During the winter semester 2025 students of the proseminar “Animals in Dutch Literature. Narrative Encounters with the Non-Human” recorded podcast episodes as a part of their final assignment. The proseminar was taught by Daniela Prusova (Dutch Studies, Department of European and Comparative Literature and Language Studies).

By using scholarly podcasting as a form of assessment, the course aimed to give students the motivating sense that their work throughout the semester would lead to a tangible outcome. At the same time, the assignment encouraged them to communicate the results of literary analysis to a broader public and to develop skills in science communication.

These are some of the impressions of the students who took part in this project:

“Producing a podcast as a final assignment was a challenging, but rewarding experience." (K.)

“I think it made the whole thing of having a final assignment a lot less worrisome, sometimes I overthink the contents of academic writing (...).” (J.)

The students learned about the theoretical frameworks of the emerging field of Cultural and Literary Animal Studies. They then analysed five originally in Dutch written literary works in groups: “Tagebuch einer Katze” by Remco Campert, “Ich will kein Hund sein” by Alma Mathijsen, “The man I became” by Peter Verhelst, “Bird cottage” by Eva Meijer, and “Monkey Business” by Jan Lauwereyns. After a workshop on the basics of podcasting and writing a script, the students took their work into the podcasting studio of MediaLab and recorded their episodes. They had the chance to get familiar with the technical aspects of recording and the professional equipment.

You can now listen to the students' work under this link. 

Many thanks to the MediaLab team for support during the recording!