Nele Bemong#

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE#

Nele Bemong is a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) at the University of Leuven (K.U.Leuven, Belgium). She studied Germanic Languages at the K.U.Leuven from 1997 until 2001, and then took a specialised year in Literary Studies. Her master thesis dealt with the 1925 correspondence of the Flemish novelist Stijn Streuvels (1871-1969) and his editor Joris Lannoo (1891-1971). For this master thesis, she received the first CTB-Award from the Royal Academy for Dutch Language and Literary Studies. Nele Bemong started her PhD research at the KULeuven in 2002 and obtained her PhD degree in 2007 with a dissertation on the forms and functions of the Belgian historical novel in the first half of the 19th century. Since October 2007 she has been working as a Postdoctoral Fellow at K.U.Leuven. During her postdoc she has been working on a project that studies the historical novel in Belgium in the second half of the 19th century. Nele Bemong teaches courses on 19th-century Belgian and Dutch literature, on the historical novel and on literary theory. She is co-editor of the volume Re-thinking Europe: Literature and (Trans)National Identity (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi 2008), Bakhtin’s Theory of the Literary Chronotope. Reflections, Applications, Perspectives (Ghent: Academia Press 2010) and Naties in een spanningveld (Hilversum: Verloren 2010), a monograph on competing issues of regionalism, nationalism and internationalism in the Low Countries in the 19th century. A fourth volume on 19th-century Dutch literature is on the way. Over the past four years, she has also organised three international conferences. Nele Bemong has also been active in several policy units. From 2007 to 2009 she was the postdoc representative in the Executive Committee of the European Network for Comparative Literary Studies (REELC/ENCLS). In 2009, she took on the function of General Coordinator of that same European Network. Since 2007 she also holds the post of ‘doctoral lieutenant’ at the KULeuven Department of Literature, which means that she deals with all aspects of the doctoral training of all the departmental PhD-students. She has also been the departmental postdoctoral representative in the Faculty Council of the KULeuven Faculty of Arts (2008-2009) and the Postdoctoral representative in the Research Committee of the KULeuven Faculty of Arts (2008-2009). (Furthermore, Nele Bemong also works as a literary translator.)

DETAILS OF RESEARCH#

Nele Bemong’s research has mainly been focussed on two domains: the study of 19th-century literature (mostly Belgian and Dutch literature, albeit from a comparative perspective) and literary theory.

Both her PhD-research and her postdoctoral research have dealt with the genre of the historical novel in 19th-century Belgium. In her dissertation, which was entitled Forms and Functions of the Belgian Historical Novel (1827-1850). Poetological, Chronotopical and Narratological Aspects of a Genre, she studied the genre as it appeared in the first half of the 19th century. Her postdoctoral project The Historical Novel in Flanders between 1851 and 1893. Poetological, Chronotopical and Narratological Developments of a Genre studies the developments of the genre in the second half of that century. Recently, she has also worked on the 19th-century novel of manners. Her main topics thus include 19th-century literature, in particular Belgian (both Flemish and Franco-Belgian) and Dutch literature, research into literature and history, the (historical) novel, oral legends, and the dynamics of literary genres. Methodologically, her line of approach includes polysystem theory, chronotope theory, discourse analysis, narratological and chronotopical textual analyses, psycho-analysis, the study of poetics and reception study. She has also written several articles on literary theory, mainly on Bakhtin’s chronotope concept and the possibilities of integrating this concept into more traditional narratological approaches, and of combining the chronotope concept with functional-systemic approaches to literature, notably with polysystem theory. Her work on the chronotope concept also resulted in the co-editing of Bakhtin’s Theory of the Literary Chronotope. Reflections, Applications, Perspectives (Ghent: Academia Press 2010), the first monograph on the chronotope. Other volumes that she has co-edited are Re-thinking Europe: Literature and (Trans)National Identity (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi 2008) and Naties in een spanningveld (Hilversum: Verloren 2010); a fourth volume on 19th-century Dutch literature is on the way. She has published some 30 articles in English, Dutch and German, and has presented papers at some 25 international conferences and workshops both in and outside Europe. More information can be found on http://www.encls.net/?q=profile/nele-bemong and on http://www.kuleuven.be/cv/u0041521e.htm .