World War I has been recorded from many points of view: correspondent, poet, politician, and soldier. Comments from a nun living in a foreign country during the hostilities, however, can provide new ...insights. Isoline Jones was born in 1876 in England, and attended the boarding school at Tildonk, Belgium, run by the Ursuline sisters. She eventually converted to Roman Catholicism from Anglicanism and made her perpetual vows in 1907 as a member of the Ursuline community. Her religious name was Mother Marie Georgine. In August 1914, German forces invaded Belgium and occupied the convent and school, and her impressions of the war years are preserved in a series of letters written in the form of a diary. The siege of Antwerp, the plight of refugees, interaction with the German soldiers, and the hectic daily life of the convent were recorded by Mother Marie Georgine. Events occurring throughout Belgium did not escape her attention, and she did not avoid describing the brutality of war. Although sections of her diary have appeared in print, this is the first publication of Mother Marie Georgine's entire diary. Her impressions of World War I offer new perspectives on this tragic event.
Diepgaande studie van de intra-Europese migratie en mobiliteit in Vlaanderen en België.
Ondanks de indrukwekkende omvang van intra-Europese migratiestromen kregen deze in België tot op heden slechts ...zeer geringe wetenschappelijke aandacht in vergelijking met de migratie van niet-Europeanen, oftewel derdelanders. Nochtans is het van vitaal belang dat de intra-Europese migratie een centrale plaats krijgt op de hedendaagse onderzoeksagenda. In de huidige politieke, economische en maatschappelijke context wordt intra-Europese migratie en mobiliteit met argusogen bekeken en moet het vrije verkeer van personen, één van de kernverwezenlijkingen van de Europese integratie, het steeds vaker ontgelden. Dit boek wil een genuanceerde en diepgaande stand van zaken bieden over (het onderzoek naar) de intra-Europese migratie en mobiliteit met een bijzondere focus op de Vlaamse en Belgische situatie, en zet daarmee een wetenschappelijke inhaalbeweging in gang.
This tale follows fictitious characters as they journey in search of wisdom and the fulfillment of their objectives. Set mainly in the fascinating university town of Leuven, Belgium, it revolves ...around the personal, social, political and academic aspirations of visiting scholars in the town. Richard Gutierrez from the USA needs to get tenure at his university. Jennifer Sydney from England is determined to advance her career. Aisling O'Shea and her six-year old son Philip from Ireland have different expectations of their trip. Piotr Malachowski wants to understand a life rooted in the bitter experiences of the internment camp of Majdanek in Poland. The nationalistic Fr Miguel Fuentes from the Philippines wonders what he can learn from a Western university to deal with the challenges in his country. What starts out as an academic sojourn for these individuals becomes a life-changing experience as their paths cross in Leuven and they learn about each other and themselves and about life itself.
Het omstreden politiek potentieel van het verledenDe weergave van het verleden is nooit neutraal. Zeker tijdens periodes van ingrijpende maatschappelijke veranderingen krijgt het verleden een ...omstreden politiek potentieel. Nooit was dit meer het geval in Belgie dan rond 1800, tijdens de turbulente overgangsjaren van het ancien regime naar de moderne tijd. In maatschappelijke debatten en politieke conflicten kwamen uiteenlopende visies op de geschiedenis lijnrecht tegenover elkaar te staan.Dit boek onderzoekt de manier waarop de bezettende Franse overheid zich van het verleden bediende in haar communicatie met de Belgische bevolking. Van de revolutionaire beginperiode tot het meer traditionalistische bewind van Napoleon: telkens gebruikten overheidsfunctionarissen het verleden om een politieke boodschap te verspreiden. Onhoudbaar verleden toont aan dat de manier waarop ze dat deden vaak verrassend pragmatisch was. De politieke realiteit tijdens deze belangrijke maar weinig bestudeerde periode uit de Belgische geschiedenis komt daarmee in een heel nieuw licht te staan. Deze publicatie is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).
- When the Nazis invaded neutral Belgium in May 1940, defeat and occupation were inevitable but Belgian armed forces held out against a vastly superior enemy for 18 days. The elected Government went ...into exile in London but King Leopold III controversially remained with his people as a prisoner. - - As described in this authoritative book, Belgians continued the fight both outside and inside their country. There were eventually two complete Belgian RAF squadrons. The Colonial Army defeated the Italians in East Africa and the Belgian Brigade fought from Normandy to Germany. - - The Belgian Resistance organized escape routes, sabotaged their occupiersÆ activities and spied for the Allies. 17,000 died or were executed and a further 27,000 survived detention. Meanwhile others collaborated and fought for the Nazis and large numbers were tried post-war for war crimes and treason. - - About half the Jews in Belgium in 1940 died in the Holocaust and there are many stirring stories of courage, as well as tragic ones. - - This is an overdue and honest account of one NationÆs very varied experiences during five years of Nazi occupation and oppression. - -
Drawing on first-hand ethnographic data, field interviews with interpreters, interviewers and decision-makers, observations and off-record comments, The Asylum Speaker examines discursive processes ...in the asylum procedure and the impact these processes may have on the determination of refugee status. The book starts from the assumption that far-reaching legal decisions often have to be made on very limited grounds. Unable to submit any evidence to substantiate their case, the only chance that many asylum seekers have is to argue their case during the oral hearings with public officials at the different asylum agencies. Maryns investigates the performance of the asylum seeker during these interviews and analyzes the relationship between narrative structuring and gradations of linguistic competence. She explores a number of related questions: first, how the interaction between applicants and public officials proceeds; second, how this interaction forms the discursive input into long and complicated textual trajectories, and third, how the outcome of these discursive processes affects the assessment of asylum applications.
Maryns demonstrates how propositional aspects play a crucial role in the asylum procedure whereas little attention is paid to narrative-linguistic diversity and multilingual speaker repertoires. Her analysis reveals how insufficient insight into the linguistic structure and narrative features of the asylum account often results in a deficient processing of important details.
Katrijn Maryns studied English and Dutch at the University of Ghent. She collected and analyzed data on African English in Sierra Leonean refugee camps and continued fieldwork at the Belgian asylum agencies in Brussels. She worked as a research associate of the National Science Foundation-Flanders and conducted her PhD research on bureaucratic encounters in the Belgian asylum procedure at the Department of African Languages and Cultures of Ghent University. Her research interests include linguistic diversity, multilingualism and the relationship between language and social identity.
One of twelve children in a close-knit, affluent Catholic Belgian family, Jan Vansina began life in a seemingly sheltered environment. But that cocoon was soon pierced by the escalating tensions and ...violence that gripped Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. In this book Vansina recalls his boyhood and youth in Antwerp, Bruges, and the Flemish countryside as the country was rocked by waves of economic depression, fascism, competing nationalisms, and the occupation of first Axis and then Allied forces.
Within the vast literature on World War II, a much smaller body of work treats the everyday experiences of civilians, particularly in smaller countries drawn into the conflict. Recalling the war in Belgium from a child’s-eye perspective, Vansina describes pangs of hunger so great as to make him crave the bitter taste of cod-liver oil. He vividly remembers the shock of seeing severely wounded men on the grounds of a field hospital, the dangers of crossing fields and swimming in ponds strafed by planes, and his family’s interactions with occupying and escaping soldiers from both sides. After the war he recalls emerging numb from the cinema where he first saw the footage of the Nazi death camps, and he describes a new phase of unrest marked by looting, vigilante justice, and the country’s efforts at reunification.
Vansina, a historian and anthropologist best known for his insights into oral tradition and social memory, draws on his own memories and those of his siblings to reconstruct daily life in Belgium during a tumultuous era.
Jonathan Andrew Epstein's Belgium's Dilemma: The Formation of Belgian Defense Policy, 1932-1940 is a study of the policy makers, debates, and decisions that impacted the Belgian army in the years ...before World War II.
