Mineke Schipper

Mineke Schipper studied French and Philosophy at Amsterdam Free University, and Literary Theory and Comparative Literature at the University of Utrecht. She started her career teaching French and African Literature at the Université Libre du Congo (1964-1968 and 1970-1972). She defended her PhD thesis (Le Blanc et l’Occident au miroir du roman africain de langue française) in Amsterdam in 1973 (the first in the Netherlands to be written on African literatures). That same year her thesis was published in Yaoundé under the title of Le Blanc vu d’Afrique. She became more and more interested in comparing literatures originating from different cultures. In 1988 she became the first Professor of Intercultural Literary Studies in the Netherlands, first at the Free University of Amsterdam and since 1993 at Leiden University.

She is currently working from a comparative global perspective regarding oral and written literature perspectives in traditions within Africa and outside. The resulting books are being published in several languages. Her two most recent books are 'Hills of Paradise. Power, Powerlessness and the Female Body' (In Dutch entitled: 'Heuvels van het paradijs. Een geschiedenis van macht en onmacht', 2018) and 'Humanity's End as a New Beginning'. 'World Disasters in Myths (2021). Both these two are also available in Arabic translations (Sefsafa publishing, Cairo). Hills of Paradise' will also be published in Nigeria in a special Africa edition (2024) by BookCraft in Ibadan.

Photo credits: Christiaan Krouwel (cropped).