Category: Issue

Tensions between religion and secularism underlie many ongoing issues in today’s society. They divide not only the West and the East, or the global North and the global South, but also the urban and the rural, the young and the old. Yet the oppositions do not seem to be absolute: atheist churches have been established… Continue reading 32.1 | Religion and Secularism

The relation between fact and fiction has been a central topic for comparative literary studies ever since its inception. Because of the literary text’s ambiguous ontological status, authors are (nominally) at liberty to write anything without being held accountable for their artistic creation. As Jonathan Culler puts it, the literary text “does not presume a… Continue reading 31.2 | Fact and Fiction

Recent decades have seen the emergence of animal studies in a wide variety of disciplines that cut across the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. In accordance with Donna Haraway’s assertion that it “matters which worlds world worlds and which stories tell stories” (Cosmopolitan Animals, vii), scholars working in the field have taken… Continue reading 31.1 | Animal Studies

Since the late 1990s and early 2000s, the concept of precarity has emerged as a central point of reference in economic, philosophical, and sociological discourse, and has become a rallying cry for contemporary resistance movements. Precarity refers to the structural financial and existential insecurity brought about by the advent of neoliberalism, the dismantling of the… Continue reading 30.2 | Precarious work, precarious life

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