Abstracts

Usha Balesar (Anton de Kom Universiteit, Suriname)
Het Surinaamse taallandschap
Alhoewel Suriname meer dan dertig talen heeft, met verschillende oorsprong is in Suriname het Nederlands de officiele voer- en schooltaal; dat betekent dat beheersing ervan, zowel op schriftelijk als mondeling niveau, nodig is om op adequate wijze te kunnen functioneren in de maatschappij. De verschillende talen in Suriname hebben een basisgroep die deze gebruikt en voor wie dit belangrijk cultuurgoed is. Bij deze presentatie worden de volgende groepen van talen besproken: de Inheemse talen, de Creooltalen en de Geïmporteerde talen. Er zal vooral aandacht besteed worden aan het Sranan dat de tweede taal in Suriname is en de functie van lingua franca vervult, de algemene contacttaal, die van oorsprong een puur creoolse taal is en die tot heden door alle etnische groepen wordt gesproken en ervaren als een taal van eigen natie. Dit wordt geïllustreerd middels een kort Youtube filmpje. De presentatie wordt afgesloten met het onderwerp ‘Ontleningen’.

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Christine Brooks (Conseil scolaire catholique Providence, Canada)
Où s’en vont les connaissances du néerlandais?
Il semblerait que toute génération a sa crise en éducation, parfois même plus qu’une. Ces crises sont communiquées avec beaucoup d'émoi, souvent en termes qui relèvent de la catastrophe, projetant un avenir blême, le résultat d’un système scolaire vu comme étant défaillant.

S’ensuit alors la mise en œuvre et l’application d’une série de réformes - qui engendre, elle aussi, des critiques variées, présentées en relevant de tons cyniques et défaitistes, douteux des capacités des réformes de redresser et remédier aux problèmes existants en éducation.

En Flandre, ces dernières années, les médias sonnent l’alarme sur l'état de l'éducation; une prolifération d’articles et de reportages déclare l'échec croissant des institutions scolaires: elles ne réalisent pas leurs objectifs visés. Pire que ça, les élèves sont laissés pour compte, un nombre croissant d’entre eux n’atteignant pas les cibles de réussite prévus et attendus par le ministère de l'éducation en région flamande (Vlaams Ministerie van Onderwijs en Vorming). Témoignons-nous ici de la crise générationnelle et cyclique - cette réévaluation et révision du quoi et comment au centre du projet éducationnel - dans nos écoles? Ou, la remise en question à laquelle les médias dévouent tant de réflexions, est-elle qualitativement différente des crises qui bouleversent régulièrement les systèmes scolaires établis.

Ma thèse: l’assaut dans le système éducationnel n’est pas propre à la région flamande, bien que certaines conséquences et défis de cet assaut soient particuliers au système d'éducation en Flandre.

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Stephen Brooks (University of Windsor, Canada)
Flanders through the eyes of Canadian students
Study abroad programs typically are organized around a central theme. It might be art and culture in Paris, the challenges of development in Lesotho, or the unique topography and geology of Iceland. The University of Windsor’s European Union Study Abroad Program, offered since 2009, focusses on the institutions of the EU, its development from humble and yet ambitious beginnings, and the challenges that it faces today.

The 320 students who have participated in this program learn about politics and governance. But they also learn about the place where they take the trains and metro, eat, shop, hike, visit cultural sites, and meet local people. That place is Flanders. The group stays in Leuven at the Irish College on Damiaanplein, a four minute walk from the Oude Markt, six minutes from the Groot Begijnhof, and ten minutes from KU Leuven’s historic library on Ladeuzeplein. Students get to know all of these places and their stories, and much more. A seven kilometre hike in the Flemish countryside is part of the itinerary, as are day trips to Brugge and Antwerp. As the students’ program journals attest, the people, culture and history of Flanders become an important part of their study abroad experience and enduring memories.

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Pascal De Langhe (SCK CEN, Belgium)
Loic De Langhe (Universiteit Gent, Belgium)
The Gazette van Detroit, an indispensable source to uncover family history around the Great Lakes. A case study using the emigration of the Delanghe family from Koekelare, Belgium to Canada in the early 1900s
For years the Gazette van Detroit (1914-2018) and the Gazette van Moline (1915-1940) served as a cultural bridge for Flemish immigrants in North America, linking them to both their Belgian heritage and their new local communities. While the digitisation of both Gazettes is a significant asset for genealogists, the sheer volume of data (around 51,000 newspaper pages) often obscures the search for meaningful family history, even when using the filters of the Gazette’s search engine. Specifically, the abundance of local sports scores and advertising acts as "noise" that can bury the relevant biographical details researchers seek.

Focusing on the impact of the Delanghe family and their in-laws (Compernolle, Degadt, Margodt, Mortier and Vantyghem) on community life, this paper expands upon the genealogical study In Search of Land: Emigration of the Delanghe family from Koekelare (P. De Langhe). By leveraging state-of-the-art AI algorithms to process around 3,500 archival pages from the Gazettes where these families names are mentioned, this study moves beyond the limited manual sampling to which the aforementioned genealogical study was constrained.

This reveals a more complete and balanced picture of how the Delanghe family helped to shape the Flemish community around Chatham in Ontario, Canada.

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Ben B. De Witte (Columbia University, USA)
Diaspora en modernisme in Astrid Roemers Gebroken Wit
De Surinaamse auteur Astrid Roemer omschreef haar literaire activiteiten ooit als een vorm van ‘terugschrijven in de diaspora’. Voor Roemer slaat de term ‘diaspora’ niet alleen op leven ‘tussen twee culturen’: hij verwijst eveneens naar een geschiedenis van gedwongen migratie in de vorm van slavernij. Vandaar Roemers nadrukkelijke oproep om ‘Surinaams-etnische romans’ niet volgens de standaard van ‘etnisch witte Nederlandse literatuur’ te beoordelen, maar vanuit een specifiek trans-Atlantische en historische gevoeligheid. Daarmee verwoordt zij een zoektocht naar een verruimd, ‘diasporisch’ interpretatiekader voor Nederlandstalige Surinaamse literatuur die, voorbij taalgrenzen, een koloniale erfenis deelt met het Amerikaanse continent en de Cariben. Dit is het uitgangspunt van mijn lezing over Roemers roman Gebroken Wit (2019). Deze familieroman die zich afspeelt in Nederland en Suriname zet in op markante stijlmiddelen die uitnodigen tot een vergelijking met de vorm en inhoud van modernistische romans. Met name het gebruik van een meerstemmig vertelperspectief, gefragmenteerde herinneringen, en een strategische inzet van polysemie vallen op. Dat het ontwerp van Gebroken Wit daardoor de leeservaring bemoeilijkt hoeft niet te verbazen. In mijn presentatie plaats ik deze esthetica in het licht van Roemers eigen omschrijving als auteur in een ‘gevaarlijke’ wisselwerking tussen westerse en niet-westerse invloeden. Zodoende geef ik een aanzet om via Gebroken Wit Roemers werk te situeren in een internationaal georiënteerde literaire stijl die ik ‘diasporisch’ en Caribisch-modernistisch noem.

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Maxence Gagné (independent artist / artiste indépendant)
Digitizing Frans van de Staak's Ongedaan gedaan: Preserving experimental Dutch cinema
Over the course of his career, Frans van de Staak directed 25 films that challenge the norms of narrative cinema. These works have remained largely undistributed until now. Initiating the rediscovery of this overlooked body of work, the Punto de Vista festival in Pamplona, Spain, presented a retrospective earlier this year. These screenings caught my attention, and I subsequently contacted the representative of Frans van de Staak’s estate, the Eye Filmmuseum, regarding the possibility of distributing the films in Canada. The chosen film, Ongedaan gedaan, is centered around two couples whose four characters are played by eight different actors, allowing different permutations. The film shows couples arguing, but rather than the content of what they say, Frans van de Staak studies how they say it. It is a profound film about what the characters communicate when they are not talking or being together. Simultaneously, it challenges how viewers associate actors with characters. In discussions with the Eye Filmmuseum, I learned that the film had been digitized in the early 2000s for European DVD box sets. However, the quality of those digitisations was too low for theatrical projection. We therefore turned to the preserved 16mm film reels in their archives to carry out a 2K digitization that meets the needs of cinema exhibitors. Beyond the 16mm format, another particularity of the film is that its sound is stored on a Digital Audio Tape. During digitization, there was a risk that the sound would not synchronize with the image. Recently, this risk materialized, and we produced a new digital audio tape to synchronize with the image. The digitizing of Ongedaan gedaan was partly funded through a grant awarded by CAANS.

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Lorenzo Nespoli (Università Ca' Foscari Venezia, Italy)
Reception and repurposing of Dutch lexicography in Edo Japan (1603-1868)
At the turn of the nineteenth century, Japanese scholars became increasingly aware of the need for a comprehensive Dutch-Japanese dictionary. This paper argues that, although Dutch-made lexicons had already been circulating during the previous century, their employment often diverged from original design. The fundamental differences between the Dutch and Japanese lexicographic traditions were but one of the reasons for the diverse reception of the genre in the early history of the Japanese studies of Dutch (Rangaku). Well into the nineteenth century, Japanese scholars still primarily relied on two Dutch-French dictionaries as the most extensive collection of Dutch vocabulary. The shortcomings of these sources compared to the Japanese needs likely encouraged scholars to adapt those dictionaries to new purposes. This paper examines the extent to which the Japanese integrated Dutch dictionaries into their own lexicographic tradition, which finds its origins in glossaries of Chinese characters. The paper also provides examples of how those Dutch sources were repurposed by the Japanese scholars as to satisfy their own needs. Particular attention will be given to how Shizuki Tadao (Nakano Ryūho) managed to construct his complex theoretical framework of Dutch grammar based on those dictionaries.

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Laurent Rasier (Université de Liège, België)
Welke plaats voor linguïstische en culturele authenticiteit en diversiteit in het NVT-/NT2-onderwijs? Een onderzoek naar lesboeken
Onze globaliserende wereld stelt het vreemdetalenonderwijs voor belangrijke uitdagingen. Volgens het Europees Referentiekader (Council of Europe 2020) moet het vreemdetalenonderwijs o.m. de linguïstische en culturele diversiteit beschermen, het recht op kwalitatief onderwijs voor iedereen versterken en de interculturele dialoog, en sociale integratie bevorderen (Koster e.a. 2023: 140, Van Avermaet & Siegers 2010). Daar komt nog bij dat ook het profiel en de behoeftes van de leerders snel evoluëren. Het onderwijs van het Nederlands als vreemde taal (NVT) is hier geen uitzondering op (Taalunie 2022).

In deze bijdrage wordt gereflecteerd over de nieuwe agenda voor het NVT-onderwijs en over didactische pistes om om te gaan met de nieuwe onderwijscontext en leerdersprofielen. Er wordt verslag uitgebracht van een comparatief onderzoek naar gebruikelijke lesboeken (zie o.a. Li 2025 ivm leerboekenonderzoek) in een NT2- resp. NVT-context. In de studie staat de vraag centraal hoe authentiek en cultureel resp. linguïstisch divers de lesboeken zijn (Yelcin & Rasier 2024). Naast linguïstische variabelen (bv. taalvarianten, tekstgenres, aanwezigheid van substandaardvariëteiten zoals tussentaal of jongerentaal) wordt ook aandacht besteed aan de sprekersprofielen (bv. gender, etniciteit), de communicatiesituaties, de sociale rollen en functies van de personnages. Dit zal ons een indicatie geven van de mate waarin huidige leermiddelen passen binnen een beleid dat diversiteit en authenticiteit centraal stelt, evenals van de dimensies waar het materiaal tekortschiet (Gray 2023; Risager 2018). Ook wordt in deze bijdrage een lans gebroken voor inclusiever (N)VT-onderwijs, met een sterke(re) nadruk op authenticiteit en diversiteit. Hiertoe kunnen nieuwe technologieën een steentje bijdragen (Rasier 2025).

Bibliografie:
Gray, J. (2023), ‘Theoretische perspectieven op taallesboekenonderzoek: achtergrond en toekomst’, in: Internationale Neerlandistiek, 61-2, 121-138.

Koster, D., A. Pot, Z. Nuria, C. Sas & T. Zegers (2023), ‘Alle kleuren van de regenboog? Representaties van gender- en etnische diversiteit in NVT-lesboeken’, in: Internationale NeerlandistiekI>, 61-2, 139-160.

Ly, C.K. (2025), ‘Language teaching materials evaluation: principles from theoretical perspectives’, in: Proceedings of World Conference on Emerging Science, Innovation, and Policy 2025, Futurity Research Publishing. https://doi.org.10.5281/zenodo.15961001. Geraadpleegd op 22 december 2025.

Rasier, L. (2025), ‘NVT-onderwijs 3.0. Welke plaats voor authenticiteit, diversiteit en technologie’?, lezing IVN-colloquium, Brussel, augustus 2025.

Risager, K. (2018), Representations of the World in Language Textbooks, Multilingual Matters.

Van Avermaet, P. & S. Sierens (2010), ‘Diversiteit is de norm, ermee leren omgaan is de uitdaging: een referentiekader voor omgaan met diversiteit in het onderwijs’, in: D. De Coen, L. De Man & K. Denys (eds), Handboek beleidsvormend vermogen, Politeia.

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Timothy Sirjacobs (Hogeschool UCLL – UCLL University of Applied Sciences, Belgium)
To place Flanders on the international comics map: Institutional Flemish comics policy and comics translation
In 2006, the former Flemish Literature Fund stated that the objective of its newly introduced comics policy was to “place Flanders on the international comics map.” (VFL jaarverslag, 2006, p. 34) This initiative represented an ambitious shift, as comics – despite their popularity – had previously systematically been omitted from Flemish institutional cultural policy. Moreover, with the notable exception of the French and German translations of works by Willy Vandersteen, most Flemish comic authors had achieved little success beyond their Dutch-speaking context. This presentation assesses the influence of the early comics translation policy on the contemporary circulation of Flemish comics within the central French(-speaking) comics world. In doing so, it traces the sinuous graphic, narrative, material and cultural evolution of Flemish comics from low cultural status newspaper strips to the guest of honorship at the 2009 Angoulême International Comics Festival.

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Ulrich Tiedeau (University College London, UK)
Nico van Suchtelen’s plan for a federation of the states of Europe (1914)
Two months into World War I, the Algemeen Handelsblad published a manifesto by the Dutch literary scholar Nico van Suchtelen (1878–1949) titled ‘Het eenige redmiddel: Een Europeesche Statenbond’ (‘The only solution: A European Federation’). Having been in-volved in the internationalist movement in his country, which had hosted the two Hague Peace Conferences, Van Suchtelen sought to end the European tragedy by suggesting “an economic-political legal framework, a Federation or Confederation of states with an inter-national army as a mutual guarantee.” Positively received in artistic and scholarly circles, his publication later that year led to the establishment of the Comité ‘De Europeese Statenbond’, comprising apart from its initiator, of Frederik van Eeden, a leading member of the influential literary group De Tachtigers, the philosopher Gerard Heymans, the early feminist Aletta Jacobs, and Benjamin de Jong van Beek en Donk, the secretary of the Netherlands’ Anti-War Council. Spreading their manifest in form of a pamphlet, which was printed in seven languages, across Europe, the accompanying letter with which it was circulated fur-ther elaborated upon the group’s intention: “In view of the present ruinous situation it can-not but be generally conceded that a firmer economic and political tie is of the utmost im-portance for every nation without exception, while for Europe particularly the narrower bond of a Federation, based upon equality and interior independence of the participant states, is an urgent necessity.” This talk aims to reassess the genesis and reception of Van Suchtelen’s initiative across Europe’s artistic, literary and scholarly community at the time, as well as its influence on more permanent formations in the interwar period, and to embed it into the wider context of the (pre-)history of the European movement.

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Angela Vanhaelen (McGill University, Canada)
Opacity, blackness and the art of the Dutch Republic
As Dutch merchants became drivers of the transatlantic slavery business in the seventeenth century, Dutch art increasingly used Blackness to signal slavery and servitude.

In this talk, I reframe the conversation on Netherlandish art by placing seventeenth-century domestic scenes and portraits in dialogue with images of trading forts, markets, and plantations in West Africa and Brazil. I will argue that Dutch paintings depicting enslaved Black Africans—for example, Frans Hals’s Family Group in a Landscape—not only obscure information about the institution of slavery but fail to capture the resistance and dissent of people who did not conform to the anti-Black world created by Dutch art.

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Floris van Weelderen (curator/conservateur HAL │VAS, Canada)
A lens on Vancouver's past: Walter Frost and Bevrijdingsdag (1945-1955)
Did you know that Bevrijdingsdag (Dutch Liberation Day) was pivotal in establishing the long-standing relationship between the Netherlands and Vancouver, even though it is located on Canada’s West Coast? Bevrijdingsdag is the day that the Netherlands celebrate being freed from Nazi occupation in May 1945.

Unfortunately, the Second World War scarred much of the Netherlands. Air raids turned cities into skeletons; the destruction of dikes by retreating Germans flooded farmland; and masses of people returned to find their homes destroyed.

By 1946, the Netherlands population of 9.4 million people had a stark choice: emigrate or rebuild. In the first 10 years after the war, over 245,000 Dutch people left the Netherlands with over 115,000 emigrating to Canada. About 11,400 Dutch immigrants made their way west to British Columbia with many settling in the Fraser Valley. With respect to rebuilding, this was achieved primarily through the U.S. Marshall Plan. Consequently, the Netherlands did not receive actual dollars but aid in kind. For instance, lumber, wheat, and other goods were shipped from British Columbia to help rebuild and feed the Netherlands. Furthermore, as they were no longer needed to carry U.S. supplies and war material, U.S.-built Liberty and Victory ships were declared surplus and given a new life as Dutch-flagged merchant vessels.

Through the lens of Vancouver photographer Walter E. Frost, this presentation explores the modes of transport typically used by post-war Dutch immigrants prior to the advent of jet travel; the ships used to transport Dutch immigrants to Vancouver and return with cargo needed to feed and rebuild the Netherlands; and the vessels that replaced the many Dutch-flagged merchant ships lost during the Second World War.

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Robert Weir (University of Windsor, Canada)
Dutch imprints and Dutch readers in The Bookshop of the World (1588-1672)
In 2019, Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen published the intriguing history of how the Dutch took over the European book market from the late 16th through the 17th centuries.1 Their systematic account is welcome indeed to book-collectors for contextualizing the phenomenon, but it also confirms what they have long known: Dutch books of that period are especially common, consistently well-made, and not very expensive even now. The range of offerings was impressive and the choice of Latin for most imprints made them accessible to an international audience. Indeed, Pettegree and der Weduwen estimate that some 300 million books were published in Holland during the Dutch Golden Age, of which they record 3 million sold at foreign auctions. Thus, publishers like the Elzevir dynasty could depend on a steady and lucrative demand from university students throughout western Europe for Latin-language editions of ancient authors, or medical textbooks, or legal handbooks, but they also printed quirkier titles for the curious, for instance a tour guide of the Alps (Vallesiae et Alpium Descriptio, Leiden, 1633), a handbook to Mughal India for merchants (De Imperio Magni Mogolis, Leiden, 1631), or celebrity physician Nicolaas Tulp’s illustrated “Book of Monsters” (Observationes Medicae, Amsterdam, 1672). This paper will discuss particular copies of these books and the foreigners who bought them. Although Netherlandish imprints were varied and ubiquitous both at home and abroad, they did not exercise a monopoly over Dutch readers, who sometimes had to source specialized texts from abroad through a well-established book trade (cf. the biannual Frankfurt Book Fair). This paper will conclude with a rare edition of Greek poetry that was published in Basel in 1560 (Vetustissimorum et Sapientissimorum Comicorum… Sententiae…) but later made its way to the Netherlands and into the hands of two academic luminaries at the University of Leiden, Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540–1609) and his pupil Daniel Heinsius (1580–1655). Those who attend the CAANS conference in person will have a chance to view and handle the books discussed.

1 Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen, The Bookshop of the World: Making and Trading Books in the Dutch Golden Age (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019).