Ruth Clemens
Ruth Alison Clemens is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS).
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 the wider cultural attitudes to automatic music. Dr. Clemens specialises in critical approaches to multidisciplinary modern and contemporary literary studies. Her research expertise includes transnational modernism; book history and media materiality; posthuman bodies, technologies, and environments; experimental forms; and literary multilingualism and translation.
