About

General presentation

Lilith is the proud name of a research unit at Liège University assembling a group of scholars in the fields of linguistics and literary studies.

The name Lilith does not only allude to our main research domains (literary studies and linguistics) and the unit’s location (Liège University) but also takes its inspiration from mythology and a variety of cultures, which have imbued Lilith with a wide range of often contradictory meanings and associations. Whereas the figure of Lilith used to have predominantly negative connotations, it has in recent times become a symbol of fiercely independent womanhood. Lilith can therefore be seen as emblematic of the fascinating complexity and diversity characterizing the objects of linguistics and literary studies.

Language and linguistics

The research unit brings together a number of fields and approaches to language and linguistics, centred on Dutch, English and German, but also venturing into contrastive and typological research. The work done by the linguists of Lilith, who make up Lilith's Centre for Linguistics, pertains both to synchronic and diachronic linguistics, putting the study of variation and change at the forefront. Its methodological approach is usage-based; researchers draw on data retrieved from corpora, gathered in experiments or collected in the field. Most of the work is embedded in functional and cognitive frameworks and extends into variational sociolinguistics, the study of multilingualism and CLIL (‘content and language integrated learning’) as well as language documentation and description. A number of these fields lend themselves well to interdisciplinary work, presenting interesting links to the study of political language or language and identity.

Literary and cultural studies

One of Lilith’s two major research areas is modern (Germanic) literatures, mainly in Dutch, English and German, with a particular focus on transnational and comparative aspects on the one hand, and interdisciplinary and crossmedial aspects on the other. Questions related to the field of poetics are by no means ignored but most of our research favours a diachronic and/or contextualizing approach. Put differently, the research unit does not limit itself to the study of texts in isolation but above all interprets texts as historically situated constructs and as articulations of specific discourses and therefore as interventions in societal and ideological struggles. Lilith’s literary research and methodology are firmly embedded in the realm of cultural history but also draw inspiration from various other disciplines, including Cultural Studies, Queer Studies, Postcolonial Studies and Discourse Analysis.

Acknowledgements

In his works, the renowned German artist Anselm Kiefer has tried to capture the multi-layered significance of Lilith as a demon-goddess. We are grateful to Mr. Kiefer for granting us permission to use an image of his work Untitled (Lilith) (1996) on our homepage. Reproduction of this image is not permitted.