Students of Humanities

In this episode, Franek Dziduch (rMA Cultural Analysis at UvA) and Ollie Köhn-Haskins (rMA Comparative Literary Studies at UU) discuss the strengths and shortcomings of satirizing European cultural elites. How does one effectively criticize Europe’s narratives of Otherness, identity, and class? To search for an answer, Dziduch and Köhn-Haskins delve into Sister Europe (2025) by Nell Zink, examinin...

In this episode, Ksenia Kwiecińska (rMA Comparative Literary Studies at UU) and Toby Kommeren (rMA Arts, Media, and Literature  at LU) discuss Georgi Gospodinov’s Booker Prize-winning novel Time Shelter (2020). If, as Gospodinov proposes, writing can be a cure for nightmares, what nightmare is Time Shelter reenacting and what kind of cure does it offer? Written in the aftermath of Brexit, the narr...

This episode is hosted by Anna Loi and Ymke van Doorn, both students of the Research Master “Arts, Literature and Media” at Leiden University. The focus is on Jenny Erpenbeck’s Go, Went, Gone (2015), a novel about the encounters of Richard, a retired professor, with a group of refugees in Berlin (Germany). How do literary narratives, such as these, shape our perceptions of migration and of refugee...

In this episode, Maura Martens and Sterre Schols, both students of the Research Master “Arts, Literature and Media” at Leiden University, delve into the marginalized stories of Europe through the lens of Critical Heritage Studies. Who is included and who is left out of Europe’s cultural narratives? Through a close-reading of the novel Soul Tourists (2005) by British author Bernardine Evaristo, Mau...

Rüya Erdoğan and Mirjam Wolting discuss Bernardine Evaristo's 'Blonde Roots'. Evaristo’s 2008 novel reverses the roles in the narrative of slavery, placing Africans as masters and Europeans as slaves through a fictional story of Doris, a white girl from England who is abducted and shipped to the fictional United Kingdom of Great Ambossa. 

In this podcast, Julia de Wit and Mauricio Mandujano Manriquez discuss Chimamanda Adhichie's 2013 novel 'Americannah'. Americannah is a Nigerian slang for Nigerians who live in America and through her characters Adhichie explores the questions of migration, race and belonging.  

Jung Chang’s 'Wild Swans' is a family history of three generation of women spread over a hundred years. The book, discussed here by Lin Monen and Hosoo Kim, examines the lives and struggles of Chinese women under different regimes. 

In this episode, Joël Kous and Jeroen Kreis review Maaza Mengiste's 'The Shadow King'. The novel is situated in the Second Italian-Ethiopian War, 1935-37 and highlights the role of women in this war. 

Njabuko S. Ndebele's 'The Cry of Winnie Mandela', discussed here by Meri Kajaia and Nina Hamann, is fictional narrative centred around the stories of several women, including Winnie Mandela. The novel is a meditation on what it is to be a woman in the struggle – on waiting, longing, catharsis, and redemption. 

In this podcast episode, Sorcha Lanigan and Sophie Carr-Brulard discuss Saidia Hartman's book 'Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments' which is an exploration of the intimate lives of young Black women in Philadelphia and New York in early 20th century.  

Sveltana Alexievich's ' 'The Unwomanly Face of War' documents the experiences of Soviet women who participated in the second world war – both at the front lines and at home. This episode by Milou Makaske, Betty Kincová and Annemijn de Vries considers the book and its themes.