Interview: Ernst Van Alphen

Ernst van Alphen is Emeritus Professor of Literary Studies at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society. Particularly interested in issues central to modern and postmodern literature and in the relation between literature, critical theory and the visual arts, his work encompasses research on articulations between trauma and memory and their role in literary and artistic representation, gender studies, and problems related to archive, image and photography. Amongst numerous publications, Van Alphen authored books such as Logs of Sculpture (2022, in press), Un/Productive Archiving (2022, in press), Shame! and Masculinity (2021), Failed Images. Photography and Its Counter-Practices (2018), Staging the Archive: Art and Photography in Times of New Media (2014), Art In Mind: How contemporary Images Shape Thought (2005), Armando: Shaping Memory (2000), Caught by History: Holocaust effects in contemporary art, literature and theory (1997), and Francis Bacon and the Loss of Self (1992). As co-editor, also published How to Do Things with Affects – Affective Triggers in Aesthetic Forms and Cultural Practices (with Tomáš Jirsa, 2019), and The Rhetoric of Sincerity (with Mieke Bal & Carel Smith, 2009).