FIAL
Place Cardinal Mercier 31/L3.03.31
1348 Louvain-la-Neuve
Helena Van Praet
Assistante
Literary scholar and critic, specialised in contemporary Dutch-language and North American poetry
Bio
Dr. Helena Van Praet is a research and teaching assistant in Dutch Literature at Université Catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain). She received her PhD in Comparative Literature from UCLouvain in 2024 for her dissertation on the experimental poetry of the Dutch poet-composer Rozalie Hirs and Canadian poet and classics scholar Anne Carson. She works predominantly on contemporary experimental literature, particularly by women poets and often from a comparative perspective. She was a visiting scholar at the ALN | NT2 Lab at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) in the spring of 2022 and at the department of Modern Dutch Literature at Utrecht University (UU) in the autumn of 2023. Her work has been published in journals such as Textual Practice, Spiegel der Letteren, and Poetics Today.
Awards
2018 Thesis Award for Literature
Awarded by the Belgian Association of Anglicists in Higher Education (BAAHE) for the high standards of excellence demonstrated in her MA thesis entitled "Coagulating an Aesthetics of Disjunction: A Semiological Reading of Anne Carson's Decreation"- Diploma
Year Label Educational Organization 2017 Bachelor of Arts in de taal- en letterkunde Vrije Universiteit Brussel 2018 Master of Arts in Linguistics and Literary Studies Vrije Universiteit Brussel 2024 Doctorat en langues, lettres et traductologie Université catholique de Louvain
Institutional responsibilities
- Since 2020 : Representative of the Scientific Personnel at the meetings of the ELAL school (Ecole de Langues et Lettres)
Teaching duties
As a teaching assistant, Helena Van Praet is in charge of tutorials for the following undergraduate modules:
- Nederlandstalige literatuur lezen en analyseren (LNED1134)
- Nederlandse literatuur I: van de Middeleeuwen tot de 18de eeuw (LGERM1334)
- Nederlandse literatuur II: 19de en 20ste eeuw (LGERM1534)
- Taalbeheersing en taalvariatie (LGERM1337) - tutorials for literature
During academic year 2024/25, Helena Van Praet also teaches the course LNED1134 (titular: Stéphanie Vanasten).
- Courses
Name ID Reading and analyzing Dutch literature LNED1134
Scientific responsibilities
- Since 2020 : Representative of the Scientific Body at the INCAL Council (Institut des civilisations, arts et lettres)
Research interests
- Contemporary Poetry in Dutch and English (North America)
- Experimental Literature
- Comparative Literature
- Rozalie Hirs
- Anne Carson
PhD project (completed)
Feeling-Thinking: Embodiment and Knowledge in the Poetry of Rozalie Hirs and Anne Carson
This project aims to fill a gap in Dutch-language research on conceptual poetry as a manifestation of an embodied cognition, i.e. as a poetic exploration of objects and ideas through the conflation of thinking and feeling. More specifically, it seeks to establish how this kind of poetry explores issues relating to the tangibility of concepts, access to knowledge, and an alternative, affective understanding of objects. To this end, the project conducts a comparative analysis of the work of the Dutch poet-composer Rozalie Hirs (1965) and the Canadian poet and classics scholar Anne Carson (1950). As a working hypothesis, the study postulates that Carson and Hirs explore two interconnected modalities in their work, namely the cerebral and affective, and that, in doing so, they slowly deconstruct certain discourses and encourage readers to think differently.
2024
Van Praet, Helena. Herinneringen tot leven wekken via sprokkelspraak. In: Poëziekrant, Vol. 48, no. 2, p. 8-9 (2024).
2023
Van Praet, Helena. Een labyrint van woekerende waterdromen. In: Poëziekrant, Vol. 47, no.4, p. 54-55 (2023).
2023
Van Praet, Helena. Touching the Screen: On Visual Textuality and Knowledge Construction in Anne Carson’s Poetry. In: Textual Practice, Vol. 38, no. 10, p. 1660-1678 (2024). doi:10.1080/0950236X.2023.2259354.
2023
Van Praet, Helena. “Dier, vertel me over God”. In: Poëziekrant, Vol. 47, no.4, p. 72-73 (2023).
2022
Van Praet, Helena. "Je blaast woorden het weten in -" Cognitief-affectieve bevraging in Rozalie Hirs' poëzie. In: Spiegel der Letteren : tijdschrift voor Nederlandse literatuurgeschiedenis en voor literatuurwetenschap, Vol. 64, no.2, p. 155-178 (2022). doi:10.2143/SDL.64.2.3291066.
2022
Van Praet, Helena. 'To Tell a Story by Not Telling It’: Toward a Networked Poetics of Delay in Anne Carson’s The Beauty of the Husband. In: Poetics Today : an international journal for theory and analysis of literature and communication, Vol. 43, no. 4 (2022), p. 639-661 (2022). doi:10.1215/03335372-10017695.
2022
Van Praet, Helena. De rode passie van hartstocht en herinneringen: Vliegen-vlieden met Anne Carson. In: Poëziekrant, Vol. 46, no. 6, p. 98-99 (2022).
2022
Van Praet, Helena. Een meanderend reisverslag. In: Spiegel der Letteren : tijdschrift voor Nederlandse literatuurgeschiedenis en voor literatuurwetenschap, Vol. 64, no.3, p. 278-280 (2022). doi:10.2143/SDL.64.3.3291497.
2022
Van Praet, Helena. Tussen betovering en bevreemding. In: De Reactor, (2022).
2022
Van Praet, Helena. Van huidhonger naar tintelend taalgebruik. In: Poëziekrant, Vol. 46, no. 3-4, p. 70 (2022).
2021
Van Praet, Helena. Affectieve ideeënpoëzie: Over kennis in de gedichten van Rozalie Hirs en Anne Carson. In: Handelingen - Koninklijke Zuid-Nederlandse maatschappij voor taal- en letterkunde en geschiedenis, Vol. 75, no. 1, p. 307-323 (2021). doi:10.21825/kzm.87037.
2021
Van Praet, Helena. Genre Developments in the 21st Century: Representation and the Network in Anne Carson’s Float. In: Journal for Literary and Intermedial Crossings, Vol. 5, no.2, p. f1-19 (2020).
2020
Van Praet, Helena. Rhizomatic Challenges to Compartmentalization: Rewriting in Anne Carson's Decreation and Patience Agbabi's Telling Tales. In: Studies in Canadian Literature, Vol. 45, no.1, pp. 74-94 (2020).
2020
Van Praet, Helena. Writer’s Writer Revisits Authorship: Iteration in Anne Carson’s Decreation. In: Canadian Literature : a quarterly of criticism and review, Vol. 241, no.241, p. 18-35 (2020).
2019
Van Praet, Helena. Recalibrating categorisation : A semiological reading of Anne Carson’s Decreation. In: English Text Construction, Vol. 12, no.2, p. 167-195 (2019). doi:10.1075/etc.00026.pra.
2023
Van Praet, Helena. Anne Carson. In: Arteel, Inge ; Bernaerts, Lars ; et al., Online Encyclopedia of Literary Neo-Avant-Gardes, Lars Bernaerts: Ghent University, 2023.
2023
Van Praet, Helena. Anne Carson’s “Anarchitecture” and the Disrupting Potential of Matter in Float. Anne Carson and the Unknown: Explorations in 21st-Century Experimental Poetry (UCLouvain, du 24/05/2023 au 25/05/2023).
2023
Van Praet, Helena. Lezers raken: Over lichamelijke beelden in de hedendaagse Nederlandstalige poëzie. Studiedag '(Nederlandstalige) poëzie en het lichaam' (Universiteit Utrecht, 25/09/2023).
2023
Van Praet, Helena. Touching the Reader: Bodily Images and Affective Knowledge in Rozalie Hirs’s and Anne Carson’s Poetry. The 4th Biannual INSL Conference Poetry. Experience. Attention. (University of Oslo, du 06/06/2023 au 08/06/2023).
2023
Van Praet, Helena. Translation, Reproduction, and Veridiction in Anne Carson’s Nox. Translation as Creation and the Neo-Avant-Garde, ENAG Meeting (Université de Liège, du 30/11/2023 au 01/12/2023).
2022
Van Praet, Helena. "Who are you?" Poetic Metalepsis in the Work of Anne Carson. Experimental Writing in English (1945-2000): The Anti-Canon (Palace of the Academies, Brussels, du 15/09/2022 au 16/09/2022).
2022
Van Praet, Helena. « Ce qui manque aux faits » : L’iconothèque comme historiographie personnelle dans Nox d’Anne Carson. Les iconothèques d’écrivain·e·s contemporain·e·s (1980-aujourd’hui), Colloque conjoint HANDLING-ALN|NT2 (Montréal, UQAM, du 07/04/2022 au 08/04/2022).
2022
Van Praet, Helena. « Toucher au vrai », en retour : Entretien virtuel avec Annick Ettlin. Atelier 'Vérité et poésie' (UCLouvain, 24/02/2022).
2022
Van Praet, Helena. “Dan vallen samen de tijd en jij door mijn vingers”: Nabeelden in Rozalie Hirs’ poëzie. 21e Colloquium Neerlandicum - Voortvarend Nederlands (Nijmegen, du 22/08/2022 au 26/08/2022).
2021
Van Praet, Helena. From Print to Digital and Back Again: Network Aesthetics in Anne Carson’s The Beauty of the Husband. Transcodification: Literatures – Arts – Media, Online Conference of the ICLA Research Committee on Literatures/Arts/Media (CLAM) (University of L'Aquila, du 01/07/2021 au 03/07/2021).
2021
Van Praet, Helena. Voelen, vragen, denken, dansen: Over kennis in de poëzie van Rozalie Hirs en Anne Carson. KZM Herfstvergadering (KANTL, 16/10/2021).
2019
Van Praet, Helena. Genre Developments in the 21st Century: Contributions by Anne Carson. Robinson Crusoe Revisited: Literary and Intermedial Legacies of the “First Novel in English” (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 29/11/2019).
2019
Van Praet, Helena. Textuality in Freefall: Repurposing Digital Strategies in Anne Carson’s Float. The Electronic Literature Organization Conference and Media Arts Festival (University College Cork, du 15/07/2019 au 17/07/2019).
2018
Van Praet, Helena. Re-Visioning the Edge: Intensification in Anne Carson’s Decreation. Annual Conference of the Belgian Association of Anglicists in Higher Education (Université de Mons, 30/11/2018).
2024
Van Praet, Helena. Feeling-thinking : embodiment and knowledge in the poetry of Rozalie Hirs and Anne Carson, prom. : Vanasten, Stéphanie, 11/12/2024.