People / Faculty, Colonial history, Dutch Studies, Language and Identity, Cultural Anthropology, Postcolonial and Cosmopolitan Theory

Dewulf

Jeroen Dewulf

Queen Beatrix Professor in Dutch Studies; Professor in German Studies; Professor in Folklore, Faculty Academic Director of Study Abroad; Director of the Institute of European Studies; Director of the Center for Portuguese Studies

Research Areas

Altantic Studies, with a focus on history, foklore, culture, religion, literature, and language; The transatlantic slave trade; Dutch and Portuguese colonial history; Dutch and Flemish literature, history, and culture; German literature, with a focus on Switzerland.

Office:
5329 Dwinelle (Dept. of German) and 207 Philosophy Hall (Institute of European Studies)

Contact:

Specialty areas

Colonial history, Dutch Studies, Language and Identity, Cultural Anthropology, Postcolonial and Cosmopolitan Theory.

Recent Courses

From New Amsterdam to New York: Race, Culture, and Identity in New Netherland; Anne Frank and After: World War II and the Holocaust in the Netherlands; The Indonesian Connection: Dutch Dutch (Post)colonial History and Culture in Southeast Asia; The Dutch-Speaking Caribbean: Dutch (Post) colonial History and Culture in the Caribbean; Introduction to German Reading Culture; The Multicultural Netherlands; Cultural History of the Low Countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg); “Minor Literatures” – Austrian and Swiss Literature and Identity

Biography

Jeroen Dewulf is Queen Beatrix Professor in Dutch Studies at the UC Berkeley Department of German and a Professor at Berkeley’s Folklore Program. He is also the Faculty Academic Director of Berkeley Study Abroad and is chair of the UCEAP Faculty Directors group. Dewulf also serves as a member of the UC Berkeley International Activities Coordination Group and represents UC Berkeley at the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU). Dewulf is also the director of UC Berkeley’s Institute of European Studies, where he is the chair of the Center for Portuguese Studies and the Austrian Studies Program. As an affiliated member of the Center for African Studies and the Center for Latin American Studies, he is also active in the fields of African Studies and Latin American Studies. Dewulf is associated with the University of Lisbon as a researcher at its Center of History and also serves as the literary executor of the Swiss author Hugo Loetscher (1929-2009). Dewulf graduated with a major in Germanic Philology and a minor in Portuguese Studies from the University of Ghent, in Belgium. He holds an MA from the University of Porto, in Portugal, and a PhD in German Literature from the University of Bern, in Switzerland. He has been a visiting professor at the University of São Paulo, the Catholic University of Leuven, and the Institute of Advanced Studies at UCL London. His main areas of research are Dutch and Portuguese colonial and postcolonial history, literature, religion, and culture, the transatlantic slave trade, and Black cultural, folkloric and religious traditions in the Americas. He publishes in five different languages (English, Dutch, German, Portuguese and French). For his scholarly service, he was distinguished, in 1999, with the Quality Seal for Innovating Initiatives in the Field of Foreign Language Education by the European Union and he was awarded by the Cultural Foundation of the Swiss UBS-Bank for his research on Swiss-German literature. In 2010, he was distinguished by the Hellman Family Faculty Fund and in 2012 he won the Robert O. Collins Award in African Studies as well as the American Cultures Innovation in Teaching Award. In 2014, he was distinguished with the Hendricks Award of the New Netherland Institute for his research on the early Dutch history of New York and the first community of enslaved Africans on Manhattan. In 2015, his research on Black performance traditions in Louisiana was distinguished with the Louisiana History President’s Memorial Award and both in 2015 and 2016, he was the recipient of the Clague and Carol Van Slyke Article Prize in New Netherland studies. In 2019, his monograph on the Mardi Gras Indians received the Gold Medal Independent Publishers Book Award and he was distinguished by the Luso-American Foundation for his contributions to the field of Portuguese Studies. In 2023, his book Afro-Atlantic Catholics was awarded the John Gilmary Shea Prize.

Selected publications

Books

Articles/Book Chapters (selection)

  • Jeroen Dewulf (2024): “‘Wouldn’t It Be Smarter to Let the Malay Colonize Europe?’ Postcolonial Critique, Antiglobalism, and Racism in the Travel Books of the Bohemian-German Author Richard Katz (1888-1968),” Journal of Austrian Studies 57:1 (2024): 21-44.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2023): “Why Rara Burns Judas during Lent: Rethinking the Origins of Catholic Elements in Haitian Culture from an Afro-Iberian Perspective,” The Americas 80:1 (2023): 33-68.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2023): “Hugo und Bruno: Hugo Loetscher und Joseph Breitbachs Bericht über Bruno (1962). Eine biographische Miszelle,“ Études Germaniques 78 (2023), 489-95.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2023): “Auf den Fußspuren der portugiesischen Kolonisatoren: Hugo Loetscher in Goa, Indien,” Quarto, Sondernummer (Post-)Kolonialismus und Schweizer Literature, 51 (2023): 64-71.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2023): “Dutch Ladinos/as? An Iberian Perspective on the Social and Religious Behavior of New Netherland’s Black Population,” New York History 103:2 (Winter 2022-23): 229-45.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2022): “Loetscher, Hugo,” Neue Deutsche Biographie; Historische Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (with Jaap Jacobs and Julie van den Hout, 2022): “The Journal of the Galliot Nieuwer Amstel: A 1660 Voyage to Curaçao from New Amsterdam (Manhattan),” New West Indian Guide (2022): 1-33.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2022): “Miscegenation,” Jennifer Burns and Derek Duncan (eds.): Transnational Modern Languages (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2022), 217-24.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2021): “1619: The Dramatic Performance Traditions of North America’s First Enslaved Africans,” Comparative Drama, Vol. 55, No. 4 (Winter 2021): 417-42.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2021): “Flying Back to Africa or Flying to Heaven? Competing Visions of Afterlife in the Lowcountry and Caribbean Slave Societies,” Religion and American Culture, Vol. 31, No. 2  (Summer 2021): 222-61.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2021): “Rethinking the Historical Development of Caribbean Performance Culture from an Afro-Iberian Perspective: The Case of Jankunu,” New West Indian Guide (2001): 1-31.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2021): “Op zoek naar een eigen Indo-identiteit: Vincent Mahieu/Tjalie Robinson,” Rick Honings, Coen van ’t Veer, and Jacqueline Bel (eds.): De postkoloniale spiegel: De Nederlands-Indische letteren herlezen (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2021), 351-366.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2021): “How Brazilian are Quicumbis?: On Mestiçagem and ‘African Indians’ in Brazilian Popular Culture,” Luso-Brazilian Review, Vol. 58, No. 1 (2021): 62-86.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2021): “Rasse, Rassismus und Rassenmischung in Brasilien: Stefan Zweig und der Traum einer Rassendemokratie,” in: Bernhard Fetz, Arnhilt Inguglia-Höfle, and Arturo Larcati (eds.):  Stefan Zweig Weltautor (München: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2021), 164-170.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2020): “Literature as Resistance: Anglo-Dutch Connections in Dutch Clandestine Literature during the Second World War,” in: Paul Dimond, Jane Fenoulhet, and Elisabeth Salverda (eds.): North Sea Neighbours: British and Dutch Interactions over 100 Years (London: Anglo-Netherlands Society, 2020), 265-274.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2019): “Iberian Linguistic Elements Among The Black Population in New Netherland (1614–1664),” Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, Vol. 34, No. 1 (2019).
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2019): “Stefan Zweig im Land der ‘Guten Wilden’: Vom Mythos zum Brasilienbuch,” in: Elisabeth Erdem, Juliana P, Perez and Pedro H. Tavares (eds.): Stefan Zweig – Das Exil-Projekt (Würzburg: Könighausen & Neumann, 2019), 123-142.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2019): “Sangamentos on Congo Square? Kongolese Warriors, Brotherhood Kings, and Mardi Gras Indians in New Orleans,“ in Cécile Fromont (ed.): Afro-Catholic Festivals in the Americas: Performance, Representation, and the Making of Black Atlantic Tradition (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019), 23-41.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2018): “From Papiamentu to Afro-Catholic Brotherhoods: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of Iberian Elements in Curaçaoan Popular Culture,” Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, Vol. 36 (2018): 69-94.
  •  Jeroen Dewulf (2018): “Rediscovering a Hudson Valley Folkloric Tradition: Traces of the ‘Pinkster’ Feast in Forgotten Books,” The Hudson River Valley Review, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Spring 2018): 2-20.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2018) “From the Calendas to the Calenda: On the Afro-Iberian Substratum in Black Performance Culture in the Americas,” Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 131, No. 519 (Winter 2018): 3-29.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2016) “Blaise Cendrars and the Nietzschean Roots of Multiracial Identity in Stefan Zweig’s Brazil: Land of the Future“, Comparative Literature, Vol. 68, No. 2 (June 2016), 199-217.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2016) “Caribbean Literature in Dutch and Other Languages,” in Sangeeta Ray and Henry Schwarz (eds.), Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016), 265-271.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2015) “’A Strong Barbaric Accent’: America’s Dutch-Speaking Black Community from Seventeenth-Century New Netherland to Nineteenth-Century New York and New Jersey,” American Speech: A Quarterly of Linguistic Usage, Vol. 90, Nr. 2 (May 2015): 131-153.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2015) “Meer dan banale soosverhalen. De Indische schetsen van Justus van Maurik,” in Rick Honings and Peter van Zonneveld (eds.), Een tint van het Indische Oosten. Reizen in Insulinde 1800-1950, Hilversum: Verloren: 141-152.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2015) “Black Brotherhoods in North America: Afro-Iberian and West-Central African Influences,” African Studies Quarterly, Vol. 15, issue 3 (June 2015): 19-38.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2015) “From Moors to Indians: The Mardi Gras Indians and the Three Transformations of St. James,” Louisiana History. The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, Vol. LVI, No. 1 (Winter 2015): 6-41
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2014) “The Many Languages of American Literature: Interpreting Sojourner Truth’s Narrative (1850) as Dutch-American Contact Literature,” Dutch Crossing, Vol. 38, Nr. 3 (2014): 220-234.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2014) “New Man in the Tropics: The Nietzschean Roots of Gilberto Freyre’s Multiracial Identity Concept,” Luso-Brazilian Review, Vol. 51, Nr. 1 (2014): 93-111.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2014) “Discovering Asia in the Footsteps of Portuguese Explorers: East Asia in the Work of Hugo Loetscher,” in Qinna Shen and Martin Rosenstock (eds.): Beyond Alterity: German Encounters with Modern East Asia, New York: Berghahn Books: 261-276.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2014): “Emulating a Portuguese Model: The Slave Policy of the West India Company and the Dutch Reformed Church in Dutch Brazil (1630-1654) and New Netherland (1614-1664) in Comparative Perspective,” Journal of Early American History, Vol. 4 (2014): 3-36.
  • Jeroen Dewulf and Hilde Coffé (2014) “Wavering between Radical and Moderate: The Discourse of the Vlaams Belang in Flanders (Belgium),” in Matthew Feldman and Paul Jackson (eds): Doublespeak: The Rhetoric of the Far Right since 1945, Stuttgart: ibidem Verlag: 147-166.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2014) “Der Neue Mensch in Brasilien. Über den Schatten Nietzsches in Stefan Zweigs Land der Zukunft,” Monatshefte Vol. 106, No. 2 (Summer 2014): 213-29.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2013). “Pinkster: An Atlantic Creole Festival in a Dutch-American Context,” Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 126, Nr. 501: 245-271.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2013): “When Oyono’s ‘Boy’ Speaks Dutch: Two Readings in One Language,” PMLA, Vol. 128, Nr. 1: 112-118.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2013): “Mirroring Zambo in an Atlantic Context: The Open Wound of Slavery in Gottfried Keller’s Don Correa (1881),”Atlantic Studies, Vol. 10, Nr. 2: 247-267.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2013). “Vom Diskurs in der Enge zum Diskurs in die Weite: Hugo Loetschers Konzept der ‘Pluralen Heimat’ als Schlüsselbegriff in der neueren Literatur der deutschsprachigen Schweiz,” German Studies Review, Vol. 86, Nr. 2: 123-140.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2012): “Poetry of the Low Countries” and “Poetry of Switzerland,” in Roland Greene (Ed.): The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry & Poetics, Princeton: Princeton University Press: 820-825 and 1386-1388.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2012): “The Flemish Movement: On the Intersection of Language and Politics in the Dutch-Speaking Part of Belgium,” Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 13, Nr. 1: 23-33.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2012): “Zarathustra in Suriname: Albert Helman’s Prophecy of the ‘New Man’ in Zuid-Zuid-West (1926),” Journal of Dutch Literature, Vol. 3, Nr. 1: 95-109.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2012): “Amsterdam Memorials, Multiculturalism, and the Debate on Dutch Identity,” in Marco de Waard (ed.): Imagining Global Amsterdam: History, Culture, and Geography in a World City. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press: 239-254.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2011). “The Many Meanings of Freedom: The Debate on the Legitimacy of Colonialism in the Dutch Resistance, 1940-1949,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, Vol. 12, Nr. 1.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2011): “’Le pays qui n’est à personne’: Brazil in the Work of Blaise Cendrars,” Essays in French Literature and Culture, Vol. 48, Nr. 11: 67-88.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2011). “Meer dan de stem van Indisch Nederland. Tjalie Robinson en de avant-garde,” Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- & Letterkunde, Vol. 127, Nr. 1: 74-92.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2011): “Tip Marugg and the ‘terrified consciousness’ in Dutch-Antillean Literature,” in Nicholas Faraclas (ed.): Iguana’s Newfound Voices, Curaçao: University of the Netherlands Antilles: 151-160.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2011): “De la Suisse au monde global. Évolution et réception de l’œuvre de Hugo Loetscher,” Revue transatlantique d’études suisses, Vol. 1, Nr. 1.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2010). “Thus Spoke Zarathustra by… Albert Helman: The Image of Germany and the Germans in Dutch Clandestine Literature (1940-1945),” German Studies Review, Vol. 33, Nr. 2: 262-284.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2010). “Zes kaarsen voor Indië, Indonesië in de Nederlandse clandestiene literatuur (1940-1945),” Indische Letteren, Vol. 25. Nr. 1: 39-62.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2010). “Meer dan God en Oranje. Nederlandse verzetsliteratuur,” Vrij Nederland, Nr. 71 (12.04.2010): 52-57.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2010). “Amerindo Country. De stem van de Nederlands-Indische gemeenschap in de Verenigde Staten,”Biografie Bulletin (Najaar 2010): 21-27.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2009). “’O liebes Land, o Belgiens Erde’: The Development of the German-speaking Community in Belgium Reflected in the Light of the Flemish Struggle for Autonomy,” German Studies Review, Vol. 30, Nr. 1: 65-81.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2008). “Die Schriften Alexander von Humboldts zu Lateinamerika,“ in Annete Horn and Peter Horn (ed.): Das Wissen der Weltbürger, Oberhausen: Athena Verlag: 91-116.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2008). “A Surinamese Marriage: John Gabriel Stedman and Joanna,” in Luc Devoldere (ed.). The Low Countries: Arts and Society in Flanders and the Netherlands, Rekkem: Ons Erfdeel: 52-62.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2007): “Framing a De-territorialized, Hybrid Alternative to Nationalist Essentialism in the Postcolonial Era: Tjalie Robinson and the Diasporic Eurasian “Indo” Community,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, Vol. 16, Nr. 1/2: 1-28.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2007). „Hubert Fichte vorweggenommen. Die afrobrasilianischen Religionen bei den Exilautoren Richard Katz und Ulrich Becher,“ Monatshefte, Vol. 99, Nr. 1: 31-51.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2007). „As a Tupi-Indian, Playing the Lute: Hybridity as Anthropophagy,“ in Joel Kuortti and Jopi Nyman (eds.): Reconstructing Hybridity: Post-Colonial Studies in Transition, Amsterdam: Rodopi: 81-98.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2006). “’Verbrasilianern’. L’émigration suisse au Brésil et la question de l’intégration,” Seminar: Canadian Journal of Germanic Studies, Vol. XLII, Nr. 3: 229-241.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2005). “A representação do Outro: reflexões sobre o ensaio ‚Can the subaltern speak?’ de Gayatri Chakrovorty Spivak,”Cadernos de Literatura Comparada, Vol. 10/11: 123-138.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2005). “’Brasilien sollte kein Land der Zukunft werden’. Das abweichende Brasilien-Bild bei Richard Katz, dem ‘vergessenen’ Exilschriftsteller,” in Willy Bolle (ed.): Akten des XI. Lateinamerikanischen Germanistenkongresses, São Paulo: Universidade de São Paulo: 603-609.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2005). “Pintar os trópicos com palavras,” in Rui Carvalho Homem and Maria de Fátima Lambert (eds.): Olhares e Escritas. Ensaios sobre Palavra e Imagem, Porto: FLUP e-DITA: 235-246.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2004). “Meer landschap dan buurschap: Portugal in Europa en de wereld,” in Idesbald Goddeeris (ed.): De Europese Periferie, Leuven: Universitaire Pers Leuven: 61-76.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2002). “Mit fremden Blick: Lettres Persanes in der deutschsprachigen Literatur von 1721 bis heute,” Acta Germanica: German Studies in Africa, Band 30/31: 49-58.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2001). “Schreiben als reflexives Verb,” ABP Zeitschrift zur portugiesischsprachigen Welt, Heft 2/2001: 95-102.
  • Jeroen Dewulf (2000). “Das Recht auf Hybridität: über Kreolismus und Anthropophagie in der Literaturwissenschaft,” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, December 2000: 611-624.

Books

Grijs Slavernijverleden?
The Congo in Flemish Literature
Pinkster King
In alle Richtungen gehen
Brasilien mit Brüchen: Schweizer unter dem Kreuz des Südens
Spirit of Resistance
Shifting the Compass
From the Kingdom of Kongo to Congo Square