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Gastcollege door Mieke Bal

Wat: Gastcollege door Mieke Bal
Wanneer: Donderdag 21 mei 2026, 11:00 - 13:00 uur
Waar: Stockholm University, The Auditorium, Manne Siegbahn Buildings, house A, Frescativägen 24E
Door: Accelerator, Department of Culture and Aesthetics and Department of English
Entree: Gratis
Taal: Engels

Abstract Moments of Meaning-Making

I have resisted the enduring pressure to write an autobiography for decades, until an event that made me slightly turn a corner. I developed writings that take their starting point in a memory from my childhood or adolescence, which then, much later, inspired intellectual thoughts in my professional life. But although it is my most personal book, it is not about me. It is about the emergence of meaning; its flexibility, its constant innovation, transformation, mobility, and socio-cultural relevance. Meaning, not as in dictionaries, but as events that happen, in time, and in company. My entire professional life came out of such moments. Meaning is made, occurs, at specific moments, in particular situations, and so, “events of meaning-making” is a more relevant phrase than “this means this.”

Biography

Mieke Bal (1946) is a Dutch theorist, video artist, and a well-known writer and feminist. She has been a Professor in Literary Theory (University of Amsterdam). In 1994, she was a co-founder of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA). She is known for her specific ways of ‘deep-reading’ artworks (e.g. Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Louise Bourgeois, Nalini Malani), and intertwining her research with various disciplines, such as contemporary and nineteenth-century literature, psycho-analysis, gender studies, philosophy, bible studies. Bal also works as a video artist, which she approaches as a specific form of cultural analysis.