For best experience please turn on javascript and use a modern browser!
You are using a browser that is no longer supported by Microsoft. Please upgrade your browser. The site may not present itself correctly if you continue browsing.

Dr. J.D. (Jesse) van Amelsvoort

Lecturer modern European literature
Faculty of Humanities
Europese studies
Photographer: Bastiaan Heus

Visiting address
  • Kloveniersburgwal 48
Postal address
  • Postbus 1619
    1000 BP Amsterdam
  • Profiel

    Since February 2021, I have been a lecturer in modern European literature at the Department of European Studies, University of Amsterdam. Per the academic year 2022-23, I am also co-coordinator of our BA programme, with specific responsibilities for the Dutch track and the first year.

    Before this, from 2017 to 2021, I was a PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature with University of Groningen / Campus Fryslân, the Netherlands. My dissertation, “A Europe of Connections: Post-National Worlds in Contemporary Minority Literature,” centres on six writers from Finland to the United Kingdom, and from the Netherlands to Spain. I combine perspectives from world literature, minority studies, and European studies to elaborate a “worldly reading” strategy that is attuned to how these writers negotiate pressures of the national in times of globalization. Parts of this project have been published in Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature and Global Perspectives

    Currently, I am working on a number of smaller projects focusing on how literature, art, and culture in Europe contribute to societal discussions on pressing matters of common concern, such as migration, climate change, and identity. With Nicoletta Pireddu (Georgetown University), I have edited a special issue on "Imagining Communities, Multilingually," to be published with parallax in early 2023. With Agnes Andeweg (Utrecht University), I am editing a special issue on hospitality and narrative ethics Ali Smith's Seasonal Quartet, which will be published open access with C21 Literature. With Margriet van der Waal (University of Groningen/University of Amsterdam), I am co-editing a special issue on "The Cultural Deliberation of Europe," which is due to be published with Continuum later this year or early next year. Lastly, I sit on the editorial board of CoLing's "To Be--Named" project, which will lead to an edited volume, a special issue, and a travelling exhibition.

    With Bram Mellink (modern and contemporary history, UvA), I am in the initial stages of a project on the history of HIV/AIDS in the Netherlands, the emergency (or lack thereof) of an LGBT+ memory culture, and the construction of a cultural archive of HIV/AIDS in the Netherlands. We work together with IHLIA, House of HIV, the HIV-vereniging, and are in touch with the European HIV/AIDS Archive in Berlin.

    I am currently starting a project provisionally entitled “Connective Fictions” that investigates how literature can be the connection between abstract, transborder processes such as climate change and migration on the one hand and individual, everyday life on the other. This project continues my interest in the ways various scales – the local, the national, the global – intersect and impact daily life, while extending my purview to the environmental humanities. 

    In addition to my activities at the University of Amsterdam, I serve on the editorial board of Armada. Tijdschrift voor wereldliteratuur and member of the board of advice of the Nederlands Letterenfonds.

    I hold a BA in Liberal Arts and Sciences from University College Utrecht (2012, cum laude), an MA in Comparative Literature from University College London (2013, cum laude), and an MA in Euroculture from the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen and the University of Groningen (2016, cum laude).

  • Publications

    2024

    • Mellink, A. G. M., & van Amelsvoort, J. D. (in press). Een succesverhaal? Beleid en beleving rondom aids sinds 1982. Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 137(3), 299-315.

    2023

    2022

    2020

    • van Amelsvoort, J. D. (2020). 'I Heard Homer Sing': Tsjêbbe Hettinga and the Paradoxes of European Multilingualism. Global Perspectives, 1(1), 1-9.
    • van Amelsvoort, J. D. (2020). Anxious About a Changing World: Twenty-First Century Low Countries Gothic Novels. Dutch Crossing, 44(1), 102-117.

    2019

    • van Amelsvoort, J. D. (2019). Bemiddelende minderheden: Literatuur in een tijd van woede. It Baeken, 80(3-4), 105-116.
    • van Amelsvoort, J. D. (2019). Narrating into Europe: Female Migrant Writers' Voice and Representation. Politique Européenne, (66), 150-168.

    2018

    • van Amelsvoort, J. (2018). 'Not Merely in Symbol but in Reality': Zadie Smith and the Aesthetic of the Intellectual. In S. Ponzanesi, & A. J. Habed (Eds.), Postcolonial Intellectuals in Europe: Critics, Artists, Movements, and their Publics (pp. 158-173). (Frontiers of the political). Rowman & Littlefield International.
    • van Amelsvoort, J. D. (2018). Between Forster and Gilroy: Race and (Re)connection in Zadie Smith's NW. Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, 37(2), 419-434. https://doi.org/10.1353/tsw.2018.0033

    2023

    2022

    2024

    • Mellink, A. G. M., & van Amelsvoort, J. D. (2024). Publiekelijk spreken. De Nederlandse Boekengids, 9(1), 20-21.

    2023

    • van Amelsvoort, J. D. (2023). Inleiding: Negen steden, vele grenzen. Armada, 22(1), 3. https://www.nederlandseboekengids.com/20230329-jesse-van-amelsfoort/
    • van Amelsvoort, J. D. (2023). Negen steden, vele grenzen. Armada, (77).
    • van Amelsvoort, J. D., & Jensma, G. (2023). Leeuwarden/Friesland/Nederland/Europa: De stadsgrenzen van een grensstad. Armada, (77), 16-18.

    2022

    2021

    • van Amelsvoort, J. D. (2021). Loft en lân: Gesprekken over Tsjêbbe Hettinga. Uitgeverij Bornmeer.
    • van Amelsvoort, J. D. (2021). Inleiding: Het land en de wereld. In J. van Amelsvoort (Ed.), Loft en lân: Gesprekken over Tsjêbbe Hettinga (pp. 7-15). Uitgeverij Bornmeer.
    • van Amelsvoort, J. D. (2021). Review Jelle Krol, Minority Language Writers in the Wake of World War One: A Case Study of Four European Authors. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. Studies on National Movements, 7, 140-144.
    • van Amelsvoort, J. D. (2021). Review Michael Niblett, World Literature and Ecology: The Aesthetics of Commodity Frontiers, 1890 – 1950. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 57(4), 570-571.
    • van Amelsvoort, J. D. (2021). Tussen taal en politiek. Armada, (73).

    2019

    • van Amelsvoort, J. D. (2019). Review James Reay Williams, Multilingualism and The Twentieth-Century Novel. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 55(6), 874-875.

    2018

    • van Amelsvoort, J. D. (2018). Review Carin Berkowitz and Bernard Lightman (eds.), Science Museums in Transition: Cultures of Display in Nineteenth-Century Britain and America. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017. Journal of European Studies, 48(1), 81-83.

    2017

    • van Amelsvoort, J. D. (2017). Review Mi Gyung Kim, The Imagined Empire: Balloon Enlightenments in Revolutionary Europe. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017. Journal of European Studies, 47(4), 447-448.
    • van Amelsvoort, J. D. (2017). Review Sandra Ponzanesi and Gianmaria Colpani (eds.), Postcolonial Transitions in Europe: Contexts, Practices and Politics. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016. Interventions, 19(1), 147-148.

    2016

    • van Amelsvoort, J. D. (2016). Review Nicolas Campion, The New Age in the Modern West: Counterculture, Utopia and Prophecy from the Late Eighteenth Century to the Present Day. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. Journal of European Studies, 46(2), 170-171.

    2015

    • van Amelsvoort, J. D. (2015). Review Aeron Hunt, Personal Business: Character and Commerce in Victorian Literature and Culture. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014. Journal of European Studies, 45(4), 368-369.

    2024

    • Mellink, A. G. M., & van Amelsvoort, J. D. (2024). A war without battles: The effects of cooperative activism during the AIDS crisis in the Netherlands (1982-1996). Paper presented at Council for European studies Conference 2024 (Lyon), Lyon, France.

    Prize / grant

    • van Amelsvoort, J. (2023). Lecturer of the Year, Department of European Studies.
    • van Amelsvoort, J., Mellink, B. & Duyvendak, J. W. (2023). Healthy Future seed grant.
    • Telford, A., van Amelsvoort, J., Xhaferri, Z. & Zuidhof, P.-W. (2023). European Climate Imaginaries (Jean Monnet Module).

    Talk / presentation

    • Paijmans, M. (speaker) & van Amelsvoort, J. (speaker) (24-2-2022). Teaching Diversity at a Dutch University, Cross-Talk: Conversations on Race & Language.
    This list of publications is extracted from the UvA-Current Research Information System. Questions? Ask the library or the Pure staff of your faculty / institute. Log in to Pure to edit your publications. Log in to Personal Page Publication Selection tool to manage the visibility of your publications on this list.
  • Ancillary activities
    • Nederlands Letterenfonds
      Lid Raad van Advies (initiële periode van 2 jaar)