Literary Studies

• We offer a programme in line—in terms of content and quality—with leading British and North American universities.
• Our programme is tailored to your needs, with small classrooms that facilitate plenty of interaction with your lecturers and fellow classmates.

- With a range of electives you can design your programme to meet your ambitions and interests.
- Over the past decade, our BA and MA courses have been rated as the best in The Netherlands in the Keuzegids university rankings.
- Our academic staff have a reputation for excellence in teaching and research. Their research contributes to pressing debates in society and their findings are brought into the classroom to shape education.
- Our student body is composed of domestic and international students. This year’s cohort, for instance, had 30% international students from countries such as Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Romania, the USA, India, China and others.
- We foster independent thinking and always strive to provide the care and support needed for each student to fulfil their potential.
- Our learning community celebrates diversity in ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age and neurotypes.

Your possibilities depend on your track. You might work as a translator, journalist or writer. You could also find a job in the field of education, research or publishing. Other options are functions at cultural organizations and government institutes.

The research projects of staff members are innovative and international and range from the analysis of (offensive) humor in controversial cartoons to garden writings and sustainability, from digital media representations to literary self-identification of marginalized or minority groups.

Students have a free choice of dissertation subjects within the areas of staff expertise and are encouraged to develop new and innovative approaches and ideas. Examples of topics that have been proposed by our students focus for example on decolonial or postcolonial discourses, on trauma and exile, on ecocriticsm or on concepts such as transculturality and heterotopia through in-depth analysis of contemporary case studies.

Examples of English Literature and Culture theses are:

• How an Adder Became an Arrow: Battle Kennings in Old English Poetry.
• The Sin of Crime in the Early Irish and Anglo-Saxon Penitentials and Secular Laws.
• The Devil is in the Details: The Use of Archery-related Language in Anglo-Saxon Literature.
• The Mother's Portrayal in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century English Popular Literature.
• Representations of Queen Elizabeth I in Seventeenth-Century Histories.
• Self-Reflection in Jane Austen’s Novels.
• Psychological Elements in Contemporary and Modern First World War Literature.
• Fantasy Fiction Medievalism: Carnivalesque Laughter between the (Post)Modern and Premodern.
• The Media of Cyberpunk: An Analysis of Postmodern Science Fiction.

Examples of European Literatures and Interculturality theses are:

• From a barren desert to a microbial jungle: Deep-sea narratives in the Anthropocene
• Heimat als Heterotopie: Ortlosigkeit und Vielortigkeit der neuen Heimat in Keuns Kind aller Länder und Stanišićs Herkunft
• No de izquierdas ni de derechas: El discurso decolonial en la obra de Calle 13
• Le transculturalisme littéraire à travers deux « intrangères » issues de l’exil. Une comparaison entre L’art de perdre d’Alice Zeniter et Marx et la poupée de Maryam Madjidi
• Trauma - Ironi i ungdomsromanen Tio över ett. Hur kolliderande former skapar en personlig bild av Kirunas flyttning
• Ambivalent feminism: Hashtagification, YouTubification, and Eurovisionization of women's rights in Russia

Examples of Writing, Editing and Mediating theses are:

• Covering Arthurian Novels: Cover Design as an Integral Part of Book Marketing.
• Tolerance as Cultural Difference: Ian Buruma’s Murder in Amsterdam.
• Chicanas Write Back: Gender and Homosexuality in Gloria Anzaldúa, Estela Portillo Trambley, and Ana Castillo
• Constructing and Deconstructing Paradise: Robinsonades and British Imperialism.
• Victorian and Contemporary Criminality in Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes Narratives and BBC’s Sherlock.
• The Fall of the Romish Church: An Edition of a Reformist Pamphlet.