9789401463096 by Uitgeverij Lannoo

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Campus Fictions Literary and Intermedial Constructions of the University World Campusfictie Literaire en intermediale constructies van de universitaire wereld

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Campus Fictions Literary and Intermedial Constructions of the University World

Campusfictie Literaire en intermediale constructies van de universitaire wereld 

Janna Aerts, Inge Arteel & Janine Hauthal (eds.)

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Academia Press Coupure Rechts 88 9000 Gent België info@academiapress.be www.academiapress.be

Uitgeverij Academia Press maakt deel uit van Lannoo Uitgeverij, de boeken- en multimediadivisie van Uitgeverij Lannoo nv. ISBN 978 94 014 6309 6 D/2020/45/10 NUR 622 Janna Aerts, Inge Arteel & Janine Hauthal (eds.) Campus Fictions. Literary and Intermedial Constructions of the University World Campusfictie. Literaire en intermediale constructies van de universitaire wereld Gent, Academia Press, 2021, 224 p. Vormgeving cover: Stéphane de Schrevel Zetwerk binnenwerk: Punctilio © De auteurs & Uitgeverij Lannoo nv, Tielt Alle rechten voorbehouden. Niets uit deze uitgave mag worden verveelvoudigd en/of openbaar gemaakt door middel van druk, fotokopie, microfilm of op welke andere wijze ook, zonder voorafgaande schriftelijke toestemming van de uitgever.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

VOORWOORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Caroline Pauwels

FOREWORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Caroline Pauwels

PRÉFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Caroline Pauwels

CAMPUS FICTIONS LITERARY AND INTERMEDIAL CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE UNIVERSITY WORLD . . . . . . . . . . .

Introduction Janna Aerts, Inge Arteel & Janine Hauthal

I. THE CAMPUS NOVEL HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS AND LITERARY REFLECTIONS UNIVERSITÄTS-ACKER, GELEHRTEN-NERVEN EN GROSSE VAKANZ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

De universiteit en haar bevolking in de Duitstalige literatuur van de achttiende en de negentiende eeuw Geert Crauwels

CAMPUS, THÉORIE ET PRATIQUE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Le rapport d’Althusser sur la rue d’Ulm Sabine Hillen

ACADEMIA IN THE MARKETPLACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Fictional Riposte Merritt Moseley

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE UNCOLLEGIAL PRECARIAT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Millennial Academic Fiction and the Character of Flexible Labour Ross Dawson

ACADEMIA, THE MATTERING MAP AND THE OTHERWORLDLY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Novels of Rebecca Goldstein Ludmiła Gruszewska-Blaim

II. EXPANDING THE GENRE’S NOVELISTIC AND ANGLO-AMERICAN CORE REFUSING THE FORM OF ‘A CLASSICAL CAMPUS NOVEL’. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

113

Experiment, Revolution and Gender in Christine Brooke-Rose’s Thru Hannah Van Hove

(RE-)THINKING EUROPE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

129

Literary Transnationalism in British Campus Novels by Malcolm Bradbury and Tim Parks Janine Hauthal

THE CONTEMPORARY ROMANIAN CAMPUS NOVEL AND THE ANGLO-AMERICAN TRADITION

147

Corina Selejan

CAMPUS CALAMITIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

165

Crime Fiction and Detective Fiction Set at German-Language Universities at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century Kathrin Klohs

NIEUWE VORMEN VAN UNIVERSITEITSLITERATUUR IN NEDERLAND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

181

Esther Op de Beek & Marieke Winkler

CODA CAMPUSLITERATUUR EN GESCHIEDENIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

199

Een moeizame relatie Leen Dorsman

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

213

INDEX OF NAMES AND KEY TERMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

217

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VOORWOORD Caroline Pauwels Wellicht heeft iemand al wel eens uitgezocht hoe het zit met de vertegenwoordiging van beroepsgroepen in romans. Ik heb zo’n vermoeden dat academici hoog scoren in dat onderzoek. Nogal wat hedendaagse auteurs hebben een academische achtergrond, werken op de universiteit of hebben dat gedaan. En vermits auteurs wel vaker schrijven over wat ze het meest vertrouwd is, kom je in romans heel regelmatig een universitaire campus of een verwijzing naar het academische bedrijf tegen. Er is echter een deel van de literatuur waar het universitaire leven niet het toevallige decor is waartegen een roman zich ontvouwt, maar waarbij het academische reilen en zeilen het eigenlijke onderwerp vormt. In de Angelsaksische wereld bedachten ze daar de term campus novels voor. En die campus novels zijn, niet toevallig, behoorlijk populair onder academici. Als je als onderzoekster, assistente of docente je eerste stappen zet binnen academia, ga je op zoek naar modellen, naar houvast. Literatuur kan daarbij een gids en leidraad vormen. Zoals veel van mijn collega’s heb ik in die beginjaren ook mijn deel van de campus novels gelezen, vooral dan uit de meer klassieke Britse canon: C. P. Snow, Kingsley Amis, Tom Sharpe, Howard Jacobson, Malcolm Bradbury, Frank Parkin, David Lodge… Het beeld dat je op die manier van je nieuwe werkomgeving krijgt is bijzonder herkenbaar en zeker ook grappig, maar niet meteen opmonterend. Bureaucraten en managers bedenken onzinnige besparingen of lepe plannetjes die snel gewin beloven. Studenten zijn niet geïnteresseerd in wat je vertelt, maar willen alleen weten wat ze voor het examen moeten kennen. Collega’s zijn ofwel domoren die vallen voor intellectuele modes en hol jargon, ofwel haaien die alles doen om hogerop te geraken. Decanen bedenken onbegrijpelijke regels, universiteitsbestuurders promoten politiek-correct taalgebruik waar ze zelf ook niet in geloven, pedagogen verdoen je tijd met nutteloze onderwijshervormingen. En over dat soort dingen moet altijd weer worden vergaderd en nog eens vergaderd… Onder die cynische doorlichting van het wetenschappelijk bedrijf schuilt vaak een flinke dosis nostalgie. Het echte academische leven, zo is de ondertoon, is helemaal anders: daar laten ze je gerust, is er altijd geld voor je onderzoek, moet je tegenover niemand verantwoording afleggen, heb je hooguit een handjevol en dan ook nog eens bijzonder geïnteresseerde studenten. Collega’s zijn misschien wat sullig en stoffig, maar 3

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VOORWOORD – CAROLINE PAUWELS

gaan gelukkig helemaal op in hun specialisme of intellectuele hobby, zodat je er geen last van hebt. En een groot deel van de dag zit je gewoon vrolijk te keuvelen in de senior common room of op café. Nice job if you can get it… En, o ja, in die nostalgische utopie spelen vrouwen of gekleurde mensen geen of hoogstens een ondergeschikte rol. Als je er naderhand op terugkijkt vind je in die campus novels vaak de Little Britain-mentaliteit waarin de Brexit-stemming zo goed kon gedijen. Uit Europa komen alleen maar rare regeltjes en gekke Franse professoren. Amerikanen zijn weliswaar luidruchtig en oppervlakkig, maar heb je nodig om af en toe geld af te pingelen ten behoeve van de uitbreiding van de bibliotheek. Feministes worden voorgesteld als vreugdeloze manwijven en al die nieuwerwetse disciplines en opleidingen zijn eigenlijk flauwekul. Vroeger was het, kortom, beter. Ik moet bekennen dat ik na een tijdje dan ook ben afgehaakt. Voor bijna alle academici is hun werk ook hun passie. Ik vind het dan ook vreemd dat je zo weinig van die gepassioneerdheid, van de vreugde en de begeestering die ons werk ook meebrengt, in de literatuur tegenkomt. Het plezier om, samen met telkens weer nieuwe generaties jonge mensen, over de dingen te kunnen praten die je bezighouden. Het fantastische gevoel wanneer je studenten enthousiast kan maken, als je ze aan het denken zet, als ze jou aan het denken zetten. De energie die je krijgt als je nieuwe inzichten verwerft, interessante mensen ontmoet, mag doceren over wat je interesseert: dat is, wat mij betreft, het ware leven. En daar wil ik soms ook wel eens wat over lezen. Ik bepleit geen sovjet-campusliteratuur, waarin alles wat we doen geweldig is. Ik zou al blij zijn met romans waarin ik af en toe iets terugvind van wat ik dagelijks in mijn contacten met oude en jonge wetenschappers ervaar: dat dit eigenlijk ook een heel mooi beroep is; wat zeg ik: bij momenten een fantastisch beroep. Daarom ben ik blij met dit boek. Ik leer er uit dat er heel veel veranderd is sinds ik de campus novels liet voor wat ze waren. Het is interessant te lezen hoe het genre zich ontwikkelde en uit de klassieke voegen barstte. Het valt op dat de focus al lang niet meer louter Angelsaksisch is. Je hoort nieuwe stemmen, leest over nieuwe ervaringen, in nieuwe locaties. En dat is maar goed ook: universiteiten zijn voortdurend in verandering en zowel het studentenpubliek als het academisch korps wordt, gelukkig, diverser. Ik kijk al uit naar de romans die daarover worden geschreven.

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FOREWORD Caroline Pauwels Someone has probably already looked into how professions are represented in novels. I suspect that academics score high in that research. Quite a number of contemporary authors have an academic background, work at a university or have done so in the past. And since, more often than not, authors write about that which is most familiar to them, you regularly come across a university campus or a reference to the academic world in novels. However, there is an area of literature in which university life is not merely a random backdrop against which a novel unfolds, but where the ins and outs of academia form the actual subject. The Anglo-Saxon world has come up with the name campus novels for such books. And it’s no coincidence that those campus novels are really rather popular among academics. If you’re taking your first steps in academia as a researcher, assistant or lecturer, you look around for role models, for footing. Literature can act as a guide. Like so many of my colleagues, I also read my share of campus novels in those early years, mostly works from the genre’s classic British canon: C. P. Snow, Kingsley Amis, Tom Sharpe, Howard Jacobson, Malcolm Bradbury, Frank Parkin, David Lodge… The impression that most of those books give you of your new work environment is absolutely recognisable and certainly funny, though not necessarily encouraging. Bureaucrats and managers think up ridiculous cuts or cunning plans that promise fast profits. Students are not interested in what you tell them, they only want to find out specifically what they have to know for the exam. Colleagues are either idiots who go for intellectual fads and empty jargon or predators who do whatever it takes to climb the ladder. Deans come up with incomprehensible rules, university managers promote the use of politically correct language they themselves don’t believe in and educationalists waste your time with useless educational reforms. And meetings must be held about all these things, meetings after meetings… A substantial dose of nostalgia often underlies that cynical examination of the academic enterprise. The real academic life, the undertone suggests, is completely different: there, they leave you in peace, there’s always funding for your research, you are accountable to no-one and you have no more than a handful of students, and really interested students at that. Colleagues may be a bit soft and stuffy, but fortunately they are completely absorbed in their own specialism or intellectual hobby so they don’t 5

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FOREWORD – CAROLINE PAUWELS

bother you at all. And you spend a large part of the day sitting happily chatting in the senior common room or in the bar. Nice job if you can get it… Oh yes, and women and people of colour don’t feature at all, or at most in a subordinate role. If you look at those campus novels in retrospect, you often find the Little Britain mentality which allowed the Brexit vote to thrive so well. The only things to come from Europe are strange regulations and mad French professors. Americans may be loud and shallow, but you need them now and again to wrangle funding out of them for the extension to the library. Feminists are represented as joyless bossy women and all those new-fangled disciplines and study programmes are actually nonsense. In short, things were better in the old days. I have to confess that I opted out of reading after a while. For almost all academics, their work is also their passion. For this very reason, I keep on wondering why one can find so little of that dedication, joy and zeal that our work engenders in fiction. The pleasure of being able to talk with each new generation of young people about the things that occupy you. The fantastic feeling you get when you are able to get students enthusiastic, when you get them thinking and when they get you thinking. The energy you get from gaining new insights, meeting interesting people, being allowed to teach about that which interests you: that’s the real life, as far as I’m concerned. And I’d like to read about that sometimes too. I’m not advocating soviet campus literature, in which everything we do is great. It would be enough for me to have novels mention something now and then about what I experience in my daily interaction with junior and senior academics: that this is actually a really nice profession. What am I saying? At times it’s a fantastic profession. And that’s why I’m so happy with this book. It’s teaching me that an awful lot has changed since I turned my back on the campus novels. It’s interesting to read how the genre has developed and broken free of its classical restraints. Notably, the focus has long ceased to be solely Anglo-Saxon. You hear new voices, read about new experiences, in new locations. And that’s just as well: universities are constantly in flux and, fortunately, both the student population and the academic body are becoming more diverse. I’m already looking forward to the novels that will be written about that.

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PRÉFACE Caroline Pauwels Sans doute quelqu’un s’est-il déjà penché sur la représentation des groupes professionnels dans les romans ? J’ai dans l’idée que les universitaires sont bien représentés dans ce genre d’étude. Il est vrai que pas mal d’auteurs contemporains ont un passé académique, travaillent à l’université ou y ont travaillé. Et comme les auteurs écrivent plus souvent sur les thèmes qui leur sont familiers, il n’est pas rare de retrouver un campus universitaire ou une référence à l’univers académique dans un roman. Il y a cependant tout un pan de la littérature dans lequel la vie universitaire sert non seulement à planter accessoirement le décor de l’intrigue, elle est également au cœur même de l’histoire. Le monde anglo-saxon dispose même d’un terme pour ce genre littéraire : les campus novels. Et ce n’est pas un hasard si ces romans de campus sont plutôt appréciés par les universitaires. Quiconque fait ses premiers pas à l’université en tant que chercheuse, assistante ou enseignante est en quête de modèles, de repères, et la littérature peut servir de guide et de fil rouge dans cette quête. Comme bon nombre de mes collègues, j’ai aussi lu mon lot de campus novels à mes débuts, surtout dans le genre britannique plus classique : C. P. Snow, Kingsley Amis, Tom Sharpe, Howard Jacobson, Malcolm Bradbury, Frank Parkin, David Lodge… Bien que particulièrement reconnaissable et certainement amusante, l’image que ces romans vous renvoient de votre nouvel environnement de travail n’est pas toujours des plus enthousiasmante. Les bureaucrates et les responsables cherchent à faire des économies insensées ou manigancent des plans qui pourraient leur être rapidement profitables. Les étudiants ne s’intéressent pas à ce que vous racontez, mais veulent uniquement savoir ce qu’ils doivent connaître pour l’examen. Les collègues sont soit des nigauds qui ne jurent que par les modes intellectuelles et le jargon, soit des requins qui ne reculent devant rien pour grimper les échelons. Les doyens édictent des règles incompréhensibles, les administrateurs universitaires encouragent le recours à un langage politiquement correct en lequel ils ne croient pas eux-mêmes, les pédagogues vous font perdre du temps avec d’inutiles réformes de l’enseignement. Et les réunions s’enchaînent à n’en plus finir… On retrouve souvent une bonne dose de nostalgie derrière cette analyse cynique du monde scientifique. Sous-entendu : la véritable vie académique est tout autre… Vous y avez la paix, assez de moyens financiers pour boucler votre recherche, vous ne devez 7

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PRÉFACE – CAROLINE PAUWELS

rendre de comptes à personne, vous avez tout au plus une poignée d’étudiants à gérer, qui affichent par ailleurs un intérêt non dissimulé pour ce que vous racontez. Les collègues sont peut-être un peu niais et poussiéreux, mais ils sont tellement enfermés dans leur monde ou absorbés par leur hobby intellectuel qu’ils ne vous dérangent en rien. Et vous passez une grande partie de la journée à papoter allègrement dans la senior common room ou au café. Nice job if you can get it… Ah oui, et n’oublions pas que dans cette utopie nostalgique, les femmes ou les personnes de couleur sont inexistants ou, à tout le moins, jouent un rôle secondaire. Avec un peu de recul, on retrouve souvent dans ces campus novels la mentalité Little Britain qui a offert un terrain tellement fertile au Brexit. De l’Europe n’émanent que des règles bizarres et des professeurs français complètement dingues. Les Américains sont bruyants et superficiels, c’est vrai, mais il faut bien de temps en temps obtenir un peu d’argent pour étoffer la bibliothèque. Les féministes sont une bande de garçons manqués et toutes ces nouvelles formations et disciplines en vogue ne sont que des foutaises. Bref, c’était mieux avant. Je dois admettre qu’au bout d’un moment, j’ai également décroché. La grande majorité des universitaires sont passionnés par ce qu’ils font. Je trouve dès lors étrange de retrouver si peu de cette passion, de cette joie et de cet enthousiasme que nous apporte notre travail dans la littérature. Le plaisir de partager, encore et encore, les choses qui nous occupent l’esprit avec de nouvelles générations de jeunes. L’incroyable sentiment que nous ressentons lorsque nous parvenons à captiver les étudiants, à les faire réfléchir, et lorsqu’ils nous font réfléchir à leur tour. L’énergie que nous puisons dans l’acquisition de nouvelles connaissances, dans la rencontre de personnes intéressantes, dans la possibilité d’enseigner ce qui nous tient à cœur. Pour moi, c’est tout cela, la véritable vie universitaire. Et il me plairait de retrouver de temps en temps cette ambiance dans mes lectures. Je ne plaide pas pour une littérature de campus à la soviétique, où tout ce que nous faisons serait fantastique. Je me contenterais de romans où je pourrais retrouver ici et là ce que je vis au quotidien dans mes contacts avec les scientifiques de toutes générations : je fais un très beau métier, que dis-je, même un métier fantastique par moments. C’est pourquoi je salue la sortie de ce livre. J’y apprends qu’énormément de choses ont changé depuis que j’ai délaissé les campus novels pour ce qu’ils étaient. Il est intéressant de voir combien le genre a évolué et s’est libéré de ses entraves classiques. Voilà quelque temps que l’angle de vue n’est plus uniquement anglo-saxon, on y entend de nouvelles voix, on y découvre de nouvelles expériences, dans des lieux jusqu’ici inconnus. C’est très positif : les universités évoluent sans cesse, et tant le public d’étudiants que le corps académique change aussi. Et c’est tant mieux ! Je me réjouis déjà à l’idée de me plonger dans les romans du genre à venir.

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CAMPUS FICTIONS LITERARY AND INTERMEDIAL CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE UNIVERSITY WORLD Introduction Janna Aerts, Inge Arteel & Janine Hauthal Vrije Universiteit Brussel

This collection of contributions on the representation of the university in literature and other media is inspired by, and coincides with, the fiftieth anniversary of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). The history of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, of which we give a brief overview below, reflects the interaction of specifically Belgian conditions with the more general demand for reforms in higher education at the end of the sixties. The location and design of the VUB campus make for an interesting comparison with the architectural planning of campuses in the Anglo-Saxon tradition.1 In the Anglo-Saxon world, academic life is traditionally situated within the walls of the university campus. The isolated campus forms its own microcosm in which students and professors meet and often also live (Schönau 1991, 151). This tradition is far less common in most European countries, where universities tend to be located on a city campus, residing in several buildings spread across the city centre. Located in the Belgian capital and the heart of Europe, the VUB is a city university as well. At present, the university has three different campuses within the Brussels Capital Region, in Etterbeek, Jette and Anderlecht.2 The VUB’s identity has always been closely linked to the location of the campus in the city, and this is particularly true today. Although it is sometimes seen as a Flemish island in Brussels – a green oasis in the French-speaking city – the VUB has never lost its connection with, and affection for, Brussels. The yearly folkloristic Saint-Vé celebration is a telling example of this historical relation.3 In recent years, the ties between campus and city have been reinforced and expanded, in part thanks to the policy of Rector Caroline Pauwels and initiatives like ‘weKONEKT.brussels’ or ‘usquare.brussels’.

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JANNA AERTS, INGE ARTEEL & JANINE HAUTHAL

50 Years of VUB and 185 Years of History

With only fifty years of age, the VUB is a young university. However, its history dates back to the founding of its French-language predecessor, the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) which was founded in 1834 by Brussels lawyer Théodore Verhaegen. With its foundation, the Brussels humanists responded to the announcement of the founding of a Catholic university in Mechelen (Peeters 1976, 462). The ULB was to be an institution independent of Church and State – as opposed to the state and Catholic universities of that time (‘De universiteit’ 2014-2016). Supported by the city of Brussels, in the early years, lectures could take place in the palace of Karel van Lotharingen and from 1842, in the Granvellepaleis. Only in the 1920s did the ULB move to its current location at Solbosch (Delforge, Usquare.brussels). Although at the time of its founding, the ULB – just like all other Belgian universities – had only French as its working language, there was already a significant Dutchlanguage presence. As early as 1856, the Flemish students organised themselves in the Nederduitsch Taalminnend Genootschap, which later became the humanist student association ‘Geen Taal, Geen Vrijheid’ – ‘No Language, No Freedom’ (Tyssens 1998, 60; Scheelings 2017, 26). From the beginning, the association’s main demand was the organisation of Dutch-language courses or programmes, but progress was very slow. Most modifications were a result of changing language legislations: the first Dutch-language lectures, doctorates and a full-fledged study programme were to be found in the Faculty of Jurisprudence, in response to the laws (1873, 1890 and 1935) that made knowledge of Dutch compulsory for those wishing to take up judicial positions in Flanders (Tyssens 1998, 60-61; VUB 50j – ULB 185j 2019). During and after World War II, however, the doubling of the study programmes with Dutch-language courses slowed down considerably (Scheelings 1991, 232). Unlike during World War I, Belgian universities stayed open after the invasion, but the persistent interference of the German occupier and the pressure to become more Dutch finally forced the ULB to close its doors in November 1941 (Dejaegere & Van Aerschot 1991, 14; Tyssens 1998, 62).4 A decade later, the association with the German demands was sufficiently weakened to allow the doubling process to gain momentum again, starting in 1955 with the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy (Scheelings 1991, 226). This evolution was partly linked to the formation of some pressure groups, such as the VNVHO in 1955 (The Association of Dutch-Speaking Humanist Higher Education), followed a year later by the OSB, a Dutch-language alumni association at the ULB (CAVA, 14 Sept. 2019; Scheelings 2017a, 26).5 Despite pressure from influential alumni and politicians in these associations, and specially allocated state support, this process was still not fully realised by 1968 (Scheelings 2017b, 119).

The Creation of the VUB and its Campus

From the mid-1960s, pressure increased to found a fully bilingual, but not yet unified, university (Peeters 1976, 464). On the eve of May 1968, the Flemish organisations

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INTRODUCTION

within the ULB demanded a proper dual university, with separate administrations within an overarching organisation (Tyssens 1998, 87-89; Witte 2019). Such a fully bilingual university was one of the demands of student demonstrations at the ULB, in which democratisation of the old university structures had the highest priority. On 13 December 1968, the Board of Governors decided to introduce a structural doubling as of 1 October 1969 (Scheelings 2017b, 119-120). Influenced by what had happened in Leuven, where the university split into the French-speaking Université Catholique de Louvain-La-Neuve and the Dutch-speaking Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, the decision for a full separation was finally made: The Vrije Universiteit Brussel retroactively acquired legal personality by law from 28 May 1970 (Witte 2019; Scheelings 2017b, 120). In his inaugural speech on 7 October 1969, the first VUB Rector Aloïs Gerlo emphasized: ‘de Vrije Universiteit Brussel komt niet tot stand tegen de ULB maar naast en mede dankzij de ULB’ (‘the Vrije Universiteit Brussel has come into being not against the ULB but with and in part thanks to the ULB’; qtd. in CAVA, 9 October 2019). Already before the split, the ULB had been extremely short of space (Bingen 1991, 385). When it became clear that the VUB had acquired full autonomy in 1968-1969, the new university had to urgently find its own buildings and quickly decided on a city campus within Brussels (Bingen 1991, 386). The ULB had already bought the Oefenplein in Elsene from the Rijkswacht (paramilitary police) in 1969; 20 of the 44 hectares of these grounds were made available to the VUB (Sian, 18 September 2019). The two universities jointly organised an international architecture contest which was won by French architect Noël Le Maresquier (Lambrecht et al. 2018, 9; Bingen 1991, 390). At first, his design was faithfully implemented (e.g. in the realisation of buildings F and G) but after some disagreements between university and architect and rising costs, the latter’s influence was restricted and new architects were appointed to realise the remaining buildings (Jockmans 2018; Bingen 1991, 391). It was not until 1973 that the first buildings slowly began to rise on Campus Oefenplein, turning the campus into a landmark of brutalist architecture; in the meantime, the VUB was able to use the overpopulated Solbosch for lectures (Bingen 1991, 390-391). The student accommodations designed by architect Willy Van Der Meeren were the first to be completed in October 1973, followed in 1976 by Buildings B and C, Auditorium Q, the restaurant and the iconic oval Rectorate building – currently called Braem building –, which was designed by the well-known architect Renaat Braem (Sian, 18 September 2019). In the years that followed, the VUB was to see exponential growth, which also resulted in further expansion of the campus: new buildings, a swimming pool and the sport hotel U-Residence were built (Sian, 18 September 2019). Even to date, in the academic year 2019-2020, new buildings are being finished, with the inauguration of Project XY and the new cultural centre Pilar as most recent and noteworthy examples. Although only a maximum of 5,500 students was envisaged when the VUB started, this number was already considerably exceeded as early as 1980; in 2018, the university had no fewer than 15,000 students (Scheelings 2017b, 120; Lambrecht et. al. 2018, 6). While it seems impossible to imagine Brussels and the Dutch-language university

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landscape without the continuously growing Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the latter has rarely been the subject of literary work. Campus fictions in which the Vrije Universiteit Brussel plays a significant role are surprisingly scarce, which also explains why no research has been done on this topic so far. One of the few works that do come to mind – albeit not an example of campus fiction – is De campusmoorden [The Campus Murders] by Jan Lampo (2011). This retrospective autobiographical account deals with the murder of two friends of the author, one a VUB student who was murdered near the campus in 1980, the other a VUB assistant murdered in Antwerp in 1993. Supported by his own memories as well as interviews with others, Lampo in several diary entries interweaves a reconstruction of the events with the ongoing murder investigation. Another – less explicit – example is Daniël Rovers’ debut novel Elf levens [Eleven Lives] (2010), which paints the interconnected lives of eleven people in Brussels. One of these eleven characters is Antoon, a shy young man who is obsessed with Audrey Hepburn and cannot talk to a beautiful girl without fancying her to be in love with him. He works as an assistant at the VUB, where he teaches students of Germanic languages to write proper Dutch. Rovers, who once worked in the same department, allegedly based the character of Antoon on one of his then VUB-colleagues. The VUB also functions as one of the settings in the political thriller De charme van chaos. Berichten uit de burgeroorlog in België [The Charms of Chaos. A Report from the Civil War in Belgium] (2000) by science journalist Dirk Draulans. In this fictional account of a civil war between Flanders and Wallonia, the protagonist pursues his love interest on the VUB campus, dating a university employee. As a final and intermedial example, we can mention the television series Heterdaad [Red-handed], for which an episode was shot on the VUB campus (broadcast in spring 1999: season 4, episode 35). In this episode, an unnamed university serves as the background of a love affair between a student and professor, followed by the suspicious death of the student in question.

The Campus Novel. Historical Developments and Literary Reflections

Both literary and filmic representations form the core of the contributions in the collection at hand and reveal that campus fictions, of course, do not just deal with the material infrastructure of campuses but also include reflections on the intellectual, psychological and sociological realities of university life. In keeping with the contributions’ range of research foci and objectives, the individual chapters – rather than following one uniform methodology that would hardly do justice to the range of themes and artistic media under scrutiny – adopt complementary approaches, scrutinizing campus fictions from philosophical, sociological, literary or historical angles. The articles in the first section of the volume consider novels that are in diverse ways related to the history of the campus and the changes in academia.6 The development of the campus novel has itself a long history, beginning with early modern academic satires (see Weiß 1988, Antor 1996). In the 19th century, (the rise of) modern science becomes a recurrent theme in novels. From the second half of the 20th century onwards, we can distinguish

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the genre of the campus novel as we know it today, in which the institutional environment where science is practiced also plays a role (see Kühn 2002, Stachowicz 2002, Dorsman & Knegtmans 2015). The heydays of the genre can be situated in the 1950s, with classics such as C. P. Snow’s The Masters (1951), Mary McCarthy’s The Groves of Academe (1952) or Kingsley Amis’ Lucky Jim (1954). The modern post-war campus novel often has a comical or satirical-critical tone which well-known examples attest to, including Malcolm Bradbury’s The History Man (1975), David Lodge’s Small World (1984), W.F. Hermans’ Onder professoren (1975), Martin Walser’s Brandung (1985) and Dietrich Schwanitz’ Der Campus (1995). In these novels, situations or characters are often highly recognizable to insiders and provide ample opportunity for authorial (self-)mockery as well as voyeuristic pleasure for readers. The campus tends to function as a microcosm (see Dubber 1991, Van den Oever & Cawelti 1991, Goch 1992, Himmelsbach 1992): the intensive contact of students and professors on campus reflects the power relations and universal themes of the world at large. In the 21st century, the genre continues to thrive, with Philip Roth’s The Humain Stain (2000), Saul Bellow’s Ravelstein (2000), Zadie Smith’s On Beauty (2005) and Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot (2011) providing prominent examples. In contexts where the tradition of the campus and the reality of campus life is less prominent the terms Universitätsroman, Professorenroman or even Studentenroman are common, as is the case in German-language literatures (see Schönau 1991, Trombik 2017). Indeed, this volume uses the term campus fictions as an umbrella term and, in this broad understanding, these variants as well as more recent developments of the genre are included. The so-called Gelehrtensatire, for instance, has become a popular phenomenon in German-language literature since the Enlightenment, as Alexander Košenina has demonstrated in his imagological study of the scholar (2003). The contribution of Geert Crauwels in this volume continues and broadens the investigation of that subgenre. Adopting a historical approach that considers the development of humanist academic education and knowledge – what in German is called Bildung – within the context of an increasingly conservative German nationalism and its repressive cultural politics, Crauwels investigates the representation of professors, students and university life in German literary works of the 18th and 19th centuries. Though his corpus is generically divers and ranges from Goethe’s drama Faust over Lichtenberg’s aphoristic notebooks Sudelbücher to Heine’s travelogue Die Harzreise (and many other examples), several commonalities come to the fore, such as the ubiquitous satirical mockery of wisdom that is considered unfit for life. The growing 19th-century influence of the positivist scientific paradigm is explicitly attacked, as is the material and reputational profit for the professors that adhere to it. Students too are portrayed with humorous disrespect in the literature of the time. Especially the student organisations, the so-called Burschenschaften, are presented as being strongly in favour of German(ic) and often also anti-Semitic nationalism. At the end of his overview Crauwels convincingly concludes that the satirical representation of academia in his corpus strongly diverges from the German novelistic tradition of the Bildungsroman, which advocates the successful societal integration of the individual through a broad neo-humanistic education.

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Situated in a very different time and place, Louis Althusser’s memoirs L’Avenir dure longtemps also seem to point at the ineptness of academic wisdom in the face of existential challenges, as Sabine Hillen demonstrates in her reading of this book. For several decades (1948-1980), Althusser was professor at the Parisian grand école in the rue d’Ulm – at the time a world-famous ‘campus’ for philosophy and critical theory – and also lived on the premises, until in 1980 he strangled his wife Hélène Rytman in their on-campus apartment. Hillen elaborates on the specific monasterial architecture of this academic place, which in the 19th century developed out of the wish for an elitist college based on intellectual excellence rather than aristocratic upbringing. The communal architectural design is closely linked to the pedagogical system that the rue d’Ulm advocated: creating an invigorating but also trustful environment for philosophical exchange between professors and students, based on mutual solidarity. In her in-depth reading of Althusser’s memoirs, supplemented by references to some of his critics, Hillen shows how the philosopher tackles the discrepancies between these intellectual ideals – that are closely connected to his own materialist and relational philosophy – and the not always so ideal reality of an, in his case, extremely troubled personal life. In its unsparing exploration of these tensions, Althusser’s book, though not a campus novel stricto sensu, does address fundamental ethical and epistemological issues at stake in the microcosm of the campus. The global economic paradigm of neoliberalism brings with it other quite specific challenges to academia, and this condition of a ‘university under threat’ is amply reflected in contemporary campus fiction, as the contribution of Merritt Moseley demonstrates. Ever since the 1950s, campus fiction has displayed a remarkably constant preference for the topic of the university as an endangered place of pure knowledge. In his historical overview of US American and British campus novels from 1950 until today, Moseley shows how the authors respectively identify anti-Communist hysteria, sexual harassment by faculty members, continental literary theory, economic austerity and, eventually, neoliberalism as putting severe pressure on the university as ‘a repository of important, “gracious” things’ (59). According to Moseley, that latest phase, with its neoliberal ideology of managerialism, its exchange of education for profitable competition and its view on the student as a consumer, has brought about decisive narrative and atmospheric shifts in the genre of campus fiction. The power of managerial administrators and the fate of researchers in precarious or superfluous positions become dominant issues in this new literature, and the former often self-ironical nostalgia gives way to apocalyptic despair and ‘the blackest kind of comedy’ (71). The article of Ross Dawson continues in the same vein, as it addresses the representation of ‘uncollegiality’ in recent academic fiction. The Lecturer’s Tale (2001) by James Hynes and Incredible Bodies (2007) by Ian McGuire, the novels at the center of Dawson’s analysis, both explore the ‘new subaltern class’ (75) at English Departments in the US and the UK respectively. Drawing on socio-economic research in the discipline of critical university studies, Dawson reads the novels as ‘significant social texts’ (77) and as critical interventions in contemporary debates on academic deprofessionalisation and casual labour, conditions that are exemplified in the position of the temporary lecturer. The respective protagonists of both novels experience their insecure posi-

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tion as a fundamental disillusionment of the belief in the university as a place of intellectual idealism. As Dawson aptly shows, the innovative character of these narratives lies not in their satirical or even cynical nature but is plot-oriented in that it attributes revengeful transgressive agency to the subjects in precarious positions – conscious plagiarism and ruthless scheming being some of them. Their reactions thus enhance the structural uncollegiality that was already at work in their departments in the first place. Indeed, the novels may even imply that the ideal of academic collegiality has been an illusion, or at least an unrealistic ideal, for a long time, even in the Humboldtian academy with its highly individualistic striving for prestige. The work of American philosopher Rebecca Goldstein approaches the dominant economic paradigm in the academic world from a different angle, as Ludmiła Gruszewska-Blaim shows in her contribution. In four academic novels Goldstein explores the concept of the ‘mattering map’: campus life is perceived and lived according to the location of students and staff on the mattering map, a conceptual metaphor that indicates what matters to whom in the quest for a fulfilled (academic) life. The flexibility and changeability of the map allow for it to function both as an analytical and (self-)critical instrument in identifying the values that inform one’s own need for recognition and one’s relationships with others. Among these values Goldstein’s protagonists explicitly consider philosophical, mathematical, religious and spiritual theories and discussions. Thus, the narratives of these academic novels clearly move away from the stereotypical campus novel: though not ignoring the down-to-earth academic tensions and problems, they are mainly concerned with scientific knowledge exchange and intellectual debate – which at times confronts the reader with highly specialized knowledge transfer. Ultimately, they seem to try out an alternative discourse on academia, diverging from the satirical debunking of campus life.

Expanding the Genre’s Novelistic and Anglo-American Core

The second part of this volume concentrates on the broadening of campus fictions both as a genre that has traditionally been restricted to the novel form, and as a mainly Anglo-American phenomenon. As Elaine Showalter observes, the campus novel, as we know it today, ‘has arisen and flourished only since about 1950’ (2005, 1). In its classical form, the genre is characterized by a predominantly Anglo-American focus, both in terms of the fictional worlds that it depicts as well as with regard to the origin of its authors. In recent decades, the genre has proliferated into other literary genres and media including poetry, comic strips, drama, radio play, film, television and online fictions such as weblogs and feuilletons. While it might be possible to argue that filmic adaptations of Lucky Jim (UK 1957, dir. John Boulting), Brideshead Revisited (UK 1981, dir. Charles Sturridge & Michael Lindsay-Hogg) and Oleanna (UK/US 1994, dir. David Mamet) have paved the way for campus fictions in film, the number of original feature films set on campus or showcasing professors (and – to a lesser degree – students) still increased considerably in the new millennium. While these new forms clearly expand the novelistic core of the genre, they often remain focused on Anglo-

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American academic contexts. That even more recent intermedial constructions of the university world keep the genre’s traditional Anglo-American focus does not just hold for the filmic adaptations of campus novels such as The Human Stain (D/F/US 2003, dir. Robert Benton), A Single Man (US 2009, dir. Tom Ford) and Still Alice (US/UK 2014, dir. Richard Glatzer & Wash Westmoreland) but also for the millennial campus films A Beautiful Mind (US 2001, dir. Ron Howard) and Mona Lisa Smile (US 2003, dir. Mike Newell) as well as the recent TV series Dear White People (US 2017–, dir. John Simien) which tend to be exclusively set on US campuses. Also recent campus comedies including Wonder Boys (US/D/UK/JP 2000, dir. Curtis Hanson), The Rules of Attraction (D/US 2002, dir. Roger Avery), Damsels in Distress (US 2011, dir. Walt Stillman), The Rewrite (US 2014, dir. Marc Lawrence) and Irrational Man (US 2016, dir. Woody Allen) clearly uphold this tradition, with Cédric Klapisch’s trilogy L’Auberge Espagnole (F/ES 2002), Les Poupées Russes (F/UK 2005) and Casse-tête Chinois (F/US/B 2013) being a rare exception to this rule. This may be no coincidence, since Klapisch’s trilogy is also one of only few campus films made by a European director. In the publication at hand, several contributions complement the largely AngloAmerican-centric construction of the campus novel prevalent in the ‘quite copious’ (Moseley 2007, viii) body of criticism devoted to the genre to date. They indicate that campus fictions created outside the UK and the US tend to shift the focus away from the Anglo-American academic contexts of the classical core (see Hillen, Selejan, Klohs as well as Op de Beek and Winkler). Yet, as Hannah Van Hove and Janine Hauthal demonstrate, the genre is not just renewed in literatures originating outside of the Anglo-American tradition but also from within. In her article on Christine BrookeRose’s Thru, Van Hove draws attention to the fact that this experimental novel from 1975 is not just critical of the post-1968 ‘radical’ university it portrays but also of the genre it intervenes into. To begin with, Thru purposefully re-appropriates and subverts the realist and often autodiegetic form that has predominated the genre since the 1950s and is still popular today. Moreover, by aiming its satirical thrust at the unequal treatment of women in the academy – a treatment that much mid-twentieth-century campus fictions mirror and perpetuate by relegating women almost exclusively to the background (e.g. as faculty wives) – Brooke-Rose’s novel performs a critique of both genre and gender. In her insightful reading, Van Hove shows how Thru’s self-reflexivity, multiperspectivity and satirical engagement with (post)structuralist theory crucially contribute to the novel’s feminist critique of post-war higher education institutions and their treatment of women. Van Hove, moreover, expands the novel’s feminist critique to the literary history of the campus novel which so far has failed to acknowledge Brooke-Rose’s contribution. Van Hove also highlights the nexus between ideologies of nation, gender and literary form when she critically observes the exclusionary mechanisms of British critics at the time who detected a ‘French influence’ in Brooke-Rose’s experimentalism and described Thru as a failed ‘European’ adaptation of an ‘indigenous product’ (Ackroyd qtd. in Van Hove, 116). While, in Van Hove’s reading, Brooke-Rose partakes in the international avantgarde by deviating from the realist Anglo-American core of the campus genre, Hauthal