On November 20, 2014, scholars from the Literatures in English programme at the VU University Amsterdam, visited NIAS for a workshop, organized by their colleague, and current NIAS Fellow, Professor Diederik Oostdijk. Ph.D. student Amrita Das wrote a piece on the experience.
“The act of going away is highly underrated,” writes Amrita Das. “The cyclic nature of everyday routines coats like a fog. (…) Like the Persian Rose garden in the middle of NIAS, in between teaching, exams, administration and preparation, our research lies, sometimes white, sometimes pink, and it is helpful to step away and notice we chose the academic path (and literature in particular), and to witness ourselves going through the process of creation and recreation.”
“This wonderful piece by one of my Ph.D. students is a reminder to all of us why NIAS matters, I think,” says Diederik Oostdijk, who holds a fellowship at NIAS to write a book on the Netherlands Carillon in Arlington, “and why the “act of going away is highly underrated.””
Read the full article “The NIAS Experience” (Literatuurensamenleving.nl)
The VU Literatures in English team at NIAS’s Persian Rose Garden (Fellow Diederik Oostdijk on the far right).