‘Dora’ is one the most important and interesting case studies Sigmund Freud conducted and later described. It constitutes a key text in his oeuvre and finds itself at the crossroads of his studies in hysteria, the theory of sexuality and dream interpretation. The Dora case is both a literary and theoretically ground-breaking text and an account of a ‘failed’ treatment. In Dora, Hysteria and Gender renowned Freud scholars reflect on the Dora case, presenting various innovative and cont...

In 1790, between the birth of America (1776) and the creation of the French National Assembly (1789), nine provinces nestled between the French and Dutch borders declared themselves a new free and independent country: the United States of Belgium. Before then, the provinces had been part of the vast Austrian Habsburg Empire ruled by Joseph II. In 1789 revolutionaries from Brussels to Ghent to Namur recruited a grass-roots army that, to the surprise of many, successfully chased imperial forces...

First volume in the new series CeMIS Migration and Intercultural Studies.

Moroccans are one of the largest and most debated migrant groups in Belgium. Moroccan Migration in Belgium analyses diverse facets of this community from a multidisciplinary perspective and addresses the most relevant and some underexposed topics in the rapidly developing field of migration studies. Combining various academic disciplines and different research methods, the book offers a panoramic introspection into the ...

Cardinal Désiré-Joseph Mercier, Archbishop of Malines, was the incarnation of the Belgian resistance against the German occupation during the First World War. With his famous pastoral letter of Christmas 1914 ‘Patriotisme et Endurance’ he reached a wide audience, and gained international influence and respect.

Mercier’s distinct patriotic stance clearly determined his views of national politics, especially of the 'Flemish question', and his conflict with the German occupier made him a...

International exchange in European cultural life in the 19th and 20th centuries.From the early nineteenth century till the middle of the twentieth century, cultures in Europe were primarily national. They were organized and conceived of as attributes of the nation states. Nonetheless, these national cultures crossed borders with an unprecedented intensity even before globalization transformed the very concept of culture. During that long period, European cultures have imported and exported pr...

Sacred architecture as reality and metaphor in secularised Western society.

Christian monasteries and convents, built throughout Europe for the best part of 1,500 years, are now at a crossroads. This study attempts to understand the sacred architecture of monasteries as a process of the tangible and symbolic organisation of space and time for religious communities. Despite the weight of seemingly immutable monastic tradition, architecture has contributed to developing specific religious ident...

Beyond resemblance: creative divergence in music performance.

What does it mean to produce resemblance in the performance of written music? Starting from how this question is commonly answered by the practice of interpretation in Western notated art music, this book proposes a move beyond commonly accepted codes, conventions and territories of music performance. Appropriating reflections from post-structural philosophy, visual arts and semiotics, and crucially based upon an artistic research ...

The impact of the Great War and its aftermath on Belgian artistic life.World War I had a major effect on Belgian visual arts. German occupation, the horror at the battlefield and the experience of exile led to multiple narratives and artistic expressions by Belgian artists during and after the war. Belgian interbellum art is extremely vibrant and diverse. 14/18 - Rupture or Continuity takes a look at Belgian artistic life in the years around the First World War and how it was affected by this...

Life and death in a sixteenth-century masterpiece.The portrait we have come to call Little Girl with Dead Bird is an enigma. On the one hand, we hardly know anything about this sixteenth-century masterpiece. But even so, on the other hand, the picture fascinates viewers to this day. This painting's indeterminate yet compelling status provides Volkmar Mühleis grounds to look beyond its historical significance and to explore its anthropological scope as well, from an intercultural perspective ...

Despite our stereotypical ideas on photographic images as snapshots (slices of time), photography is fundamentally a time-based medium. The relationships between photography and time are manifold: time can be directly represented within the image, it can be its theme and philosophical horizon, but it can also represent the global framework in which photographic practices develop and change through time. It is the ambition of this book to bring together the various aspects of time in photograp...