Literary Historian Els Stronks holds the public KB Lecture, showing how the visibility of youth in early-modern textual culture growed, and how this intensified and changed the interaction between generations. The public lecture (in Dutch) takes place on Wednesday 14 January 2015, at the National Library of the Netherlands.
Analysing Conceptualizations of Youth in Early Modern Textual Culture (1500-1800) the Digital Way
The central question the lecture departs from, has a methodological and substantive component: how can digital technologies help us uncover the emergence of conceptualizations of youth in the textual culture of the early modern Dutch Republic?
Stronks’ objectives are to show how the growing visibility of youth in textual culture intensified and changed the interaction between generations, redefining the roles, values and beliefs with regard to young people. Early modern children and adolescents were seen not just as subjects that needed to be controlled and disciplined by adults. They were also perceived – by themselves and others, in intergenerational dynamics – as a population group with specific physical characteristics, with cognitive and emotional potentials and with innovative capacities.
The tension between regulation and stimulation in the discourses on youth are mapped and analysed using the new opportunities of the large-scale digitization efforts to the max. But what is ‘the max’, at this point in time?
Attendance
The lecture will take place in the auditorium of the KB at 20.00. (Coffee/tea at 19.30). Entrance is free, but please register at activiteiten@kb.nl.
Location: Aula van de Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Prins Willem-Alexanderhof 5, 2595 BE Den Haag. More information on the lecture and programme…
About Els Stronks
Els Stronks is Professor of Early Modern Dutch Literature at Utrecht University.
About the KB Fellowship
The KB Fellowship is a joint venture between the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB) – National Library of the Netherlands – and NIAS. It is awarded to a renowned Dutch or non-Dutch scholar in the humanities. Previous KB fellows include Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Robert Darnton, Jonathan Israel and Lisa Jardine. Els Stronks is the second Fellow ‘Digital Humanities’, Marc van Oostendorp being the first in 2013. During the Fellowship, Stronks blogged about her experiences and findings.