Alexa Stoicescu

Contemporary Dutch-language literature is far more diverse than its canonical image suggests, encompassing underrepresented voices and themes including queerness, decolonisation, and ecocriticism. Alexa Stoicescu’s book project, Writing Relationships: Towards a Relational History of Dutch-language Literature from the Avant-Garde to the Present, sets out to capture this diversity through a new theoretical lens.

Drawing on the framework of relationality, the project examines seven themes across the past century, including gender and intersectionality, technology, disability, decolonisation, and conflict. It analyses five novels per theme across distinct historical periods and transnational contexts spanning the Netherlands, Flanders, Suriname, the DR Congo, and Indonesia. This inclusive approach both reinterprets canonical works and revives overlooked voices.