Belle-de-Zuylen-Chair
Last year (2007-2008) the Belle de Zuylen Chair was occupied by Prof. Barbara Gray, from Pennsylvania State University. During six months she was appointed at the Faculty of Law, Economics and Governance.
In her inaugural address (7 May 2008), entitled Beyond boundaries : Reconstructing identity conflicts to foster collaboration, she discussed the paradoxes of group boundary construction for individuals and society. Beneficial outcomes of group identification and the construction of social distinctions were presented as at the same time dangerous, as they generate in-group/outgroup dynamics perpetuating stereotyping and prejudice, and thus self-sealing cycles of identity conflict. Examples from the author’s work on environmental conflicts were used to illustrate and explain these dynamics. And also reference was made to Belle de Zuylen, who experienced these tensions as a bright young woman trying to find her own place in eighteenth-century Dutch society. Not only did she construe her correspondent d’Hermenches as a societal "outsider", but she described herself similarly, noting her distaste for the social milieu into which her family introduced her, and which stifled her creativity.
Next Belle de Zuylen Professors (2008-2009) will be Prof. Dr. Jorgen S. Nielsen (University of Kopenhagen) and Prof. Michal Kobialka (University of Minnesota).
Prof. Nielsen will undertake activities in the field of "Islam and academic education in Europe". He intends to accept the Belle van Zuylen Chair by giving an inaugural lecture entitled: "The current situation of Christian-Muslim relations: emerging challenges, signs of hope?". Academiegebouw, Senaatszaal, 2 December 2008, at 4.15 p.m. The inaugural lecture will be preceded by a conference about "Belle de Zuylen and religion", by Suzan van Dijk (Belle-van-Zuylen-zaal, at 3.00 p.m.).
Prof. Kobialka will pursue his research in the history of theatre at the Faculty of Humanities. His inaugural address will be held at 8 January 2009. As a homage to Belle de Zuylen and her "no talent for subordination", this lecture deals with the contested nature of historical knowledge and the eighteenth-century representational practices in London: Theatre/Performance Culture in Eighteenth-Century London: A Prolegomenon to Theatre Historiography of the Enlightenment. This is also an invitation to everybody interested.
SvD, October 2008
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