Month: February 2021

This issue Frame turns thirty: reason for the editorial board to invite scholars to investigate the notion of ageing. Searching for “ageing” online churns out mostly cures against it: life-altering supplements, plastic surgery, meditation, brain-training, hormone replacement therapy, there to fix the effect time has on the human body. These results suggest a cultural apprehension regarding ageing.… Continue reading 30.1 | Ageing Lines

In August 2016, the International Geological Congress in Cape Town officially recommended declaring the Anthropocene epoch, which encourages concern, critical thinking, and interdisciplinary academic, political, and cultural collaboration. The Anthropocene, coined by biologist Eugene Stoermer and chemist Paul Crutzen in 2000, denotes the time period during which human influence on Earth’s geological processes and environment… Continue reading 29.2 | Perspectives on the Anthropocene

The current state of affairs in Europe, with its challenging amount of humanitarian, economic, social, and geopolitical crises, has become a central concern in current academic debates, and given renewed significance to the question of European cultural identity. In light of the recent “Brexit,” which took place just one day before the release of this… Continue reading 29.1 | The State of Europe

Postcolonial studies occupy a steady position in the academic sphere, and the cultural industry has likewise adopted postcolonial concepts in many of its productions. Touching on issues of representation, these works often aim to make headway toward emancipating the oppressed by acknowledging and sounding their voices. While the focus on cultural difference promotes a sense… Continue reading 28.2 | The Postcolonial Cultural Industry

A far cry from young Werther’s letters, in recent years digital platforms have become preferred spaces for self-expression. As these new methods of presenting and representing the self have started to develop, “traditional,” paper-based writings seem to have given way to more immediate, interactive, and democratic forms of self-representation online. In this new issue, Frame, takes… Continue reading 28.1 | Writing the Self

This November issue of FRAME is, in many ways, a first. Veering slightly from our primarily literary focus, we have taken this edition to expand our interdisciplinary approach in tackling a conversation that seems to lie at the heart of this holiday season: what does racism look like, and in particular, what does it look… Continue reading 27.2 | Racism in the Netherlands

Whereas the first declarations of human rights addressed the citizens of individual countries, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR, 1948) has transgressed national borders in addressing a universal community. Increasingly, universal human rights discourse has become the grounds on which we negotiate cultural and religious differences and base our common humanity. However, our assumed… Continue reading 27.1 | Human Rights and Literature

Although ecocriticism already emerged as a field of study in the United States in the 1970s, the nowadays widely acknowledged global scale of the environmental crisis has contributed to the recent prominence of an ecocritical discourse. In the last decades ecocriticism has moved from the margins to a more central position within the humanities and… Continue reading 26.2 | Ecocriticism

The word “apocalypse,” or, translated literally from Greek, “uncovering” is closely related to a sense of revelation. The reality is there—it merely demands a new way of seeing. As ingrained as they are in a wide range of both religious and secular thinking, images of the apocalypse perpetuate culture on a global scale: from Judo-Christian… Continue reading 26.1 | Apocalypse in Contemporary Culture

In 2012, the word ‘revolution’ crossed the globe rapidly, as the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring sparked protests and uprisings in different parts of the world. These contemporary events provide us with new means of looking at the significance of the term “revolution” itself. Are these revolutions? Is it perhaps necessary to reconsider our… Continue reading 25.2 | Revolution