In September, six new English bachelor tracks will receive their first first-years. In this series, Vox wants to know what the hot research topics in these bachelors’ scientific fields are. This time: Arts and culture studies.

  ‘We have not promoted Arts and Culture Studies that extensively yet, but the preliminary applications are going surprisingly well,’ says Tim Vermeulen, who, together with Liedeke Plate, coordinates the new Bachelor track. ‘Most of the applicants hail from abroad, but there are also Dutch students that have shown an interest in enrolling in the English programme.’ The choice to start an English track, running alongside the Dutch bachelor track, makes sense, according to Vermeulen. Dutch art and culture do not exist in a vacuum; they are part of a much larger, global cultural ecosystem. It is important, especially in times like these, to offer the critical idiom to help understand how what is happening here relates to developments around us .’ Vermeulen sees a clear trend in Arts and Culture research at the moment: ‘We call it the ‘new sincerity’ or ‘informed naivety’. A new generation of artists wants to engage constructively with society again, perhaps because so much about our future is uncertain.’ In the eighties and nineties, artists were cynical. ‘Many of them had given up on the idea of an alternative, and you could see different ways of expressing that,’ says Vermeulen. ‘They could be very pessimistic, like Nirvana and grunge, or many punk bands; or very hedonistic, like the Vengaboys. Jeff Koons is also an example of someone who did not engage, and saw no possibility for an alternative future.’ Zadie Smith Since 2000, a new generation of artists approaches the world differently, says Vermeulen. ‘They know that it is possibly pointless, but want to try and change the world anyway. That is why we call it ‘informed naivety’ or ‘new sincerity’. The future is back in art.’ Examples of artists that fit this trend are David Foster Wallace, Zadie Smith, Coco Rosie, Mumford and Sons, Ragnar Kjartansson and Jonas Staal, Vermeulen says. ‘They once more construct, or probe the possibility to construct, alternative narratives, just in case it might help.’ At Radboud University, this trend is also visible in the teaching as well as the research topics that its scholars choose and in academic events that they organise. For example, assistant professors Edwin van Meerkerk and Tom Sintobin organise a ‘Utopia week’, with lectures about Thomas More’s work and the pictures our society paints of the perfect society. / Jozien Wijkhuijs