dr. Bettine Siertsema

Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Art and Culture, History, Antiquity

Personal information

Bettine Siertsema graduated cum laude in Dutch Language and Literature at the VU. After working as a clerk at the University Executive Board and a staff member of the Blaise Pascal Institute on science and religion, she earned her PhD in 2007 with a study of religious and ethical issues in Dutch autobiographical literature on the Nazi concentration camps. She was a fellow of the Summer Institute of the Holocaust Education Foundation at Northwestern University (Evanston, Il, USA) in 2008. Other fields of interest include theology, liturgy and Dutch poetry. She is a free-lance preacher, based at the Ekklesia Amsterdam (http://ekklesia-amsterdam.nl/home/ ).

Research

Siertsema’s research focuses on international Holocaust literature and on oral testimonies of the Holocaust. She published on Etty Hillesum, Abel Herzberg, Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones, David Grossman’s See under: Love, female perpetrators, Dutch literary representations of the Eichmann trial and Dutch poets like Martinus Nijhoff, Ida Gerhardt, Huub Oosterhuis and Lloyd Haft. Currently she works on the Holocaust perpetrator as a literary personage.

Education

Siertsema teaches a class on Media Ethics for bachelor students in Journalism (in the Department of Language, Literature and Communication) and, together with Dr. D.G. Hondius, a class on The Holocaust: History and Memory for bachelor students in History.

Ancillary activities

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