Ruth Alison Clemens is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society. Her current research project is titled 'Posthuman Music Machines: Literature in the Age of the Pianola' and is part of the NWO Startersbeurs project 'Tracing Players Playing Traces: Non/Human Music in Modern and Contemporary Literature' led by her colleague Dr Daný van Dam. 'Posthuman Music Machines' studies literature and culture from the age of the player piano (1896-1929) in order to understand how literary engagements with this new media technology shaped and were shaped by wider attitudes to automatic music and technology.

More information about Ruth Clemens

Fields of interest

• Modernism and the avant-garde
• Experimental literature
• Poetry and poetics
• Critical approaches to language, representation, media, and technology
• Translation, multilingualism, and transnationalism
• Sound studies
• The relationship between form and politics
• Critical posthumanism
• Book history, design, and material culture

Research

After working as a lecturer at LUCAS for two years, in August 2024 I joined LUCAS as a postdoctoral researcher on the NWO Startersbeurs project 'Tracing Players Playing Traces: Non/Human Music in Modern and Contemporary Literature' led by my colleague Dr Daný van Dam. This project investigates the relationship between speculative narratives and music technologies. My research project, 'Posthuman Music Machines: Media and Culture in the Age of the Pianola,' studies images, films, texts, and compositions from the age of the player piano (1896-1929) in order to understand how avant-garde and mass cultural engagements with this new media technology shaped and were shaped by wider attitudes to automatic music and the technological. 

My broad research interests cover film, cultural analysis, and comparative literary studies. My work explores the intersections between textuality and materiality, media and politics, and language and technology. As well as academic research, teaching, and writing, I enjoy undertaking practice-based work such as artistic research, critical archive studies, and creative-critical approaches. I have led artistic research workshops at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK), the Grey Space in the Middle (The Hague), and Hypha Studios (London).

My research interests are varied, with through-lines of critical posthumanism, the avant-garde across media, film, sound, and visual arts, transnational and multilingualism, genealogies of global modernism, and the materiality of culture.

Publications

Activities