PhD Studentship in Comparative Literature: Painting Themselves: A Transnational Approach to National Self-Portraiture, Ghent University – Faculty of Arts and Philosophy

Applications are invited for a fully funded PhD fellowship in the Department of Literary Studies at Ghent University, tenable for a period of up to four years. The successful candidate will participate in the project “Painting Themselves: A Transnational Approach to National Self-Portraiture”, which is sponsored by a grant from the Special Research Fund (BOF) of Ghent University and which will be directed by Prof. dr. Elizabeth Amann and Dr. Marianne Van Remoortel. This project proposes a transnational approach to the national self-portraits published in the 1840s in Europe. National self-portraits were collaborative essay anthologies that attempted to capture the essence of a nation through the representation of its constitutive types or scenes. Examples of the genre include: Heads of the People, Les français peints par eux-mêmes, Les belges peints par eux-mêmes, Nederlanders door Nederlanders geschetst, Los españoles pintados por sí mismos. This project will examine how the intertextualities and international dialogue among these collections helped to shape the definition of national identities in the years leading up to the Revolutions of 1848.
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