The Leiden Arts in Society Blog is now four years old, and we have recently released a new blog-related project: an online, open access edited volume. About a year ago we asked our blog authors to expand a post or series of post into a full article. This has resulted in seven blog-based articles, which we proudly present in the volume Arts in Society: Academic Rhapsodies.

The articles cover a wide range of topics, reflecting the diversity of LUCAS research. We divided them in three thematic clusters. In the part on ‘Collection and reproduction’ you can read Jun Nakamura’s article on the seventeenth-century Dutch dollhouseand Liselore Tissen’s piece on authenticity and 3D reproduction. On the theme ‘Texts and readers’ we present three articles: Andrea Reyes Elizondo writes about the nature of reading, Céline Zaepffel delves into Jean de La Fontaine’s Fables as prescribed reading for children, and Amaranth Feuth reads Derek Walcott as poeta novus. Finally, under the heading of ‘Pop culture’, Marion Bracq’s articles discusses comic book adaptations of Ludovico Ariosto’s epic poem Orlando furioso and Nynke Feenstra and Looi van Kessel explore the intersection of queer and deaf representation.

The complete publication, including the introduction and the cover with a wonderful image designed by Marion Bracq, can be accessed here. While academic in nature, we have aimed to present accessible pieces that, just as our regular blog posts, can be of interest to the wider academic community as well as non-academic audiences.

Arts in Society: Academic Rhapsodies is edited by Sophia Hendrikx, Merel Oudshoorn, Lieke Smits and Tim Vergeer.