prof. dr. G.E.E. (Ginette) Verstraete

Full Curriculum Vitae

Teaching

Verstraete currently teaches “Inleiding Cultuurwetenschappen” (1st year of the BA), “Reading Concepts of Intermediality” (MA in Intermediality) at the VU, and contributes to various other courses at the faculty of Arts (such as “Methodologies”). For more info on previous courses, see her CV.

Research

Verstraete’s research can be situated in the areas of cultural theory, cultural analysis, and comparative arts and media studies, with a thematic focus on mobility, globalization, and on intermediality.

-She has just finished a manuscript on Tracking Europe: Mobility, Diaspora, and the Politics of Location (Duke UP 2010). See Duke catalogue at http://www.dukeupress.edu/Catalog/ViewProduct.php?productid=16902&viewby=title&sort=

“Tracking Europe is a bold interdisciplinary critique of claims regarding the free movement of goods, people, services, and capital throughout Europe. Ginette Verstraete interrogates European discourses on unlimited movement for everyone and a utopian unity-in-diversity in light of contemporary social practices, cultural theories, historical texts, media representations, and critical art projects. Arguing against the persistent myth of borderless travel, Verstraete shows the discourses on Europe to be caught in an irresolvable contradiction on a conceptual level and in deeply unsettling asymmetries on a performative level. She asks why the age-old notion of Europe as a borderless space of mobility goes hand-in-hand with the at times violent containment and displacement of people.”

-Besides this fascination for mobility and migration, as these relate to concepts of European identity, she has an ongoing interest in the synergy between the arts and media. She recently co-edited a themed issue Intermedialities: Theory, History, Practice. Issue of Acta Universitatis Sapientiae. Film and Media Studies. Vol 2, 2010. http://www.acta.sapientia.ro/acta-film/C2/film-front.pdf

The articles published in this volume are the direct results of an expert meeting on Intermedialities: Theory, History, Practice that Ivo Blom, in collaboration with Ginette Verstraete, organized with the financial support of the European Science Foundation (The Standing Committee for the Humanities) in Amsterdam in June 2009. The workshop involved academics with a wide range of nationalities, disciplines, experiences, and ambitions. Together they provided a European platform for exploring ways of dealing with the current intermedial situation in the arts and media. During the presentations and discussions we explored the concepts and practices of intermedia and intermediality and related terms (multimedia, convergence, intertextuality) in different national, disciplinary and historical contexts. In addition to conceptualization, we looked at three other important categories: intermediality in historical research, intermediality in curatorship and intermediality in assessment and funding institutions. The central questions posed to the participants were: how do we understand the convergence between arts and media, how do we curate it, and how do we fund it?

Publications (selections)

Books and edited volumes  (selection)

• Fragments of the Feminine Sublime in Friedrich Schlegel and James Joyce. SUNY Series on the Sublime, ed. Rob Wilson. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998.
• [René Boomkens, René Gabriels, en Ginette Verstraete, red.] Globalisering. Themanummer Krisis: Tijdschrift voor empirische filosofie 1.3 (2000) (Globalization. Issue of Krisis: Journal for Empirical Philosophy).
• Verstrooide burgers: Europese cultuur in een tijdperk van globalisering. Oratiereeks Univ. van Amsterdam. Vossiuspers, 2001. (Distracted/Dispersed Citizens: European Culture in an Age of Globalization. Published inaugural lecture).
• Jan Baetens en Ginette Verstraete, red. Cultural Studies: Een Inleiding (Cultural Studies: An Introduction). Nijmegen: Vantilt Uitgeverij, 2002.
• Ginette Verstraete and Tim Cresswell, eds. Placing Mobility, Mobilizing Place: The Politics of Representation in a Globalized World. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002.
• Aniko Imre and Ginette Verstraete, eds. Media Globalization and Post-Socialist Identities. Issue of European Journal of Cultural Studies Vol. 12.2 (May 2009).
• Jan Baetens, Joost de Bloois, Anneleen Masschelein, Ginette Verstraete. Handboekculturele studies: Theorie in praktijk (Textbook on Cultural Studies: Theory in Practice). Nijmegen: Vantilt Uitgeverij, 2009.
• Tracking Europe: Mobility, Diaspora, and the Politics of Location. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.

Articles and chapters (selection)

• “Railroading America: Towards a Material Study of the Nation.” Theory, Culture & Society 19.5/6 (2002): 145-159.
• “Training Memory in Kim: Traces of a Haunted Geography.” Space and Culture 11 & 12 (2001): 123-144.
• “Technological Frontiers and The Politics of Mobility in the European Union.” New Formations: A Journal of Culture/Theory/Politics. Issue on Mobilities. (Spring 2001): 26-43. 
• “Relocating the Idea of Europe: Diaspora and Other Headings in the Works of Keith Piper.” Borne Across: Metaphoricity and Postmodern Politics. Ed Maria Margaroni and Effie Yiannopoulou. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006. 101-116.
• “Epilogue: Some Afterthoughts from the A-zone.” B-Zone. Becoming Europe and Beyond. Ed. Anselm Franke. Catalogue for the exhibition at Kunstwerke (December 2005-February 2006). Barcelona: Actar, 2005. 402-411.
• “Woord, Beeld en Politiek in de Raamgiraf van Zilahy.” Intermediale Reflecties: Kruisbestuivingen en dwarsverbanden in de hedendaagse kunst. Red. Henk Oosterling, Henk Slager, Renée van de Vall. DAF Cahiers 1. Rotterdam, 2007. 85-92.
• “Women’s Resistance Strategies in a High-Tech Multicultural Europe.” Transnational Feminism in Film and Media. Ed. Katarzyna Marciniak, Aniko Imre, and A ine O’Healy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2 007. 111-128.
• “Gender, Nation, and Tourism: Mrs. Frank Leslie’s Transcontinental Tour.” Topographies of Race and Gender: Mapping Cultural Representations. Issue of Annals of Scholarship: Art Practices and the Human Sciences in a Global Culture. Ed. Patricia Penn Hilden, Shari M. Huhndorf, and Timothy J. Reiss. Vols. 17.3 and 18.1, and Vol. 18.2-3 (2007-08).
• “Diaspora et interactivité dans l’oeuvre de Keith Piper.” Images etEtudes Culturelles. Dir. Bernard Darras. Série Images Analyses. Publications de la Sorbonne, 2008. 51-64.
• “Timescapes: An Artistic Challenge to the European Union Paradigm.” Media Globalization and Post-Socialist Identities. Issue of European Journal of Cultural Studies Vol. 12.2 (May 2009): 157-172.
• (With Ward Rennen) “De ‘spatial turn’ in de hedendaagse cultuuranalyse.” (“The Spatial Turn in Contemporary Cultural Analysis”). Sophie Levie and Edwin van Meerkerk, eds. Cultuurwetenschappen in Nederland en België. Nijmegen: Vantilt, 2005. 83-95.  

Professional activities (selection)

• Member of the Scientific Committee of the MEDIACITY project at the Bauhaus-University at Weimar
• Member of the International Advisory Board of the journal Mobilities (Routledge)
• Member of the International Advisory Board of the book series Multicultural Discourses (Hong Kong UP)
• Member of the Editorial Board of the Journal Film and Media Studies (Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania)
• Member of the International Advisory Board of the book series Cities andCultures (Amsterdam UP)
• Member of the International Advisory Board of the journal Image[&]Narrative (online Magazine)
• Member of the Editorial Board of Krisis: Tijdschrift voor empirische filosofie (1999-2001)