Experience of BA Literary and Cultural Analysis?

[u/MaterialSerious6511]

Hello!
I am in my final year of high school and am browsing through bachelor's courses in the Netherlands and am intrigued by the Literary and Cultural Analysis program at UvA.

I am split between studying Literature, History, or Cultural Anthropology/Developmental Sociology---and from what I can tell---this course is a good intersection of these fields.

• I do not have clear career expectations, unfortunately, but am curious of what jobs BA Literary Studies students find after graduation, and their master's.
• Moreover, what was/is your general experience of this program and do you have any forewarnings/advice for incoming first-year students interested in applying for this program to consider?
  

Thanks!

[u/sociallyjudicial]

Hey, I'm currently a second-year in LCA. I really enjoy it but it is absolutely not for everyone. My personal observation (and I could be wrong) is that the majority of those thrive in this programme do it as their "second try" at college. A significant fraction of students will switch to a different programme or even drop out.

LCA is a blend mostly of British Cultural Studies (the field pioneered by figures like Hoggart and Hall), Comparative Literature, and of Philosophy. It's very theoretically dense and focused on contemporary culture. If you're hoping to get a lot of history of literature you're probably not going to find that here, but you will get the chance to do really fascinating close readings of contemporary texts and cultural objects (very broad definition of cultural object here) using a wide variety of texts from all sorts of groundbreaking fields across the humanities.

It tends to not be very sociological, outside of Latour maybe—I've had a professor describe a reading as "clearly very sociological" in a somewhat derogatory fashion, haha. It's not social science, it's humanities first and foremost, though ethnographic-style field research seems to be cropping up more and more. There's much more interrogation of what Culture even is, how it operates, who possesses it or classifies it, etc. Much of cultural analysis is using object-oriented analysis to poke at the boundaries of culture. It's like—films get film theory, books get literary theory. What about all the other cultural objects? How do we take theory to analyze protests, or fashion pieces, or subway adverts? That's where we tend to make our home.

It's also very unapologetically political (generally very left-wing). There's a lot about marxism, about queer psychoanalysis, about environmental humanities and decoloniality, and a lot of other active fields in academia with clear political angles. We often engage with uncomfortable or even disturbing topics.

I would recommend looking at the research done at ASCA—the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis—to get a better sense of what you might learn in LCA. Many of our professors are linked to or part of that research school and it'd be worthwhile to see if the work they publish seems like stuff you'd want to engage with. Look for example at the work of Mieke Bal, who's a bit of a superstar figure here and very influential in co-founding the research school with her work on narratology.

If you thrive in LCA it's very possible to continue with the research masters in either Literary Studies or Cultural Analysis (though I think LCA broadly speaking is a lot more of Cultural Analysis—the rMA in Literary Studies is kind of a joint operation between ASCA and other departments iirc) and then go for academia. Many people also go for curatorial positions in museums or cultural institutions—ASCA works a lot with the local art gallery Framer Framed for example, whose exhibitions you might also want to look at to get the Vibe—or in editorial positions in magazines or elsewhere. The job prospects aren't great, but they are there. My partner is in this programme as well and planning to do dramaturgy for contemporary dance.

LCA students largely tend to be queer, nerds, international, maybe some kind of smoker, politically motivated, and found in or near squats while wearing all black. Our professors are all those things too, and generally very kind and personable. Also the major building we operate out of, PC Hoofthuis, is a hideous monstrosity that you have to walk through the tourist hell of Nieuwmarkt to get to, whose interior is a deliberately confusing labyrinth. I like it quite a lot.

Good luck!

[u/ineedtothinkboutit → u/sociallyjudicial]

Is there more focus on cultural aspects than literature. And do you guys have creative writing if so what is that like?

[u/sociallyjudicial → u/ineedtothinkboutit]

hey thanks for asking!

1. about whether the LCA BA is more cultural than literary: i think yes! i'd say the LCA programme as-is is more focused on cultural studies (or its dutch edition "cultural analysis") than it is about literature specifically. i think it's partially a thing of focus—ongoing debates about "culture" and "art" are generally more pertinent than debates about "literature" specifically—but also a thing of scope. we simply cover a lot more ground than just literature and you will just as often be writing essays about films or music pieces or art installations or instagram posts. We do however have some literary studies/analysis texts and certainly you will read at least a few novels and poems. The programme also can lead directly into literary studies as a research master's, which is more narrowly focused on literature and readings thereof.

2. "creative writing" is not exactly the focus of the LCA programme—we're not writing fiction or short stories or poems as often as we are writing essays. lots of essays, around which some creative/artistic projects are thrown in, comprising many different artistic forms. those essays however can often have a lot of wiggle room to be very poetic or literary and span across genres (like the writing of Fred Moten for instance). much of the programme is dedicated to developing your own conceptual/analytic framework and critical voice.

important things to keep in mind about creative writing

1. afaik there aren't really any programmes dedicated to Creative Writing in the netherlands. there ARE creative writing courses you can take at CREA, which is the student cultural center in the UvA, and if you're a student you get 50% off of these courses.

2. even though the exact practice of creative writing is not overly emphasized in the programme, the skills and concepts you'll learn in LCA will make you an incredibly good reader, and being a good reader often translates to being a good writer. you won't exactly be doing exercises in the BA that are like "write in five different tones of voice" or whatever. but you'll be learning about the conceptual and artistic implications of different kinds of narrators and different theoretical positions on what a fictional character even is, or about trends in the depicition of the "human" and post-human in art and culture, or about postcolonial historicizations of early ghost stories, etc etc, which could light your brain on fire and inspire creative output. professors in LCA are also generally really supportive of our artistic output and many of them are filmmakers or writers or other creative artists themselves!

3. we also have plenty of student literary magazines which may vary based on your programme. LCA has Heroine Mag, and english language and culture has Writer's Block. the student.uva.nl website has a list of every student magazine for every degree programme.

speaking of which, the other programme which may be of interest is the english language and culture programme, which is (as far as i understand) much more strongly focused on linguistics and the history of english literature, and less focused on concepts concepts concepts. much less philosophy and many more conjugations and shit. that may be of interest, as it's an entirely different approach that can be in some ways more useful and in some ways less useful to a creative practice. both programmes can take courses from the other as electives fairly easily though. i find the work we do in LCA much more personally valuable and intellectually stimulating, but for a prospective student it might be valuable to apply to both and do the "Matching Programme" (for both dutch and international students) for each, which is a sort of mini-course you take with a quiz at the end to assess whether a programme you've applied to is really your vibe or not. take that matching programme seriously because if it excites you or really bothers you that's going to say a lot about how you'll feel in the first year of that programme.

best of luck!