Moving Europe: Literary Interventions - Episode 2: Ghostly encounters in Evaristo’s Soul Tourists (2005)

In this episode, Maura Martens and Sterre Schols, both students of the Research Master “Arts, Literature and Media” at Leiden University, delve into the marginalized stories of Europe through the lens of Critical Heritage Studies. Who is included and who is left out of Europe’s cultural narratives? Through a close-reading of the novel Soul Tourists (2005) by British author Bernardine Evaristo, Maura and Sterre explore the critical role of art in the cultural archive of Europe, especially in relation to issues of race, colonialism and mobility. Evaristo offers a multivoiced alternative narrative by presenting ghostly encounters with black figures from Europe’s past. This episode also discusses Thomas Price’s Moments Contained (2022), a statue of an imaginary, young Black woman in front of Rotterdam's Central Station. Dutch novelist Safae el Khannoussi joins the discussion to speak about her critically acclaimed debut novel Oroppa (2024).For references and additional information, please see the full description (available here as PDF)