Emma de Vries
Guest Researcher
- Name
- E.M. de Vries MA
- Telephone
- +31 71 527 2727
- e.m.de.vries@hum.leidenuniv.nl
Fields of interest
- Mail- and Media Art
- Contemporary Literature
- Epistolary Theory
- Philosophy of Technology
- Digital Materiality
Research
This interdisciplinary project signals and scrutinizes a remarkable phenomenon: today’s simultaneous dis- and reappearance of the letter. While digital communication media have ousted the letter into disuse, in contemporary art and literature this medium is pervasively rehabilitated. Neo-Epistolarity, as I call these emerging practices, combines analogue procedures of paper, pen and postal delivery, with a pronounced engagement with digital culture. Thus these works cannot be interpreted as expressions of technophobia. Instead, my research probes the possibility of conceiving Neo-Epistolarity, rather than as resistance against, as inquiry into media-technological change and its cultural implications.
Curriculum vitae
In Amsterdam, Granada and Leuven I studied Literary Theory, Philosophy, and Cultural Analysis (BA and RMA cum laude). Before joining the Leiden University Center for the Arts in Society as a PhD Researcher, I worked at the philosophy department of Boom Publishers in Amsterdam. I pass the academic year 2015-2016 in Los AngeIes and Cambridge (United States), where I join the Design and Media Arts department at UCLA and metaLAB at Harvard, as a Fulbright Scholar and Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Fellow.
Grants
- Fulbright Grant
- Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Fellowship
Ancillary activities
- Chair of the LUCAS PhD Council
- Member of the LUCAS Advisory Board
Guest Researcher
- Faculty of Humanities
- Centre for the Arts in Society
- Moderne Nederlandse L&C
- Vries E.M. de (2016), Twee billen in een envelop - De brief als ding | De mens als brief. In: Klein Zandvoort B. & Ruijgrok C. (Eds.), Hoe de dingen ons bewegen. Amsterdam: Trebelsee. 81-83.
- Vries E.M. de (7 February 2015), Naast brievenschrijver is digitale dater een viezerik. De Gelderlander.
- Vries E.M. de (2015), Neo-Epistolarity: On the Place and Plays of Letters in Contemporary Culture. In: Koehler K. & McDonald-Miranda K. (Eds.), Private and Public Voices: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Letters and Letter Writing. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press. 205-237.
- Vries E.M. de (2014), On Phoenixes and Dying Swans: Neo-Epistolarity, or Letter Writing in a Digital Age. In: Shuhua C. & Kelley A. (Eds.), Approaching Letters and Letter Writing. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press. 15-29.
- Vries E.M. de (2011), Letters as Tricksters - Writing Oneself Back Into the World: On The Invitation, Jacques Derrida, Stanley Cavell and Epistolary Romanticism. In: Farrar S. & Januskeviciute V. (Eds.), Index / Assembly. Amsterdam: de Appel arts centre. 66-97.