Prof. Dr. Toon Van Houdt
Contact
Seminarium Philologiae Humanisticae
Latijnse literatuurstudie / Latin Literature
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Blijde-Inkomststraat 21, office 06.11 (PO Box 3311)
B-3000 Leuven, Belgium
tel. +32 16 32 49 05 or +32 16 20 60 64
fax +32 16 32 49 09
e-mail
Toon Van Houdt
Toon
Van Houdt received his PhD from the K.U.Leuven in 1995 with a dissertation
on Leonardus Lessius's doctrine on money-lending and interest-taking (published
in 1998). It was the starting point for a more encompassing research project
about the economic and political thought of humanists and late scholastic
theologians in early modern Europe. This project led, among other things,
to the publication of Leonardus Lessius: Ökonomie und Ethik
in the international series 'Klassiker der National-Ökonomie' (Düsseldorf:
Verlag Wirtschaft und Finanzen, 1999).
In 1997-98, Toon Van Houdt worked as a visiting research fellow at The Swedish
Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences (SCASSS) in Uppsala,
Sweden, where he participated in an international project aimed at editing
the entire correspondence of the botanist Carolus Linnaeus.
Research
Interests: cultural history of Roman antiquity (the gendered body);
Neo-Latin philology (epistolography, emblem literature); the history of
humanism and late scholasticism (economics and ethics, political thought,
discourse and communication ethics).
Ever since his appointment as a lecturer at the Department of Classics of
the K.U.Leuven, his scholarly research has focused on the social and moral
regulation of verbal and non-verbal means of communication, as wel as on
the construction of the gendered body in Roman antiquity and early modern
times. The ethics of discourse and communication occupies a central place
in, e.g., his edition and analysis of Antonius a Burgundia's emblem book
Linguae vitia et remedia, Imago Figurata (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999)
and his Dutch translation together with introduction of Erasmus's treatise
on Good manners for boys (Athenaeum-Polak & Van Gennep, 2001), together
with J. De Landtsheer. In 2002, he co-edited the multidisciplinary collection
of essays On the Edge of Truth and Honesty. Principles and Strategies
of Fraud and Deceit in the Early Modern Period, Intersections (Leiden:
Brill). The construction of the gendered body has been treated in Amor-Roma.
Liefde en erotiek in Rome (Leuven: Davidsfonds, 2003), toegther with
E. Eyben and Chr. Laes.
Research in the field of educational sciences: Reader training. The development
and implementation of reading strategies based on a new concept of linguistic
competence for the Latin and Greek curriculum.