Ieme van der Poel

Short biography

Ieme van der Poel is Professor of French Literature at the University of Amsterdam and Director of the College of Humanities. Her main fields of interest are Colonial and Postcolonial Literatures in French, including (Post) Colonial History, especially the Maghreb, Postcolonial Theory, and French Intellectual History. Her current research projects include: "Diasporic Writing: A Comparative History of the New Moroccan Literatures in French, Spanish and Dutch", 2006-2010, funded by NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research), and a full length monograph on the writings of Albert Camus: "Locating and Relocating Albert Camus." She is currently working on an annotated edition of Prousts Recherche for the Dutch market (in collaboration with Ton Hoenselaars). De kant van Swann was published in a new translation by Thérèse Cornips in the fall, 2009 (see below). In 2004 van der Poel was appointed Chevalier dans l´ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture. In 2005-2006 she was a fellow at NIAS (Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences), where she organised the international expert meeting "Transcolonialism: The future of Postcolonial Studies from a Comparative Perspective." (funded by NWO, Ambassade de France, ASCA). Since 2006 van der Poel serves at the scientific board of NIMAR, the Netherlands Institute in Rabat (Morocco). In the same year she initiated (in collaboration with prof. Andy Stafford, Leeds University) the international research group "Maghreb-Europe", a collaborative project of UvA, Leeds University and the University of Casablanca Ben M'sik. As a result of this, a first conference was organized in Amsterdam, April 2008, around the topic "Cities of Exchange: Maghreb-Europe." This was followed by a second conference in Casablanca, April 2009. A third conference has taken place in Leeds (2010) around the theme "Creolization (s): Maghreb-Europe." In 2007 the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs appointed van der Poel as one of the Dutch members of the Nederlands-Franse Samenwerkingsraad (Conseil de Coopération franco-néerlandais). In March 2009 she was professeur invité at the University of Angers, France.    

Marcel Proust

De kant van Swann (translated by Thérèse Cornips and with an introduction and notes by Ieme van der Poel and Ton Hoenselaars), Amsterdam, De Bezige Bij, 2009. ISBN: 978 90 234 2763 6.

My current teaching includes

• "Introduction à la littérature francaise du XXe siècle", Franse letterkunde BA
• Littératures du Maghreb, Franse letterkunde MA (sector plan)French Studies I: "littérature francaise ou une littérature-monde en francais?"      

Editorships

• De Academische Boekengids 
• Revue de Recherches sur l'imaginaire (Université d'Angers)
• Etudes Littéraires Africaines, revue de l'Association pour l'Etude des Littératures Africaines
• La Tortue verte, revue en ligne des littératures francophones (Université Lille 3) 
• CRIN (Cahiers de Recherche des instituts néerlandais de langue et de littérature francaises)
• RELIEF
• Septentrion/Ons Erfdeel

Key Publications

• Congo-Océan. Un chemin de fer colonial controversé (two volumes), Paris l'Harmattan, 2006, 394 pp.
• Villes d'échange(s): Maghreb-Europe (éd. Ieme van der Poel et Abdelmajid Kaddouri), Casablanca, Faculté des lettres et sciences humaines Ben M'sik, 2009.
• 'L'interculturel chez Albert Camus: un dialogue de sourds?', Lendemains. études comparées sur la France/Vergleichende Frankreichforschung, 34 Jahrgang 2009, 134/134, pp. 109-117.
• 'Lorsque Combray s'appelle Alger ou Saigon: pour une "déterritorialisation" des saveurs', Saveurs-Savoirs (éd. Jean-Christophe Delmeule), Lille, Presses Universitaires Université de Lille3-Charles de Gaulle, 2010, pp. 239-251. 

Research Interests and Supervisions

Ieme actively welcomes expressions of interest from prospective research students on any of the following research interests:

• migrant and minority literatures
• Maghrebi history, culture and literature
• French colonial history and culture (incl. literature)
• postcolonial studies and literary theory
• Literatures inFrench (19th., 20th., 21th. century)

Recent and on-going research supervisions:

• Secularism and Assimilation in the Writings of Marcel Proust
• L'Evolution de la mémoire littéraire de la guerre d'Algérie dans la fiction algérienne francophone (1958-2003)
• Anticolonialisme et Modernisme dans la littérature de voyage en Indochine (1919-1939)
• The Question of Commitment in Novels and Autobiographical Writings of Jews in Interbellum Central Europe
• Literatures of the Moroccan Diaspora
• Food in Jiddish Literature