sample and see a higher need for disclosure regulation. Findings are discussed with relation to earlier work on general attitudes towards brand placement in other media and their implications for current theory and practice.

Vernacular Multilingualism. The use of French in Medieval Dutch Literature

Recently new attention has been paid to the presence and use of French outside of France in multilingual regions, one of them being the Southern Low Countries. Scholarship focusing on this area has emphasized the presence of French within the Dutch literary culture as well as studied the language attitude of Dutch authors towards French. This article adds a third focus to this scholarship, namely that of the use of French found within multilingual texts from the Southern Low Countries. Through an analysis of a selection of bilingual and trilingual texts, it is determined how French is incorporated in these texts, what functionality it serves and to what extent this function reflects or contradicts findings from the other two views on French in medieval Dutch literary culture.

Geschlechtsübergreifende Personenbezeichnungen in wissenschaftlichen Zeitschriftenartikeln

This study, based on a corpus of 20 Dutch and 20 German scientific journal articles, looks at how authors of German and Dutch research papers use nouns referring to persons. This investi-gation shows that although the two West Germanic languages are typologically similar due to their geographic proximity the two languages can vary a lot in terms of the abstraction (e. g. Lehrkräfte, Personen; leerkrachten, personen) and specification (e. g. Lehrerinnen und Lehrer; leraressen en leraren) of both grammatical gender and biological sex in academic articles. As a result it can be observed that Dutch authors prefer generic masculine personal nous whereas German authors tend to use more alternative forms, especially in recent times. The result contributes not only to a deeper understanding of personal nouns in academic articles but also to a clearer understanding of where and why there are differences between German and Dutch.

Een schrijver verdwaald in het massamedialand

The mass media are a prominent actor in the current debate on literature. In many ways, they contribute to defining its terms and settings, including what is said, whose voice is deemed valid/legitimate, and how it is all done/expressed. The mass media no longer merely mediate; rather, they produce views on and assessments of writers and their work. In his book De literatuur draait door. De schrijver in het mediatijdperk (2019), Sander Bax discusses selected cases of the media presence of well-known Dutch authors and their books to offer an insightful and accurate exploration of the ways in which the mass media influence the debate on literature and literature itself.

Eduard Gerdes ‘bezoekt’ huizen van barmhartigheid

Eduard Gerdes’ visits of charity homes One of the most prolific Dutch authors of the nineteenth century is Eduard Gerdes (1821-1898). In an impressive study Christian Philanthropy in the Netherlands. Travel Reminiscences (1880) he presents himself as a visiting investigator of Dutch Christian charitable institutions. In this article his travels are reviewed with as conclusions: (1) ‘Christian’ in the title of the book means ‘orthodox Protestant’, and (2) the reminiscences are partly fictional.

The Imitation Game. Russian Pseudonyms and Pseudo-Translations in Dutch Literature

ABSTRACT Pseudo-translations are a recurring phenomenon within literary history. This article examines three Dutch authors who, towards the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, opted for a Russian pseudonym. Using Jérôme Meizoz’ notion of posture, this article charts the trajectory of these literary scams and explores the rules of this imitation game through contextual, paratextual and textual evidence while also looking on the impact of these mystifications on the career of the respective authors. Finally, the works of the three fake Russians and their reception can also shed light on the place and prestige Russian literature held in the literary field of the Netherlands during a period in which Russian literature was less accessible than today.

Pathways to agency: women writers and radical thought in the Low Countries, 1500–1800

ABSTRACT Previous studies of radical thinkers have brought us few examples of female radicals from the Low Countries, even if the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic was a hub for radical thought which offered a relatively female-friendly climate. In this article, we explore how new perspectives and modes of analysis, better adjusted to the restrictions and opportunities women experienced, make women’s radical thought visible. By doing so, we aim to present a more balanced perspective on what might count as female radical thought in the early modern Low Countries (1500–1800). Starting from the notion of “agency,” we analyze the life, work and relations of three Dutch authors, as well as representations of female radicalism in two literary works, in order to rebalance the notion of radicalism in a woman’s world. Anna Bijns, Meynarda Verboom and Margaretha van Dijk were not radically disruptive in the sense of operating completely outside of male-dominated domains. Instead, they gained agency by negotiating their position in patriarchal knowledge systems and by bending conventions within male-dominated networks so that their voices could be heard. To understand these voices, it is necessary to disconnect “being radical” from “the amount of disruption caused” by female agency.

On one source of information on Dutch, Danish and Swedish literature in Germany and Russia in the 1830s in the context of the formation of the canon of world literature

The article analyzes the book by the famous German literary historian O. L. B. Wolff (1799–1851), The Fine Literature of Modern Europe (1832), in which an attempt was made for the first time to create a canon of European literature, which at that moment was a substitute for the non-existent canon of world literature. This article provides a comparative study of Dutch, Danish, and Swedish literatures in this work, which introduced Dutch, Swedish, and Danish authors Little-known at the time to the general reading public outside their own countries. The introduction of this forgotten source allows us to reconstruct the criteria for evaluating “Northern” literatures within the circle of “major” European literatures and to identify a “set” of those writers who, from the author’s perspective, deserved some attention and could therefore form a canon for the literatures described, which only partially coincides with the modern canon. Of particular interest is the comparison of the German text of the book with its Russian translation, published in 1835, which contains elements of a veiled polemic with the German scholar, manifested not only in cuts made and the stylistic treatment of Wolff ’s value judgements, but also in replacing certain sections by texts of Russian origin whose authorship was established for the first time in the article. The juxtaposition of the original text and its Russian translation demonstrates a discrepancy of perceptions about the hierarchy of specific literatures within the constitutive canon of the period and the translator’s desire to place Russian literature at the forefront, which he saw eclipsing the literatures of the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark.

In the margin of the canon: Dutch architecture in the first architectural surveys of the nineteenth century

This article is about the troublesome relationship between the two book genres that shaped the rapidly developing discipline in the nineteenth century: the general surveys of architectural history and the monograph on a specific country or building style. With the nineteenth-century historiography of medieval and Renaissance Dutch architecture as a case study, this article explores the interaction between both genres, paying attention to their respective terminology, descriptive methods, classification, and value judgements. Instead of a mutual exchange between the two genres, this article demonstrates that the architectural survey, with its grand narrative on architecture’s stylistic development, was at the top of a hierarchy of academic writing that defined the architectural canon. Judgements presented in surveys about the unimportance of the Dutch Middle Ages and Renaissance scarcely changed over the years, despite new factual material, whereas the monographs were entirely determined by the surveys. Dutch authors devaluated themselves as the suppliers of ‘additional knowledge’ to the general surveys, taking over their terminology and assessment framework that lend themselves poorly to the appreciation of local architecture. The monographs on the Dutch architectural past demonstrate that national architectural history writing — mediating between local and geographical specificities and general stylistic categories — found itself at the intersection of two sweeping ideals of the nineteenth century: the ideal of Romantic nationalism and that of the professionalisation of knowledge.

Surgical Joint Distraction in Knee Osteoarthritis

Background: There is some controversy in the literature regarding the role of surgical joint distraction (SJD) in knee osteoarthritis (OA). Question: What are the benefits of SJD in knee OA? Methods: A Cochrane Library and PubMed (MEDLINE) search related to the role of SJD in knee OA was analyzed. The chief criteria for election were that the articles were centered on the aforementioned question. Results: 377 articles were found until April 30, 2017; however, only 9 were selected and reviewed because of their focus on clinical experience with SJD in knee OA. Two were considered level of evidence I-II, whereas 7 had a lower level of evidence (III-IV). SJD provides considerable clinical and structural ameliorations to patients with knee OA, postponing total knee arthroplasty (TKA) for at least 2 years. Conclusions: SJD provides benefits in delaying TKR for at least 2 years, but there is a risk of pin tract infection. Moreover, of the 9 articles reviewed in this paper, 7 were reported by Dutch authors, potentially limiting the generalizability of the results. My view is that the role of SJD in knee OA is currently quite controversial and should not be recommended until further research is conducted.

Dutch Literature in Translation: A Global View

ABSTRACT This article analyzes a dataset of over 11,000 book translations from Dutch published in the last two decades to give a global picture of recent outgoing translation flows. It examines four main categories – genre, author national grouping (Dutch/Flemish), target language, and translation grant status – revealing children’s literature and fiction to be important export genres; a steady increase in the number of translations of works by Dutch authors and a stagnation in the number of translations of works by Flemish authors; central positions for German, English and French as important target languages, semi-peripheral positions for Spanish, Italian and Danish and an emerging position for Chinese; and a remarkable rise in the number and percentage of translations that received translation grants. The article goes on to explore translation grants in more detail, examining the ‘literary quality’ criterium and the ‘market-correcting’ justification used by the Dutch Foundation for Literature and Flanders Literature (formerly known as the Flemish Literature Fund). It concludes by critically evaluating how these two aspects shape outgoing translation flows and potentially reinforce power imbalances within the Dutch-language field.

ОРГАНИЗАЦИОННЫЕ СПОСОБНОСТИ КАК РЕСУРС РАЗВИТИЯ СОВРЕМЕННОЙ ОРГАНИЗАЦИИ

Based on a number of approaches to the life cycle formation, which help to consider and formulate the specific character of crises of development and the recommendations on development from various viewpoints, a model of analysis of the life cycle of a company and factors ensuring its development in the long term has been identified by the Dutch authors B. Lievegoed and F. Glasl. The conclusion is made that the model of a life cycle presented by these authors differs from other well-known models. The most significant difference is the interpretation of the development stages of the company, in which the center of scientific view on the organization development cycle phases is its managerial capabilities. The role of the “relation space” is considered, which in addition to the “activity space” forms managerial capabilities to overcome development crises. The practical part summarizes the results of an analysis of four medium-sized enterprises in the transition from a differentiation phase to an integration phase, which demonstrate the focus of attention of the employees interested in the development of their company. The leading role of the analysis of the “relation space” is shown in diagnostics of the problems of development by employees and in the formation of managerial capabilities in the process of analytical activity. The relevance of the used model presented by B. Lievegoed and F. Glasl for the analysis and design of development of a medium-sized enterprise, which is in the stage of a transition to the integration phase, has been demonstrated. The conclusion is made on the difference in the formation of managerial capabilities for small, medium-sized and large enterprises.

The Land of Letter-Lovers: The Year in the Netherlands

The Land of Letter-LoversThe Year in the Netherlands Monica Soeting (bio) In comparison with the US and the UK, the term "life writing" came to the Netherlands rather late. It wasn't until the first years of the twenty-first century that it was introduced to Dutch readers in publications like Marijke Huisman's 2008 book Publieke levens: Autobiografieën op de Nederlandse boekenmarkt 1850–1918 and in Dutch journals like Biografie Bulletin and De Gids. Yet the term is still being contested by Dutch biography scholars Hans Renders and Binne de Haan of the University of Groningen. Renders sees "life writers" as idealistic therapists who want to offer "retrospective justice" by sustaining "overwhelming attention for the deprived in history" ("Biography in Academia" 172) like "women, coloured people, homosexuals, victims of the Holocaust, and so on" (170), in order to "show that the authors of these autobiographical documents were victimised by their social context" (169). "Life writing," De Haan writes, thus can only be described as "subjective identity politics" (194), in which "Life Writers" use documents and other texts as "vehicles for emancipation" (186). However, most Dutch scholars find no problem in using "life writing" as an umbrella term, i.e., in the sense Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson have defined it in their renowned book Reading Autobiography: "a general term for writing that takes a life, one's own or another's, as its subject" (4). Outside the academy, the term "life writing" is still largely unknown to the general reading public in the Netherlands. Moreover, the catalogue of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), the National Library of the Netherlands, which holds copies of all books published in the Netherlands, does not use "life writing" as an index term; searching the KB website for "life writing" only turns up book titles containing the words "life" and/or "writing." This doesn't help to popularize "life writing" as an umbrella term. Therefore, to assess the lifewriting publications that hit the Dutch book market in 2019, one must search the KB catalogue for all the different genres that one would consider part of life writing, such as biographies, autobiographies, memoirs, diaries, and collections of letters. [End Page 137] To start with "biography" as a search word, the KB catalogue shows no more than ten books published by Dutch and Flemish authors in the Netherlands in 2019, which does not reflect the actual number. The KB catalogue does not categorize as "biography" one of the most interesting and enjoyable Dutch biographies published last year: Verhalen van de drakendochter by Willem Gerritsen, a book about the life and work of internationally renowned Dutch literary scholar and the second Dutch professor of Celtic Studies, Maartje Draak (1907–1995), of whom Gerritsen was a student. Instead, the book is categorized as "levensbeschrijving" (literally, "life description"), an outdated term, which is also used for several biographies of male politicians, like Chris Hietland's dissertation about Dutch socialist politician André van der Louw, Mathijs van de Waardt's biography of nineteenth-century liberal politician Dirk Donker Curtius, and the biographies of famous prime ministers, Joop den Uyl and Wim Kok, by Dik Verkuil and Marnix Krop, respectively. Also listed as "levensbeschrijving" are the biographies of two male scientists: a life history of R. P. Cleveringa by sociologist Kees Schuyt, and a biography of Franz Joseph Gall by Theo Mulder. In the "stories of the dragon's daughter" ("draak" is Dutch for "dragon"), Draak's self-fashioning, self-presentation, and representation as one of the very few Dutch female professors in the fifties and sixties of the twentieth century take center stage. In this regard, the biography complies with the elements of what Dutch historian Mineke Bosch calls the "new biography" in her article "Persona en de performance van identiteit," published in the unfortunately no longer existing biography journal Tijdschrift voor biografie in 2012. Bosch writes, "In de nieuwe biografie wordt afscheid […] genomen van het zoeken naar de crux van een leven in termen van (jeugd)trauma's en geheimen onder invloed van het twintigste-eeuwse psychoanalytische complex" [The new biography takes leave of searching for the crux of a life in terms of (youth) traumata and...

Female Glass Engravers in the Early Modern Dutch Republic

This essay explores glass engravings by Dutch authors Anna Roemers Visscher, Maria Tesselschade Roemers Visscher, and Anna Maria van Schurman. I place these engravings in their rich contemporary contexts, comparing them to other art forms that were the product of female pastime. Like embroidery, emblems, and alba amicorum, engraved glasses combined text and image, transforming each glass into an object that fulfilled key social and cultural functions. Above all, engraving glasses allowed women to forge new self-representations, specifically through their use of play to question binary oppositions and moral certainties.

Local traditions v. academic law: collateral rights on movables in Holland (c. 1300-c. 1700)

Summary In the County of Holland, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the rules regarding security interests in movables changed fundamentally. Rules of doctrine came to be combined with rules found in local law, that is the bylaws of cities and regions. This went together with the re-interpreting of fragments of older bylaws. In 1631 Grotius’ Inleidinghe categorized the lien of the unpaid seller after delivery of the merchandise sold as entailing a reivindicatio. This new rule was adopted in cities in Holland, even though it ran counter the earlier approach that third-party effects of sales in this regard were very limited. Also, the new line of thought that holders with a legitimate title did not respond to pledgees pushed out older conceptions on tracing for some special pledges. In their legal writings Dutch authors after Grotius attempted to construe consistent solutions; in the legislative practice of cities, older rules could be preferred over new ones. Bylaws of cities, to which authors of Roman-Dutch doctrine referred as well, stipulated limits on tracing by unpaid sellers. All the mentioned developments were not determined by changes in the market, even though they could be incited by them. Legal change in Holland, even in the Golden Age of the seventeenth century, was due more to the embracing of academic ideas than to responsiveness to economic conditions.

Factors influencing low‐value follow‐up care after BCC

Basal cell carcinoma (BCC) is the most common type of cancer worldwide and its incidence is still rising. It is a type of skin cancer, but it is generally slow‐growing and very rarely spreads elsewhere in the body. Currently, guidelines recommend to only provide follow‐up care (e.g. annual check‐ups) to BCC patients considered ‘high risk’ according to certain factors, such as the size of the tumour, its location, and if it was faster growing than normal. However, dermatologists still provide follow‐up care to patients with low‐risk BCCs as well. To understand why this so called ‘low‐value care’ is provided and to identify strategies to reduce this care, the Dutch authors (based in Rotterdam) interviewed 18 dermatologists and organised three focus groups with 17 low‐risk BCC patients. The interviews and focus groups were audio taped and then transcribed literally. These transcripts were then loaded into a software programme and analysed for themes. Two main reasons given by dermatologists for providing low‐value follow‐up care were: i) complying with patient preferences and ii) a lack of trust in general practitioners (GPs) to identify suspicious lesions (possible skin cancers). Financial incentives and force of habit were two further reasons. Patients also expressed a lack of trust in GPs, and whereas some of the BCC patients preferred receiving periodic follow‐up care, other patients felt it was unnecessary. Several strategies for reducing follow‐up care were suggested, of which educating patients was identified as potentially effective by dermatologists and patients. Results of this study have already been incorporated in a pilot study, in which BCC patients receive written information which includes information about their disease, treatment, recurrence chance and chance of subsequent BCC. This letter is tailored to their specific situation.