Frame - Journal of Literary Studies

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Frame - Journal of Literary Studies

FRAME is a biannual journal of literary studies, affiliated with Utrecht University. Katherine Hayles, Mieke Bal, and J. Hillis Miller.

Each issue centers on a specific theme that resonates with contemporary literary debates, intersecting with other disciplines and creating space for fruitful discussions. Frame is a biannual journal of literary studies, run by (former) students of Utrecht University, which publishes articles by international theorists along with important lectures, interviews, and critical reviews. Since its estab

lishment in 1984, it is the only Dutch publication forum that allows for a centred discussion on comparative literary studies. Frame broaches cutting-edge topics in the literary field and has in the past had the opportunity of working with well-known scholars such as Jonathan Culler, N. Issues of Frame are usually centred around a specific theme that resonates with the contemporary literary debate, and the editorial board aims to compile a set of articles that together allow for a fruitful discussion. Additionally, the Masterclass section offers students the opportunity to gain some much-needed publishing experience, as well as valuable guidance during the (re)writing process. The journal furthermore offers room for conference announcements, symposiums or workshop reports, lectures, and interviews.

23/10/2025

We are thrilled to announce that FRAME is among the 5 journals that have received an NWO grant to fully transition to Open Access!

To make literary research more accessible, our editorial team is transitioning to diamond open access, including immediate digital publication and the opening of FRAME’s archive to expand digital reach, among other things.

This milestone marks an important step forward in making our authors’ research accessible to a wider public, and we couldn’t be happier to embark on this journey towards open scholarship. This achievement would not have been possible without the invaluable guidance of Utrecht University professor Kári Driscoll, whose support was instrumental in making FRAME’s transition to OA a reality.

Stay tuned for updates as we take the next steps toward a more open and accessible future for FRAME!

20/10/2025

For our final article highlight for issue 38.1 “Page to Planet,” we present “Staging Climate Justice: Tribunal Theatre, Customs, and the Politics of Ecocide” co-authored by Mohana Zwaga & Flora Lehman. The article examines the potential of tribunal theatre to advance legal and cultural understandings of ecocide. Lehmann and Zwaga utilise contextual variances of a ‘custom’ to explicate the difficulty of defining and criminalising ecocide. As they elaborate, ecocide occurs on a temporal and spatial scale that defies common legal understandings of violence. The authors specifically look at the case study of the THIS IS NOT A TRIAL theatre project, where an ecocide tribunal is staged dramaturgically, showcasing the importance of cultural intervention to create a new custom that can allow for the inclusion of nonhuman entities and timescales. The article features conversations with three core members of the research and creative team behind THIS IS NOT A TRIAL: literary and cultural memory studies scholar Dr. Susanne Knittel, legal scholar and StopEcocide NL representative Shirleen Chin, and the project’s script writer Reinier Noordzij. Zwaga and Lehman strive to showcase eco-dramaturgy’s potential for enacting change in both legal paradigms and in encouraging environmental responsibility and action.

Check out our website, linked in our bio, to either subscribe to our yearly subscription and get FRAME’s biannual print publications OR order an individual copy of 38.1 “Page to Planet” (digital or print) to read Mohana Zwaga & Flora Lehman’s article and more! 🖼️

18/10/2025

Continuing our article highlights, next up is Jessica Lentz’s “Competing Visions of Nature: The Construction of Narrative in ‘Grizzly Man’ and the Problematization of ‘Connectivity Thinking’.” The article engages with Erin James’ concept of Anthropocene Narrative Theory (ANT) to explore the ambiguous narrative construction in Werner Herzog’s “Grizzly Man” (2005). Lentz approaches the documentary through a narratological lens, analyzing how it contests the nature-culture divide, and arguing that through Herzog’s editing choices and voiceovers is created a multi-faceted narrative which allows a variety of different perspectives on nature to co-exist. The article critically interrogates Thom van Dooren and Deborah Bird Rose’s concept of “connectivity thinking,” a theoretical framework that underscores the significance of meaningful interactions between human and non-human entities. Lentz argues for a paradigm shift towards the notion of “respect,” as advocated by Indigenous scholar Sven Haakanson, which offers a more grounded and sustainable framework for envisioning future interactions between humans and the natural world.

Check out our website, linked in our bio, to either subscribe to our yearly subscription and get FRAME’s biannual print publications OR order an individual copy of 38.1 “Page to Planet” (digital or print) to read Jessica Lentz’s article and more! 🖼️

16/10/2025

In this article highlight, we present Scarlett Olivia Croft’s article “‘swallowing the unfathomable / still.’ The Precarious Lyric in June Jordan’s Ecopoetry.” Croft demonstrates how Jordan’s work challenges the dominant pastoral and Romantic representations of nature, instead foregrounding the interconnectedness of environmental issues with social justice, race, and colonial history. The article looks at how Jordan dismantles the formal expectations of lyrical eco-poetry, through thematic content and stylistic choices. Croft argues that the poet’s focus on the environmental legacies of settler colonialism and the precarity of Black and Indigenous lives redefines eco-poetry, calling for a more inclusive and intersectional approach to environmental justice.

Check out our website, linked in our bio, to either subscribe to our yearly subscription and get FRAME’s biannual print publications OR order an individual copy of 38.1 “Page to Planet” (digital or print) to read Scarlett Olivia Croft’s article and more! 🖼️

13/10/2025

Next up in our article highlights, is Sarah Richardson’s article “Solarpunk Strategies: Robots as Ecologists in Becky Chambers’ ‘A Psalm for the Wild-Built’.” Richardson focuses on the ‘Robot Ecologists’ and their role in the utopian narrative, situating Chamber’s text within broader solarpunk debates, elucidating the novella’s capacity to inspire a sense of optimism for an ecologically sustainable future in the face of mounting anxieties concerning both environmental degradation and AI.

Check out our website, linked in our bio, to either subscribe to our yearly subscription and get FRAME’s biannual print publications OR order an individual copy of 38.1 “Page to Planet” (digital or print) to read Sarah Richardson’s article and more! 🖼️

12/10/2025

For our next article highlight, here is isabel wang pontoppidan’s “& GHOST STORIES,” a powerfully haunting combination of scholarly work and personal memoir. The article explores the environmental and intergenerational effects of rare earth mineral mining in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (IMAR), demonstrating how these histories and systems of mineral extraction leave scars on the land, and the bodies and souls of those living in that region. pontoppidan presents an analysis of the history of the IMAR and China’s mining of rare earth minerals through the framework of ‘Sacrifice Zones’ as articulated by Jullie Michelle Klinger, and synergizes this examination with a deeply personal narrative about attending her —姥爷 (lǎoyé)—grandfather’s funeral in the city of Baotou. This autoethnographic article explores the cognitive dissonance experienced by the diasporic subject which extends to all affected by the weight of the climate crisis.

Zones

Check out our website, linked in our bio, to either subscribe to our yearly subscription and get FRAME’s biannual print publications OR order an individual copy of 38.1 “Page to Planet” (digital or print) to read isabel wang pontoppidan’s article and more! 🖼️

11/10/2025

Continuing our article highlights, next up is Hendrikje Dorussen’s “Eqqumiitsuliorneq: Haptic Reading, Climate Representations and the Book-Objects of Nancy Campbell.” This article presents a close reading on works by Scottish poet and artist Nancy Campbell, “How to say ‘I love you’ in Greenlandic” and “The Night Hunter,” in tandem with Timothy Morton’s theorisation of climate change as hyperobject, to explore how the distinctive material nature of Campbell’s works (a deck of cards and a collection of objects), and the subsequent haptic mode of reading demanded by these book-objects, work to both bring the unimaginable losses of climate change to a graspable scale and further offer a way for the reader to remain actively engaged with the crisis.

Check out our website, linked in our bio, to either subscribe to our yearly subscription and get FRAME’s biannual print publications OR order an individual copy of 38.1 “Page to Planet” (digital or print) to read Hendrikje Dorussen’s article and more! 🖼️

09/10/2025

As FRAME is in the process of preparing our next issue, we’d like to look back at the articles in our most recent publication, issue 38.1 “Page to Planet,” where we asked scholars to focus on connections between literature and sustainability, how literature can counter and critically examine neoliberal/hegemonic discourses surrounding sustainability, and how creative narratives can potentially create imagined sustainable futures:

First up, we have Luka Hattuma’s “Shared Breath in the Tomb of the Earth: Earthly Respiratory Systems as Resistance to Racial Capitalism in Uhuru Portia Phalafala’s Epic ‘Mine Mine Mine’ (2023).” This article examines the current socio-political landscape in the South African mining industry and how the linguistic representations of breathing rhythms in Phalafala’s epic—shared ‘combat breathing’—can create imagined possibilities for change. Hattuma focuses on the tropes of the lung and the womb, drawing on the works of Magdalena Górska and Stacy Alaimo, showing how Phalafala connects the body to the earth in a “poetics of possibility.” The lyric subject invites the reader to join in this rhythm, simultaneously individualising the collective and collectivising the individual.

Check out our website, linked in our bio, to either subscribe to our yearly subscription and get FRAME’s biannual print publications OR order an individual copy of 38.1 “Page to Planet” (digital or print) to read Luka Hattuma’s article and more! 🖼️

10/08/2025

𝗙𝗥𝗔𝗠𝗘 39.1 𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗣𝗮𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀!

We welcome abstract proposals for our 39.1 issue “Controlling the Narrative”! This issue is focused on the connections between literature and narrative. In this issue, we ask scholars and graduate students from literary studies and other related fields to engage with the topics of authoritarianism, propaganda, incarceration, revolution, protests, and the blurred line between truth and fiction.

Who owns a narrative, and how does this ownership determine the effect a work of literature has? How are narratives preserved for the archive, how does this affect current and future narratives? How do imprisoned artists and intellectuals continue to create while incarcerated, and how do these works make it to a larger audience? How do different critical frameworks read and/or critique authority?

Read our full 𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗣𝗮𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀 on our website (link in bio), and submit your proposal before 5 September 2025. 🖼️

25/06/2025

📃🌍FRAME’s New Issue is Posted! 🌏📃
We’re excited to announce that 38.1 “Page to Planet” our latest issue, exploring the connections between literature and sustainability, is all packed and ready for you to read!

From constructing different narrative forms that encompass the ecological imaginary, to immediate and personal effects of environmental and ecological damage that challenge us to consider our own roles and responsibilities, these articles illustrate that storytelling—whether in the form of memoir, poetic resistance, or speculative reflection— emerges as a vital medium that underscores the role of literature to cultivate awareness.

A special thank you to all our authors and contributors who made this issue as special as it is.

If you are already subscribed be on the lookout for your copy in the mail 📮! If you would like to have an individual copy of 38.1 you can order one on our website (linked in bio) under “Subscribe” > “Order individual copies”. If you subscribe now to FRAME you will receive our next issues 38.2 “Paper Pills: A Medical Humanities Issue” and 39.1 “Controlling the Narrative” when they are in print. 🖼️

18/06/2025

On Saturday we had a lovely launch event to celebrate our latest issue 38.1 “Page to Planet” 📝🌍. Thank you to all the attendees for their participation and FRAME’s wonderful editorial board for their hard work in bringing the issue to life.

A special thank you to the launch event team for organizing and to one of our own, Mara, for putting together the flower printing workshop🔖💐! (You can find more of their workshops on Instagram )

Want to read the latest issue? You can get your own individual copy now OR you can subscribe to FRAME (students get a special deal) to get both of our biannual issues! All available on the “subscribe” tab of our website! 🌀

Thank you to Cultureel Centrum Moira for hosting us.

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